Soul Storm (2 page)

‘Tomorrow, I think.’

‘Can’t
he
give you driving lessons?’

‘Not on the road. Can you imagine what he’d do if I scratched his car?’

She raises her eyebrows. ‘Lewis would forgive you if you smashed it into a brick wall and wrote it off. He
lurves
you.’

I shake my head. ‘Rubbish. He’s the big brother I never had. He feels responsible for me.’

Cara sighs. ‘If you say so. Though at least I know he’ll be looking out for you while I’m away. If I thought you only had the ghouls for company, I’d cancel my bloody
holiday.’

‘And miss out on boys, beaches and booze?’

‘OK. Maybe that would be a step too far.’ She throws her arm round me. ‘You know me too well, Alice. I’m just hoping that by the time I get back, you’ll be the
Alice I knew before. Fully licensed to drive and ready for a summer of fun and games.’

On Soul Beach, it’s fun and games all year round.

Well, if you’re a Guest, like Meggie and Danny, it is. If you’re a Visitor, like me, things are more complicated.

When I log on, it’s the middle of the day. Brunch time. I see azure skies. Green birds with orange wings. Calm turquoise water.

But it’s the dead people who catch my eye, as they always do. Half a dozen beautiful kids jamming on the steps of the beach bar. Blissed-out couples leaning on rough-barked palms,
smooching, staring into each other’s eyes, knowing they have all the time in the world. Ice clinking against crystal as Guests carry jugs full of ruby and mint-green cocktails to their
friends, to while away yet another perfect afternoon in a barely-there haze.

A flash of something fire-bright from a metal barrel, the smell of smoke, a silver bullet shining in bright sunlight as it speeds towards me
—

Then darkness.

‘Oops, sorry.’

I open my eyes to see the girl who’s just brushed past me. She has an open face, a string of heavy-scented lilies around her neck and dark eyes.

Gunmetal grey.

She drifts off towards her boyfriend, leaving me with the chilling memory of her last moments. So she died in a shootout. Each Guest has his or her own tragedy, most of them bloody, all of them
horribly unjust.

That’s why the Beach is so beautiful: to help them forget.

But these days I’m never allowed to forget. As a Visitor I’m part-confessor, part-detective. The Guests tell me their secrets and beg me for help in making things right in my world.
They want me to seek justice or warn the loved ones they left behind. And when I succeed – as I have, twice – I am granted new powers: first, the sense of touch and now . . .

Since I helped my friend Javier, I’ve been able to experience what a Guest went through in their last moments of consciousness. If I touch them, it’s almost as though I
become
them, see what they saw and feel what they felt before they died.

Maybe this brand new power is designed to make me seek justice for even more Guests. But this latest ‘gift’ is more like a curse.

‘Florrie!’ My sister is striding across the sand, calling out the silly nickname she has for me, the one no one else is allowed to use. Her long fair hair trails behind her in the
sea breeze like a silk scarf. She’s wearing a bronze bikini which emphasises how pale her skin is compared to the other Guests’: white-gold, instead of deep tan.

I flinch before she throws her arms around me, bracing myself for
her
last vision. At least it’s weaker every time, as though the effect is wearing off. Maybe even the Management
realise an endless replay of death would be enough to drive a Visitor crazy.

Assuming I’m not crazy already and this whole virtual reality is not a figment of my grieving imagination.

I take a step back, buying time. ‘Meggie! You smell of pineapples.’

‘It’s the cocktail of the day. Vodka, fresh fruit, honey. The Soul Beach Sweetie.’

She hugs me.

Gloved hands bear down on me, and a pillow covers my eyes, turning light to dark.

This is Meggie’s memory, yet it feels as though it happened to me. It makes no sense, but nothing here does – like the fact that I can talk to my big sister.

Or the way I’ve fallen in love with a boy who died almost two years ago.

That boy is running across the bar towards me, smiling with relief, as though he never thought he’d see me again. Neither of us can ever be
quite
sure.

‘Alice, you’re early today,’ Danny calls out.

‘Because school’s out!’ I laugh.

His moss-green eyes shine. Every time I see him, I wonder what he sees in
me.
He’s incredibly handsome, but in a crumpled way that doesn’t hint at the privileged life he
lived before the Beach.

