The Soul Thief (9 page)

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 Franklin’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.

There was something there. In that mist. He could tell.

He just couldn’t see it. Not like she could.

Beulah started to moan.

The sound sent more shivers down Franklin’s back. Julie silently handed him his shirt, and Franklin gratefully slipped it back on.

Then Julie sat beside him on the table and they waited with dread while Beulah finished her reading.

Franklin wasn’t about to turn back now, but he wasn’t looking forward to whatever it was that Beulah had to say.

Six

“YOU KNOW WHAT you get when you cross a spider with a snake and a bat?” Beulah asked.

Franklin shook his head. It sounded like the start of a joke that he didn’t know, the kind Darryl would tell.

Franklin and Julie sat out in the backyard of Beulah’s shack, perched on the remains of stumps carefully placed around a great bonfire pit. The sun peeked over the surrounding trees. Birds sang wildly just beyond the edge of the trees, while the cicadas cycled up and down. The woods smelled of mulch and green things, freshly growing.

Next to the house was a well-kept coop for the chickens, with a pen for the birds to scratch in. They’d gone back to quietly clucking to themselves once they’d realized no feed was coming.

It reminded Franklin of Lexine’s cabin, though she had more garden in her backyard. She also took care of her place more. However, this was Beulah’s…focus spot, for want of a better term. Franklin would bet that she spent a lot of time with the bonfire going, feeding the flames and reading the smoke.

“That blade weren’t merely forged. It were conjured, constructed to take lives—souls—and suck them free of a body,” Beulah said. She paced in front of Franklin and Julie, from one side of the bonfire pit to the other.

Franklin shivered in the bright daylight. “So the knife’s evil,” he said.