Read the First Chapter of A Soul’s Curse

Spending Saturdays with chatty ghosts from Massachusetts’ past wasn’t exactly a typical hobby—unless you happen to have death magic and a passion for awkward conversations with long-dead celebrities most people only know from history books.

“Oh, come on, Theo. Just give me one day. One day of letting me possess your body. I swear my buried treasure is still somewhere off the coast of Cape Cod. If we find it, I’ll share it with you. You’ll be rich!” Sam Bellamy, wealthiest pirate in recorded history and former captain of the seafaring Whydah some three hundred years ago, approached me in his frilly, loose-fitting shirt and long, tattered coat, once richly decorated with elaborate stitching and gold buttons. As a very dead ghost, the golden sunlight rising over the bay shimmered right through Sam’s transparent body, emitting a faint glow of magic that highlighted his rugged features.

“And what’s a ghost going to do with gold? I swear to the heavens, Samuel …” Another Massachusetts great, the ghost of Emily Dickinson, sat across from me on a stone crypt, her posture composed and slightly aloof. Her ghost always had this serene, introspective expression, with her gentle features reflecting her quiet and thoughtful nature. “It’s been decades since I’ve come across a talented witch who can both see and hear ghosts, and it’s been over a hundred years since I met someone who I can have an intelligent conversation with. Don’t you dare drag Theo into your ridiculous treasure hunt!” She gave Sam a hard stare, who then backed down and made his disappointment known with an exceptionally dramatic sigh.

Lizzie Borden suddenly raised a brow. Stuck in Victorian garb, she was forever destined to wear that high-collared dress covering every inch of her body, and she looked mighty uncomfortable in it. “Oh, perhaps I might be allowed to take over Theo’s body, then?”

Everyone glanced over toward the curious ghost. Lizzie might never have been convicted of murdering her family with that hatchet, but she refused to either confirm or deny her involvement in the matter with any of us, even a hundred years after the incident. “What? I think it would be fun to show off a few ghostly party tricks, and if I’m not mistaken, I believe school is now back in session. So many drunk, unsuspecting college souls to torment.” An unsettling smile crept across her pale face. Her name might have been the least known of the group, but the mystery surrounding her made her the most terrifying in my eyes.

“You know,” I told Emily as I raised my brows, “a lot of smart, well-respected people lived and died in Massachusetts. I’m sure Henry David Thoreau and Nathaniel Hawthorne are wandering around here somewhere. You should go find them. Forget these bozos.”

“Excuse me!” A stern male voice startled me. I had forgotten about the sensitive statesman standing off to my side. “I’ll remind you I was a well-respected politician in my time. I helped draft the Articles of Confederation and signed the Declaration of Independence. I refuse to be called a … bozo. Whatever that means.” Sam Adams, whose likeness was probably more recognized for being on the front of a beer bottle than for his actual accomplishments during the American Revolution, puffed out his chest and adjusted his ridiculous powdered wig that marked him as a status figure in society … two hundred and fifty years ago.

“Okay, okay. Fine. I take it back … no one is a bozo.” I pushed off from the big oak tree I was leaning against and held up my hands defensively. “You are all very …” I couldn’t come up with the ending to that thought. What encouraging words could one possibly say to a famous writer, a pirate, a government official, and a possible unhinged murderer?

“Distinguished?” Emily offered.

“Yes. Thank you, Emily. Distinguished.” If I could have given her a pat on the back, I would have, but while powerful ghosts like her could absorb enough energy around them to create an apparition for others to see, her figure was still made up of remnants of her magical aura. I could feel her magic touching me, but my hand would simply pass right through her incorporeal body. “You’re all very distinguished individuals, and you should be proud of the things you’ve accomplished in your lifetimes.” I glanced hesitantly over toward Lizzie and Sam Bellamy. “Maybe,” I added.

“When will you let me taste pizza again!” the pirate growled. “And that fancy coffee with chocolate in it.”

“And do you remember what happened the last time I allowed you to possess my body?” I scolded. “Your magical aura couldn’t settle down inside me and I ended up having to use my own magic to vomit up your ghost … and the pizza.”

He rolled his eyes and muttered something about how I wouldn’t have lasted one night on his crew.

I took in the Howard Street Cemetery as the conversation swayed and they went on bickering about rude college students and how awful modern fashion was, which I secretly thought was their way of wishing they could actually change the clothes they were buried in.

