The Soulkeepers Box Set

by G. P. Ching

  “Wow, your basement is awesome,” Jacob said.

  But Malini turned to him at the base of the stairs, a panicky look on her face. “Now tell me what happened yesterday. What’s going on with you?”

  “I told you, I don’t know. It was some freak … weather coincidence.”

  Malini shook her head. “No. It wasn’t. You did it. You made it happen.”

  “No. I didn’t.”

  “Then what happened, Jake? What explanation could there possibly be?”

  “I can’t explain. Can we just forget about it? To be honest, it gives me the creeps.”

  “No. We can’t. You … hosed Dane and Phillip to the wall. It was like you made the water move. Has anything like this ever happened to you before?”

  “No.”

  “Do you have a family history of controlling the elements? Levitation maybe?”

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “Okay, maybe I went overboard with the levitation thing, but you can’t honestly believe it was nothing.”

  Jacob turned from her and walked deeper into the room, resting his backside against the foosball table. He crossed his arms over his chest and shook his head.

  “Listen, I’ve been in this town for two years,” Malini said. “It’s like I told you: people who have been here all their lives … it’s like…”

  “Like they have enough friends,” Jacob finished.

  “Then you show up, out of nowhere, out of the clear blue sky. And, I like you, Jake. I really like you. I just can’t help but think that fate brought us together for a reason, you know?”

  “I don’t really believe in fate, but I like you too. I’m glad we met.”

  “This, this miracle…”

  “Coincidence,” he interjected.

  “Maybe I’m supposed to help you figure out what it is, what it means.”

  “Maybe it was a fluke and doesn’t mean anything.”

  “So, you’re sure, it never happened before or since?”

  “I’m sure. No.”

  “And, you haven’t noticed any other unusual abilities: superhuman speed, the ability to read minds…” She was smiling, but only half joking. Malini was so open and believing, her eyes wide with utter confidence that something supernatural had happened to them yesterday.

  Jacob shook his head, a cynical grin on his lips.

  “What about any odd dreams?” Malini asked.

  His grin faded. He looked at the floor.

  “That’s it, isn’t it? Dreams?” Malini shook his arm excitedly.

  “Not exactly. Before I came here, before I met you, I was in a car accident. I’ve had some really vivid hallucinations but the doctors told me I might. I hit my head and they said I might see things or hear things. Some things that happen in them, they seem to happen for real. But I know it’s just my subconscious working things out. It’s just a coincidence that it happens the way I hallucinate it.”

  “Or it could be a symptom. Maybe something bigger is happening to you?”

  “If I agree, can we talk about something else?”

  “For now.” Malini looked disappointed.

  Jacob walked over to the air hockey table and switched it on. Malini fell in at the other side and served him the puck. It took all of fifteen seconds for her to sink her first goal.

  “I guess you’ve probably noticed that my dad really loves America,” Malini said, serving the puck again.

  “Yes, I’ve noticed.” He grinned. “But there’s nothing wrong with that, is there?”

  “No, I guess not. It’s just I wish we could remember where we came from now and then. Do you know this was the first Indian meal we’ve had in six months?”

  “You’re kidding. Why? The food was spectacular.”

  “I know, right? It started with simple excitement that we’d become U.S. citizens. It’s a real difficult process and we were all ecstatic when it was official. “

  “Congratulations.”

  “Thanks, but then Dad insisted that we act like real Americans. I think part of it was this town. He needed to be accepted here, for his business. He has, you know. He’s very successful. But the thing is, Jacob, we still have family in India. I mean, I haven’t lived there since I was six, so maybe I don’t know what I’m talking about, but … I mean, the food here, the clothes, everything is different and not necessarily better.”

  Understanding swept through Jacob and would change the way he saw Malini’s family forever. He knew too well what she meant. The irony was that both of them had been robbed of their culture: he by the absence of his parents and her by their presence. It wasn’t that where they were was so bad; it was that where they came from was important even when everyone else said it wasn’t.

