The Soul Stealer

by Alex Archer

  Annja shook her head. “I don’t know. What if it’s someone who needs help?”

  “What if it’s something else?”

  Annja looked at him. “You really think it might be Khosadam?”

  “I don’t know.”

  The door shook again as whatever was outside tried to burst through it again. Annja stepped back unconsciously.

  “Listen!” She could barely make it out over the din of the storm, but it sounded as if someone was crying outside. “Do you hear that?”

  Gregor nodded, his face grim. “It sounds like a cry for help.”

  Annja looked at him. “We need to open that door.”

  Gregor paused but then nodded. “You know what will happen to us if we are wrong?”

  “Yeah, we lose our souls,” Annja said.

  Gregor grinned. “You are okay with that?”

  “Do we have any choice?”

  “I suppose not.”

  Annja crept closer to the door. It thundered again. She could hear the wailing now from outside. Her stomach ached. Whoever was outside must be in danger. That was the only thing that made sense.

  But what if she was wrong?

  Annja glanced at Gregor. “Here’s what we’re going to do….”

  Gregor came closer. Annja positioned him to the right side of the door. “When I say so, open the door and stand clear. I will handle whatever is there.”

  Gregor’s eyes widened. “You will handle it?”

  Annja closed her eyes for a moment. The sword was still there. “Yes. I will handle it.”

  Gregor shook his head. “If you say so.”

  “Are you ready?”

  He nodded. “Yes.”

  Annja pointed at the plank. “When I say so, pull the plank back and then open the door.”

  Annja steeled herself. She could feel her heartbeat drumming fast. Adrenaline was coursing through her veins, and any remnants of the vodka she’d drunk earlier seemed a distant memory.

  Annja half closed her eyes and could almost see the sword in front of her.

  She extended her hands, ready to close them around the hilt of the sword and pull it forth.

  “Ready?” she asked.

  “Da.”

  Annja nodded once.

  Gregor started to pull the plank back.

  “Nyet!”

  Annja spun around. Gregor froze.

  Behind them the innkeeper stood on the bottom step aiming a shotgun at them.

  He did not look happy.

  12

  The innkeeper said something to Gregor, who moved his hand slowly. “He says we are to move away from the door.”

  Annja frowned. Someone needed help outside and she didn’t feel right not going to them. But the shotgun in the innkeeper’s hand was extremely persuasive.

  Annja moved away from the door.

  The innkeeper moved toward the door, keeping the shotgun trained on Annja and Gregor as he did so. Satisfied that the timber still kept the door barred, he moved away from the door just as another thunderous boom shook it on its hinges.

  “Tell him there is someone outside who needs our help,” Annja said. “We can’t do nothing.”

  Gregor translated, but the innkeeper only shook his head and barked back at Gregor.

  “He says Khosadam is adept at luring people to open their doors. He said if he had not stopped us, we would have fallen for it and then we would all be dead.”

  Annja sighed. This was getting her nowhere. She briefly considered summoning the sword and disarming the innkeeper prior to yanking the door open, but reconsidered when Bob came downstairs followed by Yuri and Oleg.

  “What in the world is going on here?”

  “There’s someone outside,” Annja said. “Trying to get in.”

  Bob looked at Gregor. “Is this true?”

  “Yes. But we do not know who it might be. We were about to see when the innkeeper stopped us.”

  “I see.” Bob smiled at the innkeeper and said something to him in Russian. The innkeeper shook his head and gestured with the shotgun.

  “So much for that.”

  Yuri cleared his throat. “Perhaps we should all go back to bed. This may be something that will have to wait until morning for us to explore.”

  The innkeeper nodded his head vigorously. Yuri and Oleg retreated with Bob on their heels. Gregor followed and Annja came up behind them all. When she reached the top of the steps, she turned around only to see the innkeeper still eyeing her. The barrel of his shotgun was still aimed directly at her.

