Her Soul to Take (Souls Trilogy) Read online

  “Get in.”

  I was so freaked out I didn’t even pause to consider that maybe hopping into his car wasn’t the safest idea. It had to be safer than whatever I had just heard in the woods. The moment my door was closed he flipped a U-turn, driving back in the direction of my cabin.

  “What are you doing walking in the dark?” His voice was tense, furious. He kept glancing in the rearview mirror. What the hell had I done to make him so mad?

  “I’m going home. I always walk.”

  “You think it’s a good idea for a tiny girl like you to be walking through the woods in the dark?” he snapped.

  “What the hell is your problem?” I glared at him from across the seat. “If you’re just going to yell at me then let me out. It’s none of your business where I walk, or when I walk, or how!” His fingers tightened on the steering wheel, his jaw clenched. But he didn’t say anything. He just kept glancing in the rearview mirror. What was he doing out here anyway? I hadn’t seen him on campus that day and had assumed it was his day off.

  Not that I specifically looked for him on campus.

  “Take me home,” I demanded, when seconds had passed and he was still silent. He snorted.

  “Yeah, that’s what I’m doing.” Without any directions from me, he turned onto the narrow dirt drive that led back into the trees toward my house. My eyes widened, my stomach doing a nervous little flip as I gulped.

  “How do you know I live here?” That felt like a dangerous question to ask. I really needed to do a better job of thinking these things through. “Have you...have you followed me home? Have you been watching me?”

  My cabin appeared out of the trees. I always left the kitchen light on, so when I got home after dark I could see the light. It made me feel better somehow, less lonely, like the house was waiting for me. Leon pulled his trunk up in front of the porch and parked, before leaning back in his seat and taking a slow breath.

  “Leon. How do you know I live here?”

  “Don’t ask silly questions.” He was bouncing his foot on the floor, and he rubbed his palms over his jeans. It was like all the energy in the cab of the trunk was being sucked into him, building and building, and he was trying to keep it all inside without exploding. His eyes suddenly fixated on my Subaru Outback, parked just beside him. “Start driving to school. I don’t know why the hell you think it’s a good idea to go walking around in the dark, but you need to cut that shit out.”

  I laughed. It was a nervous laugh, admittedly, but irritation had a way of making me bold. “I’ll do what I want. Thanks for the ride.”

  I opened the door, only to have Leon reach across me and slam it shut again.

  My breathing slowed. His face was close to mine, his arm reached across my body to hold the door shut. I could feel his heat, warming my skin without even touching it, like being near a blazing fire. His eyes pierced into mine, pale green like the lichens that grew on the side of massive stones — but deep within that color, flecks of gold glowed like fireflies in the dark.

  “Raelynn, I don’t want to catch you walking at night again.” His tone was vicious but desperate. Almost pleading. “Drive your goddamn car. I don’t know what you’re used to in California, but no matter how many streetlights come on here, they won’t chase away the dark. They’ll never illuminate the trees.”

  The thought of that thing, that sculpture, flashed through my mind. Those teeth, that black tongue, the skeletal face. My fingers plucked at the seat as I imagined it spread among the trees, still as stone in the growing dark. Then – gone. Where had it gone?

  Leon pushed open the door again. But he kept his arms on either side of me for a moment, pinning me there. “Stay inside at night. Don’t go walking around after dark. Understand?”

  My first thought was to push back. But squashed beneath him on the seat, with his gaze not letting my eyes go for even a second, all I managed to get out was, “Got it.”

  He didn’t move for a moment, as if he could see the lie in my eyes if he looked hard enough. Then a crooked smirk curled his mouth, and he said softly, “Behave yourself, Raelynn. Or there will be consequences next time.”

  He straightened up, finally allowing me to hop out of the truck. Dozens of words all shuffled for space on my tongue, some angry, some curious, many confused. But before I could get any of them out, he revved the engine and sped off up the driveway, the glow of his headlights disappearing into the trees.

