The Soul Hunter

by Melanie Wells

  I walked over to her, put the flashlight down on the countertop, and picked her up. She fought me and freed herself from my grip, thudding to the floor awkwardly and scrambling again to the cabinet door. The bottom edge of the wood was raw from her scratches. I pulled her away again and held her firmly against the floor with one hand.

  I would rather have jumped into a pool of battery acid than open that door. Some poltergeist was back there. But of course, I stood up, clutching Melissa tight, picked up my flashlight, and opened the door slowly with my foot, swinging both sides open. There, in a reassuring assembly of order, were the soldiers in my war against germs, all lined up at attention, labels pointed forward. From Ajax All-Purpose Cleanser to Zep Orange Industrial Degreaser.

  As I leaned down to shine my light into the cabinet, Melissa wriggled free again and hit the floor running. I expected her to head once again for the open cabinet, but she high-tailed it to the other end of the kitchen and turned to stare at me, her back to the wall, her eyes bright, reflecting the light back at me as I pointed it in her direction.

  She twitched her nose calmly. She’d cornered the monster. Slaying it was apparently my job.

  I knelt on the floor and pointed my light again into the cabinet. At first I didn’t notice anything out of place. And then I saw a bottle of Tilex lying on its side in the back. I began to remove bottles from the cabinet, one by one, setting them on the kitchen floor. When I reached for the Tilex, the screech returned and the Tilex bottle began to jerk wildly. I yanked my hand away and pointed my flashlight.

  Glaring back at me were two tiny eyes, red in the light. I pulled back again and let out a little scream. I heard Melissa take off for the bedroom.

  I stood up and rummaged through a drawer, producing a pair of kitchen tongs. I used them to reach once again for the Tilex, pulling it away gingerly, shining my light directly at the red eyes, which glared, unblinking, back at me.

  It was a rat. Caught in one of Randy’s glue traps.

  As I leaned in to get a closer look, the rat let out another screech. I flinched and pulled away, sitting back on my heels.

  Now let me just say here that I’ve read the research on animals and emotion. Animals supposedly do not experience complex feelings like we do—only the simple, primal ones necessary for survival. Like fear. But anyone who has spent any time at all with animals will tell you with great conviction that their pets feel love, shame, joy—the whole rock and roll. Of course, the academics all choose to ignore them in favor of their own rat-maze-with-a-mild-electric-shock experiments. As though anyone subjected to electric shock would give you an honest answer.

  This rat, I swear to you, was enraged. And what it flung at me with those eyes was hatred. I can’t find another word for it. Simple, pure, unflinching hatred.

  The rat was dark brown with a long, black tail. It was maybe eight or nine inches long, nose to tip. Its belly was stuck to the glue trap, stem to stern, and in its struggle, it had disemboweled itself. The rat was dying. A slow, hopeless, miserable death.

  He screeched at me again. We both knew, at that moment I believe, that his doom was inevitable. And we both knew I could not and would not save him.

  A strange mixture of remorse and revulsion washed over me. The scene was grotesque, to be sure, but it was the look of revilement, of sheer contempt on this rat’s face that slapped me backward and bowed my head. I’d never been directly responsible for another creature’s suffering before.

  “I’m sorry,” I said out loud.

  He screeched at me and kicked his back legs, ripping his wound some more and spilling another centimeter of his life onto the brown, smelly glue.

  I wanted to put him out of his misery, but I couldn’t think what to do. So I sat back on my heels and started to cry. Strange, gulping sobs. I heard a soft scuffling behind me. Melissa had scuttled back into the kitchen and stood by the door, taking in the scene.

  My cell phone rang. I jumped up to answer it, grateful, for once, for the intrusion.

  “Dylan, this is Enrique Martinez.”

  “Oh. Hello.” I sniffed and wiped my eyes. “How are you?”

  “Am I catching you at a bad time?”

  “It’s perfect timing, actually. I needed to hear a friendly voice.”

  “Is anything wrong?”

  “No,” I lied. “Everything’s fine.” I pulled a paper towel off the roll and wiped my nose.

