First Soul

by Keeley Smith

“Stephen, you need to drink.”

  He felt the icy water caress his lips. Opening his mouth, he gulped like he hadn’t had a drink for a year.

  Squinting as the light from the fire hit his eyes, he found his view was crowded with Deyna’s concerned face.

  “You had us scared then,” she sighed, her lower lip trembled.

  Yeah, he’d been scared too, before the darkness had taken him. He knew how close he’d been to standing next to Lester, all shimmery and stuff.

  He lifted his hand and tucked some of the escaped strands of her hair behind her ear, he was aware of the twinge in his shoulder and chest but it wasn’t as bad as it had been. Glancing to his left, he could see Phillip nodding in and out of sleep with a dreamy smile plastered on his face. He nodded at Phillip feeling a lump lodge in his throat; Phillip had allowed Lester to save his life. Before he could say something, he could hear Phillip’s soft snores. He looked at Lester who sat to the side of him, his face showing obvious relief that he was okay.

  “You can’t get rid of me that quickly,” he croaked at Deyna who remained at his side.

  Deyna grinned and lifted her hands to his mouth, the water dripping from her hands onto his shirt making his still warm skin sigh happily.

  After gulping down another mouthful held from Deyna’s hands, he felt like he could sit up. He pushed his body to a sitting position and hissed as the pain struck his chest.

  “I don’t think you should push yourself, Stephen,” Deyna urged.

  “I’m attempting to sit up, Deyna, I’m not going to run a marathon,” he said whilst gritting his teeth.

  A small quirk of her full lips made her eyes light up, his sarcastic remarks usually lightened up any situation.

  Stephen felt torn between his gratitude to Lester and the anger of being in this situation. Lester had just saved his life and for that he didn’t have the words to begin to thank the man. However, he wouldn’t have needed saving if Lester hadn’t told them to run when the wolves had attacked.

  And why exactly had the wolves attacked them? Wolves don’t run after people, or not that he knew anyway. Amblewood was so small he was sure someone would have mentioned wolves entering people’s homes. Everything that had happened since Lester had appeared was rather unusual. Meeting a ghost was also unusual, putting it mildly, but they were in this situation because of Lester so he was finding it difficult to find the right words.

  Lester sat to the side of Phillip who was now sleeping near the blazing fire, Stephen shifted his aching body uncomfortably, a moan of pain escaped his mouth which brought Lester’s attention to him, worry lines creasing his forehead, the question clear on his face.

  “No, I’m fine,” Stephen muttered looking at Lester.

  Lester’s instant worry made him feel worse. He knew the reason why he was struggling so much to find the right words to say. It wasn’t because he blamed Lester for their dire situation, something would have happened on one of the Friday nights eventually, wasn’t that the whole point of those nights, to find danger? Well, they’d found it for sure. Stephen knew that the problem lay with his father.

  The years of moulding him to become the man his father wanted him to be, this had stopped him from becoming the man Stephen wanted to be. He was a product of his father, and he hated it. He’d somehow lost himself along the way. He wanted to be a man that could show compassion and gratitude without someone, namely his father, telling him he wasn’t a man and making him feel worthless. He wasn’t going to weep over every little thing, it wasn’t who he was, but in situations like this, what was wrong with it? What had his father done to him?

  When had he become so much like the man he despised?

  He stood, wobbled slightly and walked over to Lester, his shoulder throbbed a little more intensely now that he’d stood up but he could cope with it. He sat beside the man who had just saved his life and pushed aside the reasons why they were in this situation and thought of the reason why he was still alive.

  “Thank you... for saving my life.”

  Lester nodded, a ghost of a smile touching his thin lips. “You’re welcome.”

  Behind the smile Stephen could see the shock. Lester had already deduced that he was a brute with a thick head and a lack of manners.

  “I can’t believe you saved me after everything that I’ve said to you. I haven’t exactly been nice...”

  “Hmmm... well, what else could I do?” Lester said with a smile.

  Lester’s tone was playful which meant this wasn’t going to turn into some serious heart to heart. Okay, he could deal with this.

  He smiled and said, “Yeah, well. You haven’t brought us the best of luck.”

  “No, I don’t believe I have.” The smile disappeared as lines crowded his now serious eyes.

  Stephen knew he was thinking about the cause for all this. He wished he knew what it was.

  “But the circumstance has come about because you broke my headstone.”