  The video was shaky and unfocused. It was aimed at the floor, at first, as the audio came in and out with crackling static. The tiled floor was smeared and spattered with something dark — blood.

  The video finally focused. Two young men stood over another, who was lying on his back on the floor in a pool of blood. One of the men had his cell phone to his ear — “Yeah, at the university...no, no, he’s definitely dead...there’s blood everywhere…” — while the other used his phone to snap photos.

  Whoever was filming kept gasping and laughing nervously. “I just can’t believe this, man...I can’t believe this…”

  He zoomed in on the body. The eyes were open, glassy, and vacant. The jaw hung slack, and at a strange angle. Stab wounds in the victim’s chest had created a crater between his ribs. His face was puffy and bruised, the flesh on his arms were cut as if his assailant had been slashing at him wildly. An act of viciousness, of unhinged violence.

  The video ended, and I hurriedly clicked away from the webpage, hoping none of the passing students had seen what I was looking at. No wonder they closed Calgary Hall. I was surprised they hadn’t closed the entire school, especially considering that whoever had done this hadn’t been caught.

  Someone capable of doing that was still walking around Abelaum.

  Maybe that was why Leon had been so furious at finding me walking alone. There was still a criminal out there looking for their next victim, and I may as well have been offering myself up on a silver platter. It was creepy as hell that he knew where I lived, but at the same time, mine was one of the only houses close to the university on that stretch of road. It wouldn’t take much effort to guess that if I walked home in that direction, the cabin was probably where I was headed.

  Thinking about the terror I’d felt over that creepy statue made me giggle a little now. I’d worked myself up for nothing. Once I’d gotten home, I’d been blushing with embarrassment at my reaction. Blushing at my reaction, and blushing at the heat Leon’s gaze had left in me. I felt like I was losing my edge — I couldn’t remember the last time I’d gotten that scared.

  Which meant it was time to put myself to the test again. I planned to film an investigation in St. Thaddeus, and recommit myself to getting good content uploaded to my channel. Good content, if not entirely authentic. I had plans for the next video that were a little less than truthful, but if that’s what it took to gain success as a paranormal channel now…

  Then I’d suck up my pride and do it.

  On Saturday, I packed my backpack with the essentials — an electromagnetic field reader, an audio recorder for electronic voice phenomena, my camera, a sheathed knife for protection, and enough snacks to last me through a hike. I packed extra batteries, a small first-aid kit, and my secret weapon: the grimoire.

  A good play needed the right props. I’d done my best to study the conjuring rituals within the grimoire, but working with online translations was sloppy at best. I’d assembled together bits and pieces until I had a believable string of words. A ritualistic prayer, symbols I would draw on the ground in chalk, and lit candles would provide a perfect creepy atmosphere.

  I was going to record a mock summoning in the old church. It was absolute clickbait trash, but I had to generate more views for the channel somehow.

  My usual stance was to take investigations seriously and respectfully. If there were actually spirits of the dead present, I wasn’t there to disrespect them or anger them. But maybe the magical mockery would be just enough to bring in more views.

  I didn’t think a
nything would actually come of it anyway. I’d cobbled together such a hack version of the rituals laid out in the grimoire, any spiritual beings who took notice would surely just roll their eyes. But just to be safe, I was leaving out a key part of the ritual the grimoire had called for: spilling my own blood to complete the summoning. As dramatic as it would be to give myself a little cut and bleed all over the floor, I wasn’t actually trying to make a demon show up.

  St. Thaddeus was nearly an hour’s drive away from downtown Abelaum. It wasn’t someplace I could simply look up on Google Maps, so I was relying on the directions I’d found on a Reddit Urban Explorers forum. Abelaum’s quant business and cozy cabins disappeared as I drove, becoming long rural streets with big family homes set back from the road. The pine trees looked as if they were on the verge of consuming every spec of civilization here; their boughs wrapped around the houses, growing over them as if slowly capturing them in a living cage. The clouds moved overhead, with patchy clearings where I could see spots of blue sky and sunlight shining down. It wasn’t raining yet, and I was hoping I could finish my investigation before the downpour started. I wasn’t looking forward to hiking in the rain.

  I turned the speakers up, blasting London After Midnight as I downed my second canned espresso. The anticipation before an investigation had me buzzing, even more than the caffeine. Plenty of people would call me foolish for going to abandoned places by myself — a woman doing anything alone was bound to attract disapproval. But I had my knife, and I had pepper spray on my key chain. I wasn’t going to let anyone’s pearl-clutching about my safety stop me from living.

  Admittedly, the only thing that had given me the slightest pause was thinking of Leon’s warning the night he’d picked me up from the road. “Behave yourself, Raelynn. Or there will be consequences next time,” was something I would have preferred to hear uttered in bed. It didn’t scare me; I felt bizarrely thrilled to know going to this old church would probably qualify as misbehaving in his mind.

  He could bring on the consequences, if he ever managed to find out what I’d done.

  The road narrowed. I hadn’t seen a house in at least twenty minutes, and the asphalt was rutted, the yellow paint dividing the two lanes faded into invisibility. The distant bay, my constant companion to the east during the drive thus far, had vanished beyond the trees. My music cut out as my cell lost reception.

  Following the directions, I made a quick turn onto a narrow dirt road. The road was clearly unmaintained, the dirt overtaken by grass and rotten leaves. Low hanging branches brushed against the top of my car, and a few stray raindrops dotted my windshield.

  The road came to an end at a metal gate. A rusted NO TRESPASSING sign dangled from it by one remaining chain, and I pulled the vehicle up alongside it, turning off my engine. According to what I’d read, this was it. I wouldn’t be able to drive any further; from here, it was a twenty-minute hike back into the trees.

  I gathered my supplies, double-checked the batteries on my flashlight, and headed out. The path I found through the trees was narrow, and largely overgrown with brush, but I’d expected far worse. The wind rattled the pines overhead, and fallen needles made every step soft. The rain held off, for now; but I still felt the occasional cold drop hit my face.

  I spoke to my camera as I walked, recording some backstory for the viewers. “In 1899, forty miners took the lifts down to the lowest level of Abelaum’s notorious silver mines — two weeks later, only three of them came out alive.” It was the same legend I’d first heard told in elementary school, the story every kid in Abelaum knew. The Tragedy of 1899 changed Abelaum forever, bringing its booming mining industry to a sudden grinding halt. “The mine experienced a massive cave-in, and the lowest levels rapidly flooded, leaving the miners trapped inside. Over the coming days, as they waited for rescue, the men survived in the only way they could: by cannibalizing the dead, and later — killing and eating the living.”

  I paused as I came to a fork in the path. I knew I had to go to the right; the path sloped slightly downwards, and around the sharp bend, I should find a clearing and the cathedral. A tree stood at the center of the trail’s fork, and I could see something buried among the twigs and leaves piled around its roots. I grabbed it, and tugged out a wooden sign chipped with age. The ghosts of old painted letters remained on the wood, reading: White Pine Central Shaft, 1 Mile.

  I held it up to the camera. “After two weeks, rescuers were finally able to clear a way down, right here at White Pine. Only three men remained alive, including the owner of the mining operation, a man named Morpheus Leighman. The bodies of the others were never recovered.”

  I turned the camera up the trail to the left. It was almost completely overgrown; twigs, fallen branches, and grass left the path nearly invisible. “Once freed, the men were brought down this very trail. Accounts of the rescue describe them as energetic and strong, despite the days trapped underground. Apparently, cannibalism does a body good. But the rescued men claimed they had experienced something else down in the mines, something otherworldly.”

  Despite the instructions to head right, I walked a little way up the left path. Something was dangling from a low-hanging tree limb: a small bundle of twigs held together with twine, swinging gently in the breeze. I plucked it down, holding it still for the camera. The twigs were woven into a circlet, and a design had been formed in the middle using more twigs, twine, and...fishbones.

  Just like the strange trinkets Mrs. Kathy used to hang around her porch.

