My Soul to Take, Draft Two

Jake Barlow awoke on a train bound for Chicago. It had stopped. The boxcar door stood open and the ruddy-faced guard who had spent the past six hundred miles telling him to shut up was nowhere to be found.

His wrists were shackled together, and the chain between them ran through a ring on the wall above his head. His arms were beginning to lose feeling. He looked around the empty boxcar. It would have been nice for the guard to leave a key before he disappeared.

He looked up at the ring. It was attached to a plate that was bolted to the wall. It would have been impossible to remove. When he was being watched. Now he had all the time in the world. Unless the guard decided to come back.

He twisted around, crossing the chain so that he could face the wall and stood up. Blood ran back down into his hands with a feeling like water in a hot frying pan. With the edge of the shackle, he forced the bolts to turn until he could unscrew them by hand. The whole plate fell off the wall, hanging pathetically on the chain.

Jake peered out the boxcar door and, seeing no one, jumped down. Five feet from the door were a set of keys. Handcuff keys. He unlocked the cuffs and dropped them in the dirt.

The train had stopped in the middle of nowhere. The only thing around was an old grey mansion, set back from the track on a small hill. Everything beyond was shrouded in fog.

Jake walked along the train. He had been in a boxcar near the back, away from all the other passengers. The train sat silent. Where were they now?

He reached a passenger car and climbed the steps. He walked down the empty aisle. There was luggage and things left behind in a hurry, but no passengers. He moved onto the next car. No one.

He climbed down to the ground and looked around. Something moved under a car further forward. He quietly moved toward it. It crunched in the gravel just behind the wheels. He took a breath, reached under the car, and dragged it out.

Whatever it was punched him in the nose, forcing him to drop it.

“Stay away!” it yelled.

Jake blinked a few times. “It” was a girl, blonde, somewhere between fifteen and twenty. She scurried away and tried to climb back under the car.

He grabbed her ankle and dragged her back out. “Relax, I’m not going to hurt you.”

“Sorry I can’t say the same,” she said, kicking him in the head.

He let go and sat down in the dirt. “Fine. Stay under there.”

“I will!” she said from behind the wheels.

He rubbed his head. “Where is everyone?”

“Gone.”

“Gone where?”

“Just… gone.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“They were here, and now they’re not.”

He sighed. “Well, now that we’ve defined ‘gone’… Why are you still here?” He wiped his bloody nose and looked down at his hand.

She peered out around the wheels. “I hid.”

He looked back up at her. “From what?”

“It.”

“It? What is ‘It’?”

“Well, I thought you were It. But I guess not. It came through, like smoke and darkness. And the people were there… and then they weren’t.” She looked at him critically. “Why are you still here?”

“I don’t know. I was asleep. Woke up and everyone was gone.”

“You’re just lucky, then.”

He absentmindedly rubbed his wrists. “You have no idea.” He stood up.

“Where are you going?”

“I’m getting the hell out of here.”

She crawled out from under the train car. “Can I come with you?”

He shrugged. “Do what you want.”

She scrambled up and started walking beside him. “I’m Evie,” she said, offering a hand.

“Don’t care,” he said and kept walking.

They walked past the train engine and followed the tracks through the fog. The train disappeared behind them as the fog grew thicker. Eventually, the fog thinned and a shape appeared on the tracks in front of them. Another train. And off to the side another house on a hill.

“Not a great day for trains,” Evie remarked.

They passed a boxcar near the rear of the train. Jake kicked something metallic and looked down.

Discarded shackles.

He stopped. “It’s the same train.”

“What? How do you know?”

Because I just escaped from these. That wouldn’t work. She would start panicking, and she would get in his way. “Just trust me.”

“But we went in a straight line, there’s no way we could have circled back.”

“I’m not saying it makes sense. I’m just saying it’s the same train.”

“So what now?”

“Now we get some answers.” He headed toward the grey mansion.

“Are you sure you want to go in there?” she asked, not moving from where she stood.

He turned around. “Do you see any other options?”

“No, but…”

“Fine, stay here then,” he said, heading for the house. He was halfway up the walk when she jogged up beside him.

“You weren’t really going to leave me out here alone, were you?”

“Yes,” he replied without looking at her. They reached the heavy wooden doors and Jake raised a hand to knock. Fuck that. He pushed the door open.

It creaked slightly as it swung open, letting in the dreary light and casting their shadows on the floor of the dim foyer. Jake stepped in, eyes darting around the empty room. He took a step sideways and picked up a heavy metal candlestick from a side table.

Evie walked in beside him and looked around the room, from the chandelier overhead to the artwork on the walls and the grand staircase before them.

“Hello?” she said, not quite shouting, but much too loud for a place like this. “Is there—”

Jake clamped a hand over her mouth. He very nearly knocked her over the head with the candlestick.

