by Bre Hall
Dark Soul Experiments
Bre Hall
Dark Soul Experiments Copyright © 2019 by Bre Hall. All Rights Reserved.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Bre Hall
Instagram: @brehallbooks
For my father, my greatest mentor, my oldest friend
chapter
1
REN PEDALED HER BICYCLE UP the only hill in Wynn, Kansas, and tried to shake the paranoid notion that someone was following her. She took the next corner quickly, tires gnawing on fallen, umber colored leaves, and whipped through the open cemetery gate. She headed for her best friend, Alfie, who was in the back corner of the boneyard.
“You’re not supposed to ride over the graves,” Alfie said, not looking up.
“I haven’t heard the dead complain yet.”
“It’s about respect.” Alfie was hunched over a headstone, rubbing a piece of charcoal over a sheet of beige parchment that was draped over the granite. Ren stopped behind him and watched as a tiny daisy appeared on the paper. An exact replica of the flower engraved on the headstone.
Ren fixed her good eye across the cemetery. A tall oak. A wrought-iron fence. The tops of a thousand grave markers. They all blurred. Her near-death car accident at the start of the summer, five months before, had detached her left retina. She was still adjusting to life with one eye.
“I think someone is following me,” she said.
“What do they look like?” Alfie asked.
“Don’t know. I haven’t actually seen them.”
“Then, no one,” Alfie said, making a final broad stroke across the parchment, “is following you.”
“The moment I left the house this afternoon I knew. Do you ever get that feeling? Like someone’s right behind you? So close you can feel the tickle of their breath on your neck?”
“You’ve been spending too much time with your grandma.” Alfie dropped the piece of charcoal into an old fishing tackle box. “You sound absolutely crazy.”
“Grams isn’t crazy.” She pulled her tangle of long, brown hair into a loose bun at the nape of her neck. “And neither am I, Alf. I’m being pursued.”
“I’d like some more evidence.”
“Just wait,” she said. “You’ll see.”
Alfie peeled the parchment away from the headstone, folded it, and tucked it into a beige knapsack. He slid the tackle box into Ren’s bicycle basket. His hobby, this death-obsession, found him at the beginning of the summer. The night they crashed Grams’ VW Beetle coming home from a movie. Ren’s stepmom said it was a miracle they had both made it out alive, unscathed, apart from Ren’s eye. Ren concluded Alfie’s umbilical cord need to practically live in the cemetery was backlash from that night. Like he had to be as close as he could to death to remind him he was still alive.
“Move.” Alfie wrapped his fingers around the handlebar grips of her bike and loomed above her. His height—six foot four—intimidated some people, but Ren spent almost every waking moment with Alfie. She hardly noticed the foot of difference between them.
“No way, loser,” she said, gripping the bike until her knuckles were splinters of white marble. “You can ride into town on the back.”
“I’ll look like a sissy.”
“Where’s your bike?”
“At home,” he said. “I don’t want to get it.”
Ren turned away from him. “Not my fault you’re lazy.”
“Come on,” Alfie said. A pause. “I’ll buy you something pretty when we get to Richard’s.”
Her thoughts were swept away to the antique store downtown, owned by grumbling Richard. The shop was the only part of Wynn she liked. Besides Alf, of course, when he wasn’t dragging his heels. They were the only two things sharp enough to chip away the stone wall she’d been constructing around herself since age two.
“Fine.” She swung a leg off the bike and climbed onto the flat, metal book rack mounted above the back tire. Greedily, she took fistfuls of Alfie’s blue and green Aloha shirt for balance as he pedaled away. They rolled through the gate, jumped the curb, and bounced onto the street.
Canopies of autumn leaves flashed above them. Houses, sporting nylon spiderwebs and grocery sack ghosts for Halloween, whizzed alongside them. Kansas was shocked to life every October after squeezing out of summer’s hot and humid grasp and breathing in a final suck of oxygen before succumbing to the vampire bite of winter. Ren liked the mild chill of the air on her legs, her neck; she liked the smell—rotting leaves and crisping cobbler—of the town that time of year.
At the intersection, Alfie shot onto Main Street. It was Saturday afternoon and the three-block long downtown strip was crawling with townies. Ren and Alfie popped onto the sidewalk in front of Richard’s Antiques. The pair had clocked countless hours in the two-room antique shop that was stuffed to bursting with vintage goods stacked on flimsy cork shelves, piled on the floor, and bolted to the brick walls.
They left the bike out front and bounced through the door. Richard stood behind a long counter—his pumpkin-round belly pressed against the edge—spinning a screwdriver around the inside of a broken clock.
“Back shelf’s fifty percent off,” Richard said.
“Seventy-five for your favorite customer, though,” Ren said as she walked toward him. She watched Alfie disappear down an aisle, his bleached hair the only part of him visible as he swayed between the knickknacks.
“Shouldn’t you be in school?” Richard asked.
“It’s the weekend,” she said, hopping onto the counter. “By the way, you have chocolate on your nose.”
“I’m not falling for that again,” Richard said.
