The Soul Borrowers

Depending on the moment, his new old home was either a dream come true or a Hieronymus Bosch painting come to life. Stacks of unpacked boxes loomed over him in every room, empty shelves mocked him, misplaced furniture made his back ache. On top of everything, the air conditioning wasn’t working and the mid-summer Minneapolis heat and humidity was stifling. The only bright spot in the day was watching his wife, who had stripped down to one of his “Italian mobster” T-shirts and very short shorts. Earlier, he’d made the mistake of getting caught leering at his sweat soaked, curvy Izzy, and was met with a “touch-me-and-I-will-kill-you” glare that cut that line of inquiry off at the knees.

             “You should be unpacking the kitchen not putting books away. They can wait,” shouted the testy Izzy from the downstairs bathroom.

            The lean, sandy-haired Matt Ketchum knew she was right, and that’s what irritated him. “Just a minute,” he replied.

            He had pulled out and arranged all but one last book that lay at the bottom of the box. It wasn’t one he’d recalled seeing before. Picking up the aging hardcover, he turned to read the spine. “The Soul Borrowers by Arthur Edward Singletary.” He was about to call out to Izzy and ask if the book was hers when a photograph fell from between the pages and floated to the floor. Picking it up, the first thing he saw was the image of a cherubic little blond girl around three in pajamas standing up in her crib. It didn’t take any guessing to know this was a photo of Izzy as a child, playfully mugging for the camera. Matt made his best educated guess that this was an evening when little Izzy wouldn’t go to sleep and for whatever reason, a harried and sleep deprived Mom decided to take a picture. Then he noticed something in a corner of the room, a shadow that seemed to have the shape of a very tall person clothed in black gauze. He squinted. Pulled the photo closer. At one glance, it was simply the dark corner of the room that the flash did not reach, but at another there was a human shape to the black mass just to the left of Izzy.

            “Having fun?” asked an exasperated Izzy leaning in the doorway, her pale skin glistening.

            He looked at her and then back at the photo. “What is this?”

            She tiredly wiped her forehead and came in to the room, taking the photo from Matt and examining it closely. Her expression subtly transitioned from irritation to confusion to consternation. “That’s me, but…. What the hell is that?” she asked, pointing to the shadow.

            Matt shrugged. “I have no idea, but it’s creepy.”

            Izzy turned the photo over and read the inscription. “’Isabella. July 1987. Duluth.’ I was three. That’s my mother’s writing, but it doesn’t explain anything. Where did you find this?”

            He held out the book. “It fell out of here. It’s called “The Soul Borrowers.” Ring a bell?”

            Izzy took the book from Matt and leafed through it. “Yeah, it does ring a bell. It was one of my mother’s books. She’d only saved a few when she went into the nursing home, but I remember this was one of them. In fact, a few days before she died, she said I should read it.” Izzy looked up at Matt. “She was saying some crazy stuff around that time so I didn’t think anything of it. I just brought it home with everything else she had, which wasn’t much.” She inspected the photo again. “Wow. Creepy is right. Maybe I should read this.”

            That night after showers and dinner, Izzy and Matt lay in bed, Matt playing a game on his phone while Izzy became lost in the novel propped up on her stomach.

            “So?” asked Matt.

            “So what?”

            “The book. What’s it about?”

            “I’m only 30 pages in, but it’s a kind of sci fi horror mishmash. There are these entities or beings called “Soul Borrowers” who come to earth from another dimension where there is a gigantic, never-ending battle between good and evil. The Soul Borrowers come to earth at night and “borrow” living peoples’ souls and train them to fight for the dark side. When the people die, their souls are owned and they go to this alternative universe where they are warriors for the evil side in the battle.”

            There were several beats of silence.

            “Mmm,” said Matt. “I can’t tell if it’s one of the stupidest plots I’ve ever heard or one of the most brilliant.”

            “The writing isn’t bad, but it also comes across as something personal, like someone recounting a story that actually happened to them. There’s a pain in the voice.”

            “Anything about the author?”

