Beasthunter

by Katharina Gerlach

  She was lying on the ground with her face on her arms, whispering into the dust. “Does this nightmare never stop?”

  The tools that had fallen over when I entered lay undisturbed inside her with bits and pieces sticking out. What the heck?

  Mr. Jake closed the door of the shed and put a stone like the one I had in the window. As he came over to Sally and me, I saw the blue shimmer of his protective magic spread over the shed's walls, ground, and roof.

  “Snoop will keep the Beast busy. At least for a while.” He pushed aside some old tools and crouched beside Sally in the dust. “Now, we need to discuss what needs to be done next.”

  Somehow, I had the feeling this wasn't the first time he'd been in a situation like this. “Why is Sally so…” I searched for the right word. “…ghostlike? She didn't die, did she?”

  “It's got to do with the Beast,” he said. “I'll explain later.”

  Sally sat up. “I don't remember a Beast. One moment I sat beside the river, the next I ran away in a panic.”

  “No wonder you panicked,” Mr. Jake said.

  “Why don't you kill it?” I clenched my fists. “If you don't stop it, it'll do this over and over again!”

  “I have tried—God, how often.” He wiped his eyes and looked into my face. The worry lines were deep.

  The settling dust tickled my nose, and I sneezed. After I recovered, I asked, “How are we going to keep Sally safe from the Beast?”

  “We need to bind her to a new body. What a pity she didn't bring her favorite doll.”

  “I don't play with dolls. I'm not a toddler anymore.” Sally sat up and knitted her brows. “And I don't want to be bound to a doll, either.”

  “Can't we bind her to the magic stone?” I held up the smooth, black pebble.

  Mr. Jake shook his head. “We need something more personal. Fingernail clippings or hair would be best, but a favorite toy will do, too.”

  “My locket.” I jumped up, raising another cloud of dust and sneezing when it settled.

  Mr. Jake stretched. “That's a great idea.”

  My heart was sinking at the thought of smuggling Sally past the Beast when Snoop jumped through the broken window. He looked pleased with himself.

  Mr. Jake walked over to him and ruffled his fur. “It seems that the Beast will be gone for a while. Let's go and get the locket. Sally, if you take Tom's hand, his stone will protect both of you.”

  Sally grabbed my hand and squeezed. It bothered me that I could hardly feel her fingers in mine, but I didn't let go the whole way home.

  Chapter Seven

  Sally: Here and Now

  After romping around with Sally for a while, Snoop had settled on Tom's feet. Sally wished she could feel the dog's warmth like her brother. Snoop's quiet snoring filled the room with a peace Sally hadn't felt for … she couldn't say how long. Tom wiped his hair from his face and looked at Sally. She turned away, stared at the world outside the window again. The black cat still prowled along the garden fence. Was it calling for Sally? She cocked her head and listened—nothing. But as soon as she concentrated on something else, she heard the call again. She felt as if something attached to her chest tugged at her heart.

  Finally she asked Tom, “If I can't go outside alone, why don't you take me?”

  “I need to get this done, Sally.” Tom pointed to the growing stack of papers on his desk. “It's terribly important.”

  “You keep saying that but you never explain why.”

  “It's for you.” Tom bent down to pat Snoop. “If I forget what you looked like or our life together, the Beast will get you or you'll fade away.”

  “I'm old enough to take care of myself.” Sally clenched her hands to fists. She felt anger, but this time she knew she needed to control it. If she wanted her brother to take her outside, she had to stay calm. “I need fresh air!”

  “No, you don't.” Tom wiped his eyes. “You're a ghost.”

  “I'm not. I'm a real person.” Anger rose inside her again, and she fought hard to keep her voice down.

  “You're right; you're a real person. But most of you is inside the Beast, and I can look right through the rest. What would you call a transparent person?” Tom looked at her and there was pain in his eyes. Sally pressed her lips together and didn't answer.

  Tom sighed. “Can't you play with something? I could ask Mr. Jake for his daughter's ragdoll.”

  “I'm too old for dolls.”

  He sighed.