  Stephen shook his head, that had to be the weirdest sentence he’d ever heard. “Yeah, we broke it, but I’ve never heard of a ghost coming back to smack our ass for breaking it. It’s not particularly easy to accept a ghost standing in front of you,” he laughed, quietly, aware of Phillip sleeping next to them. “A ghost that shouts angrily is rather scary, especially when that ghost is a murderer...”

  He stopped talking; he’d said something he shouldn’t have. It didn’t show much gratitude calling the person who saved your life a murderer. But then again, Lester had been imprisoned for it.

  “It’s fine, you are entitled to your opinion.”

  “It’s not only my opinion, Lester, you were found guilty in a court of law.”

  Just saying that one sentence made him sound like his father.

  “True, but the people casting the vote were only human and I know human beings sometimes make mistakes. They did with me.”

  “What did you do?”

  Silence followed. The crack of wood and Phillip’s soft snores the only sound amongst them. Deyna had taken a seat on an unused piece of wood next to them. She sat in silence listening to their conversation. Since meeting the ghost, Stephen knew that Deyna had taken a shine to Lester. He also knew that she was eager to know about the alleged murder he’d committed.

  “Shall we eat?” Lester suggested.

  Stephen was hardly surprised that Lester had changed the topic of conversation but, at the mention of food, Stephen’s stomach growled.

  He cast a dubious glance at the large bird that remained at the edge of the water. He really didn’t feel like cutting it open at this moment in time, it didn’t make your mouth water thinking about the skin, muscle and fat they had to get through before seeing the bloody meat. The perfect type of bird he was willing to eat was a chicken and it usually came in the form of drumsticks rolled in deliciously spicy breadcrumbs.

  “How are we meant to deal with that?”

  He’d seen his dad skin a rabbit so he knew how to go about it, but how were you meant to apply the same rules to a larger than life eagle? People didn’t skin eagles.

  “I can do it.”

  Deyna stood dusting her hands on her jeans. He reeled back in shock.

  “Since when did you know how to do this?”

  Deyna grinned. “You’re not the only one who was brought up on a farm, Ste.”

  That was true but whilst she may have watched her dad skin something, did she know what to do with this giant bird?

  “No, we can do it together.” He would leave Phillip to sleep, he needed to build up his energy.

  They started working on de-feathering the bird, deciding the best place to take the meat was around the stomach area, it was much fatter here so they hoped there would be some decent meat. He didn’t want to think of what made these birds fat in the first place. The feathers were almost as large as him, this impeded their progress. They weren’t exactly easy to pull out, it took several good
pulls to loosen them. He thought the feathers would make perfect quills for a giant’s use.

  They finally pulled the feathers off the bird and then started on the skin which was both tough and elastic making it hard to rip without any tools. They simply used their hands, pulling and dragging at it until it gave way with a pop. The smell from inside the bird enveloped them making his stomach flip. The combination of dead meat and warm, sickly sweet blood was going to stay with him for a long time.

  Deyna continued ripping and pulling surprising him yet again with her strength. Once faced with the meat, they looked at each other. At some point during this Deyna had wiped her face and without knowing she’d smeared dark red blood across her cheek.

  “How are we meant to do this without a knife?” she asked.

  He looked around, he couldn’t say why, a large hunting knife was not going to suddenly appear. They should have taken one from the Room of Doom.

  “Lester, I’m going to need some light. Deyna, you might as well wash the blood off your hands and start getting the fire nice and hot.” He turned to her, smiled, and then jumped straight into the freezing cold water.

  Lester’s light guided him as he swam deeper into the river. His shoulder strained with the exercise but it held up, plus it was a case of continually using his arm so it didn’t freeze up. The cool water caressed his still hot skin as Lester shimmered along the bottom of the river bed alongside him. He scavenged through the many rocks looking for the right one that would do the job, running out of breath, he found the sharpest one and kicked off the floor and pushed his body to the surface. Deyna pulled him up and smiled, he noticed that her face now blood free.

  “Good thinking.”

  Deyna turned around whilst he retrieved his drier clothes from above the fire to swap for the cold wet clothes that were making his wound throb less. He wouldn’t have minded the cool material against his skin but Lester wouldn’t allow it. He’d be worried of him catching pneumonia or something.

  Deyna stood back as he hacked away at the meat with the sharp edge of the stone. With several sizeable chunks of the meat ready, they washed them before placing them on the hot rocks within the fire.

  Stephen noticed the light within Lester had diminished slightly. The journey along the river bed and constantly picking up objects in this world were tiring for him. Without saying a word, he stopped turning the meat and walked to Lester, placing a hand on the man’s shoulder as he bent near the fire.

