The Soul Healer

by B. Groves

  “Alison said Samuel wouldn’t keep them close by. Too many eyes on him,” Miguel commented.

  “I’m gonna need your statement too, Kyle,” Markus said.

  “That’s okay. I can only handle a small road trip anyway,” Kyle said.

  The men turned when Alison walked inside and said, “Your door is as good as new.”

  Kyle was relieved and amazed at how fast those construction guys hung that door. Now he didn’t have to worry about explaining anything to anyone.

  “Thanks, Alison,” he said with a smile.

  “No problem.”

  Markus turned away and said, “Give me about two hours.”

  “Okay.”

  “I’m leaving and putting my career in jeopardy. I’ll see y’all later,” Markus said.

  “I’ll be there later this afternoon,” Kyle said as Markus walked out the door.

  Kyle watched Markus say goodbye to Olivia and Simon and walked off to his police vehicle.

  Markus didn’t know how to handle this situation. He was a small-town police chief who mostly threw drunken men and women in jail for the night so they could sleep it off or made minor drug busts in the town, break-ins, minor assaults, but nothing of this magnitude ever came across his desk in the man’s whole career. It was bad enough there were people in some circles who looked down on him because of his race. This town was just starting to recognize diversity and began to trust outsiders, but Markus was the heart of this town through it all.

  “Are you sure you’re up for a ride?” Alison asked Kyle.

  Kyle nodded and said, “Not really, but I’ll deal with it.”

  “He can stay in the car, while I search around,” Miguel said.

  “I can do it,” Kyle argued.

  Miguel raised an eyebrow. “You’ll hold me back, bro.”

  Miguel was right, Kyle knew he was right, but his stubbornness was overpowering his common sense. He didn’t put up more of an argument. That could wait until they arrived at their first destination.

  Kyle turned back to Alison when she spoke up. “I’m sure Markus will be discreet about the arrest but I want to see the mayor of your town for myself first before I confront him.”

  “Be careful. Hopefully, Jason won’t be around,” Kyle said.

  Alison nodded. “Thanks.”

  “Are you taking Simon with you?”

  “No. I don’t want to scare the crowd away. Don’t worry, I’ll be fine,” Alison said.

  She walked off to talk to Olivia and left Miguel and Kyle alone.

  “Give me a few minutes,” Kyle said.

  “Sure. I will get Olivia ready to go,” Miguel said

  He made his way into his bedroom to put on shoes since he’d been standing outside barefoot.

  This will be fun, he thought with a shudder.

  He opened the drawer, got some clean socks, and sat down on the bed. His sneakers were next to the dresser. Any other time he wouldn’t even think about bending over to grab them but today it would be a long and arduous process.

  Kyle tried to take a deep breath and when that failed he tried to hold his breath. A wave of dizziness passed over him as he tried to bend down for his shoes.

  “Lord help me,” he gasped trying to reach the shoes.

  Kyle noticed a hand pick up one of his shoes. He eased his way back into a sitting position.

  “Need some help?”

  Chapter 31

  Journal Entry October 9, Early 2010s

  I’m sitting inside Heather’s apartment wondering where I went wrong. Where I failed my sister.

  The police left, my family are on the other side of the room, and the coroner took her body to the morgue. My mom almost fainted. My step-dad keeps shooting glares my way. My brothers are in shock.

  Heather turned her life around. She was still receiving Dr. Rodriguez’s treatments, but she had been progressing so well that he was ready to ease her off her medications. She was recently promoted at her job. Her future had been so bright.

  I don’t know. I think back to the last two years and wonder if I’d been in denial all along. I shouldn't have removed the demon.

  Heather came home from work. I was hanging out. She and I were discussing what to eat for dinner. We decided to indulge in takeout. It was a ploy to get me out of the house since I never left her alone.

  But I didn’t think anything about it. I was out of the apartment for an hour. It was only an hour.

  I came back and couldn’t find her. I searched around the apartment wondering where she went. I even went outside looking for her. Her purse and keys were still on the table. Her car was still parked in its space.

  I went back inside to try her cell phone. I heard it ring from her bedroom. It wasn’t loud. It was low. As it rang I walked into the room and realized it was coming from the closet.

  I opened the door and there she was. I cut her down. I’ll never forget the color of her face.

  She left a note. I don’t know if I’ll ever read it.

  Chapter 32

  Alison wanted to laugh at Kyle’s stubbornness. He held the sneaker as if it were a rare diamond he was protecting. He gave in and handed her the sneaker after another minute of struggling.

  “I feel like an idiot,” he said.

  “You should,” Alison answered with a smirk.

  “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  He handed Alison the socks and she lifted his foot to slide them on his feet.

