The Borrowed Souls: A Novel

by Paul B. Kohler

  “Well then, shall we begin?” asked the doctor. “I need you to push, Cyndi. And when I tell you, I need you to push hard.”

  Cyndi pinched her eyes closed but nodded in agreement.

  “Now, Cyndi, push for ten seconds.”

  With a guttural squeal emanating from her lips, Cyndi followed the doctor’s instructions. After ten seconds, she released her downward pressure and breathed in and out, rhythmically, as we were taught in Lamaze class. After a short pause, the doctor spoke sternly.

  “Push, Cyndi. Push now.”

  Cyndi squeezed my hand and cried out in pain. She pushed hard, and within seconds, she exhaled loudly.

  “Good job, but we’re not through yet. I need you to bear down once more, and push with all your might. I promise, Cyndi, this is it. The pain will be over shortly.”

  Cyndi took in several deep breaths and pushed our baby into the world. Her final scream echoed through the room, then there was silence.

  The silence was quickly replaced with the faint cries of the newborn baby in the doctor’s hands.

  “Congratulations, Cyndi and Jack, you have a healthy baby boy,” the doctor said.

  Tears of joy flowed from my eyes. I looked down at Cyndi. She cried as well, but for a much more painful reason.

  “You did it, baby. You’ve given us a son,” I said and kissed her warmly.

  A moment later, the doctor interrupted our embrace.

  “Jack, I need the box. Could you hand it to me?” asked the doctor.

  “Box? What do you mean? Didn’t you just tell me that he was healthy?”

  The doctor sat up straight, still cradling our child in one arm, and removed a mask with his free hand. Instant recognition overcame me as I saw the face of Enoch Gant.

  “What the hell?” I asked.

  “I need your box, Jack. This soul needs to be collected, and a collection will be made.”

  “I will not. Just hand me my son, and you can go to hell,” I said.

  Enoch tilted his head back and laughed out loud. “The only way you’ll hold your son is after I’ve removed his soul.”

  Cyndi’s cries turned in to screams of fear. I released her hand and took a step toward Enoch and our newborn son.

  “Give me my son, dammit,” I demanded.

  Enoch backed up slowly, turning our son toward us. Seeing him for the first time made my knees weak. I could see that he was warming up slowly, his flesh turning pink by the minute. He looked healthy. Normal. Then, he opened his eyes and stared directly at me. They were not baby blue as I expected, but were black, black as coal. A moment later the child smiled widely, opening his mouth and bearing a full rack of teeth, each one sharpened to a point. Suddenly the child began to giggle. Within seconds, the giggle turned into a full-on growling laugh. I jumped back, repulsed by what I saw. Enoch grinned at my reaction.

  “You see, Jack, this baby is not yours. Never was. He’s a product of the devil, and your only option in the matter is to release his soul to me.” Then, both Enoch and the baby’s cackling laughs joined in unison, causing Cyndi and me to scream in terror.

  I lurched forward, raising my hands and aiming for Enoch’s neck. Before I reached him, the room went dark.

  I bolted upright, unaware of my surroundings. As my eyes focused on the slowly brightening room, I remembered that I was in the old family cabin. The fire had long since burned out, and the sun was peeking through the dirty windowpanes.

  I stood and stretched for the ceiling, feeling the knots in my back groan in protest. Walking past the fireplace, I headed for the front door to introduce fresh air into the musty cabin. As my hand grasped the door handle, my mind slipped back to what I had just seen. I whipped around quickly and darted for the fireplace. Inside the burnt ash sat Calvin’s soul box, completely intact. I grabbed it, noticing absolutely no blemishes on the surface of the collection chamber.

  “Son of a bitch,” I said. My mind raced at how else I could destroy the box. I rushed to the closet and rummaged through an old wooden toolbox until I found what I was looking for. I retrieved a five-pound sledgehammer from the very bottom of the box and grinned as I hoisted it from its resting place. Returning to the kitchen, I placed the soul box on the butcher-block counter and raised the sledge above my head. With all my might, I brought the head of the hammer down as hard as I could, driving it into the top of the soul box. The painful sensation that shot up through my arm and into my shoulder caused me to cry out.

