The Soulkeepers (2 page)

"MOM!"

"Jacob?" She turns toward him. Her face
pales. Her eyes grow wide with terror. "Run, Jacob! RUN!" she yells
and that's when he notices it behind her. At first he can't
actually see it but he can feel it. He can smell it—sulfur and
something sweet. And although he doesn't know exactly what it is,
he hates it with every fiber of his being.

"Behind you," he calls out. She moves to the
front of the car and points her gun at the darkness that emerges
from the trees, flowing forward like oil in water. It is a horrific
abomination—scaly black skin, enormous leathery wings and yellow
eyes that lock on his mother. It's the sight of its talons that
makes him run faster.

Crack. Crack. Bullets fly from the gun but
the creature melts into the thick ripple it was when it oozed from
the woods. It shifts right and his mom's eyes track it until it
disappears again. Without lowering her gun, she feels for the knife
on her leg. Jacob reaches the car.

"GET. IN. NOW," she commands.

He obeys, sliding in behind the steering
wheel. That's when he realizes the car is still running. The keys
dangle from the ignition.

Never taking her eyes off the woods, she
backs toward the passenger side door. He thinks she will crawl in
next to him and they will escape whatever this is.

Lightning-quick talons rip across her chest.
Jacob screams as blood sprays the window…his mother's blood.
Somehow, she is able to sink the knife into the shoulder of the
beast before she drops. The creature backs away from her body with
an ethereal howl that makes Jacob's hair stand on end.

It rears back in pain, placing itself in
front of the vehicle. On instinct, Jacob slams the Toyota into
drive and pounds on the accelerator. The hood crumples accordion
style as he collides with the thing. He sees a flash of blood on
glass...his blood.

And then there is nothing
but the tunnel, the light, and the man in the green
mask
.

The Girl Next
Door

Three weeks later, Paris Illinois…

Jacob busied himself stacking wood in the
shape of a pyramid within the brick walls of the Laudner's
fireplace. The house smelled like dust and dried flowers. Building
a fire was a welcome distraction but he also hoped the smell of
burning oak would improve the stale air.

"That looks mighty professional. Where'd you
learn to build a fire like that?" Uncle John said from behind
him.

"My dad," Jacob responded.

"Wouldn't have thought there'd be much
opportunity growing up in Hawaii and all."

Jacob glanced toward John as he brought a
match toward the kindling and watched the flames lick up the logs.
He didn't respond.

"You can hardly tell you were in an accident
anymore. Your hair covers the scar. How's the one on your
chest?"

"Healing," Jacob said.

"It's a miracle you didn't break
anything."

Moving from his place beside the flames to
one of the two sage green recliners that faced the fire in the
Laudner's living room, Jacob didn't respond to John's comment.
While it was true from the outside he didn't appear injured, on the
inside he was damaged. He wasn't sleeping well and sometimes the
memory would come back as vivid as if it was happening all over
again. The doctors said his symptoms could happen with a traumatic
head injury but knowing his condition was normal wasn't much of a
comfort.

"I have some people cleaning out the
apartment," John said, sitting down in the other recliner. "The
boxes should be here in a week or two."

"A week or two?"

"Shipping from Hawaii to Illinois isn't as
easy as you might think," John said.

John was pale with grey hair in a brush cut
that reminded Jacob of the airmen at Hickam Air Force Base back
home. But he was sure he'd never flown a plane because he had thick
black glasses that made his eyes look bigger than they actually
were. The sleeves of his red plaid shirt were rolled past his
elbows, the tails tucked neatly into his blue jeans, cinched
tightly under a black leather belt. He always dressed like that,
like a lumberjack.

No one would have guessed Jacob was a blood
relative based on appearances. Because his mom was Chinese he had
the sort of skin that tanned fast in the sun. His hair was black
and too long to make any adult comfortable but too short to be tied
back, even if he'd wanted to. If there was any family resemblance
at all, it was the eyes. Jacob had his father's pale green eyes and
so did his uncle. His eyes were what seemed familiar to Jacob the
day they met and were his only clue that John might be telling the
truth about being his father's brother.

