Soul Catcher

by Bridger, Leigh

  I could move around the studio at will, though I winced and held onto furniture. It was May, now, and warm. Outside the loft’s big windows I heard Charles and Sarah at ground level below, singing Woody Guthrie songs off-key as they tilled the building’s weedy front yards. They were planting zinnias, just like they’d done when they were Caleb and Doris.

  This land is your land . . . this land is our land, from the demon-infested suburbs to the soul-hopping high lands . . .

  I glanced out the window at them. Songbirds swarmed around them every time they walked outside . . .

  My heart raced. Barefoot, I eased my way across the studio floor, binding my robe tighter around me and clutching my knife. It went wherever I went, even to the tiny, drafty bathroom near my makeshift kitchen. I showered with the knife tied around my waist in a plastic bag.

  I never claimed to be coping well.

  The corner of the loft I called my office was nothing fancy. A desk, computer, wall shelves crammed with art books, a file cabinet. The computer was my only connection to the outside world. Here sat reality in a familiar package. Here I good inhale the reassuring high of information. Just the facts, ma’am.

  If there was a Greg Lindholm out there in cyberspace, I’d find his salon-tanned ass.

  I sat down gingerly on the chair in front of my funky desk. I slid my bare, burn-scarred feet onto a cozy carpet scrap. I placed my shaking hands on the five-point star inlaid in the wood. I’d built the desk from the top of an Art Deco dresser I’d found by a dumpster. Looked like it’d spent years in a leaky garage or barn. I sanded the walnut and mahogany star, detailed it with fresh wood stain, shellacked it, and now it gleamed in hypnotic brown and red tones from the center of the weathered gray veneer.

  Profound beauty lives inside even the lost and abused souls. Outsider artists live by that motto.

  I turned on the computer, waited for it to boot up, practiced some yoga breathing, gave up, tried to meditate on the rows of art books crammed into makeshift wall shelves, gave up then turned to one side and vomited bile into an old nail keg I’d painted bright yellow and used as a trash can. I wiped my mouth and hands with the tail of my robe.

  My fingers trembled. I pecked Lindhom’s name with the tip of my forefinger. Maybe Google had a special category for demons in human form.

  Greg. Lindholm.

  Ready. My right hand froze on the mouse.

  I put my left hand over my right and forced my finger to click the mouse.

  My skin crawled when a long list of Greg Lindholms popped onto my screen. A chiropractor in Oklahoma, a real estate broker in Oregon, a bar owner in Illinois. How many Swedish-American Lindholms were there? I went through the entries with my eyes half-shut against what might show up. But it didn’t matter. He could be the chiropractor, the broker, the barkeep or a dozen other Greg Lindholms. There weren’t enough details, and most entries didn’t include photos of their specific Greg Lindholm. But okay, wait. Further down, there were a few. A photo of a middle-aged plumber with a beer gut. No, not him. A photo of a gayish wedding designer with long blonde hair and pale eyes. No, not him.

  But then, suddenly, there he was, smiling that handsome, deceptive smile at me from a picture in a Minnesota newspaper. The article was dated six months ago.

  Tragedy Strikes Local Lawyer

  Community Football Coach and Gridiron Star Mourns Loss

  Well-known Tinsdale attorney Greg Patrick Lindholm, 34, is shown here at a chamber of commerce fundraiser with his beautiful wife Tracy, in happier times. Tracy Cherice Lindholm, 30, died last Thursday when she lost control of her SUV on Foltrane Highway. Also killed was the Lindholms’ four year old son, Jeremy.

  “It’s a heartbreaking situation,” said a family spokesman. “Greg is devastated. He and Tracy were high school sweethearts. They married during college and never spent a day apart since. Jeremy was the light of their lives. Greg is absolutely lost without Tracy and Jeremy.”

  Lindholm, a junior partner in the law firm of Cardon, Alton and Bartlett, played quarterback for the state champion Tinsdale Rams and was a star player at the university.

  In recent years he’s become a beloved coach in the Tri-County Youth Football League. “Just the other day he was saying how much he looked forward to coaching Jeremy in a few years,” the spokesman said.

