Dark Soul Experiments

by Bre Hall

  “Orange?”

  “My dad’s a fan of the Broncos,” Larry said, then took off down the hall. She watched as every student he passed took at least two steps away from him. Even the thought of him being close to her made Ren’s skin feel like a thousand spiders were crawling all over it. She shivered away the image, the feeling, and scuttled down the corridor, toward her last class of the day.

  chapter

  5

  PAST THE HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL field and beyond a thicket of trees was the Sunflower Trailer Park. Ren had been there once before with Grams. She was eight and Grams was visiting an old friend. Ren remembered the old woman’s trailer was piled with cat food, yarn, and homemade tortillas. She had no recollection of the outside of the park, though.

  It was a fairly open space, surrounded on all sides by a chain link fence. Some of the trailers were freshly painted, with white picket fences posted along their plot of grass and sharply trimmed bushes planted at the base of the wooden staircases. But most of them were a hodge-podge of low-life living. Weeds growing out of the cracks in plastic shutters, if they were even attached. Wide, blue tarps acted as garages for dented vehicles. Small, yellow lawns were littered with overturned toddler bikes or faded toy kitchen sets. The whole park smelled like accumulating trash, stale cigarette smoke, and faintly of dog piss.

  At the very back of the lot, Ren and Alfie parked their bikes in front of a trailer with a roof covered in black plastic and shutters painted orange. They climbed the three wooden steps to the porch, where a clothesline was strung between a rotting post and a metal tent pole that held a tarp over a pile of engines, rusted lawn mowers, and an assortment of metal sheets.

  Ren knocked and waited for Scary Larry to open the door. Instead, a man wearing nothing but threadbare jeans leaned into the door frame. He swished a beer bottle in a loose grip.

  “Whatever it is you’re sellin’, we don’t want none,” the man said. He pushed on the door with his big toe, but Ren put an arm out to stop it from swinging closed.

  “We’re meeting Sc—I mean, Larry,” Ren said.

  One of the man’s salt and pepper eyebrows flexed in her direction. “You here to pick on ‘im?”

  “No sir,” Alfie said.

  “We just need to talk to him,” Ren added.

  “He don’t much care for company,” said the man.

  “I go to school with your son,” said Ren. “We’re in the same homeroom. We have a project we’re working on together.”

  “I know who you is,” he said. “You’re Hank Morris’ girl.”

  “You know my dad?”

  “See him time to time at the mill,” he said. “Look, all I’m sayin’ is my son, Lawrence, he don’t like visitors.”

  “He invited us over,” Ren said. “Honest.”

  “Unlikely.”

  “If you don’t believe me, ask him,” Ren said. “But he’ll tell you he did.”

  “Sure,” Larry’s dad said, but his vice-tight expression contradicted his words.

  “I swear to God.”

  Larry’s dad swirled the beer bottle through the air, the liquid inside sloshing against the sides of the amber glass. He took a swig, then nodded his head. “Go on back.”

  “Thank you,” Alfie said, slipping passed.

  As Ren squeezed between Larry’s dad and the door frame, he leaned close to her. “Don’t upset ‘im now, you hear?”

  Ren nodded and followed Alfie into a cramped living room. A single arm chair, burned and worn in places, sat a few feet from a cackling television broadcasting a fuzzy-framed action film. A Broncos poster was thumbtacked on the wall above the TV set. The front door closed and the room lost almost all of its light. Ren didn’t want to see what the place looked like with the lamps on. She imagined dark stains on the carpet, crumbs from late night munchies filling every crevice in the furniture, and mold splotched along the floorboards and ceiling.

  “End of the hall,” Larry’s dad said as he pulled another beer bottle from a wood paneled fridge in the kitchen, separated from the living room by a short counter.

  Ren and Alfie ducked into the only hallway in the place and stopped in front of the door at the end. A few, cheap mock-up street signs were nailed to the door. Keep Out. Caution. Stop. Lawrence Way. Ren knocked in the space between the signs three times, then waited.

  Alfie pinched Ren in the side and whispered, “What are we doing here exactly?”

