A Soul To Steal

by Rob Blackwell

  Mary Louise did, as the doorbell rang again, then sighed in relief.

  “It’s the police,” Mary Louise said.

  She opened the door.

  “Ma’am, I need to use your phone,” the policeman said.

  “Sure,” she said, and nearly dropped the phone when she saw that he was practically dragging a man in with him. “Oh my God.”

  “What is it, what happened?” Sally asked.

  “I’m sorry, Ma’am,” the policeman said. “I found this gentleman outside your premises spying on you. Unfortunately, he broke my radio when I detained him. I’ll need that phone.”

  “I’ve got to go, Sally,” Mary Louise said.

  “Is everything okay?” she asked.

  “Is that a friend of yours?” the policeman asked.

  “Yeah,” Mary Louise asked, and the policeman reached for the phone.

  She handed it to him.

  “Hello,” he said into it. “Yes, ma’am, she’s fine. This is Officer Kaulbach of the Leesburg Police Force. Your friend will be fine, I just need to use her phone. Then we are going to pay to put her into a motel until we make sure the area is safe. Our suspect might have been working with a partner.”

  He nodded and listened for a minute.

  “Thank you, ma’am,” he said and hung up the phone.

  He practically threw the detained man into the house and then shut the door behind him. And locked it.

  “Is this the stalker the paper has been talking about?” Mary Louise asked. The man on the floor appeared to be whimpering and cradling his arm.

  “Yes, Ma’am, I think so,” the policeman replied.

  “And he was looking at me?”

  “I found him right near your bedroom window,” the cop said.

  Mary Louise pulled her robe even tighter around her.

  “Do you have a knife I can borrow?” the cop asked. “The suspect here dropped his.”

  “Sure,” Mary Louise said, and then her voice faltered. “But why would you need a knife? Don’t you just want to call for back-up?”

  The cop started to laugh. All at once Mary Louise became uncomfortable. She looked carefully at his clothes and was disturbed that what she had taken for a uniform just appeared to be regular blue pants. And he was wearing gloves. She didn’t think that was normal. But she had seen a badge…

  “What’s so funny?” Mary Louise asked.

  “You,” the cop said and pulled out the badge again. “Take a good look.”

  He tossed it to her.

  Mounted on a nice looking leather case was a simple star. Above, in large letters, it said “To Protect and Serve.” But the star itself looked plastic. And when she looked closely, she could see that letters had been scraped off. She read them closely.

  “Does this say ‘Deadwood Deputy’?” she asked.

  “You can still see that, can you?” the cop asked.

  “But why would you have a deadwood deputy badge if you were a real…”

  Her voice dropped off.

  “God, lady, how long did that take you?” the cop asked. He started to laugh again.

  Mary Louise looked for the phone and saw it still in his hand.

  She backed up.

  “Don’t run,” the cop said.

  Mary Louise turned and fled, intending to head for the kitchen and through to the back door. But she tripped over the other guy’s body as she ran and fell to the floor.

  She was grabbed from behind by a rough hand, who dragged her to her feet.

  “What do you say, Ma’am?” the fake cop said. “Want to make the papers?”

  Quinn felt nervous as he walked Kate back to the hotel. It wasn’t thoughts of serial killers or phantom horsemen that bothered him, however.

  The last time he had walked her home, it had ended in a kiss. A brief one, yes, but that didn’t matter. It had still been fantastic.

  He felt more than a little stupid actually. In the midst of all this weird shit going on, what was foremost on his mind was still getting the girl.

  Maybe it is always like this, he wondered. Life never really stops and waits for you. Or maybe he needed something to look forward to other than the grim prospect of angry bosses and psychotic murderers. Maybe.

  “A penny for your thoughts,” Kate said to him.

  “I thought you were the psychic,” Quinn replied.

  She laughed.

  “Let me see,” she said. “You were thinking about your piece on the ghost hunter.”

  “Not quite,” he said.

