by Bre Hall
“Obviously, you’ve touched the relic within,” Peter said, smoke drifting from his slightly parted lips.
“Relic?” she asked.
“A piece of the past,” said Peter. “A piece of your past, to be precise. You see, the relic inside, the small sphere, is a piece of bone.”
“It’s,” she said, clutching the pocket housing the bracelet, “Bone? What kind of animal bone makes you hallucinate?”
“Not animal bone,” Peter said. His cheeks caved in as he pulled another lungful of smoke from the cigarette. “Human bone. Your bone.”
“What?”
“Well, a version of you, at least,” said Peter, exhaling.
Alfie revolved on his heels, facing the yard, and hacking, “This is ridiculous.”
Ren took a step closer to Peter. He smelled of sweat and tobacco, and his dark eyes were locked on hers. “Explain.”
“The bone has been extracted from Charlotte’s body,” Peter said. He inched toward Ren. Placed a hand on her shoulder. “The two of you share a soul.”
“What?” she asked. “How?”
“Reincarnation,” Peter said it easily, simply, with no more hullabaloo than if he’d remarked that the sky was blue.
“Leave it alone, man,” Alfie said, whirling back around. “Just leave her alone.”
Peter poked Alfie in the chest with the fingers that held the cigarette, flecks of ash dislodging from the tip. “I’m just giving her what she asked for.”
“She wouldn’t even be thinking about this if it weren’t for you,” Alfie said, shoving Peter’s hand away from him. “You gave her the bracelet. You set this into motion.”
Peter rolled his head back. Huffed. “Will you relax already? Don’t you ever relax?”
“What’s going on? It’s almost like—” she looked between their intense stare-down. “Like you two know each other or something.”
Alfie’s eyes narrowed on Peter. “I don’t know who this is. Not at all.”
Peter chuckled and took a long drag off of his cigarette. He held the smoke in for a beat, before shooting it through flared nostrils. Who was this guy? Really? Sure, kids her age smoked, drank. But not like that. Not like they’d been doing it for years.
“I came here for answers,” Ren said. “Can you give them to me or not?”
Peter nodded. “The reason you see Charlotte’s life when you touch her bone is because you’re linked through your shared soul. A piece of the physical past—a bone, a lock of hair, a tooth—acts as a portal. Something for the soul to cling to. To remember.”
“So, if everyone found a piece of their past life, they’d have these visions too?” she asked.
“No, it doesn’t work like that,” Peter said. “Only your kind has the ability.”
Ren’s brows scrunched together. She was following him until the very last part. “My kind?”
Peter took one last drag from his cigarette before flicking the butt to the ground. Snuffing it out completely with the toe of his shoe. “You’re not human, Ren.”
The heat that had been burning inside her left all at once. Like she had just been doused in globs of aloe after days of direct sun exposure. She shivered.
“Stop,” Alfie said.
“You belong to an ancient race of supernatural creatures.” Peter spoke to Ren, but he looked directly at Alfie. “You look human, but you have abilities beyond comprehension.”
“I don’t have any abilities,” Ren said.
“It’s because you’re what’s known as a Dark Soul. You were cursed,” Peter said. “Your soul was split into a million pieces thousands of years ago by a powerful enemy.”
Ren’s head felt like it had a river of information rushing inside of it, damming against her skull, pushing back. She dug the heel of her hand into her forehead. Dark Soul? Curse? Thousands of years? She had a million questions, but all she could manage to ask was, “What?”
“Your kind are called Discentem, all-knowing teachers,” Peter continued. “The enemy who cursed you are called Auxilium. They’ve forced your kind to die over and over. Forced you to conceal your true abilities. That’s why I gave you the bracelet, because you are the most important of all the Discentem and I am here to resurrect you.”
Ren’s face twisted. She took a step backward. Her heart beat loudly in her ears. Peter’s words slowly sunk in. He wanted to resurrect her. Great. Perfect. Her face fell slack. There was also the fact that she wasn’t even human. Huh? How is that even possible? She rubbed her temple. Her head ached. Not human. Not human. That’s what kept reeling through her mind. Not human. Supernatural. Cursed. Suddenly, everything Peter said caught up to her, the foreignness of it all settled in and the flood gates opened on her mind. She felt like she had been slammed into by a thirty-foot wall of water.
