Soul Search: A Zackie Story Read online

  SOUL SEARCH

  The First Zackie Novel

  Reyna Favis

  Copyright © 2016 by Reyna Favis

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the permission of the publisher,

  except where permitted by law.

  All human characters appearing in this work are fictitious.

  Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Visit the author’s website at www.reynafavis.com

  Dedicated to my mother, Elke Favis,

  and to the memory of my father, Reynaldo Favis.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  AUTHOR’S NOTES

  Special advance preview

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Thank you for purchasing this book. Fifty percent of author’s profits from this purchase will be donated to charity, divided equally between the Search and Rescue Teams of Warren County (www.sartwc.com) and Wayward Plotts (https://www.facebook.com/WaywardPlotts/), both 501(c)3 organizations. If you would like to make additional contributions, please visit their websites.

  This book would not have come to be without the kind help of many people. The author would like to thank: Katherine Furman for reading an early version of the manuscript and providing useful feedback; Bill Cafferty for scrubbing the first three chapters and Sandy Williams for catching the last(?) typo; Sara Ehrlich, Dr. Rich Kliman, Elke Favis, Kathy Ann Stagg, Lee Kliman, and Germana Callow for serving as beta readers; Sara Ehrlich for providing useful information on what it takes to be a therapy dog (any errors related to this are my own); the Writers Group of Belvidere and First Friday Writers Group for providing critical feedback during decisive moments in the book’s development; the Phillipsburg Free Public Library for serving all of my local history reference needs; Dr. Nadine Cohen, Laura Furman and Arturo Chaparro for moral support during this career transition; and the Search and Rescue Teams of Warren County for helping me to train for my SAR Tech II certification while I wrote this book. Lastly, I would like to thank my husband, Rich Kliman, for steadfast support and never once blinking when I told him that I wanted to leave a steady job to write the Zackie stories.

  CHAPTER 1

  Every thought was a battle and every breath drawn was an act of will. I no longer thought about winning. At best, I might survive until the next time. The bell on the search dog’s harness clanged in the distance. Maybe he would get here before the dead boy found me. This was supposed to be an ordinary search and rescue training exercise. All I had to do was hide in the woods and let the canine handler teams find me, easy peasy. But thanks to earthbound spirits, dead sons of bitches who wanted me to join them, I was psyching myself up for my last fight.

  The dead boy came over a crest and back into my line of sight. Choking back a sob, I cursed instead, my gut churning with acid as I pushed sweaty bangs under the bill of the baseball cap and out of my eyes. I bit back fear and schooled my thoughts so I could go down fighting. Craning my neck for a clear view of this spirit, I tried to get a handle on what I was in for. A dirty hat with a wide brim hid his face, but he was small and might have once been around six or seven. Years of fighting taught me not to underestimate him. A young spirit might be easier to fight off, but I was going into this already drained and exhausted. Focus. Go down fighting. His clothes were torn and mud spattered, but the suspenders and loose, mid-calf pants placed him squarely in the nineteenth century. My stomach took another shot of hot acid and the sob escaped between gritted teeth. He’d been dead a long time. The longer they’re dead, the stronger and more determined they became. Oh God. Go down fighting.

  The spirit darted from tree to tree through the burgeoning April woods. And then it started. His panic rushed over me in waves and it was all I could do to stay where I was and not start running crazy through the woods like him. Digging my nails into my palms, I fought to control the stress and focused hard on my reality - the rough tree bark etching its pattern on the skin of my back and the sour sweet smell of decaying leaves in the soil around me. But despite knowing that afternoon sun shone through a sparse spring canopy, the quality of the light began to shift. I strained to keep the sun’s radiance on my face, but I lost my hold, and a weaker sun penetrated my awareness, filtering through fall foliage. I shivered with the autumn chill.

  When K9 Merlin bounded out of the brush, panting and clanging, I let out a whooshing breath of relief as the dead boy’s reality receded and spring returned. But my breath caught in my throat as the spirit sought the next tree, running into the dog’s path. With canine grace, the Belgian Malinois adjusted and veered slightly, as he continued up the hill to find me. The dead boy kept up his running too, and I chewed on my cuticles as I tracked him and again felt the creeping influence of the spirit over me. Clamping down hard on the raw desire to flee, I fought to stay in my own head. Steve, Merlin’s handler, was close and if I was going to get him out of the line of fire, I had to follow his instructions to the letter and finish the exercise.

  Merlin approached and gazed at me through the dark mask of his face. I held still with difficulty and ignored the dog, but I was sweating with the effort and still hyper-aware of the dead boy. Merlin turned from me and bounded down the hill to find Steve and after a moment, five short barks echoed through the woods. This was Merlin’s trained indication to tell Steve that he had found someone. A flash of high visibility orange worn by search and rescue personnel appeared through the brush and a few seconds later, the dog and a slightly built blond man raced up the hill to reach me. Forcing my voice to sound light and happy despite the urge I felt to scream at them to run, I stuck to the script and gave the dog praise, ruffling his ears and telling him he was a star.

  Steve sucked in air after the uphill run. “He’s working really good today.”

