7 Souls

by Barnabas Miller; Jordan Orlando

  MARY WASN’T SURE WHAT time it was—she didn’t wear a watch—but it could have been at least an hour later. Nas was pummeling her eardrums. Jake Lebaux had spilled his Bud Light Lime all over the dining table—he’d brought half of the football team with him, and they were all high on God knows what, laughing hysterically as they dug their fingers into the ravaged remains of the Twersky-brand caviar and hummus. The party was overwhelmingly filled with people she didn’t know.

  Mary was at the edge of the room, standing by the big picture window, gazing through her own reflection at the darkness of the city and the wide vista of the gilded Fifth Avenue towers. A light rain was falling, the drops spattering the plate glass; she could barely hear the howling wind that battered the hotel’s stone facade.

  Amy was in Patrick’s bedroom with a crowd of newcomers, and Trick was at the door, dealing with a bellboy who’d probably been sent there by the concierge to deliver noise complaints. Not that it mattered; Trick could pretty much do whatever he wanted at the Peninsula and get away with it. Nobody wanted to kill the golden goose—the enormous bills always got paid, and everyone got a big tip, and that was that.

  “Mary-fairy.” A familiar voice spoke in her ear, making her jump. She turned and was completely delighted to see Ellen Shayne. Ellen looked adorable in a simple black dress—it made Mary realize how infrequently she saw her sister dressed up, or at a party or doing anything except reading in her room.

  “Ellie!” Mary grabbed her sister in a bear hug, squeezing her happily. “Oh my God, Ellie, when did you get here? You missed all the excitement. I love you so much—”

  “You’re drunk!” Ellen laughed, returning the hug and then pulling away. “Wow. How many have you had? That’s a gorgeous dress, by the way.”

  “I’ve had a few,” Mary admitted. Her head was spinning, she realized, but just a bit—she could totally handle it. “But it’s true—I totally love you.”

  “Okay, Drama Queen,” Ellie said. “So, were you surprised?”

  “Of course I was surprised, Ellie-belle!” Mary returned Ellen’s mischievous smile. “You knew, didn’t you? Were you, like, behind the whole thing?”

  Mary’s BlackBerry vibrated. She almost didn’t feel it, but her purse was pressed against her hip by the radiator beneath the picture window—the radiator that was covered in empty glasses and sodden cocktail napkins and full ashtrays.

  “Hang on,” Mary told Ellen, snapping open her purse and pulling out the phone. “Somebody’s calling—”

  But it wasn’t a phone call—it was a text. Mary realized her eyes were blurring with drunkenness as she leaned to peer at the tiny screen. The message was from Joon, and it read:

  HELP HELP COME HELP ME

  Mary stared at the digital characters. The music seemed to fade away.

  “What is it?” Ellen frowned. “What’s wrong?”

  “Look,” Mary said, turning the BlackBerry so Ellen could see it. “Oh my God, what—”

  “She just sent this,” Ellen said, checking her wristwatch against the time stamp on the text message. “Like, two minutes ago.”

  “When did she leave?” Mary complained. “How long ago? I can’t remember—”

  “Wait—is she kidding?” Ellen asked. “Is this some kind of a joke?”

  “Of course not!” Mary held up the phone again, so its pale glow reflected on Ellen’s makeup-free cheeks. “Look at this. Of course it’s not a joke. Where is she?” Mary was looking around at the crowd, beginning to feel panic creeping over her. “Oh my God, she left with that fucking meth head—”

  “All right, don’t panic,” Ellen said sternly, gripping Mary’s arm. “Come on, let’s find out.”

  Why did I let you go, Joon? Mary could feel a cold weight in her solar plexus as she remembered the track lights gleaming on the smooth surface of Mason’s handgun. I was standing right there—why did I let you leave with that creep?

  Ellen had her by the hand and was leading her through the crowd, toward the dancers in the middle of the room. Mary could see Patrick, off to one side, chugging beers with Silly Billy and some of the other football players—she tried to attract his attention, waving with her free hand, while Ellen got Stephen Ambrosio’s attention, standing on tiptoes to yell in his ear.