            Izzy flipped to the back of the book. “Not much. Arthur Edward Singletary. Born in London in 1955. Attended Oxford then post-graduate studies in theoretical physics at Cal-Tech. Retired and currently lives in Big Sur. The Soul Borrowers is his only book.”

            Matt tapped on his screen. “Wow. He was nominated for a Nobel prize in physics in 1982. Abruptly left Cal-Tech in 1996 shortly after publication of his book “The Soul Borrowers” for unknown reasons and moved to his current home in Big Sur. He cut off all ties to academia.” There was thunder in the distance as a summer storm began its journey across the Twin Cities. “Sounds like a temperamental genius.”

            “He sure has a vivid and dark imagination for a physicist.”

            “It’s going to storm. I’m afraid. Hold me?”

            The childish ploy for sex seemed to exasperate Izzy. “I’m worn out, Babe, and kind of into the book. Tomorrow night. Okay?”

            Matt turned over without a word and clicked off his lamp.

            “No.” Surfacing. “No, stop.” Eyes blinking madly. Matt pushed himself up on his elbows. Izzy was next to him flailing in a nightmare induced spasmodic fit and clearly frightened. “No, stay away,” she yelled. Matt reached out a hand to try and slowly nudge her back to reality, but the moment his finger touched her skin, she bolted up, eyes bulging and screaming in terror. It startled Matt to the point that he slipped out of bed and stood with his arms out trying to flag down his wife and steer her back to reality. The scream stopped abruptly, and she sat in a state of confusion, vacantly scanning the room as if she’d woken up in Neverland. Matt got back on the bed and she fell into his arms and started to cry.

            The nightmares persisted over the next week. Izzy was exhausted and anxious during the day, and her pale complexion and declining energy level started to concern Matt. On the fourth night, striving to make connections between the photo, the odd book and his wife’s dreams, Matt waited until Izzy fell asleep and then positioned himself in a chair in the corner of the bedroom with his prized Nikon V2 set for continuous shooting. Time passed like cold honey, and Matt had to change positions frequently to keep from dozing off.  Around 2:30, Izzy began murmuring and turning from her stomach to her back. Her voice grew louder in protestation. “Stop,” she called out. “Stay away from me.” Matt pointed the camera at the bed. He looked through the viewfinder but could see nothing. “Get the hell away from me.” He pushed the button and a quick series of flashes lit up the darkened bedroom, temporarily blinding him. Izzy instantly went quiet. He tried to adjust his eyes to the darkness, but could only see black and a deeper black. Soon he felt a pressure on his right shoulder, as if someone was leaning against him. There was the smell of rotten meat.

            “Do not interfere again,” whispered a voice, as if it was drifting up from the bottom of a deep well. A blanket of cold fear wrapped around him, and he shivered uncontrollably, the camera dropping from his trembling hands.

            “Matt?” called Izzy. “Matt, where are you?”

            He fought through the paralyzing fear that had bound him. “Here. I’m right here, babe.” He pushed himself up, rushed to the bed and wrapped his arms around his shaken wife.

            “Could I speak to Arthur Edward Singletary please?” Matt’s palms were damp as he held the phone to his ear. The intensity of the early morning sun predicted another hot and humid day.

            There was a moment of silence on the other end, then a hesitant man’s voice responded. “Speaking.”

            “Mr. Singletary, you don’t know me, but my name’s Matt Ketchum, my wife’s name is Izzy, and I’m calling from Minneapolis in regard to your book, “The Soul Borrowers.”

            “Izzy,” said the man as if grasping for a bit of information out of the air. “Is that short for Isabella?”

            “Yes.”

            “Is your wife Isabella Corsini?”

            Astonished, Matt looked at his phone as if it had tried to bite him. “Corsini is her maiden name. How do you know all of this?”

            “We met, perhaps 25 years ago,” he said in his measured English accent. “She was a child then, of course, but her mother came to me for help. Have the nightmare’s returned?”

            “Yes, but—”

            “Listen carefully, Mr. Ketchum. I am going to take the soonest flight I can from San Francisco to Minneapolis. I’ll text you the details shortly. I am the only person who can help her.”

            “Help her? Help her from what?”

             “The fact that you’re calling me means you already know the answer to that.”

