My Soul to Take

Jake Barlow awoke as the train abruptly came to a stop. The door slid open. They must have reached their final destination—his final destination.  He looked up from where he sat on the floor. For the past six hundred miles, a ruddy-faced guard had been throwing him glares and telling him to shut up. But now, he was nowhere to be found.

Jake stood and shuffled over to the open door. His ankles were chained together, as were his wrists. A chain ran from him to a ring imbedded in the train car wall. He had just enough range to get up to the door, but not quite out of it.

There was no one outside either. The door must have been unlatched and slid open when they stopped. The sky was overcast as though it had recently been raining, but there was no sound of drops hitting the train car’s roof. There was no sound at all.

“Hello?” he ventured, cracking the silence like an egg.

No response.

Some distance away from the tracks, a sprawling grey mansion rose up out of the dreary landscape. Jake looked around the car, until his eyes landed on something shiny. Keys. The guard must have dropped them before he vanished. Jake unshackled himself and jumped down out of the car.

He walked down along the length of the train, peering into the other cars. No one. Even the locomotive was abandoned. He was the only one there. Wherever “there” was.

In every direction was a dense fog. The only thing visible beyond the train was the old mansion. If he tried to go anywhere else, he would probably end up lost and dead in the wilderness.

As he turned to walk away from the train, he kicked something metallic. He knelt down and picked up a pocket watch. It had stopped at 2:48. He looked up at the sky. With the clouds and the heavy fog, there was no way to know what time it was now. Dropping the broken watch back in the dirt, he headed for the mansion.

The front door creaked as he pushed it open. He stepped into a massive foyer from which three hallways branched off to the right, left, and straight ahead. A grand staircase forked down on either side of the central corridor. Standing still in the room, he listened. Nothing.

A heavy thud behind him made him jump. The door had swung shut of its own volition, plunging him into shadow. High windows above the door illuminated the staircase, but the light did not reach to the floor.

He headed down the central hallway, passing statues and pieces of furniture, all draped with white cloths. At each door he came upon, he tried the handle, but found them all locked. Four doors, three tables, two chairs, four statues. Nothing particularly interesting. The hallway ended at a T-junction. Jake took the left path. It circled around, past more locked doors, and ended back in the foyer. It was safe to say that the hallway on the right would do the same.

Upstairs it was, then. At the first door on the left, he went to try the knob. The door drifted open at the contact. Inside was some kind of library, with bookshelves lining the walls. A desk sat in center of the room, with various objects strewn across it. The thing that caught Jake’s eye was thick book with papers and things jutting out of it. He thumbed through the pages. It was some kind of scrapbook, but there didn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to the entries. One page held a family photograph, another held a yellowed newspaper clipping. The collection was all different people from different places and different years. Jake turned the page to a photograph of a woman and a familiar looking man. It took him a minute before he recognized the ruddy-faced guard from the train. A page later was a wanted poster. His own wanted poster. It wasn’t attached to the page like the others, instead it was just shoved in hastily. Angrily.

Jake smoothed out the corners of the page. “$500 Reward,” it said in big, enticing letters. Below that, once it had everyone’s attention, “Jacob Barlow, wanted for seven counts of murder.” The accompanying photograph was not the most flattering.

He slammed the book shut. Somewhere behind him, something moved.

He froze and warily looked back toward the door. Nothing. Leaning out into the hall, he thought he heard it again. From somewhere downstairs.

As quietly as possibly, he crept down the staircase. There was no sign of anyone. He walked halfway down the central corridor. Four doors, three tables, two chairs, three statues.

He stopped.

Three statues.

An overwhelming sense of dread came over him. He bolted for the front door. Outside, he wondered what he, of all people, would be so afraid of. But he didn’t stop running. He reached the train, vaulted over the coupling between two cars, and dove behind a car on the other side.

“What the hell am I doing?” he asked. There was no reason to think that he’d be any safer here.

Something crunched in the gravel under the train car. Taking a deep breath, he reached around the wheels and dragged it out. Whatever it was punched him in the nose, forcing him to drop it.

“Who are you? What do you want?” it asked.

Jake blinked a few times. It was a girl, somewhere between fifteen and twenty. She scurried away from him 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.

“Who are you?” he asked. “What the hell is this place?”

“I was hoping you knew,” she replied.

This conversation was getting nowhere. He sighed and extended a hand. “Jake.”

She stared at his hand for a minute and apprehensively took it. “Evie.”

“All right, now we’re getting somewhere. How long have you been here?”

“Not long. I heard someone coming, so I hid. You?”

