Dark Soul Experiments

by Bre Hall

  “Yeah,” she said, tossing down her cold slice of pizza that had precisely one bite taken out of it. “I got it.”

  REN WAITED FOR MEREDITH TO show up all night and ground her for skipping school, but she was in bed before Meredith got home. When Ren woke up the next morning, Meredith had already gone to work. She had left nothing but the strong aroma of her perfume behind and a plate of scrambled eggs covered in plastic waiting for Ren in the fridge.

  A note was taped to the eggs: Yesterday was a warning. Skip again and you’re grounded ~M.

  Ren rolled her eyes and crumpled the note into a ball. Tossed it in the garbage. Her dad was right, Meredith was busy alright. Busy sticking her nose in Ren’s business.

  She pounded up the stairs, tossed on a set of black lace tights, a pair of denim shorts, dyed to look plaid, and a bleach-stained Black Flag t-shirt she had found buried in a pile of vintage soda pop cans at Richard’s two years earlier. She swiped a thick layer of eyeliner on the top of her lids, turning her dark lashes light in contrast. With a comb, she mussed her hair on top, before sweeping it into a high pony that still dangled halfway down her back. She slipped her boots on at the door, shouted a see ya to Grams, hopped on her bike, and rode into the bite of morning air, trying to forget about stupid Meredith.

  School was red-hot branded torture, but what was new? She sat in her classes, pen poised idly over a blank notepad, pretending to pay attention to lectures on the Industrial Revolution and the process of mitosis in cells. Really, she was just daydreaming about her and Peter’s experiments. Would he train her how to use her new-found ability to levitate? Would he teach her more about her supernatural past? By lunch, she had forgotten all about reincarnation, her new ability, and the ancient war that had set everything in motion and had moved on to thinking about Peter. His curls. His burning touch. The way his lips formed a perfect ‘O’ around his cigarettes.

  Right before last period, she stopped off at her locker to exchange her French textbook for her Intro to Filmography notebook. An envelope was tacked to the inside of her locker. Her name was scratched into the front in pencil. It wasn’t Alfie’s handwriting. Or Alice Martin’s. Who else would leave a note at her locker?

  She pictured Peter sneaking into the school, breaking into the office to find out her locker number, and posting the letter on with blue sticky tack.

  The envelope was licked closed. She ripped it open with itching fingers. There wasn’t a note inside, but a single photograph. Black and white. Grainy. Like it had been taken off of a traffic cam or an old computer camera. She squinted at the photo. Two people, faces pressed together, kissing. One of the people in the photograph wore goggles on top of his head and a trench coat. Scary Larry. The blood drained from her limbs. Her heart beat so loudly it was all she could hear. The face attached to Larry’s—long, tangled hair, nub of a nose—it was her.

  “That little creep,” she muttered.

  Alfie came around the corner of the lockers then, the tails of his pink and orange Aloha shirt blowing in the hallway breeze. He took the photo from her and asked, “What’s this?”

  Just as he registered who was in the photo, Ren snatched it out of his hands. She ripped the picture in half and then in half again.

  “I’m going to kill him,” she said.

  “How did he even take that picture?” Alfie asked.

  “How do you think?” Ren asked as she continued to tear up the photo. She ripped until it was nothing but confetti. “He probably has a million cameras in his room.”

  She stuffed the pieces of the photo back into the envelope and slammed her locker. She started down the hall at a roadrunner’s pace. Her good eye tracked the corridors, hunting for the clearing wake Scary Larry would make as he walked to his next class.

  “What are you going to do?” Alfie asked, trying to keep up.

  “I’m going to teach him a lesson,” she said.

  The crowd was clearing near the science labs, close to an alcove of windows that overlooked the art building at the back of the school. That’s when she saw him. Hollow cheeks drawn taught. Eyes trained on a spot in the distance. He didn’t even look at her when she finally reached him. Not until she clamped a hand down on his shoulder and pushed him into the alcove. She waved the envelope in his face, forcing him to look.

  “What the hell is this?” She breathed fire. Could almost taste the ash crumbling at the back of her throat. Could feel the hot embers burning on the tip of her tongue.