“Honest, Rich, what kind of person would I be if I played tricks on the elderly?” Ren picked up a quarter-sized gear from his clock and tossed it high in the air.
Richard caught the gear just before Ren could. He snapped it into place on the tea towel scattered with a dozen other clock parts. He scoffed. “A pain in my backside, that’s who.”
“Ouch.” Her hand flew up to her heart, the fingernail of her index finger scratching a brass button on her jean jacket. “Richard, you wound me. I thought of all people in this town you would know me better.”
Richard snorted just as a woman with a curtain of black hair stepped up to the counter, a set of porcelain angels curled in her dainty hands. Ren eyed the woman up and down. Wrinkled, iguana neck. Tight eyes. No hips. Ren could feel the woman’s pent-up energy twisting beneath her skin like a coil of electricity. In another life, the woman could have been a nun.
“I couldn’t find a price on these,” the woman said.
“Did you get them from the back shelf?” Ren asked.
“No,” said the woman, wrinkling her nose.
“That’s too bad.”
Richard snapped his fingers in Ren’s face. “Beat it, kid.”
“Come on, Rich, I’m just having fun” she said, but climbed down from the counter anyway. Richard was a nuclear reactor you didn’t dare breathe on wrong.
Just as she was about to step through the archway that led to the adjoining, even larger, room, she heard the woman tell Richard, “I think you have a smudge on your nose.”
“Told you,” Ren called back in a know-it-all sing-song that wafted up to th
e rafters.
In the next room, she wandered down one aisle, back up another. She thumbed through a short stack of cassette tapes and removed one by the Patti Smith Group. She attuned her ears to the red velvet-sweet banter Richard produced only around adult customers and silently slid the tape into the waistband of her shorts. She covered it with her denim jacket, her heart fluttering, skin tingling.
“Excuse me?” An unfamiliar gravelly voice came from behind her. She turned and saw a boy she didn’t know. She guessed seventeen, maybe eighteen. He had black curls the size of soda cans sprouting from the top of his head, the sides shaved short. She could admit it: He was hot. Hotter than hot. She knew almost everyone in Wynn and he was definitely an outsider.
Then she thought of the cassette tape and wondered if he’d seen her take it. Small town righteousness had inflicted her too many times in her life—people inserting themselves at the most inopportune moments—to trust even an outsider with a secret. She pulled her jacket even tighter around her.
“Yeah?” she said.
“I hate to admit it, but I think I’m lost. How do I get out of this place?”
“Oh.” She relaxed slightly and pointed to the archway, peeking just over the top of the nearest shelf. “That way.”
“How often do you come here?” he asked, putting his hands in the pockets of his jacket.
“What?” She stood up straighter, the cassette tape shifting beneath her clothes. She puffed out her stomach, trying to hold the tape steady.
“If you don’t come here often,” he said, leaning toward her, the smell of stale cigarettes and boy sweat ensnaring her senses, “I don’t know if I should trust your directions.”
“That’s a decision you’re going to have to make on your own there, pal,” she said. She grazed a finger over a rosy-cheeked plastic piggy bank close by, trying to show little interest in the conversation, while also studying his every move. Twitch of the lips. Shift of the feet. She sighed. “But, if it helps, I’m here all the time. I know this place inside and out.”
“Is that so,” he said. “Would you say you’re an expert at navigating this shop, then?”
“I guess,” she said. Her cheeks flushed. She picked up the pig—a cork was wedged in its backside—and wondered if the playful sound lingering beneath the surface of his deep voice was him flirting or just how he spoke.
“Does this expert have a name?” he asked.
“I’m Ren.”
“Peter.” He stuck a hand out. She eyed the tattoo of a crow’s wing, inked across the side of his forefinger, as she shook his hand awkwardly with her left, since the right one still held the pig. Just then, the cassette tape dropped from her waistband, slipped through a leg of her faux leather shorts, and clanged to the ground, landing near the tops of Peter’s sneakers.
“Well,” Peter said as he picked it up, turning it over in his hand as he rose. “An expert in navigation and thievery.”
She put the pig back on the shelf and snatched the tape out of his hand. It must be the air in Wynn, infecting every person who stepped foot across the town line with the same affliction. He could have just picked the tape up and handed it back to her. No jabs. No accusations.
“I’m going to pay for it,” she said.
“Sure.”
“I am.”
“Hey, who am I to judge?”
“If you’re still lost, the door’s that way.” She pointed to the archway again.
“I get it,” he said, turning. “I’ll go.”
She watched him take a few steps before he bent down, as if to tie his shoelace. When he stood back up, a bracelet was woven through his fingers. It was made entirely of lockets, all crusted in rust and ancient-looking. Every single one was different. Silver, bronze, oval, heart-shaped. The largest one caught her eye. A perfect circle with a crescent moon engraved on the grimy face with a sapphire gem nestled in the moon’s hook.
“Did you drop this?” Peter asked.
“No,” she said.
“Are you sure? It looks like it would suit your style,” he said, swinging it side-to-side. Was he trying to make up for accusing her of being a thief? Stuff her with compliments until she was fat and oozing happiness?
