Soul Seekers (6 page)

14

‘Last one aboard is a fat, wet slug!’

The students dashed to the waiting school bus, their shouts echoing and chasing in the bright morning sunshine, but Cas merely plodded reluctantly along the sidewalk with his satchel draped across his shoulder. Despite having a long and dreamless sleep he still felt troubled and nervous.

He climbed aboard the bus and was relieved to see Emily Harper waiting for him, her bag occupying the seat next to her. As soon as she saw him she lifted the bag off the seat. Cas flopped down next to her as the bus pulled away.

‘How are you feeling?’ she asked.

‘Lousy,’ he replied. ‘You?’

‘The same. I couldn’t sleep much. Mom doesn’t know a thing. It’s like the people on the base are pretending that nothing ever happened.’

Cas nodded but he couldn’t think of much to say.

The bus pulled in at various stops along the way, Jude and Siren joining them. Jude nodded at them both, but his normally cheerful smile was gone as he took a seat further down. Siren hid behind her sunglasses, said nothing and shot threatening looks at anybody who tried to sit near her at the very back of the bus.

Cas decided not to mention the weird events of last night to Emily, especially the massive train, for fear that she might think he had gone a little mad after the stress of the previous day. Maybe he had.

The bus pulled into the school and Cas got off with the other children. Dozens of pupils were milling around outside the school waiting for the bell for morning lessons. Some were playing football, groups of boys were sitting on the grass chatting, several girls were wearing fancy dress and dancing around a big oak tree in the middle of the school field…

Cas squinted at the four girls wearing long, frilly dresses as they weaved in and out between each other and danced in rings around the tree. They were young and pretty but their faces were a little grubby and they were barefoot. As he stared, one of the girls noticed him and smiled a bright, cheerful smile. She waved as she danced past. Cas waved back instinctively.

‘What the hell are you doing, squirt?!’

Mack loomed in front of Cas, chomping on a chocolate bar as he peered down at him. His blotchy face and puffy red cheeks wobbled as he ate and his cropped red hair looked like sparkling coals of fire in the bright sunlight.

‘Waving at the girls by the tree,’ Cas replied.

Mack looked over his shoulder and then quizzically back at Cas. He called out to his crew, a motley mixture of dropouts normally allied to Siren. ‘Hey, dudes, check this out. The squirt’s gone crazy!’

Several of Mack’s equally degenerate friends chuckled as they sauntered over. Cas realised that Siren was not with them. Mack gestured to Cas.

‘Who were you wavin’ to again?’

Cas looked again. The girls were gone. So was the tree. He swallowed thickly.

‘I wasn’t waving to anybody.’

Mack glared down at him as he tossed the empty candy wrapper aside and spoke around a mouthful of chocolate.

‘That ain’t what you just said,
squirt
.’

Cas felt a tingle of fear lance his guts. ‘You must be mistaken.’

The crowd of seniors chuckled and Mack stamped his foot loudly.

‘
I must be mistaken?’
he echoed with a mocking expression. ‘You callin’ me a liar, squirt?’

‘No,’ Cas replied in exasperation, ‘I was just saying…’

Mack’s thick hand whipped out and cracked across Cas’s face. Tears sprang into Cas’s eyes as his head jerked painfully. Mack’s blurry features sneered at him as he sang a jeering tune, his friends laughing.

‘The squirt’s gone mad, the squirt’s gone mad, the squirt’s gone…’

Cas’s world went silent. Suddenly he could not hear Mack’s words, could only see his fat sneering face and feel the pain throbbing across the side of his head. The thought of his father perhaps lying dead somewhere inside the base flashed through his mind and suddenly his tears were no longer those of fear.

For the first time in his life, Cas felt rage.

His bag dropped from his shoulder almost of its own accord and he stepped forward as with a cry of fury that seemed to come from some unknown place deep inside he swung his fist as hard as he could into Mack’s face.

Mack’s sneering expression registered the briefest glimmer of panic just before Cas’s knuckles smashed across his nose like a baseball bat through an eggshell. Mack’s head flicked sideways as he staggered back half a dozen paces and crashed onto the ground.

The entire school yard fell silent.

Cas’s hearing returned. The hot flush of anger searing through his body faded away as he looked down at Mack, who lay on his back staring at the sky with blood trickling across his face.

‘Holy crap,’ said one of Mack’s friends, ‘the squirt just decked MacKenzie!’

Mack sat up. Tears streamed from his face as he bleated at his friends and pointed a stubby finger at Cas.