  “Trick!” Mary yelled, waving her arm fruitlessly. “Trick! Get over here!”

  “She left with a guy,” Ellen screamed in Mary’s ear, against the pounding of the music and Christina Aguilera’s caterwauling. “Steve says they took off a while ago—some guy with no shirt; maybe you saw—”

  “I know who you mean,” Mary yelled back impatiently. She felt a sinking sensation, like she was trapped in a dropping elevator, as she stared around at the crowd—everyone was pressed in, like a rush-hour subway crowd that had suddenly decided to start dancing. “We’ve got to find the girl he was with—maybe she knows where they went. He was with this tweaked-out—There!”

  Mary pointed, picking out the girl—the tweaker girl in the hoochie dress, Mary had mentally dubbed her—who was sharing a joint with two other skanky-looking girls. Mary pushed Darin Evigan (the obvious source of the weed) to one side and got close to the unfamiliar tweaker girl.

  “Happy birthday!” Tweaker Girl sang out. Her voice was very high. Up close, Mary could see her nostril studs and the multiple piercings in her tiny ears.

  “The guy you came with.” Mary leaned in to scream to the girl, whose breath stank of scotch. “Mason, the ripped guy—do you know where he went?”

  Right then the music changed, mercifully, segueing into a White Stripes ballad that they didn’t have to scream over. “Like, don’t even mention that dirtball,” Tweaker Girl sniped contemptuously. Around them, couples were falling against each other for slow dances while others abandoned the dance area, fleeing for more drinks.

  “He told us he had a great party for us. And he was going to score some X, but he, like, totally ditched us for some Chinese bitch.”

  Mary ignored that. The wave of dread spreading over her was making her feel cold again. “Do you know where they went?”

  “What’s going on?” Patrick’s voice, right behind her—Mary reached for his hand and squeezed. Patrick was peering at Tweaker Girl like he’d never seen her before. “What’s the big deal? Who are you?”

  “She wants to know where Mason took that girl,” Tweaker Girl enunciated, as if Patrick was too stupid to follow the discussion. “He’s got, like, a crib?” Tweaker Girl went on. “A real house—a place outside of the city.”

  Outside the city? Mary’s despair kept growing.

  “I know where it is,” Patrick said, putting an arm around Mary’s shoulder protectively. “You drive north, like, for twenty minutes, and it’s easy to find. I was there one time.”

  Drive—? Mary didn’t like the sound of that at all. “Trick, we’ve got to go,” she yelled. “He’s got Joon and she just texted for help. You said you know where it is, right? You’ve got to get your car out of the garage and—What?”

  Patrick was shaking his head emphatically. “There’s no way I’m leaving,” he said firmly. “Are you fucking kidding? With all these people here? And I’m in no condition to drive. Neither are you.”

  “But—” Mary was wondering where her learner’s permit was; she was reasonably sure it was back at home. “But what do we—”

  “Amy can drive,” Ellen said firmly, holding out her hand, palm up, toward Patrick. “She’s sober—I just saw her. Hand over the keys.”

  Hurry up, Mary thought. Hurry up—we’ve got to move. We’ve got to save her.

  “I’ll give you directions,” Patrick told Mary, fishing in his pocket for a thick, heavy key chain. “You’d better get a pen.”

  5

  10:19 P.M.

  MARY FIXED HER EYES on the murky view of the Saw Mill River Parkway shining in the bright headlights of Patrick’s brand-new Mercedes-Benz SLK300—a “pre-graduation” present, Mary remembered. It was the first time she’d ridden
in this admittedly very sexy roadster, with its gray and chrome flanks and its German steel-panther design, but right now she wished that Trick’s parents had given him a safe car.

  They were zipping forward as fast as Amy could drive, but the Friday-night leaving-the-city traffic was still fairly heavy and they kept getting caught behind a series of nearly identical gray SUVs ferrying families to the Berkshires. A light rain was falling, spattering the windshield, and Mary’s seemingly permanent dull headache was magnified by the drone and thump of the miniature wipers and the low-pitched whine of the car’s powerful engine.