  “I was wondering if you were going to be home later. I’m coming off overtime. I could drop the video by for you. I couldn’t get clearance for the file.”

  “What time?”

  “I could be there in ten minutes.”

  “That would be great.”

  I hung up and returned to the kitchen cabinet, compelled back to the morbid scene. It seemed somehow fitting that I should witness the death I’d caused, though I’m sure the rat would rather have died alone. He screeched at me again, baring his sharp, yellow teeth.

  It occurred to me that Gordon Pryne, and other bilious souls like him, had witnessed many such scenes. Pryne’s victims, of course, were human. People with lives and minds and souls. People who, with the burden or advantage of language, depending on your point of view, could articulate their suffering—plead for mercy, shout for help, and if they were so inclined, curse their executioner.

  What sort of person can inflict torment without succumbing to empathy? What could such profound absence of tenderness feel like? Apathy? Or perhaps emptiness. Maybe a person must be emptied of his very self in order to muster a true capacity for cruelty. I could not imagine, no matter how deeply I looked into my sometimes dark and conflicted heart, how anyone could blithely, intentionally impose pain on another being.

  I heard a knock at my front door. Ten minutes had passed quickly. I took my flashlight and answered the knock.

  David was standing there, dressed up for a date, all snazzy in scuffed cowboy boots, Levi’s, and a wool blazer.

  “You forgot, didn’t you?” he said.

  And of course I had. “We had supper plans, didn’t we?”

  “You were supposed to meet me an hour ago.”

  I looked at my watch.

  He stepped inside and brushed past me. “I’ll go flip the breaker. The rest of the block’s not out. It must be you.”

  I shut the door and called after him. “You want the flashlight?”

  “No,” he said, without turning around. I heard him walk through the kitchen and into the garage. By the time I made it back to the kitchen, the lights were on. The refrigerator shuddered to life with a jolt.

  David walked into the kitchen and pointed at the bottles of cleaning products lined up on the floor. “What’s going on?”

  “A rat. Caught in a glue trap.”

  “Since when do you have rats?”

  “Since…I don’t know. I found out on Sunday.”

  He leaned down, still without looking at me, and peered into the cabinet. “Thanks for mentioning it. And since when do you have a pet?”

  “Since last night.”

  “What is it? A gerbil or something?”

  “Rabbit.”

  “Thanks for mentioning it.” He studied the rat. “Does it have a name?”

  “The rat?”

  “The rabbit.”

  I moved in front of him and shut the cabinet doors. “David, look at me. I apologize. I feel terrible about this. I do.”

  “This isn’t really about how you feel, Dylan.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means I’d like to have a girlfriend that pays attention.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  The hurt in his eyes shifted to anger. “Don’t make me explain it to you. You’re not an idiot.”

  I took a step backward as the first tears began to sting my eyes. “Explain it anyway.”

  “It means I don’t like sitting at a restaurant for an hour by myself waiting for you without even the simple courtesy of a phone call.”


  “I apologized, David. What else do you want me to do?”

  “You say that like it matters. ‘I apologize.’ What does that mean, exactly? That it won’t happen again? Because it will, Dylan. Next week or next month or on my birthday or someday when we’re due at my mom’s for Christmas. It’s just a matter of when.”

  I took a step back and crossed my arms defensively. “That’s not true. I’ve never stood you up before.”

  “No, you usually just cancel at the last minute. Or you have some big catastrophic über-disaster in your life that demands all your time and attention. Flies or demons or suicidal patients or a bloody ax on your porch or who knows what? I’m…just…”

  “What? You’re just what?”

  “Sick of it, Dylan. I’m sick of it.” He jammed his fists in his pockets and shifted his weight to one foot. He looked down at the floor and took a breath. “I’m a patient man, Dylan. I really am. But there’s just too much… I don’t even know what to call it… Chaos, I guess. I don’t like it, standing in the middle of all that wind.”

  The doorbell rang. David flashed me an I-told-you-so look.