“Ren are you okay?” Alfie touched her elbow lightly and she stumbled backward.
“I have to go,” she said, stepping off of the porch and marching to her bicycle, concealed in the tall grass.
“Wait up,” Alfie said, following.
“Let me help you return to your original form,” Peter said.
“No.” She picked up her bike and swung a leg over the saddle.
“You came looking for answers.” Peter started across the grass “You can’t just ignore the truth because you’re afraid of it. They’ll come for you, like they always do, and you’ll be dead.”
“Who?” she asked. “Who exactly is coming for me?”
“The Auxilium, of course,” said Peter.
Ren rolled her eyes and kicked off from the ground. “Do you know how insane you sound right now?”
She stood up on her pedals and tore across the lawn. Alfie was close behind, breathing heavily as he tried to match her pace. She didn’t glance back at Peter. She needed out of there. Fast. She zipped up the driveway, weaving in and out of clumps of grass that would slow her down if she ran them over, and didn’t let up, even after she hit the bridge.
“Wait,” Alfie said. “Ren, wait.”
She skidded to a stop in the middle of the road, bent over her handlebars, and gasped for air. Dust, kicked up from the tires, filled her lungs, and she began to cough. Alfie stopped beside her.
“He’s lying,” she said, glancing back at the Johnson place. “He has to be lying.”
Alfie reached out and grabbed her handlebars. “Ren, there’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you.”
“No.” She picked up pedaling again, forcing Alfie to pull his hand away. “I can’t handle anything else today. I just want to go home.”
“But I—” Alfie said.
“Just drop it,” she said. “Okay?”
She stared down the top of the grain elevator on the north end of town near the cemetery. She focused on it like it was a beacon, a lighthouse leading her out of Crazy Town, guiding her toward the warmth, the comfort, the sanity that was home.
chapter
7
WAS IT REALLY SO CRAZY? Could Peter actually be telling the truth? Could reincarnation be real? Was she really not human, but superhuman? What had he called it—a—
“Can you give me a hand with these?”
Ren swiveled on the stool, where she sat at the kitchen island after school on Tuesday afternoon, sipping lukewarm coffee, black, no sugar, while she ignored her Algebra book, opened on the counter. She looked up at Meredith, who was tottering in with an armload of grocery sacks.
“What?” Ren asked.
Meredith plunked the sacks onto the counter, breathing heavily. “Never mind.”
Ren turned away, stared off at the backsplash behind the sink on the other side of the room. Followed the subtle swirl in the tile with her good eye. What was it that Peter had said she was? Something di. Dissector. No.
“Ren.”
It was some word she had never heard of. Sounded Greek or Latin. Not that she would know anyway. She never paid attention in any class besides film.
“Ren,” Meredith said, loudly.
Ren’s head shot up. “What?”
Meredith’s lips crunched into a skeptically-tight bundle. “What’s going on with you?”
“Nothing.”
“Is something on your mind?”
“No.” Ren stood and headed for the stairs.
“You can always talk to me, you know,” said Meredith, following her.
“I don’t have anything to talk about,” Ren said, climbing the steps, her mind still spinning with thoughts of Peter and what he told her. But she wasn’t going to tell Meredith. No, she reckoned she’d tell beef head Garret Monahan before she’d tell Meredith.
“I might know more than you think,” Meredith said. She reached up to clutch the silver, triple spiral pendant necklace she always wore. Rubbed the center with her fingertips as if for luck. “I might be able to help.”
Ren rolled her eyes. “I don’t need a lecture on teenage angst and how someday in the near future it will be beyond me.”
“That isn’t what I meant,” Meredith said, her voice soft.
“I’m going to my room,” Ren said, rounding the corner at the top of the stairs, her boots crashing down the hall.
