Soul Screamers, Volume 1

Stunned, I leaned back to see his face, and the hurt I found there seemed to leach through me, leaving me cold with dread. “What happened?”


Nash exhaled slowly and leaned back against the side of the slide. Light from the streetlamp above played on his hand when he rubbed his forehead, as if to fend off the memory. “He fell off a ladder trying to paint the shutters on a second-story window and hit his head on some bricks bordering my mom’s flower bed. She was pruning the bushes when he fell, so she saw it happen.”

“Where were you?” I spoke softly, afraid he’d stop talking if my voice shattered his memories.

“In the backyard, but I came running when she screamed. When I got there, she was crying, holding his head on her lap. There was blood all over her legs. Then my dad stopped breathing, and she started singing.

“It was beautiful, Kaylee.” His words grew urgent and he sat straighter, like he was trying to convince me. “Eerie and sad. And there was his soul, just kind of hanging above them both. I tried to guide it. I didn’t really know what I was doing, but I had to try to save him. But he made me stop. His soul… I could hear it. He said he had to go, and I should take care of my mom. He said she would need me, and he was right. She felt guilty because she’d asked him to paint the shutters. She hasn’t been the same since.”

I didn’t realize I was holding my breath until I had to take the next one. “How old were you?”

“Ten.” His eyes closed. “My dad’s was the first soul I ever saw, and I couldn’t save him. Not without killing someone else, and he wouldn’t let me risk my own life. Or my mom’s.” He opened his eyes to stare at me intently. “And he was right about that too, Kaylee. We can’t take an innocent life to spare someone who’s supposed to die.”

He’d get no argument from me there. But… “What if Meredith wasn’t supposed to die? What if it wasn’t her time?”

“It was. That’s how it works.” Nash’s voice held the conviction of a child professing belief in Santa Claus. He was a little too sure, as if the strength of his assertion could make up for some secret doubt.

“How do you know?”

“Because there are schedules. Official lists. There are people who make sure death is carried out the way it’s supposed to be.”

I blinked at him, eyes narrowed in surprise. “Are you serious?”

“Unfortunately.” A breeze of bitterness swept across his face, but it was gone before I was even sure it was there in the first place.

“That sounds so…bureaucratic.”

He shrugged. “It’s a very well-organized system.”

“Every system has flaws, Nash.” He started to disagree, but I rushed on. “Think about it. Three girls have died in the same area in the past three days, each with no known cause. They all just fell over dead. That’s not the natural order of things. It’s the very definition of ‘unnatural.’ Or at least ‘suspicious.’”

“It’s definitely unusual,” he admitted. Nash rubbed his temples again and suddenly sounded very tired. “But even if they weren’t supposed to die, there’s nothing we can do about it without getting someone else killed.”

“Okay…” I couldn’t argue with that logic. “But if someone isn’t meant to die, does the penalty for saving him still apply?”

Nash looked shocked suddenly, as if that possibility had never occurred to him. “I don’t know. But I know someone who might.”





Chapter 10





“So who’s this Tod?” I slurped the last of my soda, watching as passing headlights briefly illuminated his features, then abandoned him to short stretches of shadow. It was like rediscovering him with each beam of light that found his face, and I couldn’t stop watching.

“He works second shift at the hospital.” Nash flicked his blinker on as he made a left-hand turn.

“Doing what?”

“Tod’s…an intern.” He took another left, and Arlington Memorial lay before us on the right, the mirrored windows of the new surgical tower reflecting the streetlights back at us.

I gathered the wrappers from our meal and shoved them into the paper sack on the floorboard between my feet. “I didn’t know interns had set schedules.”

Nash turned into the dimly lit parking garage and glanced in both directions, looking for an empty spot near the entrance. But he was also obviously avoiding my eyes. “He’s not exactly a medical intern.”

“What is he, then? Exactly.”