  I threw up my hands. “I need to answer the door, David. Can you just…hang on a second? Please? I’ll be right back. We’re going to finish talking about this. And I’m going to grovel. And you’re going to forgive me. I feel certain of it.”

  He sat down on a barstool and threw his keys onto the kitchen table.

  Officer Martinez was standing on my porch, tape in hand.

  “Oh, hey. Thanks for coming by,” I said.

  “I saw your lights come on. Everything okay?”

  “My electricity was out. I guess it was the breaker or something. I’m fine.”

  “Want me to check the house?”

  “No, that’s okay. I just—”

  “I checked it already.” David’s voice came from the doorway behind me. “She’s all safe and sound.” He walked over to us and extended his hand to Martinez. “David Shykovsky.”

  Martinez smiled and shook his hand. “Enrique Martinez.”

  David looked at me. I couldn’t tell if he wanted to cry or hit something. Maybe both. “You could have told me, Dylan.”

  “Told you what?”

  He kissed me on the cheek. “I’m leaving. I’ll call you later. Nice to meet you,” he said to Martinez. “Good luck.”

  He walked out the door, glancing down at the Virginia Slims jacket as he strode by. Then he got in his car and drove off. Just like that.

  “I guess I came at a bad time,” Martinez said. I shook my head. “It’s just a misunderstanding. I’m sorry. It’s not you.”

  As I shut the door, the rat screeched again in the kitchen.

  “What’s that?” Martinez asked.

  “A rat. It’s caught in a glue trap under my kitchen sink.”

  He walked past me and into the kitchen, squatting down to peer under the sink. “Want me to get rid of it for you?”

  “Would you?”

  “Sure. Where’s your dumpster?”

  I pointed. “Behind the fence to the left.”

  “Garbage bags?”

  “Pantry.”

  He opened the pantry and pulled out a big black Hefty Handle-Tie garbage bag, the kind you put leaves and grass in.

  “Are you going to kill it?” I asked. “Or just throw it away?”

  “Which do you want me to do?”

  “I’d like for you to put it out of its misery.”

  “You might want to wait in the other room.”

  I walked around the house turning on heaters, then went into the bedroom and found Melissa, who was hiding under my bed. I held her for a minute before I put her back in her hutch, more for my comfort than for hers. She was shaking, her big rodent teeth chattering, her brown eyes darting around. I wondered if she knew, somehow, that it had been a relative of hers, however distant, suffering behind that cabinet door. Had she been trying to save it?

  I heard a scuffle in the kitchen, a few Spanish words I didn’t know, and then the slam of the back door. Several minutes passed before the door opened again. By the time I met Martinez back in the kitchen, he was standing at the sink washing his hands.

  “Well?”

  “Rats are hard to kill,” he said.

  “You look a little green.” I smiled sheepishly. “I owe you one. I didn’t know what to do.”

  “I had to throw your…” He made a pinching motion with his fingers.

  “Tongs?”

  “I threw your tongs away. I didn’t think you’d want them back.”

  “Good call. Can I offer you something? Dr Pepper? Cash? My firstborn? Or I think I have some Shiner left from the last time I made Shiner Bock stew.”

  “I’ll take the cerveza. Gracias.”

  I opened the fridge, reached in for a Shiner Bock and motioned him to the kitchen table. He dried his hands on a dishtowel and pulled out a chair.

  “Have you eaten?” I asked. It was past nine.

  He shook his head, no.

  “I could warm up some chili.”

  He brightened. “Snow-day chili?”

  I opened up a fresh bag of Fritos and dumped them into a bowl for him, then warmed up the chili, dished it into a couple of bowls, and served it with some cheddar cheese on top. I sat down across from him and we dug in.

  “I spoke to Gordon Pryne today,” he said.

  “You saw him?”

  “Paid the man a visit. In my official capacity as DPD chaplain.”

  “How was he?”

  “Jittery. He needs the meth. It’s not going well.”

  “That’s no surprise. Where is he? Parkland?”

  He shook his head. “Cell. Lying on his cot like an old dog.”

