Soul Catchers

by Tony Moyle

  Under a natural tunnel, constructed by trees meeting each other over the top of the track, a boy and a young adult were walking together. They walked towards the chapel, in the direction that Nash always took to catch the late-afternoon boat. As he watched them approach he took a second look.

  Instinctively he threw himself behind a hedgerow of blackberry brambles and immediately regretted it. Picking thorns from his legs, he crept around the side and hid behind a shoddily constructed drystone wall. Peering over the top, like a hairy version of Mr. Chad, he assessed them again. There was no doubt in his mind. It was the boy from the cemetery.

  - CHAPTER NINETEEN -

  THE THIRD TREE

  Demons had jobs for life. Or afterlife, depending on how you looked at it. Once they’d been allocated their position, that was it. No one retired and death was unlikely. If you didn’t like it, tough. Mr. Brimstone was one of the fortunate ones. The Soul Catcher was one of the more interesting assignments. Not only did he have the day-to-day flow of souls to manage, he had to deal with regular anomalies. Whether that was the reincarnates or the shadows, life couldn’t be described as monotonous.

  Some demons weren’t so blessed. There were demons whose central job was to keep the heating system running or managing ‘Health and Safety’. ‘Health and Safety’ was a loosely termed job title, given the immense amount of pain and suffering being delivered in Hell. The position was solely focused on the well-being of demons rather than of patients.

  It usually involved telling Mr. Aqua to be careful where he left a trail of water, or reminding the workforce not to get too close to Mr. Volts. Most of this advice was posted in signage around the place. ‘Careful: hot surface’ was placed anywhere Mr. Brimstone was regularly in attendance and ‘mind the gap’ was a general reminder that Mr. Noir was everywhere, even if you couldn’t be certain about it.

  Brimstone always felt that if promotion had been an option, then librarian would be a good move. Sadly for him the library didn’t have one. It didn’t need one. The whole of level eleven was completely autonomous. The only time demons ever went there was to locate a soul on Earth. That in itself happened so very rarely and almost only required a qualified demon in attendance. Most of the time the library was unoccupied and everyone assumed that as no alarms were ringing things continued as normal.

  Normal in the library meant three things. Firstly, the two trees, roots sprawled over the carbon-polished floor, would be producing new books at an eye-watering speed. Each new edition started as a single page sliced from a trunk like an overefficient, invisible ham slicer. The trees’ growth was rapid enough to replace each sheet of paper at the same pace.

  Each new page documented the emotional changes occurring in the subject. When the person’s soul experienced love for the first time, a new page would be added like cells replicating in flesh. As more experiences were logged, the book expanded. Over time the original page would duplicate itself until thick, bound volumes, bursting at their seams, filled the shelves.

  One tree, the older and larger of the two, was responsible for producing manuals of those souls destined to end up with overwhelmingly negative polarity. The smaller tree would produce those likely to end up positive. They didn’t always get it right. Humans had at least some control over their destinies. If a human had enough willpower it was just possible for it to override its genetic and spiritual settings and send itself in a different direction. That was before the number of destinations was more than one, as it was now. The trees hadn’t been notified of this change, and as far as they were concerned, continued to produce what they deemed to be correct.

  The smaller tree was only in Hell because of this change. A similar tree once grew in Heaven where it would document all the souls likely to end up there. When its purpose became redundant, it withered. The first warning the demons had of this was when they discovered a new sapling growing close to their own tree. As it grew, the branches stretched out in the air, entwining with the other as if to make their own connection, answering their own questions as to why they were both here.

  The second normal in the library was that the fires at either end of the floor would be burning, fuelled by the ancient, scruffy hardbacks and newly printed pamphlets that no longer needed storing. When a life was extinguished on Earth the corresponding backup file was consumed by the flames. The life no longer needed documenting as the soul would already be catalogued on one of the other levels.

  Thirdly, the books organised themselves. As a book was added the others would shuffle along or occasionally lift up and move to a more comfortable shelf. This library was not organised alphabetically. It was chronological. The oldest and largest volumes lived to the left and the thinnest to the right. The fires reflected the amount of paper that they were being forced to devour. The oldest manuscripts took the longest to burn, and the left-hand fire was so ferocious it licked the underside of level twelve above it.

  This ingenious system was one that Brimstone had always admired. Most demons weren’t comfortable with the heat from the fires, but for him it was perfect. He’d always be the first to volunteer whenever a job required someone to come here. On this occasion he’d volunteered himself. Somewhere in this library sat a book first sliced from the trees a few thousand years ago. It ran to several thousand pages and, although it would be easy to locate, it wouldn’t be quite so easy to move.

  To access any book, a demon had to type a name into the computer system which sat on a large table in the shade of the two oaks. This particular book was catalogued by more than one name. Which name it originally went by was a mystery. Brimstone knew only one of its aliases and tapped that name into the clear glass screen and waited for the noises to start.

