Soul Catcher

by Bridger, Leigh

  It was a lonely place, and a lonely night. I crept down a short set of concrete steps and gave one wistful look back at the large, dark windows and sturdy brick walls towering over me. Goodbye, everyone. Goodbye, Ian. Again.

  “Pick up the pace, Kittycat,” a slick male voice said. “I’ve got aliens to kill.”

  I froze. Kittycat.

  A sports car was parked in the weeds at the side of the road. A slender shadow leaned hipshot against its hood. The shadow straightened. “That’s right, Kittycat. I’m your ride. Leonidas. Move it.”

  I took a few steps toward him then stopped. “As stupid as this is going to sound…despite the fact that Sheba vouched for you, I have my doubts.” He sighed and lit a cigarette. The tiny flame of his lighter illuminated his face like a torch. The slanted eyes, the high cheekbones, the whole Keanu Reeves-in-need-of-a-tan look. He smiled at my reaction, which he could apparently see even in the dark. “Yeah, Kittycat, you know it’s me.”

  “Leonidas.”

  “Well . . . not exactly. I chose his form. I’m far more important than a video game character.”

  My skin prickled at the memory of his voice coming out of the computer, warning me when the demon finally took full control of Momma’s body. “Thank you for what you did that night.”

  He shrugged. “You had a crush on me. I was flattered.”

  His tone rankled. “So you think you’re too hot for me to resist?”

  “You were a fan.”

  “When I was a kid, yeah. When I thought Street Blaster was the coolest video game in the world.”

  “You were into it, Kittycat. Scoring those alien duels. Practicing for real life, pretending you could kill demons with a click of your thumb, just like your idol, me, Leonidas, killed the ten-armed sloths on Level Four.” He tossed his smoke into the gravel. “Climb into the Leo mobile, Kittycat. I’ll drop you off on the mean streets. Not that I approve. But your wish is my command.”

  I moved cautiously to the car’s passenger side. “Is there a tribe of boons who hang out around video games? Is that what you are? A Play Station pog?”

  He snorted as he opened the driver’s door. “I like technology. You could say I’m a techno pog. I can only protect you as far as town. Once I let you out there, you’re on your own.”

  “I’m going to catch a ride to the interstate, and then see how far I can hitchhike.”

  “Whatever, Kittycat. Your fate is your choice. Free will and all that.”

  I got into the car, fitting my feet between piles of computer components on the passenger side floor. The dash was crowded with gadgets. Wires and plug-ins dangled from the ceiling. “You’re not real, but this car is. Right?”

  He snorted. “You think I’m made of ectoplasm or something? Touch the goods, Kittycat.”

  I prodded his arm. Flesh and blood, or a great substitute. After all, Sheba had substance, too. I had touched her. “Why don’t pogs and boons nab human bodies, the way spirit guides do?”

  Another snort. “Who wants to be stuck in a container that gets fat and sick and wrinkled?”

  “Look, I’m just trying to understand the physics of all this.”

  “You can’t. You think inside the box. You believe in the reality you know best. It’s a dimensional issue, Kittycat. You’re stuck in one boring lane on the highway of parallel universes. Me? I’m able to accelerate, back up, or take the off ramps at will.”

  “So, Techno Pog, where were you and your big dimensional ego when Amabeth and Dolly drowned? Getting your freak on with one of those fancy new hand-cranked phonographs?”

  Leonidas popped another cigarette in his mouth and lit it with a lighter shaped like a Nano. “I tried to warn you that day, Kittycat.” The cigarette bobbed on his lip. “But you always play solo. I told you to call Ian for help, but you wouldn’t. So Pig Face took over Daddy McCrane’s body, tricked Mama McCrane and their kid Dolly and even you, Amabeth, into thinking he had a rowboat downstairs, and he convinced you chicks that all you three had to do was follow him downstairs from the nice, safe attic, swim out the front door, and get in the boat.” He halted, arching a brow at me, almost jaunty.

  “There was no boat,” I said wearily.

  “Bingo, Kittycat. So after mama and her chicklet waded into the water downstairs ol’ Piggy Dude shoved them under. You crouched on a dry top step with a soggy pencil, trying to scribble Pig Dude’s picture on the stairwell’s wall before it was too late. But he grabbed you by the ankle and pulled you down, too.”

