8 Souls Read online

  Screw ’em. I zip the suitcase closed and shove it under the bed—clarinet and all.

  I find my family outside, standing in the driveway. The afternoon has grown hot and humid, and, with the next breeze, my nose crinkles from the scent of the brown water of the Nodaway River that’s just a mile or so out of town.

  Dad steps in front of me. The time has come—he’s leaving me.

  Only temporarily, but three months in the Middle of Nowhere, Iowa suddenly presses down on me, threatening to squish me into the dirt under my feet. My insides squeeze tight, and I can’t bring myself to look at him. Reality is sinking in.

  What had been just talk a couple of months ago— “Chessie needs a break from us and our drama. She should go stay with your parents for a few months.” —is now real life. It’s happening.

  Back in Minneapolis, there are papers. Papers with my parents’ names on them, and once signed, I’ll be relegated to the same Kid of Divorce category as most of my friends. And, for whatever reason, my parents think being surrounded by Iowa cornfields will help me cope with the change. But there aren’t enough ice cream sandwiches and slushies in the world to fix this.

  Dad hugs me and whispers in my ear, “I’ll come visit in a couple of weeks, okay?” I nod and the water in my eyes spills over my cheeks. “Grandma and Grandpa are so happy you’re here. Hang out and get fat off Grandma’s cooking.” He kisses the top of my head. “I bet Grandpa will have you fishing every day.”

  “Gross.”

  In Villisca, when you outgrow the pool, you move on to the river, trading slushies for beer. And with miles of water and absolutely no other entertainment options, rods and reels reign supreme.

  “Fishing stinks and I refuse to do it,” I say into his chest, making him laugh. I inhale his scent, and he smells like home. And then, like that, home gets in the car and drives away, leaving me with the uncomfortable odor of old people and small town.

  Grandma forces me to take a few sugar cookies before I head upstairs. The rose curtains in my bedroom are wide open, letting in the sunlight, which is strange because I’m pretty sure I left them closed.

  I lie on my new bed for the rest of the afternoon, playing games on my phone, texting my friends, and watching the shadow of the setting sun spread across the far wall.

  When night sets in, I open the window and warm humidity floods my room.

  Darkness hangs over small towns differently than big cities. Cities never sleep. Their electric vibe hums all night, pushing back against darkness. A screw you to Mother Nature. Small towns, on the other hand, wither away at night. They’re meek, giving in to the blackness, succumbing to whatever lies in its depth.

  Except the house across the street seems more alive in the night, like it absorbs energy from the darkening sky. The windows are black tar eyes, sticking to whatever passes by on the street or sidewalk—or whoever peers at it from her bedroom window.

  It’s unnerving, but familiar.

  The house isn’t very large. Its white paint is chipped off enough that it appears gray. The roof sags over the front door. I know from my dreams that it was nice once. Someone took care of it. A family. They kept it painted bright white. Planted rose bushes and pruned the gardens.

  Then someone murdered those people. Two adults, six kids. Bashed their heads in with an axe. But the most unsettling part is that they never found the killer. Why would someone kill eight people, including six kids? And in such a brutal fashion? For me, those questions are what loom over the house, shadowing its once-normal facade, deepening its empty windows. Too many unanswered questions for such a tiny Iowa village.

  My dreams never provide any clues about the killings, and I long ago stopped searching for them. I could ask someone else to help me figure it out, but then I’d have to admit that I’m still having the dreams. And that’s a big ol’ hell no.

  I wish I could rid myself of the dreams for good, but I don’t know what my connection is to the house. I’m not from Villisca, and I’m not related to the murdered families. I don’t even know much about the house itself, except that it hosted a bloody mass murder. I’ve never even been inside it—not in real life or in my dreams.

  I’ve been up close to it though. Just once.