“Shut up!” he hissed in her ear.

She pulled away from him. He let her.

“Sorry,” she whispered. “I thought you wanted answers.”

“I do, but you don’t go around announcing yourself. That’s how you get caught.” He leaned into a doorway off the foyer. It was a formal parlor, with stuffy leather chairs and a dusty piano.

Something creaked upstairs. Jake’s gaze drifted toward the ceiling. He turned around to find Evie right behind him.

“What is it?” she whispered.

“Stay here,” he said, walking past her toward the stairs.

“Is it safer here?”

“Doubt it. But you’re noisy.” He crept up the stairs.

She scowled and followed.

The apparent source of the sound was down a hall to the left of the stairs. The first door stood open, revealing what might have been once a study but was now a museum to both the odd and the mundane. It was though a great number of people had emptied their pockets and arranged the contents haphazardly on shelves.

Jake wandered into the room, rummaging through the bizarre collection.

Evie picked up a pocket watch. It had stopped at twenty past two.

“That was when it happened,” she said.

Jake spun around. “I take it back. You can be quiet.” He squinted at the watch. “What’s that?”

“It was my father’s. I had just asked him what time it was. The train was stopping and I thought maybe we’d reached Kansas City. But it was still so early. ‘It’s two fifteen,’ he said. And then the train stopped. And…” She gestured around the room. “This is all that’s left of them.”

Jake picked up a folded piece of paper off the desk. He’d seen it before. The guard on the train had tried to get him to sign it. Said it could be worth something someday.

He unfolded it. A crumpled wanted poster, offering a $500 reward. Surely he was worth more than that. He crushed the paper into a ball and dropped it on the floor.

“There’s nothing in here,” he said and headed for the doorway.

“What about this?” Evie asked.

Jake turned around to find Evie holding a revolver. “You know how to use that?” he asked.

“More or less.” She held it hesitantly. Her expression changed from unease to terror. She aimed the gun at him and pulled back the hammer with both thumbs.

Several questions ran through Jake’s mind. His eyes darted to the crumpled poster, still on the floor. “What are you—?”

“Move!” she shouted.

He got that feeling, like spiders crawling up his spine. There was someone, or something, behind him. And the girl meant to shoot it. Not him. It. So he should move. This revelation came too late.

Something plunged into his back. So this is what being stabbed feels like. But it wasn’t like that. It was like icy darkness wrapping itself around his heart and beginning to squeeze. The room faded out as he struggled to breathe. There was a heaviness in his right hand. A heavy, metal candlestick.

He swung it back at his attacker, connecting with something solid. The icy grip released. A bullet whizzed by him. The floor rushed up at him. Distantly, two more gunshots.

Jake woke up on the floor. His gaze drifted from the ceiling to the doorway. The door had been closed and a chair wedged against it.

“Oh my God, I was afraid you were dead,” Evie said, leaning into his field of view with her hand on his arm.

“Not yet.” He pushed her away and sat up, rubbing his sternum. “Is that what happened to the others?”

“Yes. Well, no. With them it was a lot faster.”

“Lucky them.”

She looked down at the floor. “I don’t know about that. When that thing reached into them, it ripped something out of them. Like it tore their souls out. And they felt every bit of it.”

“Their souls, huh?” Jake got to his feet and went back to poking around on the shelves. “Maybe it couldn’t find mine.”

Behind him, Evie asked, “What makes you say that?”

He shrugged. “I’m not exactly a good guy.”

“Jake?”

“What?”

Then it hit him. He’d never told her his name. He turned around. She had the wanted poster in one hand. And the gun in the other.

She shook the poster at him. “Is it true?”

“That I killed eight people?”

She glanced at the paper. “This says seven.”

“Matter of opinion.” He glanced at the gun. “You going to shoot me?”

“Do I need to?”

“Up to you. But if I was going to kill you, I would have done it already.”

“Then why didn’t you?”

“Didn’t need to. I mean, I thought about it. You’re pretty noisy. But it seemed like more trouble than it was worth. I’m starting to reevaluate that decision.”

“So you still might try to kill me?” she started moving towards the door.

He looked at her. His expression shifted to something bordering on confusion. “No. I don’t think I will.”

“Well, you’ll forgive me if I don’t believe you.” She pulled the chair away from the door.

“Don’t go out there.” He took a step toward her.

She steadied her aim. He stopped.

“Stay away from me.” She opened the door and disappeared out into the hall.

After a minute, Jake looked out into the hall. Evie was nowhere to be found. She was either hiding somewhere, or she was dead. Jake was no longer sure which one he hoped for.