As we touch, I feel the jolt as an image forms in my mind. However hard I try to focus on the warmth of his lips, the chill of his last moments passes through me. Burnt orange earth speeds
towards me at a thousand miles an hour. Every time I hope it might be different, that the plane will recover its stability before it smashes into the desert.

But it never does.

Tim hovers in the background, with Meggie. We should make the perfect foursome: me and Danny, plus my sister and
her
first love. But even though the Beach has smoothed Tim’s frown
lines, made his hair more strawberry-blond than copper, he still keeps his distance. Maybe there’s something about his final moments he doesn’t want me to see.

No. Tim was innocent, whatever the police said. Otherwise, my sister would surely sense it, keep away.

Danny kisses me again, and the red earth is fuzzier, less menacing this time.

‘What news, Alice?’ Danny asks me.

‘Summer’s here. Cara’s going to the Caribbean. I’m staying at home.’

Here, I stick to the meaningless trivia that makes up my boring routine. Guests love to hear about school, and music, and especially the seasons: the smoky smell of autumn, the chill of winter,
the first flowers of spring.

So as I read Danny’s face, I’m surprised at how bored he looks by the idea of summer.

Then I realise: why would he be interested when every day is summer on the Beach?

‘Why aren’t you going on vacation?’ He’s trying to hide his relief, but he’s hopeless at lying to me.

I shrug. ‘Dad’s busy with work. They’re talking about a big holiday at Christmas. Australia, New Zealand.’

‘Wow. I always wanted to go there.’ He’d have made the perfect Bondi surfer dude, with his soft blond curls and hard, muscular legs.

‘I’ll make sure I tell you every detail.’ Except Christmas is almost half a year away. Who knows what’ll happen between now and then?

‘What will you do with your spare time? Aside from spend it with me?’

‘If I pass my driving test next week, I’ll have . . .’ I’m about to say ‘freedom’, but it seems too cruel, ‘. . . wheels. Mum’s, of course. Not my
own. Plus I might get a holiday job.’

‘Oh, get a room, you two!’ my sister says, then beckons us towards the sea. Tim has grabbed a bucket of cold beers and a few bowls of ice cream from the beach bar, so I pull away
from Danny and the four of us head for the water’s edge.

As I sit down, the sand under my body is slightly damp. It cools me. I try not to analyse the sensations too much, because it’s hard not to doubt my own sanity . . .

Too late. The doubts accelerate; my real surroundings close in on me again, in lurid focus. The duvet cover with its retro tulips pattern. The pile of schoolbooks in the corner that I
don’t intend to look at again till September. The driving test paperwork.

The Beach is a website.
Nothing I feel can be real.

‘Florrie, don’t zone out on us, babe.’

My sister touches me on the arm. The image of the killer’s black leather gloves lasts less than a fraction of a second this time, but it’s enough to remind me of my responsibilities
to her.

I focus on Meggie’s swimming-pool-blue eyes, on the kinked white streak in her blonde hair that I’ve never noticed before. After she was killed, the murderer combed her hair, fanned
it out against the pillow so that Zoe – who found her – said she looked like an angel.

‘Florrie!’

‘Sorry. I was thinking of something else.’

‘Right.’ Her eyes have darkened. She looks at Tim, who nods, slowly. ‘Maybe this is a good time to talk.’

‘About what?’

She sighs. ‘About this. Here. It’s wrong, me expecting you to be with me the whole time.’

I shake my head. ‘No. It’s cool. I want to be here too. We’re sisters.’

But Meggie’s still frowning. ‘Just because we
want
to be together, doesn’t mean we should be. This isn’t a good place. Tim thinks—’

‘What are you talking about?’ I break in.

‘The sun and the sea are just disguising the reality. This is a dark place.’

A breaker crashes, spraying me with foam. I turn to Tim. ‘What have you been saying? I don’t need you babying me. We got along just fine before you showed up.’

He steps back, as though he’s been slapped.

‘Don’t blame him, Alice,’ Meggie says, softly. ‘He’s got your best interests at heart. I’ve been too selfish to see that the time you spend here . . .
it’s like being in a cemetery, or a ward full of the dying. It’s not what a sixteen-year-old should be doing.’

‘Seventeen,’ I correct her.

