Soul Catchers

by Tony Moyle

  The only access to Bryher was from the larger islands of St Mary’s or Tresco via public ferry or private boat and most residents were more likely to own the latter than they were a car. The only sensible mode of transport on an island not much more than a mile long was quad bike or bicycle. Fiona and Violet used neither. The many pockets of their farm, separated by mossy drystone walls or banks of prickly gorse bushes, was never more than a five-minute stroll to their small, white cottage that sat on the edge of the western shoreline.

  “I’m not sure we’ll need many pickers at harvest time this year,” announced Fiona as they ambled down a sand track that descended between attractive, grey stone cottages on both sides.

  “How many did we have here last year? Five or six?” said Violet.

  “Six.”

  “I think the most we’ll need is one extra pair of hands at this rate. The locals looking to earn an extra quid or two aren’t going to be very happy.”

  “I’m sure we’ll be ok and the locals will understand it’s out of our hands,” said Fiona encouragingly as she stretched over to hold the other woman’s hand.

  The island’s robins and sparrows, less anxious and fragile than their comrades on the mainland, bustled around blackberry bushes and provided a distinct soundtrack of the island. The sound of the ocean lapped against the rocks as the women made a turn onto a dusty driveway that led up to three attached cottages clung to the beachside on the edge of a semicircular bay.

  Every day the two women thanked their luck and persistence for this paradise setting where they’d made their home. Without a certain Byron T. Casey they would never have come to live here or afforded the privilege. Both women had been held against their will in the underground passages of Whitehall, although no evidence for their imprisonment was ever presented to them. After the scandal of Emorfed the new government were more than happy to buy their silence. Financial compensation that more than paid for the farm and the cottage.

  Still holding hands, they approached the larger of the two end cottages. A small boy sat on a wooden fence waiting patiently for their return. A grubby-looking child whose skin showed he took every opportunity to explore an island where little was out of bounds and everything was worthy of adventure. This was his island. When only eighty or so people lived permanently here, no one else of his age could lay claim to it. Today he’d been down to the beach for a few hours playing amongst the rock pools. His brown, curly hair had captured more seaweed than his hands had caught fish.

  “Hello, Mums,” he called when they were within earshot. He jumped down to greet them.

  “Here’s our little guard dog,” said Violet. “So, have you been vigilant?”

  “Absolutely. I haven’t moved from this spot all morning.”

  “Other than to go to the rock pools, I see,” added Fiona with a chuckle, picking a piece of seaweed from his hair.

  “It was all part of my secret operation. You don’t know what might be hiding in them,” he offered in defence.

  “Crabs, I’d think,” replied Violet.

  “Or pirates,” replied the boy.

  “Pirates are a bit big for rock pools, I think. Where is Faith?”

  “Aunty is at the back of the house soaking up as much sunshine as she can. Even though she’s in the sun every day she still shivers when she’s in it. I don’t get it?”

  “When you’re older I’ll explain it to you, Scrumpy. She’s perfectly fine: the brightness makes life more pleasant for her.”

  The boy lost interest in the answer halfway through and started searching the ground for good, flat stones for skimming on the lake this afternoon.

  “Well, it’s time we got everyone some lunch. There aren’t many pickings from the farm so thank God they invented supermarkets,” said Violet.

  On the lawn to the right of the house a young girl sat with her legs crossed and a book open across her lap. Her long, white unicorn hair flapped around in the breeze but her focus on the book was never lost. The pale, white skin across her body was impervious to the scorching temperatures around her. Where it was hard to distinguished between the boy’s tan and the dirt that he’d acquired, the same was not true of the girl. Clean and pure, her skin sat contrasted against the brown grass of the lawn. A couple of years older than the boy, she ignored all three as they walked up the path.

  “Hold on, Mummy,” shouted the boy, as the two women drew closer to the house.

  He made his way into the immaculately pruned walled garden full of bright colours and strange flowers. The girl didn’t move, captivated by the puzzle in her book that sent somersaults around her brain. The boy skipped over to the girl in the pose of an aeroplane, making noises to fit the reconstruction.

  “Sis, it’s time for lunch.”

  Unable to move from the spot, her plain voice gave a short response. “I’m working out the puzzle.”

  “Even you must get hungry. Come on, Grace, I’ll race you.”

  She lifted a single skinny, white finger to her lips as if to hush the world, and after the briefest of pauses she stood up. “Solved it.”

  *****

  Cities were full of people: that’s why they were called cities. A mass of citizens living in a collective group or society. David couldn’t understand what advantage there was in squeezing so many people into so little space. It was obvious that people loved cities, otherwise why were they there? In their billions they followed, one lemming after the next. Yes, there were more jobs in cities, and of course with jobs came entertainment, theatres, restaurants and more people. Lots more people. The more people that congregated in a place, the more other people wanted to join in, desperate not to miss out. Most cities lacked space for this very reason. What was fun about that?

