Christian was quiet for a moment. “Look, I don’t want to pry or anything. But Cora… What happened to her?”
Ben thought about his little sister. Cora’s brown eyes had always been so innocent. She had been more level headed and rational than he or Sam. The other Souls used to take bets on which of the three of them would change first. Of course, each one of them thought it would be the other. Except for Cora. She never hedged a bet. She never encouraged it. “I don’t really know,” Ben finally responded to Christian. “Cora was, well, she was always the kind one, the most motherly. We all looked out for each other, but it was Cora that soothed things out when it got heated. Maybe she knew. Maybe she felt the change coming. About a year ago, she started taking these walks. At first they were no big deal. We thought she just wanted some space. Some time to be alone. She certainly deserved it. But then she started to go for a full day and then two. Until it was not uncommon for her to be gone days at a stretch. Sam and I were concerned. We felt she was pulling away. One day when she hadn’t returned for over a week, we went looking for her.” Ben looked out the window, staring but seeing nothing. “Sam found her. She had Changed.”
“I’m sorry,” Christian said softly.
Ben lifted his gaze as if just remembering Christian was standing there. “I never saw Cora again. I went looking, but didn’t find her.”
“What about Eugene? Maybe he can find her.”
Ben nodded. “I asked him and he’s keeping his eyes open and his machines and gizmos humming, but so far nothing.”
“Don’t you have to become angry before you change?”
Ben looked down and pushed his toe into the carpet. “It’s hard to tell when a Soul is going to change. Cora showed no signs, except for the fact she was taking these long walks. Sam was convinced Cora knew she was changing and didn’t want to harm us. She thinks that’s why she left.”
“What do you think?”
“I think Cora was embarrassed. I think she couldn’t fight it off and she was embarrassed that she couldn’t.”
“How long will it be before she can make the Jump?”
“Centuries. It takes a long time to gather the kind of energy they need to make the Jump. I plan to find her long before she reaches that point. I won’t let her harm a human.” Ben looked down at the floor again. “She made me promise.”
~ ~ ~
Sam sat on the arm of the couch, watching Ryan’s mother unload the groceries. Eugene had shown her where their temporary headquarters was located, and then they had both fazed, she to Ryan’s house, he to the high school and the sister.
“Hi, Mom!” A young voice echoed from near the front door. A young, blonde haired girl of about fourteen came around the corner, moving into the kitchen.
Eugene followed her. He walked over to Sam.
“Nothing?” Sam asked.
“Nothing,” Eugene echoed.
The girl flicked on the television and threw herself onto the couch, her thumb flying over her cell phone as she texted.
Sam leaned back against the couch. “It’s going to be one of those long waits. I can feel it.”
Eugene shrugged and pulled out one of his contraptions. He ran gentle fingers across the top of the black machine.
“You really like those machines,” Sam said, more statement than question.
“Of course. How do you think I’ve gotten by all this time, alone?” Eugene leaned toward her as if telling her a secret. “Because I’m not alone. I have my machines.”
Sam grinned patiently and nodded. Strange, she thought. Eugene is very, very strange. She sighed and glanced at the pictures on the wall. A perfect family. A Mom, Dad, daughter and son. She knew that not every family was perfect. And she wondered what secrets this one was hiding.
The girl turned the channel of the television. Again. And again. Then her phone beeped and she looked at the tiny screen in her hand.
“What’s her name?” Sam wondered. She knew better than to get involved with the family, but she wanted to know. She always wanted to know. It helped to pass the time.
“What?” Eugene looked up from his machine. He glanced at the girl. “Oh. Claire.”
Sam stared at the girl as she began to twirl a strand of blonde hair around her finger as she contemplated the text she had received. Sam wondered if Claire had been close with her brother, as close as she was with Ben. She wondered if the child was hurting.