  “I’m sorry, Malini, I bet India is beautiful.”

  “It’s not just India.” She sighed. “It’s everywhere—everywhere I’ve been. It’s part of who I am and I don’t want to forget it. I don’t want to lose it, you know?”

  “Yeah, I think I understand,” he said.

  Malini sunk another goal.

  “So much for the possibility of superhuman speed,” he said.

  Malini giggled.

  “Would you like to see a dance I learned in India? It’s been a few years, well, almost a decade I guess, but I think I remember.”

  “Sure.”

  Jacob sat back against the wall and Malini pulled a couple of chairs to the side to clear a makeshift stage. She placed a CD in a small player in the corner of the room and took her position in the center of the cleared patch of rug, her fingers delicately positioned near her shoulders.

  As he heard the first sounds of a stringed instrument, Malini’s wrists began to roll. Her arms became snakes, coiling around her sides. As the drumbeats joined the melody, her feet rose and stomped in a dance as beautiful and threatening as a looming thunderstorm. Her hands twisted intricate circles around her body, her back bending with the music, her hair sweeping against her shoulders.

  She was exotic—brown and lean. Most importantly, she was open, as different and lost here as he was, and for the first time since coming to Paris, he felt connected.

  Jacob stood. She was spinning but stopped when she noticed him rise. The thick black layers of her hair whipped against her neck and fell to her right shoulder. Her breath came in huffs as she looked at him. There was a question in her eyes that he couldn’t read, but he desperately wanted to be the answer. He wanted to be the thing that made this world better for her.

  Without thinking, he reached for her hand. Stopped. Reached again. He linked his finger into hers at an awkward angle, fearful his sweaty palms would gross her out if he held her hand properly. His heart thumped in his ears and his mouth went dry. She walked toward his chest and on instinct Jacob moved his other hand to the small of her back. Bending his neck in a series of light but erratic movements, his lips came within a fraction of an inch of hers. He waited. He wouldn’t make the decision. He wouldn’t cross the line without her.

  He didn’t have to wait long. Malini rose up on her tiptoes, grabbed the back of his head, and kissed him. Jacob was more than happy to return the favor. Everything seemed to melt away, the feel of her lips against his drowning out the world. He wanted to remember every moment, every feeling. It was his first kiss, but as she moved in closer and pressed her body into his, Jacob hoped it wouldn’t be their last.

  Chapter 14

  The Other Garden

  Jacob never expected his punishment to be so, well, punishing. After their first meeting resulted in tea and a nap, he was disappointed that Dr. Silva was no longer concerned if he looked tired. Nor did she ask him to talk. She simply expected him to work.

  The first two Saturdays, he worked in the greenhouse. He repotted saplings, watered row after row of plants, and moved pots around for no apparent reason but Dr. Silva’s whim. When he was done, his back ached and his fingers were permanently stained. The working conditions were humid and cramped.

  That w
as child’s play compared to this.

  The pile of compost in front of him was three feet high and smelled like mushrooms. Jacob watched bits of brown crud blow off the top and swirl in the air around him. Although the sun was shining, the wind cut through his gray hoodie and chilled him to the bone. Six o’clock on a Saturday morning and his workday had officially begun.

  “Add another two inches of this to each of the raised beds and rake it in,” Dr. Silva said, handing him a shovel.

  Jacob responded by hoisting the wheelbarrow and heading toward the half acre of sixteen-foot-long cedar rectangles. He wasn’t afraid of the work and the faster he started, the sooner he’d finish.

  “When you’re done, I have something else in the greenhouse for you to do,” she said, leaning casually against a garden bench. Gideon rested atop the back of the bench, flicking his fluffy red tail as Dr. Silva’s long nails compulsively raked the cat’s neck and shoulders.

  Jacob began shoveling. As cool as it was, it didn’t take him long to work up a sweat and by the time he headed back to the pile to refill the wheelbarrow, he was tempted to take off his sweatshirt. He paused when he noticed that Dr. Silva was still watching him.