  “Scary Larry will know if Peter’s in town or not,” Ren said. “He knows everything that everyone does. That’s why he’s called Scary Larry.”

  She could hear breathing on the other side of the door and it made her teeth hum. She’d rather comb the town over than ask Scary Larry for help, but she knew he was the fastest route to Peter.

  “What?” Larry said through the door.

  “It’s me,” she said. Then, when he didn’t speak or move to open the door, she added, “Ren Morris. You told me come ov—”

  The door opened abruptly. Just a crack. A purple, halogen glow shivered into the hallway. Scary Larry was a silhouette of tangled hair and steampunk goggles. He looked like an evil villain straight out of a comic book. Or at least a crazed henchman.

  “So,” said Larry, “You want to know who was following you through town Saturday.”

  Ren elbowed Alfie in the ribs. “I told you someone was following me.” Then, to Larry she said, “But no, the guy we’re actually looking for is about five-foot-ten, curly black hair, jawline models envy. He also has a tattoo of a bird’s wing on one of his fingers.”

  “Like I said,” Scary Larry grinned, “You want to know who was following you.”

  A cold pulse pumped through Ren’s veins as it hit her that Peter was the one who had followed her, which meant he hadn’t just dumped the bracelet on any random girl in town. He had targeted Ren. He had wanted her to see what the bracelet could do. But why?

  “Show me,” she said as she pushed open Larry’s door. The small room was lit by blacklights, lined with computer monitors, and covered in electronic parts. She found a single square of empty space in the middle of the carpet and stood in it. She turned back to Larry. “I need to be sure it was him.”

  Larry sat down on a stool in front of the largest computer screen in the room and began to key in a code. The screen split into four quadrants, each displaying a section of downtown Wynn. Traffic cams. Larry clicked on the lower right camera and Ren recognized it as the intersection of Main and Wheat Avenue, which led to the cemetery. A video of Ren riding her bike played, and just as she leaned into the turn, Scary Larry froze everything. He zoomed in on the corner of the sidewalk.

  “There,” Larry said, pointing to the shadow of a building.

  Ren squinted at the boy in the frame. He was leaned against the limestone wall of the laundromat, arms folded, wicked grin on his face, dark curls ruffling in the breeze.

  “That’s him.” She gulped. “Larry, do you know where he is now?”

  Scary Larry smiled with just one side of his mouth. “I know everything about everyone in this town.”

  “Creepy,” Ren murmured.

  “But the information’s going to cost you,” said Larry with a scowl.

  “How much?” Ren asked.

  “Three hundred dollars,” Larry said.

  “No way,” said Alfie. “We don’t have that kind of money.”

  “Get real,” Ren said to Larry.

  Larry shrugged. “A kiss then.”

  “You’re joking,” said Ren.

  Scary Larry folded his arms across his chest and leaned back. “A kiss or three hundred big ones. Your choice.”

  “No,” she said. “No way. I am not kissing you.”

  “Then find your stalker on your own,” Larry said.

  Ren pinched Alfie’s elbow and whispered, “How much money you got?”

  Alfie dug around in his pocket and pulled out a small nest of twenties. “Sixty or so.”

  “I’ll pay you back.” Ren took
the money and turned back to Scary Larry, who was licking the edges of his dry lips with the tip of his tongue. Ren tilted her head so that Larry fell into her blind spot. Otherwise, she may have vomited all over his trench coat. She held out the money. “Sixty dollars; take it or leave it.”

  “Sixty dollars and,” Larry said, “a kiss.”

  “Come on, man, sixty bucks is a lot for a little bit of information,” Alfie said.

  Then, Larry added, “On the cheek.”

  She wrinkled her nose. Her whole body squirmed. Then she thought of Charlotte, of Billy, of falling through the frantic heat of all of those colors and into the past. It had to be Peter. He had to know what was happening to her. They were so close. Scary Larry was unfortunately the one who would lead them there.

  “If you tell anyone,” she said, stepping forward. “I mean anyone, I will—”

  “You’re not exactly welcomed in the inner circle,” Larry said.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked.