            Matt found Izzy sitting on the living room couch staring blankly out the picture window, the Nikon resting in her lap.  He sat next to her and put his arm around her shoulder. “Izzy…”

            “What’s happening to me, Matt? Am I possessed?” He pulled her closer but could offer no response. She turned to face him, her tired, red eyes welling up. “What is that thing?”

            “I don’t know yet,” he responded. “Don’t ask me why, but I called the author of “The Soul Borrowers” today. He’s coming out here from San Francisco to help us.”

            A thousand questions converged at once and clogged her ability to formulate words, so she gave up and sobbed quietly against Matt’s chest.

            The next afternoon was muggy and drizzly as Matt drove back from airport with Andrew Singletary hunched in the passenger seat. The small man looked to be in his late seventies or early eighties, with well-worn, out of fashion clothes loosely draped over a bony body. His face was deeply creased with age, but his sunken brown eyes were vibrant and probing, with stories of tragedy behind them that Matt could not even guess at.

            “I came to Minneapolis to help Isabella at her mother’s request,” he said softly, breaking the silence.

            “Mr. Singletary, can you please tell me what’s going on? Some kind of…force or being is attacking my wife at night.” From his shirt pocket he pulled out the creased print he’d made of the attack the night before and handed it to Andrew. The old man fished glasses out from his jacket and studied the photograph. A black cloud hovered over Izzy in bed, and like a small tornado, a thin black line stretched from the ominous mass down to Izzy’s chest. “It spoke to me.”

            Andrew’s head turned and his thin lips parted. “It spoke to you? What did it say?”

            “Do not interfere again. It sounded like it was coming from my own thoughts, not like a voice,”

            Andrew set the picture down on his lap and took off his glasses. “What I’m about to tell you, Matt, will make me sound like I’m insane. I know this, but every word of it is the truth.” He paused, searching for the right starting point. “The Soul Borrowers is classified as fiction, but I can tell you that it is not. What happens in the book happened to me and my wife, Jane. As a scholar, I could never come out and claim that the story of the Soul Borrowers was real. I would have been shunned at best, locked up in a mental ward at worse. It is, however, very real.”

            Rain started falling harder, and the wipers became metronomes keeping the beat of Andrew’s tale.

            “After fifteen years of marriage, my wife Jane began having nightmares, very disturbing and dreadful nightmares. We tried sleeping pills, marijuana, alcohol, you name it, nothing could rid her of the terrifying night visions, and her health started to decline. She had always been an active person, full of energy, talkative, but soon after the nightmares began, she would spend her days in bed watching TV.

Being a researcher, I started to do research. I wasn’t even sure what I was looking for, but I followed every thread to its end. Then, I came across a paper in a defunct psychiatric journal by a Dr. Augustus Clemons from Atlanta, Georgia. The paper he wrote recounted the case of a young man named Paul the Doctor had seen for three years who was experiencing ever intensifying nightmares and deteriorating physical health. Dr. Augustus first diagnosed the problem as sleep paralysis, but soon realized this did not account for Paul’s health problems. Frustrated that tests for other issues all came back negative, he decided as a last resort to try hypnosis.

Well, as I’m sure you already guessed, the hypnotized young man told the stunned psychiatrist the story of the Soul Borrowers, that they came at night and extracted the man’s soul or essence or spirit or energy, whatever you want to call it, and trained it in the dark arts. He said every time it happened, a portion of his energy was lost, and that was why he was growing weaker. When the lessons ended, he said, so would his life.

“What the fuck?” shouted Matt at the windshield.

“I understand your frustration, Matt. Believe me I do, but I must tell you the best part of my discovery. Dr. Clemons asked the hypnotized man if there was any way of defeating the Soul Borrowers, and the man said “yes.” He said, “Love. Pure unselfish love is an emotion that the dark ones do not understand and greatly fear. It is the only thing that will keep them away.”

“What does that mean?”