  Fourth of July five years ago, when I was twelve, a teenage girl who lived behind my grandparents had dared me to go knock on the front door. She said she’d let me hang out with her and her friends during the fireworks show if I did. They had been so cool, with silky blonde hair, bikini tops, and lip gloss. So I agreed to the dare. I pulled my frizzy brown hair back into a ponytail and marched over to the house. I was going to be a cool kid that Fourth of July, hanging with the bikini girls—even if the house’s windows threatened to open up and gobble me down.

  When my feet hit the porch, I had been convinced that unseen hands would rise up between the aged, cracked boards and grab my ankles. Up close, the house had smelled like rotted wood siding, and the old lace curtains in the windows were yellowed by age and sun.

  With every ounce of tenacity I had, I knocked on the front door. The thuds had echoed into the emptiness on the other side and matched the thumps in my chest.

  A shred of curtain twitched inside the window to my right. I shrieked and ran like hell, expecting blood to come flowing out the glass like it sometimes did in my dreams.

  The bikini girls had laughed so hard—doubled over and smacking one another on the arms. And then they refused to speak to me when they saw me later that evening at the fireworks show.

  That had not been a good day.

  But that was a long time ago. I stand taller in front of the window, straightening my spine. I’m not twelve years old anymore, and the house is just a bunch of wood and glass and old spook stories. And I see it every night when I go to sleep. Big deal.

  I grab the curtains, ready to pull them together, when a light flickers in one of the Axe Murder House’s lower windows. I take a step back but then move forward to get a better look, curiosity driving my movements.

  The light flickers on again. A tiny yellow speck—a cigarette lighter.

  “What the hell?” I mutter.

  The light sputters out, leaving the window black once again.

  A piercing pain radiates through my temples, squeezing my eyes shut. I press my hands to the side of my head to make it go away, but it sharpens, like a pin driving its way through my skull. I nearly collapse onto the floor.

  And then, as quick as it started, the pain’s gone, as if it had never been there at all.

  I open my eyes, and it’s broad daylight. The house across the street is painted a fresh coat of white, and red rose bushes grow in front of its porch. My grandparents’ car is no longer parked on the street…because there is no actual street. Only weed-filled lawns and a dirt trail between houses.

  I shake my head. This isn’t right. I’m not asleep and I’ve never had a daydream about the house before. My eyes squeeze shut.

  I let out a low, slow breath and peek one eye open.

  It’s dark outside again.

  I open both eyes. Grandma’s car is out front just like before. The Axe Murder House is old and decaying. Everything’s back to normal.

  I think. I hope.

  The little yellow cigarette lighter flickers on again across the street. I fling the curtains across the window and collapse cross-legged onto the floor. I don’t know what the hell is going on, but this is only day one and already I wish I were back in Minneapolis.

  I swipe a curly lock of hair from my face. “Worst summer ever.”

  Chapter Four

  As usual, I dream about the Axe Murder House right after falling asleep.

  Mud squishes through my toes as I stand on the dirt road in front of the house. The sky is clear but smells of rain and manure. The house is new, painted white, and a small rose bush is beginning to bloom near the front porch. Children’s laughter hits my ears just as I wake up.

  My recurring dreams are always quick—over just as
soon as they begin. It’s a little past three a.m. I force myself to ignore my bladder and fall back asleep. In my next dream, I’m standing on Highway 71, the main highway that leads to Villisca.

  Cold asphalt prickles my bare feet. Highway Patrol cars and an ambulance block the road as the paramedics bring a small body up from the ditch.

  It’s a little girl. She’s tiny—and dead, having drowned in the Nodaway River that runs parallel to the highway. Her length barely takes up half the gurney, and I wish the paramedics would put her in the damn ambulance already. Her little arm still has traces of baby fat, and her knuckles are dimpled in a way that tells me she likes—liked—milk and cookies.

  My dad suddenly appears next to me. He’s crying, and through muffled sobs, he says, “The river.”

  When I turn to look at the gurney again, the little girl isn’t on it.

  She’s standing right in front of me.

  Her eyes are blood shot, her face bloated and ashen. She starts to giggle. The high-pitched sound vibrates the air around me, beating against my skin in rhythmic waves.