“You think?” She stepped toward the bracelet and was about to take it from Peter when he pulled it away.
“Uh-uh.” He shook his head, his curls bobbling. “Finders keepers.”
“You just said it was my style,” she said. “You practically forced me to like it and—”
“Forced you? You can’t take your eyes off of it.”
“Can I see it?”
Peter smirked. “Sorry.”
“What’s a guy going to do with a charm bracelet?”
“I don’t know. Sell it on the internet. Give it to a girl I like.” He swiveled. Squeaked away. “I’ll figure something out.”
As he came up the other side of the aisle, passing like sun spots through trees, he eyed her through the antiques, a sly smile brooding. Then, he turned and disappeared into the main room. She remained. Stared at the space he had left. She felt suddenly awake, alive. Like she’d just chugged twelve cups of coffee at Roast a few doors down. Boys from Wynn annoyed her, except for Alfie, of course. She barely gave them a second glance. But she was suddenly swarmed by a thousand questions about Peter. Was he just passing through town for the day or had he recently moved to Wynn? What kind of music did he like? What was his opinion on her favorite movies? How old was he? What did his tattoo mean? Did he have a girlfriend? She rolled her eyes at her own stupidity. Of course he had a girlfriend. Boys like Peter—with that hair, that perfect, olive-oil skin, and that sandpaper-rough voice—always had girlfriends. That’s who the bracelet was for. His girlfriend.
Suddenly, fingers jabbed her on either side of her ribcage and she jumped. She turned to see Alfie, standing behind her with a wild grin on his face. She punched him in the shoulder.
“Don’t do that,” she said. “I’m already on-edge from this morning.”
“Oh, yes,” Alfie said. “I’d almost forgotten about the mysterious pursuer. Have you seen anyone lurking in the shadows? Lying in wait with knives and hand guns?”
“Don’t make fun of me,” she said, sliding the cassette tape back into her waistband, hoping it wouldn’t fall out again.
“Stealing is wrong,” Alfie said.
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Too bad,” she said.
“I won’t let you do it.”
“You’ve let me get away with it before.”
“Yeah, well,” Alfie said, then paused, searching for words. His mouth remained closed.
“So, why the sudden need for me to be an upstanding citizen?”
“Because.”
“Because?”
“Because you’re better than that,” Alfie said.
“Do you even know me?” she asked. She laughed, then remembered their deal in the cemetery. She handed Alfie the tape. “If you want me to be so good, then buy it for me.”
Alfie tossed the tape back to her. “I don’t have any money.”
“Earlier you said if I let you pedal the bike, you would buy me something.”
Alfie laughed. “That was just to get you off the bike.”
“I only have five dollars,” she said.
“That’s enough for a tape.”
She studied Alfie’s glacial blue eyes, searching them for a familiar playfulness she desperately needed to pluck out of those bright irises. Ever since the accident he’d been different. Distant wasn’t the right word, but it was close. Mature was a better descriptor. She couldn’t talk him into playing out her schemes the way she used to. It was like stealing Grams’ Beetle without driver’s licenses was the final antic he’d let her get away with. She could fight him on the cassette tape, sure, but she didn’t think it would be worth it. He’d brood for days, his sphincters tightening even more than Wynn had already fastened them.
“Fine, but you o
we me.” She gave Alfie a shove and marched to the front counter, hoping to catch a second look at Peter. But he wasn’t there. Long gone. It was just Richard, bent over his broken clock, dropping a gear into place. She slid the tape and a folded five-dollar bill on the counter. Richard laughed as he smoothed out the bill and slid it into the cash box.
“What?” she asked.
“You’re always in here buying old junk like cassette tapes while other kids are getting their music off the internet,” Richard said. He peeled two, one-dollar bills from the box and pressed them into her palm, along with a receipt. “It’s just different is all.”
“Is being different so bad?” She pocketed the cash and the tape.
“Suppose not,” Richard said. “If you didn’t live in this town.”
“Later Richard,” she said. She could tell his conversation was about to turn political. Talk to Richard long enough and he’d start talking politics. Ethics. Morals. Anything worth complaining about, really. Sometimes, she’d wander into the shop and try to get Richard fired up. Just to watch his bald head turn red and whatever antique he was fixing at the time squish beneath his clenching fist. It was better than cable TV.
“Happy now?” she asked as she wandered up the aisle and met Alfie at the door. She held up the receipt as the pair of them stepped out into the late afternoon sunshine, a nip breezing in. Day slowly emptying its sand through the hour glass.
Alfie didn’t even glance her way as he pulled the bike upright and plucked something off of the handlebars. “What’s this?”
She blinked. Dazed. A hammer on wood pounding in her chest. Alfie was holding the locket-ringed charm bracelet Peter had showed her earlier. She inhaled harshly, then lunged for the bracelet.
“I can’t believe it,” she whispered, trying to stave off a smile. Peter’s deep voice was in her head. I might give it to a girl I like.
“Where’d it come from?” Alfie asked.
“Peter,” she said.
“Who?”
“Someone I met in the shop.”
“Why would someone you don’t know buy you a bracelet?” Alfie snapped.