  “Am I your entertainment, too?” he asked. Since their first meeting, when he’d had tea with her, she didn’t have the same effect on him as before. She was still as beautiful, but his skin didn’t tingle when he saw her and her eyes didn’t cut quite so deep. But it was awkward having someone watch him shovel. If she wasn’t going to help, the least she could do was not stare.

  “Well, looks like you’ve got everything under control here,” she said, an edge to her voice as if his comment had caught her off-guard. She dusted her hands off against the sides of her cargo pants. “I have some things to do in the orchard. I’ll check back with you later about the work in the greenhouse.”

  Jacob was relieved when she finally left. She wandered off into the maple trees, the big red cat following close behind.

  The first hour wasn’t bad. He glanced at his watch only twice and was making good progress. The second hour became increasingly tedious. His hands began to blister. He caught himself checking the time every ten minutes and stopping often to count the remaining beds in the field.

  Refilling the wheelbarrow proved more difficult than he anticipated. If he loaded it up as much as he could, it became so heavy that the handles cut into his hands. But if he filled it only halfway, he would tire himself out making multiple trips. He tried a combination of both approaches, leaving his whole body sore and covered in compost dust.

  At least he had something good to think about while he worked. Malini. Amazingly, she was his girlfriend now. He thought often of their first kiss and those that followed. The memory never got old.

  By the time he hoisted the last shovel into the last bed, the sun was high. He felt dirty, tired, and, more than anything, thirsty. He was supposed to be done in an hour. Jacob wasn’t sure if Dr. Silva would even want him to start the next project, but he decided to track her down to find out.

  As he approached the threshold of the orchard, he noticed the maples were covered in buds. They lined up on the east of the property like a skeleton army. Fog had settled among them, under the shade of the entangled branches, creating a border between light and shadow that he stepped over to follow Dr. Silva’s general direction. Mist slithered in wispy tendrils around his ankles, the ground beneath him squishing under each step. Layer upon layer of fallen leaves decomposed below his feet. A musty smell like dirt and maple syrup lingered in the air.

  Jacob tried not to think about how creepy the orchard was. The trunks of the trees were scarred with knots and hollows. Cobwebs stretched from limb to trunk. He ran into a few and wiped his face repeatedly to make sure it was free of spiders.

  “Dr. Silva?” he called. There was no discernable path, no footprints to follow, but the terrain sloped gradually downward. He wasn’t worried about getting lost. When he needed to find his way out, he could simply walk uphill.

  He was thinking about how thirsty he was when he almost walked into a hedge. It wasn’t so much a traditional hedge as it was a thick garden wall, at least ten feet high, which made it even more embarrassing he hadn’t seen it until his face had practically met greenery. How he couldn’t have noticed it was beyond him, but he felt a strange type of disorientation, like walking into a room and forgetting why he had entered it. Maybe he was dehydrated. Maybe exhausted.

  “Dr. Silva?” he called again and began walking along the wall.

  A break in the privet revealed a wrought-iron gate, similar to the one at the front of the house, as if the iron had grown out of the hedge itself. Ivy interlaced itself among the gate spindles, making it almost impossible to see anything behind it. Across the top, a vine of red roses grew, its thorns reminding him of barbed wire.

  The roses surprised him. In Hawaii plants bloomed all year round, but since he’d come to Paris he was painfully aware that the deciduous plants here died off in the winter and gradually came back in the spring. This plant was bright green and leafy, the crimson roses open and bright. The vine seemed to defy the brown stick branches of the maples. He wondered if Dr. Silva had used some kind of special fertilizer to make these plants come back sooner than the rest.

  “Dr. Silva, are you in there?” he yelled through the overgrown bars.

  Silence.

  He reached down and tested the handle but the gate was padlocked with an antique iron lock. This did not surprise Jacob. It was perfectly matched to the wrought-iron gate. What did surprise him was that someone had left the key in it.

