Soul Catcher

by Bridger, Leigh

  “I’ll find a way,” Granny promised. I was staring at the purple snake again. The one who’d smiled. It smiled again. Wider.

  Preacher T looked from the purple snake to me. “She’s found her a friend, Jeannie. Good.”

  He went back inside, and when he returned he pressed a whittled miniature of the tiny purple snake into my sweating hand. At the center of its back was a bored hole with a small metal ring through it. “This little totem’s name is Nahjee. That’s how you say it. You spell it n-a-g-i. It’s Hindu for ‘snake.’ Those Hindus, they say snakes are wise and know all about rebirth. Snakes shed their skins and start over. Snakes got ancient wisdom. Little Nahjee here won’t steer you wrong.”

  Granny took off one of the many gold chains she wore, stuck its carved quartz pendant in her pocket, then threaded Nahjee onto the chain and clasped it around my neck.

  The tiny wooden amulet instantly warmed the skin at the base of my throat.

  “You talk to Nahjee,” Preacher T said. “She’ll listen. And she’ll tell you things you need to know.”

  The snake charm seemed to move against my skin. So warm. Comforting. Strange, for a snake.

  Hello, Livia, Nahjee whispered in my brain. I will help you recognize danger, I promise. Because yes, your mother is battling a demon that wants to kill you.

  I vomited on myself, Preacher T, and Granny.

  *

  Granny drove me straight to Asheville from Preacher T’s home. We bounced along narrow roads that wound around mountainsides like snakes. Everything was a snake, to me. I lay against the truck’s passenger door with my face against the cool glass, unmoving. I didn’t tell Granny what Nahjee had said.

  Granny patted my leg. “Livia, hon, try to cheer up. Souls are like a diamond you can crack open and turn into lots of smaller diamonds, but then merge it back together. We’re all pieces and parts of other souls attached to the core of our own. All that matters, Livia, is how much of you is the diamond, and how much of you is a chunk of coal, only fit for burning. I promise you, you have a good mission in life. Your Daddy wants you to do what you’re doing. I promise. And your poor, sweet Momma doesn’t know anything about all this, and she doesn’t ever need to know. So don’t you worry about upsetting her.”

  Pieces. Parts. Diamonds. Coal. What parts of Momma are only fit for burning? My head swam.

  *

  Asheville is necklaced by the French Broad and Swannanoa Rivers. Its back streets are narrow and filled with deep shadows. Its massive and gothic downtown buildings sink their foundations into ancient trails and the lost dreams of Cherokee Indians. Many gilded and violent lives have passed through the streets and the mists along the rivers. And many of those souls were still there.

  The city was just starting to recover from decades of genteel poverty, beginning in the Depression. Many shops stood empty; boarded over, many streets were wind tunnels haunted by pigeons and trash.

  Granny carried me into an alley where moss clung to damp drain pipes. I looked down woozily at stepping stones set with weird patterns of beads and colored glass. We ducked into a doorway beneath the stained glass symbol of a bleeding moon.

  A young woman with long blonde dreadlocks and gold lame’ leggings frowned at us over her tattoo machine. She was etching a marijuana leaf on her own forearm. Granny handed her money and they talked in long, hushed words. I didn’t want to hear. My eyes drifted over walls of strange designs, fascinated. Nahjee curled tight over the fast pulse in my throat.

  Don’t look at those, Livia, Nahjee whispered. Some of them draw banes.

  I didn’t know what a bane was then, but I averted my eyes anyhow. If Nahjee kept talking to me. I’d better listen. Which seemed all right, considering. The blonde woman gestured. I curled on my side atop a softly woven rug on the floor, and Granny undid my long black braid and parted it vertically down the side of my skull, just above my left ear. She plucked the hair one strand at a time. Later, when I had the courage to lift my hair and look in a mirror, I saw a naked strip two inches long and an inch wide.

  My brain hummed as the tattoo needle buzzed in my ear. Tiny symbols embedded themselves in me. A cross, a Star of David, an ankh, and other symbols, some so odd that Granny drew them on paper for the tattoo artist to copy.

  I was marked now, or protected, or scarred, depending on your point of view.

