Soul Catcher

by Bridger, Leigh

  I parked in the misty lot of a tiny diner where a retro coffee cup beamed its white neon outline to the night. The lot sloped off to a crumbling curb behind the old building, and behind that, the land dropped steeply into woods and shrubs.

  “I warn you,” I said to Greg Lindholm, as I opened my creaking driver’s side door, “the donuts here are made from grains you probably never heard of, and the gourmet coffee is imported from countries whose names are full of strange vowel combinations.”

  He smiled. His heat and his large, powerful body seemed to take up all my air. “Sounds good, Livvie.”

  As we stepped out of the truck a bedraggled, half-starved puppy appeared from the darkness. It limped badly, and shivered. The puppy gobbled up a few crumbs of donuts beside a dumpster then whined and looked our way, wagging its tail.

  “Oh, no, I’m a sucker for a homeless puppy,” Greg said. He headed for the animal. The puppy tucked tail and scooted toward the woods. “Don’t be afraid, little guy,” Greg called. He disappeared into the fog.

  I frowned. The darkness made me nervous. I cupped my hands around my mouth. “If you can catch him I’ll take him to the humane society tomorrow.” Gigi volunteered there. Maybe she’d put a charm on the puppy. Make sure it got a good home. Somewhere in the fog at the lot’s back edge, the puppy whined with heartbreaking need. “Come here, little guy,” I heard Greg coaxing. “Sorry, Livvie. He seems to be afraid of men. Give me just a second.”

  Afraid of men? Men were the least of the unknowns that lived in the dark. I sighed. “I’m good with dogs. I can probably catch him.”

  I reached behind me, under my jacket, and touched my fingers to the knife tucked into a small scabbard sewn into the lining. I stroked the knife handle, pulled the knife free, and headed into the fog. Always try to stay on the safe side of paranoia. That was my motto. I could barely see. I heard Greg shuffling in the edge of the woods. The puppy whined nearby.

  “Here, puppy,” I called. “Come on, little guy, come on—”

  Greg Lindholm slammed his thick fist into my face.

  I sprawled backwards. My head nearly snapped off my neck. My brain short-circuited for a few seconds. I heard the slurpy, panting sound as something else, not a puppy, it had never been a homeless puppy, joined us. It swatted me across one arm. Its claws felt like razors.

  Greg Lindholm grabbed me by my long black hair and dragged me down the hill into the woods. His scent rose up, a stinking, rotting smell, like a corpse. The thing inside a stranger’s body laughed deep in its throat. Then it spoke to me with guttural contempt.

  “Time to die again, bitch.”

  3

  I woke up or regained consciousness. Hard to say which. Somehow I’d driven myself back to the studio last night. I didn’t remember how. I lay naked on the hard plank floor upstairs, shivering. When I managed to lift my head, the last trickle of vomit trailed away from my bleeding lower lip. My skin was sticky with blood and semen. Everywhere. All the strategic spots and then some. All raw, torn. My right eye was swollen shut. My right arm was ripped; dried blood covered it. I had bruises on my breasts in the shape of Lindholm’s fingers. I hurt all over.

  Time to die again, bitch. Time to die again. Again.

  Greg Lindholm had tried very hard to kill me with his dick and his fists, but something, or someone, had stopped him. I’d managed to stab him in the leg before he slung me against a tree, but that only slowed him down. He’d beaten me until I was limp, fucked me as painfully as possible, and then he’d wrapped his hands around my neck and begun to squeeze. As my mind went black I felt a swoosh of energy and saw a flare of light. I heard Eight Toes scream and make a gargling sound, then go totally silent. Lindholm jerked his hands away from my throat and got to his feet. Another swoosh sliced the air and then the deep thud as an object struck the tree only inches away.

  Lindholm muttered something about “waiting” and “patience.” And he left me laying there.

  I had had help from someone. Or, like I said, some thing.

  Now I squinted in the morning light. My head whirled. Slowly, trembling, I pushed myself upright. I stared at the canvas leaning against a post less than two feet from me.

  I had painted a new picture.

  This time there was no unspeakable creature in it, or like other paintings, no malevolent faces of people I’d just as soon didn’t really exist somewhere.

