Cleaving Souls

by Chauncey Rogers

  “They probably aren’t far,” Doyle said, stepping up beside him. “I know that sometimes Suzzane likes to walk down the road. Perhaps she took Kat with her—just to talk or something.” He pulled his eyes from the woods and fixed them on Alex’s face. “Here’s what we should do: you get back in your car and start checking the streets around here. I would bet good money that they are on one of those streets. Just in case they aren’t, I’ll stay around here and look in the woods a little, in case there’s something we missed. Take Suzzane’s phone with you. Since I already have her number, I’ll call her phone if I find something or if they come back. If they’re not on any of the streets around here, I think the next best place to check would be back in town. Maybe it wasn’t Suzzane’s car I saw after all. When you find them, you just come back here. Okay?”

  Alex nodded and slipped Suzzane’s phone into his pocket. The plan sounded as good as any. “Okay. Thanks, Doyle. Just let me know if you see anything.”

  “Don’t mention it. And don’t worry, I will. Now hurry,” he said, nodding towards the car. “They can’t have gone too far.”

  Alex ran back to the car and climbed inside, turning on the engine before he’d even landed in the seat. As he pulled down the driveway and back to the gravel road, he saw Doyle in the rear view mirror pick something up from the flowerbed and begin lumbering towards the woods, still scratching intermittently at his implant.

  Hopefully, one of them would find Suzzane and Kat before anything bad happened.

  10

  Suzzane set the bag down in the middle of the glen, then opened it and began pulling out items while Kat watched. First came a large, white sheet. She unfolded it, spreading it across the ground in the little clearing. It looked, for a second, as if they might be there for a quiet picnic in the shade of the oak trees. Then Suzzane lay a medical kit on top of the blanket: bandages, antiseptic, some pain killers. It looked so small and inadequate. Finally, she lay a filleting knife down beside the medical supplies, and its thin blade glistened in a spot of sunlight.

  Suzzane must have seen the change of color in Kat’s face, for she said, “It’s alright. We have some pain killers, and things to make sure that the blade is clean. And it’s very sharp, dear. This should be over with very quickly.”

  Kat flinched away as Suzzane reached towards her. “Are you sure we even have to do this?” she said, her voice growing panicky and her breath quickening. “I mean, this really should be done by a doctor, shouldn’t it?”

  “Katherine, don’t you remember what just happened back at my house? You can’t wait to see a doctor about this. That twin sister of yours, her soulmate—they’re done waiting. Her aura is going to permanently affect you very shortly. I suspect that, already, she is winning control of your body when you sleep. It may begin to occur while you are awake, as well.”

  Kat placed her hand beside her left armpit, as if worried that Suzzane might take the knife and start cutting into her right then. “But, it was never a problem before. I mean, she’s been with me my whole life, hasn’t she? Can’t we just get rid of him, and then they’ll both go away?” She knew she was panicking, but she didn’t care.

  Suzzane knew she was panicking as well, and gave her a patient smile. “He is tied to her. She is tied to him. Her soul is still connected to those tissues that are living inside you. His soul is tied to hers. So long as those tissues are alive, he will be tied to you. I won’t force you to do anything, Katherine, but I fear what might happen to you if you keep waiting. And what might happen to that dear husband of yours.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Suzzane shook her head. “You poor thing. They strengthen each other because they are soulmates. Alex strengthens you for the same reason. They will try— No, they will keep trying to get rid of Alex. They’ll kill him, if they have to, to keep him away from you. So long as he’s around, your ability to resist them is increased, and their ability to influence you is weakened.”

  “But, I mean, that wouldn’t happen. Even if something did happen, and Alex died, wouldn’t he still be around, like the fire man is still around? We’re soulmates too, so wouldn’t he just— wouldn’t he...?” She eyed the knife again, and had to sit down to keep from fainting.

