by N. P. Martin
Hans Belger stepped forward under one of the flickering lights, raising his head to reveal his grotesque mask of a face under his hood. The way his sunken face was nothing more than dark, leathery skin attached to a misshapen skull, it was like his human essence had been somehow sucked out of him, leaving behind nothing but a shell through which the blackest of magick flowed. I thought that if you drained Belger of his magick, his body would probably fall to dust.
Belger was turning his head from side to side as if he was trying to see something. Which he was. He was trying to see into me. I felt his invasive presence poking around inside me, slithering through me like hard-backed snakes. “There is something not right with you,” the old Warlock said.
"You're not the first person to ever tell me that," I said back, using the time to try and increase the strength of my magick, which wasn't happening at all.
Belger stretched out his arm then, his long, bony fingers moving like he was trying to grab something. “I see now. It’s your soul. I can feel it trying to escape your body. Here, let me help it along. It seems to be struggling.” He made a fist with his outstretched hand and drew his arm back sharply.
At the same time, a massive pain went through my chest. The same sharp, cutting pain like last time, only far greater. “NO!” I shouted, fighting to keep from falling to my knees. Gritting my teeth against the pain and the fact that it felt like my chest was going to explode Alien style any second, I managed to raise my right hand enough to launch a blast of magick at Belger, who took the blast center mass and barely flinched afterwards. Straightaway, I conjured another energy blast and fired it at him. This time, Belger stopped the sphere of blue magick mid-air before redirecting it at Leona. The blast hit her in the chest, and she cried out in shock as it took her off her feet and sent her flying back down the corridor behind me.
"Leona!" I shouted or tried to. The pain of having my soul ripped out of me was becoming unbearable. All I could do was fall to my knees like a puppet with severed strings.
Then I screamed shrilly like a pig having its throat cut as my soul finally burst free from my body, a luminescent white orb with a wavy tail behind it making it look like a little comet. So beautiful I wanted to cry. And then my soul drifted upward in a languid sort of fashion like it was in no hurry to get to where it needed to go (which was the Astral Plane and who knows where after that) before disappearing into the ceiling. I could only stare at the spot in the ceiling my soul had gone through, a terrible sense of emptiness quickly welling up in me, any sense of warmth or humanity that I may once have had draining away just as fast.
“There now,” Belger said, unmistakable glee at his own sadism in his voice. “Does that feel better? I’m sure you were glad to get such a weight of your chest.” He laughed loudly, his cackling voice echoing horribly of the walls and into my ears.
Then I remembered Leona. I called her name as I looked behind me, but saw no sign of her.
Where did she go?
The magick blast should have knocked her out, although it was possible that her boss, Brentwood, had discovered a way to partially neutralize the effects of the magick. Brentwood had a whole team behind him researching ways to counter magick and balance the scales a bit for the field agents like Leona. Whatever the case, Leona appeared to be gone, probably having seen the futility of what we were trying to do and thus saved her own ass. If I still had a soul, I would have felt desperately sad and alone at that moment, but all I felt was nothing.
Leona was gone. I was going to die. That’s all there was to it.
“Go on, Belger, you Nazi fuck,” I said. “Just kill me.”
“I will,” Belger replied, coming closer. “After you tell me why you are here.”
“I came to steal your rotten soul.”
The Warlock stopped a few feet from me, his burning green eyes fixed on my own. “Only a fool or a desperate man would attempt that. Which are you?”
“Both, it looks like.”
“Why would you need my soul?”
“To give to a demon so it could save my own soul.”
“Too late for that now, isn’t it?” His lipless mouth formed a rictus grin.
“Fuck you.”
Belger stretched out a hand that exerted invisible pressure around my neck, hauling me up to my feet and holding me there. "What if I don't kill you? I could always use another ghoul to do my bidding. What do you think? Would you like that? Lots of foul meat around here for you to feast on."