  “You and me?” Larry scoffed. “We’re alike. Woven together as tightly as a straw hat. The bitch and the weirdo. Outcasts.”

  “Are you going to tell me where Peter is or not?” Ren asked. She didn’t need Scary Larry pointing out what she already knew.

  Larry held his hand out and Ren dropped the cash into his greasy palm. He unfolded each bill, counting it slowly. When he was done, he looked up at her with eager eyes. “Alright, sweetheart. Now for the rest.”

  Scary Larry tapped a long, jagged fingernail against his pock-marked cheek. She took a deep breath. Might as well get it over with. The itch to put her hand on the glowing pebble inside of the bracelet was growing stronger. She needed Peter to clue her in. Fast.

  Alfie brushed her forearm, as if to stop her, but pulled away just as she moved in close enough to Larry to smell the lemon-sourness of his skin. She was just about to peck a kiss on his cheek when he turned toward her. Their lips entangled for a brief, sloppy moment, before Ren pulled back, eyes on fire, stomach roiling. Scary Larry erupted in a fit of laughter.

  “You little piece of shit,” Ren said, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. She could still taste his bad breath on her tongue. She wiped her lips again. “You’re an ass hole. You know that, right? A creepy little fucker.”

  Larry just laughed.

  “Tell us where Peter is, man,” Alfie said.

  “Tell us now or I’m taking the money back,” Ren said.

  Scary Larry pounded a code over his computer with a smile snaked across his face. Then, an aerial view, as if a drone had captured the image, popped onto the screen. A square house surrounded on all sides by thick, shelter belt trees, beyond which lay a barren field and then, the twisting arm of the Arkansas River.

  “I know where that is,” said Ren. “That’s the abandoned Johnson place.”

  “Yes.” Larry zoomed in on the house. A black, blurry dot stood in the front lawn. “And that’s who you’re looking for.”

  “Nobody goes to the Johnson place,” said Ren, thinking of the stories she’d heard all her life. The Johnson family lived in Wynn circa 1950 on a farm outside of town. They grew wheat. They went to church. They were just like everybody else. Until they weren’t. Until old man Johnson lost his brains, killed his wife and child, chopped them into pieces, buried them in the walls, and shot himself. Or so the legend goes. Old man Johnson’s body was never found. No body was ever found. There was blood though. Drips here, drops there. That’s when the rumors started. Small-town gossip is the reason the Johnson house has sat idle on the south side of Wynn for decades. “You only go to the Johnson House if you’re suicidal. If you want the ghosts of the family to rip you to shreds and join them in their house of horrors.”

  “The stories about the Johnson family are bogus,” Scary said. “Clearly. because this guy has been there for a few days now. Even before he tracked you through town.”

  “You’re sure that’s him?” Ren asked.

  “Trust me, it’s him,” Larry said. “I like to keep an eye on everything.”

  Larry keyed something into his computer and a second image flickered onto the screen. A straight-on shot of the two-story Victorian house that had sat idle for over half a century. Someone was on the bottom step of the sagging porch, smoking, or thinking. It was hard to tell because the drone was clearly snapping photos from the tree line. But Ren would recognize those curls anywhere.

  “That’s him,” she said. She inhaled a shallow breath. “That’s Peter.”

  chapter

  6

  REN’S FEET WERE TRAIN CAR rotors, churning hard as she pedaled out of the trailer park, Alfie riding close behind, biting at the back tire of her bicycle. A boil of dust grew behind them, concealing the Sunflower Trailer Park entirely. She hummed around the corner near the high school and kept motoring.

  “Slow down,” Alfie said. “Peter’s not going anywhere.”

  Her head snapped back. Eyes narrowed on Alife. “You don’t know that.”

  She dug the toes of her boots into the smoothed surface of the pedals and cranked herself forward, toward the downtown strip. They whipped passed the market and Richard’s and the three trees on Main Street, gold with autumn, before ripping onto Indigo Lane. There were roughly four ways out of town. All of them coinciding with cardinal directions. Indigo headed south, the Oklahoma state line within spitting distance once you reached the river.

  “Is this what you want?” Alfie asked as the brick street turned to pot-hole laden asphalt and then, as they passed the city limits, to a dirt road.