  When I got home I slipped into Momma’s room and watched her sleep. Even drugged on psychiatric meds she looked uneasy and sad. But she was Momma, not some other creature, no matter what came and went inside her.

  I don’t know if you can ever save her, Nahjee whispered.

  I laid a hand on Momma’s arm gently.

  One day, when I’m strong enough, I’ll try.

  *

  We muddled along for the next few years. Momma remained sedated and distant, but except for a few worrisome moments she didn’t scare me. Maybe because I could feel my own power growing; every night I painted in my sleep, and then Granny whisked the paintings away and burned them. I began to sense other spirits around me, good ones, their shapes forming in soft shadows. Still, I couldn’t yet see the spirit world the way Preacher T and Granny said I would.

  I was happy enough just keeping Momma’s dark side under surveillance, waiting for the day when somehow I’d understand how to rescue her. Alex continued to be happy, comforting, my best friend. He began to turn handsome, like Daddy.

  Then, when I was sixteen, a hiker found Preacher T beaten to death in his high-mountain yard, with all his snakes and his art in pieces around him. A month later, Granny Belane was shot in the head as she filled her truck’s gas tank at a convenience store near Asheville.

  The sheriff said it was robbery, but nothing was stolen.

  They were gone. Both of my spirit guides, wiped out a month apart.

  Was I strong enough to survive without them? Was I ready?

  On the cold January night after Granny’s funeral, I sat at the kitchen table watching Momma wander the room. My skin prickled. From the den came the laser-gun sounds of Street Blaster, a video game Alex and I often played. Even Alex was subdued, now. He sat in the den in his coat and dark, dressy church suit, randomly firing the controls.

  “Set your blasters on ‘High,’ morons,” a voice called with a certain mechanical sarcasm. One of the many scripted commands uttered by the game’s star character, a smug, sci-fi commando named Leonidas. “Get ready to attack the tri-level dungeon through the portal.”

  I kept my eyes trained on Momma. “How are you feeling?” I asked, trying to stay calm. Something was definitely not right with her.

  She kept her back turned. My stomach twisted as her hands roamed over the thick handles of carving knives protruding from a wooden storage block. My heart raced. I slowly pulled a notepad and a pencil from the pocket of the overcoat I hadn’t yet removed.

  I laid the pad on the table.

  I picked up the pencil.

  Don’t make me draw your demon, Momma.

  Suddenly the air filled with shadowy forms, electrified.

  “Kittycat,” a voice shouted. It was Leonidas, the video game character. Kittycat was my screen name.

  A video game character was yelling my video game name at me from the computer.

  “What the heck?” Alex called. “Okay, Sis, how did you manage to program Leo to say your name?”

  “Livia,” Leonidas shouted. “Your mother has lost the game. The demon has taken over. Kittycat, your mother is gone forever. Get ready to fight.”

  The thing inside Momma’s body turned to face me, a knife in her hand. An ice-cold breeze froze my skin.

  Then the demon hissed and leapt at me.

  *

  I came to a quarter of a mile away, in a neighbor’s rural yard, with my hair in singed hunks around my face and the skin peeling off my burned feet. My feet were bare and blistered. I swayed and hugged myself, kneeling, sobbing, broken, ruined, dazed.

  Paint them, trap them, burn them, kill them. Al
ex, Momma. I’m so sorry.

  That’s what I was chanting when the sheriff and the paramedics found me.

  *

  Firemen dug Momma’s charred body out of the kitchen, along with Alex’s. I couldn’t tell anyone the truth; they wouldn’t have believed me. That an unspeakably obscene creature had emerged from my mother’s physical body, that I had dodged into my bedroom just barely ahead of its lethal grasp. That it had ripped my brother’s chest open as he’d tried to defend me, and that the creature vaporized after I pulled a childhood drawing from my pocket and set it on fire with a cigarette lighter.

  Nope. Not a believable defense.

  Even I began to think I’d only dreamed seeing a demon, that I must be psychotic, though Nahjee kept telling me otherwise. I wouldn’t listen, couldn’t think straight. The authorities decided I was mentally ill and therefore, innocent of criminal charges. The forensics seemed to back up my claim that our mother stabbed Alex, but also indicated the fire was all my doing.