Meggie blushes. ‘Sorry. I lose track here, which is the whole point I guess. But that’s part of the problem. You can’t move on.’ She takes a deep breath. ‘Neither
of us can.’

At first I don’t understand what she means. Then it hits me. ‘This isn’t for my benefit at all, is it? You just want more time alone with
him.’
I point at
Tim.

‘Alice. NO!’ The shock on her face makes me realise I’ve got it wrong. ‘I’d love you to be here all the time, but we’re bad for you.’

‘In case you’ve forgotten, I’m your only hope of getting justice, Meggie. Or doesn’t that matter to you any more?’

Her eyes are locked onto mine. ‘It matters, oh, God, it matters. This place is a prison and there is nothing I want more than to leave the Beach behind. To find peace. To know the right
person has been punished, whoever that person is. But there is one thing that matters more: your future.’

The waves – the first thing I heard on the Beach – are getting louder, and the heat of the sun makes my head throb. I’m losing any sense of what she really wants. I reach out
for Danny, ignore the brief vertigo as I ‘fall’ yet again. ‘Are you in on all this?’

He squirms. ‘It’s a horrible situation. I don’t want to lose you. I love you more than anything. But I don’t have anything to offer you except this,’ he waves at
the Beach, ‘and
this
is not enough. I won’t ask you to sacrifice yourself for an afterlife of limbo.’

Why does he look guilty? Then I realise. ‘Have you talked about this behind my back? Decided it’s time for little Alice to get on with her little life in the normal world, leaving
you to live your
special
lives without me?’

Meggie steps towards me. ‘You’ve got it wrong. You’re the one with the power here, the power to get away, live your life.’

‘But you
have
talked about me?’

Meggie’s eyes are cloudy again. ‘Of course. Endlessly. And I’ve lain awake, night after night, wondering what to do. God knows I didn’t care about being selfish when I
was alive, but this is too serious to get wrong.’

I want to tell her she’s not selfish, that I’m sorry for shouting. But there’s something I need to ask first. ‘What do you want more, Meggie? For me to leave . . . or to
escape yourself?’

The longer she stays silent, the more afraid I become.

Everything I’ve done since I first visited the Beach – trying to work out its secret rules, helping Javier and Triti get away, staying close to Sahara even though she makes my skin
crawl – I’ve done for Meggie.

I can’t bear it if all I’ve managed to do is make her even more unhappy.

‘I want everything to be the same as it was, Florrie. To be alive. For all this to be a bad dream we’re going to wake up from any moment now. But it can’t happen.’

‘Come here, Meggie.’ I hold out my arms, bracing myself for the familiar vision of the pillow and the gloves. But it’s so faint now that it’s no more than a cloud across
the sun as she falls into my arms. ‘I can’t turn back time, but I can put things right. Help you get away.’

I don’t spell it out – once, I was banned from the Beach for saying too much. But she knows that justice is the key to her escape from ‘paradise’.

‘I’m afraid of that too, little sis.’

No one knows what comes next: somewhere even more beautiful, or nothingness? By the end Triti and Javier both craved oblivion, a final resting place.

‘It might be wonderful,’ I tell her.

My sister’s face changes. ‘No, I’m not afraid of that. What terrifies me is that it might go wrong.’

‘How could things be any worse for you, Meggie?’

‘You really don’t know?’ She laughs bitterly. ‘The killer could get you too, Florrie. Then we’d
both
be stuck here forever. And it would be my
fault.’

I shake my head. It’s not that I think I’m immortal, or protected. How could I? Two people I know have died in twelve months. Another is technically alive, but beyond help. Life is
cheap.

‘I understand the risks, Meggie, but I can’t stop now.’

She shakes her head. ‘Believe me, it’s nothing like you think. The bleakness is the worst. And it’s not just you. It’s our parents, too.’

I step backwards, stumbling on the sand. We never talk about them. What could I say? Tell the truth: how her murder blew our family to pieces like a grenade? How Mum’s still going to
counselling with that creep Olav? How Dad has whole weeks where the only place he can sleep is slumped over his desk at work?

‘Meggie, let’s not go there.’

‘I will if it’s the only way to make you realise what you’re risking.’

Tim and Danny are keeping their distance; this is about family.