  “That just isn’t how this normally works,” Suzzane said. “I can’t tell you why he’s stayed behind. That’s very rare. But I believe that this is the only way to keep you, your baby, and Alex safe. Besides,” she added, “you don’t really want Alex lingering behind once his time has come, now do you?”

  Kat glanced at the knife’s blade, then squeezed her eyes shut, digging for delays. She didn’t want to do this here, in the forest, awake. Doctors should do this. Doctors who could put her under and make sure she didn’t feel anything.

  “I don’t understand,” she said. “Why? Why is he fighting against this? If he just let me get rid of her—let her die, then wouldn’t they both be together? In heaven, or...?”

  Suzzane was shaking her head.

  “I don’t know. Maybe he knows, but I doubt it. This,” she said, suddenly reaching out and pinching Kat’s arm, “this he knows. This life. This physical world. I believe in an afterlife, child, but I don’t want to go there. Death is frightening, perhaps even for the dead. I’m not sure, but maybe that’s why he stays.” Suzzane blinked thickly at her, then said, “We’d better get on with it.”

  Kat looked down at the knife once more, and it seemed to grin back at her in the light. She looked away, swallowing hard. She was trembling.

  “Okay,” she whispered. “I— Okay. Let’s do it.”

  Suzzane handed her a few pills. “Swallow these,” she said. “They’ll help with the pain, and they won’t hurt the baby—it’s not twins, by the way. Just the boy. Your twin sister—she confused me before. But the boy will be beautiful. Now swallow them. Then you’ll probably want to remove your shirt, dear.”

  11

  Alex had driven down and searched every side road and driveway that he had come across, trying to find the precious balance between moving quickly enough to catch them, and moving slowly enough to notice anything that they might have dropped. It seemed like what he should be doing, at least.

  He shook his head slowly as he pulled off another offshoot road and back onto the larger one. Maybe he really should have just called the police a long time ago. He did have a phone now. If it was unlocked, then maybe he....

  His thoughts trailed off as the road began to look very familiar. The arrangement of trees on either side like something from a dream. The pattern of potholes somehow predictable.

  He knew this stretch of road. Suzzane had lived closer to the cabin they’d stayed in than he had realized.

  Alex pulled into a driveway on the right. At the end of the driveway were the remains of the rental cabin. Perhaps they’d come here? It seemed as likely as anything else. He pulled the car to the end of the driveway, parked, and got out, locking the doors before letting them close behind him.

  The cabin didn’t look as bad as he would have imagined. Half of it had been burned very badly, it was true, but the other half was in much better shape than he’d have guessed. In his memory, it had seemed as if the entire place had gone up, but now it looked as if parts of it had only been scorched. Perhaps, when smoke was pouring through every opening, the appearance had been far worse than the reality.

  He walked up and looked in through the kitchen window. The radio that sat there had melted some, but not too badly. Chunks of the ceiling had burned and dropped to the floor, and he wondered if there were still knives lying all across the kitchen beneath them. And if he went to the front room, the TV would be there, and the bits of glass from its exploded screen. And in the bedroom....

  He pulled himself away from the window.

  He had to find Kat. She could be a danger to anyone she came across.

  He was halfway back to the car when he heard the screaming.

  12

  “I’m sorry, dear, but you’ll n
eed to hold still, or else I can’t get it.”

  Kat scarcely heard her over the sound of her own crying. The first scream had exploded out of her, unbidden. She’d been biting a stick, but even as she did it she thought it was the most stupid idea she’d ever heard. The stick lay beside her now, nearly snapped in two with deep bite marks piercing it.

  “It hurts,” Kat managed to say through the cries.

  “Well, I’m almost there. Just hold still and we’ll get this thing out of you.”

  Suzzane wiped at her brow with the back of her hand, the knife still clutched between her fingers. Kat saw the way her blood clung to the blade, dripping thickly off. Suzzane’s other hand was braced against Kat’s chest, pushing her bra slightly to the side to keep the cutting area clear.

  “Okay” Suzzane said, lowering the knife towards Kat’s armpit once more, “we’re almost there.”

