The house looked different now, thought Lauren as she walked toward it.
After she’d left Curran, she’d taken the train out toward Boston College. She’d walked slowly down the streets of this neighborhood, almost oblivious to the growing wind and ever present drizzle. But she did look behind her a number of times. Part of her almost expected to see the man again.
Her stalker.
What did the Soul Eater want? Lauren wanted to know the answer to that question worse than anything she’d wanted before. She stopped. What if the answer’s not good?
She frowned. Of course it wouldn’t be good. The Soul Eater was a minion of the Devil. How could anything he wanted be good? It wouldn’t be. Better to just resign myself to the inevitable rush of horror that will happen when I discover what it is.
If I discover it, she quickly corrected herself.
She drew close to the front steps. There was no sign that anything had even happened here. No tape marks from where the police would have put up the yellow crime scene tape. After all, there was no crime scene. No bodies. No nothing.
Darkness had fallen on the neighborhood almost an hour ago. Deep shadows bled out from the shrubs surrounding the small house. There were lights on in only one or two of the houses further down the street. Most of the people living close by weren’t home from work yet.
Perfect.
Lauren looked at the front door and frowned. It would, of course, be locked.
There had to be another way in.
She saw a small flagstone path running down one side of the house and took it. It led her to the back door. Lauren tried to door handle and found that locked as well.
From her bag, she took out a roll of duct tape and penknife. She drew out a long strip of the silver sticky tape and then cut it. She pressed it diagonally across the pane of glass. Then she repeated the process, this time pressing the line of tape in the other direction so there appeared a gossamer ‘X’ on the back door.
She paused, glanced around, and shook her head. Lauren Fields, she thought, nun and burglar.
She slammed her left elbow at the intersection of tape and heard the glass give. The tape held it fast though, keeping it from shattering and making an awful noise. Lauren kept breaking the glass until she could reach her hand through and unlatch the bolt.
Two minutes after she’d started, she entered the back hall of Sister Donovan’s home.
She closed the door behind her and shivered. Inside the house it felt like a glacier had settled there. Her breath came in small wisps of heated air that warmed her face as she walked.
In the kitchen she looked around. Some dishes still littered the sink. An empty box of spaghetti stood as testament to the dinner Sister Mary had never finished.
Her last meal, thought Lauren. All because of me.
She pushed through the wooden swing door separating the kitchen from the rest of the house. It felt warmer in the dining room. Lauren peered into the china cabinet and saw an old set of dishes. Bone china? She thought it looked so, but she wasn’t there to appraise Sister Donovan’s estate.
She moved beyond the dining room and into the living room. A small television set and VCR sat on a low shelf at one corner of the room. A couch and armchair, both in a blue gingham pattern, occupied the majority of the room. She could see a stack of magazines in a small tray between the two pieces of furniture.
She must have had an office somewhere.
Lauren veered toward the hallway and found herself retracing the steps she’d taken the other night. A weird sense of dreadful deja vu sprung up over her. She felt her heartbeat increase. Her breathing came in short rapid gasps.
Calm down, she told herself. That was then. This was now.
Find the journals.
Find the journals.
Her breathing slowed. Steeled now, she pressed on into the bedroom. The oxygen tank sat close to the bed. Pictures on the walls showed Sister Donovan in a wide array of locales. Most of the pictures she stood smiling with what looked like native peoples. None of the framed photos had captions, but Lauren guessed some showed regions in Africa, South America, and Southeast Asia.
Quite the traveler.
The other night, Sister Donovan had started to say something when she’d been killed. Had she been alluding to some reservoir of information that would help Lauren now?
She looked around the bedroom. Aside from the bed, there was a bureau with a big mirror. A stack of religious texts sat on top. A few more magazines lay by the bed.
But otherwise…nothing.
Lauren got down on her hands and knees. She lifted the skirt of the bed and glanced under. It seemed even darker under there.
Should she turn on a light?
Someone might see it and wonder who was inside. Lauren doubted news of Sister Donovan’s death had reached many people in the neighborhood, but she didn’t want to chance someone calling the police.
Her eyes had adjusted pretty well anyway. And the streetlight in front of the house sent some of its light into the house. Not much, but enough to make out things.
Lauren went back to the kitchen and found a flashlight in one of the drawers. She headed back to the bedroom and opened the closet door.
She switched the flashlight on and instantly a beam of yellow cut into the swath of dark. Mounds of books met Lauren’s eyes. Clothes on hangers draped over the stacks.
It must be here, she thought.
Again she got down on her knees and began going through the piles. Most of it was a substantial collection of science fiction novels. Apparently, Sister Donovan had been quite a fan. Lauren smiled. It made her feel closer to the old nun knowing that she’d been human as well as divine.
Behind her, at the entrance of the closet, a pile of books began to form a mound. Lauren kept passing the books out over her shoulder. The closet seemed much deeper than she’d originally estimated. The more books she got through, the more stacks appeared before her.
Until at last, she saw wall.
How many books did she have time to read, thought Lauren. There must be at least two thousand here.
Her hands touched cool plaster. The back of the closet. She shone the flashlight at the side walls and pressed into them trying to find some sort of cubbyhole or secret panel.
Nothing.
She leaned back on her haunches and sighed. Where would it be?
She shivered, feeling the cold of the house. She hoped Steve and Dr. Kwon had their eyes on that Darius fellow. The last thing she wanted to think about was him showing up here right now.
Put it out of your mind!
A creak from somewhere else in the house startled her. She jumped and the flashlight dropped, hitting the floor of the closet with a bang. The light vanished.