  I slumped in my chair, gazing numbly at the computer. Just because a man is swank, successful, a doting daddy and married to the sorority girl of his dreams doesn’t mean he’s not harboring a nasty Mr. Hyde inside his golf shirt.

  Demons pick the weak people, Sarah had said. I guess Lindholm was the right guy at the right time. Full of grief? Despair? Rage over the shitty hand fate had dealt his wife and child?

  Had Momma been too naïve, so gentle and trusting that she was a pushover?

  I leaned closer, frowning as I studied Lindholm’s square-jawed face, his smiling gray eyes. Clean-cut jocks weren’t my type. I mean really weren’t. I couldn’t figure out what had made him so irresistible to me in person.

  Time to die again, bitch.

  I bookmarked the Greg Lindholm entry then turned the computer off.

  The screensaver—one of my gothic landscapes, and I was proud of it—blipped to black and the hard drive whirred to a stop. I reached over to shut the computer’s top.

  But then . . . words rose on the screen. On the turned-off, dead-black face of my computer. Stark, bone-white letters. They slowly intensified, like a sinister smile taking its time, enjoying the shock value. As the words reached a radioactive glow I pushed so far back in my chair that I turned it over and hit the floor, scooting back from the computer as if something might squeeze through the screen.

  You won’t get away next time, bitch. You can’t hide much longer. You’ll see.

  *

  I woke up to find Sarah and Charles sitting beside my bed, frowning at me. Gigi and Dante stood across the studio, arms crossed, grimly studying my new painting. I shoved myself upright in bed. My t-shirt was splattered with acrylics. Tubes and jars were scattered all over the bed. Brushes lay where I’d dropped them on the studio floor.

  Across the way was a giant post-it note. I’d painted one of my bigger canvases in a nice rainbow of colors. In the center I’d painted a message. Its script was old-fashioned, flowing and beautiful, yet from a strong masculine hand, with thick loops and brusque jabs. Not my choppy way of writing.

  I know you’re scared, love. Not feeling too grand, that’s for sure. But you can’t pretend the bloody langer didn’t speak at you t’other day from inside that metal book or whatever ’tis. Do not be thinking about offing yourself because of him. ’Tis never as simple as taking a walk next door, you ken? If he gets to you, speak of me. Speak my name. I’m beating my fists on the wall between us. He’s coming after you, and there’s no bloody thing I can much do about it until you’re willing to see me again.

  Ian

  Around me, the disappointed silence was not exactly golden.

  “You should have told us the demon spoke to you again, sweetie,” Sarah said.

  Charles nodded. “We’re on your side, and you can’t keep secrets from us.”

  Gigi sighed. “What is going to take for you to believe what we’re telling you?”

  Dante frowned. “Livia, we’re all in danger here. Not just you. And not just us. The rest of the city, too. If this demon gets rid of you, he’ll be able to hurt a lot of people.”

  Wrapped in Sarah’s bird quilt, I shuffled miserably to the canvas, searching the words for tricks, for hidden meanings. “I don’t want you guys or anyone else to suffer because of me. I’ll go away. I’ll pack up and hit the road . . . ”

  “That’s what the demon wants you to do, sweetie,” Sarah said gently.

  “He wants you to be all alone again,” Gigi agreed. “Vulnerable.”

  Charles nodded. “He knows you’re gathering your own forces, just like he’s gathering his. We’re in this together. We always have been.”

&nb
sp; I shuddered. I continued to rake the painted words for clues. “Who are you, Ian?”

  Dante stepped up beside me. He touched a dark finger to the word langer. “We know one thing about him. This is Irish slang.” He touched the word grand. “This, too.”

  Gigi popped forward and tapped a pink fingernail to ken. “But this is old school mountain dialect. You ken? Is like saying, ‘Okay? You get it, babe? You understand?’”

  “What is he, a hillbilly leprechaun? So what does langer mean? Is that an Irish word for demon?”

  Dante worked his mouth and cleared his throat awkwardly. “No, it’s Irish for penis.”

  “Prick,” Gigi amended, blinking.

  I stepped back from the canvas. “How do we know this is a good guy named Ian talking and not . . . Greg Lindholm in disguise?”

  Charles patted my back. “I can tell you this much about your Ian—whoever he is, the boons are fond of him. We’ve been asking around. A few of them have heard of him. They say he is ethical, for a soul hunter. They vouch for him.”