She remembered how her own mother had sobbed during the day when their father was out plowing the fields. She remembered the pain her mother had gone through when she, Ben and Cora had died. All of her children. Damien had been there, to comfort her even though he was hurting himself. Sam would be forever grateful to him.
“Honey,” the Mom called. “We’re going to order pizza.”
“Again?” Claire asked. “We just had pizza yesterday.”
“Do you want just cheese?”
Claire shook her head and didn’t respond.
Sam stood and walked over to the table, taking a seat beside Eugene. “I’ve been meaning to ask if you would do me a favor.”
“Anything,” Eugene said, turning the machine over in his hands carefully, inspecting it.
Sam hesitated. She didn’t know how Eugene would feel about this. “I need you to find someone for me.”
“I heard about Cora and I’m looking for her, but so far nothing.” Eugene twisted one of the wires in the machine.
“Thank you for that. I appreciate it. But it’s not Cora.”
Eugene lifted his gaze to her, but then quickly lowered it back to his machine.
Sam fidgeted just a little, adjusting herself in the seat. She turned to look at the mother again. The woman had hung the phone up after ordering the pizza and was loading the dishwasher. “When I was back working with Daniel, I saw my husband.”
Eugene’s hands froze over the machine.
“I know you know who he is. I know you keep files on all of us.”
Carefully, slowly, he began to turn the black box in his hands.
“He was a Changed, Eugene. I want to find him.”
Eugene frowned. He delicately placed the machine onto the table. “There’s nothing you can do for him now.”
“It’s true, then? He was real. I wasn’t imagining him.”
“Yes. He’s real. But he’s a Changed now.”
“You know about him.” It was a statement. She hadn’t really believed Eugene would know about him. She knew he kept files on the Souls, but not the Changed. “You knew about him when he was a Soul?” She desperately tried to keep the tone of her voice neutral.
Eugene opened his mouth to answer, then scowled and closed it, concentrating on turning the black machine over and over in his hands.
She sat very still. “How long? How long was he a Soul?”
Eugene shook his head. “This can only hurt you. I don’t think –”
Sam slapped her hands on the table. “How long?”
The mother glanced at the table, then shifted her glance to Claire who stared at the television. The mother shrugged and continued loading the dishwasher.
Eugene sat back in the chair. “Two hundred years,” he whispered.
Pain, physical pain pierced her heart. For two hundred years Damien had been alone. Two hundred years they could have spent together. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t find him until the very end. He was almost a Changed. And I wasn’t sure it was him until after he Changed.”
Sam looked away, thoughtfully. The agony he must have felt… Two hundred years! Misery welled up inside her. The time lost. The time they could have been together! If she had known, if she had been with him, he might not have Changed. “Why didn’t you tell me?” she wondered and her voice cracked.
“Sam…” He reached for her.
She pulled away.
Eugene’s shoulders slumped and he withdrew his hand. “To what end? It only would have hurt you.”
“That was my
decision to make.”
“I was trying to help you. To protect you.”
“I don’t need protecting,” Sam growled. She shot to her feet. “Do you know where he is now?”
Eugene glanced down at his machine. He began stroking it.
Sam ripped the machine from Eugene’s hand. He jerked after it. “I asked if you know where he is now.”
“No,” Eugene said softly. “Be careful, Sam. That’s a delicate machine.”
“Where is he?”
“I lost track of him about a month ago! Please --” He held his hand out to her, palm up.
“I’m disappointed, Eugene. I really am.”
“Please…”
Sam shoved the machine at him and he grabbed it, cradling it against his chest. Sam stood for a moment, teeth clenched, watching him hold the damned box protectively.
He looked down at the box, whispering, “I’m sorry. I am. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
He had purposely kept it from her. She fazed, the world around her shifting and turning fuzzy, before disappearing altogether. She had to get away. From Eugene, from all of it, from everyone.
~ ~ ~
Sam concentrated on what Ryan’s room looked like and the room came into focus around her. There was his bed, a basketball jersey laid out on the mattress, a basketball beside it. A six-drawer dresser was against the wall, below the window. Thick blue curtains were drawn aside to let the sun shine in.
