Souls Dryft

  A struggling would-be writer who can't seem to get her life together, Grace avoids daily frustrations by disappearing into the pages of her book. There the characters she's created have become so real to her that she can no longer believe they're fictional. After all, she's lived with them since she was thirteen and one of them —a lusty, blue-eyed, accident-prone pirate— appears to have escaped into her world, set on causing trouble.

  As true life begins to mimic the plot of her novel and the edge of reality blurs, Grace knows she can't live in both worlds forever. Sooner or later she'll have to face reality. If only she can figure out which is hers.

  Souls Dryft

  by

  Jayne Fresina

  MF, Romance, Time-travel

  Twisted E Publishing, LLC

  www.twistedepublishing.com

  A TWISTED E-PUBLISHING BOOK

  Souls Dryft

  Copyright © 2013, 2016 by Jayne Fresina

  Edited by Marie Medina

  Second E-book Publication: February 2016, SMASHWORDS EDITION

  Cover design by K Designs

  All cover art and logo copyright © 2016, Twisted E Publishing, LLC.

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission.

  All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

  All characters engaged in sexual acts are over the age of 18.

  DEDICATION

  To Dad

  As I was going up the stair,

  I met a woman who wasn’t there.

  She wasn’t there again today;

  I wish that she would go away.

  A Beginning

  Every story has many beginnings, but one of mine happened here. I was thirteen, recovering from a hideously unflattering haircut— about which I was comforted by my father’s logic, "There’s only a week between a bad haircut and a good one" —and had just enjoyed four squares of Cadbury’s milk chocolate in a hapless attempt to console myself for this being the last day of the summer holiday. Well, it wasn’t exactly the very last day before school started, but it was the last day here in Norfolk, with Aunt Rose and Uncle Bob; after this it was all downhill. Our mother was practically salivating at the idea of getting us back to school and ending the six- week bacchanalia. It was time for us to wear uniforms again and be miserably subjugated. We were children, for pity’s sake; we weren’t supposed to be running feral, were we?

  So here I was, clinging to the last few precious moments of a gilded afternoon, as if my life’s blood drained out. That sun melting behind the distant pines was my will to live, my own strength fading away. Everything was horrible. Nothing would ever be good again.

  Like I said, I was thirteen.

  Somewhere below, my father pressed the car horn, and I determinedly ignored it. He worried about practical things, like traffic and getting home in daylight. If only he could appreciate the sorrowful, drooping beauty of a sunset and not keep looking at his watch. But I despaired. My father, much as I loved him, had no patience for my meandering soul. He lived his life by right and proper, rule and schedule, as dictated by our mother. Sometimes I wondered if I truly was the fruit of their loins, or if I had, as was often suggested, been left on the doorstep by gypsies.

  Soon they’d send the Good Daughter to find me, but she wouldn’t dare come up here, where it was damp and—God forbid—slimy. Little brat.

  I wanted to stay here forever, to live at Souls Dryft, with Uncle Bob and Aunt Rose. The chimneys of their house were visible from this high vantage point in the crumbling, flint stone tower of the castle ruins, and they seemed to reach up to me like the arms of a child. The house wanted me to stay, I was sure. But for now I was merely a sulky teenager and had no choice.

  That didn’t mean I couldn’t stage the occasional protest and keep them all waiting. I was a horrible child. Ask anyone. But when you’ve been a child as many times as me, it gets rather samey.

  Perched half-way up that ancient stone staircase, I thought I was blessedly alone for just a few minutes more. I was not, of course, but I didn’t realize it then. The creature hadn’t yet begun to cause trouble, because she was asleep. Inside me.

  And I— the worst maladroit that ever put one foot before the other—was unknowingly about to wake her.

  Sleepy fingers of sunset fumbled over that mossy old stone ruin and found me there with my scuffed, dog-eared notebook, pen poised at the top of a new page. Here goes.

  The ink moved smoothly, quickly, but it was no longer guided by my hand. It was led by someone else, someone stronger, older, wiser. Someone who wanted to tell me a story. I didn’t know, back then, that she needed something in return, so I let her write:

  An introduction to a most lamentable heroine,whose melancholy lesson is here to be learned,in a story contrived from select scenes of jiggery pokeryand ending in her comeuppance, most rightfully deserved.

  She has no qualities one might expect in a heroine. As you would too, had you so little conscience, she sleeps deeply and contentedly. In peaceful repose, her face reveals nothing of the wickedness within, but for that scar on her chin — the souvenir of a childhood tumble from some height. Consider, if you will, that ladies in her day and age are not supposed to climb trees, let alone fall out of them.

  While we have this moment and she is suspended in sleep and time, let me tell you something of her in warning. You may decide against making her acquaintance, in which case I shall save you the trouble of reading further.

  Firstly, she has been known to curse like the proverbial sailor on shore leave; secondly, she has no qualms in winning an argument by any method, including, not just her flapping tongue, but her strong teeth. She believes in vengeance as the only salve for the many injustices against her, real or imagined. Her eyes are never softened with tears, for she is a hard-hearted soul, and the only occasion her cheeks are known to blush is when they have just been rightfully slapped. There are folk who will tell you that she is always found where she is least wanted and never found when needed.

  With these odds against her, she should let some other, more deserving soul take her place in our story. Yet she knows nothing of our expectations in a leading lady. Even if she did, she would be careless of her scant chance at winning our favor and would likely thumb her nose.

  So, if you seek any great learning or moral lesson herein, best look elsewhere. I promise nothing more than a tale of one obstinate, wicked woman, about whom — most folk will tell you — she has nary a good, honest bone in her body.

  But she will soon wake. Rain drums hard at her window and leaks through the rafters above. One drop, oozing through a crack in the old wood, lingers a moment, stretching, and then falls, aimed directly for the tip of her nose. Peace is about to be shattered.

  * * * *

  "Hurry up, Grace!" my mother yelled from the car. "What on earth are you doing up there?"

  Leaping down the last few steps of the tower, notebook almost slipping from my fingers and with my heart thumping wildly, I had no breath to answer. Fortunately, "What on earth are you doing?" is something my mother asked out of habit, in the same way that other people cursed or lit up cigarettes when anxious. She didn't really want to know, especially in my case.

  I felt windblown, chewed up and spat out, because, in the time it took the sun to sink finally out of sight behind those tall pines, an entire lifetime had rushed through me, and it was still there, like a generator, throbbing deep in my bones. The being that had possessed my pen for those few moments had taken my body likewise on a journey. But it hadn't lasted long. Not this ti
me.

  Now I was a child again. How did that happen? Oh, the injustice.

  The Good Daughter, Marian, was in the back seat, blowing bubbles with her gum, letting them go "smack". No one told her off, too distracted by my naughtiness, as usual. Let me tell you something about Marian; she was the compensation for me —as in "Thank God we have one daughter we can rely on." And that other cherished nugget, "At least we have one daughter to do us proud." Apparently, by the time I was three, my parents decided they had better try again, despite the fact that neither of them knew what to do with the first child they produced. Marian was a proper baby, one they could all gurgle over. The sense of relief was tangible; even I felt it at her christening, as I sat on the kitchen floor decapitating a doll with a bread knife, listening to all the aunts and uncles dutifully paying homage to the Sainted Child.

  Marian did her coat buttons up without being told. She was always picked first for teams. Not that I was jealous. No ten year old should have blinding white socks, is all I’m saying.

  "Just look!" My mother’s voice ripped into the summer evening, scattering wildlife. Even the fat, docile doves took flight from the tower in a sudden panic of disgruntled warbling. "She’s torn her shorts again. I don’t know why I bother trying to make her look decent."

  Marian opened the car door, sliding over so I could jump in. Rick Astley was playing on the radio: "Never Gonna Give You Up." My father’s finger itched for the volume knob, but my mother handed him a sticky square of flapjack, which required both hands to eat – one carefully cradled in anticipation of falling crumbs — and he ate whatever she gave him, despite the fact that none of us were starving. For the journey home, the car was crammed full of provisions, as if we might be stranded in some desolate place and World War Three break out before we got back.

  Primly posed on her side of the seat, Marian exclaimed, "You’re a mess, fuzzy head!"

  "Shut up, Princess Pea Brain."

  "Spotty, Spotty, Fatso." She pinched my arm, whispering, "If you can pinch more than an inch…"

  I pinched her back. "Bag of bones. Stinking, maggoty corpse!"

  "Ow," she screamed. "Mum, tell her!"

  Our mother dutifully craned her head around. "For Heaven’s sake, Grace, shut the door. You’re letting flies in. You’ve got chocolate on your face again. Don’t put your muddy feet on the back of my seat."

  Ah, back to the old routine.

  "Where were you all that time?" Marian demanded, as if she had any right to question a genius.

  "Marian," I assured her calmly and solicitously, "you are a hideous, festering carbuncle on the face of humanity."

  While she was still absorbing the insult, I twisted around to watch Souls Dryft and the ancient tower ruins slowly disappear from the back window. No, I reminded myself – nothing is gone forever. I couldn’t see them now, but they were still there.

  "I won’t tell you again, Grace. Stop kicking the back of my seat!"

  Sighing, I flipped open my notebook. With all these distractions sent to try me, I hadn’t got beyond the beginning yet, but I must struggle valiantly onward. The entire literary world eagerly awaited the outpourings of my fevered mind. Surely.

  "And don’t write in the car, Grace, or you’ll make yourself sick." My mother turned the radio down, and the music faded away to a whisper.

  Marian blew another bubble, popping it loudly in my face.

  Thus I was absorbed again into my own life, but I thought how fantastic it would be, if I really could be transported to another world, just by running up that old stone staircase. Anywhere else would suit me just fine. Surely Jane Austen and Emily Bronte never put up with such as this.

  One day, I’d return here to write an ending.

  But my past, like a runaway train, was already catching up with me.

  Part One

  Shirts Laundered

  Chapter One

  Twenty Years Later

  Grace

  Recent events considered and by my standards, it was quite a normal day. Accustomed to calamity, it was, perhaps, only to be expected that I should find myself trapped between the uncooperative glass panels of a formerly revolving door, jammed there by the satin ruffles on a hideous hoop-skirted dress that would not look out of place in a pantomime. The dress shredded, my hands bruised, mascara running down my flushed cheeks, I was finally freed, shot out into the cool air with the speed of a clay pigeon. People passing turned to look without stopping, dragging curious children hurriedly in their wake. For a moment I forgot where I was, or who I was—again, nothing unusual for me—and then I heard my mother’s voice.

  Hurrying after me with my coat, she worried, not because I’d run out of a wedding reception to chase after a ghost, but that it might rain. As if that could possibly make things any worse. Too exhausted to argue, I slid my arms through the sleeves, thrusting my hand into a pocket I hadn’t used in almost a year.

  As my fingertips slid down into the frayed edge of torn lining a sharp corner pricked my finger. His dry cleaning ticket, accidentally kept, all those months, buried in my pocket.

  If I closed my eyes I could see him again, as he was the night we met, a familiar stranger with no awareness of time running out and less than a year to live. There was something about him—like a stiff pain in the neck you know you’ll get if you lay a certain way, yet you wake up in that position regardless, because it’s habit. He walked through a doorway into my life, stirring memories that lay dormant inside me. Like a breeze shattering a dandelion clock he broke apart this fragile world, leaving the seeds of my reality to drift through air and time, taking me with them.

  Wait a minute, I hear you shout.

  Here we are almost at the end already, so what happened, between running down the steps of that ancient stone tower at the age of thirteen, until now?

  Well, a lot happened actually, all of it stultifying, none pertinent to my story—that is, until I met Richard, ten months before I got stuck in that revolving door. Ten months before he died.

  It was a few days before my thirty-third birthday, in fact.

  * * * *

  The evening began with the usual chaos.

  "The Angel Gabriel’s been detained by the police," she squeaked, running up to me with music sheets clutched to her blouse. "You’ll have to find a substitute."

  I would have asked why that responsibility fell to me, but she stared with the glossy, panic-stricken eyes of a cornered fawn, her life about to be torn out through her throat. Once, the poor thing was so eager to coordinate the annual nativity play, puzzled why the more seasoned members of staff gleefully left her to it. Now, a pitiful, trembling wreck, she probably couldn’t tell me her own name, let alone why she was here. I could hardly abandon her, could I?

  The school hall was filled to capacity, some parents eager to see their little star perform, most sprawled apathetically in their seats, or shrinking in their coats, dragged there under duress. On our side of the curtain, Joseph threw up like the girl from The Exorcist; two wise men were engaged in a fistfight, and the Virgin Mary, in a large neck brace, rehearsed all her lines to the ceiling. I had just confiscated a pack of playing cards from the shepherds, when I was informed that the Angel Gabriel would not be appearing tonight, except possibly before her caseworker.

  A little toffee hammer began knocking away inside my head. If I wasn’t out of here in one hour the dry cleaners would be closed and I wouldn’t have my interview suit for tomorrow. Every other piece of clothing I had was stained with ink, coffee, or something best not identified, but my interview suit was pristine—even the buttons still sewn on with the manufacturer’s own thread. Without that suit, I didn’t stand a chance of a new job, and I’d spent weeks preparing for this interview.

  But someone had to clean up Joseph’s vomit, before it got stepped in. I supposed it would have to be me.

  * * * *

  Precisely one hour later, heart thumping like an angry fist on a locked door, I sprinted across the road,
using my bag for shelter. Torrential rain, gleaming spitefully in the amber glow of the streetlamps, ran down the back of my neck and seeped inside my shoes. Some fool, roaring around the corner without a care for innocent pedestrians, swerved to a halt in a squeal of impatient rubber. I ran on, no time to stop. Almost there. It was like one of those nightmares when you can’t run fast enough, the ground is melting and your legs seize up. Almost there…the harsh lights of the dry cleaners were on, but it looked deserted. Please, please…

  I could have sworn I checked for oncoming traffic, but dodging out between two parked cars I felt the heat of an engine, breaks slammed on just in time. Peering out from under my bag, I confirmed it was the same maniac that almost killed me before. With an irate purr, his posh car swung into a parking spot beside the dry cleaners and he leaned out, already shouting,

  "Are you out of your mind?"

  I couldn’t even gasp out a "sorry". I was out of breath, and when I saw the cell phone pressed to his ear, I swiftly concluded he spoke to someone on the other end of it – not me.

  Dashing through the door of the dry cleaners, I fumbled in my bag for the ticket. The white-haired man at the counter looked up from his crossword puzzle, eyeing the puddle of water I left on his floor.

  "I thought I wouldn’t make it," I sputtered.

  "We’re open late tonight," he said calmly, observing me with the thoughtful eyes of an owl. "Late night closing up till New Year. Sign says. On the door."