  “AHHH!”

  As I regained my composure, I picked up the dropped hammer and laid it on the countertop next to the box. The undamaged box.

  “Well, this might be more difficult than it seems,” I said. At that moment, my next brilliant idea hit me like a ton of bricks. I returned to the closet and retrieved a spool of bailing wire. I rushed back to the counter and slowly, methodically, wrapped wire around the box and the handle of the sledge. Once that was complete, I gleefully grabbed the handle of the hammer and walked out the door.

  Once outside, I headed around the cabin and ducked into the forest. A well-worn trail led from the clearing around the cabin, and if my memory served me well, would open up at Lake Sweeny, a small nature pond that was a long-lost secret in these parts.

  The hike was just what I needed. I remembered the stroll through the forest taking ten or fifteen minutes in the past. But as the trail faded in and out from lack of use, I was led astray a number of times. Twenty minutes later, I finally found my destination.

  The spring-fed lake was calm and still at this early morning hour. The occasional ripples caused by jumping fish in the distance were the only things that broke the mirrorlike finish of the surface. I contemplated dragging the old canoe from the shed but wasn’t sure about its ability to float after so many years. I decided that I would rather test my arm strength than my sink rate.

  I walked out onto the dock until I reached the edge. I stopped and looked around at the beautiful scenery. On all sides of the lake, dark green pine trees sprang from the edge, creating the perfect secluded fishing hole.

  “Here goes nothing,” I said. I began to swing the hammer like a pendulum, forward and backward then forward again. After a few practice swings, I released the hammer with the soul box tightly attached to it. It flew through the air gracefully.

  Kerplunk! The water splashed several feet into the air, and then calm once again returned to the lake surface.

  I turned and smiled. In fact, I smiled all the way back to the cabin.

  Fifteen minutes later, I stepped out from the canopy cover of the surrounding forest. I paused momentarily as I noticed the old wood shed off to the side. Even though I didn’t need to eat or drink, I had the sudden urge to fry up a beautiful lake trout for lunch. Stopping at the shed, I rummaged through the dozen or so fishing poles in the corner until I found my old favorite spinner reel. I grabbed the old tackle box and headed for the cabin to sort out the condition of the fishing gear inside.

  As I stepped into the cabin, my eyes locked like a magnet onto the soul box sitting on the countertop.

  “What the—” I blurted.

  “You don’t think you can shrug your responsibilities that easy, do you?” Hauser asked.

  Chapter 8

  “How’d you find me?” I asked, trying to hide my surprise.

  Hauser smiled, then pulled out a pair of vintage wire-rimmed glasses and slid them on his face. “What do you think? Does it make me look . . . distinguished?” he asked.

  I shrugged and avoided looking at him directly. I moved to the countertop and began untying Calvin’s soul box from the sledgehammer.

  “What? No comment about my new spectacles?”

  “Okay, yes. You look very distinguished with your new glasses, Hauser,” I said in a monotone voice. “I suppose you’ve had those this whole time.”

  “Nope. I actually have you to thank for these. If it wasn’t for your little tantrum yesterday, I’m not sure when the Sentinel would’ve actually handed them out.
”

  “Wait, what? You just got them?”

  “Yep,” Hauser said as he folded them and put them back in his pocket. “The latest and greatest from the masterful wizards that create useful things. They allow me, or whoever is wearing them, to see any active soul collector in the world. Pretty slick, huh?”

  “Yeah, slick. So how does it work? You go up there, or wherever it is that you go to meet them, and tell them you have a problem, and they drop everything they’re doing to create this new gizmo for you to, what? Become the bounty hunter of the afterworld?”

  “No, not quite. I had this latest piece of hardware within an hour of you ditching me yesterday. I guess they’d had them ready for some time and were waiting for the right opportunity to release them into the collector circulation.”