Sam began to pace. Two hundred years? Two hundred! She sat on the bed, cradling her head in her hands. Damien. She had loved him so. She remembered the feelings, the warmth, and the desire. The laughter they shared. She couldn’t remember the last time she had laughed a true laugh. She remembered the way he made her feel… so loved and cherished. But she couldn’t recall his image. Now the only image she could remember was the ghostly one of him as a Changed when he had appeared before her in the street.
It wasn’t fair! If she had been there she could have prevented his Changing! She could have stopped it. Two hundred lost years. She missed him. Even now, after so many years, she missed his presence. She rarely let herself think about him. And now that she was, a torrent of sadness overwhelmed her.
She felt a strange tingling on her face, over her cheeks and she touched them with her fingers. When she pulled her hands back, blue sparkles shimmered on the tips of her fingers. She stared at them, confused. They shimmered and sparkled on her fingertips like tiny blue diamonds. She rubbed her fingers together and the diamonds disappeared between them.
“Sam?”
She turned to find Ben standing in the doorway, Christian just behind him. She quickly looked away, wiping at her cheeks, at her face and stood, bowing her head so they wouldn’t see. “What are you doing here? Where’s the Dad?”
“Are you okay?” Ben asked softly.
“Yeah,” she said, but her voice was shaky and thick. And she couldn’t look up at Ben because he would know she was not okay.
“Christian, give us a moment,” Ben asked.
He knew. Damn him, he knew her too well.
“It wasn’t your fault,” Ben whispered. “You saw… we saw Damien die. We couldn’t know he’d become a Soul.”
Oh, God. Kill me now, she thought. She couldn’t do this right now. She sighed, trying desperately to keep her emotions under control. “Eugene told you. I’m okay. Really.”
“No, Sam. You’re not okay.”
She sat on the side of the bed trying to get hold of herself, to push the feelings aside. The memories were too painful. She had buried them for so many years. “We have to concentrate on Scala now.”
Ben nodded and sat beside her. “That’s why you have to be all right. You can’t think of him now. It makes you vulnerable. And we can’t afford to make mistakes.”
“I know.” She stood up and looked at the pictures on the kid’s dresser. It was a team basketball picture, two men standing on either side of the team like bookmarks. Coaches. She felt Ben’s gaze on her, contemplating. She turned to him. “There’s just one thing…” She looked Ben in the eye. “Please tell me you didn’t know.”
A displeased frown etched his brow. “I didn’t know. There’s no way. You know I would have told you.”
She nodded and turned back to the kid’s desk. It was remarkably clean of miscellaneous objects, of any kind of item that would give her a clue about the boy. A computer screen sat in the center, on and humming softly as if waiting for the boy to return. She knew Ben would have told her. Or did she? Would he try to protect her as Eugene had?
“You believe me, right?” Ben asked.
Sam nodded again, refusing to believe the doubt festering in her mind. He would have told her. She pulled open a drawer. It was filled with scattered sheets of papers and notes.
“You can’t think of him as your husband anymore. He’s a Changed.”
She winced at the proclamation. Even though she knew Damien was a Changed, he was still her husband. And she couldn’t escape the guilt that weighed her down. If she had been there, if she had only known… she could have prevented Damien from Changing. One thing was certain, she would never be able to hurt Damien. And that fact was the most dangerous of all.
“If and when we find him, we’re going to have to fight him. Just like the others. And, if he’s as old as Eugene says, he’ll be close to making the Jump.”
Sam clenched her teeth. It was Damien. She could never see him as wanting to hurt someone, as being evil. “So where the hell is Scala?” She pulled one of the letters out and read it. A love letter from a girl named Rachel. Rachel?
Ben’s lack of an answer let her know he knew she was changing the subject and wasn’t pleased about it.