  People were forced to live in smaller and ever more expensive accommodation. It wasn’t unusual for a single person to live in something no bigger than a one-room shoebox for the price per month of a small family car. They still paid it. Drawn in by an undiagnosed addiction to opportunity and excitement, naively the mass of human traffic is tricked by the city’s need to feed on those that lose their bottle or fall to the many traps that it secretly builds behind the illusion. Crime, vice and violence were all generated by the collective selfishness of a city desperate to corrupt all of its inhabitants in one way or another.

  There were no such temptations to worry about in the countryside. Nothing to squabble over but the peace and quiet. Outside of the bustling metropolis of concrete orchards was a world where birds could be heard singing. The last time David heard a bird singing it had come from a budgie in a cage. The countryside might have lacked a really good pizza parlour or a nail salon, but as a child in Patagonia he never missed them, so he probably wouldn’t miss them now.

  David struggled to get a glimpse of the outside world through the jumbled contents obscuring his only window. The fridge-freezer blocked at least fifty percent of the three-foot-high window. But if you stood on a stool, held onto the ceiling light and craned your neck at a ninety-degree angle you could just about make out the round dome of the Radcliffe Camera. Only if it wasn’t pissing it down and grey in Oxford on the particular time you tried to look. Which realistically meant about four days of the year.

  Fortunately for David, this city home wasn’t permanent. Once he’d had the opportunity to meet with Dr. King and figure out whether, and how, he should be punished for his part in John’s demise, he could move on. Hopefully back to a place where everything was not governed by road signs and traffic lights. Dr. King taught psychology in Oxford, not far from the view that was hampered by clouds and David’s fridge.

  Everyone in Oxford seemed to own a bike. Their conscientious motives to save the planet appeared not to stretch to the potential damage inflicted on those ‘not’ riding a bike. Unless you had two wheels and a lump of metal wedged up your backside you were apparently fair game. David tiptoed his way through the city, navigating the narrowest and least bike-friendly passageways he could find. A num
ber of these two-wheeled death squads still did their best to hunt him down.

  Dr. King was deep into his ninth decade, but still gave daily lectures and seminars at the Experimental Psychology Department, a walkable distance from the centre of Oxford. His great age didn’t seem to worry the Deans who offered him the position some years ago with the proviso that he did not take up a full-time clerical position. The occasional sermon was fine. Their interest was in his work with the mind, not the spirits that he was also famed for. When David reached his office door he tapped on it firmly.

  “Enter,” came the deep Irish welcome.

  The office was low frills. There wasn’t a couch for patients because in truth they weren’t welcome here. The replacement for a couch was a desk and a couple of chairs positioned in front of it. This room was equipped for talking to students about psychology, not for the afflicted who needed help to understand their own. This room was focused on theoretical debate of the mind, rather than any deep, forensic search of one.

  “You must be David.”

  “Yes,” he replied.

  “It’s most irregular for you to ask to see me. There are many psychiatrists, psychotherapists, counsellors and even less qualified people, if that’s possible, who would be more than happy to see you in Oxford.”

  “None of them can help me,” replied David.

  “Well, that’s no surprise, I’m afraid. Take a seat.”

  “Thank you,” said David as he sat tentatively in front of Donovan’s desk, “You come highly recommended.”

  Donovan rubbed his wrinkled face and leant backwards a little so that his thick glasses could focus on the young man. He spoke with the eloquence and clarity of a much younger man and, although his features could not be mistaken for youthfulness, he appeared nowhere near the age that had been indicated. There was one other important difference from how David’s mind remembered him. There appeared to be no stutter. In every other way, though, he was definitely the man who had chanted the soul out of John’s body in a house in Kensington all those years before.

  “I’m grateful that there are people in the world that still remember who I am, let alone recommend me. You’ll appreciate I have limited time, as this is not part of my normal routine. What seems to be the problem?”

  David tried to explain. The issues in his head only occurred during asleep and away from his own unique ability to rationalise what he saw. Was it even happening? Or was it some strange flashback of things that were and things that might yet be? These weren’t normal dreams, after all. Most were effectively reruns, déjà vu moments trapped in the fabric of a brain that his soul was unable to fully occupy.

  “I have dreams,” replied David unable to offer any bias as to what he felt about them.

  “What sort of dreams?”

  “Of things that I think happened before I was born and stories I was told as a young boy, now repeated at night in perfect clarity.”

  “Quite often patients with recurring dreams demonstrate some unresolved conflict or stress point,” offered Donovan.

  “But they are different dreams that recur frequently, sometimes all of them in the same sleep.”

  “Then you must be experiencing many different unresolved conflicts. Give me an example of one of these dreams.”

  Dr. King removed a pad in preparation to jot down anything of interest or note, at all times keeping eye contact firmly on David. David chose carefully which dreams to reveal. He had dreams that would be familiar to Dr. King and at this point he didn’t want to make any connections he might remember.