  Sally floated to the sofa and hugged her knees. “If you won't let me see the world, you could at least let me read your story.”

  Tom looked scared. Sally could practically see his heart flutter in his throat like a butterfly trying to escape.

  “It's your story.” His voice sounded hoarse. “But remember, I am not planning to win the Nobel prize in literature.” He took the first twenty sheets of his story and placed them one by one on the floor. “Maybe you remember some of it.”

  Sally hovered beside the first page. “Do you want me to critique it?”

  Tom shook his head. “Just let me know if you remember something.”

  Snoop got up, stretched, gingerly stepped over the spread-out manuscript and walked to the door. Tom let him out.

  Sally began to read. She still traced the lines with her finger, a habit she had never been able to shake. When she looked up, Tom had returned to his writing.

  Tom: Diary

  When we arrived back home, a black car stood in our driveway. In a side-window, a sign said

  Undertaker Miller

  taking good care of your beloved

  I frowned. “They can't bury Sally. They haven't got a body because she isn't dead.”

  Mr. Jake shrugged. “Most families I watched had a memorial service the day after the Beast stole their kid. But after a month, latest, most didn't even remember the name of their lost child.”

  My throat contracted. I wasn't sure if I could face Mamá and Dad if they forgot Sally. “Will I forget her, too?”

  “I don't think so. You were as close to her as I was to my daughter, and I didn't forget.” Mr. Jake gazed at me with a weird look. “Also, you're the first person I met who saw the Beast as it is, and not as what it pretends to be. Maybe that means something. Now, get that locket and come to my place.”

  He opened the door to his house and signaled for Sally to enter. As fast as I could, I ran into our house and up the stairs. Dad stood in the door of Sally's room with a stranger by his side. When his gaze fell on me, angry clouds gathered over his head. “How can you run around this happily when your sister has been dead for less than a week?”

  A week? Sally vanished a few hours ago. But trying to tell them would probably be just as useless as telling them about the Beast.

  The stranger—I guess it was the undertaker—put his hand on Dad's arm. “Youth is much more resilient when it comes to death. It is probably due to a lack of experience.” His voice was soft and difficult to hear, but it calmed Dad.

  I pressed my lips together and slipped past them through my door. I searched for the locket, which wasn't too easy in a room that looked like a hurricane playground.

  I threw everything I didn't need on my bed. Fear, anger and a feeling of urgency ruled me. I sighed with relief when I discovered the locket in the side pocket of my schoolbag. Wondering how it got there, I stormed out of the room and down the stairs. The undertaker stopped me by grabbing my arm. He pulled me into the sitting room where my parents sat on the sofa holding hands.

  “Sincere condolences, young man.” He took my hand and his fingers felt like a sponge—a wet sponge. I shuddered and pulled my hand away, but he stood in the door and blocked it, so I had to stay. He spoke to me as if I was a five-year-old. Although he only tried to be nice, I hated him. Didn't he see I was in a hurry?

  “Sally is in a perfect world now,” he said, and I stopped listening.

  I knew better what had happened to her. It scared me so much I wanted to hurt him. I wan
ted to hurt anyone. I snorted. “Bullshit. Sally isn't in a perfect world. She got sucked up by the Beast, and all of you are just too blind to see.”

  Mamá's eyes widened, and she pressed her hand on her trembling lips. Dad frowned and sucked in his lips. He hated it when I forgot to be polite. How much worse was doing it on purpose? I didn't care. They'd probably not remember a word tomorrow anyway.

  The undertaker took a few steps into the room, thus freeing the door. He wobbled his head and driveled about “misguided kids,” “difficult adjustment to the loss,” and stuff.

  I ignored him and was just about to go when Dad's voice cut off the undertaker. “Thomas Sastre-Blythe, you will immediately apologize.”

  “What for? For telling the truth?” I retreated toward the door. Somewhere deep inside, I wondered where my anger came from. I had always feared Dad when he got stern. Not because he became violent or anything, but because I was such a fraidy-cat. Right now, though, I was too angry to care. Sally was out there, and I needed to get her into the safety of the locket, while an undertaker was filling my ears with his oily voice.