  I stumble back and fall, scraping my elbow on the road.

  Her giggles grow louder as her hand reaches out to touch me, grotesquely stretching her arm several feet as her bones crack and her flesh rips. I scramble backward, screaming for help.

  Her cold hand grabs my shoulder—

  “Shit!” I jolt up in bed, heart pounding.

  I’m at my grandparents’ house. There’s no dead girl. There’s no bloody scrape on my elbow. It was just a dream, I repeat over and over again.

  Despite my morbid recurring dreams, I don’t have nightmares very often. My entire body is trembling, trying to force the drowned girl from my mind. The way she looked at me and reached for me, as if she needed me. I rub my eyes to get rid of her.

  In my head, I can still hear my dad crying. “The river.”

  When he was in high school, Dad’s best friend drowned in the Nodaway River. He fell through the ice. Gone, just like that. My dad told me that story only once, but once is all I needed. The image stuck. The ice cracking. The sound of it like breaking glass. The last look on his friend’s panicked face before disappearing under the frozen sheet of river ice—until his body was found a week later several miles away, washed up on the shore, barely recognizable.

  Dad doesn’t like the river. He’s probably the one Villisca native who doesn’t fish.

  I lie back down in bed and take deep breaths through my nose. The air in the bedroom is stuffy, but cool. I wrap the comforter around me and flop onto my side.

  Everything in the bedroom smells like Grandma. It should comfort me, but it doesn’t. It’s a stark reminder that I’m not at home. This mattress is firm, not like the springy one in my real bedroom. Even the pillow under my head isn’t quite right…lumpy and unfamiliar.

  I concentrate on my breaths to keep homesickness from creeping in. In. Out. In. Out. Eventually, my mind composes itself, then goes blank, and I begin to drift to sleep.

  But almost immediately, a soft sound rouses me. Barely there, it hums through the air with a methodical pace.

  Giggling.

  My eyes flicker open, and I strain my ears but am unable to decipher which direction it’s coming from. I close my eyes. It’s the wind. Go to sleep. But the sound continues. Muffled, but distinct enough that it’s not the wind, or the hum of a fan in another room, or air flowing through the ductwork. It’s giggling.

  And it’s not a dream.

  It must be Grandma, because it’s too high-pitched to be Grandpa. I make a face, not wanting to think about why my grandma is giggling in the middle of the night.

  “Oh my god, yuck.” I pull the covers over my face. But my bladder has other plans and eventually forces me up.

  The wood floors are cool under my feet. I walk out of my room, but two steps into the hallway, the giggling noise pivots. My grandparents’ bedroom door is straight in front of me. But the giggling isn’t coming from in front of me. It’s behind me.

  It’s coming from my own bedroom.

  A chill ripples down my spine as the giggling continues nonstop, machinegun-like, with no pauses for breathing, vibrating the air around me.

  Just like the drowned girl in my dream.

  As if she’s sitting cross-legged on the floor right behind me, playing a board game or having a tea party. Or ready to reach out and touch me again.

  The hallway is dark, but there’s enough light to make out the white walls and dark woodwork around each door. Slowly, my head swivels around to look at my bedroom, unsure of what might stare back.

  But the doorway is dark. The floor is empty. No girl. Nothing except giggling and a slight beam of pale-yellow streetlamp light streaming in through the window. The curtains are open again.

  I step inside the room, measured and cautious. In the darkness, a creak of old hinges stops me cold. My closet door is moving—slow but steady it opens as though something inside is extending a hand against it.

  “Chessie,” a childlike voice whispers.

  My hand flies to my mouth to keep my scream in my lungs.

  The cool air of the house swirls around me. All the muscles in my body constrict, as though trying to make my frame as small as possible—a smaller target for anything around that might try to grab at me.

  I run out of the room and fly down the stairs. At the sofa, I grab the quilt off the back and lie down, pulling it over my entire body.

  The giggles go away.

  The whole house is silent except for a rhythmic tick-tock of the wall clock over the TV. I concentrate on its rhythm and ignore my bladder. I’m awake for what feels like all night, but it’s still dark when I drift off.