  I winced. “Did he say anything?”

  “He did.”

  “He didn’t confess, did he?” I grinned. “Maybe he thought you were a real priest. You’ve got the whole Catholic vibe.”

  He took a long pull on his beer and looked at me. “He asked for someone.”

  “Who?”

  “You.”

  “Why would he ask for me? I’ve never met the man.”

  “Not by name,” he said. “He asked to see the girl behind the mirror.”

  “He saw me, then.”

  Martinez shook his head. “Nope.”

  “Then how?”

  “He told me he had a dream. About a lake and a rope. And a necklace and a girl. And the girl in the dream was the girl behind the mirror. He told me he needed to talk to the girl behind the mirror. He said you’re the one that can help him.”

  27

  How I’d gotten myself elected to help anyone was a big pile of stinking mystery to me. Not only was I not qualified for the job, I had no memory of applying for it and was positive I did not want it. But apparently, at least according to a dying, hallucinating homeless person in the Parkland ER, and a serial murderer and rapist coming down off a crystal meth intoxication, I’d been summoned. Twice now. By powers way up there in the corner office. The references were weak, though. So I figured I might still have a chance to get out of it.

  Martinez asked what I thought it meant, that I could help Gordon Pryne, and I told him that I didn’t know. Which I didn’t, though I had my suspicions.

  I thought about popping the interrogation tape in and pointing out Peter Terry, the source of all things vile and villainous in my life, but I didn’t know Martinez well enough to risk it. What if I was the only one that could see him? What if he wasn’t there this time? This whole thing could quickly deteriorate into something like those old Bewitched episodes, with Darren/Dylan the buffoon/crackpot always talking to the walls and seeing things nobody else saw. I needed that like a tomato in the face. Besides, since I don’t have a TV, the question was moot anyway.

  Martinez stayed longer than he should have. I was shaken by the rat thing—as was he, I think—and we both seemed to need the company. He didn’t leave until long after his second bottle
of Shiner was empty and the label peeled off entirely, bit by tiny bit.

  “A nervous habit,” he’d said.

  He didn’t say what he was nervous about.

  Enrique Martinez is a handsome man. Very male, if you get my meaning. All dark and inward, with a pleasing sense of trouble about him. He seemed to me like a guy who had gotten into enough hot water in high school either to straighten himself out for good or to land in a permanent state of delinquency. I had a feeling he rarely told his stories.

  He talked a little, listened a lot. You could feel his brain tumbling things around.

  He asked about David.

  “Over a year,” I’d said. “Maybe a year and a half.”

  “Nice guy?”

  “Very.”

  He’d nodded and peeled the dot off the i.

  What bugged me about the whole thing was that I felt like I was cheating. Like I should call up David and confess or something.

  I owed David an apology, for sure. More than one, it sounded like to me. Probably entire volumes could be drafted and bound to accommodate the necessary supplications. But Enrique Martinez wasn’t the reason I’d flaked out on David tonight. I was the reason I’d flaked out on David tonight. And that was a much tougher problem, in my opinion. Here I was, thirty-five years old, and still waiting for my better self to arrive. She had yet to show up, the irresponsible little brat.

  But I must admit, as I sat there listening to myself talk to Martinez and liking the way he considered me as I prattled on, I found myself in a little bit of a flutter. Just a tiny one.

  Don’t get me wrong. David Shykovsky is quite nearly the most perfect man I’ve ever met. Funeral home or no. Even that strike couldn’t contaminate his otherwise perfect boyfriend record. But I’d been wondering lately if we really had the mojo.

  We’re very different, for one thing. David is all sweetness and light. Grade-A, #1, Sugar Pie material. There is absolutely no guile in the man. Not one drop. And he has the longest fuse of anyone I’ve ever met—an endless supply of forbearance. He’d forgive me until he turned blue. Me, I’m always the one standing there red in the face.

  Another thing is, he’s optimistic. The glass is always half full with him. Not only is my glass half empty, I’m the sort that will sit there and calculate the time before it dries up entirely.