Shadow of a Life (38 page)

I stuck my hand out over the top of
the well and let go. Jeremiah shoved Peter to the ground and jumped
to the well. He vanished immediately and I felt a brush of air pass
me as he raced into the well after the burning paper. The screams
of horror coming from inside the well echoed up at me and I stepped
back, trembling.

“
I’m going to kill you.”
Elsa’s eyes had become wild and she loomed large as she bent to
retrieve the gun Jeremiah had dropped as he jumped into the
well.

I backed away slowly. I knew there was
no outrunning them that time. They had no cards left to play—nor
did I. Elsa lifted the gun as Jeremiah reappeared at the edge of
the well, shaking with rage. I closed my eyes and covered my face,
waiting for the sound or the pain, whichever came first. But
instead of a gunshot, I heard a scream and a thump. I opened my
eyes to see Nick standing over a lifeless Elsa, holding one of the
shovels we’d left at the barn. Sophia was right beside Nick,
staring down Jeremiah, posed for a fight.

Elsa recovered quickly and tried to
sit up, but in the faint glow of the moonlight I saw a look of pure
terror spread over her face. Confused, I looked at Jeremiah. He had
the same terrified expression, staring at his wife.

“
Nooo . . .” Elsa moaned
quietly. “Not
now
.” She tried to crawl toward Jeremiah as the rest of us gawked
in wonder. But just before their outstretched hands touched, their
bodies slowly disappeared. Nothing remained except for a pile of
clothes and the pistol that had threatened to end my
life.

Peter picked himself up from the
ground and limped toward me. I whipped my head around, trying to
figure out where the Goodwins had vanished to. Sophia sat on the
ground where she was and sobbed—huge, body shaking sobs. Nick
hunched over her, his arms wrapped tightly around her heaving
shoulders.

“
Where are they?” My voice
trembled in fear.

“
They’re gone,” Nick
said.

“
I know they’re gone, but
where did they go?” My body still pumped adrenaline and I couldn’t
calm down.

Sophia lifted her head and instead of
the fear I expected to see, I saw the smile I loved so much. They
were tears of joy.

“
They’re gone, Jamie.
Forever. You finished their business for them. That’s why when they
vanished this time their clothes were left behind. Their auras
disappeared with them. They’re not
ever
coming back.” She sobbed
again.

I was so overwhelmed and relieved that
I had to sit down, too. I stepped back against the rock well and
slid down until I was sitting on the ground. Peter sat next to me
and put his arm around my shoulders.

“
You got our revenge for us,
Jamie. You took away the thing that was most important to them,
just like they took away the things that were most important to us
when we were alive,” Nick said quietly.

A light came on at the back of the new
house. “Hello? Is someone out there?” a male voice called from the
balcony.

“
We’ve got to get out of
here,” Peter whispered. “We can’t just disappear like you
two.”

We quickly gathered the Goodwins
clothing and, removing their wallets first, dropped the pile and
the gun into the old well. We listened until we heard a faint thud
and knew the items had reached the bottom. It would be a long time,
if ever, before they were found again.

Peter stuffed the wallets into his
jacket with the leather pouch, took my hand, and we all ran into
the trees beyond the well, back to where our wild night had
started.

We didn’t get very far into the grove
before Sophia yelled for Peter and me to wait. I turned to see that
she and Nick had stopped a few paces back. They weren’t
moving.

“
What’s wrong?” I whispered
loudly.

“
Jamie . . .” From the tone
of her voice, I knew immediately what was wrong.

They’d finished their business,
too.

“
I can feel the pulling
sensation everyone talks about—it . . . it’s . . . time for us to
go.”

A lump worked its way up my throat. I
couldn’t speak. I wanted to say so much, but I couldn’t form my
thoughts and feelings into sentences. Sophia let go of Nick and
walked slowly toward me, concentrating hard on every step she took.
She put her arms around me and we hugged, both of us crying into
each other’s shoulder.

“
Thank you,” she managed to
whisper.

I still couldn’t say anything but I
hugged her tighter, desperate not let go of the one person I’d ever
felt was truly like a sister.

“
Sophia . . . it’s time,”
Nick said quietly from where he stood.

Sophia unwound herself from my arms as
another sob escaped my throat. She walked back toward Nick and
Peter took over the place she’d just vacated, holding me tight in
his strong arms.

“
Jamie . . . I should . . .
warn you.” Sophia stopped to catch her breath. “Once someone . . .
becomes a soul saver . . . they’re more likely . . . to become one
. . . again.”

“
What did you say?” I lifted
my head to look at her, but it was too late. She and Nick were
gone—and their clothes lay entwined on the muddy ground of the
forest floor.

CHAPTER 25

M
orning came with a vengeance the next day. The sun had
returned and mocked us with its presence. I would have preferred to
go to sleep and not wake up for a month. After Nick and Sophia had
extricated the night before, Peter and I gathered their things and
went in search of their rental car. We found it parked at the fork
in the road at the spot where Peter and I had climbed through the
barbed wire fence hours earlier.

We found the car keys in the pocket of
Nick’s jeans and Peter insisted he could drive. I climbed into the
passenger seat. That was the least crazy thing we’d done all
night.

We drove back to Newport News and into
the parking garage of our hotel in silence. Everything we did
seemed to be done in a blur. I didn’t want to explain everything to
Camille. All I wanted to do was take a bath and pull the covers
over my head, but Camille met us at the door, gasping in shock when
she saw the way we looked.

“
What happened to you?
Where’s Nick and Sophia?” she said.