"I just want you to know you are welcome
here for as long as it takes to find her. If something has
happened. If she's…passed on, you can stay with us permanently.
There's no reason to worry about that. You'll always have a home
with us," John said.

All at once Jacob was filled with the desire
to throw something, his stomach clenched with his fists. His jaw
hardened as he ground his teeth. In his head, he knew he should've
been thankful to have a place to stay but everything about this
situation seemed wrong. He hated John for suggesting his mother
might not be found. More than anything, he wanted to be back on
Oahu helping to find her. And worst of all, he hated what his uncle
was about to say. He could feel it coming, those words so often
repeated to him after the death of his father, those words he
wanted to torch from the air before they could reach his ears.

"All we can do now is pray for your mom and
trust that she's in God's hands."

Jacob thought he might explode. Pray was
what people said when they didn't know what to say, when they
couldn't offer anything else. Pray meant do nothing. His nails bit
into the palms of his hands. He turned away from John and shoved
the anger down deep, where it coiled like a snake in his gut. He
closed the lid to it.

"Can I ask you something?" he said.

"Of course, what's on your mind?"

"You say you are my uncle, my father's
brother, but your name is Laudner. My last name is Lau. My father's
last name was Lau."

"There's a very good explanation for that
Jacob. See, um, your father…he changed his name. He shortened it,
from Laudner to Lau." John's face twisted before each word as if
his brain was choosing the right one from a stack of thousands.

"Yes, you've said that before. But what I
want to know is why." Jacob pressed. It was the first of many
unanswered questions he'd asked without success. Why had he never
met the Laudners? Why had his father changed his name? And, most
disturbing to him, why hadn't the Laudners attended his father's
funeral five years ago? It was more than not knowing John. It was
not knowing of an Uncle John or any of the Laudner family. His
parents had never even mentioned having family on the mainland.

John opened his mouth, then closed it again
when a rotund woman with beady eyes and short brown curls entered
the room from the kitchen. A sense of relief crossed his pale
features as Aunt Carolyn interrupted.

"It's getting late," Carolyn said. She
stared at John as if she were beaming her thoughts directly into
his head. Her eyes flicked toward Jacob but seemed to find nothing
to hold her interest and ended up resting back on John.

As always seemed to happen when Jacob
brought up the topic of his parents, there was no time to talk.
John became obsessed with how late it was, how he had to open the
store in the morning, and how Jacob had better get his rest.

Once the goodnights were said, Jacob climbed
the wooden staircase and passed through a hallway lined with
portraits of Laudners throughout history. Some were so old their
black and white images had a yellow tint beneath the framed glass.
There were pictures of men and women, and multiple generations
huddled on the front lawn. There were photos of men in military
uniforms and newspaper clippings with Laudner names highlighted.
Dozens of images lined both walls of the second floor hallway.
Besides John, Carolyn, and their daughter Katrina, Jacob didn't
know the names or the faces. It was a hallway of strangers, even
the few he recognized.

One thing was for certain: there were no
pictures of his parents. No pictures at all. That's what bothered
Jacob the most.

Near the end of the hall, Jacob passed by
his cousin Katrina's open door and caught a glimpse of green eyes
and curly brown hair. He began to say goodnight but was stopped
mid-word when her foot shot out in a purposeful kick that slammed
the door in his face. A road sign that read "Private Property"
swung forward on its hook toward the tip of his nose.

"Goodnight then," he said to the door. He
would have liked to be friends with Katrina. She was only two years
older than him and the only person close to his age he knew in this
town. But Katrina treated him like the plague, something to be
avoided at all costs.

Suddenly, Jacob couldn't breath. The walls
billowed inward. The hall was too hot, too small. On his toes, he
jogged down the stairs, lifting his coat from the hook near the
door. His aunt and uncle's voices floated out from the kitchen and
he hoped their conversation was enough to cover the click of the
door as he pulled it closed behind him. He was desperate for air
and some time to think.