  “I hope he’s satisfied if we find some corpse in the snow tomorrow,” Annja said. “We should have been able to help.”

  “In his mind, he’s doing the right thing,” Gregor said.

  “We must respect that even if we do not agree with him.”

  “I suppose.”

  At the door to her room, Gregor stopped her again. “By the way, Annja, I would think twice about trying to go out of your bedroom window to see what the commotion outside is all about.”

  “Why?” Annja said.

  “The windows are nailed shut,” Gregor said.

  “We’re trapped here?”

  Gregor smiled. “Only until dawn.”

  DESPITE HER ANGER over not being allowed to open the front door, Annja managed to fall back to sleep. The ache in her stomach vanished and the commotion outside drifted away.

  Dawn broke with a bright but overcast light. Annja immediately hopped out of bed, grabbed a hot shower and dressed before anyone else. Refreshed and not feeling any effects from the vodka the night before, she walked downstairs.

  If the innkeeper had been ready to shoot her a few hours previously, it certainly wasn’t apparent this morning. Bright and cheery, he ushered her to her seat and placed a plate of sliced fruit, ham and eggs in front of her.

  Gregor appeared a few moments later, followed by Bob.

  “What the hell happened last night?” Bob asked.

  Annja shook her head. “I don’t know. But I aim to find out once we get some food down.”

  Gregor pointed at the door. “He has removed the plank of wood.”

  Annja glanced over. “The danger’s gone now, is that it?”

  Gregor asked the innkeeper, who nodded then spoke in broken English, “Eat, please. Please.”

  “I guess he’s forgotten about shooting us,” Bob said. “That’s a good thing.”

  Annja drained her cup of coffee and found it instantly refilled. “Where are Yuri and Oleg? Still sleeping?”

  Gregor shook his head. “I don’t think so. Their rooms were empty when I went past.”

  “They’re gone already?” Annja shook her head.

  “Talk about men on a mission.”

  “You get a weird vibe from them at all?” Bob asked. “Something about the way they carried themselves didn’t sit all that well with me.”

  “How could you tell?” Annja asked. “You passed out pretty early on last night.”

  Bob shook his head. “Don’t write me off that easily. I am extremely adept at acting stone drunk when in fact, I am observing the situation.”

  “Really,” Annja said.

  Bob shrugged. “Sometimes.”

  Gregor frowned. “If you were acting, you certainly did a good job letting me carry you all the way upstairs.”

  “Always nice to be carried,” Bob said.

  “Well, I don’t know about Yuri and Oleg aside from the fact that they don’t strike me as middle-aged businessmen. They’re far too in shape to be sitting around a boardroom all day. Did you see the necks on those guys?” Annja asked.

  Gregor nodded. “Yes. They are at the very least former military.”

  “Possibly more?” Annja asked.

  “Possibly much more.”

  Annja pushed her plate away. “I want to get outside.”

  Gregor and Bob finished off their food and stood. Annja walked to the door and glanced back at the innkeeper first just to make sure there wasn’
t a gun trained on them.

  There wasn’t.

  Annja opened the door and looked out. A few flakes drifted down in the morning light, but the brunt of the storm was over. Drifts of the white stuff towered at points along the main street, partially obscuring doorways and windows.

  A pair of troughs led away from the hotel. They vanished farther down the street. Other than that, nothing looked unusual.

  Annja frowned and pulled the zipper higher on her parka. “The snow took care of any prints around here. There’s no telling what was banging on the door last night.”

  Bob peered out. “Well, at least there’s no corpse. That’s a good thing.”

  They stepped out into the deep snow, their breath staining the air in front of their faces. “It’s freezing,” Bob said. “But I guess that’s a given.”

  Gregor pointed at the tracks. “Where do you suppose Yuri and Oleg have gone off to?”

  “We could follow,” Annja said.

  “Nothing much else to do,” Bob said. “I don’t think the cruise director will have the shuffleboard up for at least an hour or so.”