  “You will apologize to Mr. Miller right now.”

  “You can't make me,” I shouted, ran out of the house and slammed the door.

  Mr. Jake was waiting for me in his kitchen. Sally sat in a red circle on the kitchen table and giggled whenever she touched her finger to the red line.

  “It tickles,” she said.

  “Do you have the locket?” Mr. Jake asked.

  “They think Sally died a week ago,” I said with a trembling voice. I told him about my parents and the undertaker.

  “That's part of the Beast's magic. Those people who remember the victim think far more time has passed than really did. We can't do anything about it.” He pointed to the windowsill. “Put your protective stone over there or it will disturb the spell. We need to bind Sally.”

  Obediently, I pulled the stone from my pocket and set it aside.

  “Now, the locket,” Mr. Jake said.

  I held it out, and he took it from my hands. Carefully, he took the lock of Sally's hair and placed it in a small pentacle he had drawn on the floor. Snoop approached and sat between the two spikes that pointed to the table. Mr. Jake took a yellow crayon and drew a big, big ellipse that went from one tip to the other, all the way around Snoop and the table with Sally's ghost. When he was done, he sprinkled black powder from a jar that he took out of a cupboard all through the kitchen. The powder smelled of coffee. I sneezed.

  “Bless you!” He put the jar beside the sink and took my hand. Then he chanted weird words. I didn't understand any of them. They must have been in a different language, but I didn't dare to ask. Snoop joined Mr. Jake with a long and mourning howl that sounded more like a wolf's than a dog's. I felt the hairs on my arms rise, and my heart beat faster and faster.

  The black powder began to glow—first bluish, then white. When it was so bright that I had to squint, Mr. Jake squeezed my hand.

  “Tell her to hide in her hair,” he whispered. “You're the only one who can do it.”

  At first, my voice didn't want to work, but after I cleared my throat several times, I managed to speak.

  “Please, Sally, hide in your hair.”

  Sally's legs stretched toward the hair. They became impossibly long. When they connected with the lock, Sally snapped into it as if her legs were rubber bands that contracted. The white light went out, and I noticed that the powder and the drawings were gone. But the air still smelled of coffee.

  “I like it so much better than brimstone,” Mr. Jake said when he noticed me sniffing. He picked up the hair, put it back into the locket, and handed it to me. “There you go. Sally cannot leave the locket for more than fifty yards. As long as the locket is with you, she is safe.”

  How safe could she be with me? I was a fraidy-cat. Without Sally, I was nothing. I stared at the locket, feeling numb. A small coil of hair with a ghost was all that was left of her. My tears burned hot tracks down my ice-cold cheeks.

  Mr. Jake hugged me wordlessly, and Snoop squeezed himself between us. He licked my hands that were still clamped around the locket. He snuffed and wheezed and wriggled while my tears dropped down on him. My mind whirled. I remembered how the Beast had swooped down to snatch Sally. I remembered it in my room, and the stink of rotten cabbages and unwashed clothes that clung to it. My knees began to tremble. Instead of the locket in my hands, I saw the Beast's fiery eyes glare at me. I moaned, and my knees buckled. I had no strength left to break my fall.

  Mr. Jake caught me before I slammed into the ground. He sat me on the lonely kitchen chair and put his hands on my shoulders. “As long as Sally is with us, we'll have a chance to get her back. The Beast can be defeated. I know it in my bones, or I would have given up years ago.” He lifted my chin with his right hand. His eyes were as dark as the night sky, and the fierceness of his belief wrapped around me like a warm coat.

  Snoop whined, and Mr. Jake smiled a little. “He says you are much stronger than you think.”

  Somehow, Snoop's praise gave me confidence. I wiped away my tears and asked, “What did the Beast do to Sally? How did it turn her into a ghost?”