  The bookshelves creaked with the pain suffered by old joints as one line of books squeezed the life out of their bindings to allow the monstrosity to lift away. A massive, tatty book forced its way into the air and the rest of the books sighed their relief for some well-earned slack. Dust trickled out of the pages as loose paper clung to the inside covers for dear life. The power holding the book in the air struggled to drag it to the table.

  It finally settled with a thud. Brimstone felt under the table for suitable protection. His hands returned with a pair of heavy-duty oven gloves. This book, as precious as any historical artefact housed in the Bodleian Library, had to be handled with care. It would not cope with being fondled by the molten sweat and steam vents that coursed through Brimstone’s clumpy palms.

  The front of the book with fashioned from thick blue leather, faded and battered. How the leather had formed from the pulp that initiated the first page was as much a puzzle as why socks never appeared again in pairs after you’d worn them once. A gold-embossed font that once proudly announced the owner’s name had been eroded by the friction of the book rubbing against others. Brimstone carefully opened to the first page and the expanded book consumed the whole of the six-foot-wide table.

  Very few of the books had chapters. In fact there were probably less than a dozen that ever did. If the book had chapters, it meant only one thing. These huge autobiographies were not about one life: they had many. This particular book had over fifty chapters, one for each of the unique lives that it had occupied.

  This breed of book was an exception. There were large books in the library, dedicated to those humans who’d been fortunate to enjoy long and full lives. But ones with multiple chapters were only possible if the soul had been repeatedly sent back to Earth. At one stage there were twelve of these monolithic pieces of literature. This was the last one standing.

  Brimstone ran his gloved hand down the spine and, holding the weight of the preceding chapters, opened the book to the penultimate one.

  “There you are,” muttered Brimstone as chapter fifty-one showed a clear title at the top of the page: JOHN HEWSON.

  It wasn’t the longest chapter in the book, but it was the one Brimstone had the best memories of. He scanned through the pages, recounting some of th
e emotions and experiences that John had been through over the thirty plus years of his life. He examined the later part of his life and how John had felt on first arriving in Hell and meeting him. He noted a passage that read, ‘I didn’t dislike this creature’.

  “Well, I wish I had the empathy to return the favour. But I don’t. Let’s have a look at the last chapter, shall we?” he said to himself.

  Each previous chapter in this book finished with ‘The End’. John’s chapter stated something more ambiguous: ‘To be continued’. The fifty-second chapter was almost completely blank other than for two words: DAVID GONZALEZ. So that’s who he was now, part of him at least. That information might be useful to the Devil, even if it was impossible for any communication to pass between the two of them.

  Brimstone hadn’t expected to find many answers in his research into John’s life, but at least he had identified the target. He had no love for John, only a deep fascination with what this unique character was capable of. He flicked back through some of the other chapters to remind himself of the other personas he’d come to know.

  Over a thousand Earth years John’s spirit had been sent back and forth. Each time Brimstone had been the one to welcome him. Each time John, or one of his aliases, would have no memory of the previous visit, requiring Brimstone to explain the story afresh. A soul was missing on Earth and he had to recover it. He always did.

  John had always been the most reliable of the twelve. Maybe that’s why he’d survived the longest. The recovery of a reincarnate was not normally complicated by the factors that faced John the last time. The Devil’s need for a new body had asked too much of him and, as a consequence, had created the situation they now found themselves in. What would they do when all the twelve were gone? How would they then recover souls like Sandy’s? Thankfully it wasn’t up to him to decide.

  Brimstone flicked through some of the older chapters, reminiscing through John’s backstory. Chapter forty-eight included a passage about Robert Scott. Brimstone chuckled to himself as he recalled the failed South Pole expedition he’d sent him on to find a reincarnated penguin. Although successful, the Devil had not been willing for him to return. Satan created such a storm that day, conditions that no human would have survived – not unless they were clever enough to eat their own huskies, that is.

  Chapter forty-one had details of Thomas Farriner. In that life, John’s forebear had chased a reincarnated dog around the City of London. He’d eventually got fed up running and decided to set the whole place on fire. It took out the dog, Thomas’s bakery in Pudding Lane, around two-thirds of the city and, sadly, his own life in the process.

  So many lives with so many skills in these pages. John’s collective life had included artists, engineers, farmers, scientists, royalty, a teacher, the man who’d invented the paper clip, and a milkman. It was frightening to think how influential or ingenious John’s current offspring might be, if he could harness these collective talents. There would be no bounds to what he might achieve. That was impossible, though. John’s soul, constantly reborn into the soulless shells of unborn children, only kept reflections of his past. They might revisit him as memories, but they were always just out of reach.

  Brimstone could sit here reading John’s many histories forever if there weren’t more pressing priorities. The other demons were currently scouring the lowest level of Hell, presumably meeting some of John’s many captives, and he couldn’t stay here enjoying himself. He closed the book and removed the oven gloves that had developed a small fire inside each hand. Pressing the return key on the computer screen, John’s collective almanac lifted with a groan and returned slowly to its position, to the disappointment of its neighbours.