He looked around the train car and back at the mansion. “Maybe an hour. Maybe two.” He looked back at her. She was staring. “What?” he asked.

“You look familiar. We haven’t met before, have we?”

“Not likely. Maybe you’ve seen one of my posters.”

“Are you famous or something?”

He looked down. “In a manner of speaking.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Never mind. Forget it,” he said. “Have you seen anyone else?”

“No. I thought I was all alone until you came charging out like a man possessed.”

Jake nodded like he was putting something together. He wasn’t. “Right. How exactly did you get here?”

She frowned out at him. “I assumed the same way as you. Do you not remember?”

“I must have fallen asleep before we got here. When I woke up, everyone else was gone.”

“Oh. Well, I was walking home across the neighbor’s field. I must have gotten lost in the fog. I tried, but I couldn’t seem to find my way back.”

“And this house wouldn’t by chance belong to your neighbor?”

Evie shook her head. “I’ve never seen it before.” She pointed to the train car they leaned against. “And the nearest railroad is twenty miles away. I know I didn’t walk twenty miles in the fog.”

“So you’re saying we don’t know anything.”

Evie shrugged. “Sorry.”

Jake peered back around the train. “I do know that there’s something in there. Something bad. Trust me, I’d know.”

“I know we’ve just gone over how much we don’t know, but do we have any idea why there is a train in front of this house in the middle of nowhere?” Evie asked.

“It got lost, same as you,” Jake said.

“How exactly does a train get lost? It’s on tracks.”

“That just means it goes where the track leads.”

She gave him a skeptical look. "How do you know it wasn't here to begin with?"

"Because I was on it," Jake replied. "And I know that it started in Denver."

"You were on the train?" She asked. "Where were you going?"

The gas chamber, he thought.

"Chicago," he said.

"Why? If you don't mind me asking."

"I had an appointment."

"You're probably going to miss it now."

"I don't really mind." Jake leaned around the train car. Something moved near the house. He ducked back behind the wheels.

“What is it?”

“Something bad.”

Evie crawled back under the car and looked around. “Where is it?”

“I don’t know, it was just—”

Evie shrieked as something grabbed her and dragged her to the far side of the car. Jake dove after her, but she had disappeared. He heard another scream coming from the house. Sliding on gravel, he ran towards the building and shoved open the door.

Inside, it was even darker than before. Outside, it had been so gradual, he hadn’t even noticed.  Now, the shadows had taken over and the light had retreated.

The screaming had stopped. Jake turned down one hall and started banging on doors. Locked. He reached a set of double doors and threw his weight into the spot where they connected. After a few impacts, something cracked and the doors swung open.

A dark-paneled dining room lay before him. The table and chairs were all covered in the same cloths as the other furniture. Not being a fan of surprises, Jake tore the cloths off of the furniture and threw them aside. The last thing he needed was his adversary playing hide and seek under the table.

The room was devoid of any life or anything other than furniture. There were, however, another set of double doors at the back of the room. These were unlocked. Behind them was a kitchen, in the same state of disuse as the rest of the house. But what interested Jake was the wooden block with several large knives stuck in it.

He selected a large butcher knife, and resumed his search. Around a corner in the hall was a statue covered in a sheet. Something moved underneath it. Jake raised the knife and ripped down the sheet, eliciting a yelp from whatever was hiding there.

Evie cowered beside the base of the statue, arms up to protect her head.

Jake let out a breath and lowered the knife. “Jesus.”

Evie lowered her arms and looked up. “Oh, it’s you.”

“Yes, it’s me. What the hell happened to you?”

Evie stood up, shaking. “I… I don’t know. Something had me, but I fought, and I got away. Somehow.” She looked down at the knife. “What are you going to do with that?”

“I’m going to find this thing, and I’m going to kill it.”

“Can you?”

“Yes.”

“Are you sure? I just mean, it wasn’t a person that took me. It was… something else.”

He made a slight stabbing motion with the knife. “Shouldn’t be a problem.”

“Do you even know what you’re doing?”

He looked her straight in the eye. “Yes.”

She shifted uncomfortably and looked away. “If you say so.”

He headed down the hall. “We’re going to find this thing, and we’re going to end it. Stay close.”

After a bit more wandering around the house, they found themselves upstairs in the library. Jake ducked behind the desk, looking under it and digging through drawers. Evie absentmindedly looked at things on the desktop.

“So, you never did tell me.”

“Tell you what?” Jake asked, head down, looking through the random objects in a drawer.

“What you’re famous for.”

He looked up at her and froze. She was leafing through the scrapbook. The one that contained his wanted poster.

“I don’t think there’s anything in here,” he said, standing up and heading for the door.

“It can’t be that bad.” She had turned to the page, but wasn’t looking at it.

He gestured out the open door. “Let’s just go. There’s nothing useful here.”

“Jake…” she said.

“What?”

She was looking at something behind him. “Run.”

There weren’t a lot of options for running. The only place he could go was back into the room, where he would be trapped anyway. But in the split second he pondered this, it became a nonissue when something plunged into his back.

His first thought was, So this is what being stabbed feels like. But with his next thought, he realized that this was something completely different. It was more like someone was squeezing his heart. He couldn’t breathe and an icy chill spread through his veins.

Distantly, he became aware that the butcher knife was still in his hand. He swung it down and back as the room faded to black.

Jake woke up on the floor. The first thing he saw was Evie crouched beside him, clutching the knife. Some part of his brain decided that she had learned what he’d done, and was going to kill him. His eyes shot open and he tried to make his escape.

“Whoa, whoa, calm down,” she said, putting a hand on his shoulder. “You’re fine. Relax.”

His eyes darted from her face to the knife. “So you’re not going to…?”

She looked at the knife and set it down. “No! Why would I?”

He blinked a few times. “No reason. I just thought…”

“You thought I was going to stab you? Why?”

“Well, it’s what I would have done.”

“What?”

Jake shook his head. “Nothing. Never mind. I’m kind of… mixed up right now.”

“That thing was going to kill you,” Evie said, standing up.

Jake sat up and rested his head in his hands. “It feels like it did.”

“You’re lucky you managed to…” Evie drifted off.

“Managed to what?” Jake asked, not looking up. No response. “Evie?” He lifted his head.

Evie was standing by the desk. Next to the macabre photo album. And it was still open to that page. She looked from the book to him. “Oh my God.” Her eyes moved to the knife on the floor between them.

“Evie…” he said, not moving.

“Is it true?”

“That I killed eight people?”

She glanced back at the book. “It says seven.”

Jake shrugged. “Matter of opinion.”

“Is it true?”

“If I say yes, are you going to go for that knife?”

She shifted nervously. “Maybe. Are you going to try to stop me?”

“No.”

She blinked. “No to it being true, or no to stopping me.”

“I won’t stop you.”

“So it is true?”

“Yes.”

Evie lunged for the knife, grabbing it off of the floor. Jake didn’t move.

“All right,” he said, “you have your knife. But I’m not going to hurt you.”

“Why should I believe you?”

“If I was going to, I would have done it already.”

“Why should I believe anything you say?”

“Because I’m trying to get us out of this place!” Jake said, standing up. He wavered slightly and grabbed a nearby bookcase for support. “If you want to die alone at the hands of that thing, go ahead and kill me. Otherwise, let’s find a way out of here.”

Evie lowered the knife. “Fine.”

Jake held his hands up. “Look, I think I hurt it before. If we can hurt it, we can kill it. And then maybe we can get out of here. You can go home, and I can go literally anywhere else.” He turned and walked out the door.

Evie went to follow him, but stopped in the doorway. “Why did you do it?”

Jake stopped and turned around. “What?”

“Kill all those people. Why did you do it?”

He thought for a second. “I don’t think I have an answer you’ll like.”

“I don’t care if I like it.”

Jake sighed. “The first one, well, I didn’t have much of a choice. The others, I had a choice. And I probably made the wrong one.”

“That’s not much of an answer.”

“I told you that you wouldn’t like it.” He threw his arms up. “What do you want me say? That taking a life was hard and it tore me up inside? Maybe when you’re in a filthy trench in some godforsaken field, and someone’s going to put a bullet in your brain if you don’t take him out first. Maybe that breaks you a little. But you know what? It gets easier. Each one was easier than the last until at number eight, I didn’t even care anymore. There’s nothing left in me to break. Is that the answer you want?”

“So why not kill me?”

“I’m not going to kill a kid. I’m not a complete monster.”

She studied him for a moment. “No, but you’re a liar.”

“What?”

She took a couple steps toward him. “You said you don’t care.”

He shrugged. “I don’t.”

“Then why are you crying?”

He blinked and wiped his eyes. He hadn’t even noticed until she pointed it out. “It’s this place…”

“Then we’d better get out of here before you start feeling something,” she said with a half-smile, handing him the knife. “I think you can use this better than I can.”

“You’re not afraid I’ll hurt you?”

“If you were going to, you would have already.”

He nodded. “Let’s get the hell out of here.