  Annja smirked. “Always the joker.”

  They trudged off in the troughs left by Yuri and Oleg. Even with the path through the snow, it was still tough going and took them over five minutes to reach the end of the main street.

  Annja stopped. “And I thought biking was tough.”

  “You need to spend more time in the snow,” Gregor said. “It will toughen you up.”

  “Gee, thanks.” Annja shook her head. Gregor was nothing if not a master of the obvious.

  Bob pointed ahead. “Looks like they went into the church.”

  Gregor turned around. “Do you hear that?”

  Annja strained her ears. Someone was wailing. But the cries sounded nothing like what she had heard last night. “Come on.”

  They trudged back the way they’d come and then past the hotel another block. Outside one of the houses, they saw ten villagers standing around in a circle. As they drew abreast, the villagers looked at them with frowns.

  “What’s going on?” Annja asked.

  Gregor pressed the villagers, who spoke rapidly at him. Gregor’s face grew serious and he nodded repeatedly. He asked a few questions and then turned to Annja.

  “One of the villagers is missing.”

  “Who?”

  “The husband of this woman. He came out in the blizzard last night to get more wood for their fire. That was the last she saw of him.”

  “What time did he come out?” Annja asked.

  “About the same time you heard the noise last night.”

  “You think it was him?”

  “I do not know,” Gregor said.

  Bob looked around. “Any trail has been obliterated with all of these people here. There’s not much to go on.”

  “What about police?” Annja asked. “Is there some type of constabulary around here? Maybe we could get their help.”

  Gregor shook his head. “Places like this are patrolled by a military police station a number of miles away. The odds are that even if we needed them desperately, they would not be able to get here until a few days from now.”

  “You don’t consider this desperate?” Annja shook her head. “That woman’s husband might be dead.”

  “He probably is,” Gregor said. “And there is nothing we can do about it now. We can only try to make sure it does not happen again.”

  “And just how do you propose we do that?”

  Gregor’s eyes looked hard. “We find Khosadam.”

  “Just like that?” Annja shook her head. “If it was that easy, how come no one’s done it so far?”

  “Because they are frightened,” Gregor said. “And you cannot blame them. They are but villagers of little worth in the world at large. Their lives are determined mostly by what they toil for. Nothing more. Something like this seems omnipotent to them. They feel powerless against it.”

  “Until we come in and rescue them,” Annja said.

  “If that is the way it has to be, then yes.”

  Bob nodded. “I’m good with that.”

  “You’ve never struck me much as the rescuing type,” Annja said. “Are you sure you’re up for this?”

  Bob frowned. “Just because I’m on the thin side—”

  “Like an anorexic starlet,” Annja said.

  “It’s all muscle, I’ll have you know.”

  Annja smiled. “I’m just giving you a hard time, Bob. If you’re good with this, then fine, we’ll do it.”

  Bob seemed relieved. “We’ll need some supplies.”

  “We need more than that,” Annja said. “We need a plan of attack. Just what do the legends say about this Khosadam, anyway?”

  “I told you everything I know yesterday,” Bob said.

  “Not sure what more you could want.”

  “I want plenty,” Annja said. “Like specifically, where would a beast like this go during the daytime? Does it hide? Does it vanish into thin air or go somewhere in another dimension?”

  Bob looked at her. “You seem a lot more accepting of the idea today than you were yesterday.”

  Annja shrugged. “Maybe listening to whatever it was outside the hotel last night gave me reason to reconsider.”

  Bob shook his head. “I don’t really know much more about the legend than what I told you.”

  Annja looked at Gregor, who had remained quiet. “What about you, big guy? Got any information you can share with us?”

  Gregor looked at them both. “We are serious about this quest?”

  “Yes,” Annja said.

  He nodded. “Khosadam will hide during the daylight. It comes out to hunt only at night.”

  “So where does it hide?” Annja asked.

