Paul Kohler - The Borrowed Souls, A Novel

“Hey, bring that back,” I yelled.

Again, I knew it was useless with all these people around, but there had to be something I could be doing. This was my stuff, and I wasn’t going to idly sit around while they continued to crate up all of my things.

“This should freak them out plenty,” I chuckled. I moved to the stack of boxes and began to unpack them, placing the items back in their original locations as best as my memory served.

After freely unpacking two boxes, the third box in the stack became frozen in place. I quickly realized that I was no longer alone and turned to find a female detective staring right through me at all the books that I’d just unpacked.

“Would you be a dear and bring me a few more boxes so I can continue living my life?” I said sarcastically.

“Hey, Franklin. Come in here for a second?” she called out to one of the other detectives. She stood motionless, perplexed. Within moments Franklin, the same guy who had just been in here, stepped back into my now overly crowded study.

“What can I do for you, Detective?” he asked.

“Didn’t I… ask you to box up everything in this office?” she asked.

Franklin glanced at the bookshelves that once again hosted a number of my personal effects. He nodded. “Yeah. Simmons and I both were in here a few hours ago and everything should’ve been… wow, that’s weird.”

“Weird? Explain.”

“Sorry, Detective, but it’s just… we had everything boxed up in here. I swear. I was just in here a few minutes ago, and—”

“Does this look like everything is boxed up?” The detective interrupted him and motioned to the bookshelves.

“Um, no. I’ll, um, get it done right away,” Franklin said, clearly embarrassed.

“And make it quick. Transport is supposed to be here within the hour, and all this needs to get to the crime lab ASAP.”

Hearing that, the gravity of the situation really hit home. I was about to lose everything I’ve ever owned, and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it.

Determined to at least slow them down, I darted from room to room, looking for any unoccupied space. Stepping into the master closet, I found all of my clothes had been boxed, along with all of my hats. As fast as I could, I rehung everything I could that had hangers. I took the box of hats and just dumped them on the floor. As I stepped back into the master bedroom, the smile on my face vanished. Two movers were hauling out our bedroom furniture.

I ran past them and into the living room and found that half of the furniture had already been taken out of the apartment. As soon as the two guys carrying the mattress walked out the front door, I found myself alone. I grabbed as many boxes as I could, ran them back into the bedroom, and scattered their contents across the bedroom floor.

“You know, you should be careful with that stuff,” a voice came from behind me. Startled and caught off guard, I turned so fast I nearly lost my balance. Hauser was leaning against the wall, picking at the cuticles on his left hand.

“What… what are you doing here?” I asked.

“I should ask you the same. Don’t you have a job to do?”

“I, uh, I’ll get there. I just want to… find something in here,” I stammered.

“You know, Jack, all of these things, these possessions, they don’t mean a thing. They’re all items that were once yours and Cyndi’s, but not anymore.”

“Then what’s going to happen to them? Neither of us have any family,” I said.

“Does it matter, Jack? Does it really matter what’s gonna happen to any of it? It’ll all probably be donated after it sits in some police storage warehouse for ten years. And that’s something that neither you nor I can control.”

“But it’s my stuff,” I pleaded.

“And now it’s not. I hate to be so direct about this, but the moment you died, you lost everything. You lost your right to possess. You lost your right to live.” Hauser paused. “Listen, buddy, I know where you’re coming from. I’ve been there many times before. You can do this.”

“I don’t understand. How is it that you’ve been here many times? Didn’t you become a collector something like two hundred years ago?”

“Yeah, I only personally went through this once, and it was more than two hundred years ago. Obviously things were different back then. But I still experienced the loss that you are experiencing now. Through the years though, through all of the trainings that I’ve done, I experienced this same thing over and over again, albeit secondhand through my trainees. I’ve had to walk their feelings through to the other side, just like I am with you right now. And let me tell you, buddy, you have it easy. When I made the transition, my trainer was a complete asshole. He used the tough love approach. And trust me, you would much prefer me than him.”

“Your trainer, is he still around?” I asked.

Hauser paced around the room almost as if he were looking for an exit. “Yes and no. He still exists, but he’s no longer a trainer. But enough about him and me. This is about you, and letting go.”

I nodded. “Isn’t there anything, just one single item, that I can keep? You know, as some kind of memento?”

Hauser shook his head and walked toward the door. “Sorry, bub. No bueno.”

“But Wilson had the coin. How was he able to keep that after he died?”

“Well, that doesn’t really count. And I think you know why.”

“No, please enlighten me,” I said, beginning to feel frustration build.

“The coin, along with many other items, are tools of the trade. They each do something special in the aid of soul collecting. With more experience, you will be able to gain more items as you go along.”

I knew the coin was able to bring back certain memories of the person’s past, but what did the rosary do, I wondered. “So, nothing of my own, not even an—”

“Nothing,” Hauser said with finality and walked out of the bedroom.

Before I could follow him, the female detective stepped into the room. The shocked look on her face was severely comical.

“Franklin!” she yelled.

As much as I wanted to hang back and watch Franklin fumble with an excuse, I wanted to—no, I needed to—continue the conversation with Hauser, so I followed him into the living room.

“Listen, Jack. I understand what you’re going through. Trust me, I get it. But the more you come back here, to your old life, the more difficult this transition is going to be for you. What you need to do right now is to think of a different place and jump there. You mustn’t come back here again. Ever. It’ll do you no good. Besides, within a week or two, this place will be cleared out completely. There’ll be nothing here for you to come back to.”

Feeling defeated, I nodded slightly. “It’s just so difficult, you know?”

“I do. But each of us handles this transition differently,” Hauser said as he glanced at his pocket watch. “Back in my day, this part of the transition was fairly easy for me. My background and heritage was—how should I say this?—different from your own. We put far less value in personal possessions than the world does today. To give up everything that I owned… let’s just say I didn’t give it a second thought.”

“Then how can you relate to my difficulty here?” I asked.

“It’s the vices that I struggled with,” Hauser said. He looked at me and smiled as he patted at his shirt pocket, looking for something. He continued to pat down his body, into his pants pockets, until he found what he was looking for. He slipped out a pack of gum and put a piece into his mouth. “It’s the vices that will kill you, let me tell you. Listen, Jack, regardless of how different our situations were, I know one thing: you’ll make it. You’ll just have to trust yourself and let go.”