Around me, an assortment of eclectic gravestones peeked out from the dying patches of grass that took over the field. Although a well-known tourist attraction in Salem, this early in the morning there wasn’t much activity going on in the cemetery. Well, except for the other wandering ghosts who were too afraid to come over and join the conversation.

As far as I knew, both seeing and talking to the dead wasn’t a very popular type of magical power. Magic often developed and took shape from life experiences, and while I wasn’t the only one who lived through a traumatic event, the intensity, nature, and timing of my experience awakened something in me that resulted in this rare ability to bridge the gap between death and life. Maybe it came from loneliness, or perhaps it was my own way of punishing myself knowing I couldn’t save those who were already dead. Either way, it was more than just communicating, I felt a bond with these ghosts. I also felt a connection to things that could cause death, like poisons or injuries.

“Women in long pants?” Emily suddenly gasped, drawing my attention away from my thoughts. “That’s just absurd!”

With a devious plan in mind, I snatched my phone out of my backpack and pulled up a celebrity photo to show Emily … a photo of a scandalous performer wearing black fishnets, shiny platform boots, and a strip of fabric for a top that was so thin it left little to the imagination. 

“Good gracious!” If ghosts could blush, Emily would have. “During my time, that woman would have been hung by the thin strap of her … garment … if she went out in public like that!”

“Times have changed.” I shrugged at her, then gestured to myself. “I mean, look at me. I took about five seconds to comb my hair this morning. My jeans are fraying at the ends, my t-shirt has a hole in the armpit, and I’m wearing two different socks … and I’m totally going into work like this.”

What they didn’t know was that while I would have loved to dress in something nicer, most of what little disposable income I had was spent on herbs, plants, and other magical contraptions for making spells.

“Oh, Theodore Kingston.” Emily lifted a hand to my face. Her powerful magic tickled my skin. “Your sandy-blond hair rivals the golden hues of a sunlit beach, and your blue eyes sparkle with the clarity of a pristine ocean. You are perfect just the way you are, Theo. Never change.”

I nearly choked on my tongue. “Please tell me you are not flirting with me, Emily Dickinson. You’re a bit, uh, old for me, and you know I have a boyfriend.”

“Not to mention she’s also a bit dead,” the pirate added with a deep chuckle.

Emily pursed her lips together and frowned. “I was gifted with the exceptional ability to write eloquent prose. Forgive me, Theo. I suppose I’ll just take back my compliment. You’re just an average man by today’s standards, anyway.”

I let the jest slide because a moment later, a sense of awareness settled over me as the ground started to softly vibrate beneath my feet. I searched around me, but couldn’t pinpoint the location it came from. “Did any of you feel that?”

Sam Adams threw his hands up and cackled. “Of course not, Theo! When was the last time any of us touched solid ground and actually felt it?”

The vibrations were becoming stronger, louder, like an army of horses rushing toward me. “I think there’s … something coming.”

“Divine Lord save me,” Lizzie ground out. “If it’s Paul Revere again, sleepriding while obnoxiously screaming, ‘The British are coming!,’ I will rip out his vocal cords and kill the man myself.”

“He’s already dead,” I reminded her.

“Then I will rip him from the afterlife and kill him again!”

I swung my backpack over my shoulder, still trying to locate the cause of the vibrations. If it had anything to do with death … perhaps, say, a stampede of Civil War soldiers riding on their horses toward their last battle … I would have been able to sense it with my magic. But I couldn’t latch on to any lost souls, wandering wraiths, or any other beings that should have been resting peacefully in the ground.

“Could that be it?” I turned around to follow Emily’s finger toward the chubby blob of living fat racing toward me. At least four times my size, its long, skinny legs were too small for its jiggling body, and its large, googly eyes were looking in two different directions. A single antenna flopped over its face, and its mangy tail flapped with each awkward gallop.

“What the …” My hand tightened around the strap of my backpack.

“I reckon yet another student tried to summon a unicorn from a different realm, and failed miserably.” Sam Bellamy took a step closer to me and whispered in my ear, “Any chance I can possess your body now? I’m pretty sure I can take down that vile creature with your bare hands. Come on, I’ll make you look like a hero!”

With panic driving my movement, I didn’t bother to answer him, turning to take off and run as fast as I could out of that cemetery.

“See you next week, Theo!” I heard Emily’s fleeting voice. “Don’t die! But if you do, you better come back as a ghost and find me!”

My backpack smacked against my back as I weaved in and out of the ancient headstones, trying not to trip on the uneven land or grave markers hidden by overgrown grass. I leapt over a small commemorative statue, racing toward the concrete footpath that led toward the exit. 

