The Soul Thief Read online

  It sat in a small wooden chair covered in cushions of white lace while it brushed thick dark hair that had once belonged to my wife. It looked like a little girl. Annabelle. That’s what everyone else called it. All of five years old and already a thief. A thief and a killer.

  My hand curled into a fist as I watched it feigning innocence.

  “Daddy, can you brush my hair?” It turned those soulful black eyes to me, my wife’s eyes, and smiled with full pink lips.

  I walked back down the hall to my room without answering. I never entered its room no matter how much it cried or how kindly it asked me to. I never let it enter mine. That was part of the arrangement. My hands wrung around each other as I paced the well-worn footsteps of my past selves. The carpet was worn to the baseboards here at the foot of my bed. My eyes kept darting to the picture of my wife that hung on the wall.

  She had been a beautiful woman, her dark eyes and hair being only a few of her finest features. Her voice was borrowed from heaven, her soul was as pure as golden sunshine. She was the most perfect person I’d ever met.

  And then that monster came and devoured her.

  I darted my eyes to the door to see if it had left its room to follow me. It hadn’t.

  “What am I supposed to do?” I sought comfort from my wife’s visage, hanging on the wall beside our bed.

  Five years before I had been elated to find out we were having a baby. A perfect, healthy little girl. We’d call her Annabelle. It was my grandmother’s name; my wife loved it. We decorated the nursery with soft things and bought beautiful dresses.

  “Daddy?” It called from its pink painted bedroom. “I can’t find my teddy bear.”

  I look away from the hall.

  When the time came for our sweet perfect daughter to be born, some horrendous switch occurred. I was given a baby that wasn’t mine. I could tell. It looked too much like the spitting image of my wife. Everyone said so.

  That’s when I knew the truth. It had killed her. It had killed my wife.

  She had gotten sick late in the pregnancy and went into early labor. The doctor said the hemorrhage was a risk natural births came with. I knew better than to believe it. I knew that the monster had outgrown its host and devoured it.

  My wife had been reduced to a bloodstain on hospital sheets and I was given the creature that killed her to take home as my daughter.

  Of course no one believed me. That was one of its tricks. It looked just like a little girl. Who could ever consider that it was a murderous fiend?

  But I knew.

  I knew that Annabelle wasn’t what she seemed and that she wasn’t my daughter. She was a soul thief and she had killed my wife.

  My poor, wonderful loving wife.

  For five years, I tried to ignore it. I hired nannies, but they all left. Of course they left. It probably tried to kill them too and they were too scared to tell me. I wanted nothing to do with that creature. That awful thing that sat in front of a mirror brushing my wife’s hair, looking at me with my wife’s eyes.

  I looked at the photograph of my wife again and knew what I had to do. It was time. I couldn’t keep running, hiding in fear. If I let it go on one day it would kill again. Maybe me. Maybe another man’s wife.

  I had been imaging how I’d do it. I had been reading up on how to kill demons. I wasn’t sure that I was strong enough, but as I looked at my wife’s picture I knew I had to be strong for the two of us.

  “Annabelle come here.” I called down through the open door while staring at the last picture I had of my wife before the demon entered her.

  I don’t know who called the police, but they must have been under the demon’s influence. I was sure that when it screamed that disgusting high pitched waile, it summoned its followers. Another trick.

  But it was quiet now.

  The officers busted into my house screaming at me. The hammer was still in my hands when they came to the top landed and I panicked, looking between them and the monster under me. It was still moving. I couldn’t risk it. If I let it get strong again, it’d kill for sure.

  I brought the hammer down again, wet blood hitting my face. The creature stopped moving and I couldn’t help but smile, letting the ball-peen fall from my hand to the floor. Those stolen black eyes were dull, and piles of black hair littered the floor of my bedroom. The officers had guns pointed at me, but I didn’t care. I put my hands up, relief finally swelling through my blood.

  “It’s safe now.” I explained to them, exalted. “It’s okay. I got it. I know, it took me so long, but I finally managed to kill it.”

  They kicked a bloodied pair of scissors away as one of the men threw me down. I looked up from the floor beside its limp body.

  “No, you don’t understand. It was her! It was Annabelle! She’s the monster, are you listening? It killed my wife!” As one officer pulled me to my feet, I began to kick and fight back, trying to explain. When we passed by the mirror at the top of the stairs I saw the blood coating my face. I looked back down the hall and saw the other officer touching Annabelle’s body, calling someone on his radio. He could call for help all he wanted, but that demon was dead. Lengths of hair littered the floor, its scalp a mess of cuts from where I’d taken back the gifts it had stolen from my innocent wife.

  I was surprised I could still see her face so well, given how many times I’d hit it.

  “You’ll thank me one day.” I turned to the officer. He stared at me with eyes brimming with disgust. He looked a little green under his skin as he looked back at the officer in the bedroom.

  The poor fool was trying to perform CPR. It wouldn’t help, but I felt bad that he wanted to try. Annabelle must have tricked him too at some point. I shook my head.

  At least she’d never hurt anyone again. I could rest easy knowing that.

 

 

  C L Foltermann, The Soul Thief

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