  Asking around. Asking the boons? And what precisely, was a boon? I pivoted like an arthritic old woman. “If you guys can see all the shit that goes bump in the night, why do you need me?”

  Sarah shook her head. “We don’t see the demons and their little banes clearly. We hear them, we sense them, they communicate with us, they often help us, the boons, do, that is. The banes of course, are nothing but trouble, and the major demons, like Pig Face, are deadly. But we don’t have your gift. You can see them clearly, the banes, the boons, the demons, the good souls, the bad, big and small, if you want to. You are the only one who can capture the banes and the demons. You can send them away—and not just temporarily. Permanently.”

  Dante put a hand on my shoulder. “You’re a soul catcher, Livia. You really are.”

  Suddenly, dozens of songbirds lit on the windowsills. Shrieking. Sarah and Charles closed in on me protectively. “Get dressed,” Sarah ordered. Gigi dragged me toward the old armoire I used as a closet. Dante ran to the window, thrusting a hand inside his long, black jacket. Seventy-five degrees in May and he dressed like a gunslinger. He pulled out a pistol.

  Gigi stood guard as I shoved my legs into jeans and pulled a shirt over my tank top. She tossed a pair of paint-spattered tennis shoes at me then reached inside her pink-trimmed black overalls. “Here. This is a helpful charm.” She opened a tiny vial. A sickly sweet fragrance filled my nose. She dabbed the oil on my forehead, chin, and throat. She grabbed my hands and smeared oil on my scarred, tattooed wrists.

  I drew back. “I smell like over-ripe coconuts.”

  “Boons love this scent. It will help draw them to you. They can’t stop a demon but they’ll certainly toss some tricks his way and slow him down. But you have to ask them, Livia. They don’t butt into people’s lives. You have to want them there.”

  Not likely. I rammed my feet into the tennis shoes. Across the way, Sarah, Charles and Dante gazed grimly out my windows. Dante’s shoulders sagged. He slowly put his gun away.

  Sarah pivoted wearily. “The police are here. I expect the demon has something to do with this.”

  I froze. Once I was outside this sanctuary . . . Silence. Grim looks were traded. Oh, shit, I thought. Oh, shit.

  Hundreds of songbirds now occupied the sill. A pair of flies zipped past them. They lit on the armoire’s open door and gazed down at me.

  “There, see?” Gigi smiled gamely. “You’ve already caught the attention of a couple of sweet little boons. They’ll go with you to the police.”

  House flies? Cold sweat slithered down between my breasts. Police. The Man. The System. The Authority. Or to put it in old-time southern lingo, The Law.

  I doubted a pair of flies would be much help against demons and The Law.

  *

  A few hours earlier, The Flame Master, aka Ronnie Bowden, the likable geek-freaky sound man at Dante’s Room who also worked as a street performer spewing fire out of his mouth, had walked into Asheville’s prettiest downtown green space, Pritchard Park. He stood in the middle of its pleasant little sunken plaza.

  As the morning’s usual audience of street people and business folk watched in horror, Ronnie yelled, “I love you, Livia Belane, even if you don’t love me,” then soaked himself in gasoline. Next he chopped off the fingers of his left hand with a brand-new hatchet he’d bought at Asheville’s westside Home Depot. Then, as his blood spurted on a bed of freshly planted pansies, he flicked the ornamental dragon lighter he’d bought at the big fantasy and comic con down in Atlanta.

  And, ta-dah, he roasted himself alive.

  The good citizens of Asheville were reeling. Pritchard Park, a haunted triangle of artistically landscaped boulders and stone checker tables in the heart of the downtown shopping district, already had its share of infamy, but nothing like this. There were the unexplainable lights at night, the ghost of a Confederate soldier from the old Civil War staging grounds that lay beneath the modern pavement, and plenty of Wiccan holiday rituals by the local covens, which, in Asheville, didn’t draw that many odd looks.

  Ordinarily the park was home to stuff as unremarkable as drum circles, music jams, protest rallies, street mimes, hellfire preachers, homeless men muttering to invisible friends, stoned college students fucking behind the shrubbery, and white bread tourists strolling through on their way to bars, restaurants and art galleries. Until that morning the friendliest public park in Asheville had not been the site of self-amputation and self-immolation, all in one bloody, chargrilled package.