I said nothing as I stared back at him, hardly even caring what he decided to do to me. Keep me or kill me. It was all the same to me without a soul at that moment.
Then out of nowhere, deafening gunfire sounded in the confines of the corridor, coming from behind Belger. His body bucked as at least two rounds went right through him, one of which whizzed past my head on the exit like a mini fighter jet, the other hitting off the wall and exploding the bricks out. Belger roared as he released his invisible grip on me so he could spin around to confront whoever was shooting at him. He shot out one hand and formed a shield of magickal energy in front of himself to stop any more bullets from hitting him.
Surprisingly calm and indifferent to the fact that I almost got shot in the head, I backed over towards the wall and looked down the corridor to see Leona standing, Beretta in hand, blasting away at Belger. Even without a soul, it still felt good to see her, which made me think that perhaps my humanity hadn't all gone, not yet anyhow. There was still some in there, hanging on for dear life.
A voice sounded in my head:
Now would be a good time to do something.
Yes, of course. Leona was distracting Belger. The Warlock had his back to me. I didn't have the use of my magick any longer, but I had the next best thing:
A big fucking gun that fired chaos bullets.
Whipping out the pistol from under my coat, I took aim at Belger's back, pulled back the hammer and fired, hitting the Warlock between the shoulder blades. Belger cried out and staggered forward, though he still maintained his shield against Leona's continuing stream of rounds. As he half turned towards me, I fired again and shot him in the neck, forcing him back against the wall. Now as well as being shot (which given the state of his physical body probably wouldn't have annoyed him much anyway as it was kind of like like shooting a mummy) he now had to contend with the chaos magick now flooding his system. Magick that was conjured when I was at full strength, so he would have a job countering it.
“Leona! The box!” I shouted.
I didn't know if she heard me or not, for in the same moment, Belger blasted me with his magick, which slammed me into the wall like a cannonball to the gut. As I fell forward, it was all I could do to remain conscious. My head on the floor, I looked up at Belger not too far away, who was now screaming as if in agony, his bulletproof shield down as well. He appeared to be bathed in a mass of dark, undulating shadow, and it took me a second to realize the cloying blackness was coming from the box that Sanaka had given me. Leona had somehow managed to open the small container and get it in front of Belger. The box was now drawing out Belger's soul, and to hear him scream, you would think it was ripping him apart in the process.
When the Warlock's soul finally emerged from his body, it was a twisted black thing that writhed and screeched as it got inexorably pulled along. No matter how powerful Belger was, or had been, his soul couldn't resist the pull of the box, and seconds later, riding on a final scream from Belger, the black soul was sucked into the box, and the lid got closed on it.
And as I slipped towards oblivion, I saw Belger's robes fall to the floor as if Belger himself had simply disappeared from existence.
35
Ghoul Status
WHEN I CAME to it was to the sound of the world's loudest sewing machine, or so my befuddled brain thought at the time. There was a sense of motion underneath me, and I soon realized I was in some sort of transport. A helicopter maybe, judging by the chopping engine noise. Then a figure was leaning ove
r me. It was Leona. “Creed,” she shouted over the engine noise. “Creed, are you alright?”
I tried to tell her I was, but for some reason, my mouth didn’t seem to work. It was like I had lost the connection between my mind and body. Then as Leona stared down at me, I looked into her eyes and the memory of what had happened hit me all at once. The confrontation with Belger. Losing my soul.
My soul is gone.
A pained mewling noise escaped my lips.
“Hang in there, Creed,” Leona said. “We’re getting you home.”
We?
I focused past her and saw Brentwood, his dark face staring back at me, impassive as always as if he was totally indifferent to my condition. Which knowing Brentwood, he probably was.
He wasn’t the only one to feel like that either. I felt dead inside. Scraped out. The only emotion that seemed to be left in me was the misery that came with knowing I was no longer a human being. That I was just an empty shell, not even a shadow of my former self. My magick, all that I had ever known, had been snatched away from me, and with it, the whole of my humanity. Soon, I would be a sad, shuffling thing, roaming around aimlessly, all memory of my former life gone.