  I clutched my stomach at the mental image. Leonidas grinned. A sickly glow appeared on his aquiline face as if spotlighted by an invisible map light. His skin went blue-gray. Water drooled from one corner of his gaping mouth. He mimed drowning. Then he looked at me with slitted eyes. “Blub blub blub, Kittycat,” he said sarcastically. “Game over. You lost. All because you wouldn’t ask for help. Again.”

  I thumped a button on the door’s armrest and sucked in some fresh air as soon as the window whirred down. “Somehow I doubt you’d have been worth calling on, Street Blaster. You and your unpredictable sense of honor.”

  “Yeah, well.” He started the car’s engine with a flick of one hand. “You’re no high scorer yourself.”

  *

  There wasn’t much evidence left that Ronnie Bowden had mutilated and burned himself in Asheville’s pristine downtown park. The bricks of the small amphitheater that stair stepped down from College Street were hosed clean. The city’s grounds crew had clipped the charred branches off nearby shrubs. The crime-scene tape was gone.

  I kept to the deep shadows under the park’s single large shade tree. I wanted to offer Ronnie a mea culpa before I left town. Or before Pig Face killed me. Whichever came first. I didn’t want to die with Ronnie on my conscience, too. It seemed pretty obvious that Pig Face had manipulated him to commit suicide.

  I looked down a street in the general direction of the downtown police station. Nahjee was there, boxed in an evidence locker. I didn’t want to leave her behind. I fumbled with Tabitha at the base of my throat. The amulet hadn’t said a word in days.

  “Tabby, can you help me get Nahjee out of jail so I can take her with us?”

  Nothing. Not a peep. I tried again. “Can’t you two move around, change forms, take up new homes, the way Sheba and Leonidas do? Hmmm? Comeon, Tabby, just answer that for me.”

  With a sound like an annoyed huff, the amulet’s fragile little voice said, “We are boons, not pogs.”

  “Sorry, I’m not up the subtleties yet.”

  “Our kind has as many varieties as fish in the sea and birds in the sky. All with different habits and habitats.” Tabby’s tone became smug, as if I were too ignorant to tolerate. “Nahjee and I must be attached to our host soul before we can function as our kind intends.”

  I couldn’t stop myself. “Oh? So you’re like a leech.”

  There was a long, brittle silence this time. “Shit,” I said under my breath. “All right, I apologize.”

  “Livia, Nahjee is safe for the moment. But you are most certainly not. Go about your business and do not annoy me further.”

  Angry click. Dial tone.

  That’s how it felt, anyway.

  White light filtered through the tree’s spreading branches from the antiseptic glow of the downtown streetlamps. The checker tables and benches were empty. The park wasn’t a particularly private place; it could be strolled from end to end in an easy minute or two, and it was surrounded by the watchful window fronts of ground floor shops and cafes. But late at night it became a deserted island in the sea of the sleeping city.

  I shut my eyes. “Ronnie, are you here? I just want to tell you I’m sorry that something in the . . . underworld . . . connected you to me. I’m the reason the demon went after you. I’m sorry. I hope you rest in peace. Or that your soul goes some place wonderful, wherever it wants to go next.”

  “Quit yer whining and stop yer conniption fits, gal,” a heavy drawl said behind me, thick with sa
rcasm. “Souls don’t keer to hear yer balderdash. Git on to yer battle! There’s lives at stake!”

  I whirled around. A skinny, bearded Confederate soldier stood there, glaring at me over wire glasses perched on the tip of his nose. We weren’t in Pritchard Park anymore, and it wasn’t nighttime. We stood on a muddy wagon road in the blue-silver light of early morning. Around us was open pasture rimmed in forest. The rutted road disappeared into hills covered in trees. Beyond them rose mountains. Everything was shrouded in a silver mist.

  My hand went to the hilt of my knife. The soldier hooted. “Save your pig sticker fer demons. Ain’t no need to go pokin’ ghosts with it.”

  “Are you the soldier who haunts Pritchard Park?” My voice shook. I kept my hand on the knife.

