The Soul Thief (10 page)

“No, it ain’t,” Beulah said. “Weren’t no demons or otherworldly creatures involved. All natural.”

“But you said it takes souls,” Franklin protested.

“Taking a soul don’t make it evil,” Beulah interrupted. “Y’all have raised chickens, right?”

Franklin nodded. He hadn’t, actually, raised chickens. Though he liked eggs well enough, it was just him, and the stupid birds weren’t worth the bother.

But he had slaughtered Sweet Bess, the hog he’d raised. She’d been much more like a dog than a pig. A big, nasty,
mean
dog, but still. So he understood what Beulah was getting at.

“It’s what you
do
with the soul afterward that makes it good or bad,” Beulah explained. “It were originally created for sacrifices. A way of honoring their gods.”

“Their gods?” Franklin asked. It didn’t surprise him too much that it was a foreign knife.

“There’s more out there than just your white-bearded old man,” Beulah warned.

Julie squeezed Franklin’s hand in warning when he would have spoken up.

Instead, he nodded, keeping his words to himself. “So it weren’t created to do evil,” he clarified. “But it weren’t created to do good, either.”

Beulah shrugged. “It could do good,” she said. “In the right hand.”

Franklin pressed his lips together and didn’t say anything, though he didn’t see how taking souls could ever be a good thing.

“The blade’s history is cloudy after its maker was slaughtered,” Beulah said. “It wasn’t being used much, and when it was used, it wasn’t being used right. It wasn’t doing what it was created to do.”

She paused, then fixed Franklin with a hard stare. “It woke up when it was in your hand,” she told Franklin. “Wanting to take the souls of those ghosts of yours.”

Franklin gulped. He remembered sitting at the kitchen table, holding the blade, threatening the ghosts of Mama and Gloria. It weren’t his proudest moment.

“So what would it do with those souls?” Franklin asked after a moment.

“What would you want for it to do with them?” Beulah countered.

“Send them Beyond,” Franklin said. “Help them pass through.” When Beulah looked at him, puzzled, Franklin added, “Ghosts get stuck sometimes.”

Beulah smiled like a cat who’d just gotten into the cream. “Ghosts, eh?” she asked.

Franklin felt his back stiffen. “Yes, ma’am.” He weren’t about to deny it.

“Would what you be doing with the knife be evil?” Beulah asked.

“No, ma’am,” Franklin said firmly. “But it would be cheatin’. To just send ’em on. Not let ’em work out what they needed to do before they left.”

Beulah gave Julie a huge grin at that. “He’s a keeper,” she commented casually.

“Yes, ma’am, he is,” Julie said, squeezing his hand.

Even though the women couldn’t see him blush, Franklin suspected that neither woman needed to see his skin turn red to know what it was he was feeling.

“So the blade was meant to take souls,” Franklin said, trying to get the conversation back on track. “What is the doctor gonna do with it?”

“Doctor?” Beulah asked.

“The man who stabbed me with the knife. He was wearing doctor clothes,” Franklin explained. “Scrubs.”

“Doctors generally heal people,” Beulah said.

“They can also kill,” Julie added quietly. “Like the ones who decide that someone has suffered enough. Help them on.”

“Angel of mercy,” Beulah said. “Could see that.”

“Is that really evil?” Franklin asked. He wouldn’t have wanted Mama to suffer after her heart attack, if it hadn’t killed her outright.

Beulah cocked her head to one side. “What you do with your ghosts isn’t evil. But using the knife, you said it would be cheating. That doctor of yours, he’s looking for a cheat. A shortcut. To something.”

“To what?”

“Power.”

Ξ

Franklin walked out the front door of Beulah’s shack with Julie in front of him. As she walked to the car, Beulah wrapped one of her meaty hands around Franklin’s arm, stopping him.

“You know, that blade liked you,” she said.

Up close, Beulah smelled of dirt and not enough baths, her breath foul with rot.

But he didn’t try to get away, despite how uncomfortable he was with anyone touching him. Instead, he shrugged.

He didn’t feel the same way about the blade.

“It’s still connected to you,” Beulah added.

“What do you mean?” Franklin asked, alarmed.

Beulah paused. “Don’t know rightly how to explain it. But it left a part of itself—a ghost, maybe—inside you. When you was stabbed.”