Dead, but not dead.
In my gut, I felt a powerful appetite begin to grow, one that I knew quite soon, I wouldn’t be able to ignore. An appetite for rotten meat. Any meat, the more decayed, the better to match the sense of decay I already felt seeping through me.
“Everything’s going to be alright, Creed,” Leona said.
Not it wasn’t. Nothing was going to be alright anymore.
After that comforting thought, I passed out again, grateful for oblivion.
The helicopter had landed when I next awoke. Brentwood was pulling the door open, and cold air came rushing into the inside of the chopper, bringing me round slightly, enough that I could sit up. "Where are we?" I asked, my voice flat and emotionless.
“Back in Blackham,” Brentwood answered after he had exited the helicopter. “We’ll get you to a hospital, Creed.”
I shook my head. “No.”
Leona stood over me. “You need to get seen to, Creed,” she said.
Getting to my feet, I climbed unsteadily out of the helicopter, the light outside hurting my eyes. Sensitivity to light was another ghoul trait. It wouldn’t be long before I couldn’t stand the light at all and I became a creature of the night only. A human rat, holed up all day, coming out at night to feed. “Just take me home,” I said to no one in particular, not even sure why I wanted to go home at all. What was there left for me there but a house full of useless books and artifacts and a Garra Wolf that wouldn’t want to know me anymore when it realized the person it knew to be me no longer existed?
Still, for the time being at least, where else was I going to go?
Sitting in the front passenger seat of a black SUV that Leona was driving, I barely listened as she tried to tell me about what happened after I lost consciousness back at the Devil's Playground. Her voice was level as if she was giving me a debriefing and she spoke about Hans Belger turning to dust after his soul was sucked into the box (the box Leona still carried on her), about how she had radioed Brentwood to send reinforcements to the island to round up Belger's sicko followers, many of whom were killed when they tried to resist, the rest being detained and shipped back to the mainland for processing. Brentwood was happy apparently, as it was a huge bust for him and would surely go a long way to securing the next year's budget, which according to Leona, is all he really cared about. I didn't react to anything she said as I stared out the window in a semi-catatonic state. After a while, Leona gave up on trying to talk to me, and she lapsed into silence until we got to the Sanctum in East Oakdale.
Robotically, I got out of the car and walked up the steps, then stopped when I saw that someone was standing there. It was Sanaka, though I barely acknowledged him as I stopped at the front door and realized I wouldn’t be able to open it because I had no magick left in me to do so. “Damn,” I said.
"I sensed what happened to you," Sanaka said, his hands plunged into his black trench coat, his long hair blowing in the gusty wind. "I thought you might need my help."
Leona came up behind us. “Who are you?” she asked, addressing Sanaka with suspicion as she eyed up the sword he held in his hand.
Sanaka gave her a small, respectful bow. “My name is Mitsuo Sanaka. I am a friend of Creed’s. I’m here to help if I can.”
Leona shook her head like she didn’t have time to wonder at my relationship to Sanaka. “Can you help him?”
Smiling patiently, Sanaka said, “Unfortunately, when a soul is gone, it is gone.”
“He’s right,” I said, staring at the door, wondering why Sanaka hadn’t opened it yet.
“So what do we do then?” Leona asked. “Leave him like this?”
Sanaka didn't answer as he waved his hand by the front door. A second later, the locks disengaged, and I pushed the door open, going inside, wondering vaguely as I did so why I was even there in the first place. I should have just got dropped off by a nice, comfortable dumpster and waited for nightfall so I could begin my new life as a ghoul. The piles of stuff in the house held no connection to me anymore. They were just strange, useless objects, aspects of a former life that were rapidly fading. It felt like my brain was falling apart inside, leaving massive holes in my memory. Pretty soon, I would be a mindless creature who ran only on the basest of instincts.