“Look at this.” Sam held the letter out to him, hoping he would concentrate on the job. “Looks like Ryan had a girlfriend.”
Ben stood and took the letter, scanning it. “It sounds like a crush.”
Sam sighed inwardly, thankful he stopped speaking about Damien. “Maybe.”
“Those don’t usually pan out as potential lifelines.”
“Unless they’re really in love,” Sam said, picking up another letter and scanning it. She shrugged. “Just the usual ‘there’s no one else’, ‘you’re the love of my life’, ‘I want to spend my life with you’ mush.”
Together, they said, “We should check it out.”
~ ~ ~
Ben leaned against the wall at the local Wallie’s Hot Dogs. He watched as the next shift came in, all the employees dressed in a red apron and red baseball hat with ‘Wallie’s’ embroidered in gold across the cap. All were teens. They clocked in, shoving their timecards into the machine. Eugene had shown him a picture of Rachel and told him she was scheduled for this shift. Ben watched the hour hand move slowly past the top of the hour. She was late.
The door opened and a young man rushed in, mumbling his apologies as he punched his card. Someone complained about him always being late.
It was ten minutes after the hour when a girl at the front counter asked another employee, “Where’s Rachel?”
The employee shrugged, adjusting his hat. “She hasn’t called in. Maybe just running late.”
Ben narrowed his eyes slightly. Maybe. Something seemed off to him. Another ten minutes passed. He needed to find this Rachel.
He fazed to Eugene’s temporary headquarters, where he found Eugene bent over, inspecting a screen. Eugene jumped when he materialized and instantly hit a switch on the monitor. The screen went blank. Ben didn’t ask what Eugene was hiding on his monitor. Right now, he didn’t want to know. “I need to get to Rachel’s home,” he told Eugene.
Eugene nodded, his head. He leaned back, running his hand through his brown hair, which only made some of it stand up straight. “Is there a problem?” he asked, sliding a filing cabinet drawer open.
“I don’t know.”
Eugene pulled out a file, opened it and nodded. Slapping it closed, he stood and said, “Express trip into the burbs.” He
laid a hand on Ben’s shoulder and they fazed, materializing inside of a house.
It was dark, and quiet. The shifting dim and then bright light of a television illuminated the hallway before them.
Ben moved down the hall until it opened into a small kitchen with a television on the counter. No one was in the kitchen.
Ben fazed to the hallway. He shook his head at Eugene and together they looked up the stairway. Prickles raced along the nape of his neck. An electric charge? Ben wasn’t sure, but he felt something in the air. He fazed to the top of the stairs and looked down the hallway. One door was closed at the end of the hallway. Two doors were open across the hall from each other. Slowly, he began down the corridor.
He was ready for anything and nothing all at once. He looked into the first room. A bathroom bathed in blue peeling wallpaper. He turned his head to look into the room across from it.
The sign on the door should have given it away. Pink letters proclaimed ‘Rachel.’
Ben stepped into the room, his gaze taking in the unmade bed, the scattered clothing on the floor, the pile of books on the table beside the bed. A light was on beside the books. Typical teenage room.
The room was not super charged, nor were the outlets burned out. The lights were not broken. All of these would have been the signs of a Jump having been made. A Jump had clearly not happened in this room.
So where was Rachel?
~ ~ ~
Sam leaned against the wall in Claire’s room, watching the girl. She had just finished doing homework, closed the book and hopped into bed.
In many respects, her spunk reminded Sam of Cora. She liked the girl, as much as she didn’t want to admit it. Claire was making a brave effort to continue with her life as normally as possible.
Claire pulled her covers up. She grabbed her cell phone from the bedside table and typed something onto the tiny keyboard.
Sam shook her head. Modern technology.
A crooked smile formed on Claire’s lips before she put her cell phone back on the table.
Bedtime, Sam thought.
Lost Souls: Imperfection – Episode 2 Page 4