Darkness swallowed the closet again.
Lauren sat very still. Her ears strained against the heavy silence, probing, trying to find another sound.
Was someone there with her?
Steve?
She frowned. No. He’d be busy with Kwon.
Lauren drew the small gun he’d given her earlier. Ever so quietly, she pulled back on the top of the gun, chambering a round. Each tiny click and clack made her hold her breath.
Off came the safety.
She aimed the gun at the closet opening.
Listening.
Maybe it was him.
Maybe he’d eluded Steve and Kwon.
Gotten away.
And had only one thing on his mind.
Lauren.
Her thighs burned from squatting. The gun, small though it was, began to feel heavy in her hands. She wanted to put it down. She wanted to slump against the cool wall and rest for a moment.
But fear wouldn’t let her.
The closet grew colder.
Lauren began praying. In her head she began reciting every prayer she’d ever known. Over and over again.
The silence hung heavy.
Suffocating.
She wanted to draw a deep breath. She wanted to stand. To move. Adrenaline had flooded her system and she felt jumpy.
Stay still!
A thought occurred to her then. The sound the flashlight had made when it struck the wooden floor.
Bang.
Not a dull thud.
Not the sound she would have expected.
Bang.
Almost as if -
Her eyebrows jumped. Maybe?
There seemed to be no noise coming from the house. Maybe the old home was settling. Noises in old homes were common, even if for no real reason.
She smiled. No one was there.
She lowered the gun.
Slid the safety back on.
And set it down to her left.
Lauren turned back around to face the rear of the closet. Her fingers found the flashlight. She tried the switch.
Yellow light bit back into the dark. She sighed. Good, the bulb hadn’t broken at all. The switch must have simply gotten hit when it fell.
Lauren shone the light on the floor.
There!
She saw a cut in the floorboards. It made a square almost a foot and a half long by a foot wide. She took out her penknife and opened the blade.
It fit into the tiny opening and Lauren pried it back.
The floorboard came up.
And she saw them.
A series of black leather journals shrouded in plastic wrap to protect them. She removed the package; there must have been ten of them in total.
There were no marks on the cover. Lauren carefully slid them out of the plastic and then unfolded her legs, sitting cross-legged on the floor of the closet.
For some reason, she felt better about reading them in there than out in the open.
Did she feel safer there with the clothes tickling her head? Almost like being a little kid and hiding in the clothes racks at the department store again, she decided.
She took up the flashlight and opened the first journal. The light showed old yellowed paper, crinkling at the edges. On the pages, deep black ink flowed in cursive writing.
On the first page, she read:
A study of the minions of evil by Graham Westerly.
August 1939
Lauren flipped through the pages. His writing was tough to read until she’d accustomed her eyes to its massive loops and swirls. She could tell he’d been artistic as well judging from how he wrote.
But the first journal failed to produce anything interesting with regards to the Soul Eater. There was no mention of him at all. And it wasn’t until Lauren had pored through nine of the journals that she finally found it.
There on the final pages of the tenth journal that had been started in 1947, she found what she’d been seeking.
Few of the Devil’s children are as fearful as the Soul Eater.
For years, I could not fathom its purpose. I was only able to
trace its nefarious deeds back through the annals of history.
It seemed its existence was rumored only in whispered legends,
and yet, I somehow knew it was much more. Little did I realize
the truly awesome power with which its Dark Lord bequeathed it.
In truth, the Soul Eater is a more a demon than man — and yet it
may assume the guise of a man as easily as we draw a breath.
Indeed, it is by this form that the Soul Eater accomplishes his
task. For as a man he can walk among the peoples of earth
with no fear of discovery.
He is the Devil's emissary — the primary instrument for his
resurrection.
Lauren looked up from the journal and felt cold fear wash over her. My God, she thought, how will we be able to stop this? She took a breath and kept reading.
The Soul Eater is responsible for collecting evil, for it is through
the evil of others that he, the Devil, lives and lives best.
The words echoed inside her head. Sister Donovan’s last words. Here they were, in Graham Westerly’s own hand.
The Soul Eater steals the souls of those who are most evil
within our society. For years I felt confounded by this theory.
It was only after much research that I learned that the Devil’s
power was scattered on Earth by God as a way of keeping the
Dark Lord from ever coming onto this plane. Unable to
manifest himself here, the Devil languished long in the
netherworld, constantly trying but finding no suitable portal of
evil through which he could enter our world.
So he created the Soul Eater. He sent this demon to our plane
with the purpose of harvesting the souls of the most evil. The Soul Eater gathers these souls. And if he is able to gather enough of them,
he will be able to open a portal to Hell and enable Satan to enter a physical body here on Earth.
I know not how the resurrection would occur. Nor do I know
how many evil souls must be gathered for the resurrection to
occur. I know the Soul Eater has wandered our plane for
millennia. Always at work. Always gathering. Perhaps he
keeps these evil souls within him, but I think not. I think he
must have some means to contain them — be it natural or not.
In the guise of a man, the Soul Eater may be reasonably assumed
to be vulnerable to those things that all men are. In his true form,
however, the Soul Eater would be almost impossible to vanquish.
Of all that I have encountered, none has disturbed me as much as
The revelation that Satan is actively trying to gain access to our
World. I believe that if the Soul Eater were successful, his
Master would be impossible to banish again.
Lauren slumped back against the wall. Her breathing came in fast gulps. This is it, she thought. He’s trying to bring the Devil here.
To Boston.
I’ve got to tell Steve.
She glanced back at the journal. The next few entries scared her even more.