  “I’m confused. Why’d it take you nearly a full day to come find me? If you’ve had a way to see where I was this whole time, why wait until today?”

  “Well, buddy, after you lost me in the tubes of London—which I have to give you kudos for being very creative—I had a moment of clarity. I thought back to when I first became a collector, and how I struggled with the conflicting emotions battling inside me. I figured with the extraordinary training that you’ve already been through, you were bound to snap.”

  “Listen, I didn’t snap,” I argued. “I’m just not . . . willing to blindly collect random souls, when you and I both know that there is a better way.”

  Hauser nodded in agreement. “You’re right. You’re absolutely right, Jack. That’s why I gave you some space. I needed you to find clarity on your own before I came to drag you back, kicking and screaming, if that’s what it takes,” Hauser winked.

  “Why are you being so nice?” I asked. “You said it yourself that I’ve been a major pain in your ass through my entire training. And in your eyes, I threw this major tantrum, which we’ll just have to agree to disagree about—”

  “No, you threw a tantrum. There’s no question,” Hauser said with a smirk.

  “Yeah, whatever. We all can’t be as perfect as you at being an emotionless human, now can we?”

  Hauser’s winced slightly, then looked at his watch before stowing it back into his pocket. “Why don’t you have a seat, champ. I see a lot of promise in you, and if sharing some of my past strengthens your ability, then I’m willing if you are.”

  Surprised at Hauser’s sudden openness to share, I nodded and eased myself down into the lumpy couch.

  Chapter 9

  Hauser pulled up a wooden chair from the kitchen table and sat down across from me. He crossed one leg over the other and briefly fidgeted with his hands in his lap, clearly showing signs of trepidation. He stared off into space, as if looking for an invisible solution to his problem.

  “You’re only partly correct, Jack. I have far more emotion than I seem to let on. That’s partly a carryover from my previous life.” Hauser paused, folding his arms in front of his chest, then he looked directly at me.

  “What I’m about to tell you is something that I am not at all proud of.”

  “If it’s any consolation, I’m the last person in this world to judge,” I said.

  Hauser smiled. “Let’s talk after you hear what I’m about to tell you. Before I became a collector, I was . . . a very bad man. I worked, if you would like to call it that, as an assassin . . . for Napoleon.”

  I inhaled sharply.

  “See?” Hauser said. “It was shortly after the French Revolutionary Wars, and although a treaty was in place, the Napoleonic Wars were just getting started. I will not be in any history books. I was a . . . secret to Napoleon himself. At his charge I traveled through France, killing any and all British soldiers I came across, along with any French sympathizers for the British cause.”

  Hauser stopped and stood. He slowly paced around the small, musty cabin, almost as if he was looking for something. He opened all of the kitchen cabinets, finally reaching high on the top shelf and fumbling about with its contents. A moment later he withdrew a dingy bottle with a dark liquid inside. He removed the cork and brought the bottle to his lips. Tilting his head back, he poured half of the amber liquid down his throat.

  “Whoa! That’s got a kick,” Hauser said as he offered the bottle of bourbon to me.

  Nervously, I accepted the bottle and took a swallow. The phenolic sting glided down my throat and warmed me instantly. I handed the bottle back to Hauser, and he recorked it before returning to his chair.

  “All in all, I killed nearly a thousand soldiers and innocent civilians between the years 1809 and 1811.”

  I gasped, much louder than I expected. I was speechless, but my mind was in overdrive, wondering what all that killing would do to a person’s psyche. I couldn’t imagine what Hauser had to cope with over the centuries, when here I was, unable to take a single soul from an unborn child.

  “Sometime in the middle of 1811, Napoleon was beginning to lose his control. His victories in battle were becoming fewer and farther between. His defeats were increasing by the number. He began to lose focus at what he was fighting for, and I was eliminated.”

  “You mean, you were the reason for the decline of Napoleon?” I asked.

  Hauser shrugged. “If you asked Napoleon at the time, that’s precisely what he’d say. I was his scapegoat.”

