Souls

By Mizuki

Drawings

"Do you still keep the drawings?"

The question was asked quietly, with a hint of hesitation. Monica Jackson raised her eyes from her book and looked across the sitting room at her husband, who was resting in his favorite armchair, pretending to read the paper.

"Of course," she said immediately. There was no need to specify, she knew exactly which drawings he meant. "Why do you ask?"

Robert sighed and pinched his nose, putting the paper in his lap, a sure sign that something was not right.

"There's something I need to check," he answered enigmatically. "Please, could you bring them?"

Monica frowned in confusion, but rose from her seat all the same. "Sure. I'll be right back."

She left the living room and climbed the stairs, but before she entered the master bedroom she hovered for a moment in front of her son's door. Through the dark, pristine wood she could hear faint music, something pretty and melodious, possibly classical. Smiling slightly, she knocked and entered after hearing the soft 'come in'.

The room was tidy and minimalistic, painted in pleasant earth tones. A single bed, a wardrobe in the corner, a neat desk and a bookcase with rows upon rows of books and CDs, all of them ordered alphabetically, not one out of line – it was everything her perfectionist son needed in his world. No posters or pictures adorned the walls, no wayward socks gathered dust in the middle of the rug and the bed was always perfectly made, the duvet so taut that she was certain it would pass even the most rigorous army inspection.

Her son himself was at the desk, hunched over a mountain of homework.

"How are you doing?" she asked. "Do you need anything?"

He turned around and she saw that he had a band-aid on his cheek.

"I'm all right," he said cheerfully. "Just finishing, actually."

She didn't hear him, staring aghast at the band-aid. "Sean, are your scars bleeding again?"

His expression instantly became defensive. "It's nothing. Please don't worry."

"It's not nothing!" she exclaimed shrilly. "It's the second time these past two weeks, it's not normal! You should go see a doctor, maybe you need stitches!"

He turned back to his homework, shielding the band-aid from her sight. "Mom, please, don't worry. It'll pass, that it will."

She wanted to say so much more, but the words just wouldn't leave her mouth. Helpless, she stared at the back of his head, not for the first time wondering what was happening beneath the red hair.

The women at the office regularly supplied her with horror stories about rebellious teenagers, about 'keep out' signs, black nail polish, bad language, drugs, alcohol and whatever else normal kids did to assert their independence. She'd read countless manuals about problem children. If he had come home stoned, with a tattoo and a pregnant girlfriend she would have known what to do. As it was, she was continuously mystified. Nothing she did seemed to reach him, nothing managed to break the layer of ice he'd put around his heart.

"I understand," she said eventually, defeated. But before closing the door she just had to add one more thing. "Sean?"

"Hmm?"

"I love you."

The chair squeaked underneath his weight. Then his quiet voice penetrated the silence.

"I love you too, Mom."

Feeling a bit better, Monica let the door shut, then remembered her original purpose and walked to the bedroom she shared with her husband. Inside she opened the wardrobe and reached up for a large wooden box with flowery carvings. Holding it gingerly in her arms, she descended the stairs and re-entered the living room. Robert was sitting silently in his armchair, the paper forgotten in his lap.

"You have them?" he asked when he saw her.

"Here," she said, putting the box on the coffee table next to him. "But I have a question."

"Hmm?" he muttered, already putting the paper away and reaching for the box. She stopped him.

"Does this have something to do with the parent-teacher conference? You've been awfully quiet since you came back. And I just talked to him. Robert, his cheek is bleeding again. Please tell me what happened. Did he cut himself again?"

Robert shook his head. "I don't think so."

"Then what is it?"

"I'm not quite sure. Something isn't right… I'll tell you in a moment, I just need to check something…"

Exasperated, she let him have the box. There was no reasoning with him when he was so distracted.

Inside the box she kept all the things connected with their son's early years of therapy. Evaluations, reports, test results… and the drawings Sean had drawn when he was around six or seven. They were illustrations of his dreams, prompted by one of the doctors, but quickly abandoned as an idea, because they only made him sadder. He'd managed to draw eight, and she'd kept them all, hoping foolishly that one day they might help in one way or another.

Robert took the drawings out of the box and arranged them on the table, scanning each with a slight frown.

"What are you looking for?" she asked, barely glancing at the variety of pictures. She didn't need to look, she knew them all by heart.

The first drawing he'd drawn in his childish, clumsy style, was of a solitary man with long red hair, a stick-like sword at his waist and a large cross-shaped scar obscuring most of his face. The shrink had pronounced the figure Sean's alter-ego, but Monica wasn't quite so sure. Instead of identifying himself with the man, little Sean seemed to hate him.

The next three were the most disturbing. They consisted of black and red blobs of paint with occasional dark slashes and, what was most horrifying, what seemed to be dead people. Sean had told them over and over again that he was dreaming about blood and death, but seeing it displayed like this always made her flinch with horror. What on earth had put those awful images inside her little boy's head?

Robert put the three pictures aside, quickly, as if they burned him, and turned to the rest, completely ignoring her question. She watched as he pondered the fifth drawing, a woman with long black hair and coal-black eyes, her white clothes – a peculiar cross between a dress and a kimono – gruesomely stained with blood. Underneath, in unsteady letters, a shaky hand had written 'tOMOe'.

Her husband shook his head, muttering. "No, not her."

He bypassed the drawing of a man in a Superman cape and a group shot of a tall man with rooster-like black hair, a little boy and a young woman with a ponytail, both in weird wide trousers and carrying sticks, and moved to the last one in the series. It was the young woman with a ponytail, but her blue eyes were empty, her cheek had a cross-shaped wound and there was a sword sticking out of her chest. Next to the dead, slumped figure was the caption: 'KaORU'.

The picture slipped from Robert's fingers and floated gently onto the table.

"What is it?" Monica pressed, feeling vaguely apprehensive.

"It's her," he said slowly, his eyes wide. "It's Kaoru."

"You mean the girl in the picture? She must be important somehow, he drew her twice, after all…"

"Yes, she is important, all right," he agreed readily. "And I think I've met her today."

For a moment Monica thought he was insane, and hoped that his explanation would clear her fears away, but by the time she'd heard all about the parent-teacher conference and the young woman teaching P.E. she was convinced that her husband had finally gone round the bend.

"What are you trying to say?" she spoke eventually, rubbing her temples. "Are you saying that the P.E. teacher is the girl in the drawing? That's crazy."

But Robert didn't laugh sheepishly like she'd hoped he would. "Honey, he called her Kaoru. He told her, and I quote, 'You've always been naïve, Kaoru'. And I think he's been skipping P.E. to avoid her. You can't tell me that it's nothing."

She decided to humor him. "All right. So let's assume it's something. Then what do you think it is?"

"I don't know. But I'm sure she was in his dreams."

Monica pursed her lips. "You think he's been having prophetic dreams about his future teacher's death? I mean, look at this, it's awful. The girl has a sword in her heart."

"She's not going to die," he assured her. "I think she already did."

"I don't understand. Why would this Kaoru be alive if she already died?"

He shook his head. "That's just the thing, her name is not really Kaoru, it's Katie."

"So what?"

"And she called Sean 'Kenshin'. And he responded to that."

A seed of doubt planted itself in her mind, making her shiver. "So what does that mean?"

"I don't know. But I sure as hell intend to find out."

A/N: Uh oh, Robert's scheming... whatever will he do? XD

Kaoru/Katie's coming back on Wednesday!:D

Thanks to sulou, J Luc Pitard, SRAS9, brit02, Emi Violet and skenshingumi :) Believe it or not, your reviews often inspire me to write :P