  “I just thought you might like to have a memento of our great achievement,” Scary Larry said, as steady and calm as ever.

  “Ren, come on,” Alfie said from behind her. “He’s not worth it.”

  “Alf, stay out of this,” she said. Then to Larry, “You will burn any other copy you have made of this photograph. You will delete—permanently—any digital file you have. Or so help me, you sick freak, I will come to your house with a gallon of gasoline and I will torch your computers until they are nothing more than ash.”

  “I’ve already saved a copy to my e-mail,” Larry said. “You can’t burn that.”

  Ren’s fingers shifted from his shoulder to his neck. She squeezed so tightly Scary Larry gagged. He clamped onto her wrist as she pushed him hard against the window.

  “Ren, stop it,” Alfie said.

  “Okay, okay,” Larry said, looking down at her. “I’ll get rid of it.”

  “Ren, look,” Alfie said.

  She hadn’t noticed it before, she’d been so consumed with anger, but Scary Larry was at least two feet off the ground, his heels jittering against the middle of the bottom window pane. She was lifting him, not with the hand around his throat, but with her mind. It was all levitation.

  Immediately, she pulled her hand away from Scary Larry’s throat and glanced back at Alfie. Larry hung mid-air for a few long seconds before he dropped, hit the ground with a thump, and gasped. Shaking, Larry scrambled to gather his books, scattered around the floor of the alcove.

  “I’m sorry,” Larry said. “I’m so sorry. I’ll delete it. I’ll delete it. I’m sorry.”

  “You better—” Ren started to tell him he better not say a word, but Scary Larry was already running down the hallway, his thick tennis shoes pounding over the linoleum. She turned to Alfie. “Do you think he’ll tell anyone?”

  “That you just lifted him feet off the ground with one hand?” Alfie shook his head. “Who would believe him? Besides. He’s too scared of you now.”

  “Should have done that years ago,” she said. “Maybe I can try it on Garret Monahan.”

  “Don’t push your luck,” Alfie said. “You’re not that strong.”

  “It wasn’t strength,” she said. “It was—”

  “Telekinesis,” Alfie said.

  She looked up at him. “Yeah.”

  “You need to learn how to control it.”

  “Peter said I wasn’t ready to use it yet.”

  “Screw him,” Alfie said. “You need to tell him what happened and that if you do it accidentally again it will be in front of more people than just Scary Larry. Then, I’ll be visiting you in some sanitarium for the rest of our lives.”

  She followed Alfie’s gaze as it flicked up and down the hall, but no one had stopped to watch. Faces were pointed straight ahead, as if bound to their destination on a wire, unable to turn away.

  Alfie slung an arm around Ren’s shoulder, his touch icy compared to her blazing skin. Together, they slipped into the eb and flow of their peers, gliding down the corridor as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. As if she hadn’t just lifted a boy two fee off the ground with nothing but her mind.

  chapter

  12

  AFTER SCHOOL, REN MET ALFIE outside, where her cruiser and his old BMX were chained to the metal rungs of the bike rack. They unlocked them, rolled them onto the pavement, and pedaled through town, past the town limits, and across the bridge to the Johnson place. Peter was sitting on the top porch step turning the dial on a porta
ble radio with one hand and holding a smoldering cigarette in the other.

  “You again,” Peter said to Alfie as the bikes rumbled over the uneven lawn.

  “I’m here to make sure everything goes smoothly.” Alfie stopped just shy of the bottom porch step.

  “I bet you are.” Peter turned off the radio, and everything went silent.

  Ren and Alfie dismounted their bikes and left them leaning against the bushes. Alfie glared up at Peter.

  “She might be caught up in your little game, but I’m not,” Alfie said.

  “Is that right?”

  “Yeah.” Alfie started up the steps. “It is.”

  Peter stood up so Alfie couldn’t tower over him quite so much. At six-four, Alfie tended to tower over everyone regardless. Peter blew a cloud of smoke into Alfie’s face. “I see. Well, here’s the deal, pal—”

  “Jesus, you two. Play nice,” Ren said, stomping up the steps and pushing between them. She dragged Peter by the elbow into the house. Once over the threshold, she let go of him and turned back to Alfie. “You coming or what?”