“Well, I wasn’t sure at first, but it dawned on me that perhaps it meant that I, as the one who most truly loved my wife, I could perhaps protect her with that love. I know how silly this all sounds, but maybe my love could act like a shield for her. So, that night I lay next to my wife after she had gone asleep. I draped an arm over her and concentrated on my love for her, all the years we’d spent together, the wonderful sex, the adventures, the struggles. Then out of a corner of my eye, I saw the darkness take shape over us, like a thundercloud forming in the dark sky. As it hovered, I whispered, “I love this woman. You cannot have her.” I sensed the anger and then fear of the creature as it tried to approach, tried to attack something it did not understand and feared. I was scared out of my wits, actually lost control of my bladder, but I kept repeating that phrase over and over again, until finally, the blackness dissipated like a vapor, and, best of all, never returned.”

“That is freaking amazing.”

“Yes. So, after all of my rambling, I am here to help you perform this relatively simple but lifesaving gesture for your wife. Will you do that for her?”

“What? Of course I will. Are you kidding?”

“No. Unfortunately, I’m not.”

After introductions to Izzy and assurances and several glasses of wine, everyone paused at the kitchen table.

“Mr. Singletary…” began Izzy.

“Please. I’m English, but I’m not your tutor.”

A rare smile creased Izzy’s pale face. “The rain in Spain…Edward. I…I’m having a hard time with all of this, and…I have to tell you, it’s blowing my mind.”

“I would worry about you if it weren’t. You’re experiencing horrific nightmares, your energy level is declining, you were plagued by this as a child—“

“That’s one of the things I don’t understand. If the…love cure works, why is this—?“

“Coming back to haunt you again? I honestly don’t know. Everything about this is new and unexplored, not to mention completely out of the realm of our scientific understanding of reality. All I can convey to you is what worked for my wife and me. And that is why I’m here.”

More wine was poured, more theories discussed, but soon Izzy’s eyes began to droop. Everyone agreed it was time to begin.

A single night-light cast a small glowing ring out into the bedroom. Izzy came out of the bathroom in her nightclothes and lay on her side of the bed. Andrew took up his position in a chair nestled in a corner of the room. Finally, Matt reclined on his side of the bed, wide-eyed and watchful. Fifteen minutes later Matt could hear the unmistakable purring of Izzy as she drifted into sleep. He turned toward her, rested an arm on her midsection and waited.

The temperature in the room began dropping. Out of a corner of his eye, Matt watched as a small dark floating patch began to grow and swirl like black smoke in a breeze. Silent, cold, the presence of the expanding entity above terrified him, but he focused his thoughts on Izzy and their life together. Shutting his eyes tightly, he whispered, “I love this woman. You cannot have her” over and over again. He wanted to scream in terror, but stayed on task, his body trembling, his teeth chattering. Whether it was one minute or thirty minutes later he couldn’t tell, but the fear gradually dissipated and his muscles began relaxing. He tentatively opened an eye and saw that the black entity had disappeared and he could feel the room warming up again. Andrew came to Matt’s side of the bed.

“Matt, it’s gone,” he whispered.

He let go of Izzy, turned over, and sat on the edge of the bed feeling drained. Soon he mustered the energy to speak. “Did it work?”

Before Andrew could answer, Izzy stirred and then sat up in bed.

Matt turned to her. “Izzy, are you okay?”

She managed a barely discernable smile. “I need to pee,” she said, and then got to her feet and walked out of the bedroom. The two men watched her warily, as if awaiting the verdict from the jury foreman. Only seconds after she disappeared, there was a loud and ominous thud, like a bag of wet garbage hitting the ground. The men rushed out of the room. Standing at the bannister overlooking the entryway, Matt froze in horror. Izzy lay motionless on the hardwood floor some ten feet below, her head twisted unnaturally as if that had absorbed the impact.

He groaned and slowly slid down to a sitting position, sobbing into his hands. Standing at the bannister next him, Andrew stared in disbelief at the broken body sprawled on the floor. The elderly man slowly turned his attention away from Izzy to the blubbering wreck crouched below him. He wore an expectant expression.

Matt held out his hands, palms up, as if begging for forgiveness. “I’m having an affair,” he blurted, tears rolling down his flushed cheeks. “I’m sorry. I’m having a goddamn affair.”