Her Soul to Take (Souls Trilogy #1)(7)

“Miss you too, sweetheart!” There was a murmur in the background, and she added, “Dad says to stay safe out there.”

The house felt even emptier once I’d hung up the phone. I was grateful for Cheesecake, who sauntered over from the kitchen meowing loudly for his dinner. He was a bossy roommate, but he was so damn cute I had to forgive him.

On my way back to the couch with some dip for my chips, the brown paper parcel poking out of my bag caught my eye. The book Inaya had gifted me, the grimoire. Excitement squeezed its fingers around my stomach, a feeling not unlike walking into a haunting investigation for the first time: a thrill, mingled with trepidation.

I unwrapped the book on the coffee table. I probably should have worn gloves; the thing was so old it should have been in a museum. A signature was scrawled in the corner on the inside cover, but the calligraphy was too fancy for me to make out.

I flipped through the pages, marveling at the detailed sketches and tiny, neat Latin. There were drawings of herbs and plants, and some quick use of an online translator told me that the text described the greenery’s magical properties. Then there were the sketches of monsters: the boney wolf zombie, a lean, faceless creature draped in seaweed with tentacle-like legs, a multi-limbed thing that looked like a spider with a bird’s beak made out of broken tree branches. The art was amazing, the kind of design that would have inspired Creepypastas and indie video game developers.

There were pages on purifications, clothing, prayers, astrological events — I only had the patience to translate bits and pieces, but the sheer amount of information was mind-blowing. This grimoire was an absolute treasure. Every time I turned the page, my heart beat a little faster.

Then I found a drawing unlike the others. It was a sketch of a man, around my own age I guessed. His hair lay in waves that curled around his ears, soft pencil strokes portraying a lightness to it. He was shirtless, the muscles of his lean chest starkly outlined but marred with what I could only think were meant to be scars and the vague outlines of tattoos. His lips were full, his chin dimpled. Beneath dark, heavily drawn brows, his eyes had been colored gold.

It was the only spot of color I’d encountered in the book so far. It made his eyes look alive, as if they were watching me, and there was a texture to them as if they’d been formed with flakes of gold leaf.

The adjoining page read, Operation for the Summoning and Binding of the Killer.

The Killer...summoning and binding…

These were instructions for summoning a demon.

I leaned back from the book, the trepidation that had been lurking at the edge of my excitement taking center stage. I wasn’t sure if I believed in demons and magic. Ghosts were one thing: the remnants of departed souls, lingering energy, stranded spirits. But demons were something else entirely, one of the many creatures that had lurked in the shadows of human fears for centuries, for millennia. I didn’t deny the possibility they could exist — but like gods and angels, I usually assigned them to the realm of mythos.

Demons were exciting, fascinating. The possibility of a place not being merely haunted, but possessed by demonic forces was the driving entertainment value behind numerous horror stories. They played perfectly on human fears: unexplained, terrifyingly powerful, tempting and seductive, representative of sin.

I’d walked through places where demons were said to play. I’d found them no more frightening than anywhere else.



I couldn’t get those eyes out of my head. Golden, glowing, piercing in the dark. I was still awake at nearly 2am, lying in bed with my laptop open, trying to use my body’s refusal to sleep as an opportunity to brainstorm new vlog ideas.

My subscriber count was being swiftly surpassed by newer channels, channels that played up the drama rather than the science of careful investigations. WE USE A OUIJA BOARD IN MASSACHUSETTS’ MOST HAUNTED FOREST! ATTACKED BY A DEMON! Millions of views for this shitty clickbait. It had only been up a few days.

Shot in the green lens of night vision, I watched the group pretend to be possessed. I watched them run through the woods shrieking, move a planchet around a Ouija board to form threatening messages they all gaped at. It was fake, all fake. I think the audience knew it was fake too, but judging from the comments, no one really cared. It was exciting, it was funny. It was entertaining. Dozens of channels pumped out content like this while mine wallowed behind on views because I insisted on authenticity.

I snatched up my vape pen from the bedside table, inhaling irritably. If I didn’t turn something around soon, I wouldn’t be able to keep up the channel. Pretty soon I’d have to face reality, get the office job, and settle down. Every fiber of my being cringed away from that possibility, but I wasn’t a teenager anymore. I had bills to pay, and this adult thing seemed determined to crush every last dream down to a pulp.

The Killer. Golden eyes in the dark.

I’d bookmarked that page, and I wasn’t sure why yet. It became even harder to sleep knowing that downstairs on the coffee table, the grimoire sat closed — but within those pages, in the dark, those golden eyes still shone.

Watching.

Waiting.





Monday morning brought more gray skies and drizzling rain. I walked to school under the black brim of my umbrella, boots splashing through the puddles along my narrow driveway to the road. As I reached the mailboxes, I caught sight of Mrs. Kathy grabbing her mail. As my first-grade teacher, nearly fourteen years ago, her blonde hair had been streaked with gray — now it had gone straight silver.