  “Even now, the legends of what the miners experienced underground lives on in this small town’s local culture. The rescued men claimed they met a monster, a God who had been sleeping deep in the earth. They claimed this God granted them mercy, allowing them to escape in exchange for worship. According to the legends, Morpheus would eventually buy the church located near their rescue site, and dedicated it to the worship of the underground God.”

  I turned off the camera, satisfied as I headed back toward the other fork in the path. Down the fork and around the bend, the trees cleared. For a moment, the sight of St. Thaddeus took my breath away. The cathedral had three magnificent spires at the front, reaching high into the sky, rivaling the tops of the pines. The wood was blackened with age, covered with patches of moss and fungi. A low stone wall lay in crumbled heaps around the church’s dirt courtyard, and it looked as if the steep roof had caved in on one side.

  I began to record again, in silence this time, letting the view speak for itself. The church was far larger than I had expected; it was a relic of exquisite Gothic architecture. Beneath the center spire was a large round window of stained glass, although it was so covered with dirt and grime that I couldn’t make out what it depicted.

  The front doors, still covered in chipping white paint, were chained shut. I wandered around the side of the building, examining the boarded-up windows, filming everything. About halfway down the side of the church was a single door, and this one had already been opened: the chain that once secured it dangled off the handle, the padlock still attached and the links cut.

  I’d read online this was the way to get in, but I still held my pepper spray ready. With my weapon in one hand and the camera’s flash illuminating my way, I shoved open the door with my foot and the old hinges screeched. Dust cascaded down around the entrance, the shadows thick within. My light cast a sickly yellow beam through the gloom across the nave. A pile of rubble and splintered boards lay beneath the caved-in ceiling, dull light spilling in from above.

  The wooden pews still remained, set in long rows up and down the nave. Hymn books were tucked into the shelves on the backs of the pews, swollen and moldy with the damp. The air was thick, oppressive in its silence. There was no tingling, no chills, nothing that would have alerted me to lurking paranormal energies.

  The church felt dead. Like a void that dispersed all its light, all its energy, leaving only moldering air behind.

  But there, at the front of the church surrounding the
pulpit, someone had erected some kind of shrine. I approached carefully, side-stepping splintered beams from the fallen ceiling. Numerous white candles sat around the pulpit, surrounded by their own melted wax. More of those bizarre twig trinkets were scattered around, more fishbones, more twine.

  The dust on the ground was disturbed. The footprints were fresh. I hesitated, my camera frozen in my hand as I fixated on those footprints. It wasn’t as if this place was unknown to other explorers. I wasn’t the first to come here, and I wouldn’t be the last. But I didn’t particularly like finding such fresh evidence of a visit.

  But I’d come here on a mission. I had an investigation to do.

  I started with the audio recorder. I wandered around the nave with the camera fixed on me, asking questions to the empty air.

  “Is anyone here with me?”

  “What’s your name?”

  “How long have you been here?”

  The old building creaked in the wind, and somewhere beyond the pulpit, a little sound made me fall silent. I couldn’t even guess what I’d heard. A whisper? The wind? Had something fallen? A footstep, or a knock?

  I was used to feeling something in these old places. As the minutes dragged by, and the silence stretched on, that began to unnerve me more than anything; it wasn’t just that I wasn’t experiencing chills, or unease — I felt nothing. The excited buzz of a new investigation was gone. The awe at the church’s architecture had faded. What was left behind was a heaviness that made my thoughts feel slow, as if I was dissociating.

  Maybe coming here alone hadn’t been a good idea after all.

  I needed to wrap things up, but there was one last thing I needed to film. I set up the camera on its tripod facing the pulpit, and cleared a space for myself in front of the mass of candles.

  It was time to create some demon-summoning clickbait.

  I’d used my translation notes to mark the relevant page in the grimoire, and I turned to it now. The golden eyes of the Killer greeted me. In the dim light, those eyes looked brighter than ever, searing into me with an accusing gaze. I paused, letting my fingers brush over the page. That face was dangerous, sharp, cruel...and so goddamn familiar.