My heart was pounding, but my breathing was steady and rhythmic. I didn’t think for one minute I stood a chance against a beast like that, whether or not it had any intelligence. But running? Now that was something I was good at. Having been an all-star in track and field during both high school and college, and winning numerous competitions, I was at least confident in that ability.

A garbling howl sounded from close behind me, and despite how fast I was for a human, the fact the monster was exceptionally larger than me meant it could cover four times as much ground.

“Out of the way!” I screamed at two pedestrians walking across the sidewalk just outside the cemetery. For a second, the looks on their faces flashed annoyance, but then quickly morphed to terror when they saw the strange creature closing in behind me. They didn’t think twice, screaming as they immediately turned to scramble in the opposite direction.

I flicked out two fingers, casting the magic spell and aiming it behind me. Another strangled howl echoed in the damp morning air as the monster’s disproportionately sized tiny feet slipped and it slid across the busy main street, taking out a few parked cars and setting off their alarms. Maybe not my smartest move.

Tires screeched and car horns blared, as if that would do anything against the crazy unicorn imposter. The farther I ran toward Salem Common, hurtling over benches and garbage cans, the more attention I brought to the lunatic man being chased by some weird reincarnation of a child’s stuffed toy.

Not really sure where I was going, I knew I couldn’t risk leading this thing into the busy part of town. I turned down a residential street hoping it would continue following me. I stopped running about halfway down the street, then spun around. I could do simple spells with my sign language magic, but my true power? That was control over death. I didn’t want to kill the poor animal, if it even was one. It wasn’t like it chose to be put in the middle of downtown Salem on a weekend. But, if the police were on their way, they’d kill it anyway, and I had no other ideas about how to contain it or send it back to where it came from.

As the beast continued to charge at me, poison seeped from my skin, forming a cloud of magical energy in front of me. Like many toxins and poisons, it wasn’t visible, but I could feel the magic floating at my will, moving with each gesture of my hand. I threw out my attack, and while the creature momentarily paused, it shook it off and regrouped quickly.

“Crap.” Either it was immune to the poison or the spell wasn’t powerful enough. All I had done was successfully piss it off.

Just as I was about to turn and continue running, something suddenly stunned the creature and it froze in place. Its body began changing, morphing. Underneath its scaly skin, lumps and bumps were moving and expanding, like it was boiling from the inside out. The monster itself looked just as confused as I was about what was happening as its body blew up like a marshmallow about to explode in the microwave.

“What the …” 

I stacked my arms, clenching both fists in front of me, activating a shield just as the poor thing erupted into a fireworks display of internal organs. Chunks of gooey flesh splattered against my invisible protection bubble, stuck to the hoods of cars, and littered the street, leaving behind pieces of rancid-smelling innards and streaks of dark red blood.

When I figured I was safe from being slapped in the face by monster intestines, I dropped the shield and began searching around for what might have caused the animal to suddenly pop like a balloon. Maybe the person who summoned it tried to call it back and failed, or maybe it developed a bit of indigestion from eating one too many people before it got to me. I knew it wasn’t my magic, but whatever happened, the beast was no longer alive, which thankfully meant it was also no longer my problem.

Exhaling a breath of relief, I sat down on a small stretch of clean curb, ignoring what I was pretty sure was part of an eyeball next to my foot, and unzipped my backpack to remove my water bottle and phone. It was the perfect almost-fall day—a brief stretch of time during the year when it wasn’t sweltering hot or freezing cold. The sun was rising higher in the sky, the trees lining the street casting long shadows across the row of tightly packed houses. If I inhaled deeply, I could taste just a hint of salt on my tongue from the nearby bay.

Looking at the time on my phone, I realized that thanks to my early departure from the cemetery, I had extra time to kill before I went into work later this afternoon.

With one last look toward where the silly-looking monster had been, I hesitated for a moment, suddenly worried that it might reincarnate and swallow me whole. Death by mutant unicorn wasn’t on my list of preferred ways to die, and I didn’t particularly want to share that story with my ghostly friends for the rest of eternity. It never returned, thankfully, and I felt no vibrations rumbling the ground, but I did momentarily feel this odd unsettling feeling in my gut. Out of the corner of my eye I thought I saw a sharp shadow ducking mysteriously behind a parked car. It could have been a cat, a piece of trash, or perhaps just my mind playing tricks on me, but if there was anything there, it wasn’t attacking me. I took that as a sign to let it go and move on, knowing there was somewhere else I needed to be.