  Chapter Five

  It’s bright when Grandma nudges my shoulder in the morning. My eyes squint against the daylight as I sit up, muscles sore from being scrunched into a fetal position all night. The smell of coffee hangs in the air.

  “Why are you sleeping down here?” Grandma asks with half concern, half annoyance.

  “I—I don’t know,” I stammer, trying to think of a quick lie. “I came down for a drink of water in the middle of the night, and I guess I just fell asleep here.”

  She frowns. “It’s an old couch. Bad for your back. Go back to your bed next time.”

  “Yes, Grandma.”

  She scoots me into the kitchen where I spend an unknown amount of time eating an unknown amount of bacon. If I keep this up for three months, I’ll need a whole new wardrobe for my senior year.

  Grandpa comes in through the back door and sits down, plopping the day’s paper on the table between us. I nearly choke on my next bite. On the front page is a picture of a little girl with black-brown hair. The headline reads: Villisca Girl Found in River.

  My stomach lurches.

  Her picture stares back at me from the rough surface of the newspaper. It’s the same face that had stared at me in my dream, except in the photo, she’s chubby and sweet, not bloated and glassy-eyed.

  The river had drowned her. Or someone else did.

  I skim the story. Amelia Diaz, four years old, went missing five days ago from her backyard in Villisca. Not much information is given, because not much information is known. Who took her? Where had she been for five days? The authorities have no answers at this time. Nor do they know who took the other two girls who are missing.

  Two others?

  My eyes do a double take. There are two other little girls missing—Laney and Grace. I chew the bacon in my mouth, but the flavor is gone. I point to Amelia’s picture. “I saw her,” I blurt out before I can stop myself.

  “What do you mean you saw her?”

  “I mean, I saw her…once…” My words stammer out because there is no good explanation. She’s been missing for five days, but I only got into town yesterday. “Or maybe it wasn’t her,” I quickly add.

  Grandma snatches the paper away and plops a pancake onto my plate. Grandma does not like talking about bad things.
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br />   “Church is in one hour,” she says. “Eat up.”

  I stifle an eye roll. Church is not really my thing, but instead of complaining, I force the pancake into my sickened stomach as Grandpa sips coffee. My mind is far too frazzled by the dead girl in my dream to construct an argument against organized religion.

  After breakfast, I stand at the foot of the stairs and stare up. The only bathroom in the house is on the second floor. I take a deep breath, unsure of what awaits me at the top of the steps. More giggling? The cold, dead hand of little, drowned Amelia?

  My feet tiptoe up the steps until they hit the floor of the upstairs hallway. Things seem normal. No giggles. But my skin crawls at every brush of circulating air. Eyes are on me—I feel them.

  The door to my bedroom is wide open. Mentally, I go through my clothing options, while still standing in the hallway. Once my mind decides on jeans and a red shirt, I rush in, grab the articles from my dresser, and then run like hell back out of the bedroom. I go into the bathroom where the smell of bleach oddly makes me feel safe.

  After a shower, I curse my curly brown hair. It hates the summer. In the winter, with the right concoction of spray gel and a straightening iron, it keeps its craziness to a minimum. But in the summer, it soaks in the humidity like a sponge.

  My dad has straight jet-black hair. My mom has straight, blonde hair. I somehow, due to a harsh genetic mutation most likely, ended up with a frizzy, mud-brown mess. The only trait I ever get complimented on—and at least there is one—are my eyes. I have my grandma’s eyes. “You’re straight out of Vietnam,” Grandma likes to say. Then she pats my wild hair and adds, “Almost.”

  There’s no point to fighting nature, so I twist the brown curls into a messy bun.

  Good enough for Iowa.

  I spend the first half of the church service studying the large sanctuary. It’s a pretty church, but it’s the only church I’ve ever been to, so I’m hardly an expert. I’m not religious. Every religious moment in my life has been in this little Iowa town, at the insistence of Grandma.