  The knife went in again, and Kat clenched her fists so hard she feared puncturing through her palms with her fingertips. Her jaw was clenched tight, and tears squeezed hotly from the corners of her eyes and ran down her cheeks as Suzzane started to cut once more. She couldn’t ignore the way Suzzane’s arm worked back and forth—she was sawing into her flesh.

  Kat opened her mouth and screamed, splitting the forest once more and shaking the leaves. Everything was pain. Everything was fear. Suzzane kept cutting.

  “I’m almost there, Katherine. You’re doing great. Just stay strong, dear. We’ll have her out in just a second.”

  Kat’s eyes opened, and she stared up into the overshadowing trees, looking beyond them to the hot, blue sky overhead. Maybe, if she could just focus on something else....

  She screamed again. The pain was nearly unbearable.

  When her eyes opened after that scream, Suzzane was mopping at her brow once more. This time, it left a red streak across her forehead.

  Kat moaned, her teeth clenched once more so tight that they ached, throbbing as if they might shatter from the pressure.

  “I think I see her now. Just a few seconds more, and we’ll be done.”

  Suzzane fished a hand into the incision, and Kat immediately felt a searing stab of heat fire through her shoulder—different than mere pain, this was something else. Kat knew, in that instant, that Suzzane had indeed reached her twin.

  Then a shadow fell over Suzzane and Kat. Not a shadow as the trees cast them, but greater, darker.

  Kat focused her eyes beyond Suzzane’s form.

  Doyle stood there, holding a hand trowel.

  “Okay, I’ve got her in my fingers, Katherine,” Suzzane said, unaware.

  He raised the hand holding the trowel, and Kat could see it in his eyes. She screamed—not from pain, this time, but from pure terror.

  Suzzane must have heard the difference, for she paused and looked up, her blind eye moving from reading Kat’s shoulder to checking her face.

  She never saw it coming.

  She never knew Doyle was there.

  The trowel plunged down in his thick, meaty hand, and stabbed deep into her neck.

  Kat screamed again, shutting her eyes. She didn’t hear anything beyond her own cries, and she didn’t see anything besides her pounding pulse against her eyelids. But she felt something. Something hot splash across her bare stomach—Suzzane’s blood.

  When Kat’s scream died for lack of air, and her eyes finally opened again, it was done. Suzzane lay dead beside her, and Doyle stood over her, blood up to his wrist and dripping down from the trowel.

  He stared at Kat, standing powerfully over her, waiting.

  Her lips, suddenly dry and numb, cracked open. “Doyle, why?”

  “I told you not to come here. I told you not to do this. Now, you’ve left me no choice.”

  “The fire man,” Kat said, her voice hoarse.

  He sneered at the monicker. “Yes, the fire man. Although, if you care to know, my name was Chris. But you don’t,” he said, leaning down, “because you don’t care about anybody but yourself.”

  “Are— Are you going to kill me?”

  “No. As much as you may deserve it, I won’t do that. She needs you, and I need her. If you die, we all die. No. You’re going to come with me, somewhere safe. Somewhere I can keep you.”

  Her body stiffened, and he smirked down at her.

  “Come along, then,” he said, and he bent down to grab her.

  But, despite the fear and the blood loss, Kat still had some fight in her.

  Laying on her back, she rolled her hips up off the ground, cocked her foot, and then fired it directly into his face. The heel of her tennis shoe made perfect contact with his nose, crushing it and rocking his head backwards. Doyle’s body slipped backwards and then fell to the ground in a heap.

  Kat didn’t wait. She snatched up a few of the bandages, shoving some of them deep into her armpit. It stung horribly, and she winced as she tried to pack them in farther and stanch the flow of blood. Then she rolled onto her stomach and pushed herself up off the white sheet, trying to ignore its large crimson stain and her own hurting.

  Suzzane lay on her back, staring upwards into the afterlife, her neck a mess. Doyle lay next to her, and as Kat stood, he started to move, moaning and drawing his hands up to his shattered face.

