The Soul Thief

by Leah Cutter

  The shed sat to the left, under a large old oak tree. It weren’t too big, smaller than a one-car garage. It had the look of an artist’s studio, with red-painted wooden shingles covering the outer walls, white trim, and a gray tiled roof. Sweet incense oozed from it, floating over the bright spring grass.

  “Eddie?” Julie called as she walked toward the studio. The door was closed this time, instead of a black curtain covering the opening.

  Franklin hurried across the grass to join her.

  As she was lifting her hand to knock on the door, it swung back. Eddie peered owlishly at them.

  “Good morning,” she said, though it was well past noon.

  “I tried to call—” Julie said.

  “No, no, I’ve been back here all day. I wouldn’t have heard.” She wiped her hands—covered in some kind of white material—down the front of her already white-smeared work apron. She looked the same as Franklin remembered her, a large, older white woman with tanned skin and wild white curls. Her blue eyes peered at them from atop a large nose, the kind good for sniffing out trouble. She had an easy smile, though, and looked happy to see them.

  “Come on in,” she said, stepping back into the studio. Workbenches lined three of the four walls, while a tall bookcase filled the fourth, its shelves lined with drying pottery, as well as a few books. Under the cloying sweet smell of incense lay the earthy scent of clay.

  Most of the pottery pieces were little figures, like matching sets of suns and moons, horseshoes, and clusters of stars.

  “Today’s a day full of luck,” Eddie explained as she walked over to the sink in the corner and washed her hands. “All these pieces will bring folks even more luck, particularly when made on a day like today.”

  Franklin had no idea if any of Eddie’s work would actually bring a body luck. He also didn’t think that was what her gift was, to make small figures. She should be working like Julie did, to cure folks, heal them.

  However, he knew it weren’t polite to say anything. Not that he ever would. He’d told her once that the spirits could move her more if she’d let them.

  She’d claimed to be too old to learn new tricks.

  “So how are you?” Eddie asked, stepping back from the sink and drying her hands. “I’m glad to see you. Both of you,” she added, glancing at Franklin. Then she put her towel down and stood with her hands on her hips. “But I can tell this isn’t a social call. You got something you need.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Julie said. She drew Franklin forward. “We need to know the history behind that blade of yours. The one you gave me last year. To help protect me from the creature.”

  Eddie shook her head. “There ain’t much to tell, I’m afraid. I got the knife from an antique dealer in town.”

  Franklin sighed. He really hoped this wasn’t going to be a wasted trip.

  “Should we go talk with him?” Julie asked.

  “Naw, fool didn’t know what he had.”

  “What did he have, ma’am?” Franklin asked.

  Eddie shrugged. “All I knew was that it was an object of power. So I took it before he could sell it to someone who might misuse it.”

  “Can you tell us anything else?” Julie asked. “Anything at all?”

  “Well,” Eddie started, then sighed. “I always kept that knife in a circle of protection. I didn’t ever leave it out. The only folks who ever saw it were people from our group.”

  “Why did you keep it hidden?” Franklin asked. “What made you feel like you had to do that?”

  “The knife was powerful,” Eddie said. “When it was outside the circle, I felt sometimes like it was calling to me.”

  “And you just gave it to Julie? Without any instructions?” Franklin asked. He wouldn’t give in to his anger. But he also was never coming back here again. He’d be happier if Julie never came back either.

  “I knew she’d give the knife to you,” Eddie told him sharply. “And I knew that you’d be able to take care of it.”

  Franklin shook his head, bewildered. He hadn’t known that he needed to do something more with that knife. He’d given it to Darryl for protection.

  And look what had grown out of it.

  “Thank you, ma’am,” Franklin said, reaching for Julie’s hand and tugging her back toward the door. “Y’all have a nice day.”

  They was halfway back across the yard before Eddie stuck her head out of her studio. “Wait,” she said, following after them. “I’m sorry I can’t help you. But I know someone who can.”

  Franklin waited, his patience just about run out.

