Stations of the Soul

by Chris Lewando

  Was that what Helen had seen when her child died?

  Was that what he’d looked like, when the prostitute died? Robin had supposed she’d chosen to come to him rather than her murderer, but perhaps there was no choice involved, after all. Knowing what he did, Father Kelly would never have chosen Joel as his receptacle, to remain locked in that terrible prison for a screaming eternity. If he’d had the power to choose, he would have chosen Sarah or Robin as his hopeful conduit to Heaven.

  Joel was so strong, so otherworldly, and so greedy for life, it seemed that nothing could stop him. His dark, invincible power would stun the world, razing anyone who stood in his way; a psychopath, the like of which had never before existed.

  Even as Robin despaired, Joel staggered. The euphoria on his face slid into surprise, then confusion. He emitted a strangled squeal of denial. His fingers clawed like a drowning man seeking air. Around him, a mist thickened and coalesced into the echo of ghostly figures, winding in harmony like a shoal of fish in a dark sea, dissected by shafts of sunlight. The shapes gradually lost form, becoming a slow, kaleidoscopic twister, spreading ever further from Joel’s body. As the edges brushed Robin, he was touched by the electric thrill of souls freed from bondage, and knew, for a fleeting moment, what it was to be immortal.

  Then the single entity dissipated into countless tiny specs of multicoloured lights, which rose and dispersed through the windows, the walls, the ceiling; the substance of brick and mortar and glass proving no barrier to the discorporate bliss of pure sentience.

  Sarah’s hand tightened on Robin’s, and he realised this was like nothing she’d seen or experienced, and knew that she, too, had been touched by the cyclone of souls.

  Joel gave a single long wail of grief, and dropped to his hands and knees, drawing in harsh, rasping breaths. He finally shook his head as though to clear it, and sat back on his heels, His expression slack as his eyes danced unseeing over Robin, to rest on Sarah with a small spark of recognition.

  ‘I’m hungry,’ he whispered.

  Sarah knelt and wrapped her arms around him, saying, ‘It’s OK, Joel, my love. It’s all right, now.’

  ‘Is he gone?’ Robin whispered, almost in disbelief. His gaze flicked around the room, seeking ghosts, but the space was cold and empty.

  ‘I think they’ve all gone,’ she said, tears of relief streaming down her face. ‘I think Father Kelly’s faith was strong enough to lead all Papa’s victims into the unknown. And maybe he was dragged along in the flood.’

  Father Kelly’s body sprawled in ungainly angles by Robin’s feet. He bent down and closed the staring eyes. He straightened the old man’s limbs, tidied his robes, and clasped his hands together over the cross on his chest. ‘I hope you find your God,’ he whispered.

  Later, in the kitchen, they were sitting at the table, watching Joel devour a sandwich. He was a confused husk of what he had been, a daunting figure, both in his size and his lack of cognisance. It seemed that their father had stolen something from him, maybe something he could never claim back. Time would tell.

  Robin reiterated what the professor had said. ‘We need to leave. We need to leave, now.’

  ‘We can’t just leave him there, like that.’

  ‘We have to. His story about being ill, to that woman who knocked, has given us a couple of days grace. We must make use of it. No one will call, assuming he has a gastric virus, but after that…’

  She lifted haunted eyes. ‘Where can we go?’

  ‘I don’t know, but we have to leave England. If we stay, they’ll find us. England’s just too small, Joel too noticeable.’

  ‘But Joel hasn’t got a clue what happened.’

  ‘No, thank God. But none of us should end up incarcerated for something we didn’t do.’

  ‘I wonder whether Joel is still in there,’ Sarah said in a low voice. ‘Maybe he went, with the others. Would a body survive without a soul?’

  Robin grimaced. ‘I don’t know. A year ago, I didn’t even believe in the concept of souls… But he knows you, and hopefully will rediscover his own memories in due course.’

  Joel hadn’t spoken since those first bizarre words, and they weren’t sure how much he understood of what they tried to explain. His look of blank incomprehension was understandable. Even someone with a full deck of cards wouldn’t have believed that, Robin thought. He wouldn’t, if he hadn’t experienced it.

  But at least the Joel who had emerged was biddable, and simply did as Sarah asked. Maybe, one day he would rediscover himself, but at present he was a shell, operating on fundamental needs and instincts.

  ‘We could try the place in Italy,’ Sarah suggested.

  ‘I don’t think so. The police will turn this into an international manhunt. We have to go further, as your dad said, south over the continent, into the eastern bloc, maybe.’

  ‘I’ve never been out of England.’

  ‘I’ve only ever been to safe places; holiday destinations.’

  ‘How about America?’

  ‘Maybe, eventually. But we can’t use our real names or pass-ports.’

  Sarah gave a wan smile. ‘Joel and I have others. And plenty of money. I can organise a passport for you.’

  ‘How long will that take?’

  ‘About five days.’

  ‘Then you’ll have to go on without me. The longer you stay, the more likely you are to be apprehended.’

  She nodded. ‘Papa said he had a laptop in the car. I’ll do it now.’

  ‘I’ll go and find it. You stay with Joel.’