  I nodded absently as my eyes kept darting towards the dead boy. “Yeah, he found me pretty fast.” The thing was even closer now, crouched behind a scrubby bush. Anxious for us all to go, I stood up, shouldered my pack and started walking down the hill. Any minute now, my will would fail, the dead boy would break through and the real fight would start.

  Steve shot me a sheepish look as I tried to leave. “Hold up, Fia. I know you’re in a hurry, but this dog needs a real paycheck.” He presented Merlin with the tug toy that was the dog’s reward. As Merlin pulled mightily on the toy nearly tearing Steve off his feet, he spoke to the dog in a high pitched voice, telling him what a good boy he was. I stood near them, rigid with fear and impatience, mentally urging them to get the hell out of here. The dog danced with the praise, shook Steve even harder and put his rump in the air with his elbows on the ground, ready to play for as long as Steve would allow it.

  After a few long minutes of them playing and me shifting from foot to foot like I needed to pee, just as I thought I would vomit, Steve put the toy away and offered Merlin some water. “Ready to go back? Or do you need to hide again for someone else?”

  My throat felt thick and I bit off an answer. “You and Merlin are the last ones.” I adjusted m
y pack and then led Steve and Merlin down the hill at double time, my body angled sideways to accommodate the steepness and speed. As I came to the level ground, something cold and clammy grabbed my hand and my face twisted with revulsion. I shook hard to make it let go and walked faster.

  Steve missed nothing. “What’s wrong with your hand?”

  “Ugh… tick!” I blurted out just as it grabbed my hand again. This time I could feel how spongy soft the flesh felt, like it was ready to slough off the fingers. I yanked my hand in front of me and picked up my pace.

  Steve was grinning, clearly amused by my discomfort. “You ought to be used to that by now, girl.”

  The cloying smell of decay became stronger, flooding my nostrils and I clamped my mouth shut to keep from tasting it. I gave the dead boy a mental shove to get him to move away, but he came back more insistent. With my hands out of reach, he now grabbed at my braid and made my baseball cap tip backwards. I shoved him again with my mind, swearing out loud.

  “C’mon, Fia, it’s only a tick. Suck it up.”

  With the dead boy now holding the tail of my t-shirt and the rotting smell in my hair, I just glared at Steve. “They’re disgusting. I can’t help it.” At least that thing was not coming after him. I walked rapidly to increase my distance from Steve and Merlin.

  “You know what? I’m going to run back and get some cardio in. I’ll see you later.” I tightened the straps on my pack and took off down the trail with the dead boy following, snatching and grabbing at me every time I slowed my pace. As I approached the parking area where the search teams organized the training runs for the canines, I pulled into a copse of trees and whirled to face the wraith. Seeing red in the corner of my vision, I bared my teeth as my hands clawed at the air between us. The energy focused into my hands and I shoved the spirit back with everything I had. The creature wailed and crumpled to the ground. “Good… good, you deserve that, you son of bitch!”

  Fighting back tears, I gasped as my heart stuttered and my legs grew weak. I had to accept the futility of my situation. He would get up eventually and after that last shot, I was running on empty. Sweat beaded on my brow and I took shuddering breaths as I struggled to power up and strike the putrid revenant a second time. Go down fighting, damn it. Just as I thought it was over for me, a red hound with a short, glossy coat burst through the trees and began to nuzzle the dead boy. On the heels of the dog, a man in a bright orange shirt exploded into the copse of trees and then stopped short, breathing hard. He was tall with a mop of gray curly hair and the sagging features of late middle age. Like many tall people, he had poor posture and stooped slightly forward, as if trying to negate his height. The look on his face moved rapidly from shock to anger as he stared first at the whimpering dead boy and then at me. In the next second, he smoothed his expression and turned to look only at me, stepping between me and the wraith. “Oh, sorry,” he said with a clipped British accent. “Didn’t mean to disturb a call of nature. Zackie, come!” The hound came to the man’s side, its gaze never leaving the dead boy. “We’ll be off, then. Sorry again.”

  I stood frozen and wide-eyed as the dead thing crawled and then limped after the retreating man and dog. Never in my life have the dead just up and left after finding me. I had been fighting for days to make the things that came out of the woods go away. My heart wasn’t beating right anymore and my arms and legs felt weak, trembling and cramping painfully whenever I moved. The dizziness and vomiting would come eventually if I didn’t get some rest or something to eat.

  Shaking myself out of my stupor, I staggered out after the man, desperate to know how he managed to make that dead thing leave me. A quick look up and down the trail revealed nothing of the man. I bit my lip and my gut cramped as I worried that something bad could happen to him because he had intervened. I should not have let that shade follow him. Even though I had been distracted, this was no excuse for being irresponsible. The fact that the man might be able to see what I see, every bit as well as I could, was an aberration to me. It appeared that the man looked right at the dead thing, not with the vague sense of unease of someone with limited sensing ability, but with a full recognition of what he perceived. However, sensing and purging these entities are not necessarily matching skill sets. I had to find the man quickly.