‘Do him, now!’

The group of seniors turned toward Cas, who was about to flee when a heavy schoolbag flew through the air in front of him and crashed into the seniors like a bowling ball through skittles. The seniors scattered in shock as Siren smashed through them, her fists whirling like an out-of-control windmill.

Mack scrambled to his feet, doubly shocked to see Siren rushing to Cas’s aid, and found himself on the end of one of her boots. He yelped as he ran, grasping his own backside with his hands as Siren chased him across the yard to the cheers of the rest of the school.

Jude and Emily joined Cas from where they had been watching. Jude looked at Cas and then at the bleating form of Mack fleeing across the yard.

‘And I thought what we saw
yesterday
was unlikely,’ he said.

Emily picked up Cas’s bag and handed it to him. He slung it over his shoulder, completely oblivious to the looks of admiration he was getting from dozens of pupils as they passed by. For some reason he felt neither fear nor pride. He felt empty.

‘Things have changed,’ was all he could think of to say.

Before Jude or Emily could reply, the school bell rang out.

*

The rest of the day was no less bizarre than the one that Cas had already endured in 1776. Everything had indeed changed.

For a start, wherever he walked other kids gave him a wide berth, as though in the blink of an eye Cas had gone from being the kid that everybody shoved past to becoming a brooding juvenile psychopath whose merest glance was enough to send younger children screaming for the principal. Mack in particular found himself in enforced isolation after taking a beating from both the newest pupil in the school
and
the most feared. To be friends with him was now social suicide and he spent the entire lunch break sitting alone on a bench nursing his bloodied nose. Strange, thought Cas’, how quickly the tables had turned.

But it was in gym class that afternoon that everything really changed.

Cas sat with Jude, Siren and Emily as the physical education tutor taught the class about the importance of having at least thirty minutes of exercise per day.

‘Just a run about,’ she said, ‘ball games, anything you like. Your body is like an engine, and if you don’t use an engine what happens to it?’

‘It seizes up,’ Emily said as her hand shot in the air.

‘That’s right, Emily,’ the teacher said. ‘Exercise helps make our hearts and lungs stronger. But there are things that are bad for our hearts and lungs too. Can anybody tell me something that’s bad for them?’

Smoking
. Cas raised his hand to speak and the teacher looked at him.

‘Yes, Cas’?’

Cas opened his mouth just as a tremendous clattering noise echoed through the gym as though a thousand bricks had fallen all at once onto the sprung wooden floor.

Cas whirled as an enormous white horse thundered through the gym as though fleeing the gates of Hell itself. Its head was bowed as it charged, its front legs clawed the air and its mane rippled in the wind. Atop the saddle was a soldier, his blue uniform bright and clear, his eyes above his broad moustache focused on Cas as he screamed at the top of his lungs and swung a cavalry sword that flashed in the sunlight.

Cas let out a cry of horror and hurled himself away from the stallion as it crashed toward him. The cavalry sword flashed past his head with an inch to spare as Cas tumbled to the gym floor into the path of the stallion’s flying hooves.

Cas flung his arms over his head and buried his face beneath them as the huge animal galloped clean through him and vanished through the opposite wall of the gym.

The gym fell silent again. Cas opened one eye and peered at the featureless wall of the gym. Then, he got the impression that he was being watched. He turned his head.

The entire class was staring at him in surprise, their mouths agape and eyes wide.

But it was not that which surprised him the most.

Jude, Emily and Siren had also hurled themselves clear of the phantom rider and lay scattered across the gym, all staring at the wall where the horse and rider had vanished.

* * *

15

‘Something’s happened to us.’

Cas stood on the corner of the street where the school bus had dropped Siren, Emily, Jude and himself off. The sun was getting low, casting long shadows across the street.

‘I’ll say,’ Jude uttered.

The four of them had enjoyed the unprecedented luxury of having the entire rear of the school bus to themselves, largely because nobody else in the school would come near them. Even some of the teachers had cast wary glances in their direction when school had turned out. Principal Brownstone had also studiously avoided them and Cas could hardly blame her. Overnight, they had become freaks.

‘You’re all seeing what I’m seeing,’ Cas went on. The three of them nodded slowly. ‘How come you didn’t say anything?’

‘Thought I was going crazy,’ Jude replied. ‘Last night I saw a horse and carriage pull into the service station near our house and ride straight through the Taco Bell. I’m not sure if anybody put gasoline in the horse.’

‘I saw a church choir singing,’ Emily reported, ‘but they were all standing in the middle of a lake.’