  Gregor spread his arms toward the mountains bordering Yakutsk. “Anywhere in the mountains. Perhaps a cave. Perhaps a small shelter. I do not know exactly. But that is our best chance of finding it.”

  Annja nodded. “Then it looks like we’re heading back into the mountains.”

  13

  “You realize that it’s basically insane for us to venture up into those mountains so soon after the snowfall?”

  Annja glanced at Bob. “You said you were down with this.”

  “I am, I am, it’s just that heading out now seems a little risky.”

  Gregor finished packing some supplies in his backpack. “When would you prefer to get started? Tomorrow? Perhaps after another person has gone missing?”

  “I’m just saying we could get into trouble.”

  Annja smiled. “I thought that was the point.”

  Gregor nodded. “I am ready if you are.”

  Annja tucked a large hunting knife into her belt and shouldered her pack. “Too bad we can’t use our bicycles. Might have made the trip out a bit easier to take.”

  Bob sighed and shouldered his own pack. “We’d better get going, then. Night comes early around these parts, and it’s already past noon.”

  “We’ll just have to do the best we can,” Annja said. She looked at Gregor. “Can we make it to the mountains before dark?”

  He nodded. “It will be a tough march in the snow, but it is doable. We must hurry, though.”

  They headed out of the hotel and struck out on a path west out of town. Gregor volunteered to take point, and Annja and Bob were only too glad to let him plow his way through the high snowdrifts. They followed along in his wake.

  Gregor drove them hard, but he also made sure they stopped every half hour and drank water. “Even though it is cold, you can still get dehydrated. We must always drink to replenish our fluids.”

  “Lucky for us, there’s plenty of snow around here,” Bob said. “All we have to do is melt it down and drink it.”

  Annja capped her water bottle and slid it back into her pack. Her legs were on fire from the march, but she was determined not to let it show on her face. The truth was, she would rather rest another day in her warm bed than slog thro
ugh the snow in search of some mythical creature. But she figured she’d have an interesting story for Chasing History’s Monsters at the very least if nothing else panned out. She knew the Khosadam story was the kind of thing her producer, Doug Morrell, would be thrilled to air on the show.

  They moved across open fields. The footing tripped them up constantly. Unable to see what was beneath the heavy blanket of snow, they fumbled along over boulders and fence posts and bits of barbed wire a few times.

  Annja unsnagged herself from some wire and looked at Gregor. “Good thing I got my tetanus shot.”

  He pointed. “We are almost at the foot of the mountains.”

  Bob came up behind Annja. “Good. I need a rest.”

  “I thought you were in excellent shape,” Annja teased.

  Bob shrugged. “I’m king of bikes, but marching across snow-packed fields is killing me.”

  Gregor led them up a shallow incline and stopped under the large canopy of a pine tree, its branches stretching out overhead like a giant umbrella. Under the canopy, there was hardly any snow at all.

  “Nice place to camp,” Annja said.

  Gregor looked at her. “We cannot stay here.”

  “Why not?”

  Gregor held his head up and sniffed the air. “Take a breath like I am doing.”

  Annja sniffed the air and blanched. “What in the world is that smell?”

  Bob gagged.

  Gregor knelt and studied the ground. Then he got up and crept around the back of the tree. When he reemerged a moment later, his face was grim. “I think I have found the missing villager.”

  Annja started to go see, but Gregor stopped her. “It is not something you want to look at.”

  Annja pushed his hand aside. “I’m a big girl. I can handle it.”

  She regretted saying it a second later when she looked around the tree trunk and saw the disemboweled corpse on the ground. His limbs were outstretched and the ground around him was soaked with blood and guts. A line of his intestines trailed away from the open cavity of his abdomen.

  Annja felt bile rise in the back of her throat and had to clutch the tree trunk to keep from losing it.

  She felt movement behind her and then heard Bob retch twice before adding the contents of his stomach to the mess already on the ground.