7 Souls

by Barnabas Miller; Jordan Orlando

  She finally saw it out of the corner of her eye. A silvery circle of moonlight reflecting off a dusty mirror by the small kitchen.

  The sliver of light was coming from a room up the rickety wooden stairs. Ellen didn’t want to go upstairs.

  But there was another ear-splitting boom, and then another. Ellen cupped her hands over her ears and screamed a high-pitched squeal, the kind she hadn’t made since she was a baby. She knew she would die if she stayed down here. She knew she would burn up.

  There was no other choice. If she could get to a window upstairs, then she would be saved. She followed the tiny shaft of moonlight and climbed the tall, narrow stairs with her hands and feet, like she was climbing a ladder on the jungle gym. She scraped her index finger on the scuffed wooden stairs and ripped off a splinter that stung like a shot at the doctor’s office, but that didn’t matter.

  Once she was at the top of the stairs, she realized that the light was coming from a small, cluttered room. The window there was a circle instead of a square.

  She walked to the room’s warped door, which opened out into the hallway, and grabbed the brass doorknob with both hands—tugging on it with all her strength until the door finally clicked shut. She flipped the lock and then hurried to the circle window. It was too high for her to see out of. She almost started to cry, but she knew there wasn’t time. Mommy and Mary would be gone, and then she would be left alone.

  I could make stacks from the books.

  The window wasn’t that far up—just a little too far over her head. If she could stack the books that were on a shelf in the room, then she could climb to it.

  Heaving for breath, she pushed the dusty books together and made a stack shaped just like her Paddington Bear stepladder at home, even though her finger with the splinter hurt so bad. She climbed gingerly, step by careful step by careful step … and then she could see them! Through the bottom left portion of the window, with her fingers clinging tightly to the frame and her neck stretched high, she could see Mommy and Mary running through the trees, leaving deep tracks in the white snow as they ran.

  “Mommy!” Ellen screamed. “Mary!” She rapped her fist against the window as hard as she could, but they were too far away to hear her. She checked the window for a handle, but there was nothing to pull on. There was nowhere to open it.

  “Mary!” she squealed again, pounding both her hands on the window again and again. But she could only watch helplessly as Mommy took Mary’s hand and pulled her through the snow, farther into the trees—farther away from Ellen and the old wooden house.

  And then Mommy stumbled. Ellen’s eyes widened with terror as she watched Mommy tumble forward into the snow.

  Ellen was right about those horrible explosions. God really was punching cracks in the world, and Mommy had fallen into one. She was flailing her hands at the edges of the crack, trying to claw her way back out. But Mary hadn’t fallen in: she was standing right at the edge, near Mommy. She could help pull her out….

  Only Mary wasn’t moving. She was just standing there, stock-still, like a frozen little doll in the snow. Ellen tried to pull herself higher to see better—to understand what was wrong with Mary. She smacked her palm against the window till the skin was pink and burning.

  Pull her out, Mary! Give her your hand! You can pull Mommy out of the crack!

  Mommy was reaching up for Mary’s hand—reaching and reaching—and Ellen kept slapping her raw palm on the window because it was all she could do. But Mary didn’t reach down for Mommy. She took a step back. She stepped back from the edge, and she watched Mommy struggle and scream. She watched for a few more seconds and then she turned around and began to walk away.

  “Mary, what are you doing?” Ellen howled. “Where are you going?”

  “Ellen?” A man’s shaky voice came from the hall just outside the door. “Ellen, is that you?” The brass knob on the warped door rattled violently. He was trying to come in. “Ellen, it’s Uncle Larry—you’ve got to come with me now. Right now, okay? Unlock the door.”

  “Mommy’s dying!” Ellen cried out, looking back through the window. “She’s dying in the snow and Mary’s going away. Why is she going away?”

  “Ellen, please, sweetheart, just open the door. We don’t have any time.”

  Ellen heard a pair of heavy footsteps bound up the rickety stairs, and then there was another man’s voice in the hall. A very angry man.

  “Don’t talk to my daughter,” the deep, angry voice said. Even though it sounded so horribly mean, Ellen thought she recognized it.

  Daddy?

  “Mort, something’s wrong with you, okay?” Larry said, breathing heavily. “Something’s wrong. I know you, all right? We made a mistake, but … you’re not a violent man. This isn’t you. Just put down the gun, all right? Let me get your daughter out of here, and then we can talk. We’ll talk—just you and me.” The doorknob rattled again—so loud and so hard that it looked like it would burst off. “Ellen, sweetheart, open the door now. Open it.”

  “She’s not your sweetheart!” Daddy growled. “Don’t talk to my family!”

  “Daddy?” Ellen called out. “Daddy, Mommy’s dying in the snow and you need to save her.”

  “Mort,” Larry pleaded. “Please don’t. Please. Just let me get Ellen out.”

  On that last word, Larry broke the knob clean off the door. He pulled the door open partway, when Ellen heard two more deafening cracks. She covered her ears and backed up against the window.

  Larry was standing strangely still in the partially open doorway. There were two little, smoking black spots on his chest, and red blood trickling down his arm. Something was wrong with his eyes. They looked dazed and his arms and his legs went limp. He lurched forward, collapsing at the door.

  Suddenly, there was the oddest silence. Ellen was so scared that she couldn’t get her body to stop shivering. She felt like she was going to pee.

  Larry’s body was lying in a heap, in front of the partially open door. Ellen could see only a sliver of the dark hall outside, and she couldn’t see her daddy at all.

  “Daddy …? Daddy, are you out there …?”

  There was no answer, and she began to shiver worse than before.

  “Daddy …?”

  She craned her neck to try and see around the door, but loud sounds scared her back against the wall. First the sound of metal clattering to the floor, and then something much heavier. Something big. It hit the ground so hard that she felt the vibration in the wood under her feet.

  “Ellen …” She heard her name in a choked whisper. “El,” the voice said again. “Come to the door.”

  It sounded like her daddy. Stepping off the stack of books, Ellen crept to the door and peered through the crack, over Larry’s motionless body.

  She saw her daddy sitting on his knees. His square, stubbly face was drenched with sweat and as white as the sky. His jet-black hair was stuck to his forehead like a wet mop. He was still wearing his suit from the party, but it was rumpled and dirty, and he was tugging desperately at his shirt collar with both hands.

  “El,” he croaked. “Something’s wrong. Something’s wrong with me….”

  He was making horrible hiccuping noises in his throat like he was choking—like something wouldn’t let him breathe. A flush of blue and purple was showing under his pale white skin, as his eyes grew wider.

  “Daddy, what’s happening? I don’t understand what’s happening.” Ellen was so scared she couldn’t move.

  “El, don’t hate me,” he said. “Don’t hate …”

  And then he stopped. Everything in Daddy just stopped. His head fell to his chest, and then the rest of him fell forward. The side of his face slammed flat against the floor. His bulging eyes were wide open, but he wasn’t moving.

  “Daddy?”

  He wouldn’t answer her.

  “Daddy, what’s wrong? Daddy?”

  She darted back to the window and climbed her stack of books, peering out into the distant tr
ees, where her mother was still trying to dig her way out.

  All Ellen could do was stand there and watch Mommy suffer. She could only watch and slap at the window with her numb, burning hands.

  Where are you, Mary? Where are you? Why did you walk away into the snow? You can still come back and save Mommy. You can save all of us.

  * * *

  IF THE SPELL FAILS, the Spell-Caster expires.

  It’s me or Ellen, Mary thought. So what do I do?

  But she knew. She’d known for a while; she’d observed over and over that she couldn’t change what had happened—thinking about it had been too confusing, and her faith that she could save herself was too strong to let her face it. But she’d always known.

  With her final, desperately weak store of willpower, fighting the agony of not being able to breathe, she began crawling toward the suite’s bedroom, mustering a hidden reserve of adrenaline that got her to her feet and let her stagger forward through her darkening tunnel vision. She was barely staying upright as she stumbled toward Mary Shayne. Mary had dropped the gun, and in her final moment of consciousness before Ellen’s body collapsed from suffocation, Mary swung her arm down and swept the gun from the carpet, pulling the slide back as she collapsed forward onto her own back, pushed her own body down onto the bed, pressed the gun to the back of her skull and pulled the trigger.

  III

  THE AKH

  HE HAD DREAMED OF pain, and golden eyes; rooftops chilled by wind. He almost woke more than once, first in the ambulance, rocking in the traffic, cold metal against his wounded chest, shrill sirens piercing his ears as they roared forward through the night. Then he faded and woke again with a flashlight in his eyes; he had to say his name and he did that, barely, his throat scratching and burning; he smelled pungent antiseptic and breathed cold, dry air. Then he slept without dreams, outside of time, as if the ancient world and the present day were one and the same, merged together as they always had been in his deepest imagination. Awakening for a fleeting moment in cold darkness, hearing the dull, repeated beeping tones of the machines and the ghostly, distant footsteps of a night nurse, he had been afraid, and he must have called out, because somebody came and checked on him, a black silhouette against the emerald green light of the machines, and then he had fallen back asleep again.

  Now sunlight flooded through his eyelashes; a warm red glow that made him feel safe. The sheets itched his legs, and he felt a painful tug and a cold numbness across his chest. He tried to open his eyes as slowly as he could, but the brilliant sunlight pierced his eyes and made them stream with tears.

  Someone held his right hand and squeezed it. He turned his head, weakly, and the dark blur sharpened until he saw a girl’s lovely face, framed by short dark hair and obscured by eyeglasses.

  “Hey,” Ellen said. She squeezed his hand again, and smiled. She was wearing her burnt-orange Gap hoodie—the same as the last time he’d seen her.

  “Hey,” he whispered. “Hey.”

  “How do you feel?” A tear ran down Ellen’s nose and she sniffed and awkwardly brushed it away and then brought her hand back to his. “Do you—do you feel all right?”

  “Hurts,” Dylan whispered. “Not so bad.”

  His eyes were clearing—he could see the Styrofoam-paneled ceiling and the ancient television that hung above his bed from a black steel post and the wide window that filled the room with sunlight. Between the comblike slats of the blinds, the sky was a rich, bright blue.

  “You can breathe,” Dylan told Ellen. His voice was coming back.

  He heard the unmistakable sound of a man clearing his throat and realized that he and Ellen weren’t alone. Someone else was there, on the left side of the room, silhouetted against the window; as his eyes adjusted, Dylan saw a small, well-built man with dark, mottled skin and close-cropped black hair flecked with gray. Under a dark suit jacket and a beige overcoat he wore a white checked oxford shirt that looked like it had been made from graph paper. His bright blue eyes stared right back at Dylan’s.

  “Dylan, are you all right?” the man asked flatly as he approached the bed. “Do you feel like talking?”

  “Who—” Dylan coughed, which hurt his chest, and Ellen squeezed his hand again.

  “Dylan, I’m Detective Mateo,” the man went on in the same even, quiet voice. “I’m from the fifteenth precinct’s detective squad; I’d like to ask you a few questions.”

  “Questions—”

  “It won’t take long.” Mateo pulled a notebook from his back pocket; he was clicking the button on a ballpoint pen with his other hand. “I promise; I’ll be out of here before you know it.”

  “I’ve already talked to him,” Ellen said. She still had Dylan’s hand in hers, and he didn’t mind one bit. “I’ve told him everything I know.”

  “Who shot you, Dylan?” Mateo raised his eyebrows.

  “I don’t—I don’t know.”

  Truer words were never spoken. He had absolutely no idea. As his head cleared, he remembered bits and pieces of what had happened; he remembered waking up driving a car, and the frantic nightmare hour he’d spent with Mary Shayne, racing to his own apartment and then ending up at hers, and finding the book of spells in the Shaynes’ foul-smelling study—it was coming back to him in more detail—and then going to answer the door …

  And then, nothing.