  Kat looked around. Maybe it was the loss of blood, or maybe it was her adrenaline-fueled panic. Whichever it was, she had no idea which direction she’d come from, and thus no idea which direction to go to reach Suzzane’s house and the waiting truck.

  She cursed under her breath.

  Doyle started to move more, and Kat stopped deliberating. She plunged into the forest, pressing the bandages up under her arm as she forged a path through the undergrowth.

  13

  The screams had stopped, and somehow that was much, much worse than hearing them rip through the forest.

  Beaded sweat stood out across Alex’s face, and the hot forest air seemed to grip him by the throat and force his breath into a weak wheeze. He spun around, searching for...something. Anything. He’d ran in the direction the screams had come from—or, from the direction he’d thought they had come from, but as the seconds ticked by without another sound to direct him, he started to doubt whether he’d gone in the right direction in the first place.

  The screaming had sounded like Kat, but he’d never heard her scream like that before, so he couldn’t be sure. Whoever it had been, people only screamed like that when they were in great pain. The sound of it had rammed its way through Alex’s entire nervous system like a jackhammer, disturbing every sense and cell in his body.

  He wanted to run, to give the torrent of adrenaline an outlet. But, as prepared as his body was, the side effect seemed to be a numbing-over of his mind. He couldn’t think of what to do beyond running. He wanted to run towards the screaming—to fight. But the urge of flight kept tickling around the edges of his instincts, nudging him towards a retreat back to the car.

  But the silence....

  He had to find Kat. He ran into the woods, ignoring the smaller brush and branches as he tore through the greenery like a feral beast, still just guessing at the direction.

  14

  Kat lowered herself down behind a tree trunk, leaning against it and depending on the tall saplings on either side to shield her from view. The pain in her armpit had quieted down significantly, but she still felt cold. Her hands were clammy and weak, and the world spun a little every now and again. At least she was still aware enough to realize what was happening: she’d lost too much blood and was in shock.

  Doyle hadn’t stayed down on the ground as long as she’d hoped. Chris—however he’d managed to control Doyle—hadn’t wasted much time, and apparently didn’t feel much of the pain that Kat’s kick had inflicted on the man. He’d taken Suzzane’s knife and come after her, scaring her out of her first hiding place after only a minute and forcing her to relocate. She’d ran until he was out of sight and then hunkered down behind a tree.

  Now that she thought about it, she
wasn’t sure it was even possible for her to hide from him. Could he sense where she was? With his tie to her twin, would he always be able to find her?

  She needed to keep running—to actually get away—but she wasn’t sure that she had the strength to do that.

  Something cracked in the woods, and she twitched down even lower against the ground, like a frightened rabbit. The snap of a breaking twig sounded again, and then she could hear Doyle’s voice, speaking Chris’s words without its folksy, rural accent.

  “Kat, stop hiding and come out. I don’t want you to bleed to death. Come out here so that we can close your cut up.”

  There was silence for a minute, presumably Chris waiting for a response. Then he growled.

  “Get out here. After all you’ve done to her, after how you ruined both our lives, do you really hate us so much that you would die, just to keep us apart? Get out here. Now.”

  Kat could hear the sound of his footsteps crunching through the brush as he stalked closer to her. She braced herself, preparing to flee once more, wondering if she would have the strength to keep this up for much longer.

  Then, unexpectedly, his footsteps paused. When they sounded again, they were heading away from her, off in a new direction.

  Kat let out her breath and, with her teeth clamped together, tried to pack the bandages more tightly into her arm. As she did, the blood trickled through them and ran down her arm, leaving a red coursing track down to her elbow.

  As her strength continued to fade, Kat realized her options were fading with them. Keep running? Go for help? Head back to the medical supplies and try to patch herself up?

  She pushed the bandages up into the cut again, doubting whether or not she’d be able to do any of those things, especially since she had very little idea where she was.