  “Well, why else were you smiling?”

  “I don’t know,” Quinn said. “Was I smiling?”

  “A little. It made you look a little mischievous. It was cute.”

  “Well, cute is good,” Quinn said.

  They neared the hotel and walked in silence up to the door.

  “You don’t always need to walk me back,” Kate said. “I can handle myself. Remember, my dad was a cop.”

  “I know,” Quinn replied. “But the way I look at it, you and I are in this together, whatever the hell is going on. And it doesn’t hurt to travel in numbers.”

  “Well, maybe I should be walking you home then,” she said and smiled.

  “Maybe next time,” he said.

  “Sure. And thanks.”

  “Anytime,” he said.

  The agony of the moment was nearly killing Quinn. A voice in his head was shouting for him to kiss her. Just move closer in and kiss her.

  But he couldn’t. A thousand what-if scenarios played in his head. What if she rejected it? What if she gave him the “Let’s just be friends” speech? Or maybe he was most frightened by the prospect of her kissing him back.

  You are not in high school anymore, Quinn O’Brion, the voice said. You are damn near 30 years old. It isn't like you haven’t done this before.

  And maybe that was it. He had done it before and look how it had ended. Sharon, the very old-fashioned Geraldine, and Meredith. All had started well and ended up…

  “Goodnight, Quinn,” Kate said, as she leaned in and kissed him on the cheek.

  “Goodnight,” he said.

  She walked to the door.

  Quinn walked home thinking dark thoughts about himself. Fortune favors the bold and he had run scared. She liked him, right? He liked her, right? It was a simple thing then to kiss her and see what happened.

  But he wondered if the weight of the past was too much. Or was it something else? Was it that he felt so damned unstable lately-the nightmares, hearing horse-hoofs and constantly fearing what was around the corner?

  I’m going crazy, he thought. That can’t be good for a relationship. Quinn laughed out loud. That seemed to be a gigantic understatement.

  It wasn’t like he was the only one with baggage either. Her mom had been killed and she was out for revenge on a person who might or might not still be around. Granted, compared to him she appeared stable enough.

  But what was he supposed to do? Just pretend he did not feel an attraction because he did not think this was a good time? Maybe that would be a smart thing to do, but it was not what he wanted to do. He needed some kind of positive sign on the horizon to keep him from giving up altogether-maybe that was true for her too.

  We are afraid to be alone and scared of what happens if we’re not. Hadn’t he read that somewhere? Some English poet? Crowley-that was it. He only vaguely recalled the whole poem, but that line had stuck with him.

  As he walked up to his own door, it came to him again:

  We are afraid to be alone and scared of what happens when we’re not.

  It was too much. Maybe tomorrow would be a different kind of day. One where he didn’t spend all day thinking about murderers and fictional ghosts.

  Tomorrow will be different. The nightmare could end-the cloud above him might lift.

  When Quinn woke up the next morning, he felt relaxed and ready to face the day. His optimism last night seemed to be right.

  The nightmare had lift
ed.

  But it had really only just begun.

  Chapter 12

  “ Where will you find ghosts? Forget the cemetery. There are nothing but corpses there and believe me-those are very different from ghosts. By far the most common place to find spirits is in funeral parlors or battlefields. But it isn’t the dead that cause them to reside there, rather the living. Most ghosts are nothing but imprints, a memory left behind that occasionally plays itself back. But those imprints are caused by the most powerful energy force in the universe-emotion. Enough of it in a concentrated place and there is no telling what might happen. ”

  — Terry Jacobsen, “The Truth About Hauntings”

  This is what it feels like to die.

  His lungs were screaming for air, his legs begging him to stop running. Behind him there was a steady drumbeat of a horse rapidly gaining on him, one that was desperate for neither oxygen nor rest. In the still cold air, he could hear a ringing, the sound of a sword torn from its scabbard and held aloft. In a moment, it would begin its arc downward with a near-silent swish and its steel would rend his flesh. There is no escape, nor hope of it. He was finished.

