Authors: Mary Lindsey

Shattered Souls (6 page)

BOOK: Shattered Souls

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Mom pulled out on the street, looking somewhat dazed. “Alden seems like a very nice boy. The kind of boy I’d like to see you hanging out with.”

I almost laughed out loud. If she only knew! A reincarnated, soul-sharing lunatic. Ghost Boy—every mother’s dream.

FIVE

I
spent the weekend avoiding Mom and doing homework. I’d fallen so far behind in my classes recently, I felt like I’d never get caught up.

I decided to take the Santa Claus approach to Alden’s reincarnated ghost mediator story. When I was a little girl, Dad told me that Santa Claus would come as long as I believed he was real. Once I no longer believed, Santa stopped coming. This was how I was going to handle this ghost business. I didn’t believe, so they were not real and would stop coming.

The problem was that approach wasn’t working. The voices were getting worse, despite my constant mantra that they weren’t real. And despite the Xanax too. I couldn’t decide which was worse—going crazy or actually hearing ghosts.

My cell rang right as I finished a hideous trig worksheet. A lump formed in my throat as I stared at Zak’s name on the screen. I hadn’t heard from him in two days.

Zak was the first person I met when I moved back from Galveston three months ago. He was working at a shoe store in the mall and convinced me to buy an outrageous pair of strappy red heels, flirting the whole time. I was immediately attracted to his deep blue eyes and gorgeous smile. I had never worn those shoes, I realized, as his name flickered on the screen.

I decided to not confront him about the cemetery. I couldn’t risk losing him too. “Hi, Zak,” I answered, tapping my pencil on the table.

There was a long pause, and I thought for a moment he’d hung up. “Hey, babe. I . . . um . . . I’m really sorry about Friday night. I didn’t mean for that to happen.”

I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. “It’s okay, Zak.”

“Can I make it up to you?”

My fingers touched a piece of paper, and I instinctively began to fold. “Sure.”

“How about I take you for seafood in Kemah? You like roller coasters, right?”

I made triangles from the edge moving in, tension ebbing from me into the folds. “Love roller coasters. Sounds fun.” I turned the paper over and repeated.

“Awesome. I know you have school tomorrow, so we’ll make it an early night. I’ll pick you up at six o’clock, okay?”

“Great.” I pulled on the edges of the triangles slightly, without looking.

He was quiet for a moment. “You okay? You seem distracted.”

I looked down at my hands. My trig worksheet was now a crane. “Yeah, I’m great. I was just finishing some homework.” I unraveled the bird and smoothed the worksheet flat. “I’ll see you at six.”

After changing clothes and strapping on those red heels, I watched for him out the narrow, vertical window next to the front door. Mom was still mad about the cemetery, so to avoid a scene, I didn’t tell her good-bye when I took off.

It’s a miracle I made it to the car without falling flat on my face. Heels are not my thing, but Zak’s grin was worth it. The door to his beat-up Delta 88 heaved a metallic groan as he opened it for me. “Nice shoes!”

“Yeah, this slick salesman at the shoe store convinced me I couldn’t live without them.”

Zak grinned and wrapped his arms around my waist, pulling me against him. His warmth ran all the way down my body. “What else did he convince you you couldn’t live without?”

“Um.” I pulled away and slid into the car. “Dinner.”

His mood on the surface was light, but he wasn’t his usual easygoing self. His smile never reached his eyes. We made small talk on the forty-minute drive to Kemah, covering every subject with the exception of the voices in my head and what had happened at the cemetery.

When we pulled off the highway, the noise in my head became so loud, my eyes watered. I don’t know if it was because there wasn’t as much road noise or if it was really louder. Individual voices would fade in and out periodically, but I couldn’t understand what they were saying.

“You okay, babe?” Zak pulled off into an office parking lot.

The voices continued to crescendo until I clamped my hands over my ears and held my breath to keep from screaming.

“Is it the voices?”

I nodded and uncovered my ears so I could unbuckle and reach my purse on the floor. I was shaking so hard, I couldn’t manage the zipper. Zak leaned over, unzipped it, and rooted around until he found the bottle of pills. He handed me a pill and I bit off a quarter and swallowed it dry, dropping the remainder loose in my purse.

“Just relax, okay? Give it time to work,” he said.

He rubbed my shoulders while I waited for the pill to take effect, which didn’t take very long since I hadn’t eaten anything all day. I hated the numbing effect, but it did make the voices return to background static.

“Better?” he said, brushing the hair from my forehead.

I nodded.

He started the car and pulled back out on the road. “You should really tell your mom about this. I’m worried about you.”

Just like with the background noises in my head, I pretended not to hear him.

The Kemah Boardwalk was an entertainment complex built on the northwest side of Galveston Bay, far inland from the Gulf, halfway between Houston and Galveston Island. There were clubs, restaurants, and amusement rides.

We sat outside on the second-story deck of a casual seafood restaurant looking over the water. Sailboats, Jet Skis, and wet bikes zipped over the surface of the water below, while seagulls and pigeons bummed food from the restaurant guests. The cool breeze blowing off the water felt good.

Zak usually sat beside me when we ate, but today he sat across from me. The waitress placed our food on the table, and he leaned closer. His eyes were the color of the darkening sky behind him.

“You’re still mad at me for what happened in the cemetery, aren’t you, Lenzi?”

“I’m not mad.” I picked up the ketchup and unscrewed the lid. “I’m disappointed.” I tipped the ketchup bottle, wanting to kick myself for how lame that sounded. When nothing came out, I gave the bottle a couple of whacks on the bottom. “I sound like my mom, huh?”