  They suspected that the manhunt would be focused on airports or the southern ports, so Sarah booked her and Joel on a ferry to Ireland, and from there they’d go straight on to southern France or Spain. They decided she’d take a coach to Liverpool for the ferry to Ireland, being less exposed to casual watchers than they would on the train. Hopefully they would make the ferry before a description hit the media.

  Robin would find somewhere to hang out until his new passport was ready. There would be a dead drop in a public locker at which point his cash would disappear, the passport left in its place. Then he would follow south. He wasn’t too worried about being recognised. The Robin Vanger whose image had been plastered all over the news, had a scar that ripped his face in half.

  He was worried that Sarah might be apprehended, though, simply because of Joel, even though they’d dyed his hair brown, but leaving him behind wasn’t an option. Even though Joel might not even know he was being institutionalised, his longevity would, within a few years, trigger medical interest. And that was exactly what Sarah had been trying to avoid.

  ‘I’m scared. I don’t like us separating,’ Sarah admitted.

  ‘It needn’t be for long, and we don’t have a choice. When I know where you are, I can fly to meet you. The three of us travelling together is far too dangerous, right now. As it is, I’ll be praying that Joel isn’t noticed. Keep him in the cabin on the ferry.’

  ‘But how will we find each other?’

  ‘Set up some new email accounts, then wherever we end up in the world we can always communicate.’

  Her fingers flew. ‘What email address will we remember?’

  ‘How about Gabriel and Raphael? At least Lucifer has gone, now.’

  She laughed, then began to cry. ‘How can we joke about that, when…?’

  Robin put his arm around her. ‘You know, I think Father Kelly would understand. Maybe he does, wherever he is. Though, I suspect that ‘moving on’ means becoming something other than hu-man. Maybe they don’t even think like humans anymore.’

  Traffic was already building up outside, and the faint glow of dawn was lifting the darkness. ‘You’d better go,’ Robin said. ‘You can’t afford to miss that coach.’

  They hugged for a long moment, then Robin watched Sarah and Joel fade into the city, leaving him alone. He felt a pang of misgiving. Now, more than ever, he had to trust to a future. If necessary, he’d spend the rest of his life seeking her. Bu
t there would be no coming back to England. Not until many years had passed, any-way, and the murdering trio who were the subjects of a massive manhunt had drifted into legend.

  Epilogue

  The priest’s body had finally been carted away, and the forensics team had departed. Redwall stood in the tiny living room, hands clenched in anger. They’d found traces of prints that might be Robin’s and Sarah’s.

  Father Kelly had been dead for maybe two days. A woman from his church had come to the house to make sure he was alright as he’d been ill, but even if she hadn’t, due to his calling, he wouldn’t have remained undiscovered for long. When she got no answer, she’d called an ambulance, and eventually the committee that had formed outside his door decided to break in. But Father Kelly had been far beyond medical help. The time of death was judged fairly accurately, the house being cold, thanks to a lack of central heating. Obviously, priests were supposed to warm themselves under the glow of God’s love.

  He recalled this priest.

  Freman had written an article about him. He was the one who had seen an angel come down to take the souls of those poor children who’d been tragically mown down by a lorry. Redwall had thought then that there had been kind of an inherent sadness about the man whose moment of glory had dissipated under a cloud of scepticism.

  As Redwall looked around, it seemed that the whole house was filled with the same threadbare aura, but maybe it wasn’t sadness, after all. It was simply a lack of care for all things material. As though this mortal life had been no more than a staging post to heaven; a penance one had to live through before going on to that higher plane.

  Was there a heaven? He doubted it, and yet, that word, angels, kept popping up. But if Robin had done this, why now? In fact, why kill the old man at all? It seemed that everyone who came into Robin’s vicinity ended up dead. The DCI hoped, for the priest’s sake, that there was somewhere better, but held no great conviction to that end. But if there was not, even in this life the priest had achieved more than some. A life without greed, a moment of glory, and the dubious fame of having been murdered for it.

  By the next print-run, he thought sourly, the whole of the country would know Father Kelly’s name a second time; not because of his goodness, but because he was newsworthy once more. For the man who had seen an angel had apparently been killed by one. The word silenced came strongly to mind.

  There was something so negative about his work, these days. He was so tired of being part of it, the horrible downside of humanity. Almost everyone he liked seemed to turn to dust, as if he were some kind of King Midas, accidentally destroying that which was already beautiful: his children, Freman, Father Kelly, even Robin.

  But the Robin he’d liked had never truly existed.

  He was realistic enough to understand that nothing had really changed, except himself. He’d grown older, more cynical, less hopeful that his job had any long-term purpose or merit. For all he was changing in the world, he might as well be serving petrol at a filling station. At least by doing that he would be blatantly admitting that pollution was a problem he couldn’t solve. Perhaps it was time he got off the treadmill, retired, took up charity work.

  He sighed, walked out, and closed the door behind him. The house belonged to the church, and no doubt another priest would soon inhabit the characterless space that Father Kelly had inadvertently vacated. Maybe he would change the décor, bring in some light, but it would be a lonely existence all the same. What he wouldn’t bring was a wife, and the noise of new life rampaging about the place.