  “So how did it happen?” I asked.

  “How my life ended is not important. What came next is.” Hauser remained seated as he uncorked the bottle and finished off the remaining bourbon in one long draw. “Sorry, kid. There’s none left for you.”

  “No worries,” I said. “I’m more of a Scotch guy anyway.”

  “Before I was killed, I suffered through four days of horrific torture at the hands of Napoleon himself. In between sessions I drifted in and out of consciousness. I struggled to maintain clarity on what was real and what were hallucinations. At one point, two men came into my cell and told me that they were there to collect my soul. I was sure at the time that they were simply hallucinations caused by the various concoctions given to me by Napoleon or his guards. I was further convinced they were hallucinations when they offered me to live beyond my death. They promised me a long life if I agreed to become a soul collector myself.”

  “So they recruited you?” I asked.

  “Yep. After a few more encounters with the two gentlemen, it became clear that they in fact were real, and I wasn’t conjuring them up as a form of mental escape. I listened to everything they had to say and figured that I had nothing to lose.”

  “If you’ve committed all of those murders, why did the Sentinel want you? Wouldn’t they want to cleanse your soul of all its evil?”

  “It was precisely because of all of those murders that they wanted me. They saw me as an emotionless individual and felt that having the ability to collect a soul regardless of how I felt about human life was an attribute they desired.”

  I was beginning to understand more about life and death and everything in between. “Then I might be a liability to the Sentinel.”

  Hauser nodded. “You might be, Jack. But a man can change.”

  “But I don’t want to change, Hauser. I like caring for humankind. I can’t become like you, an emotionless killer.

  Hauser nodded. “Toward the end of my tenure as Napoleon’s personal assassin, I began to grow a conscience. Something happened in the last year of my life that I can’t quite put a finger on. I began to feel. I started letting people go that I was sent to kill. The feeling that flowed inside of me with each life that I saved was far more rewarding than that when I took a life. When the two collectors were sent for my soul, I knew I had an opportunity for redemption.”

  “So why did they send two collectors for you? Were they afraid that you might not come quietly?” I asked

  Hauser chuckled. “No, not quite. One of the two collectors was retiring, and the other man would became my trainer.”

  I wasn’t sure if it was the shot of bourbon that I had taken or if it was hear
ing everything that Hauser had just revealed, but I began to feel lightheaded.

  “I know exactly how you feel, buddy,” Hauser said, tossing the empty bottle into the fireplace, the glass exploding upon impact.

  For several moments Hauser and I stared at the settling ash in silence.

  “So is your trainer still around?”

  Hauser’s hands returned to his lap, once again fidgeting nervously. “Yes, and no.”

  “I don’t understand. Do you know or not?”

  “The man who trained me was Enoch Gant.”

  Chapter 10

  “Holy shit,” I exclaimed. “The same Enoch from my dreams?”

  “The very one,” Hauser said. “At the time, Enoch was the Sentinel’s head trainer. He was the best at what he did, and he knew more about our line of work than anyone else . . . including most of the Sentinel’s council. He, like myself, was quite young when the Sentinel brought him on. Also, like myself at the time, he had been a cold-blooded killer. Then, a few months after my training was complete, Enoch went rogue.”

  “Rogue? You mean he quit? Like me?”

  “Not at all the same, Jack. The reasons for your resignation were righteous. Enoch became power hungry. He saw the potential in life, and death, and took it upon himself to live a different path on the run.”

  “And the Sentinel can’t locate him? Maybe he died.”

  “He’s believed to be alive, but unfortunately, the Sentinel has no way of locating him.”

  “What about your new spectacles? You were able to find me pretty easily.”

  “It’s ironic that you bring up the glasses. You see, the Sentinel has been trying to develop an item that might have the ability to locate Enoch Gant. In fact, that whole R&D department, as you appropriately coined it earlier, was established with the sole purpose of locating Enoch. This latest item,” Hauser said as he tapped his pocket where the glasses resided, “tracks any soul box. But Enoch is without a box in his possession.”