He headed back downstairs. That thing was still out there, and Jake needed a better defense than a candlestick. At the bottom of the stairs, he made a left and pushed open a door. He was rewarded with a dusty and disused kitchen. Perfect. On the counter, several knives sat in a wooded block. He pulled a few out, testing them for optimal weight and balance. He ended up with an eight inch butcher knife that felt right for slashing a few throats.

Now he just hoped that thing had a throat.

He went through the mansion, creeping around corners and throwing open doors. He found only dust and silence.

“Where are you, you bastard?” he yelled at an empty room. He spun back around to the doorway.

And found himself face to inky blackness with the thing.

“Oh, there you are,” he said, sounding much calmer than he felt. He slashed the knife across what would have been its throat. The blade passed through harmlessly, like trying to cut smoke.

The thing did not appreciate the attempt. It advanced on him.

“Oh shit.” He backed into the room, looking for an escape, a better weapon, anything.

He backed into a window, the panes rattling as he hit it. He turned, unlatched it, and swung it open. It was a ten foot drop from the windowsill to the ground. He didn’t even look back at the thing.

He just jumped.

Jake rolled when he hit the ground and managed to avoid stabbing himself with the butcher knife still in his hand. As soon as he was upright again, he took off for the train, limping slightly. It hadn’t been a perfect landing.

When he reached the train, he vaulted over a coupling and dove behind a passenger car. He sat there, panting. It wasn’t like this would provide any more cover. There was nowhere safe. Not in this place.

He got up and crept along behind the train, heading for the back of the train. Fog and crazy circles be damned, he was getting out of there. He followed the tracks, fully expecting them to lead him back around, but continuing out of pure stubbornness.

As soon as the train faded into the fog behind him, he could see something rising up ahead. It wasn’t the train, coming around again. It was a railroad bridge, crossing a mist-filled ravine he couldn’t see across.

He was about to cross the bridge when he hear the distinct sound of a gunshot, followed by a distant scream.  Jake stopped. He turned around and he ran back along the tracks to the mansion.

Another shot rang out as he sprinted up the walkway. Assuming the revolver was fully loaded when she picked it up, she only had one bullet left.

And she used it just as Jake shoved the heavy front door open. It flew from where she cowered behind the dusty piano, straight through the thing moving ever closer, past Jake’s head, and embedded itself in the far wall.

The shadow pulled itself together, coalescing into a solid form, as it reached toward Evie. Its inky fingers grazed her blouse. Jake took a running leap and jumped onto the thing’s back, stabbing the knife down into whatever it could find.

“Run!” he yelled at Evie.

She scrambled up from behind the piano and fled the room. The thing stayed solid long enough to throw Jake into the door frame. He grabbed a book that had been knocked on the floor and hurled it at the thing. It hit the wall ineffectually. He rolled over and crawled out of the room, pulling himself up on the door frame.

Evie was heading for the stairs. Jake grabbed her hand.

“Not that way.” He pulled her out the front door and down the walkway.

“Where are we going?”

“We’re getting the hell out of here.”

She broke into a run to keep up and squeezed his hand tighter. “You came back for me. Why?”

“I’m just as confused about it as you are.”

They reached the train and headed down the tracks, into the fog.

“Doesn’t this just go around?”

“It didn’t five minutes ago.”

Just as Jake started to think that the tracks would lead them back around, the bridge rose up in the mist. They paused at the edge of it.

“Where does it go?” Evie asked.

“I don’t know. Anywhere but here.” He glanced back in the fog. Something dark was following them. He turned to Evie and pushed her onto the bridge. “Go. Run. Don’t look back.”

She looked back. The thing grew closer. “Wait, what are you going to do?”

“Buy you some time. Now get going.”

She took off across the bridge, disappearing into the fog. Jake stood his ground between the rails, clutching the knife in one hand. The thing paused in front of him for a moment, as though confused by his defiance.

Then it lunged.

It plunged one inky hand into his chest. There was that icy grip, slowly squeezing his heart. But it was different now, like it was trying to rip something out of him. He swung the knife up driving it into what should be the thing’s heart.

And everything faded to black.

He woke up in the grass. He blinked as the sun shone down through wisps of cloud. Evie leaned into his field of view.

“Oh my God, you’re alive!”

He sat up and looked around. Miles of green fields spread out around them. Just ahead, the railroad bridge crossed a river and the tracks meandered off through a benign landscape. The breeze sent tendrils of fog swirling into oblivion. No train sat on the tracks. No houses for miles.

“Where are we?” he asked.

“I don’t know. But I think we’re out.”

He rubbed his sternum. “How did I get here?”

“I dragged you. You’re heavy, you know.”

He looked at her. “You went back for me?”

“I thought I owed you that.” She looked around. The breeze blew loose strands of her blonde hair across her face. “So what do we do now?”

“I have no idea.”