Cas looked at Siren, who frowned behind her sunglasses. ‘You don’t want to know,’ she said.

‘I do,’ Cas insisted. ‘Did you see something that looked like it might have happened in 1776?’

Siren sighed. ‘I went out for a walk because I didn’t want to talk to my pop after all that’s happened. I was out near the river when I saw a woman being hanged from the branches of a tree. Problem is there’s not supposed to be any trees where I was walking. When I got home I checked it out on the Internet, and it turns out lots of people used to be hanged on the common before a gallows was built in 1769.’

‘We’re seeing the past,’ Cas said to them. ‘Whatever happened to us, it’s not gone away.’

‘How can that be?’ Emily asked.

‘I don’t know,’ Cas admitted, ‘but if it’s still happening to us…’

‘Then it’s still happening to your father,’ Jude realised.

‘Maybe,’ Cas replied. ‘One way or the other, we’ve got to report this.’

‘To who?’ Jude asked. ‘They won’t let us on the base so we can’t talk to anybody there and my mom’s stressed enough already without me telling her that I keep seeing dead people.’ He gestured to Siren. ‘Siren’s pa’ is a lunatic so there’s no way I’m going to ask him to help us out. He’ll as likely shoot us.’

‘You watch your mouth,’ Siren warned him.

‘He put us here,’ Jude snapped. ‘He wouldn’t shut that contraption of his down when we were hanging in the air above it, when his
own daughter
was hanging in the air above it.’

Siren’s hand shot out and slammed into Jude’s throat as she pushed him back against a wall. Emily tried to stop her but Siren was far too strong and swatted her easily aside. Cas stepped forward and spoke softly.

‘
I
put us here,’ he said. ‘This is my fault.’ Siren froze in motion, one fist raised to hit Jude. ‘It’s me you should hit, not Jude,’ Cas added.

‘Them’s wise words,’ Jude urged Siren.

Siren peered sideways at Cas from behind her sunglasses. ‘You figure that how?’

‘I should have led us out of that ventilation shaft, not carried on to see what the light at the end was. If I had, we wouldn’t have been sent into the past, my pa’ wouldn’t have been either and none of this would have happened.’

‘You don’t know that,’ Emily soothed him, one hand on his shoulder. ‘The experiment might have gone wrong even if we hadn’t gotten involved. There’s no way to tell.’

‘But it did go wrong,’ Jude wheezed from where he was pinned to the wall. ‘And now we’re all paying the price of Captain America’s big experiment.’

Siren’s glare swivelled back to bore into Jude’s eyes. ‘So what would you have done, brave Jude?’ she challenged.

‘I’d have faced that machine without fear,’ he coughed back, ‘from at least ten miles away.’

Siren shook her head and released him. Jude coughed and slid down the wall onto his haunches as Siren turned to Cas.

‘Fine,’ she said, ‘you got us into this mess so you can damned well get us out of it. What’s your plan?’

Cas looked up into the sky, where the sun was sinking toward the horizon through fiery rivers of red and gold. Night was coming.

‘You’re not going to like what I’ve got in mind,’ Cas replied to them all. ‘Meet me tonight on the edge of Lincoln Woods, nine o’clock.’

‘I can’t stay out that late,’ Emily protested.

‘Find a way,’ Cas insisted. ‘We do this together or not at all.’

Siren frowned and pulled off her sunglasses. ‘What are you going to do?’

Cas couldn’t believe what he was saying, but somehow he knew it was true.

‘We’re going to have a look into the past.’

* * *

16

Cas waited until half-past eight before he slipped out of his bedroom window and down onto the porch roof. His mother was downstairs, having sent him to bed at eight as usual. Cas had taken the time to ruffle his duvet up and close his curtains, enough so that she would hopefully not realise he was gone.

Which he didn’t intend to be for long.

Cas ran across the front lawn and down the street, the sky above still tinged with the last of the evening’s light. The dense trees of Lincoln Wood ahead were cloaked in darkness, looming over him as he ran toward the edge of the treeline.

A brief flash of light guided him in, as he saw Siren turn a small flashlight on and off. He ran up to her and saw Jude and Emily waiting alongside her, both of them looking nervous.

‘What are we doing here?’ Emily asked. ‘It’s dark.’

‘The darker the better,’ Cas replied with more confidence than he felt. He turned to Siren. ‘You’re taking the lead.’

‘Why me?’ Siren asked suspiciously.

‘Because you know where it is.’

‘Where
what
is?’

