Souls Lost (Appalachian Souls Book 1)

by Bonnie Elizabeth

  “I can’t do that,” Emrys said. “As I’ve said, I can’t influence feelings. But I know you’ll come to love Lorne more deeply, nearly as deeply as he loves you.”

  Dixie said nothing, saddened, not sure how she’d ever come to love that man any more than she did, which was well enough, but it wasn’t a fairy tale happily-ever-after kind of love, the kind of damn-all-things-to hell-and-let’s-be-together kind of love that she wanted.

  It suddenly seemed to her as if the older she got the fewer wishes Emrys could grant, rather like he’d drawn her in, granting her small things but now that she was older and had real needs, not the kind of needs a child had, that he always said no. What good was making a wish if it could never be granted, and what sorts of wishes could he grant?

  Dixie had tried to get clarification but Emrys always gave vague responses that told her nothing, as if he didn’t want her to know exactly what power she might hold. Yet her momma had made a huge wish, a wish to keep her safe, and that had succeeded. It made her resentful a bit, not of her momma, exactly, but perhaps of her momma’s relationship to Emrys.

  Dixie resolved that she would never have that happen with her children, or child, or the passel of dogs she cared for if there weren’t any children. After all, if Emrys couldn’t be counted on for wishes, maybe he couldn’t be counted on to know the future.

  “Is the future set in stone?” Dixie asked suddenly.

  Emrys drew back, a hand coming to his chest as if he’d never considered such a thing. “The future is now and in the past. It is every decision you made in all your yesterdays and the decisions you make today. I can read those decisions and see the line, but you can always change and begin to make new ones. And in that case, the future I see will change with each different decision you make.”

  Dixie opened her eyes, thinking about it. She wasn’t sure what Emrys’ powers were but she liked to think he couldn’t read her if she wasn’t communicating with him, and she couldn’t do that with her eyes open. It might have been rude not to say good bye, but he often left her the same way.

  She could change. Make different decisions. Dixie noodled that, like pushing around a loose tooth, even though, just as she had always known with her tooth, that she wouldn’t actually pull it, too afraid of the messy change that would come if she did.

  Chapter 19

  Zoe had another shot of vodka before Taran left. He seemed overly grateful that she was going to contact her friend Donna about talking to her sister, and that Charlene would then try and talk Kay into coming back to Corbin Meadow. At some point he’d walked over and closed the sliding glass door which made Zoe feel like a caged animal, though the air conditioner was no longer working so hard.

  She didn’t feel any more tickles on the back of her hand or her neck, and when she thought she felt something, it was normally just her imagination picturing a bug of some sort moving around tickling her skin. She never ended up killing anything when she swatted her body.

  The vodka made things a bit fuzzy, like her head was wrapped in feathers, dampening her senses because she was protected from the real world. Except, Zoe reflected, it wasn’t the real world that she needed to worry about, not really, unless you called weird ass gnome-like things “real” which she most certainly did not.

  She was glad when Taran finally left her to her own devices, secure in the knowledge that she would start the process that he was supposed to take care of. Weren’t men always like that? Not her father, though. At least not that she knew.

  Zoe sat back on the sofa, trying to figure out what to say to her friend Donna, when she dozed off. Drinking on an empty stomach, no matter the adrenaline rush, could do that. Before she passed out, Zoe thought she smelled roses. Her momma had loved roses and took every opportunity to purchase them from the store. No rosebush existed in the garden because she didn’t have the interest in gardening and those bushes that had been planted had withered and died during the winter months, refusing to be resurrected in the spring, though other rose bushes in other yards did just fine. But still, the flowers were purchased and brought to the house. The smell always reminded Zoe of her momma.

  There had been plenty of roses in a variety of colors at her momma’s funeral. Her father had a large arrangement with a spray of red roses. Zoe’s arrangement had been smaller but with a spray of pink flowers. Friends had all had arrangements made up of white carnations and yellow or sometimes white roses. The church had been beautiful.