  This time, there was a pioneer. A fucking pioneer, like the corny paintings in kids’ history texts or a stalwart young frontiersman in some cheesy ‘Old Mountain Times’ mural. He was the kind of realistic, traditional art I never painted, asleep or awake. I stared up at him through my pain, with one good eye. I’d painted him life-sized, on one of my largest canvases.

  He was tall and lean. He looked older than me, but still young. He wore leather leggings, coarse knee boots, and a rough cloth coat. He had long black hair and eyes too blue to be anything other than a drugged mistake dabbed in place with the wrong shade of cerulean blue acrylics. He stood in the woods, a blur of green I’d only slapped around him, some vague mountain world. He was vivid. His world was not.

  In one hand he clasped a long, bloody hatchet with some kind of native markings. He held out the other hand to me. Reeling, I looked down at my hands. The smear of blood on his fingertips matched a smear of flesh-colored paint on mine. Apparently, we’d tried to do a little hand holding.

  He looked down at me, straight down at where I huddled on the floor, and he kept his hand out as if offering help, and in his eyes, there was fury. And there were tears.

  A message was scrawled across the floor in front of the canvas. A puddle of blood showed where I’d dragged my fingers through it to ink them.

  Call my name. I won’t let him near you again. Swear to call my name. ’Tis Ian.

  My teeth chattered. The light in my brain faded in and out. I stared at the painting, at the tender, outraged eyes, the bloody tomahawk. My rescuer? Or just another demon smart enough to trick me?

  I managed to get up and stagger to the canvas.

  Right before I passed out again I turned Ian, or whoever the fuck this new demon might call himself, to the wall.

  *

  Nahjee was gone. Judging by the raw ribbon of skin on the back of my neck, Greg Lindholm had ripped the pendant off by its gold chain. Only Tabitha remained, smeared with my blood. But she didn’t talk. She radiated alarm. Yeah, Tabitha was freaked out. I understood. She huddled against my feverish skin

  Stop imagining things. You probably just dropped Nahjee when you crawled out of the truck last night.

  Hope springs eternal when your grip on reality is sinking into quicksand. I staggered outdoors and sank down on the cold, littered March ground, dressed in nothing but a thin geisha robe. I pushed my bruised hands through the scruff of brown weeds and trash. “Naaaah shee?” I slurred. “Please be here. I need you. Naaah shee?” Every movement seemed to tear more of my muscles loose from my bones. I was dimly aware of fresh blood seeping down my thighs. Sweat stung my raw eye.

  Pebbles and bits of metal dug into my elbows. My hands were frantic. I had to have Nahjee back. “Talk to me. Why don’t you talk to me, Nahjee? I need you. That thing is going to come back for me. That thing in a man’s body. Oh, God. Someone tell me what to do.”

  “Livia, we’re here,” a sweet female voice said. “Ssssh. Livia. Livia? Oh, honey. Nahjee managed to send us a message before he put a spell on her. You aren’t alone in this battle.”

  I hugged myself and sat up slowly, dizzy, gasping for air. The light came and went. “What?”

  “Livia? Can you hear me?” The soft female voice drawled again, right beside me. “Charles, here she is.”

  A plump, middle-aged woman knelt by me among the weeds and debris, cooing. The smooth cotton of her long peasant skirt spread out like a fan, brushing my bare heels. Her strong hands stroked my shoulders.

  The Ablehorns, Sarah and Charles. My landlords. Their gallery was in the river district of
the French Broad. They tried to treat me like a daughter, but I kept them at a distance, like everyone else. “Livia, oh, Livia. Charles, get my medicine kit.”

  “I’m coming, hon,” he called. “Just chatting with Sheba. She tells me the little bane was banished in the fight. Sheba got a look at his master, the one that was in Livia’s painting. Yes, it’s Pig Face. He’s loose, and he’s commandeered some poor bastard’s body. Guy’s name was Greg Lindholm. Oh, and Sheba says Livia painted another canvas just before dawn. Someone named Ian. A soul hunter, Sheba suspects.”

  “A soul hunter?” Sarah echoed. Even to my dizzy brain Sarah’s voice came through loud and worried.

  “They’re not all lost, wandering souls, Sarah.”

  “I’d rather not deal with one, regardless. They’re rough men.”

  “They’re not exactly peaceniks, but they get the job done. Chill out. We’ll talk about it later. By the way, Livia’s heat is off, Sheba says. And the back gutter needs mending.”