  He spat tobacco juice on the soggy ground. “Ain’t no sech thing as hauntin’. Ghosts don’t haunt places. They on a mission, gal. Waitin’ for something or somebody they ain’t yet been able to see. I’m just bivouacin’ here ’til my wife finds me. She said her goodbyes to me right here—” he swung a uniformed arm at the open field—“’cause this here’s where the local infantry mustered up.”

  He spat again. “I died at Antietam. Then a pack of goddamn Yanks come through these mountains and looted our farm and shot her dead. Left our kids to starve. The kids have done come along and gimme a hug to say they’s fine, but she’s a mite confused, I think. Woman never did come to town but that onct. Skeered of townsfolk. I reckon she’s still hiding from the Yanks.” He spat. “Burn in hell, the ones who done it to us. Demons wuz involved, you bet.”

  Okay, I’d heard enough. I wanted out of his alternate realty. I backed away a few steps and pivoted in a quick circle, hoping I’d rotate through time to downtown Ashevillecirca, like, now, please. I’d have given anything for the sight of the ATM at the Bank of America building or the awning-covered patio of Tupelo Honey. But all I saw were more woods, the wagon road, and among the trees some chimneys and a distant steeple.

  I slowly faced the soldier again. He shook his head and sighed. “You’re seein’ me fer a reason, gal. I’m supposed to introduce you to some folks.” He waved a hand toward the road. “Well, come on. Soon’s you git it over with you can skeedaddle back to yer doom.”

  I stared at him. “How can I resist when you put it like that?”

  He hunched the strap of his rifle higher on one thin shoulder and headed across the field. I followed on shaking legs. Around me, shadows began to form. Horses and men, lots of men, their gear clanking, their drawling voices bawdy and hopeful and scared. I heard women and children too, coaxing, praising, crying, saying goodbye. None of the troops or their families appeared to notice me. Only the landscape and my soldier-guide remained vivid.

  When we reached the edge of the woods he threw out an arm to halt me. “No need to intrude on their privacy anymore’n we got to. They can’t see or hear us no-how, but we can see and hear them. Just cock your ear and listen, gal.”

  He waved a hand. A tall, handsome man in an officer’s uniform materialized in front of us. His hair and beard were dark blonde; his bearing was aristocratic. His plumed hat lay on the ground. He held a woman in his arms, one hand around her waist, the other cupping her head. His eyes were closed and tears streaked his face.

  Her face was turned to his shoulder and her arms were wound tightly around his neck. Her hair, pulled back in a large knot at the nape of her neck, was a soft reddish-brown. A blue bonnet tumbled from its ties down her back. Her dress was blue as well, nothing fancy but definitely upscale. The bodice had puffy sleeves with lace trim, and the skirt belled out. Whoever she was, she could afford lace trim and steel hoops.

  Her shoulders shook. She sobbed. Then she pulled back from him abruptly, planted both light-brown hands on his chest, and tilted her beautiful, light-brown face with its African features up to him. “I’ll hate you the rest of my life,” she said, crying. “I’m glad I won’t live long without you.”

  “I refuse to believe in your prophecies,” he said hoarsely. “I will return for you, Maratile. And we will find a way to live as husband and wife. I swear to you on every ounce of honor in my soul.”

  “What does your honor count for, Paxton? There’s no honor in fighting for this cause.”

  “I’m fighting for my family and my homeland, not for any man’s cause other than that.”

  She knotted her fists into the fine braid of his coat. “You are riding to your death. And you are leaving me to mine.”

  “If I thought I was condemning you to a premature death or a life of misery, I’d cut my heart out on this spot. But I believe this fight will end as quick as it’s begun, and gentleman of both sides will come to agreements, and there will be a new world of freedom and opportunity for all, with as little bloodshed as possible. Your people and my people will be free of the past. Can’t you pretend even a little hope and faith in my vision of the future?”

  She shook her head. “We can leave now. Go West. Or North. To the great frontier of California or to Mexico or Canada. I have no fear of what we’ll find in those unseen lands. But I have great fear of what we’ll find inside the unseen lands of this war.”

  “My love, I will come home to you.”

  I watched Maratile and Paxton trade a look of sheer tenderness and despair. He swept her up and they kissed wildly. There was nothing demure or courtly about it. It was hot, ferocious, desperate. She pushed away from him again, swaying, crying. More tears slid down his face.