  “The Beast is a soul-sucker; it's trying to come alive by drinking other people's souls, their memories, and their lives.” Mr. Jake closed his eyes for a second. Suddenly he seemed very tired. “I have studied it for a long time, but I'm still not sure how it does what it does. Somehow, it sucks the memories out of its victims, and that drains their whole being in a way that they become less and less real. People around them don't know them anymore. It's as if they never existed. Even the parents, those who loved the child the most, don't recall their child. Sometimes they believe in a tragedy and have a burial, but soon the loss feels farther and farther away until they forget.” Mr. Jake blinked away a tear. “I'm fed up to see others go through the same pain I'm feeling day in, day out.”

  “If you can't kill it, why didn't you get at least people's souls and memories back?”

  “I failed at that too.” He closed his eyes and breathed deeply.

  After a while, I asked, “What happens to the memories and souls?”

  “I don't know. So far, they've never returned.”

  Snoop yelped.

  “All right, Snoop. I'll tell him.” Mr. Jake patted his head. “He says you are the tenth person who managed to keep some part of the victim, but the first who remembers the Beast. He believes you're special.”

  Something warm exploded in my stomach and spread through my body. I sat up straighter, trying to look more confident.

  “What will we have to do to get her back?” I asked.

  “Well,” Mr. Jake said, “if memories are the key, you should get Sally to tell you as many of them as she possibly can.”

  Chapter Eight

  Sally: Here and Now

  “I'm done,” Sally said and stood up from the last page of Tom's manuscript. She was much more solid and couldn't float. She shot a glance at Tom. Had he played a trick on her? It didn't look like it. He was scribbling away peacefully at the table. She remembered that she used to move her feet to go places. Why was it so hard to remember these things? With a very stern face, she walked to the sofa and sat down. She rolled onto her belly and propped her chin in her hands. Maybe Tom knew.

  “You know, it's really weird that I don't remember all of that.”

  “It's not weird, it's the Beast.” Tom stretched, got up, and collected the pages.

  Sally stayed silent until Tom placed the stack of papers back on his table. He looked so vulnerable. What if the Beast caught him too? Hadn't there been something about an attack on him in the manuscript? Sally tried to recall the scene but felt the memory slip away. Couldn't have been important. She walked over and put her arms around him. “I'm so glad I remember you.”

  Tom's smile couldn't be bigger.

  “Did I tell you some of my memories?” The longing in her own voice surprised Sally, but she really wante
d to know more about herself. She knew there had been something in the manuscript. Something she should ask questions about. The word parents popped into her mind but she didn't know what it meant. If only she could make herself remember her life as it was before. She knew she'd be whole again then. Maybe it would help to read about it. “Please write about my memories.”

  Tom nodded. “I'll do my best.”

  Someone knocked at the door, and it opened slowly. A man who looked just like Tom stuck his head through the gap. Could this be his father?

  “Are you all right, Tom?” he asked.

  What about her? Sally wanted to scream. Didn't he see her, or did he ignore her?

  The fact that he didn't acknowledge her sliced through her heart like a knife. She wondered why. She didn't even know the man.

  Tom patted Sally's hand for comfort and turned away from the man to sort the paper on his desk.

  “Is that your dad?” Sally asked.

  “Our dad.” Tom sat down at his desk and picked up his pen. “I've got work to do, Dad.”

  The man came in and put his hand on Tom's shoulder. “It's time to acknowledge she's dead, Tom. It's been nearly a month now.”

  Tom didn't answer.

  Sally wondered. Had it really been a month? Tom had said it had only been a few days. Probably his father's memories were wrong too. Sally noticed how hard Tom concentrated on his next sentence. She had to get the man away. He was annoying her brother. Familiar anger rose inside of her when the stranger spoke again.

  “Your mother wants you to come home. You can't stay here forever.” His father's voice was toneless. “As much as it hurts, we need to mourn and then return to the realm of the living.”

  Sally saw the man's hand tremble, and Tom bit his lip not to cry. Her anger faded as if it never had been there. She wished Tom could tell this man what truly happened and why he was sitting in this room writing like mad. She wondered about that herself. And the man seemed nice and caring—the right person to help her look after her little brother.