  “I can’t believe I agreed to this,” Amy repeated. “Why didn’t we call the police? Why didn’t we call the police, like, the minute that girl told—”

  “Because the room was full of drugs and booze,” Mary told her doggedly for the second or maybe the third time. Amy’s scatterbrained questions kept making Mary’s stark terror even more unbearable. “Let somebody else deal with all that. Meanwhile, we’re on our way there.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  We already had the argument—please can we not?

  “You can’t go any faster?” Mary complained. The scrap of paper in her hand was suffering from being folded and re-folded—she had tried to force her hands to stay still and stop fidgeting, but it was impossible. Her nerves were firing like a sputtering cable in a manhole, the kind that makes Con Ed show up with hard hats and sirens and cordon off the entire street as an electrical hazard.

  “I can’t,” Amy said regretfully. “Stop asking me that. You see the traffic.”

  “Sorry.”

  Mary could hear the fear in Amy’s voice, and she realized that she must have sounded the same way. They were both frightened; that was no excuse to bother Amy. She was driving, after all—Mary was just a passenger in a borrowed dress.

  “What’s that number again?” Amy was leaning forward, peering through the rain that splashed against the clean, brand-new windshield. The dealer’s stickers were still in the back window of the car; it was that new. “The turnoff? The exit?”

  “Forty-nine,” Mary repeated, staring at the directions again. “Almost there, I think.”

  Ahead of them, the darkened road seemed to narrow. The slow-as-molasses black Volvo SUV in front of them—the car that was causing all the trouble, since there were at least five cars stacked up behind them—flashed its turn signal and Mary rejoiced silently as another Manhattan family and their damn bicycle rack and Dartmouth bumper stickers exited. Now the road was clear, and Amy stamped on the gas—the engine roared like an amplified chain saw as they surged forward.

  “What do you think happened to her?” Amy repeated. She’d asked the question five times already. Amy didn’t deal well with stress. Mary had noticed this time and time again, watching her friend panic before math tests (she’d apparently never managed to corral Scott into helping her cram, the way Mary had). Amy’s hands would shake and her voice would tremble and she would freeze up. Not the person you’d necessarily pick when you wanted help responding to a friend’s distress call.

  But she’s got her license—and she’s sober, Mary told herself. And, anyway, we’re all friends.

  Best friends.

  “Exit forty-nine,” Mary called out, pointing through the blurred windshield. “Right there, Amy!”

  “I see it,” Amy said, fumbling with the gearshift—the transmission grated and the car shook as her foot slipped on the clutch. It’s not her car, Mary remembered in exasperation. She’s not familiar with it. I hope we don’t crash into a tree.

  “Now, pay attention, because it’s, like, right after the turnoff. We have to—”

  “You told me,” Amy snapped.

  Even as frightened as Mary was, that startled her. Had Amy ever snapped at her? She didn’t think so, not as long as they’d been friends. Amy had to be more frightened than Mary had ever seen before—and Mary had seen her so scared (like when they were caught shoplifting in eighth grade) that she’d been literally unable to move.

  They were almost there. The car slowed, its engine moaning and humming like a powerboat motor as Amy got them off the Parkway, following the scrawled instructions. Mary almost reminded Amy of the directions and then firmly clamped her mouth shut. Amy was nervous enough.

  There was no sign of life or activity anywhere. Twenty-five minutes north of the city, they might as well have been in the middle of an Appalachian forest. The road was as flat and glossy as a satin ribbon, and flanked by trees that flowed past the car like the black ink that a deep-sea squid sprays into the icy ocean water right before it comes after you and kills you. The sky was invisible; the rain had picked up. The Mercedes’ weak headlights were the only illumination for miles in every direction.

  HELP HELP COME HELP ME, the text had said. Mary had called it up again and again on her BlackBerry screen, its shaky yellow glow filling the car like a miner’s lantern each time, but there was absolutely nothing else she could learn from it.

  What’s happening? What the hell is happening?