  In her dream, Zoe was back there, walking up the side aisle to the front where her momma lay in her casket, the lid open. She’d looked like she was sleeping, except her make-up was a little wrong, the color a bit too pale. Still, any minute she could get up and say hello, even though a part of Zoe knew she wouldn’t ever do that again.

  Even in her dream state the grief rushed up at her, knocking her down like she was a tree in the forest that had been felled by a chainsaw. The cutting of her ties to her momma’s roots had been just as quick and as heartless. There was the most physical ache in her chest, the center of it radiating outwards to her entire body. Her arms and hands tingled with that ache. Heartache, she thought, thinking how appropriate, but who knew her heart took up her entire body?

  “Hush, child,” her momma said. They were sitting in the pews of the church like they had every Sunday for as long as Zoe could remember. They were in the sixth pew back, not too close but not too far back, her momma closest to the aisle. It was the pew they always chose whenever they could. The wood beneath her was dark and the floor was carpeted in what Zoe liked to think of as church red, particularly since the church she sometimes attended in Portland was carpeted in the exact same color.

  Long, narrow windows of stained glass lined the sides of the building which was raised high over their heads in a nod to Gothic architecture. The church organ was huge and had been purchased with a special collection from the people of the congregation back in her grandfather’s day. It wasn’t a large church, certainly not the largest in Corbin Meadow, as it was Lutheran, which was not the religion of choice for the overwhelming majority of folks. The Bible Church and the Baptist Church were both three times the size of this one.

  “Momma?” Zoe whispered, her voice drawing out the vowels of the word as they had when she was a child.

  “That’s my girl.” Her momma put her arm around her, easing her closer. Her hair was the pale brown and gray it had been before she died, and her face looked exactly the way Zoe remembered it, if a bit more lined.

  “I’m scared,” Zoe whispered, realizing it only then that she was terrified.

  “Stay inside. Don’t go into the backyard for anything.” Her momma took Zoe’s face and framed it with her hands, staring into her eyes. “Promise me, my rascally girl.”

  Though Zoe had rarely seen her momma look as serious as she did in the dream, the voice was there, the smile around the words “rascally girl” filled with warmth.

  “I promise,” Zoe said.

  “You will call Donna and you will find a way to bring Kay home,” her momma added.

  “Why? Why is Kay so important?” Zoe asked. She didn’t really want Kay there. What if Taran decided he wanted to get back together with his ex-wife? And why, Zoe wondered, did she care? Just because she liked that he admired how she looked, because she got a tingle through her body every time he stood a little too close didn’t mean she cared or that she wanted a relationship. Maybe she should go back to Portland.

  “You could go back now,” her momma said. “It would keep you safe. But would you really be happy there? The Blood calls, Zoe. It didn’t need me because it had Dixie, and it thought she was all it needed, but Dixie hoarded that power to herself. Now that she’s gone, there is no one.”

  “Why doesn’t it call to Kay?” Zoe asked.

  “I think it does,” Jodie said finally, after a silence long enough to make Zoe worry her momma wouldn’t answer. “I think it does but she’s filled with so many regrets and so many other desires
that she doesn’t even know it’s calling. Make her see that.”

  “I’ll try,” Zoe said quietly.

  “You need to do it,” her momma said. “You’ve been noticed and not in a good way. I and the others had more leeway thanks to Dixie and thanks to the fact that they didn’t know what we were doing, what it all meant. Even Elaine got ideas through, and it was only after months of her planning that she was noticed. But you…they were listening already and they understood what your plans were. Take care. Remember what I said. Don’t go out in the garden in the back.”

  A bell sounded, loud and urgent. Her momma looked towards the front where a casket lay, the cover open. Zoe followed her momma’s gaze, not certain who was in there, not wanting to know. Her momma stood, gave her a quick kiss.

  The church faded and Zoe was in the backyard. A mist was coming up. Something was there. She needed to remain still.

  The bell called her again, louder now, closer.