  “Her name’s Beulah. She lives up at the end of Old Mill Road. You’ll find the turnoff for it at the end of Main Street. She’s…well, she’s kind of odd. But I think she’ll be able to tell you something about the knife. You’ve touched it recently, right?”

  “Been stabbed with it,” Franklin said dryly.

  “Oh,” Eddie said. “Then yes, go talk with Beulah. Tell her I sent you.” Eddie paused, then looked squarely at Franklin. “May I?” she asked, reaching toward his injured side with her hands spread wide.

  “Thank you, ma’am,” Franklin said.

  Eddie didn’t actually touch him. He still felt the warmth from her palms radiating his skin.

  Unfortunately, she didn’t do much else. The wound still ached in a long, drawn-out way.

  Either she wasn’t following her own spirits and calling again.

  Or the knife was much too strong.

  Franklin didn’t really want to know in either case.

  Ξ

  Old Mill Road started off like a usual small town road, with ranch-style and other small houses stacked up on either side. Then the road left town and narrowed, going along fields, the brilliant green crops growing right up to the ditches running beside the road.

  Once the road started climbing, it cooled off, leaving the clear open plains for woods. The road got rougher, until it weren’t more than a dirt trail.

  About a mile from where they left the highway were big “NO TRESPASSING” signs on either side of the road, that were then repeated less than a quarter mile away.

  One even had a red skull and crossbones on it, with the words, “Trespassers will be violated.”

  Franklin didn’t much like the looks of that at all.

  But he’d done his fair share of talking with hicks and hillbillies. He figured this Beulah wouldn’t be crazier than anyone he’d already met. Probably not any worse than most of the folks who made up his own family.

  The road dead ended just a bit further up. A wooden cabin—more like a shack—lurked on the left side. Moss covered the roof, and lichen and vines grew up the sides. Trees hunched nearby. An old over-stuffed chair, stained with bird droppings and black moss, sat on one side of the single door. A gray blanket covered the window.

  “Well, here goes nothing,” Julie said. She reached over and squeezed Franklin’s hand.

  “I don’t know about that,” Franklin said sourly. “That sure looks like something.”

  But he weren’t about to back down. He got out of the car and took Julie’s hand before they walked closer to the house.

  “Stop right there,” came a gruff voice.

  A woman came barreling out of the house.

  Franklin took it as a good sign that she didn’t have a shotgun pointed right at them.

  She was, however, shaking an evil-looking wand at them, about three feet long. The tip of it held a blue stone, shaped like an arrowhead. Sharp metal spikes stuck out on all sides just below it. Bones dangled just below that, long ones, like ribs and forearm bones. In between them hung ratty ribbons that might have once been white.

  The woman holding the wand looked like a Hollywood version of a hillbilly, right down to the one large snaggletooth in the front of her mouth with the one beside it missing. She was a large woman, not white or black, but mixed. She had brown eyes that stared out from a broad face, her nose melting across it like something had scared it out of growing tall
. A colorful red bandana held back black dreadlocks. She wore a stained, green-and-white flannel shirt over a pair of ratty gray sweatpants.

  “Beulah?” Franklin asked, stepping forward, slightly in front of Julie. “My name’s Franklin. Franklin Kanly. This here’s Julie Horton. Eddie sent us.” It weren’t that he believed that Beulah could do anything with that wand.

  He weren’t about to take a chance, though.

  Beulah sniffed, unimpressed. “What’s that poser want?” she asked, not lowering the wand but centering it instead right over Franklin’s heart.

  It was probably just his imagination—or his paranoia—that the center of his chest suddenly felt warm.

  “Ma’am, did you ever…meet that blade of Eddie’s?” Franklin asked. He couldn’t imagine Beulah coming down out of the hills to go meet with someone like Eddie, couldn’t see her in Eddie’s artist’s studio.

  Eddie wouldn’t allow a dirty hillbilly like Beulah into her clean house.