  “What?”

  “Seeking out Peter? Talking to him about the bracelet?” Alfie asked. “Is this what you want?”

  “Why wouldn’t I want to know.”

  “Because you just found the thing on Saturday,” Alfie said, breathing heavy, trying to keep up. “Maybe with time, it will be easier to understand. There’s no reason to rush.”

  “I didn’t find it,” she said. “It was given to me. Peter gave it to me, and I want to know why before it’s too late. Before he leaves town. If you’re not on board with me figuring this out, then you can just go home.”

  “Ren,” Alfie snipped. He didn’t have to say anything else. She could hear it in the silence. Get real.

  “I’m serious,” she said.

  “How long have we been friends?”

  “What does this have to do with anything?”

  Alfie rode up alongside her, stared at her until her head swiveled to look into those constant blue eyes. “Just answer the question, will you?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. Forever.”

  “Exactly,” he said. “I’ve put up with your wild antics forever and I’m going to keep putting up with them, because I’m not going anywhere. Not ever.”

  The corners of her mouth tilted up, but she didn’t smile fully, for her bike tires bumbled over the rocky bottom of the steel truss bridge hoisted high above the brown curl of the Arkansas River. She braked hard. Skidding to a stop in the middle of the bridge, she looked out over the tops of the trees on the river bank. She could just make out the crumbling top of the chimney that rose above the abandoned Johnson House like a crimson finger, crooked, drawing them closer, closer.

  “Why’d you stop?” Alfie asked.

  A breeze coiled through the trees, forcing their branches to lean to one side and whipping Ren’s hair out of place. She set foot to pedal once more and rolled slowly across the bridge.

  “Come on,” she said, ignoring Alfie’s question entirely.

  Once across the river, they hooked an immediate left into the mouth of a long driveway, so overgrown with tall grass and weeds it was barely visible. The Johnson House had lost its paint to the wind and rain decades before. Only bare slats of wood remained. As Ren pedaled toward it, she realized why the wild tales of old man Johnson burying his murdered wife and child latched on so well in town.

  “Who would stay in such a creepy old house?” she asked.

/>   “A creep,” Alfie muttered. “That’s who.”

  “You don’t even know him.”

  “I know enough.”

  Ren’s bike tires were colts on infant legs, wobbling as she pedaled through clumps of tall grass in the front yard. As she pedaled, she stared up at the second-floor window, hung with lace curtains, shivering from an unknown flow of air. Ghosts most likely.

  She dropped her bike in the dirt near the porch and climbed the warped steps, her gaze never leaving the front door. Her arm extended, fist curled, but she stopped short. Paused to take a breath.

  “Just knock,” whispered Alfie.

  She rapped her knuckles against the weathered wood.

  “I wondered when you’d show up,” came Peter’s unmistakable gravel voice from the side of the house. He was trudging out of the shelter belt of trees nearby, sucking on the butt of a cigarette. When he reached the porch, he hopped up and swung himself over the railing effortlessly. Alfie grumbled something, but Ren couldn’t hear, she was already advancing toward Peter, jabbing a finger at the air between them.

  “You lied to me,” she said.

  “Did I?” His lips pulled up on one side and his eyes gleamed with a spark of mischief.

  “You didn’t just find the bracelet, did you?” she asked. The temperature of her skin was close to boiling. She imagined her face, her neck, was painted red. “You planted it on me. On purpose.”

  “So, technically, that’s not a lie,” he said. “It’s called the art of deception. If I had lied—”

  “Don’t be smart, asshole,” Alfie said. “Just tell her why you did it.”

  Peter pulled a small, rectangular case from his back pocket, smirking. “I’m surprised you couldn’t do that.”

  She glanced from Peter to Alfie, whose hands were shoved deep in the pockets of his khaki shorts, fists bulging near the seams.

  “Just tell her,” Alfie said.

  Peter opened the case to reveal a row of neatly packed cigarettes. He plucked one from the middle of the line and stuck a smoke between his teeth. He replaced the case with a zippo lighter and lit the cigarette as easily as breathing.