  “All in good time. Help me with Livia.”

  “Coming, hon.”

  I swayed. Sheba? Who or what the fuck was Sheba? And how did she know what I did inside my own home? And if this Ian was some kind of tough-ass ghost, that didn’t sound too reassuring either. Their conversation fluttered through my mind and disappeared around a bend. Too much to consider. How had the Ablehorns known to communicate with Nahjee?

  I pawed at Sarah’s examining hands. “Leave me alone, leave me . . . go away. Something’s after me . . . it’s not safe . . . ”

  “I know, Livia. I know. But we’re here to help you fight back. Charles, we’ll move her upstairs. The two of us can manage.”

  “You don’t understand,” I slurred. Violent chills came over me. “I’m psychotic. There’s no demon. Some guy tried to kill me. He’ll get you too.”

  She bent her head close to mine. I smelled jasmine and kindness. “No, sweetie, you’re not psychotic. You never have been. Demons are real, and Pig Face is one of the most vicious ones, and he’s been looking for you a long time.”

  “Oh, fuck.”

  She stroked my sweaty hair. “For now, just understand that we’re your friends. Old friends.”

  She and Charles lifted me into their arms. It was like floating.

  My feverish brain swore I felt the soft tickle of feathers.

  *

  I wished I could stay inside the cocoon of Sarah Ablehorn’s hand-stitched quilt forever. The heirloom quilt transformed my bed, which was just a twin mattress and box-springs I’d set on concrete blocks in one corner of the studio, next to an aged metal sink, a small fridge, and my toaster oven. Now it became a soft nest.

  Sarah dosed me with antibiotics. She rubbed me with ice and alcohol to help the fever. She stitched up the ripped flesh of my arm, and also between my legs.

  “Didn’t know you were a doc,” I whispered groggily when I finally could.

  She rubbed cinnamon-scented liniment on the bruises and claw marks along my bare back. “Oh? Didn’t I ever mention that I used to be a nurse practitioner?”

  “No . . . you said . . . you and Charles used to be teachers. In Cincinnati. High school teachers. Then you moved to Asheville to follow your dreams.”

  “I see you’ve paid attention to our chitchat much more than you’ve ever let on. You secretly adore us. Thank you. We adore you too.”

  “You don’t really understand what happened, what I’ve done, what I see . . . ”

  “There, there, Livia.” Her hands were as soft as down pillows, smoothing away the pain in my spine. “We’ll talk about that when you’re feeling better. There, there. Chill out.”

  She gently palpated my bruised belly and, speaking as if her psychic pee test could not be doubted—pronounced me not pregnant. The horror of that idea nearly undid me. Pregnant with what? What kind of being, exactly, had raped me? Was Greg Lindholm a human being or the pig-faced demon or both?

  “Pig Face took the man’s body,” Sarah said. “He’s a very powerful demon. That’s why he was able to trick you. He’s afraid of you. He needs to eliminate you. He always tries the obvious ways first.”

  Oh, that was helpful news. “So what stopped him?”

  “The Soul Hunter—if that’s what this Ian really is—took a swing at that little bane and killed it.”

  “That thing . . . clawed me.”

  “Yes, and it’s a nasty bane wound, one that’s backed with the passions of a major demon. If you were rested and strong you could probably heal it, but not in your current vulnerable state. Bane wounds are illusions, but they’re such powerful illusions that our bodies can’t resist believing in them.”

  “I was . . . clawed . . . once before. The night my mother . . . ”

  I stopped. Old secrets die hard.

  Sarah patted my shoulder. “We know about the demon who infiltrated your family. Your mother fought a brave battle against that creature. You can be proud of her.”

  I stared up at her, gasping. After years of torment, confirmation had come. “You . . . believe me?”

  “Absolutely. Pig Face sent that demon to destroy your family. But he underestimated your power, even when you were a child. And he underestimated the forces that had massed to protect you. Your sweet Alex. I believe Alex saw the family’s fate very early, on a soul level. He had to stay there for you. He’s always been your sweetest spirit guide. He and your mother will show up in your life again, eventually.”

  “Where . . . when . . .”

  Sssh. She stroked my face. “Your mother is a good soul, and she’ll find you again. Mothers always do. Livia, take comfort. You banished the demon who killed your entire family. An amazing feat for a teenager. We knew then that you would become the most amazing soul catcher of your generation.”