  “Gaaah!” He jumped at the flash of red that moved beyond the gate. Through a gap in the ivy he’d seen Gideon; the red fur was unmistakable. Dr. Silva must be behind the gate after all. Gideon was always with her.

  Jacob was struck suddenly by an urge to go home to the Laudners. The gate was locked, key or no key, and going through without permission was risky. It didn’t seem like he was supposed to be here. Besides, it may have been the dehydration, but his heart was racing and his gut twisted. Something told him to turn back, to give up. If he left, he could just talk to Dr. Silva about it another day or make up the hour next week.

  But when he thought about the Laudners, he remembered his eye and lip, healed now but not forgotten. Uncle John had put himself on the line to shield him from Aunt Carolyn’s fury but it was horrible anyway. As much as he hated staying with the Laudners, he was sorry that his actions had proven Aunt Carolyn right in her eyes. She had feared that he would act out violently, that he was somehow deranged, and he had proven her right. Jacob didn’t want to spend any extra time with her right then.

  Swallowing hard, he reached for the lock and tried to ignore the slight trembling in his hands as he turned the key. There was resistance as the mechanism engaged. He turned harder, stepping closer to the device to take advantage of his center of gravity. The lock finally sprang and he removed it from its metal ring. The gate swung open and he stepped forward, over the threshold, releasing the ivy-covered metal behind him. With a head-splitting clank, the gate slammed shut.

  It was hot, rainforest hot. At least thirty degrees warmer than the other side of the gate. He stripped off his sweatshirt and rolled up his pants before reaching through the ivy and placing the lock back on the gate handle. Dr. Silva must have had a reason for doing this and he thought it was a good idea to leave things the way he found them.

  Following the overgrown trail, he was amazed at the variety of plants he encountered. John had mentioned Dr. Silva’s rare plant collection and Jacob was beginning to appreciate its significance. There were rubber trees, bamboo, palms, and others he couldn’t name. The plants were huge and thriving in an environment he could hardly believe existed in Illinois.

  When he turned the corner, a sickly sweet smell met him head on, causing him to gag and bury his nose in his elbow. He wished he hadn’t left his sweatshirt by the gate and could tie it around his face. The stench made his
knees quiver. He recognized it for what it was. The smell of death.

  In the back of his mind he hoped Dr. Silva didn’t have anything to do with the smell. Was she capable of killing? He wasn’t sure. Jacob had to admit finding a dead body out here wouldn’t have surprised him.

  A row of gigantic flowers, six feet tall, lined the bend in the trail. They were purplish black and covered in beetles. He followed the pebble pathway toward them, searching the ground for the source of the odor. The smell became more intense, almost unbearable. He forced himself to continue down the path and the smell gradually faded.

  The corner of the gate’s iron frame was barely visible now. The ivy seemed to be growing around it as he watched, covering what was left of the gate in thick green leaves. Once he turned the next corner, he would lose sight of it completely.

  Jacob thought again about turning back. There was an odd feeling in his stomach, like he was at the top of a roller coaster, when you can’t see anything but air and you know at any moment the cart is going to fall out from underneath you.

  “Jaaacooob,” a female voice sang from behind the trees. He whipped his head toward the giggle that followed and saw only a flash of flesh color between the green branches, followed by a rush of red fur.

  “Dr. Silva?” he called, but the voice didn’t sound like hers. It was higher, younger.

  “Go back, Jacob,” a deep male voice reverberated around him.

  “Who is that? Who are you?” he said, turning in place.

  Up ahead, farther down the trail, he saw the flash of flesh again, a hip, maybe an arm. Jacob couldn’t tell what part of the body it was through the dense foliage but he knew it was a woman, a naked woman.

  The female voice called to him again from the trees. “Don’t listen to him, Jacob. Come this way. Don’t you want to know?”

  “Know what?” he called back. “Who are you? How do you know my name?”

  There was no answer. A streak of red followed where the flesh color had been.