"Look at him, for Christ's sakes," Leona was saying to Sanaka, her frustration and concern for me getting the better of her now. "He's like a goddamn zombie. Are we just going to leave him like this?"
Sanaka stood in the center of the living room just as Blaez entered the room from the kitchen. The Garra Wolf stopped and stared at me, growled slightly, knowing I wasn’t the person who had saved it from imprisonment in Babylon. The wolf looked at Sanaka as if for an explanation. “His soul is traveling through the Astral Plane as we speak,” Sanaka said, as I sat down in one of the armchairs to stare dead-eyed at the floor. "Soon it will merge with the River Of Forgetfulness before being sent to another dimension or realm."
“Can’t you just get it back?” Leona asked, standing by the side of my chair.
"It is not that simple," Sanaka said. "There are millions of souls in the Astral Plane. It would take too long to locate Creed's. He only has a short time left before his physical form atrophies, shutting out the possibility of his soul being able to enter his body ever again."
Leona sighed sharply. “What fucking good is magick if you can’t use it in times like these? So that’s it? Creed is just a fucking zombie now for the rest of his life?”
“A ghoul,” Sanaka said, as infuriatingly composed as ever.
“A fucking ghoul then,” Leona spat. I could feel her anger and frustration building beside me. Not that I was flattered by her concern or anything. I was too busy slipping fast into a twilight world where normal human beings (ones with souls, that is) were becoming like ghosts to me as if they weren't there at all—as if I wasn't there at all. Whatever the case, the effect was the same. Complete alienation.
“There is someone who may be able to help,” Sanaka said. “Something. The demon that Creed summoned. It will have the power to get Creed’s soul back. Whether it will do so or not all depends.”
“On what?” Leona asked.
Sanaka smiled patiently. “On what Creed is prepared to offer it in return.”
36
Return Of The Demon
SANAKA PREPARED EVERYTHING for the summoning ritual in the basement, electing not to procure any John Doe’s for the ritual, figuring the demon wouldn’t be expecting any offering this time around. Except, of course, what I had promised it, which was one hundred souls. It remained to be seen whether or not the demon would be happy with the one soul I had stolen for it.
While Sanaka was down in the basement, I sat in the living room, staring at the floor like a zombie in between meals. Leona sat in one of the oth
er armchairs, saying nothing, occasionally checking her phone as she got updates from Brentwood on the island siege. By that point, I didn't even care if I got my soul back or not. I was that far gone, feeling nothing but the hunger growing inside me. A hunger for meat. A hunger that would soon become all consuming and insatiable, becoming my only raison detre. I still wasn't sure if ghouls were partial to live meat in the form of people. They had been known to attack animals, cattle and horses, leaving most people to believe that the animals were the victims of Satanists or aliens. In reality, it was just ghouls having a munch. Whatever the case, Leona was looking more and more tasty to me, her firm, pale flesh causing me to salivate like a dog that hadn't eaten in days.
“You alright there, Creed?” Leona asked as she looked at me strangely. “You don’t look so good. Why are you staring at me like that? You’re freaking me out.”
I kept staring, a vision in my mind of myself sinking my teeth into her tender flesh. I growled at her. Yes, growled, like an animal.
Leona stood and told me she was going to check on Sanaka. As she went to walk past me, I grabbed her arm and pulled it towards my salivating mouth. “Creed!” she screamed, then punched me hard in the face, causing me to let go of her arm. “What the fuck?” She backed away from me, her hand going to one of her Berettas, ready to draw on me if she had to.
I growled at her again. Snapped my jaws at her.
“Stop it!” Leona shouted angrily. “Settle to fuck down, Creed, or I swear I will shoot you!”
Her words somehow cut through the foggy haze in my mind, connecting with the semblance of humanity I still had in me somewhere, but which was diminishing fast like a candle in the darkness only seconds away from burning out completely. Another small growl left my mouth before I settled back in the chair and began staring at the floor again.