  “There is one dream that I have that resembles no emotion or memory stored or seen. In the dream I wake in a meadow of ivory white grass. A gentle breeze washes over me as I open my eyes to a sky tinged with red. Between myself and a red sun, burning in the sky, a translucent barrier holds in the atmosphere. On the other side a cloud of blue material attempts to enter but the translucent barrier cannot be breached. I appear to be the only one alive in a world of regimented beauty. My whole existence brims with…what do you call it?”

  “Happiness,” offered Dr. King sympathetically.

  “Yes. But when I wake there is no happiness in me and I have no desire to rediscover it.”

  “You know, of course, that the place you describe only exists in your mind?” said Donovan.

  “But it’s so vivid. The touch of the grass upon my hands, the breeze against my face, is just a fraction of the reality that presses down upon me.”

  “The brain is a magnificent organ, David. This world, however real it may feel, is a figment of your subconscious. Why the brain has created such a location for you is what we must discover. Dreams, you see, are based on our feelings and perceptions towards experiences in our lives.”

  “That’s just the point, though. I don’t have feelings. I’m not capable of it.”

  “What you tell the girls of this city is none of my business.”

  “No, I mean it, it’s not a girl thing. I really don’t. I have never cried either in sadness or humour. I have never screamed in pain or anger. I have never shown pity or felt disappointment. Never once in all my years.”

  “Not that I believe you for a second, but maybe your perception of having no feelings has created a world full of them. A place where you can connect to the things that you feel are missing in life. Do all these dreams have a similar pattern?”

  “No. I can’t find any pattern between them.”

  “And you have no particular life concerns. Money, girls, gambling, drinking, estranged family members, job anxiety, university stress?”

  “No. I told you I’m not susceptible to the worries that normal people suffer from.”

  “So why have you come here?”

  “The dreams. They’re not normal surely?”

  “Well, they are what they are,” replied Donovan, feeling his time was being wasted but wanting to humour this strange teenager. “Tell me another dream. Let me see if I can identify any patterns.”

  “There is a dream that has surfaced in recent months. It feels the most real at the time, as if I am playing a part in it as it unfolds, rather than watching from the sidelines.”

  “What happens in that dream?” asked King calmly.

  “I’m standing over a middle-aged man lying lifelessly on the floor of a hallway. The body has a gunshot wound to the heart and a pool of blood is gently flowing over the floor. I turn and walk out into the corridor. There are no signs of a forced entry at the front door, but there’s a man with a gun. He talks directly to me. There is no haste in his actions. He’s just murdered a man and yet he wants a conversation. In a calm voice he says, ‘How many times have I killed you? See you next time.’ And then he slowly walks away.”

  “The man is referring to the gentleman on the floor in this scene, is he not?”

  “That’s just the thing. He says it to me, as if the body and I are one and the same. The dream then shifts to a cemetery. I’m standing over a black marble gravestone and there are markings carved carefully into the back.”

  “The markings must identify who is buried there,” replied Donovan rather too directly.

  “These marking are not on the front of the gravestone but on the rear.”

  “What do the markings read?” asked King, suddenly more fascinated with this dream sequence than the one before.

  “God protects the King.”

  “Interesting. In the dream whose grave was it carved on?”

  “I don’t know. I never see his face or the front of the grave in the dream,” replied David accurately.

  This was exactly how he saw it in the dream, even if he had seen it differently in real life. A lie could be hidden if the question asked was wrong.

  “Do you know what it means?” asked David.

  “Yes, I do. It doesn’t come from any of my psychology teachings, though. I know this phrase from my study of theology. The phrase is based on a Phoenician description.”

  “Who are the Phoenicians?
” asked David.

  “Phoenicia was an ancient civilisation based in the Eastern Mediterranean close to what we now refer to as the lands of Israel and Lebanon. They first appeared around 1500 BC and are recognised as being the first race to use a formalised alphabet. They were also the first civilisation to organise their society into city states.”

  “At least I know who to blame for my cramped apartment,” said David. “What do the words mean?”

  “Well, in the Phoenician culture and alphabet the word God is ‘Bal’ and the word for King is still in use today in European languages, although its spelling has changed. Tsar Nicholas, of course, was one of the last to hold the title. Your inscription is a name, Baltazaar.”

  David desperately tried to process the information with little success. None of the timing or detail made sense. Weeks before he arrived in the country and visited the grave etched on his own history for so long, someone had spent hours chiselling the Phoenician name of one of the people on his list into the back of it. But why? This wasn’t divine intervention. He knew that John had received unexplained help during his attempt to bring Sandy and Ian back to Hell. When he’d really needed help it had come to him. But that had never happened to David. There were no voices, no signals and no directions. He had always been on his own in his search for revenge on those who had hindered him.

  “What do you know about this Baltazaar character from your theological teachings?” asked David.

  “Very little. You’re talking about a culture that predates Christianity by more than a thousand years, and the ability to write it down on paper by even longer. Only mystery surrounds this character. Anyway, it’s interesting that you should think that up in a dream. Do you have any religious beliefs?”

  “Let’s say I’m aware of the possibility, but it’s not really for me,” replied David.

  “Agnostic, are you?”

  “Something like that.”