Paul Kohler - The Borrowed Souls, A Novel

As I waited, my mind returned to the maternity ward at the hospital. Seeing the complete and utter joy that had spread across Wilma and her husband’s faces would forever grip my soul. I knew it wasn’t their child that I was there to take, but I was certain that I would be destroying another couple’s happy future. I shook my head in disgust as the first bout of shivers rumbled through my body.

Then, suddenly, I was no longer alone. Feeling defeat once again, I looked over at Hauser. He sat next to me, also wearing a parka. How did he know he’d need a jacket?

“Just like you, kid, I landed and jumped back to grab a coat.”

I stared into his eyes, fixing my gaze sternly. “Please don’t make me do it, Hauser.”

“I’m sorry, kid. It’s out of my hands. If you just give me a moment to explain—”

“There are no words that you can say that will change my mind,” I said.

“It doesn’t have to be like that, Jack. If you would just come back to your senses, and away from this godforsaken wasteland, I’m sure that you’ll understand everything. But you just have to let me explain.”

I sat next to Hauser a moment longer before standing. I looked down at him, still sitting cross-legged at the edge of the cliff. “I don’t think so. I believe this will be the last time that we’ll talk for quite some time,” I said.

“Dammit, Jack would you just grow up,” Hauser said.

Without another word, I disappeared.

Back in the city, I descended the grungy stairway into the subway. In all my years living here, I’d only used this form of public transportation a few times. Once, right after Cyndi and I moved into our first apartment, and I thought taking the subway to or from work made the most economical sense. Besides the overcrowded nature, it was the smell and the transient population that curbed my appeal.

The second adventure into the underground came after an out-of-control holiday office party, and was one of the most terrifying experiences of my life. Cyndi and I had been robbed at gunpoint at 1:30 in the morning. After making it out alive, we both vowed never to set foot in the godforsaken place ever again.

Now here I was, going against our agreement from years earlier. I smiled, feeling the irony of the situation. Cyndi and I had said that we’d never again venture into the subway as long as we both lived. Now she was dead and I was… sort of dead.

Hopping over the turnstile, I stepped up to the platform and waited patiently. Glancing at the train schedule as I passed through the entrance, I knew it wouldn’t be long. Within moments I heard the metallic clanking sound to my right as the train came to a halt directly in front of me. I stepped into the first car and quickly turned toward the door. I expected to see Hauser materialize any second, but he was nowhere in sight.

A minute later, the doors closed and the train lurched forward, causing me to stumble back. After regaining my balance, my equilibrium quickly agreed with the forward momentum of the train and I relaxed for the next five minutes. When I felt that we had traveled about halfway toward the next station, I thought about my next destination. A moment later I vanished.

I popped back into reality at the mouth of King’s Cross station. Having been to London numerous times, I was familiar with the tubes.

I rode down an exceedingly long escalator until I reached the landing below. I paused at a monitor displaying the route schedules and noted that a train would be arriving momentarily, but I’d have to hurry. I sprinted through the maze of tile-faced corridors until I arrived at my desired platform.

Having only briefly thought through my plan while I sat on that frigid ice shelf, I wondered if I was just wasting my time, or if jumping from a moving vehicle would actually help conceal my trail from Hauser’s monocle. I remembered him mentioning something about being able to track other soul collectors by the scent they left behind.

The sound of the approaching train grabbed my attention, and within moments I was onboard and sitting next to a man dressed in a pinstripe suit, reading a newspaper. The train was hurtling toward the next station. Again, once we’d traveled through the tunnels for ten or fifteen minutes, a sudden inspiration hit me like the train that I was on. I smiled as my next destination formed in my mind. A moment later I vanished.

I popped directly onto the platform in St. Pancras International Terminal, which just so happened to be the boarding station for the Eurostar. I’d read numerous times about the train and the construction of the Chunnel and felt that this final adventure would be the perfect crescendo in my evasion of Hauser.

As I moved through the crowd along the platform, I had a heightened awareness for Hauser’s presence. Realizing that spotting him in a crowd of so many people would be futile, I relaxed and stood alongside the multitude of people waiting to board the supersonic train to France.

Ten minutes later, boarding had completed and the train was about to depart. Not having a paid seat, I simply mingled about the cabin until all the passengers took their seats. As the train began to inch forward, I found a vacant seat on the aisle and sat down next to a woman, speaking what I believed to be French, on her cell phone.

As the time passed, so did the city. The congestion of row houses gave way to single, freestanding homes, which in turn gave way to farms and fields. An hour and a half later, the train dipped into the ground and began burrowing through the tunnel under the English Channel. After another thirty minutes, I felt confident that I had effectively eluded Hauser’s trace. I had a final destination in mind, but I wasn’t prepared to go there just yet. I had one last stop to make before I was confident that I’d avoided his monocle for good. A moment later I jumped from two hundred feet beneath the surface of the water to nearly a quarter mile above the city streets of New York.

I stood on the 102nd floor of the Empire State Building, the observation deck, and stepped outside. I’d visited the building numerous times through the years, having a great love of the height and view. I walked around the entire perimeter, pausing momentarily at each face to look out across the vast city. Even though I’d been up there a dozen times, the view from the top was still awe-inspiring.

After some time I found a vacant bench near the north entrance and sat. I wondered how long I should wait for Hauser before making my final move. Ten minutes? Half an hour? Longer? I had no idea. I waited until it felt right.

After nearly ninety minutes of people-watching, I was quite pleased that Hauser had not been able to follow me. I stood up and stretched before making one last lap around the observation deck. Satisfied that I wasn’t followed, I jumped to what would hopefully be my last destination for the foreseeable future.

Many years had passed since I’d last stepped foot into the long-forgotten mountain cabin. When I was growing up, my dad and grandpa would take me up there to camp and fish almost every summer. After Granddad passed away, Dad and I sort of just stopped coming. Then, after my own father passed on, I got word that he’d left the two-hundred-acre mountain property to some nature conservatory with the express consent that no commercial development would ever occur on the parcel. He wanted it left as pristine and unabused as he’d found it years earlier. That had been twelve years ago, and I’d only taken Cyndi up to the cabin once to share some of my history with her. Because of my family, the conservatory manager granted me use of the place anytime I wanted, and assured me that because of the remote location, it remained virtually unchanged, following my dad’s request.