  Lester jumped at the contact and he felt his hand sink into the icy cloud. Thankfully, the pull on his energy was only a small amount because he wasn’t back to full health either. The icy touch he welcomed on his hot skin. Lester nodded his thanks but Stephen could see the confusion set in the man’s face. He could hardly believe it himself, he’d made a conscious effort to help the ghost without being asked for it.

  They now sat around the warm fire eating, the meat was a little chewy and salty but it was better than they’d thought it would be. Phillip had joined them, his eyes drifted shut as his hands unconsciously lifted the cooked meat to his mouth, the energy used to help him had cost Phillip. He needed a good night’s sleep. Stephen watched him slowly chew. He would make sure that Phillip continued to eat, he needed every bit of strength he could get in this place especially after what he’d endured for him.

  “I was sentenced in 1969 for my crime,” Lester whispered.

  Stephen stopped pushing the bird meat into his mouth fearing he’d misheard Lester. Stephen cast a quick, shocked glance in Deyna’s direction who sat wide eyed with her mouth open looking at the ghost.

  “Two years before this unfortunate series of events I had been given my father’s shop. It was the best shop in Amblewood,” Lester said with a smile.

  “Where was it?”

  Lester looked at him but Stephen noticed that his eyes were already seeing the past, he wasn’t really looking at him. “It sat right in front of the soldier memorial, a large wood framed shop with white doors. Which shop sits there now?”

  “It’s the card shop, Lilly’s cards,” Deyna answered.

  “My family lived in the village then, did you know them?” Stephen asked.

  Lester shook his head. “I don’t remember anyone by your family name.”

  Lester floated over the piece of wood, he looked like he was sitting on it. Stephen looked into the fire.

  “It should have continued as it was. My father would be so angry with me for what has happened. He expected that shop to go down through the Andrew’s family. It would have if...” Lester shook his head. “Anyway, I was given the shop the day my father died. It was a sudden death, a heart attack which shook both my mother and I. I loved him so much, he was kind, strong and above all else a family man.

  “From an early age I remember my father’s hand in mine, guiding me around the shop, talking to me about how it worked. I knew I always wanted to follow him in his line of work. Despite the grief that hit me losing the only man I’d ever looked up to, we knew the terms regarding my father’s death and I was given the key by my mother. He would have wanted it.

  “I have to say it was the proudest day of my life. I could hardly believe I was the owner of Andrew’s DIY. I spent months making sure the shop was just how I wanted it. Freshly painted on the outside, the dark wooden floorboards were varnished so they threw back your reflection. I took immense pride in the shop and I’d watched my father running it so I knew the changes I wanted to make when it was passed to me. The last thing I changed about the shop was the sign. We opened for business and it was booming. Life was good again, until I lost my mother.

  “My mother passed nine months after my father. Their love was a kind of love where one couldn’t live without the other. I was also lucky that my mother met the love of my life before her passing. Although I’d lost my mother, I knew she was proud of me and I felt everything within the shop was just right. My life was perfect; everything was great, until Lee Turner arrived in our little hamlet.

  “It was unusual for a stranger to enter our little hamlet and, as you can imagine, he was the talk of the town, to use the expression. We weren’t used to new people setting up home in the hamlet and as you can imagine, Lee Turner soon captured the interest of all the women in the village. How can I describe him to you?” Lester said as his hand tapped his knee, the finger sliding through his ghostly form. “I don’t know if you know him but Lee looked a lot like James Dean...”

  Lester stopped to look at them. Stephen shrugged. He was sure he’d heard of the person but couldn’t put a face to this James Dean. Deyna looked just as confused.

  “You young ones don’t know anything,” he smiled, shaking his head. “James Dean was an actor who tragically died in the 50s which was a great shame as he could have made something of himself. During his short life, James Dean had mastered the dashing, dangerous look that women swooned over, this Lee Turner was just like James Dean with the women.

  “Marie and I married after my mother’s passing and were still in our honeymoon period when he stepped foot in our hamlet. I remember my wedding day like it was yesterday. Her sunshine yellow hair was pulled into a bun high on her head with wisps of it hitting her high cheek bones, pink from the heat of the summer’s day. Her veil concealed her cornflower blue eyes until I lifted the thin, silk material and saw them, glimmering with unshed tears. She had the bonniest smile, one that could make your heart flutter. She was the prettiest girl you could ever clap your eyes on and she was mine, well, until-”

  “What happened to your wife?” Deyna asked interrupting Lester.

  Lester sighed and bowed his head. “She was murdered.”

  j

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN