The Lost Soul

By Adele Morris

Black eyes. Seeing eyes. Death eyes. As Keeper of the Dead, Sondra Carstairs can see, hear and feel souls that no longer walk among the living. Or she could when younger. But as an eighteen-year-old, Sondra ran from everything that it meant to be Keeper, including Anona Island, the home of generations of Keepers. Twenty-two years since Sondra ran from being Keeper, she receives an appeal from a lost soul which forces her to return and face the darkness of Anona. Anona, the home of the Keepers, is no longer a safe haven for anyone, including Sondra. And when she learns just what someone is prepared to do, she must decide whether becoming Keeper is worth stepping on the path she’d avoided for so long or not. For the Keeper protects. She protects the dead. She protects the living. Embracing the darkness within is Sondra’s only chance to survive.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley
• Release date: May 9, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463061060

Adele Morris

Adele Morris, a pseudonym for Katryn Hancock, was born in Glasgow and grew up in the northern suburbs of South Australia. She has a degree in business management and has worked in finance, technology and project management. She lives in Adelaide, where she has spent the last twenty years exploring story and mythology. The Lost Soul is her first novel and explores the mythology of sea and the power of the living world that the ancients believed all people once had access to.

Book preview

Part 1

Dreams or Memories?

Adelaide, South Australia

Who looks outside, dreams;

Who looks inside, awakens.

[Carl Jung]

Chapter 1

New Year’s Eve

Dreamer. Messenger. Artist.

Storm’s coming.

In dreams, some people forget who they are, while others begin to remember. Sondra Carstairs woke up from a dream with her pulse racing. Confused and disoriented. Aware that something was very wrong.

She wasn’t a dreamer. She was a live-in-the-now kind of girl. The world of dreams she’d left behind with imaginary childhood friends and that damn island. She most certainly didn’t need dreams to remember who she was.

The only problem: it wasn’t the truth. In fact, it was so far from being the truth that Sondra suspected she was in danger of spontaneously combusting, a result of years of such ridiculous denial. She hadn’t set out to deliberately lie to others or even to herself, it was just…

How do you tell people the truth? How do you tell them you aren’t like they are, and it isn’t just the living you see and hear?

It was a trick question. The answer was: there was no easy way to tell people. So, she hadn’t told them. As a result, others thought she was just like them.

How wrong they were.

Dreamer. Messenger. Artist.

Twenty-two years ago, over two decades, Sondra had run from Anona Island to Australia where she’d believed she would be safe. All for nought. She’d been found out.

And, by a dream of all things…

1:07 A.M. and Sondra was fully awake despite the fact she’d only just crawled into bed less than an hour ago after another twelve hour shift. Around her, the house was still. Her eyes sought out the moonlit silhouette of her uncluttered bedroom, needing the assurance of normality. Everything was as it should be.

So why do I feel so aware?

Despite the summer night, there was a definite chill in the air. As the trees beyond her window swayed to and fro, tendrils of moonlight danced on the far wall. Sondra clutched her quilt, seeking warmth from the lightweight cotton. Warmth and protection.

Protection from what? It was just a dream.

There’d been light. Lots of light. Scalding, silver light. Light the strength of two full moons. Light so strong it seared her soul and cast a spotlight on the denials of the adult. A spotlight exposing the part of herself she’d kept hidden. There’d been nowhere to hide.

Worse. Something had been lurking in that dark, waiting for her just beyond the light. A sense of wrongness so strong that she’d known it meant trouble.

Just a dream.

Only it hadn’t felt like one.

Someone had been calling to her. A man’s voice. Fearful and urgent.

Older and deeper, the timbre reminded her of someone from her past, familiar and yet, also unknown. Initially, she’d thought it to be her father. But that couldn’t be.

Whoever it was, he’d been in trouble. Serious trouble. Death trouble.

Storm’s coming. That’s what he’d said. That’s what had woken her up. He’d been so close to her, she’d felt his breath on her cheek as he’d screamed his warning.

She lived alone, but he’d really been there. It hadn’t been her imagination. She’d trained herself out of imagining things. But that voice...

Just a dream.

Only it felt more than that.

Black eyes. Seeing eyes.

No, she forced the word out of her lungs and laid her head on the pillow, closing her eyes. If she ignored it, whatever it was, it would go away. She was not going down that path again. Not for anyone.

An hour later, Sondra dreamed again. Or, at least she thought she did. The dream was different this time. Asleep and yet not, she hovered at the edge of awareness. She saw nothing but a heavy blanket of greyness in every direction, as if someone had stripped the world of colour. A permanent realm of ghost-light.

Keeper. Hurry, a male voice commanded loudly. Storm’s coming.

Sondra was awake and out of bed in an instant, heart racing. One swipe at the lamp and the room was bathed in soft golden lamplight. Normally relaxing, the lamplight did nothing to dispel her uneasiness. If anything, watching the shadows on the wall moving even though there was no wind to cause them to do so, her tension increased.

That voice… she couldn’t have heard it. Simply couldn’t. She was alone and that voice… just couldn’t be. What’s dead stayed dead. Jack Carstairs was a rotting corpse, one with his beloved sea.

It was a dream, that’s all.

Just my imagination.

Over the years, Sondra had gone to extraordinary lengths to tone down her imagination, ensuring she fit in with those around her. Her life was exactly as she’d planned it: uninteresting, boring even, but most assuredly normal. Even her career as a Systems Accountant had been deliberately chosen. She had no use for imagination. She craved the right and wrong of business, not the uncontrollable and elusive world of dreams.

Dreams were for children. With her fortieth birthday only weeks away, Sondra was pretty sure she could no longer be classed as a child by any definition. She’d left her childhood behind along with dreams, talking with the dead and an island that over twenty years in exile hadn’t quite erased from her memory.

Dreamer. Messenger. Artist. None of that was her world any more.

Yet, two dreams in one night was hardly what she’d call leaving things behind.

Across the room, she caught sight of her panicked reflection in the full-length wall mirror. Her father’s daughter, without a doubt. She’d long ago changed her hair from black to blonde, but there was no easy way to disguise her eyes.

Black eyes. Seeing eyes. Death eyes.

The sliver of fear that detached from the memory of that voice surged through her. Sondra deliberately squashed it. She wasn’t getting involved.

I can’t, she declared to the eyes looking back at her from the mirror, taunting her. I’m not that person anymore. I’m not the Keeper. Agatha Carstairs was, Sondra’s great-aunt and the Keeper of the Dead for the last eighty years.

Sondra couldn’t drag her eyes away from the mirror. There was something not quite right about her reflection. It didn’t take her long to realise what: the light. Not golden, like the bedside lamp’s light, but silver. Just like the Carstairs Lighthouse. Just like her dreams. Only this light came from within the mirror.

The light continued to strengthen, banishing shadows from the room. Eventually, the light grew so bright that it hurt her eyes and Sondra was forced to look away. Part of her wanted to keep watching, but part of her feared what the light meant.

A beam of moonlight protects strong and true.

She wanted to turn back, yet she couldn’t move. Feared to admit this was no dream. Even more feared to admit where that light was coming from.

The Carstairs Lighthouse was one of the old places in the world. The doorway to another realm where the living had no power. And now that energy was reaching out to her…

She stamped on the thought. What’s dead remained dead.

And then, softly at first but growing louder, Sondra heard the ocean. The lapping of gentle waves against the shore. Not the usual background noise associated with a land-locked cottage. The waves weren’t coming from outside, but from behind her. From the mirror.

Drip…

Drip…

Drip…

She turned back quickly. A gasp caught in her throat, too scared to form a scream. The mirror was no longer visible, all that could be seen was a path of moving water. Row after row of white crests peaked and then disappeared, moving from top to the bottom. Dripping on to the polished timber floor.

The practical side of Sondra’s brain urged her to run in the opposite direction. The less rational side of her brain pointed out that water dripping from her mirror wasn’t exactly normal behaviour and shouldn’t she be curious?

Curious? The logical side screamed at her. Who the hell needs curiosity?

You did. You weren’t always as you are now. Light and sea had been two elements she’d once been able to command.

But that was a long time ago. Great-Aunt Agatha was Keeper, not her.

And yet, water didn’t appear from nowhere just to leave a puddle on the floor. The one simple fact that, in spite of any contrary desire, told her she couldn’t ignore what was happening.

With a deep sigh and some serious misgivings about her present course of action, Sondra approached the mirror cautiously.

She needn’t have bothered. By the time she’d crossed the room, as though disturbed by her movement, the water had disappeared and she found herself facing an ordinary mirror. Solid enough that her touch left fingerprints. Even the floor was bone dry. Whatever energy had caused that dripping had gone. Leaving nothing but a myriad of questions in her mind. Foremost of which: Why?

Sondra couldn’t actually say she was disappointed. Even as the room returned to normal, she eyed the bed warily. The thought of sleep no longer appealed. It was only a matter of time before the dream revealed itself fully. In no mood for a repeat performance, she headed for her work laptop. There were bound to be work emails to action.

But even as she sought the distraction of work, Sondra had a nagging feeling something had changed and not for the better.

But what? And did she really want to know? Whatever battle was about to happen, it had nothing to do with her.

***

Chapter 2

Storm’s coming, a male voice screamed in Sondra’s ear.

Awake instantly. The only sound Sondra heard was her own laboured breathing and the echo of the scream still in her ears. Her hand fumbled for the bedside lamp, an instinctive reaction but she craved light.

Three dreams in one night. What the hell?

As light banished dark, she fought to rein in her ragged breathing. She was at a loss. One dream, maybe two, she could explain, but three? All delivering a warning. And all leaving the aftermath of dread like the bitter aftertaste of a strong cup of coffee. There was something unnatural in the way this dream appeared and disappeared, a spectre of the dark leaving nothing more than a residual feeling that the danger hadn’t gone.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

She didn’t know what disturbed her more, the fact that she was dreaming again, or the fact that she couldn’t remember the dream. Most likely the latter. As a child, she’d recalled dreams easily, movies of other people’s lives so vivid, her power of recall had been as precise as to have been disquieting. But childhood was a long time ago.

Staring at the bedside lamp’s artificial light, every instinct screamed at Sondra not to get involved.

There’d been light again. Lots of light. Looking at that light had been like staring into a one-thousand watt light bulb. This time, there’d been wind. A strong, howling gale capable of ripping roofs and power lines without hesitation. Not the gusting northerly breeze currently rattling her neighbour’s garden trellis outside her window, but a brutal sea wind. A pushing, bullying wind trying to herd her in a certain direction. Towards danger or away from it, she couldn’t tell.

But that voice… not her father, though the cadence was similar. Old and deep, as if the voice had come from the ocean herself. Someone from the past.

A name refused to come.

Who was he? She knew nothing except that voice. And she should have. She was convinced of it. Whoever he was, he hadn’t expected to die the way he had.

There’d been real pain in his scream. Death hadn’t been kind to him.

She sat upright, hesitant to leave the safe confines of the bed.

Was that it? Was that all these dreams were? The errant thoughts of a recently disincarnated soul. A sailor taken by a storm at sea.

Her heart skipped a beat. She didn’t know how she knew, just that it was the truth. The sailor that had reached her had taken his last breath.

Keeper, the whisper echoed around the room, a sharp cry against the night’s silence. The sailor’s voice again.

Another jolt of recognition surged through Sondra, but an image refused to form. Who are you?

There was no answer but the sudden chill Sondra felt on her skin, a not-so-gentle reminder that this was more than an overactive imagination. She was no longer alone.

She held the quilt to her chin, aware that her hands shook slightly—a natural reaction. If this sailor was from the Land of the Dead, she was entitled to shake a little.

Sondra’s eyes darted around the room, but with her carefully selected pine furniture, the minimalist approach to decorating, there was no place for anyone to hide. Not that she’d expected to find anyone. The memories from her life before Australia might be locked up tight, but knowledge once learned wasn’t easily forgotten. Whoever he was, this sailor from her past, he hadn’t journeyed from any physical realm.

Feeling smothered and needing to move, Sondra slipped from her bed and headed for the bathroom. The rest of the cottage was gripped in darkness, but nine years in the one home meant she knew its nuances, navigating the long hall passage by the thin stream of silver moonlight filtering in from the outside world.

Located at the back of the cottage, away from artificial streetlights, the bathroom was always dark. Not tonight.

Translucent moonlight cascaded through the glass window casting a silvery sheen over the room. Strangely hesitant to enter, Sondra flicked on the bathroom light and banished the moonlight before she stepped any further into the room. As golden light bathed the room, her eyes went straight to the mirror. The ordinary vanity mirror mocked her fears.

She almost laughed at her disappointment. What did you expect?

She remembered the bedroom mirror. The mirror was part of the message. Just like the dreams and the voice. She didn’t need to understand the message to figure that.

Sondra caught sight of her timid reflection in the mirror. This time it wasn’t her father she was reminded of, but her mother. The late Miranda Carstairs had believed her own daughter cursed. As far as Miranda was concerned, dreams were a dangerous doorway to the collective unconscious that must never be opened. The irony not lost on Sondra.

Well, Mother, I guess we’re finally in agreement about something.

But she wasn’t her mother. And the burying her head in the sand approach to life had never sat well with Sondra. Better to face life head on than cringing in darkened hallways. That was her motto. She was a girl of untold common sense. Too much, if her cousin were to be believed. She called on every ounce of that common sense now. Something beyond the norm was happening. The sooner she understood it, the sooner she could fix it and the sooner her life would return to normal. All she had to do was pay attention.

Baby steps.

Swallowing her doubt, Sondra allowed her eyes to linger on the mirror. It clearly showed that, despite what she was feeling, there was no one else in the room. She touched the glass-like surface. It was as cold as ice.

No, not ice. As cold as the very deepest ocean.

Physical contact only strengthened the feeling there was another presence in the room beside her. She turned slightly and, out of the corner of her eye, saw the shadow. A hint of darkness beneath the window.

It wasn’t her shadow. It was too far away and in the wrong direction. Half her height, the shadow had a depth to it that left a distinct impression there was form beneath the darkness. A hint, nothing more. As if something was trying to become physical.

Sondra whirled to face the shadow. Who are you?

Except, her eyes saw no shadow. Only light. The room around her was still.

A little too still.

Sondra looked around warily, wishing she knew what to do next. When she’d first started renting the cottage, it had been a newly-built courtyard villa with minimal garden. So new that most of the appliances even had the original wrapping still on them. A perfect home for her. A home without a history. History meant baggage. She was wary enough of her own history without wanting to be saddled with someone else’s.

Now, after the dreams, she didn’t believe it was the cottage attracting these events.

Had she indeed stumbled on to a lost soul’s moment of death? But why her? Great-Aunt Agatha was eminently better qualified in dealing with troubled souls.

You’re a Carstairs. You could help him.

Not in this life time, she chastised herself. She was trying to calm herself, not incite herself further. The Land of the Dead. The lighthouse. Anona. None of it was her world now. So why did some spirit think it did?

In an effort for calm, she turned on the tap and splashed water on her face. Everything will be okay. I’ll figure this out—

It took a mouthful of accidentally swallowed water to convince her how wrong she was.

She gagged and spat the water out. Seawater? How the hell did seawater get into my tap? The nearest thing to a beach in her neighbourhood was the River Torrens and, while debate often raged about the quality of its water, it was most definitely a freshwater river.

Sondra stumbled backwards and eyed the sink with confusion. It was a physical impossibility for seawater to enter the household plumbing by ordinary means. Yet it had.

In the tiny bathroom, the smell of the seaside was overpowering. The pungent smell of seaweed in the morning after it’d been submerged beneath the ocean for the night. A smell straight from childhood. Of Anona.

No. She tried to stop the thought, but couldn’t.

Anona Island. A paradox of golden beaches surrounded by an aqua ocean. An island of secrets where the sea controlled one’s every movement. Sometimes gentle, sometimes rough, the Atlantic was ever present. Sondra’s two strongest memories of Anona Island, three if you counted the ocean, were of the lighthouse and the graveyard nestled beneath its shadow. An ancient relic of protection and a shrine to the dead. Both symptoms of the island’s archaic death traditions.

She hadn’t moved, but in a single heartbeat, Sondra found herself back in the dream world. Awake and yet dreaming. Her physical body might still be in a landlocked bathroom but her senses suggested otherwise. Wind whistled in her ears as the ocean roared towards shore.

Her skin tingled.

She’d never experienced anything like this before. It didn’t help her nerves already strained beyond breaking point. But, somewhere in this imagined world was the key to unlocking her dreams. An answer she needed to find that would make sense of the dream. And making sense of a dream was the only way she knew of dispelling its power.

She allowed her eyes to roam across the dream world landscape. She was standing at the water’s edge, a sandy white beach beneath her feet. Before her, the sea stretched far out to an unbroken horizon. A grey sea beneath an even greyer sky. So dark, it was almost black. But where?

Anona?

Instincts screamed that it was, even if that specific beach looked unfamiliar. And far from gentle.

Waves charged the shore with relentless ferocity, seeking to release pent-up energy. But the beach, the point where land met sea, instead of releasing the energy only added to it and pushed the waves back with extra force. Each wave crested higher. So high, they could swallow a human in the merest fraction of a second. A strong sea. An angry sea.

A man-killer sea.

The chill Sondra felt from the sand beneath her bare feet was almost glacial. There was something else going on beyond what she was being shown. The dead had wanted her to see this for a reason.

She heightened her senses and concentrated on the image before her. She saw at once what she’d missed.

Someone was out in that sea. A solitary blob on the horizon. A lone soldier on a battlefield. No boat could withstand that sort of pounding and live to tell the tale. Whoever was piloting that craft wouldn’t be able to ignore death’s knell. The lightweight catamaran needed to reach shore quickly.

As the sleek white boat came into focus, Sondra made out the faint outline of a man at the helm. From this distance, more shadow than form, yet, she felt his urgency and a desperate need for safety. To remain at sea meant death. Even the most inexperienced sailor would sense that. Then again, even the most inexperienced of sailors wouldn’t have risked going out in such an angry sea. That was suicide.

As wave after wave pounded the catamaran, boat and sailor were pushed further from shore, further from the hope of rescue.

Even standing safely on shore, Sondra felt her heart pound faster in response to the danger.

Just a dream, she tried to remind herself.

But this was no mere dream. There was a depth to this world, a sense of reality that suggested she was witnessing a real event. She scanned the horizon frantically for any sign of help but the storm had completely isolated the vessel. Whoever was at the helm was truly alone.

Then, without warning, off the sleek bow appeared a sailor’s worst nightmare: a deadly rogue wave. Ten times the size of any other wave, it turned with an unnatural deftness and headed straight for the exposed boat with a single intent: to destroy.

Sondra had never seen a rogue before. But every islander knew of the hidden danger of the killer wave. Watching the speed with which that wall of water was bearing down upon the catamaran, she knew there was no hope of survival. The rogue wave was a hunter from which there was no escape.

No ship is built to withstand sheer wrath, her father had once told her when, after the loss of one of the island’s fishing vessels, she’d tried to reconcile the loss of life.

Sondra tried to call out, to warn the sailor. But her throat was so tight she had no voice. Instinctively, she stepped forward, even though she had no idea how to help. The only times she’d ever danced with a storm, to calm the winds, her dad had been at her side. His power more than hers. But she was driven by a need to do something. This sailor wouldn’t last long.

The waves reaching shore shoved her backwards roughly. She had no power against their unyielding strength. In a single moment of clarity, Sondra realised there would be no help for the sailor. His fate set.

The ferociousness of the ocean, its march relentless, cast a thick plume of sea spray into the air, hampering visibility. Sondra struggled to maintain eye contact with the ill-fated catamaran. But she didn’t need her eyes to understand what was happening. She was watching the last moments of the sailor.

No one should die alone. Not like this.

The lethal sea wall reached the catamaran in a matter of seconds, quickly swallowing its tiny frame. As the vessel and sailor were lost to view, the roar of the waves almost deafened Sondra, sounding more like a jet engine at full throttle than the sea.

Sondra cried out. Automatically stepping into the water. No.

Run, the male voice she’d heard in her dream cried out. Run. Protect yourself.

Sondra turned to run but the world shifted.

The beach was gone. So too the sand. Still in the dream world, the familiar rocking sensation beneath her feet told Sondra all she needed to know. The dream had changed. No longer was she looking on from afar. She was on the catamaran. The rogue wave bringing death with it, moments away.

Panic surged through her as blood roared in her ears. The violence of the rocking indicated how strong the swells were. The speed of the shift left her breathless. Pelted by violent sea spray, she was never more aware of the closeness of the sea than in that moment. She could feel the exertion of her calf muscles. It was all she could do to stand up. She tried to breathe but every breath resulted in a mouthful of seawater.

This is wrong. The sea wasn’t the enemy.

Just a dream.

Only it wasn’t. Every cell in her body screamed in response to the energy of this storm. With a single dream, the world of then had crashed into the world of now. The sailor’s cry, seawater from her tap, now this. Fight argued with flight.

Fight won.

She forced herself to stand straight. She didn’t know what was happening but her father had always taught her to stand and face her fears.

You’re not real. Just a dream, she repeated, forcing her breathing to slow.

Storm energy screamed in her head but she didn’t falter. Show no weakness.

Just. A. Dream.

A single gust of wind rammed into her and knocked her off her feet.

Sondra landed hard against the bathroom tiles.

The dream vanished.

The sea had gone. So too had the boat. Even the rogue wave had disappeared back into the netherworld of dreams. Disappeared as if it had never been.

Lying where she’d fallen, breathing unevenly, Sondra used the coolness of the tiled floor to remind herself she was safe. Dreams couldn’t hurt her.

Just a dream, she repeated, until her breath came more regularly. Just a dream.

Only it wasn’t.

She could tell the difference between a dream and reality.

Nor could she fail to miss the massive crack that split her bathroom mirror in two. That certainly wasn’t right. Her dreams as a child had been vivid but never physical.

What had that sort of power?

She shivered.

Not a dream. Not a memory. A warning from a soul, a sailor, caught between heartbeats. The moment between living and dying.

Why show me this?

The world of dreams was not always literal. Messages beneath images that had to be deciphered to find the real meaning. You couldn’t lie to the dead. Perhaps, this lost soul was showing her his last moments. Or perhaps, there was an even darker danger that stood against him. Something dangerous enough to threaten her.

The sea didn’t strike without warning and certainly not without provocation. It just didn’t work that way.

Find what is lost. Hurry… no longer safe, the sailor’s voice pleaded.

Sondra staggered to her feet, clutching the sink for support. The mirror still showed she was alone, but it lied. Who are you?

Evertides is waking. Beware.

Now she was even more confused. Evertides? The local name for a treacherous tract of sea west of Anona where even sailors dared not sail. Agatha’s the Keeper, not me.

There was no answer.

It was too much for Sondra. She stumbled from the room. There was only one thing left she could do. Regardless of any personal discomfort, she couldn’t ignore a message from the dead. Not at this time of the year. And certainly not after that dream.

Storm’s coming. Well, she’d seen that storm and if that was heading her way then she was out of her depth. The sailor had warned the wrong Carstairs. Why hadn’t he sent for the Keeper?

Sondra grabbed her phone. She didn’t care about the ten-hour time difference or the fact that Anona was half a world away. It was time to call Agatha.

As the phone diverted to voicemail, Sondra’s hands were shaking so much she almost dropped the phone. She waited forever for Agatha’s terse voice to prompt for a message. Suddenly, she heard the tone and panicked. What the hell was she supposed to say? Call me, I’m being haunted by dreams? Agatha didn’t allow weakness in herself, she certainly didn’t appreciate it in others. And at eighty-eight, she tended towards one emotion: grumpy.

Sondra forced casualness into her tone. Hi… Agatha, she paused. One quick breath. Two. Her voice steady as it would ever be.

I’ve been… dreaming… only I don’t think it was a dream. Call me, please, the words slipped out.

Sondra ended the call with enough force to send her phone flying through the air. It landed on the kitchen bench-top with a sickening thud.

Bloody hell. What was she supposed to do now?

***

Chapter 3

It was late morning when Sondra arrived at work, sluggish after her night’s disturbed sleep. Having received no return call from Great-Aunt Agatha and in an effort to stop herself wallowing, she’d fled her too-quiet cottage and sought refuge in work. Better to be doing something—anything—than nothing. Which probably sums up the state of my life. So much for a Happy New Year, she thought wryly as she reached the two-storey stone building five minutes from her cottage.

Wright Business Consulting was her home-away-from-home. A business consulting firm specialising in financial systems to small and medium sized business. The world of Wright’s consisted of project plans, impossible deadlines and the craziness peculiar to the implementation of computer systems where anything could and often did, go wrong. The unpredictable nature of project