  As he contemplated communicating his limited news through the telepathy system, something unexpected caught his eye. The floor of level eleven was a continuous slab of smooth graphite splattered with scrawled and illegible annotations. Leftover soot, from burnt-out books, settled onto the floor and were pressed down by the footsteps that followed. At least it used to be continuous. Between the two trees, in a small indentation in the floor, something was attempting to burrow its way into the room. Desperately seeking the air and light that would offer it survival, the top of a plant was poking out.

  Brimstone moved closer. He knelt down with the gentleness of an intrigued gardener discovering an unexpected new arrival. By no means a horticultural expert, even his simple knowledge identified what it was. It was the sapling of a tree.

  Sitting motionlessly in the branches of the biggest tree, the large tarantula was relieved to see his interest was down and not up.

  Trees only grew here for a reason. The other trees didn’t seed, so there was no chance this sapling had been propagated by them. Trees grew if they had a purpose. There was only one explanation for a third tree. It meant a third coming.

  “It’s not possible. You can’t exist,” muttered Brimstone. “If you are here, then you must have produced a book.”

  Brimstone rushed to the computer terminal. He had no name to enter but he knew the computer was able to search the records by filters. Brimstone needed only one. He typed in ‘neutral’ to the search criteria and a single result flashed on the screen. Brimstone requested the book to be delivered to the table.

  A crisp, white pamphlet floated majestically through the cavern, landing serenely on the desk in front of him. The cover was as plain as the white paper inside and had been laminated with a tough, durable plastic. Placing the oven gloves back on his hands, he opened to the first page.

  There was little information. No name jumped out from the page. The only useful information was a date in Earth years. The computer confirmed an accurate estimate of the current Earth year, crawling along from their prospective in a Universe some light years away. Whoever this book belonged to, he calculated they were about eleven years old.

  How was this possible? The only purpose of the trees was to document where people’s souls would end up. Neutrality was not based on a divine intervention. It was a freak of the system that not even the trees could predict. When it happened, the demons had ways of dealing with it.

  A third tree meant that someone existed who didn’t have positive or negative traits. But how could a pure neutral soul come into existence? Was it a new trick of John’s? Had his book run out of space and the trees had decided to make him a new one? Or did it belong to someone else? Someone born without the three requisite elements of their soul from the very start.

  A person like that changed everything. What if they reproduced and created a purely neutral race? If they had the power to open a third way, Hell would be finished. Brimstone opened up the connection to his telepathy network.

  “Is anyone there?” he said tentatively. Only a few demons were allowed to set up a telepathy call, and he wasn’t normally one of them.

  There was a long period of silence.

  “Brimstone, is that you?” came a weak, stressful voice. “You’re not authorised to open this.”

  “Yes, no and protocols,” said Brimstone.

  “It’s Asmodeus. There’s no time for protocols. We’re trapped down on level zero. They’ve blocked the entrance with an ox.”

  “Well, get someone to blow it up,” replied Brimstone. “Mr. Volts should have the skills for that.”

  “Volts is gone. He got squirted with water from the funnel of a whale and electrocuted several of our group. He shot up into the air and we haven’t seen him since.”

  “Oh dear.”

  “And I’ve got a message from one of the demons at the Soul Catcher. They have an issue that needs your attention.”

  “What sort of issue? Another shadow?”

  “Not from what they’ve told me. They can’t place it in a vase or vessol. They did say they thought they heard it miaowing, though.”

  “Miaowing!”

  Mr. Brimstone suddenly felt overworked. Was he the only one with any competence left? Everyone else seemed to have lost theirs playing in the z
oo.

  “Ok. I’ll come down and help you after I sort out the Soul Catcher. But I need to get a message to Satan.”

  “I’m listening,” came a quiet response after a few seconds of delay. There was a lot of chinking of glasses and noisy debate that made it even harder to hear him crisply.

  “Where are you?”

  “Outside a pub,” said Satan.

  “What are you doing there?”

  “Drinking a Bloody Mary until you rang. Asmodeus, please get a grip on things. It sounds like you’ve completely lost control.”

  “Sorry, Your Highness.”

  “I know who John is,” said Brimstone.

  “Excellent, do tell,” replied Satan.

  “His new name is David Gonzalez. But there’s another thing, too.”

  “I missed that…come again.”

  “Sir, there’s a third tree in the library and it has produced a single book,” shouted Brimstone.

  “Calm down,” replied Satan. “What name?”

  “There isn’t one. You need to look for an eleven-year-old.”

  - CHAPTER TWENTY -

  STRIKE!

  All demons are created from the elements, but not all are created equal. The senior demons are unique. No two are built from the same starting point. Typically they have been moulded from the more exciting or extraordinary materials, like gold or titanium. A senior demon can also be distinguished from a worker demon by official titles. Only senior demons are given the prefix ‘mister’. There are no female equivalents, although demons are clearly unisex. As tradition states, much like the Pope is always a man, senior demons are always ‘mister’. Complaints about this are much less vociferous in Hell than they are on Earth. There aren’t any women here to offend.