Franklin shivered. He didn’t like the sound of that at all. Though that was exactly how it felt.

Julie was at the side of the car door and had turned back, realizing that Franklin wasn’t behind her. He raised his hand, reassuring her that he was okay, that she should stay there.

“It was why I was able to give you so many details about its history,” Beulah said. “Normally, I gots to touch something to know so much about it. But it’s in your blood.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” Franklin said when Beulah didn’t have anything more to add. He tugged his arm gently free.

“I ever have any ghost problems, I’m sending them to you,” Beulah added as Franklin crossed back to the car.

Franklin nodded. That was only fair. Though he’d also given Beulah most of the money in his wallet for the reading.

As they backed out of the clearing, Julie asked, “You okay?”

Franklin sighed, but decided he needed to keep telling Julie the truth. “That knife wound? It’s never felt right.” He didn’t tell her it still felt as though the blade was in his side—that Beulah had just told him it might be.

Julie nodded, reaching over and squeezing his knee. “Let me know how I can help.”

Franklin didn’t have a clue. Maybe he could go visit Preacher Sinclair. Have him pray the ghost of the blade out of his side.

Though, somehow, he doubted that would be enough.

Ξ

Franklin puzzled and puzzled all through dinner about what the doctor (since that seemed to be what they was now calling the man who’d stabbed him) wanted to do with that blade, that soul stealer.

They’d stopped at a roadside diner, one that promised authentic home cooking and heavenly pies. It fit with Franklin’s idea of a diner, with red vinyl booth seats, a cracked linoleum floor, and pictures of the local baseball team—going back decades—pasted all around the cash register.

The waitress who’d served them was probably barely out of high school and pregnant. At least she looked happy about it, snapping her gum as she took their order, coming back often to see how they was doing.

The chicken-fried steak wasn’t as good as Mama’s—nothing would ever top that. But it was a close second, and the mashed potatoes was perfect, with just the right amount of whip and butter in them to make them fluffy.

Still, Franklin couldn’t pay as much attention to the food as it deserved, his mind too preoccupied.

Finally, after the dinner plates had been removed and they was waiting on pie, he asked Julie, “Have you figured out what the doctor wanted with that blade?”

Julie shook her head. “You said it took a lot of energy to conjure your mama up.”

“It did,” Franklin said. “It must have taken a lot from him to bring back those other two ghosts too. But why did he do it?”

“Well, by bringing them back, he was able to make you go and get that blade,” Julie pointed out.

Franklin gave a low whistle. “He’s smart. Came up with the only thing that would make me dig it up.”

“Why do you think he didn’t try to dig it up himself?” Julie asked.

Franklin snorted. “That thorn bush weren’t tame. It took a lot to defeat it. Plus, Darryl would have shot anyone he thought was trespassing in his backyard. No, he had to wait until I got it.”

“You could ask Georgia if he came snooping around the house any,” Julie pointed out.

“Not sure what good that would do,” Franklin said. “He already has the blade. The question is what’s he gonna do with it?”

“If he raises more of the dead, brings back ghosts, could he take their souls?” Julie asked.

“That’s what I was thinking,” Franklin said. He smiled at Julie.

Normally, Franklin didn’t believe in touching in public. Particularly not a nice white woman like Julie, particularly not a new place he’d never been at before. In a town like this.

But he really wanted to take her hand across the table. He tried, instead, to show her how he felt about her with his eyes, how much he admired how smart she was. “So he raises ghosts back up, brings them out of their well-earned rest—or rips them out of Heaven—and then…does what with them?”

“I don’t know,” Julie said. “With the blade, he could then take their souls and use them, somehow.”

“Got to be something big, though,” Franklin said. “If it takes so much out of him to raise them in the first place. It’s gotta be something big. Some kind of big magic or spell.”

Franklin felt distinctly uncomfortable with those words coming out of his mouth. He didn’t cast spells or dabble in magic. He just did his duty, helping ghosts along.

This doctor, though, he did something more like what a witch would do.

“If he is a doctor, or was, then he might be trying to heal someone,” Julie said.

“Or some
thing
,” Franklin pointed out. “Like a wound in the earth.” Just healing a single person wouldn’t take that much effort. Not if the doctor could raise the dead.

Just then, their pies arrived. Franklin’s still steamed from being fried on the grill, the vanilla ice cream melting perfectly beside it.

It sure looked heavenly.

And so did Julie, sitting across from him. Even if he couldn’t take her hand. It was as close to perfect as he was likely to get in this world.

Something even that blade couldn’t cut through.

Ξ

Full and satisfied, Franklin let out a small belch as they was driving home.

“Sorry. Excuse me,” he said, apologizing to Julie, not feeling sorry, not one bit. He was too damned content to feel bad.

Julie just grinned at him. “That was mighty good.”

“It sure was,” Franklin said. While Franklin loved cooking with Julie on their nights in, he also enjoyed going out with her.

Feeling daring, he reached across the divide between them and lightly touched her thigh.

Julie dropped one hand down from the steering wheel and wrapped it around his.

Though Franklin was still injured, and Julie was a nurse and a stickler for taking it easy, maybe they could still spend some time making out on the sofa that night.

Suddenly, the pain in Franklin’s right side spiked hard, where the knife had been plunged into him. He couldn’t help but twitch, abruptly squeezing Julie’s thigh hard.

“Sorry,” he said, removing his hand. Then he gasped as the next wave of pain hit.

“Franklin?” Julie asked, worried. “What’s goin’ on?”

“The knife,” Franklin gasped. The pain intensified, a single steel point of lava burning in his side.

As quickly as it had come, the pain left, leaving Franklin panting.

Julie had already pulled over to the shoulder of the highway. She had one hand on his forehead. “You’re burning up,” she murmured. “Infection?”

“No,” Franklin said, grabbing onto her wrist when she would have pulled away. “At least, that’s not what I think it is.” He took a couple of deep breaths, trying to sort out what was going on.

The knife—no, the blade—was in pain.

“The doctor’s doing something to the blade,” Franklin finally got out. “It has three prongs on it, right?”

“Yes,” Julie said, still worried.

“The doctor…oh, jeez…the doctor is shaving away one of them,” Franklin ground out.

“How do you know?” Julie asked, worried.

“The blade’s calling out to me,” Franklin told her. “It’s still connected to me. Like it left something inside me. When the doctor stabbed me with it.”

Julie frowned at him. “Have you been feeling that since the start?” she asked.

“Yes, ma’am,” Franklin said. “I didn’t want to tell you, though. I didn’t want to worry you.”

Even in the dim light, Julie’s glare was strong enough to make Franklin wince again, and not from the pain in his side.

“You need to tell me that kind of thing,” Julie said. “You got to share. Or we’re never gonna make it. Not long term.”

Franklin blinked. He knew that he wanted for them to make it, for them to keep being a couple. For them to maybe, someday, live together out at his farm.

Maybe even get married.

He’d never assumed that Julie might want the same things, though.

“Really?” he asked, his voice soft with wonder. “You want to make it long term? With me?”

Julie rolled her eyes at him. “Of course I do. Idiot.”

Franklin wondered about telling your partner things that were important, like being with them long term, but he didn’t say nothing.

Then the pain washed over him again, stealing his breath away and making the world dim.

“Franklin? Honey?” Julie’s voice sounded very far away.

From behind Franklin’s shut eyes he could see a gray line, leading across the fields, leading straight to where the blade was suffering.

“That way,” he rasped, pointing a finger. “We got to go that way.”

He felt Julie’s lips brush against his forehead. “You just keep telling me the direction. I ain’t gonna cross country in my car unless I have to. I have to keep taking roads.”

Franklin nodded, then said, “Okay.”

The call of the blade was strong.

But so was Julie’s hand, resting on his thigh, keeping him present.

Between them, it was gonna be okay.

Ξ

They kept driving mostly north and then east, in turns. The night sky was clear, the stars distant points of light that Franklin could barely see, the sky washed out by the highway lights. Only a few other cars traveled with them along the road, mainly semis and other professional drivers.

When Franklin saw an exit for Perrysville, he felt a stronger twinge. “There,” he said, pointing it out to Julie.

The pain had gotten worse. Franklin wasn’t sure he’d be able to stand once they got to where ever it was they was going. But he’d do whatever it was that needed doing.