  Quinn couldn’t stop his mind from racing even as he continued to run, despair filling him. He fought the urge to give up and kept running.

  Just as the horse seemed to be on top of him, he darted suddenly to the right, jumping off the road and stumbling down the soft red clay that covered the hillside. Behind him, he heard the rider stop the horse briefly and turn.

  Quinn kept himself moving as he came to the bottom of the hill. He dove into the forest, desperate to put distance between him and his pursuer. The trees were a thick knot of pines and as he ran he could feel their dead branches slicing into him.

  He was cut, bruised and shaken, but he kept running. There was no time to stop, barely time to breath and he prayed he could find the right direction. He couldn’t think with the sound of his heart pounding.

  The moon’s light was obscured through the dense forest, but Quinn pushed on toward what he thought must be north. North was the bridge and his only hope for safety.

  Behind him, he heard the crash of the horse coming through the trees. Quinn didn’t know how that was possible. He only moved forward, hearing the ever louder sounds of something large hacking its way through.

  He chanced a brief glance back. He could make out a shape moving preternaturally fast toward him.

  There had to be a way out. Quinn jerked himself to the left, crouching low to the ground to avoid branches. He tripped and his hand fell onto a large branch as he tried to stop himself from falling. He stifled a scream and kept running.

  The bridge. He had to reach the bridge. He plowed on before reaching a small clearing in the woods. He looked behind him, but he didn’t see anything. Worse, he heard nothing. The night was silent.

  Where the hell was it? He tried to be quiet and just listen. But he could only hear the sound of his own breathing. There was nothing alive out here, only an endless parade of dead trees.

  “Hey Quinn,” a voice said.

  Quinn screamed.

  He had no idea where the voice was coming from. He looked around the clearing and saw nothing.

  “Over here,” the voice said, and it sounded like it was behind him.

  He whirled around but there was nothing. Just the dark forest all around him, fencing him in. All of this felt familiar, very familiar, but something was wrong. He was supposed to start running toward the bridge.

  He turned to leave.

  “Please wait a minute, Quinn,” the voice said, coming from behind him again.

  He turned and this time there was someone. A man stood at the edge of the clearing. He was dressed in a black suit, as if he had been to a formal dinner. But Quinn could not take his eyes off the man’s face. He had piercing blue eyes, which reminded him of someone. But the eyes demanded control. They demanded he pay attention.

  The man came forward. Quinn tried to step back and found he couldn’t move. This isn’t right. I’m supposed to run for the bridge. The horseman is supposed to chase me. There is no man here.

  “I am sorry to interrupt,” the man said.

  There was nothing wrong with the man’s appearance. He shouldn’t have been intimidating in the least. He appeared to be Quinn’s height and approximate build. He looked older and his face bore a small scar. But Quinn was afraid. He was almost as anxious to run away from the man as he had been from the horseman.

  “What do you want?” Quinn asked. He couldn’t run, move, or even look away. He felt trapped.

  “What do I ever want?” the man asked. “To make a deal.”

  “No,” Quinn said. It was automatic, reflexive. There were no good deals with this man. He knew it in his soul.

  “Come now, Quinn,” the man said, and his voice was gently chiding. “You didn’t hear me out.”

  “I don’t need to,” Quinn said. “This is just a dream.”

  “No, it’s a nightmare, but I grant you your point,” the man said and he continued staring at Quinn. His eyes bore right through him. “I’m not here to help with that.”

  “Then what’s your deal?”

  “Well, you will have to learn to deal with your cennad on your own,” the man said, and Quinn had no clue what he was talking about. “I can’t help you there, even if I wanted to. We all have to face our fears by ourselves.”

  “What do you mean? Who are you?”

  The man waved his hand as if it was unimportant.

  “Not the point and it doesn’t matter, at least not yet,” the man said. “I’ve come to offer help.”