Cas took a deep breath. ‘Crazy Jo’s.’

He heard Jude and Emily suck in a collective breath of shock as Siren watched him with a serious gaze.

‘
Now
you want to go there?’

‘I’ve had an idea,’ Cas replied. ‘You know the way, right?’

Siren nodded and turned, striding away into the inky blackness of the woods as she flicked her flashlight on. The white beam of light sliced a thin strip of illumination through the trees.

Cas followed her with Jude and Emily falling miserably into line behind her.

‘This is not a good idea,’ Jude complained.

‘You got any better ones?’ Cas challenged over his shoulder.

‘We could pretend than nothing ever happened.’

Cas ignored him as he concentrated on following Siren’s flashlight between the towering trees. The woods were deathly silent, as though they had left civilisation far behind them. Even the sound of their footfalls sounded muted and tiny amid the endless expanses of forest. For a moment Cas remembered the woods through which they had fled the Hessian soldiers and found himself looking over his shoulder expecting to see horses and soldiers with bayonets.

Above, the clouds broke up a little to reveal a pale moon glowing in the night sky that illuminated the forest in a ghostly blue light.

‘It’s up here,’ Siren whispered in the darkness as she shut off her flashlight.

The dense woods were thickest in the middle of the forest, out to the East of Flint’s Pond. Cas crept up alongside Siren as she came to a halt behind a huge fallen tree trunk and peered over the top.

‘There it is.’

Cas saw a battered looking old shack standing alone in the midst of the woods, its walls cloaked in vines and creepers as though the forest had come alive and tried to take the shack back as its own.

‘No place like home,’ Jude whispered. ‘What the hell are we doing here?’

Cas turned to face them.

‘We keep seeing the past,’ he explained. ‘And this place has been here for two hundred years at least, maybe more. This morning I saw a bunch of girls dancing around a tree that wasn’t even there. One of them saw me and waved.’

Emily’s face, already looking pale in the moonlight, turned white as she stared at him with eyes wide. ‘It saw you?’

‘Not
it
,’ Cas said. ‘I saw a person, a young girl, and she saw me too.’

Siren glanced at the shack and Cas saw her figure it out. ‘You think that you can talk to somebody here?’

‘It’s worth a shot,’ Cas replied. ‘Everybody says it’s haunted, right? We need to do this for ourselves or your father and his soldiers will never listen to us. We need
evidence
so that we can get back into the base and figure this all out.’

‘Why come here though?’ Emily pleaded. ‘In the dead of night? Couldn’t you just wait until you see another ghost and ask them then?’

Cas shook his head. ‘If it is ghosts we’re seeing then they’re too unpredictable. We don’t know what we’re going to see next or when it will happen. Coming somewhere that’s haunted will up our chances.’

‘Great,’ Jude uttered. ‘This way we can really make sure we scare ourselves to death.’

Cas looked at Siren. ‘You’ve been inside, so you show us the way.’

Siren didn’t move. She stared down at Cas for a long beat before she replied.

‘I haven’t been inside.’

‘You
what
?’ Jude snapped.

‘But your friends said that you had!’ Emily protested. ‘They said they saw you!’

Siren scowled at her. ‘They’re idiots. I just went around the far side of the shack, hid for a minute and then tossed a couple of stones at it to make it sound like I was moving about inside.’

‘Well,’ Jude murmured, ‘so you’re not quite as hard-core as you’ve been pretending.’ Siren’s head swivelled to glare at Jude, who flashed her a quick smile. ‘Which is totally cool of course.’

Cas ran a hand through his hair in disbelief as he got in Siren’s face. ‘You want to get in there now and redeem yourself?’

‘Not so much,’ Siren replied.

Cas looked questioningly at Jude, who chuckled at him. ‘Yeah, good one. Only way I’m going in there is if you kill me first and then carry me.’

Cas sighed and grabbed Siren’s flashlight from her hand. Then he stood and clambered over the tree trunk. He had barely made two paces when he heard somebody behind him. He was surprised to see Emily following him.

‘You sure?’ he asked.

‘No, so hurry up before I change my mind. I don’t want you to have to go in there all on your own.’

Cas felt a rush of gratitude toward Emily. He turned and flicked the flashlight on as he crept toward the shack, the beam of light playing on the shattered door. He could see that the iron locks had rusted away, the door latch hanging loose from the frame.

Cas stopped near the door, one hand holding the flashlight as with the other he reached out for the door. The wood felt old and brittle to his touch as he gripped it, and with a deep breath he pulled the door open.

* * *