  The car slowed and Amy waited at an intersection, looking both ways as patiently and carefully as they had been taught in Drivers Ed. There’s nobody around! Mary wanted to scream. Run the damn stop sign!

  “Left turn,” Mary reminded Amy.

  “I know.”

  “Sorry.”

  She was trying not to talk, but she couldn’t help it—the shock and noise of that gunshot was still echoing in her head, forcing her to speculate about what could be happening to Joon at whatever meth lab or underage brothel or whatever bad, bad place she’d been taken. Mary had never realized how quickly you could become absolutely terrified, how the feeling came over you like a big ocean wave with a riptide that knocked you off your feet, plunging you into the cold surf.

  “Okay,” Amy said, peering at the odometer, brushing her red hair back from her smooth forehead. “I think we’re there.”

  She slowed the car and turned into a muddy, rain-drenched driveway, the tires crunching on gravel and twigs as the engine whined. The windshield wipers whipped back and forth as the driveway tilted upward. They splashed through puddles that sprayed brown water like molten chocolate that gleamed in the headlights and then they coasted downhill and Mary looked out the window and stopped breathing.

  No, no, no—

  Before them lay an empty field—a broad clearing that was just barely visible beneath the wide, flat sky. The light from a nearby town glowed weakly in the distance, silhouetting the faraway trees.

  Standing on the near edge of the field, looming over them like a gravestone, was an enormous, sharp-edged black mass. Not a barn—a house. A deserted country house.

  The place she’d been seeing—that she’d been dreaming, hallucinating, whatever she had been doing—over and over all day: it was real. They were here, and it was real.

  It was like seeing a famous European building or monument for the first time, after spending years looking at postcards. The view out of the Mercedes windshield exactly matched the vision she’d been having. The only difference was the season and the weather—the snow was replaced by damp, trampled dead grass that shone in the headlights, and that awful bloodred evening sky was replaced by the luminous overcast glow beyond the rearview mirror.

  But it was the same place.

  It’s not possible, she thought weakly. Her pulse pounded in her ears. She felt a sharp pain in her palm and realized she was clenching her fist around the BlackBerry so tightly that her fingernails were cutting into her palm.

  “Um—okay,” Amy whispered, her hands still clamped around the steering wheel. She sounded terrified—and Mary, for her own reasons, couldn’t blame her. “Wh-what do we do now?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Yes you do, a maddening voice in her head insisted. You’ve got to go in there. You’ve got to get out of the car and go in there.

  But how could they do that? The house was like a black wedge in front of them; it seemed to absorb the head
lights’ glow without reflecting any of it. There didn’t seem to be anyone else around—there wasn’t the slightest sign of human activity.

  “You’re sure you got the directions right?” Amy whispered. “Because I don’t see anything.”

  “This is the place,” Mary said firmly.

  “Are you sure?”

  I’ve been seeing it all day, Mary thought. Of course I’m sure.

  But there was no way to say that to Amy without sounding like she’d lost her mind. Which, Mary realized, wasn’t too far outside the realm of possibility.

  “I’m sure. Cut the engine.”

  “No.” Amy hadn’t moved; her hands were trembling, white-knuckled. “No way.”

  “You can leave the headlights on,” Mary said gently. “Come on, Amy—we’ve got to.”

  Amy took a deep breath and shuddered as she let it out and then killed the engine. The silence made Mary aware that her ears were still ringing from the deafening music at the party. As her hearing adjusted, she realized that the nighttime country around them wasn’t completely silent—she could just make out the gentle patter of the scant raindrops on the untended lawn.

  And she could hear something else—something that made her want to curl into a ball on the floor of the car and put her thumb in her mouth and whimper like a baby. She could barely hear the faint murmur of running water. It sounded like a natural stream or brook, not that far away. Just like she’d been imagining all day long.

  “What the hell is this?” Amy was nearly hysterical. “There’s nobody here! Where’s that guy? Where’s Joon?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “But it doesn’t make any sense,” Amy went on, her voice climbing in pitch. “Where’s Joonie? What happened to her, Mary?”

  I want this to stop, Mary thought weakly. I want this day to end—I want to go home.