Zak chuckled and took the bottle from me. “I deserve it.” He tipped the bottle at a slighter angle and poured a puddle of ketchup next to my fries.

I cut a bite of fish with my fork. “You do stupid things that are totally out of character when you’re drinking.”

He screwed the top back on and set it down. “Like what?”

“Like trying to make out at my father’s grave.”

He pushed his fries around. “Yeah, that was pretty stupid.”

“It was.”

He pointed at me with a shrimp. “But you can’t really blame me. Come on, Lenzi. It was your birthday. You were so . . . hot. You
are
so hot. I can’t help myself.” He dragged his shrimp through my ketchup, winked, and popped it in his mouth.

A blush burned my cheeks. I was probably the color of the ketchup on my plate.

He grinned. “You are especially hot in those shoes.” He reached under the table and ran his fingers over my knee, causing tingles to skitter up my leg.

“You’re mine,”
a disembodied male voice said from behind him. I swiveled to the side, pulling out of Zak’s reach.

“Why did you pull away?” he asked.

Heart hammering, I rearranged the French fries on my plate and searched for an answer. “Too public” was all I could come up with. I really didn’t want Zak to know that even with the Xanax, I was still hearing voices. He might tell Mom. I couldn’t bear that.

The voice laughed from behind me, and I flinched.

Zak’s brow furrowed. “You okay?”

I reached for my glass to buy more time. “Yeah, I’m just jumpy, that’s all.”

He held his empty glass up and signaled to the waitress to bring another iced tea. “I need to go to the bathroom.” He stood. “You sure you’re okay?”

I ran my finger down the condensation on the outside of my glass. “I’m fine. Really.”

He leaned over and kissed me. “Okay, then. Be right back.” He stopped to look back at me for a minute before disappearing down the patio stairs.

I felt a cold breath on my neck.
“I want you. You will surrender to me,”
the voice hissed. I spun around and found no one.

I didn’t know why this voice was so much more terrifying than the others, but I instinctively felt I was in danger. It was hard to breathe, like the air had gotten thicker. The thing’s cold respiration continued on my skin, making my flesh crawl. I covered the back of my neck with my hands.

The middle-aged waitress stared at me as she set the tea down on the table and picked up Zak’s empty glass. She pulled a straw out of her apron pocket and placed it on the table. “You okay, hon?”

I nodded.

“Well, just let me know if y’all need anything.”

As the waitress wandered off to the next table, the thing breathed on the right side of my face. I shuddered, and gooseflesh prickled down my arms.

“Surrender,”
the voice demanded.

The woman at the table next to me stopped eating and gave me a you-are-totally-nuts look. And she was right. I needed to get another pill down and hide someplace until it took effect.

I sprinted to the bathroom, clutching my purse. Sinking down to the floor of a stall, I focused on staying in control. My hands shook, making it difficult to unzip the purse. I dug around in the bottom and found the bottle of pills. I fumbled with the childproof cap and instead of just taking a quarter this time, I swallowed a whole pill.

The thing breathed on my neck again. My scream ricocheted off the hard surfaces of the bathroom, amplifying my terror. I jumped to my feet and backed into the corner, wrapping my arms around myself. When I clamped my eyes shut, an image of Alden filled my brain. Alden! In the cemetery, he’d told me to just tell the bogeybaby to go away, and it did. Maybe it would work with this thing too.

My voice sounded like a cartoon character with a speech impediment. Fear personified. “G-g-go away. I w-won’t surrender to you. G-go away.”

It laughed.

“Now! I mean it.”

I stood in the bathroom stall for a long time waiting for the next terrifying assault. The ghost, or whatever it was, seemed to have taken off. Maybe it was gone, or maybe the Xanax had taken effect and I’d stopped hallucinating. Either way, I washed my face at the sink, praying the voice wouldn’t return.

I took a deep breath as I made it up the stairs to the restaurant deck, but before I could round the corner to the patio, something scratched my back and cold air blasted my neck. It stung like the scratch had broken the skin. I clapped a hand to my spine under my windbreaker. Blood. Terrified, I stared at my crimson fingers.

“Surrender to me.”

“Never!” I yelled.

The thing’s laughter rang over the pounding pulse in my ears. I realized in horror that I hadn’t told my mom good-bye. I was going to die, and I hadn’t even said good-bye. . . . Just like Dad.

“I will have you. You are mine. Surrender.”

“You’ll never have me! I’ll never surrender!”

A sharp pain shot up my abdomen. I watched as drops of blood seeped through my shirt.
Run!
I yanked off the highheeled shoes. I could hear it laughing as I bounded down the patio stairs two at a time into the parking lot.
Run!
I had to get away. Another slash across my stomach.

“Never!” I screamed as I ran between the cars toward the Ferris wheel. A horrible ripping sensation filled my body—like Velcro ripping out my insides. Alden was right. These weren’t just voices. Somehow this voice was making me bleed. It had entered my body. And now I was housing its soul.

SIX

I
collapsed next to a pickup truck in the parking lot and curled in a ball on the pavement.

Get out!
the voice in my head shouted.

I remembered Alden telling me that a Malevolent would take my body to use as its own if it could force me out. “No,” I gasped, barely able to speak because of the burning pain filling me from head to toe. I focused on staying conscious and in control. It felt like the thing was trying to make me move against my will.

I could see the steps to the restaurant where I had been attacked. People were laughing on the patio, unaware that things like this lived among them. Or lived inside me, as it were. What would it do if I let go and allowed it to take over? Would it kill someone? Would it live as me?

Now that I wasn’t struggling to stay on my feet, I felt stronger. Maybe knowing the stakes allowed me to control it.

“What do you want?” I asked it.

BOOK: Shattered Souls

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