My Soul To Keep

by Jackie Sonnenberg

  My soup was staring at me.

  I shot my head up and looked around me, at everyone else. Most, if not all of them were eating normally and talking to each other. Did they know they were eating faces? Or was I the only one? I looked at the guy next to me. I was positive his bowl had a nose in it before he dipped his bread in and made it disappear.

  My own soup still sat there facing me. Literally. I couldn’t eat this. I sat back, watching it, almost expecting it to start to speak to me. I kept looking around at the others as well in hopes of them finding the same thing. I did not want it to be just me. Why would it be just me?

  The second I looked back at my bowl, the face started to fade away. I stirred it again, watching the wavy mouth shrink in protest and the eyes swirl together into nothing. I imagined the whole thing. I must have. I dipped my bread in the soup and ate it just as I did before, feeling that same warming comfort as I did before. After all, it was soup and nothing else. A month ago, upon seeing this, I would have screamed louder than the horror movie. Now, it was something that just gave me a little scare but mostly, made me think. It was just another thing to add to the list.

  Chapter 16

  Mitchell mentioned in an email that morning that we should get our own poster boards, which were only like 99 cents in the bookstore. They would have markers at The Manor for our activity tonight. I was a little annoyed that he told us this last minute, but it was just a stop after school. My heart burst in relief when I walked in the bookstore and saw Damien standing in line.

  “Dude.”

  He turned around, taking out an iPod earbud.

  “Yo.”

  I joined him in line, as he was there the same reason I was.

  “He said just one, right?” he asked me.

  “Yeah I guess.”

  “I am not too sure about my artistic ability, but we’ll find out.”

  We held our posters as we moved up in line.

  “So,” I started. “What did you think of the soup the other night?”

  “It was awesome.”

  “Yeah, it was…even though I saw a face in it.”

  He turned to me. “What?”

  “Yep. I saw an actual face in my soup. But that’s not the weirdest thing that happened this week. Hearing voices and someone pounding on the door to a storage room with no one in it was pretty off the wall, too.”

  Damien paused. “Huh.”

  “Indeed,” I answered.

  We walked out of the store together after paying, and I knew that I was waiting for too long to talk to him.

  “I have had quite the share of paranormal encounters around the house.”

  Damien listened as we walked outside, slowing our steps and moving close together.

  “You have?”

  “Someone was clearly whispering to me in the room in the middle of the night, someone was clearly pounding on the walls in a room in the corridor. When I opened the door all this junk fell out, it was filled up. No one was in there. And a face, clear as day, appeared in my soup the other night. It was like a camera developed in broccoli bits and cheese.”

  “That’s…intense,” Damien replied, clearly struggling with the right words.

  I shrugged. “I feel like I want to know more about the…spirits in the house. This girl Becky has had some encounters too. Have you met her? She usually keeps to herself but we have been talking a lot. We want to learn more about them, you know? Like who they are and what they’re doing there.”

  I knew Damien was listening, but he said nothing else.

  “Are you freaked out now?”

  “Well kind of, but I am interested, too,” he answered. “I was just wondering if you were doing okay living there.”

  “It is actually great. Aside from living there being great, it seems like the spirits are with us rather than against us or anything like that.”

  “I think that’s a beautiful thing,” Damien said. “Spirits, anyway. I want to know them and respect them.”

  This was why I loved talking to him.

  “You need to come to The Manor more often,” I stated.

  “I’ll try. But, anyway, I’ll see you later for this thing,” he said holding the poster.

  “See ya.”

  The lower lounge wasn’t as decked out in candles or tablecloths like it usually was, so I guessed it wasn’t going to be a real serious meeting or activity. We were actually gathering in the mess hall this time, which made sense since we needed the tables. The tables themselves were ready for us with a bunch of markers and colored pencils spread out on each one. Mitchell had everyone take a seat, the upperclassmen of course crowding him at the front.

  “Everyone, I asked you all to bring a poster board. If you didn’t get a chance to get one, we have just a few extras. Now, tonight we are going to express ourselves and our messages of Light through art. Now, now, it doesn’t matter how great of an artist you are or if you think you have no artistic talents at all. The point of this exercise is to continue to spread our message in a new way. Come up with your own artistic vision of our new destiny in The Next Life. It is through your visions you will make something visually beautiful to inspire in someone else to come and seek out their own Lights. It can be anything you personally believe is the next world that awaits us: Any kind of paradise you imagine and believe. As long as somewhere, anywhere, you incorporate the GOL logo as the focus. Inspire others! Let us decorate the campus with our knowledge!”

  We were left alone with soft music and our thoughts. I looked at my blank poster board, and it didn’t take long for a picture to pop in my head.

  I instantly grabbed some green colored pencils of various shades to draw the fields. I drew green lines from the bottom edges up, and curbed it smaller towards the top to appear stretched out very far. I made mounds and little lines for grass. The rest of the poster would obviously be the sky. I made three of the clouds spell out a wavy “GOL.” I spent the time shading and coloring it a little better, and that was it. In my mind, and in my mind only, the edge of the field at the top of the page wasn’t empty. Someone stood there, but I did not draw him in. Only I could see him. In my mind was where he stayed.