  “Seriously?” Peter whispered to her as they walked down the hallway. “What’s he doing here?”

  “I invited him,” she said. “Is that a problem?”

  “Yes, actually,” Peter said.

  “Well,” she shrugged, “Get over it. He’s my best friend.”

  It seemed like even more dust and debris from the old house had been cleared away. She wondered if Peter had cleaned it up just for her. Her cheeks felt suddenly warm as she thought about Peter thinking of her when she wasn’t around. She fought the blush, trying to tell herself not to read into anything. He just wanted the place clean for himself to live in.

  As she stepped into the kitchen, flooded with afternoon light, the thoughts immediately vanished as her good eye settled on a round, metal tea tin Peter had placed in the middle of the table. It was the size of a fist and orange from years of rust. She didn’t have to ask—she could just sense it, like a homing device—but she did anyway.

  “Is that?” She pointed at the tin.

  “Mhhm,” Peter said, giving it a thump with his index finger. “Inside.”

  “What?” Alfie asked. “Another portal?”

  “Relic,” Peter said stiffly, correcting Alf.

  “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Alfie said, staring at Ren with wide eyes. “Remember what we talked about earlier? At school?”

  Ren shook away thoughts about the relic and what kind of past life it would lead to as she replayed the incident with Scary Larry in the hallway a few hours before.

  “Right.” She looked at Peter. “I think we should work on controlling my new abilities before we move on.”

  Peter’s lips crinkled like used tinfoil. He stared, unwavering, at the tea tin. “I thought we already discussed this?”

  “We did,” she said. “But I—”

  “She sort of lifted a kid two feet in the air at school today,” Alfie said. “With her mind.”

  “Did anyone see it happen?” Peter asked, still not looking up.

  “No,” she said. “But it’s not like I could control it.”

  “It’s nothing to worry about.” Peter picked at a fleck of rust on the lid of the tin. “It’s only your body getting used to the extra energy. Like getting an organ transplant. It takes some time to get used to. For now, let’s keep rebuilding your soul.”

  “Alright,” Ren said.

  “I really think—” Alfie started.

  “You really think what?” Peter’s eyes snapped up, pierced clean through Alfie. “That you know more about this than I do? Because if you would like to take over the whole stitching-Ren’s-soul-together operation, be my guest.”

  “Maybe I will,” Alfie said. Then, he muttered, “Arrogant ass.”

  “Alf, it’s no big deal,” Ren said. “Really.”

  Alfie nodded. Everything in him unwound as he began to relax. Then Peter laughed and immediately, Alfie was tense again.

  “She has you well-trained, pup,” Peter said. “Doesn’t she?”

  Alfie’s knuckles cracked. Fists, welded shut, trembled at his side. Then, he did something Ren had never seen him do before. He puffed out his chest, gave Peter a quick, head-to-toe once over, then stepped forward. Ren could sense he wanted to smash his fist into Peter’s face. A spark of adrenaline made her leap in front of Alfie. She drove her hands into his ribs and tried to hold him back.

  “Hey.” Her head bobbed left, right, weaving beneath Alfie’s chin, trying to catch his eyes. When she did, she swore she saw a flash of green cross their ice blue seas. She blinked and found the glacier tint once more. “Alfie, stop it. Just stop.”

  “Wow.” Behind her, Peter chuckled again. She whipped her head around so fast her vision went black for a moment.

  “That goes for you, too,” she said. “Now, am I going to listen to you two bicker all afternoon or can we get back to the experiments?”

  Peter put his hands up in surrender and backed himself against the sink. Alfie slipped back from Ren’s palms and found his spot in the doorway. They were as far apart as they could be and still remain in the same room.

  Alfie’s shoulders remained tensed as he and Peter stared across the table at one another. Peter looked away first and Alfie slowly relaxed. Ren glanced down at the tea tin again, then up to Peter. He nodded.

  “Go ahead,” Peter said.

  She didn’t wait to snatch up the tin. As she did, she heard the relic tink against the metal. It sounded like rain when it beat down on the roof of her dad’s barn. She peeled off the lid. It pried free more easily than the locket first had. Inside, the metal was shockingly unscathed, so shiny she could see the milky brown color of her eyes blinking back. On top of the reflection sat a pinky nail sized nugget that glowed with a thousand colors, just like the small bone had. She watched tiny tendrils of tinted light wisp off the edges of the relic like hands reaching up to her from the depths of a deep cavern.