  She looked up to see Kyle’s face creased in pain, but he also seemed thoughtful.

  “Will Samuel kill Clara?” He asked as Alison slipped the other sock on and then his sneakers.

  “I’ll say the police will find her soon and not alive,” Alison answered.

  Clara had told her too much. She’d known what would happen to her if she spilled the truth. She’d accepted her fate. The demon inside of her would return to hell, but her body would turn to dust.

  “He’ll make it look like an accident to cover his tracks,” Alison said.

  Kyle ran a hand through his hair and lowered his head in guilt. “I’m responsible for that. Prayer isn’t helping the guilt.”

  Alison finished tying Kyle’s shoes and sat on the bed next to him. His face turned red from the pain and his mouth turned down in grief.

  “Kyle, you wanted to help. I understand. We all do, and sometimes it bites us in the ass,” she said.

  Kyle’s eyes met Alison’s. At first, she wondered if he would lean over and kiss her. Did she want him to?

  “Is that what happened with your sister?” He asked.

  Alison leaned forward and put her elbows on her knees. She lowered her head while the emotions coursed through her veins. Her stomach ached thinking about Heather. Sometimes the physical pain was worse than the emotional pain, especially for the aftermath.

  “Alison, if you don’t—”

  “My mom got pregnant with me when she was seventeen,” Alison said, staring at the wall.

  “A new boy started at her school in her junior year. He came out of nowhere. He was beautiful, as my mom put it. He had these green eyes, that in her words, were ethereal. His hair was this silky blonde and he was muscular. He was also friendly, athletic… you know, the perfect guy,” she explained. “He said his name was Anthony Stark. She didn’t know comics, so she didn’t know it was a false name.”

  She turned to Kyle, who urged her to continue.

  “Every girl wanted him, my mom said, but he only had eyes for her," Alison laughed lowly at the story her mother always told her. “My mom described herself as shy, few friends, and fat, but I’ve seen her high school pictures… she was not fat.”

  “She fell in love with him?” Kyle asked.

  “Oh, yeah. She was head over heels for him and she said the rest of the school couldn’t believe he was dating her, but she said she didn’t care what they thought,” Alison said. “Fast forward to the following summer before her senior year, she had long since l
ost her virginity to him. She’d been throwing up every morning and she took a pregnancy test.”

  “Let me guess,” Kyle said. “You were her bundle of joy.”

  Alison smiled. “Yes, I was. My grandparents were mad.” Alison laughed. “But when I was born, they spoiled me.”

  “My grandma and my mother drove over to Anthony’s house so she could speak to his parents. My mother was crying the whole way. The pregnancy and my grandparent's anger scared her.”

  “A reasonable reaction,” Kyle said.

  “Oh, yeah. I never faulted her for it. She said she thought about aborting me, giving me up for adoption, all that. She was a teenager. How could I blame her? Anyway, when they arrived, they found the house empty and for sale. My mom realized something. She’d never met Anthony’s parents. He was always inside the house alone and that’s why they could have sex without being caught.”

  “Wow,” Kyle said.

  “My grandparents searched everywhere for my father. They never found him. It was my uncle who pointed out the name. My family was dumbfounded. Where did this guy come from, and why did he attend high school under a false name?”

  Alison ran a hand through her hair. “My mom always said there was something special about me. She didn’t know why, but she said something about me was different. I was born and my mom kept me. She said she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t give me up.”

  “God chose her to raise her special little girl,” Kyle said.

  “I don’t know about that, but I want to show you something.”

  Alison walked back into the living room. She signaled to Miguel that they would be a few more minutes. He nodded and turned back to watch Olivia running around the pond.

  She rummaged through her bag and found what she was looking for.

  She walked back into Kyle’s room and handed him the picture.

  It was her senior picture from high school.

  “You’re beautiful,” Kyle said with a grin.

  “Stop,” Alison said rolling her eyes. “Look at it, Kyle. Tell me what’s different.”

  Kyle looked between and picture and Alison. Realization changed his features. He gasped in surprise.

  “You found the difference,” Alison said.

  “Your eyes were blue in this picture,” Kyle said, looking back up at Alison. “This wasn’t Photoshopped?”

  “Nope. That was my eye color until my accident. A drunk driver plowed into me when I was twenty. I was in a coma for two weeks,” Alison told Kyle. “When I woke up my family was happy I was alive, but my mother screamed because of my dad’s same eye color.”

  “Jesus,” Kyle whispered still looking at Alison’s senior picture.

  “I confused the doctors. They ran test after test on me. My brain damage and other wounds healed at a rapid pace,” Alison said. “It was like a miracle.”

  Alison sighed she hated using that word—miracle.