  With no better options, I grabbed a protein bar out of my pack and crammed it into my mouth. Randomly choosing to follow the trail east, I began a quick Hasty Search, designed to rapidly cover areas with the highest probability of finding a missing person. The man was tall and could probably move a fair distance rapidly, but still, he could not have gone far. I limited the distance that I checked and looked carefully for signs of brush disturbance or fresh footprints along and on either side of the trail. Nothing. Frustrated, I turned around and started jogging west. As the trail turned, a deer path appeared, flattening the brush and heading downhill into the deeper woods. Squatting, I saw a partial footprint along the path. The step had crushed some vegetation, which was now in the process of springing back. Encouraged, I decided to take a chance on the deer path. Moving more slowly through the brambles and thicker growth, I sidled down the hill until I reached a more open area.

  Fifty yards away near a crop of boulders, the dead boy knelt with his arms around the red dog, sobbing into its fur. The man, crouching behind with a hand on the dead boy’s shoulder, spotted me and gave me a hard stare. I could not make sense of what I was seeing and began walking forward over the rocky ground, but the man immediately put his hand up to signal me to stop where I was. Another shot of acid washed into my gut, but ignoring my misgivings, I held my ground at his gesture. The man disregarded me now and gently turned the dead boy around to face him. He got on his knees to be on eye level and said something that I could not catch. The dead boy appeared to nod once. As the wraith turned back to the dog, it grasped the harness and the dog began leading it towards the farthest edge of the clearing. After three steps, my eyes were suddenly blinded by a light so bright that it made me lose my equilibrium on the uneven ground. The weight of the pack pushed me forward and I came down hard on my knees as my hands flew up to shield my eyes.

  “What’s happened?!” I shouted as I frantically rubbed my eyes. “I can’t see anything! Are you all right?” I had no idea a wraith could do this. I was blind and defenseless if this thing came after me now.

  My breath caught as I heard footsteps approach me and I sensed someone was near. As I rubbed my tearing eyes, I began seeing shapes, albeit poorly. The man was standing above me, but he did not offer to help me up from the rocky ground. All he said was, “How could you? Are you a psychopath? He was just a child.” I then heard him stalk off before I could think of anything to say.

  I was in a nightmare, alone in the woods and all but blind. I grabbed the radio out of my pants cargo pocket and tried to call for help. No use. The radio transmission was blocked because I had gone downhill into a bowl. My heart was thudding rapidly and a fear-sweat was starting to pool under my arms. Close to losing all sense of direction, I forced myself to bite back the panic and think. Stumbling blindly through wilderness could get me killed. Either the dead boy would find me or I would take a bad fall and break every bone in my body. Fumbling in the breast pocket of my 5.11 tactical shirt, I found my sunglasses and put them on to ease my eyes. At least I was visible in this shirt. The color was so brightly orange, you could see me from space. With several search and rescue teams training in the area, someone would find me if I could not walk out on my own. The SAR teams would probably be delighted to put their skills to use. But what if that thing came back for me? That would be the greater danger compared to anything the wilderness had to offer. I sat back on my haunches and began rubbing my bruised knees to get the feeling back. The sunglasses were helping and I was able to see a little more of my surroundings. I kept alert for the return of the dead boy.

  After a short while, I could see enough of my surroundings that I was confident of finding my way out. As I staggered to my
feet, I cursed the man. Why had that bastard left me like this? And what difference did it make if that dead thing was once a child? It only looked vaguely like a child now. It was just a freakish imitation of life. I was bone tired of dealing with these things, but it was not like I could just decide to avoid them. God knows I tried to do that by coming here. Feeling trapped, I ground my teeth and forced myself to move.

  I struggled up the hill, my pace slowing with every step as I sunk deeper into despair. To distract myself, I thought about the man who I now called The Bastard. Little by little, my thoughts turned towards revenge. I had a fixed blade knife in my pack. I could slash his tires if I could figure out which car belonged to him. Maybe this makes me a bad person, but I justified it as psychological self-defense. If I’ve learned nothing else, it’s better to feel anger than weakness. When I reached the trail, I used all my senses to probe the woods for The Bastard and I realized that the dead thing was really and truly gone. It had not come back for me and it was not waiting in the woods. The Bastard made it follow him and, more importantly, made it disappear. While a part of my brain argued that I was just being a masochist, I allowed myself to feel a sliver of hope. I did not have to face endless days of fighting it off or brace myself for another dangerous bout of fatigue. Maybe, just maybe, The Bastard had a solution. I started running towards the parking lot to find him and nearly collided with Steve.

  Steve staggered, but regained his balance. “I was trying to find you. We have a call out! There’s a missing autistic boy.”

  CHAPTER 2

  We arrived at the scene in a neighborhood of neat little houses, all built in the same style. The only thing that varied was the colors. The lawns were still blanched from the winter, but areas of green were beginning to show. There was the usual suburban landscaping, but nothing too thick or prickly that would be hard to force my way into. This area was not going to be physically difficult to search, but there were a lot of nooks and crannies where a small boy could hide. I wiped the sweat from my face with a trembling hand and concentrated on mustering my energy for the search ahead.