Dodging left to avoid the kitchen window, he
wrapped the wool coat around him, and crept down the stairs into
the dark driveway. Fluffy white flakes floated down from the night
sky. Snow. He'd never seen it in person before coming here. He held
out his hand as he walked toward the street, watching the cold, wet
blobs melt in his palm: one second there, the next second gone.

"Just like my life," Jacob said to no one.
The street was dark aside from the light of the moon. Enough snow
had collected on the pavement to give it a luminescent sheen.

Once he reached the street, he glanced back
for any sign the Laudners had noticed his departure. All was quiet.
The Laudner's house was pale yellow with grey trim, a sort of long
box with two windows that jutted out of the roofline on the second
story like raised eyebrows. Katrina's room was under the left,
Jacobs under the right. The house stood alone on the north side of
the street.

Directly across the street, the only
neighboring home was a looming gothic Victorian. He knew it was
called a gothic Victorian because the building seemed so out of
place here, he'd asked what it was. He'd thought maybe it was a
funeral home or a museum or something. It was gloomy and gray with
a black wrought iron fence out front. Dead ivy crawled up one side
of the place and wrapped itself around a tower the shape of a
witch's hat. In the wetness and moonlight, the roof glowed like it
was radioactive.

As he walked between them, he thought the
houses were taunting each other with their stark differences. But
then, maybe the reason the Laudners didn't have more neighbors was
no one would willingly join this architectural contest of wills. Of
course Jacob wasn't used to any of this: the space, the cold, and
other more important things he didn't like to think about.

Past the end of the Victorian's wrought iron
fence, Jacob gathered his coat around him. With nothing to break
the wind out of the north, an icy gust blew right through him and
towards the dead forest to the south. Ahead, shadows twisted, and
the sounds of a winter night danced eerily around him. The shrill
of an owl made him lurch back from the trees. Ice cracking off
wind-bent branches had Jacob turning on his heels. But it was the
scraping sound of wood on wood that sent a tingle up his spine. The
whine of rusty hinges made the image of a coffin lid dart through
his mind.

He walked faster. The swish-swish of his
feet in the snow echoed in the night. Or was someone following him.
He stopped. The footsteps stopped. He glanced behind him, searching
the night. A ripple moved across the street. It was as if someone
folded the sky and then quickly flattened it out again on the
horizon. Something filmy and dark darted from one shadow to the
next and the memory of the accident gripped his throat. There'd
been a ripple in the woods, just like this one.

He launched himself down the Laudners
driveway, kicking up snow as he went. Heart hammering, and breath
coming in huffs, Jacob could feel the bruise on his chest ache by
the time he reached the door. It was locked.

At first he panicked, lifting his fist to
pound on the door. But then the warm light from the kitchen window
caught his eye. Knocking would mean admitting he'd snuck out. From
the safety of the porch, he looked back toward the street. Snow
swirled over the pavement. Clearly the ripple was a trick of the
moonlight. Of course it was. The memory wasn't real. It was a
product of his damaged brain.

He took a deep breath and walked around the
porch to the patch of yard beneath his window. A rose lattice ran
the length of the wall. Good enough.

The icy wood was barely tenable but he dug
his toes between the slats and climbed, gripping with throbbing
cold fingers. When he reached his window he flattened his palm
against the glass and pushed up with everything he had. The window
opened with a bark and Jacob slid between the lace curtains,
walking his hands across the rose-colored shag carpeting until his
legs could fit through. As quietly as possible, he closed the
window behind him and flopped onto the floral wingback chair.

Everything in his room was old lady pink.
John's Aunt Veronica had lived there before they put her into a
retirement home. John said he'd fix it up for Jacob some day but
until then, he had a pink room.

Jacob removed his jacket and moved toward
the bed, ready to call it a night. That was when he heard the
voices.