  “Somehow I know I don’t want help from you,” Quinn said.

  “Only because you aren’t thinking clearly,” the man said. “Let me tell you how it’s going to go. If you leave now, you will wake up as you always do and remember nothing but the usual nightmare. And when Lord Halloween comes after you and Katrina, he will kill you.”

  “Are you Lord Halloween?” Quinn asked.

  The man laughed at that, a full-throated belly laugh.

  “No,” he said. “I’m something much worse.”

  “Then why are you helping me?”

  “Let’s just say I’ve been in your shoes before,” he said. “And I’d like to move this little game forward. As it is, I’m a little worried my two favorite players are going to be taken off the field before we can really get moving. Lord Halloween knows all about dear Trina, Quinn, and he knows you love her.”

  “Wait a second, I mean…” Quinn started. “I just met her.”

  The man shrugged.

  “I know what I know,” the man said. “And what if I told you she feels the same way? What if I told you she is right now having a dream about you-and it’s not this kind of dream. She’ll wake up blushing, I promise you that.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “I know a lot of things, Quinn,” the man said, and he began walking around him slowly in a circle. Quinn had no choice but to follow, slowly turning around him.

  “Here’s the deal,” he said. “You won’t remember much, but keep this in mind. Don’t leave Trina alone, even while she sleeps. She doesn’t think she trusts you, she will try to keep you away, but she is in grave danger. She isn’t the only one, though. Lord Halloween will come for you first.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s his way. He has already been tracking you two and you have no clue who he is.”

  “Tell me, if you know,” Quinn said.

  “Oh, I know,” the man said. “But as with our nightmares, there are some things you have to face yourself. I can’t give the whole game away. I will give you a hint, if you accept my deal.”

  Quinn hesitated.

  “What’s the deal?” he asked.

  Suddenly Quinn found he was free to move again.

  “That’s better,” the man said. “A little bit more civilized, I think. Now you are ready to hear. Your only chance to beat Lord Halloween is by embraci
ng what you are. You don’t understand what I’m saying and that’s okay. When the time comes, you will know. You are far more dangerous than your opponent. He is, at his core, just a man.”

  The man walked behind him now. Quinn looked up at the moon above and noticed its light wasn’t white anymore. It had turned slightly red. A dark maroon moon hung over the sky.

  “It’s never been like this before,” Quinn said.

  “No,” the man said. “And this is just the beginning. Lord Halloween is a man, but you are something else. Are you scared now?”

  And Quinn knew he should be. He could still hear a horse out in the woods somewhere, waiting for him. But suddenly the horse didn’t seem to be his enemy. It was calling to him. He could imagine being on the horse, riding through the black darkness, a blood moon guiding his way.

  “That’s it,” the man said. “You can be so much more, Quinn. You can be the thing others are afraid of. You can be the nightmare that lurks in the shadows.”

  And Quinn felt power surge through him. Suddenly, he could sense everything around him. He could count the pine needles on the ground, hear the wind whistling through the branches, the worms in the earth. This was his time. The horse was coming for him, but not to harm him. To pick him up. To set him free. This was what he was born for.

  “What do I have to do?” Quinn asked.

  “It is your only chance to save Katrina, Quinn,” the man said. “Embrace what you are, or I promise he will gut, torture and kill you both.”

  “What do I have to do?” Quinn repeated.

  “Follow your instincts,” the man said. “If you get another chance to kiss Katrina, take it. Don’t hesitate. Face your fears. If you succeed, you will be offered a gift. Take it. It’s not free, you will find that out in time, but it is yours to take. Use it.”

  “How?”

  “You’ll know when the time comes,” the man said.

  “What’s in it for you?” Quinn asked.

  The man smiled. It was a cruel smile, the smile of someone who has lived for centuries and watched countless innocents fall into darkness.

  “Everything,” he said, and that was the only explanation Quinn was going to get.

  He shivered.