IT WAS ALMOST EIGHT O’CLOCK. Dinner had been made, eaten, and cleared away. Meredith was shut into her parlor, busy grading her community college students’ history essays, while Ren’s dad was laid up in the den, watching old westerns. Ren stood just outside of Grams’ bedroom door, shifting from one foot to the other, the plastic sandwich bag with the bracelet inside swaying slightly with her movement. She could hear the cackle of the record player and the slightly off-key hum of Grams’ deep voice.
Ren was about to knock when the door cracked open and Grams’ eyeball met hers. “You gonna stand out there all evening or are you gonna come in?”
Ren glanced over her shoulder, down the hall. It was so unlike Grams to invite anyone into her sanctum. Usually Ren had to approach quietly, calmly, and almost beg to be let in. Grams opened the door all the way and waved a sweeping hand toward the tiny, wooden room. Ren stepped inside, the door closing abruptly behind her.
“Can I ask you a question, Grams?”
“Your aura’s muddled,” Grams said, grabbing Ren’s shoulders and pushing her toward the bed. “Sit. I’ll cleanse it.”
“No, I’m okay,” Ren said.
“Hush girl.”
Grams drew her fingers through the air around Ren. It looked as if she were trying to capture a spider’s web, invisible to the eye. Ren curled her fist around the bracelet. She wondered if she squeezed tight enough if the bone would spring free and cast her into Charlotte’s world?
“Grams, I really need to ask you something,” Ren said.
“Sit still, darlin’,” Grams said as her fingers swirled.
Maybe it was a mistake, asking the resident crazy lady, but Grams was the only one she knew who believed in the supernatural. The only one she remotely trusted who could help her figure out the truth.
“Grams,” Ren said. “What do you know about reincarnation?”
Grams stopped, her fingers pausing mid-sweep above Ren’s head. Grams inhaled, held her breath for a beat, then exhaled. She set to drawing whatever muck there was out of Ren’s aura again.
“What do you want to know about it?” Grams asked.
“Does it exist?”
“Do you exist?”
Ren pulled away from Grams’ dancing fingers and looked up beyond the wrinkles, into Grams’ bright eyes. “So, it does exist?”
“Belief is the greatest power of all,” said Grams.
“So,” Ren said, “You’re saying yes. It does.”
Ren thought back to the years before Grams went nuts, when every Sunday and Wednesday Grams would drag Ren to church and they learned about how there was only one life and it should be lived in accordance to that very good book, and that the afterlife consisted of only two places: The good place and the bad one. She was never taught of things beyond these places. Certainly not of reincarnation. Not of the supernatural. Not of ancient races cursed by their enemy. But once upon a time Grams didn’t believe in the supernatural either. She wouldn’t have cleansed her aura or even touched on the subject of reincarnation. Was Grams truly crazy or had she just learned a little something over the years?
“I have a book,” Grams said, moving toward the book case. She set aside a few of her canning jars and thumbed through the leather-bound spines on the shelf. She plucked a faded, tan book from the stack and handed it to Ren. “Here.”
Ren took it. The title on the outside cover had long since faded. Only a cluster of gold flecks remained from where it used to be. She opened to the title page and, in a shiny embossed type, read: The Practicality of the Supernatural.
“Chapter Nine.” Grams tapped her fingernail against the page. “You will be enlightened, my dear.”
“Thanks,” Ren said.
“Now,” Grams said, turning her back on Ren and opening a dresser drawer. She produced a large crystal ball. “Shoo. The future is calling.”
Ren slipped through the door before Grams changed her tune. Before she took back the book. Forbade her to enter her room again. Barred Ren from finding out for herself what she believed when it came to this reincarnation business.
The house was quiet as she tiptoed up the stairs and went into her bedroom. She closed the door and sat down on her bed. Switching on the lamp nearby, she began to flip through the wrinkled pages of the book. A musty scent, like the inside of Richard’s Antiques, drifted out of it. She found Chapter Nine, entitled, “Beyond these Bones: Reincarnation and the Afterlife.” She pushed aside her initial hesitations, the ones that had turned her so quickly away from Peter, and began to read.