  Beulah tilted her head to one side. “Funny you ask that. Had another man—a white man—come up and ask about that same knife not more than a month ago.”

  “Really?” Franklin asked. He stopped himself from taking another step forward, as Beulah’s wand continued to heat up his chest. “Can you tell me what he looked like?”

  “Why should I tell you anything at all?” Beulah asked.

  It was a fair question. Franklin didn’t want to be spreading his troubles around, but he had to gain this woman’s trust.

  “Because someone—possibly this man—stabbed me with that blade,” Franklin said.

  Beulah’s wand seemed to move of its own accord, directing her hand unerringly to the right side where Franklin had been injured.

  “I see,” Beulah said. She abruptly raised her wand back up, holding it upright and to the side, like an ancient knight might have held a sword. “I can’t tell you much of anything about him. He was a white man, older. Head shaved, but white fringe all along the edges. Talked snooty. Offered me a lot of money for what I could tell him.”

  Julie tugged on Franklin’s hand so he looked over at her. She raised her eyebrows in question.

  “Yeah, that sounds like him,” Franklin said. “So can you tell us anything about that blade?”

  Beulah gave him a great, large grin, showing off more rotten and missing teeth between her thin lips. “I can,” she said. “But you ain’t gonna like it.”

  Franklin nodded grimly. He already knew there weren’t nothing about this day for him to like.

  Ξ

  The inside of Beulah’s cabin smelled of fresh cedar and rosemary. It was dim after the bright spring sunlight outside, and seemed crowded with magazines stacked everywhere, a loveseat encased in a stained floral cover sagging just right of the door, broken wooden straight-back chairs piled in the far corner. At least the wooden floor had been swept clean.

  Bunches of rosemary, dill, sage, and thyme hung from the rafters, drying, along with strands of garlic. A huge wood-burning stove took up most of the left wall, and an oversized wooden rocking chair, topped with stained cushions and pillows, sat in front of it.

  Beulah stopped just inside the door, then turned and pointed to Franklin’s and Julie’s feet. “Shoes,” she commanded.

  Franklin nodded, surprised, but he complied, slipping his sneakers off.

  It would make leaving in a hurry more difficult, but he weren’t about to question how a woman wanted to keep her house.

  “This way,” Beulah said, leading them through the dim living room and into the kitchen.

  There, sunlight streamed through the back windows. The walls were covered in clean white tiles, laid like bricks. Green linoleum covered the floor, carefully repaired with duct tape and flooring samples that didn’t match where it had cracked. Two stoves took up the near wall—one a modern, electric edition, the other, an ancient, black iron wood-burning version.

  A long skinny harvest table took up the center of the room. It had a reddish hue to it, that Franklin assumed came from the cherry wood and not from chickens he heard clucking in a coop out back. More herbs hung from the ceiling here, filling the room with cooking smells, like oregano and sage.

  “I need you to lay down here,” Beulah said, indicating the table. “And hike your shirt up.”

  “Why?” Franklin asked. Why did she want him to bare himself? They were just here for information.

  “I don’t know anything about that blade,” Beulah said adamantly.

  Franklin looked at Julie. How far was it to the door?

  “But I can find out the history of it,” Beulah bragged.

  “How?” Franklin asked. Was this what Eddie meant, by how Beulah could help them? That she’d be able to find the history of it?

  “It stabbed you here, right?” Beulah asked, her wand suddenly pointing toward his side again.

  Franklin tried to control his flinch. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “I need to draw some blood. Just a little,” she added quickly. “Then use that to conjure the blade’s past.”

  Franklin didn’t like this. Not one bit.

  “How will you draw the blood?” Julie asked, professional.

  That at least made Franklin feel better. Julie would make sure it was done right.

  “What, you a nurse or something?” Beulah asked, challenging.

  “I am,” Julie said. She fished her hospital ID out of her purse and showed it to Beulah.

  Did Beulah know her letters? She appeared to, mouthing the name of Julie’s hospital silently.