  Well, I was no amazing artist. I didn’t care.

  After having a cup of tea, I was surprised to find out that we would be going around campus to hang our posters up—tonight. Most people had their GOL hoodies on as of habit.

  “If you don’t have your hoodie today, we have extras also. It is quite chilly out there,” said Mitchell. Seth stood at the end of the table with a couple rolls of duct tape on his arms. Mitchell stood by him and lovingly put his hand on his back. “Seth here will give you tape while you all go out, and we will take care of the Manor for you until you get back.”

  A smile formed on Seth’s lips, and I couldn’t help but think how creepy that made him look now.

  Everyone seemed happy with the impromptu campus roaming. I caught up with Damien and we shyly showed our pictures. His was a picture of an androgynous angel in a bright sky.

  “I just picture myself being able to fly, like an angel. I know it’s cheesy.” Damien was actually trying to hide his poster by his legs. I never saw him this bashful before. It was adorable.

  “No, it’s great,” I assured him.

  We found Becky and Holly once we stepped outside, and I felt really good about introducing Becky to my friends. She was just an awkward outsider. Like I was at the dorms.

  “Let’s see your pictures!” I prompted, putting my coat on over my hoodie. Holly’s was modest; a bunch of multi-colored candlesticks with black shading in the background, but Becky’s was the coolest. It was an abstract of weird shapes and it was in the shape of Earth, or something that could be Earth, with people and objects making up the continents. So many different things made up North and South America, Africa, Europe, that you had to look twice and closer in order to see what the objects were. It wasn’t sure what to think except that Becky had to be an art major.

&nbs
p; “Woa. That is wicked,” I couldn’t help but say. “That is seriously freaking awesome.”

  Becky sort of shrugged it off. “Thanks! I’m really happy we get to hang these up. I love art.”

  “Come on, guys.” Kimberly came out of nowhere walking down the wooded path. “Let’s not spend all night out here.”

  Not even sure where to go, we just walked down the campus sidewalks casually chatting. Our coats bundled up and our hoods pulled over our heads, we mostly hid our faces in the fall-almost-winter night. We dispersed a bit to roam potential areas to hang up our artwork. We saw that some people put their posters on trees, around posts, on building windows and walls and even to fences. I managed to get mine on the side of a building along with many others. Damien taped his to one of the athletic buildings.

  We watched other members walk up and down campus in the darkness, and saw Holly at one point standing alone across the street. She held her poster by her side, looking both ways and not making much effort to move. She eventually eyed the trash can, and we figured out where she intended to put it. Iris sauntered down that sidewalk and stepped in front of the trash can with a tight look on her face.

  “I don’t think people are going to look in the garbage to find enlightenment,” she said bluntly.

  Holly just shrugged. She might even have been a little embarrassed. Iris continued to stare at her until she came up with an answer.

  “Well, I just don’t think mine is very good,” she said.

  “Well, what you are throwing away is a symbol of your spirit and your mind. Is that what you think of yourself? That you aren’t very good? You don’t really want to do that, do you?”

  Holly didn’t get a chance to answer.

  “Because then that is a symbol of weakness. You don’t want to be a symbol of weakness, do you?”

  “No, I just—

  “Strong people care about spreading their messages. Weak people care too much about the opinions of others and over think. Are you weak, Holly?”

  Holly stared at the sidewalk. “No.”

  “Good. Then go and find a place to put your poster. Don’t be a disappointment to Mitchell or The White Light.”

  Iris left her to catch up with some other members up ahead. Damien, Becky and I pretended to be talking to each other. As dumb as that was, I saw that Iris legitimately made Holly feel uncomfortable. All about a poster. I thought it was unlike Holly to care so much about a drawing, but it was Iris’s attitude that rubbed me the wrong way. The three of us started to walk back, pretending we didn’t see her.

  Seth greeted us at the door, having opened it all the way and stood there waiting for all the cattle to come back into the barn.

  “Come on in the kitchen,” he said, hearing us come up the path. “Carol’s baking something.”

  He probably had no idea who he was talking to. He just heard the mumbles and the footsteps coming up the path to the house and probably just gave every mystery group the same lines. I couldn’t help it, I felt profoundly sorry for Seth. What a horrible fate to just come out of nowhere like that, and how he came to accept it.

  We gathered where everyone else was around the tables and Mitchell, at once, raised his head and inhaled the new aroma lingering in the air.

  “I can’t wait to see what Carol’s got for us this time,” he said happily. “We’ll have a nice treat to go along with our meditation session tonight! That does smell delightful, doesn’t it?”

  Carol came out with the finished product and set it on the kitchen counter.

  “What kind is it?” someone asked.

  “Oatmeal raisin, with walnuts!”

  I had to admit I was disappointed. Damien and I eyed each other. We had our hearts set on the chocolate chip ones we had at our first meeting. We politely took cookies as Carol gave them to us all and walked to the upper lounge.

  “I don’t like oatmeal raisin,” I admitted.

  “Yeah, and I don’t like nuts,” Damien added.

  “So,” I said to him, a twinkle in my eye. “What do you have?”