Reincarnation had its roots in religion. From Hindu Karma, where your actions in the present determined your next life form, to Buddhist Metempsychosis, where you are transported to one of the six realms, to Jewish enlightenment, where the soul moves from lifetime to lifetime, growing, strengthening, until finally reaching a state of complete nirvana—bliss—and eventually passing on to the afterlife. There were whispers of reincarnation throughout history. Most people forgot their pasts, but some remembered. Some believed their problems in their present lives were linked to an event in their past lives. Even more, some believed the present was linked to the past through a physical relic.
Ren slammed the book closed. Her heart thrummed against her rib cage. The present was linked to the past. She thought of the tiny, glowing sphere made of bone that was resting in the moon-engraved locket. Charlotte’s bone. Her bone.
She pulled out the sandwich baggie and released the bracelet from its hold. She rubbed her thumb over the largest locket. She could hear Charlotte’s thoughts whispering through the silver. Her breathing was staggered. Strained. Her fingers itched for the feeling of the bone fragment. She wanted to touch it. She needed to touch it. But she shouldn’t.
But what if it was all true?
Every last bit.
Her thumbnail popped open the rusty split in the locket and the bone swirled on the silver disc. She didn’t think. She simply pressed her forefinger to the pebble for only a second. The room began to spin. A thousand colors flooded her mind at once and she felt her stomach drop as she fell through space and time. Then, she slammed into something hard, felt the thick fabric of a long dress fall against her knees. She held a picnic basket in the crook of her arm. It was heavy as she walked through the oak woodland, Spanish Moss spiraling toward her. She was taking Billy supplies, food and things to get him by for a few days in the woods.
The hollow in the fat oak she’d told him to hide in hadn’t changed much since they were kids. Same slanted entrance, same carvings on the outside edges they’d etched into the tree as kids. Crude triangles and squares. Wards, Billy used to call them, to keep away the bad spirits. Inside, the hollow was as dark as burnt biscuits, and if she hadn’t known to look for anyone, seen the faint flash of the whites of Billy’s eyes, she would have thought it empty.
>
She squatted down in front of the entrance and stared at Billy’s shadowy figure. He hadn’t so much as moved. He was just staring at her. For a moment, her heart stopped, thinking he was surely dead. Then, Billy poked his mop of hair out the entrance, grabbed her wrist, and yanked her inside.
“I thought you were gonna forget about me,” Billy said.
Charlotte clutched her chest and tried to catch her breath. “And I thought you were gonna give me heart failure. You were so still I thought you’d passed in the night.
“Wasn’t sure it was you out there,” Billy said.
“Of course it was me.”
“You were all silhouette,” Billy said. “I couldn’t be certain.”
“Then, why’d you pull me in here if you thought I was someone else?”
“I heard a twig snap,” Billy said. “Farther down. I figured I’d take my chances that it was you.”
A boot in old leaves. Crunching. Swishing. Charlotte’s eyes locked in a wide-opened position. Billy fumbled for something. A rifle. He slid the gleaming barrel of the gun into view. Aimed it at the hollow’s opening.
“What are you gonna do with that?” Charlotte whispered.
“Shhh,” Billy said.
The footsteps grew closer and Charlotte knew, knew this whole thing was a mess. A bad idea. It was some spy looking for a deserter. Looking for a not-so-prodigal son on his daddy’s land. Then, someone plopped into view. Simple dress. Bright blonde curls. Alena.
“Don’t shoot,” Charlotte shouted the same time Alena yelped. “It’s only Alena.”
Ren pushed to the front of Charlotte’s thoughts. The maid. She recognized her from somewhere, but before she could think of where, Charlotte took over once more and the thought was nothing more than an idea in a dream. A foggy swirl of loose ends.
“Alena?” Billy said, tucking his gun back into the darkness. “It’s me.”
“Billy?” Alena scooted into the hollow and wrapped her arms around Billy’s broad shoulders. He crushed her to his chest. Alena had always been his favorite. Used to sneak him leftover dessert after their parents had long retired to their separate bedrooms. “It’s been too long.”