  Zoe turned to look, knowing as she moved that whatever was out noticed. She had no time to run. She felt the weight on her back and she sat up, not quite awake, her eyes wide and unseeing.

  The phone trilled a third time and Zoe gasped, looking at it. Donna was calling her. She paused a little longer, trying to catch a hold of the good part of the dream while shaking off the ending. Had she called her friend before going to sleep? She couldn’t remember.

  Chapter 20

  At the station, Taran tried to make notes about what he had learned, at least the things he could share. You couldn’t write down that Rumpelstiltskin was going around killing the women based on a vision, not if you wanted to continue to work as police chief. He’d be lucky to wash dishes at the diner in Corbin Meadow if he wrote that up.

  The station wasn’t a large place, big enough for a reception area where Mattie worked the phones and talked to anyone who came in. They had a large office that Johnny and Bobby Joe Elkins shared. They’d hired Bobby Joe on full time when they’d lost Amanda. Before that, he’d been security down in Hickory and worked part time if they needed him, most notably the time when Amanda had been murdered.

  Taran had his own office, which was roomy compared to a real city police office, though his wasn’t that much tidier, he supposed. Papers lay everywhere—on the gunmetal desk, the brownish gray folding chair that sat in the corner, his larger ratty brown upholstered club chair that hadn’t seen a club since about 1950, the bookshelves that were built into the wall next to him, and the top of the two drawer metal file cabinet, the black so worn that it was almost the same gray as the desk.

  Across the hall was were a pair of interview rooms, one for suspects, a nicer one for witnesses, a small closet of a kitchen and a bathroom. The stairs that led down led to storage and a couple of holding cells if they had to arrest someone and keep them at the station for any amount of time were at the end of the hall. Taran considered the cells more of a drunk tank than a jail because most of the time they were used were for drunk and disorderly arrests and sometimes a driving while intoxicated, but all things considered, even that happened rarely in Corbin Meadow. The cells smelled of stale alcohol and vomit, in contrast to the smoky smell of cigarettes of the upstairs, which lingered from a time when you could still smoke in a police station.

  The air conditioning groaned and creaked as it blew air that was only slightly cooler than the air outside into the building. That was something else that hadn’t changed since the day Taran was hired over a decade ago. The place, he realized, was old and nearly as unchanging as a rock. Unchanging was a good way to describe the town of Corbin Meadow, and even a fair number of people in it.

  Except now he had to factor in evil gnomes, which did not work for him in any way, shape, or form. Who the hell believed in gnomes and fairies once they’d gotten past kindergarten? Did even children really believe in them? Had Elaine been killed because she’d liked gnomes dressed in Star Trek uniforms and the creatures had taken exception and made an example of her? Did they exist just in Corbin Meadow or everywhere?

  Worse, was he going crazy? Maybe Zoe had some strange drugs that she’d smoked and he’d breathed it in and they’d had a shared hallucination. He didn’t know of drugs that could do that, certainly not any that smelled like lemon furniture polish. Besides, now, sitting at his desk, he didn’t feel as if he were coming down off of a high or a trip.

  Taran shook his head as if he could shake off any potential hallucinogen. He needed to figure out what was going on.

  All the women who had been killed were strong women, working for the community. He thought Zoe might be a target as well and he made a note about that, mentioning he had concerns. He wasn’t at all certain why she might be a target but perhaps someone—a gnome?—had something against the Mason-Hyers.

  Taran started looking through the computer, checking into what he knew of Zoe and Jodie Mason-Hyer. The Mason family had been members of the Lutheran Church forever. They’d lived in Corbin Meadow since before it became a township. Her Mason ancestors had been farmers, some hogs and some tobacco, though neither had had enough land to be rich by the standards of the day. They’d done their own work on the land and hired temporary help as they’d not been rich enough to afford more than one slave.

  The Hyers had done better. They’d been woodworkers, real craftsmen, some of the early ones who started working in the area. At one time, of course, most everyone in the countryside farmed, but the Hyers had also built cupboards, tables, chairs, and beds for much of the community. Their work was considered the finest.