  So they sent me to a psychiatric institution way over in the flatlands of Chapel Hill, where researchers from the university gave me heavy doses of anti-psychotics that still didn’t keep me from painting demons with my own blood at night. I willed myself to never see another one in the flesh. Nahjee whispered to me from time to time, her tone sad. Even if you do not allow yourself to see them, they are still there.

  “I paint them when I sleep. That’s crazy enough,” I told her.

  Finally, after a couple of years, the doctors gave up, judged me harmless to anyone but myself, and let me out.

  They were right. I could only harm myself.

  *

  I wandered to Asheville and lived on the streets, selling my hand-painted postcards of local scenes. It wasn’t so bad being diagnosed as completely, totally delusional. I was used to it now. A highly functional schizophrenic. Possibly homicidal, but innocent by reason of insanity.

  Better to explain my weird shit in those terms than to think the things I saw and did were rational reactions to my terrible memories, the questions that would never be answered, the everyday reality. Otherwise I’d end up gumming my oatmeal in a padded room again or dead under a bridge near a homeless shelter. No biggie.

  I could handle self-destruction, either way. I tried to kill myself about a dozen times, but my hallucinations kept interfering. Angels, right. Hands that tugged and pulled me away from the gutter. Nahjee soothing, Time will tell. You will find your way again. I just didn’t have the guts to off myself in a competent way. I’d have to keep practicing.

  In the meantime, I collected tattoos like a squirrel collects nuts. I wanted to disappear under protective symbols so my imaginary friends and enemies couldn’t see me hiding.

  Soon images covered both my arms from shoulders to wrists. Cherubs, skulls. Momma and Alex’s names, and Daddy’s, Preacher T’s and Granny Belane’s. Celtic eternity knots, and Hindu symbols for protection. Barbed wire and daggers. Snakes, lots of snakes. And my favorite line from the 23rd Psalm. Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death . . .

  Many of the tattoos hid scars. Slash marks. A streak of burned skin inside my right wrist, from the fire.

  And then there were the piercings: five in the right ear, six in the left. I mostly filled the holes with simple little gold studs. Hey, a girl has to be conservative to keep her professional look, right? Especially at night, when the demons still came.

  Over the years I’d tried the obvious solution to stop painting demons in my sleep. I locked myself into bathrooms. Handcuffed myself to beds. Handcuffed myself to men I fucked so I wouldn’t have to sleep alone. I sat on park benches all night, playing checkers with the street people, beating African drums, me and the homeless and the stoners and the other lost souls.

  It never worked. When I was in a trance I used whatever made a mark. Ketchup, barbecue sauce, mud, soap. Or, deprived of all else, my own blood. Old childhood habits are hard to break. When you’re in a trance the surface of your skin parts under your teeth and fingernails like a fine seam. I never felt the pain until I woke up the next morning with a new gash in my arm and something awful and bloody staring at me from the nearest paintable surface.

  But I hadn’t suffered any more wide-awake hallucinations like the night of the fire. Just the dream-paintings. Nothing came shuffling after me and tried to squeeze between the molecules of my bedroom door.

  Nope. I was cured of all that.

  But I knew in my heart that the darkness, filled with demons, would continue closing in.

  2

  Six years later

  Through some lucky quirks of fate, I carved out a warped but survivable life for myself. First, Charles and Sarah Ablehorn took a fancy to my art and invited me to work at their gallery. My big, abstract landscapes began to sell. The Ablehorns rented me an old building they owned, where I set up a studio and a living space.

  Next they introduced me to one of their patrons, a local nightclub owner, Dante. He offered me a part-time job as a bartender. Extra money, working late nights, perfect.

  I almost felt . . . settled.

  Then one night, not long after my twenty-fifth birthday, I made the mistake of sleeping alone, sober, and soundly.

  I jerked awake in the bleary light just before dawn. My arms and body were smeared with paint. Open tubes of acrylics seeped bright colors all over my blanket. Unwashed brushes lay along the gooey trail my footprints made across the loft’s scarred plank floors. My fingers were so sore I could barely bend them. I staggered out of my bed, gasping. My gaze followed the brush and paint trail to a canvas standing starkly against a brick wall between my tall windows.