  ‘Better get back,’ he said to Jim.

  ‘Yeah, the boss is fretting. Wants to know what we’ve got.’

  ‘Pretty much nothing, I guess.’

  ‘Except that we know who did it.’

  ‘We think we know.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s going to go down like a lead brick. Strange one, this, isn’t it?’

  They wandered back to the car.

  There seemed little point in hurrying.

  It was, indeed, the strangeness of the case that bugged Redwall. The time-span, the dots that didn’t want to be joined. He wasn’t bothered about what had happened to the professor all those years ago – he’d just been a sordid little man with more money than morals, from what they had discovered. No, it was the peculiar anonymity of people he would never have guessed to be bad: Sarah who’d been a damn fine nurse from what everyone said; Joel, a gentle and not very bright giant; and Robin, a bean counter. Why would these people be teamed in some kind of murder ring? And why kill the priest? That was just pointless. The man had already told Redwall what he knew, a garbled story that could scarcely be called knowledge, and he’d been both lauded and pilloried for his conviction that he’d sighted an angel. He had probably wished, many times over, that he hadn’t told anyone about the illustrious visitation.

  Had his angels visited this on him? Was it because he knew who they were? The notion that perhaps they really were something other than human – dark angels, from the underworld – was a fleeting thought he would never share with anyone.

  He realised that this case was going to drag on for a while yet. How could three exceedingly noticeable people simply disappear into thin air? Where had they gone? Were they even still in England? They’d had two days grace in which to disappear, and they had done it as if plucked from the earth by aliens. In this day and age, you could get to the other side of the planet in that time. He doubted they would be in London anyway. There were so many questions he wanted to ask, but even if they were found and locked up, the answers might never make sense. He’d met many nutters in his time, and no psychology ever truly explained how some people could call themselves human and do the things they did.

  A couple of days later, Jim dumped a handwritten, hand-delivered letter on his desk, a brow raised in query. It was an unusual enough event these days, but Redwall didn’t share the contents. After reading it through several times with varying shades of disbelief, he slipped the note into his desk drawer. Maybe Robin was simply mad, after all. But what he’d read would haunt his dreams for a long time, and challenge his very firm conviction that the concept of a soul derived, like God, from superstition, ignorance, and legend.

  End

  Acknowledgments

  To all those readers who enjoy my fiction, thank you. You provide life-blood to my writer’s soul. Without you, my imagination would dry out, my stories remain in the wishful cyber-cupboard of my mind.

  Who Do I think I am?

  I am an ordinary person writing about extraordinary things. Am I a good author? I think so. I hope so. I ride a daily schizophrenic roller coaster that takes me from I am good (when the writing is in full flow) to I am useless (when someone stamps on my ego). And when someone I once considered a friend told me to stop boring us, go and put your money where your mouth is, I was shocked. But in the end, that’s what I’m doing. By self-publishing I’m exposing myself to the whole gamut of stranger danger. I can’t choose how people react to my work. I can only decide to keep writing, or stop.

  Reviewing

  I hope you enjoyed reading this work of fiction as much as I enjoyed creating it. If you did, then I’d love to know. Giving birth to a new novel and sending it out to discover its place in the world is like kissing goodbye to a child nurtured to puberty. Each book takes a little of the author’s soul with it when it flies out into the void. And when you never hear from that child, a little of the parent withers and dies. So please, if you enjoyed the book, post a review. Let me know my writing is appreciated.

  If you find typos, errors, or storyline glitches, don’t judge my creative spirit on them. Be my editor. Let me know so that I can put things right. I can’t afford a professional editor, so your generosity will help me bring the published story up to a tight, professional standard.

  If you do review, it’s best to keep it short, and reflect on your emotional responses. Let other readers know how the work made you feel. Did it grab your attention? Did y
ou want to keep reading? Did the characters come to life? Did you care about them, and wonder about their future after the closing lines? Would you read another work by me?

  But please don’t provide a synopsis of the story, expose the crux of the plot, or judge the work on the premise that it isn’t your chosen genre.

  Jessie Running

  A pimp is killed by a hit and run driver. Jessie, one of his girls, is missing, along with a fortune in drug money. D I Redwall, investigating the case, suspects she’s the missing daughter of the charismatic politician, Edward Stowleigh. But what would drive a privileged teenager to give up everything to become a lowlife prostitute? Is Jessie amoral, as her father suggests, or a victim screaming for help?

  The trail goes cold, and the missing money becomes an urban legend, until there’s a murder some years later, in another city. Jessie has surfaced once again – and the police are not the only ones trying to find her.

  But in the meantime, Jessie has learned to protect herself – and she’s out for revenge.

  Night Shadows

  Tom is a sensitive and gifted artist, with a baffling history and a secret compulsion that often results in murder. He can justify it, but to society, he’s a criminal. Helen, onto the scoop of a lifetime, finds herself inextricably connected to Tom. On another continent, General Hawke will stop at nothing to put Tom – and his unborn child – under the microscope, even at the risk of an international crisis. Does this all originate from a mysterious disappearance long ago? Events converge in a rapidly escalating manhunt, to an exposure that will echo into the future – if Tom can stay alive long enough…