  Beulah gave Julie a hard look up and down, moving her wand in small circles close to Julie’s chest. “Huh,” was all she said after a moment.

  Then she turned, opened a drawer, and pulled out a black knife that appeared to be made of stone. “I was planning on using this.”

  “Ooooh,” Julie said. She touched the blade gingerly. “That will do.”

  “What is that?” Franklin asked. He figured he had a right to know, since they was planning on using it to slice him open, get at his blood.

  “It’s an obsidian blade,” Julie explained.

  “A what?” Franklin asked.

  “Obsidian is a type of volcanic glass,” Julie explained. “There’s been some studies done with surgery blades being made out of obsidian. The actual edge of the blade is finer and sharper than most metal blades because it’s only microns wide.”

  “Okay,” Franklin said slowly, not sure he understood all of that.

  “It’s safer and better to be cut by that blade than by most,” Julie assured him.

  “I trust you,” Franklin said.

  As soon as the words was out of his mouth he realized that meant them, and not in a casual way. But rather, in a deeper, heartfelt way. He caught her gaze and held it for a moment, trying to express what he meant, what he was feeling.

  Julie smiled at him and reached out, squeezing his arm briefly.

  “If y’all is done,” Beulah said dryly.

  “Sorry, ma’am,” Franklin said. “What do you need?”

  “Shirt off,” Beulah instructed.

  Franklin turned his back on the two women and slipped his T-shirt off over his head, feeling oddly exposed.

  He knew that his cousin Darryl would be cheering him on, right now, telling him that this was how all the best porn movies started.

  Franklin had watched some of that porn. He hadn’t thought it was any good at all.

  When Franklin turned back around, he was surprised that Beulah didn’t focus immediately on his side.

  “What the hell else you been doing?” she asked, holding her hand up, a few inches from his bandaged shoulder, where the thorn had bit him.

  “Fighting with a thorn bush,” Franklin said. “The one that grew up over where that blade was buried.”

  Beulah’s eyebrows rose up toward her hairline but she didn’t say anything. Instead, she gestured for Franklin to lay down on the table.

  Julie gently pried loose the dressing over Fr
anklin’s injured side. At least the wound there had only required stitches. It weren’t all red and angry like the thorn punctures.

  While Beulah got a large pot for her stove, filled it with water, and started stirring herbs into it, chanting nonsense syllables, Julie took Franklin’s hand and squeezed it. “You doin’ okay?” she asked.

  Franklin looked up at her. “I’m doing fine.”

  Julie winked at him. “Look fine too,” she whispered.

  Franklin was again glad that his blush couldn’t be seen because of his dark skin. He hadn’t been keeping up with his weekly workouts with his Ab-Buster. But he had been doing more physical work, hauling crates of produce at the stand, as well as more pushups, at Karl’s suggestion. They’d even put up an iron bar, out back, so they could do pullups. Franklin was getting better at those, too.

  Finally, Beulah was ready. She prayed over the blade, some words in English, some words in a language that Franklin didn’t understand, but that sounded soft and slurred together. Julie nodded along now and again—he’d have to ask her about it, later.

  With a quick flick of her wrist, Beulah cut along Franklin’s skin right above where the stitches for the knife were. The cut wasn’t deep, and didn’t sting until after she was finished.

  Julie had been right, though. It barely bled.

  With an overhand, extravagant wave of her arm, Beulah flicked the drops of blood gathered on the blade into the pot of water on her electric stove.

  Steam instantly boiled up and flowed over the edges, like a witch’s cauldron.

  Franklin couldn’t help but shiver.

  The steam didn’t contain images, not that Franklin could see.

  But he could recognize its power.

  This steam reminded him of the regular ghosts who sought him out—something that was between one place and the next. Maybe between the here and now and the past.

  Fascinated, Franklin sat up to stare harder at the pot. Beulah was still chanting, swaying and moving her hips more gracefully than he would have thought possible. She danced in time with a music he didn’t quite hear, but he knew it came from the steam and her cauldron.