  The drugging effect of her fingers, her magic, stilled every shocked and painful thought. Soul catcher, best of my generation. Soul catcher.

  I cried without tears.

  Momma.

  Then came the rage.

  Pig Face murdered my family. He’s responsible.

  “How do I catch him again? Pig Face? I’ve got to banish the bastard . . .”

  “Yes, but not until you’re stronger.” Sarah stroked my forehead. “Pig Face is regrouping. He won’t be so careless next time. Sssh. Rest. You’re safe here. Sheba is on duty twenty-four seven. Not even a demon can get past a house pog in its own digs. Sheba was with you in your childhood. She gained power from your rage and grief. She won’t let you down again.”

  “A pog, a what?”

  Sarah’s hand drugged me. A sweet fog filled my brain. “Sssh.”

  I curled on my side in a tight ball under the quilt.

  “There, there,” Sarah sang softly, as I tossed and turned. “There, there. It will all make sense when you’re well again. Just sleep. You’re safe inside this building. You always have been. That’s why we rented it to you. And why Dante offered you a job. And why Gigi has watched the shadows on your behalf. We are imperfect assistants, Livia, which is why Pig Face found you before we realized it was him. But we’re here now, closing ranks against him.”

  Sarah’s quilt had small songbirds on it, embroidered in the finest detail. They came out of the material, perched on my shoulders, and nuzzled my cheeks. There, there, they sang.

  I slept, despite myself.

  *

  April shoved March out of its body and took over, like a demon. Or like a soul hunter. Ian, whoever he was, didn’t leave another message, or put in another appearance. Regardless, I was never going to trust any man again. Even one who was just some kind of ghost.

  Soft afternoon light poured in through the windows of my studio one afternoon, sifting dust motes through the air. They seemed to sparkle. I lifted my head from my pillow, squinting in the light.

  Across the room, seated in the sunshine at a work table I’d never seen before, Doris Harken bent her pretty head over a Bible that still lay in sections, unfinished. Her brunette hair was short, in
pin curls. A long apron covered her dungarees, which were rolled up to reveal sweet little ankle socks. Her plaid shirt had an embroidered cowgirl on the chest. She tapped the toes of her saddle oxfords to a big band beat only she heard. Her face was peaceful. Her agile hands worked a curved needle strung with thick thread. She was sewing the spine of the Good Book. Piecing Deuteronomy to Joshua and Luke to John.

  Except for the fact, of course, that she’d been murdered nearly seventy fucking years ago.

  In its heyday Harken Bible Printing had been a neatly whitewashed brick two-story fronted by a pretty magnolia tree and a row of well-tended zinnias. In the photos I’d found at the Asheville library the Harkens—who liked theological puns, you can tell—posed proudly in front of their business. A good-looking young couple, smiling and hugging. He had a handsome mustache and a cool fedora. She wore the lapels of her tweed suit turned back to show an extra inch of sexy throat, and her nifty little hat was decorated with white lace. The Harkens, Caleb and Doris, reminded me of Gable and Lombard in a romantic old movie.

  Their mission in life was to spread the good word one handmade Bible at a time. They didn’t get much chance to do that, though. Caleb and Doris were robbed and murdered in 1940. Workers from a nearby garage found their bodies under their magnolia. They’d been stabbed to death.

  No. Get real. Hacked was the word the newspaper used. Hacked.

  The killer was never caught.

  Not long after I moved in I found sections of a Harken Bible stuffed behind the plaster board in an upstairs wall. What beautiful fonts Doris and Caleb had used, what fine, smooth paper, strangely un-yellowed. I stitched the sections together into a makeshift spine then carefully glued a soft rectangle of leather in place as a cover. I latched that cover with a piece of thong attached to a slender spire of quartz and a chunk of tin I found outside in the trash. Tin was elemental and friendly, in my opinion. Nobody ever got hacked to death with a tin ax.

  Now my folk-art Harken Bible sat in the midst of a little shrine of crucifixes, menorahs, Buddha’s, vintage old-time southern Bible fans and nature what-nots on a table I’d bought at the flea market up the road. That shrine was pieces of a Bible in particular and faith in general. Good versus evil. It was as if the Harkens had bequeathed me hopeful parts of the New Testament but also some fairly worrisome sections of the Old Testament, pertaining to demons.