  “What is it?” she asked, not taking her eyes off of the thing.

  “It’s a tooth,” Peter said.

  Normally, she would have thought it was gross. An old, human tooth resting at the bottom of a tin canister. But for some reason it didn’t repulse her. Is was beautiful, almost. Magical. Her escape.

  “Can I?” she asked as she reached for the tooth.

  “Go on,” Peter said.

  “Wait,” Alfie said. She stopped just short of touching the relic.

  “What now?” Peter sighed.

  “Shouldn’t you tell her where she’s going?” Alfie asked. “Like whose life she’s falling into and historical facts in case she gets stuck in the time for too long and needs to know how to act in that society?”

  “It’s not time travel,” Peter said.

  “But isn’t it though?” Alfie asked. “Sort of?”

  Ren had to agree with Alfie. It was a form of time travel. With Charlotte’s bone she had fallen into the Civil War, in the midst of the action.

  “She has no free will when she regresses,” Peter said. “She just has a shotgun seat for that lifetime of memories.”

  “Maybe I should know,” Ren said.

  “You’ll know as soon as you touch it.”

  “There’s no harm in telling me, right?”

  Peter dragged a hand through his curls. “I guess not.”

  “Okay, then,” Ren said. “I want to know. Then I won’t be so blindsided when I first go in. I’ll be able to catch on faster. Maybe it will help move the experiments along.”

  “How?” Peter asked.

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  “Mindfulness is a powerful thing,” Alfie said.

  “Yeah,” she said, “Mindfulness and all that shit. It could make me stronger. My abilities I mean.”

  “It’s just a theory,” Peter said with a snort.

  “Who was this?” Ren pointed inside the tin. “Whose tooth was this?”

  Peter pulled out a
chair and sat down at the table. “In that life, your name was Lizzie Hyland. You were killed in Dublin, Ireland in the summer of 1911. The regression should pick up a few days, maybe a week, before then.”

  “Was I dying from the famine?” Ren asked.

  “No,” Alfie said. “That happened decades before.”

  “You were just an average girl, living in the heart of Dublin with a thousand other people who were just trying to get by,” Peter said. “Now, enough discussion. It’s time to see for yourself.”

  She reached toward the tooth once more, but Alfie grabbed her elbow, stopping her. She looked up at him. His eyes were trained on Peter. Alfie asked, “Is it safe?”

  “I thought you’ve witnessed a regression before?” Peter asked.

  “That’s not an answer,” Alfie said. He glanced at Ren. “You need to ask these sorts of things.”

  “I’ve done it before,” she said.

  “Nothing may have happened,” he said. “Then. What about possible complications in the future?”

  Peter leaned back in his chair and laughed. “You can’t be serious?”

  Ren remembered her conversation with Peter from the day before. He had said he’d tried the experiments with her soul before, but something had gone wrong. Had he said what exactly? That whole afternoon was a flood of information. Something surely got lost.

  “Could something go wrong?” she asked.

  “The chances,” Peter said, shrugging, “are slim.”

  “But it could go wrong,” she said. She pulled her hand away from the tooth and pressed both palms against her knees. The raised fabric from the pattern on her tights was rough against her hands.

  Peter shook his head and sighed heavily. He stood up, pulled his cigarette case from his back pocket, and stuck a new smoke in his teeth. He struck a match against a small box he snagged from the counter, but it wouldn’t light. He tried a fresh one and the yellow flame wriggled up to the cigarette.

  “You have to know that the chance of something going wrong is far less than the chance of the Auxilium who want you dead finding you,” Peter said. He paced slowly, keeping parallel to the kitchen counter. “Soon enough they will come and when they do your soul must be full. Your immortal strength must shine through and counter any attack they make on your life.” He sat down next to her and took her hands in his, keeping his cigarette in the corner of his mouth. She felt that electricity again. “Don’t you see? This is the only way to be free of the dark cycle they’ve put you through for centuries. This is your only way out.”