  Ronnie left behind a note. He also left behind Nahjee.

  You gave me this pendant. You gave me your heart, he wrote. You told me to prove I loved you.

  Nahjee was now stuck in a plastic bag somewhere in a police evidence locker. I could feel her struggling to communicate, but Pig Face’s spell still imprisoned her.

  The Asheville P.D. were curious about me. An understatement.

  “All right, Olivia, just tell me if you knew Ronnie was going to barbecue himself. If maybe, hmmm, you encouraged him? Maybe you were teasing the boy? Maybe he took a flirtation the wrong way? Excuse me. These pair of flies just won’t stop buzzing around my head.”

  I watched numbly as Detective Sam Lee Beaumont swatted at my two boon-flies., Sam Lee was Asian American and looked like a cross between Jackie Chan and Larry the Cable Guy. He had the Larry drawl, too.

  My lungs wouldn’t expand. The tiny, windowless room at the Asheville Police Department felt like a coffin. They couldn’t accuse me of anything; Ronnie had killed himself in front of many witnesses; so, at worst, people might believe I was a skank who provoked his suicide. That’s despicable, but not a crime.

  Still, my hands sweated on the metal table. The overhead fluorescents flickered. My eyes darted toward every shadow. Detective Beaumont glared at the escaping flies then sighed heavily as he looked my way again. “Now. Livia. Tell me again. Just as honestly as you can, hon. I just want to fill out the forms and close this case. What was your relationship with Ronnie Bowden?”

  “We didn’t have a relationship. He was the club sound man. Dante let him perform in front of the club on weekend nights. He’d worked up a decent fire breathing routine. Some nights he made fifty to a hundred bucks in tips. When the bar was slow I’d take him sandwiches and Cokes. I do that for all the street performers. Dante okayed it.”

  “So any romantic relationship between you-all was just in Ronnie’s mind?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “How many times did you-all hook up?”

  “I said we had no relationship. That means no fu . . . no sex, in any form.”

  “Come on, now. You know what I’m talking about. Was he a ‘friend with benefits?’”

  There’s no benefit to being my friend, mister.

  “No, sir. He wasn’t a friend. He was just a sweet guy who liked to wear eye liner and run the club’s sound booth and juggle torches and spew fire out of his mouth. Like I said, I took him sandw
iches.”

  “So you’re sure this romance was all in his mind?”

  “I don’t know what was in his mind, sir. He was shy. We didn’t talk.”

  Detective Beaumont gestured at the last, fading yellow speckles from the bruise around my eye. “Livia, who beat you up? I asked around at the Inferno. You haven’t been to work in two months.”

  “That has nothing to do with Ronnie Bowden. Sir.”

  “Oh? Then tell me who it does have to do with? Who’s your abusive boyfriend, Livia?”

  Oh, just a demon from another dimension. Who may be closing in on me even as we speak. Bile rose in my throat. I swallowed hard. “I can’t discuss that, sir. But I swear it has nothing to do with Ronnie.”

  Detective Beaumont scowled. When his face compressed he looked like a jowly Pekingese. “Livia, let me paint a little clearer picture for you. This mornin’, a young man mutilated himself in a city park, and then he burned himself alive. Not only did his suicide note implicate you in his decision-makin’ process, but he had a weird snake pendant in his possession that belongs to you. Now here you are lookin’ like you’re recoverin’ from a major butt-whuppin’ by someone. In your art studio you’ve got a great big painting of a fierce-looking back-to-nature honcho who’s holdin’ a bloody hatchet. Ronnie Bowden used a hatchet on himself. You like hatchets, Livia?”

  “No sir. I just . . . it’s just a painting. A coincidence. “Look, you can’t charge me with anything. I have a right to leave.”

  “Livia, hon. Ronnie Bowden is the son of the CEO of Mid-States Mountain Bank. His folks were none too happy when he rebelled and turned into a club rat, but he was still their sweet baby boy. They’re never gonna accept that he was just a messed-up little geek who offed himself. They’re lookin’ for a villain. And they’re none too picky about who they blame.”

  “I thought rich people had no more clout than the rest of us, under the law.”