I still couldn’t speak so I just
walked past her and closed the bathroom door behind me, stripping
down to nothing and climbing into the tub before it was even full.
I sunk down into the water with nothing but my mouth and nose
showing. When I finally emerged an hour later, Camille was sitting
on the floor outside the bathroom door, holding my pajamas for
me.

“
Peter told me what
happened.”

I took one look at her and tears
started streaming again. The two of us sat in the hall and cried
for a long time. Peter had gone back to the other hotel room by
then and it was just the two of us. Eventually I crawled into bed
and stayed there until noon the next day.

We had three more days on our hotel
reservation and before our round-trip airline tickets would work.
We weren’t really sure what to do with ourselves. We didn’t dare
risk driving the rental car again. We took some time going through
Sophia and Nick’s luggage—keeping some things and discarding
others. Camille was devastated that she hadn’t gotten to say
goodbye to Sophia and Nick, but she was ecstatic to claim most of
Sophia’s clothing. I didn’t think I could ever bring myself to wear
any of it. The memories were too close.

I did take the flowers Sophia had
carried during her wedding and pressed them between the pages of a
book. I would do something with them later—when I was
ready.

We took a wad of cash we found in
Jeremiah’s wallet and ordered a simple headstone for Sophia’s
grave. “Nicholas and Sophia Briggs Trenton—Together At Last, Never
To Be Forgotten” was the inscription we chose. We thought it was
much better than the crudely etched stone currently at her grave
that only said, “Sophia Mason.” We cleared the dead leaves and
weeds from her grave and covered the site with flowers, hoping Nick
and Sophia were somewhere watching—knowing we had not forgotten
them. The rare visitor to the Old Plantation Cemetery would never
know the true identity of the person buried there, but maybe
wherever she was, she could watch and appreciate our gesture. The
three of us sat under the tree next to her grave for a long time
that day.

“
Do you wonder where the map
would have led? I mean, if you hadn’t set it on fire, do you think
we could have figured it out?” Peter asked.

“
I know I’ve been wondering
about it. What if there was
actual
buried treasure somewhere?” Camille
added.

I looked at Peter and then looked back
at the ground. “I didn’t burn the map.”

“
What?”

“
I didn’t burn the
map.”

“
What are you talking about,
Jamie?”

“
When we were getting ready
to leave the barn I saw another piece of paper lying in the dirt.
Out of curiosity I picked it up. It was just an old bill of sale
for some horses, but I stuffed it in my shirt with the map anyway.
That’s the paper I lit on fire.”

“
Are you being serious right
now? Why didn’t you tell us before now?”

I shrugged. “After the Goodwins
disappeared, I was scared to say anything because I didn’t want
them to come back.”

“
Jamie, do you realize you
conned the con man?” Peter asked incredulously.

I nodded.

“
Ooo! We’re going on a
treasure hunt,” Camille squealed.

“
Not now,” I said. “Someday
we will, but not now. That adventure can wait.”

AUTHOR’S NOTE

Shadow of a Life
is a work of fiction. But not entirely. In
November of1872, Captain Benjamin Briggs really did board
the
Mary Celeste
with his wife Mary and daughter Sophia. Captain Briggs was a
seasoned mariner and sailing had been a part of his family for
generations.

In early December, the ship
was spotted by Captain David Morehouse’s ship, the
Dei Gratia,
in the middle
of the Atlantic Ocean
.
Morehouse was an acquaintance of Captain Briggs. As the
Dei Gratia
approached
the
Mary Celeste
it became apparent that something was not right. After
boarding the ship, the crew of the
Dei
Gratia
found that no one remained aboard.
The
Mary Celeste
had become a ghost ship, seeming to sail itself.

Although theory after theory
has been given for what happened on that fateful trip, no one will
ever be able to say for sure what really occurred. And no one will
ever know what
really
happened to little Sophia Matilda Briggs.

Special thanks to Brian
Hicks.
I found “Ghost Ship: The Mysterious
True Story of the Mary Celeste and Her Missing Crew” by Brian Hicks
to be an extremely important research tool.

The second book in the Soul
Saver series is available now.

Haven Waiting

Soul Saver: Book
Two

Continue for an excerpt.

S
he rose to her feet, brushing the dirt from her clothes, and
stuck her hand out for me to shake. “I don’t think I’ve introduced
myself properly. I’m Haven Mills.”

My mouth dropped and I
stared at her.
Haven?
With an H? Could this be the ghost of the person who made the
map?
My mind screamed and every part of my
body felt as if electricity was running through it. I’d felt that
feeling before—right before we found the map in the barn in
Virginia.

Haven still held her hand out to me
and I forced myself to reach one of my own trembling hands out to
shake hers. It felt as if a shock went through my body the moment
our skin touched. I knew Haven felt it, too. We continued to stare
at each other for a long moment, not breaking the grip of our
hands. I forgot that Peter and Camille were even there.

Finally, she whispered, “How do you
know about ghosts?”

My voice caught in my throat, but I
managed to choke out, “I’m a soul saver.”

About the
Author

T
ifani Clark grew up on a farm in
southeastern Idaho (yes, that’s where they grow all the potatoes)
as the middle of five children. She had a lot of space to imagine
and daydream and often pictured herself as a character in one of
the many books she read. She was habitually found pretending to be
Scarlet O’Hara. Tifani loves mystery and hates it when one goes
unsolved. She is married to the love of her life and is the mother
to four fabulous children. When not writing, she enjoys playing the
violin and piano and traveling to new places. She especially enjoys
visits to national parks and places of historical
significance.