  The pig-demon thing looked straight back at me. It had the basic shape of a man, but its legs were short and scaly. It squatted, grinning at me, with its massive arms draped over its obscenely spread knees. Jutting from between its thighs was a major boner.

  Stay focused, be calm, Nahjee counseled. I’d worn her to a faded luster over the years. My sweaty fingerprints were practically embedded in the wood. Speak your prayers, she instructed. Take a deep breath.

  I moved my dry lips silently. Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil . . .

  Fuck me. Because I did fear evil. I seriously did.

  Squatting by Pig Face’s cloven hooves was some other creepy thing, like a pet. This one had a long, sharp nose and his fur was striped red on a chalk-gray hide; he or she or it had the fanged grin of a rabid wolverine and the long tail of a monkey. Its feet looked agile and vicious. Each paw had eight long toes, with claws, and the heel of each paw had a spur. Eight Toes watched me with opalescent eyes that gleamed a cold, bluish white. It was laughing at me.

  Burn them. Burn them both right away, Nahjee urged. Don’t wait for full light. These two are really dangerous.

  I threw on some leggings and a long sweater, shoved my scarred feet into mud-colored earth sandals, strapped a long Bowie knife to my waist, grabbed the painting, and rushed downstairs. The lower level of the building acted as my garage. I never parked the truck outside, even though getting ripped off by prowlers of the ordinary variety was the least of my worries.

  I elbowed a lever on the brick wall. Gears whirred in the room’s ceiling. A massive warehouse door slid sideways on its tracks. I stepped out slowly, looking both ways. I lived in an abandoned industrial area in the flood plain of the Swannanoa. It was a world of urban forest, weeds, junk and isolation.

  Further down, approaching the highway, the road was going upscale. Big-box retailers, fancy landscaping, even a riverside park. But not here. My nearest neighbors were a family of raccoons who lived in a boarded-up ice plant. I put out dry dog food for them. They climbed up my building’s outer walls to perch on its deep window sills at night, where they fought, fucked, and pawed at the glass.

  No problem. I liked waking up in a cold sweat to discover it was just them. Reality is one big mofo thrill ride. Scream then laugh. Yeah, just raccoons. This time.r />
  Shivering in the early March chill, I sliced the painting to pieces. Eight Toes, the grinning little parasite with the fucked up feet, occupied a small piece of canvas by himself. He’d go into the fire first. Hurry, Nahjee whispered. Something’s happening.

  My hands trembled as I dumped charcoal into a rusty metal drum. The world felt empty, and the morning light over the tall buildings of Asheville seemed to glow a weird yellow-green. Car traffic and freight trains rumbled in the distance.

  Above me, a faded angel mural looked down from the bricks, her face weeping through the mortar. Beneath her bare feet the painted ghost of the building’s logo still showed.

  HARKEN BIBLE PRINTERS, INC.

  THE GOOD WORD SHALL ABIDE

  I squirted lighter fluid into the metal drum, stepped back, tossed a match, and watched the plume of orange flames shoot up. Good and hot. “Back to hell, motherfucker,” I said loudly. It never hurts to talk some serious kick-ass movie dialogue to a hallucination

  I bent and grabbed an armful of canvas. I held the jagged pieces face down. I didn’t want to see Eight Toes and his big friend, the one with those bloody, lecherous eyes and the moldering, pig-like face. I especially didn’t want to look at the thing’s erection again.

  I tossed Eight Toes at the flames. He didn’t go.

  A gust of wind caught the piece of canvas. I grabbed but the wind flung it just ahead of me, like a taunt. I dropped the rest of the canvas and leapt after that scrap. Picture my long black hair flying like an electrified flag over my tattoos and studded ears. I chased the windswept canvas through woods strewn with junked washing machines, old tires and moldering liquor bottles.

  You can’t run fast enough, bitch, a guttural voice said from nowhere. I slid to a stop in the cold muck atop the Swannanoa’s steep bank. Eight Toes settled gently on the dark water. He smiled his monkey-wolverine smile at me as he floated downstream, disappearing around a curve in the woods. The river would carry him under a small bridge and then into the highway culverts, where I’d never be able to reach him.