  There’d been a minister in the family at one time but he’d left. Taran let that go. He didn’t see much else. Who would know? Elaine would have, but she was dead.

  Dolly Jean Pitikins might know. Taran wondered if the historical society, really just Dolly Jean’s front room, was open on a day where it was pouring. She couldn’t expect visitors. Of course, because she worked out of her home, Taran didn’t have to worry if the society was open, not really, if he wanted to talk to her. On a wet and blustery day, Dolly Jean was going to be bored and perhaps a bit lonely and more than willing to offer up all the gossip he could stomach.

  Taran smiled a little as he moved around some papers, pretending like he might be tidying up, already thinking about his visit to Dolly Jean.

  Chapter 21

  “Did I call you?” Zoe asked Donna when she had gotten herself up to grab the ringing phone. She held it to her ear while opening and closing her eyes, trying to rid herself of the last traces of her very strange dream. What was that about the backyard? She wasn’t supposed to go there, as if whatever was out to get her lived only there and there alone. Of course, after what she thought she’d seen with Taran, and then the vodka, was it any wonder she was having strange dreams? She still felt light headed.

  It was still raining outside, her father still wasn’t home, and the house was still too warm for the season even with the air conditioner trying to keep up with the humidity.

  Donna laughed a little. “I don’t think so, hon. I was just checking in to see how you were doing. I was at home watching the rain pouring down and thinking how you must feel right at home in this.”

  “It never rains like this in Portland,” Zoe said. Did her voice sound as grumpy as she felt? She should be nicer to Donna. She’d kept in touch. It wasn’t Donna’s fault she liked Corbin Meadow, didn’t think there was anything wrong with the place, wouldn’t in a million years believe Zoe had seen what she’d seen and chalk it up Zoe having done some sort of drugs on the Left Coast, as they said, probably with a “bless your heart” thrown in.

  Donna humphed. “I was just thinking of you, that’s all.”

  “That was nice. And it’s funny because I was thinking of you,” Zoe said, trying to be conciliatory. She’d been thinking just this morning that she’d stick around the town. No need to make everyone angry if she was planning on staying. Or maybe she should leave Corbin Meadow and live in Hickory or Raleigh or some other small town where she coul
d be Zoe Hyer and no one would notice her as she went about her work in the lab, but deep down she knew she couldn’t. She was tied to the town as strongly as she was tied to her family, like a horse to a post, so to speak.

  “Was it good?” Donna asked.

  “I have a weird request,” Zoe said. “Something came up about Kay Pugh when I was going back over my mom’s death with Chief Rees…”

  “Probably because he’s still not over her,” Donna interrupted. No “bless his heart.” Probably because unrequited love needed no blessing. It was sweet and wonderful and no one need apologize for that.

  “No. I brought her up because I thought she might know something. Obviously Chief Rees couldn’t ask her to come here and he wasn’t even sure what to ask her because I didn’t know and I know Charlene and she were good friends…” This time Zoe purposely let the sentence hang.

  Donna was probably in her too-small house, an eight hundred square foot place that housed her and her husband and two boys all living in each other’s pockets and getting on each other’s nerves, which was probably why Donna spent what time she could at her mother’s house, especially as the boys got bigger. Zoe didn’t know how her friend breathed in the house and wondered if Donna was hiding in the only bathroom to have a bit of privacy for her conversation. But no, the school was actually open so the boys would be gone. Donna could be enjoying what she could of the house, perhaps finding a corner that wasn’t a complete mess.

  “I’ll ask Charlene to mention it,” Donna said, hesitant.

  “I think it’s important,” Zoe said. “I thought someone was in my backyard, so I’m kind of worried that maybe the killer is after certain families and I could be next, you know? If there’s any way she can come back and maybe we can talk and I can put my finger on what it is that I thought she might know. It was something my momma said in passing the last time I was here…”