  She pulled her bonnet up, tied it with shaking hands, then hid those brown hands in the pockets of her skirt. She rushed past me, her head bowed, her shoulders shaking.

  And he stood where he was, looking after her tragically, as if his life would end the second he couldn’t see her anymore. I strained my eyes but he slowly faded to nothing.

  The soldier and I stood at the edge of the woods, alone again.

  He studied me shrewdly and seemed a little amused by my stunned silence. “Cat got your tongue, soul catcher?”

  “Was that me and Ian?”

  “Ohhh, you’re a smart one.”

  “What happened to us?”

  “Paxton got shot to pieces at Bull Run. And Maritile got beat to death in a race riot up in New York.”

  My breath shuddered. “No, really. Go ahead and be blunt.”

  He guffawed darkly. “You asked.”

  “So Ian was able to track me down in that life. Does he remember?”

  “Nope. ’Cause you don’t want him to, and you don’t want you to, neither. You cain’t erase what he recollects of the misery that started this here cycle, back in seventeen such-and-such, but you can keep the jump on him about the lives since then.”

  “What I just witnessed makes me less likely to change my mind about our fate. So why did you show it to me?”

  He shrugged. “Some o’ the boons asked me to give you this tour. They didn’t say why, but boons generally know best. Now, if you want my opinion, it’s to let you know that there ain’t no value in you hidin’ from your man. A soul catcher needs a soul hunter beside her. Maybe if you own up to whatever happened to start this, your fate could change.”

  “I have my doubts. Especially since I’ve got no clue what happened to Ian and me in the seventeen such-and-suches.”

  He leaned closer to me, his eyes accusing, sympathetic, demanding. “Whatever happened don’t matter no more. You gonna let it be so easy for the demon to git rid of you and your man and all your spirit guides this time?”

  Suddenly the air began to feel hot. The shadows, the scene, him, began to fade. “Time fer me to move along,” he added. “If’n you see my wife, tell her where to find me.”

  “I will. But wait—”

  “If you get kilt aforehand, send your ghost back by for a chat. Sometimes it gets right lonely here on the muster grounds.”

  And then he was gone, and I was alone in Pritchard Park.

  Before I could re-orient myself, Tabby spoke urgently.

  “The
griffins are coming. Run.”

  I looked around wildly. Griffins? What the fuck did she mean by that? I grabbed my backpack, pulled the knife out, and ran up College Street to Haywood, a main drag that heads straight for I-240. Haywood Street is lined with grand old department stores and shops; it’s like a walk through the 1930’s. Most of the buildings are apartments, restaurants and art galleries now.

  At two in the morning all I saw was the shadows of the street lamps, and all I heard was the quick, rough hiss of my breath. I kept close to the shop windows, my knife carefully in front me as I slipped from one awning covered door to the next. I scrutinized planters and benches as if they might come alive. I turned left down a side street. I’d take Battery Park to Page, a short cut past the Grove Arcade, then reconnect with Haywood.

  The Grove Arcade. Wait a minute.

  The arcade is a vast marble building from the 1920’s, several stories tall, and it takes up a whole block. Inside and out it’s opulent and lined with nice shops and cafes; the top floors have been turned into luxury condos. There are dozens of gargoyles on the façade and . . . I slowed down even more. The heat was sweaty for an early spring night. The air shimmered.

  The Grove Arcade is decorated with dozens of gargoyles, yes. But flanking its grand entry way are not more gargoyles, instead . . . there are a pair of . . . giant, growling, winged lions.

  Some people call them griffins.

  I heard wings. Big fucking wings. I whirled around and bolted back toward Haywood. Behind me the wings grew louder, and with the sound came low, echoing growls. I careened back onto Haywood’s wide mercantile lanes then ducked inside the darkness of a doorway alcove.

  My drawing pad. I opened the backpack then grabbed the pad and the thick stub of a charcoal pencil. But as I flipped the pad open, two slimy, lizard-like hands appeared out of thin air near my knees. They reached up like a child grabbing for a treat. I squinted in horror at a small, shadowy form with a rooster-like comb, snake eyes, and the slobbering grin of a deranged Cheshire Cat.