His mother died at 1:58.
Sixteen minutes later
her body was gone.
J came back to Bethany to bury his best friend. He did not expect to bury anyone else, and he did not expect the hospital to lose her.
Mariah is pronounced
A death certificate is a small piece of paper. It is also the last time the system agrees with the family about what happened.
Grief was supposed to be
the worst part.
J returned to Bethany for one reason: to bury Dennis, who grew up two doors down. Dennis was supposed to be the only loss. Before the funeral is over, J’s mother dies — and then the record of her simply stops.
It looks like an ordinary city.
That is how it keeps its secrets.
Held together by habit, memory, family and proximity. Damage arrives and settles before anybody has a name for it.
Two friends who grew up two doors apart.
Before the black sedan, before the paperwork, Bethany was just home — the block where J and Dennis learned to ride bikes, the stoop where nothing bad had happened yet.
That is the Bethany J came back for. It is not the one he found.
She carried her illness quietly.
Mariah was always good at making tired look like order, at making pain mind its business when company was coming. Her death begins the central mystery. Sixteen minutes later, her body disappears from the hospital.
Before you spend a dime,
take the story.
Bus 13 is a complete short story — all twenty pages of it — and it costs nothing. A tenth grader misses her ride home on a Friday afternoon and catches the 13 instead. She falls asleep before her stop. Everything after that is the story.
It is the fastest way to find out whether you like the way Will Jones writes, before you commit to a whole novel.
A house has a soul the same as a person. So does a block. So does a name.A saying in Bethany
The horror is not only supernatural.
It is paperwork.
It is real estate. It is silence. It is the way a neighborhood can be drained piece by piece while everyone is told it is progress. Properties change hands. Quiet men keep appearing where they should not. Duval does not kick down doors — he buys the building the door is attached to.
One neighborhood. Three books.
Book Two stands on its own — you can start here and follow everything. Book One gives you how Bethany learned what it was worth, and it makes the ending of Book Two hit harder.
Souls for Sale
Where the neighborhood first learns what it means for a soul to be for sale.
Buy Book OneSouls for Sale II
Two deaths, one day, and a pattern too organized to be coincidence.
Buy on Amazon — $12.89Souls for Sale III
Some things in Bethany are not ready to be found yet.
Coming soon
Bethany has been waiting for you.
Step inside Souls for Sale II and find out what this city has been hiding.