  He returned the twinkle with a smile. “I got a box of Girl Scout cookies in my backpack.”

  “Shut up! Where did you get them?”

  He laughed. “They were selling them at the caf. Didn’t you know that?”

  “No. What kind?”

  “Thin mints.”

  “Oh, man. You’re the best.”

  We looked around sneakily with this great secret we didn’t want anyone else to know about, and I followed Damien to a corner in the lounge. He pulled his backpack off a couch and revealed the green box of Heaven. We snuck those thin mints, and would have eaten the whole box if Mitchell didn’t announce to gather downstairs.

  The lower lounge was all decked out with candles lining every edge on the windows. We settled on the floor cushions, Damien taking up the one on my left and letting his jacket sit between us. The whole time during our session I felt it on my arm and leg and I wondered: if he and I were touching, would we share the same vision?

  I can’t say I remember the graphic details of that session. Truth was, I was having a hard time connecting with anything at all. It wasn’t the vision itself that was out of the ordinary, but how I felt. My head hurt for some reason, and I knew it had something to do with the lack of vision I had. I couldn’t see anything in the meditation and the more I tried, the more it hurt. It bothered me since I thought I had a pretty clear mind. Why couldn’t I imagine anything? Better yet—did this mean that my spirit didn’t go anywhere?

  I struggled to focus during this session, to see or hear anything at all. Mostly, it looked like a bunch of gray swirls in my head. Was this the source of my massive headache? My head throbbed with every swirl that passed through my brain pores and for once, I wanted a meditation session to be over. It was only a few minutes that passed but it seemed like much longer. I longed for the sound of Mitchell’s voice to wake us out of our reveries, still scrunching my eyes and forehead in discomfort. What was wrong with me? When neither the brain swirls nor the pounding ceased, I felt like I had to opt out. I opened my eyes and rubbed my temples. All the other members were still in meditation mode so I didn’t feel the need to say or do anything. I excused myself and quietly went up into the kitchen. In the top counter drawer we kept stuff like painkillers and band aids. I popped a pill and took it with a glass of water, with a shudder. I should have been used to taking pills but instead it made me feel like I wanted to throw up.

  After several satisfying gulps I honestly didn’t know if I wanted to go back downstairs. I paced the area to kill time, around the kitchen and lounge and even to the laundry area in the back. I was actually in the laundry room when I saw Ad Astra’s pipe cleaner tail sticking out from behind the washing machine. I knew it was funny I hadn’t seen her all night but there she was, hiding out for some reason.

  I knew the session was over by the voices coming back upstairs. I met with Damien, and our conversation turned out to be mutual.

  “Did you do anything?”

  “No.”

  “Me neither.”

  “I couldn’t get into anything.”

  “I couldn’t either. It was so weird. I felt like I couldn’t connect.”

  “Same here, but for some reason I still have a headache.”

  “Me too. I’m going to go call it a night. See you later.”

  “Yeah, later.”

  Once Damien left I went to my room, feeling like I was balancing on the tip of a pin. Why was I so dizzy?

  Chapter 17

  Dreaming might have made that worse. My head was spinning. I could almost feel the fluids in my brain sloshing inside my ears. I could have been dreaming—yet I didn’t—or couldn’t—open my eyes. Things could have flown outside the window: leaves, mailboxes, boxes, cars, just like in The Wizard of Oz. The fumbling and shaking I felt was a strange comfort, like it was rocking me in my bed and keeping me asleep.

  Whatever it was, the headache and chaos was gone the seco
nd I opened my eyes. From the general feeling I had waking up; there was a good possibility of it coming back.

  There was a very pale light coming from my window. The light was not the usual color of daytime. It looked like a very sickly yellow-green, not the bright and happy kind. It looked like the sun came up briefly, vomited, and then went back down. It wasn’t that early, but it was still morning. It was early enough, and something was going on. I got out of bed and grabbed my glasses. People in the rooms adjacent to me were coming out and talking.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  “There was a storm or something!” Holly exclaimed. “It’s windy as hell. There were a couple of trees that snapped and fell over already and hit things.”

  “Jeez.”

  “We have to go downstairs,” another girl said calmly. “Mitchell wants us all to gather together.”

  We all went downstairs, all of us. All the residents were awake and making their way down, and the pit of my stomach also went down.

  “Where’s Mitchell?” someone asked.

  “He’s downstairs. He wants us all to go down there immediately,” a 12th grade guy said, trying to move to group along. He made us all gather at the base of the stairs and waited until everyone was downstairs.

  “A tornado touched down on campus last night.”

  “What?”

  “Holy shit.”

  “Where?”

  “It’s gone now, but it was on this morning’s news. Come on now, Mitchell will explain everything.”

  Everyone in their pajamas gathered in the upper lounge. Mitchell stood at the front in a long blue robe, like a bit like a younger Hugh Hefner. I would have found it funny if I didn’t see what was next to him. He had on the news segment on the television, which played the live news segment of a reporter walking around a pile of bricks. She talked about the severe building damage done by the tornado that struck last night. The more the cameras showed the buildings with the giant, brick-less holes the more they looked familiar.

  “Oh my god,” someone next to me said. “That’s Gander Hall!”