  “I’m sorry,” he told the man with the tanned, pockmarked face and the bright blue eyes. “I’m sorry, I can’t—I can’t remember.”

  “That’s actually fairly common,” Mateo said, sucking in his cheeks as he wrote in his notebook. The ballpoint’s scratching was very loud in the quiet, air-conditioned room. “Trauma can cloud a victim’s memory, particularly with a violent trauma like gunshot. It generally passes. Here’s another question: before you lost consciousness, did you see who shot Mary Shayne?”

  Shot Mary—This didn’t make any sense to Dylan, at first. As he thought about it, he realized he had no idea how to answer. This is a homicide detective, he told himself. Speak very carefully—he won’t miss much.

  “At the Peninsula Hotel,” Detective Mateo went on. “You passed out from”—Mateo flipped back a page in his notebook—“blood loss and shock, at approximately three this morning, which is very close to where the coroner puts the time of death for Ms. Shayne. So I’m wondering if you have any memory of her getting shot, Dylan.”

  “No,” Dylan said, a bit too quickly. He was afraid to glance at Ellen, because of course he remembered completely; he remembered Ellen gasping for breath and staggering across the ruined carpet and through the bedroom door, hefting the gun and firing it at Mary’s head. He thought he’d never forget it.

  It wasn’t really Ellen, though. It was Mary. It was Mary, after she died—revisiting the Ka of the seven people who killed her.

  “There’s a lot of amnesia in this case,” Mateo said, frowning at his notebook and flipping pages. Outside the window, a car horn honked—it sounded fairly distant, and Dylan realized he had to be on a fairly high floor. “I’ve interviewed all five eyewitnesses,” Mateo continued, “and I can’t get a thing out of them—they literally have no memory of most of the day, if you can believe it.”

  That’s the spell, Dylan thought. They can’t remember.

  “But you know what’s funny?” Mateo didn’t sound amused at all; he sounded resigned. “I actually can believe it. I mean there must have been at least three bottles of vodka for each of them. It was party time, that’s for sure.” He shook his head. “No wonder nobody knows what happened. They’re not even sure how they ended up at the hotel.”

  “Everyone’s out there,” Ellen told Dylan, tipping her head toward the room’s wood-paneled door. “Joon and Trick and Amy and Scott. They’ve been up all night—since Mary died. The cops have talked to all of them.”

  “Not that it’s done any good,” Mateo said, sighing heavily as he reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a small photograph. “Do you know who this is?”

>   Dylan peered at the photograph. It was a blurry, black-and-white mug shot of somebody he recognized, but just barely. “He was at the party,” Dylan said, remembering a young, chiseled guy dancing with his shirt off. “But I didn’t talk to him. Who is he?”

  “He’s Mason Pike, twenty-one years of age, resident of the Bronx, and he’s DOA as of five-twenty-five this morning, Dylan. The reason I’m wondering if you know him—and I’ve asked all your friends the same question—is that the gun that killed Mary Shayne is registered to him. Exact ballistic match to her, and to you. And not only that”—Detective Mateo flipped another page in his notebook—“the gun’s covered in Mason’s fingerprints, and Mary Shayne’s fingerprints, and a few others we’re still working on—two distinct sets of latents.”

  “And he’s dead?” Dylan repeated. The bright blue sky outside the window behind Detective Mateo was nearly blinding him; he was having trouble thinking his way through what he was hearing. “I don’t understand. How—”

  “Shot point-blank by one Armando Delgato at approximately four A.M.; we’ve got Delgato in custody. Apparently it was a long time coming: several witnesses from the party confirm that Delgato and Pike had an altercation there earlier in the evening, and according to the hotel staff, a gun was fired.” Mateo shrugged. “These white boys trying to be gangsta, thinking they’re Bloods and Crips … anyway they had some kind of beef and he showed up dead this A.M. The part I don’t get”—the detective returned his level gaze to Dylan—“is why bullets from his gun ended up in your chest and Mary Shayne’s head. You’re absolutely sure you don’t remember getting shot? It’s not coming back to you?”

  “No,” Dylan said truthfully.