  “It is, Alison. Don’t deny it,” Kyle said handing her the picture.

  “Maybe for other people, but two nights later I saw my first demon. I thought I was going crazy. I thought the pain medications were making me hallucinate. The doctors changed my medicines, but night after night, the shadow appeared on the tech’s face. He acknowledged me and laughed because I was new and didn’t know how to handle him.”

  “I can tell you the rest later, but my mother ended up marrying my stepdad and they had two more children, one of them was Heather. I was lying about my career. I told my parents that I was in pharmaceutical sales and traveling the world. I think my mom never believed it, but when Heather was in college, she acted strangely. She was never the type to party or do drugs. She was shy like my mother.”

  Alison shook her head as the memories flooded back. “My mom called me hysterical they couldn’t find Heather and I flew home. By the time I arrived, they found her…”

  “A demon possessed her,” Kyle said.

  “It did. I waited for the right time to tell my family,” Alison continued. “Of course, they thought I was full of shit. It wasn’t until Heather was fighting me one night that I called them all to her apartment. She showed them what she was to spite me. This was the first time my family saw my powers. It was a shock.”

  Alison blinked back tears thinking of her beautiful little sister. “She fell into a deep depression. The psychiatrist I recommended to Miguel became her doctor. She told me the memories were coming back of the things she’d done while she was possessed. She confessed that she hit a homeless woman on purpose one night and she remembered doing it. She killed the woman.”

  “Oh, God,” Kyle said, shaking his head.

  “She seemed to recover. The treatments were helping and she was putting her life back together,” Alison said.

  “It didn’t work?”

  Alison lowered her head. “No. I’d been staying with her to help her out. She wanted fast food one night, so I went to pick it up.”

  Alison felt a hand on her shoulder. “I found her in the closet. I tried to save her. I tried. She was gone. I finally read her note a year later. She thanked me for trying to help her.”

  “My entire family never looked at me the same again. I know my stepdad still blames me. He even said to me that I should have left it in her.”

  Alison turned to Kyle and said, “Now do you see why I sometimes leave them in? Heather’s soul didn’t recover because it had been too long.”

  “Do you know how long?”

  “If I were to guess, from the first phone call from my mother about Heather acting weird, to the time I exorcised her, I would guess about nine months.”

  “I’m sorry, Alison,” Kyle said. “It must have been shocking to have it hit so close to home.”

  Alison smiled sadly. “I have to make a judgment call when the demon has been inside them for a long time. It’s hard to explain. I could see Heather’s soul fading, but I did it anyway. However, I had a co-worker whose soul was intact because the demon was benevolent enough to leave the soul alone and not destroy it.”

  Kyle took his hand away from Alison’s shoulder. She could tell he was absorbing what she was explaining. Not all her exorcisms worked. Not all the humans she’d tried to save over the years recovered. It was better to leave it inside them. People like Clara Reid were too far gone for Alison to help.

  “I see what you’re saying,” Kyle said. “I don’t agree with all of it because I still think the soul could be saved but I understand better now.”

  Alison smiled. “You don’t have to agree with me, you just have to follow my orders.”

  Kyle laughed and they stared for several moments. Again, Alison thought Kyle would lean in and kiss her.

  Ha! Who was she fooling? She was hoping the handsome Reverend would lean in and kiss her.

  Kyle reached and pushed Alison’s hair away. She didn’t pull away as they continued to stare.

  “You must tell me about that scar too,” Kyle said.

  Alison was about to respond when she heard a voice from the hallway. “Hey! Next time, get a room.”

  Alison laughed and Kyle scoffed. “We’re coming.”

  Alison heard a chuckle and footsteps walking away.

  Simon walked into the room and Alison nuzzled him.

  “I better go,” Kyle said standing up.

  Alison nodded and said, “I’m heading down to the police station, but I will swing by the mayor’s office first to watch Samuel.”

  “You can’t miss him,” Kyle said at the doorway.

  “No, I can’t, remember?”

  “True.”

  “Kyle?”

  “Yes?”

  “Do not engage them if you find them. You’re too hurt,” Alison warned.

  “I won’t. I’ll meet you at the station,” Kyle said.

  She watched Kyle hobble out of the room and argue with Miguel for taking so long. Alison grinned and turned her attention back to Simon, who waited for his owner to give him some orders.

  “I have to leav
e you here, buddy,” she said. “Keep an eye on this place while I’m gone.”

  Alison stood up and walked out of the room with Simon following behind her. She always hated leaving him alone, even when she worked her regular job. She had one of those cameras set up in her apartment when she wasn’t there to keep an eye on him, but for now, she’d have to trust that Simon would stay safe while she was away from him.