The Soul Catcher - Chapter 1

I had an awful feeling today. I woke up and straight away I had a ball of lead resting heavily in my stomach. I didn’t want to get up and go to work. I was tempted to call in sick, but I couldn’t think of a valid reason. If I didn’t go in every time I felt a slight hint of dread, well, I live in England, it rains a lot. That makes me dread that my straightened hair is going to be frizzy by the time I get to work and that my makeup is going to be running down my face. If I stopped when I felt dread, I wouldn’t go on first dates, or try that new dish from the Indian takeaway. I wouldn’t dance with a stranger in a club, shake a new acquaintance's hand, I'd stop hugging my friends for fear of the visions I might have. I’ve had to learn to try and ignore the feeling of dread or it would stop me living my life.

This didn’t feel normal though. I stayed in bed for another half an hour before the feeling finally lessened enough for me to find some energy. After dragging myself out of the house to work, and being sucked into the monotony of the day, I somehow managed to forget about the feeling.

I work in a call centre, an inbound one thankfully; I couldn’t stand working in a cold calling centre, but this is where the monotony of the day comes in.

“Hello, this Jemma at Chambers programming, how may I help you?” over and over again. I get sick of saying my own name. In one day at work I must answer at least twenty phone calls. That’s saying my own name a minimum of twenty times. Then you have others saying my name. Monotonous.

Even though it’s an inbound call centre we’re still expected to try and sell products to the customers that phone us, and we get a nice bonus if we manage to continually upgrade accounts, sell extra software and basically do anything else that will earn the company extra money. It’s not a horrendous job, but it’s not what I would choose given an option. I’m a people person, but as I’m sure you’ve already guessed, working with people, where the chance of touching them is going to be very high, wouldn't be ideal. Also for some reason there never seems to be very many ghosts in call centres. Have I told you that I see ghosts yet? It is not fun, but there’s less in the centre. It’s like even they think that they could die, again, from the tedious monotony of being here.

Eight hours later and my work day was finally over. Grabbing my jacket and bag I head out of the office and instantly feel the lead ball back in my stomach. I hate it on days like this, where you just know something is going to go wrong. We all have them, where we say it’s “just going to be one of those days.”

I nipped into the local corner shop to grab something to eat for the night and a few other bits and pieces that I needed, bits before finally heading home. I hadn’t been looking where I was going and when I walked out of the shop the next thing I know I’m on my arse, landing straight on a cracked paving stone that’s covered in chewing gum. The door to the shop has slammed shut behind me and my bag of shopping spilled out around me. Putting my hand down to give myself a push up I put it straight in a bit of chewing gum I hadn’t spotted. Lifting my hand quicker than I thought possible I wipe it on my top looking in despair as I see the white mark staining it. I’m tempted to just stay sat on the disgusting street but the streetlights are starting to flicker on and the air is getting cooler so I know if I stay here I’ll end up getting ill.

I can also already feel a pin prick of pain and just know I’m going to have bruise that will make it uncomfortable to sit for a couple of days and as tears well up in my eyes I’m just glad that there’s no one else around to see the mess I’ve gotten myself into. That is until I hear the tinkling of the bell that’s above the shop door.

“Just great.” I mutter to myself before getting my knees beneath me and pushing myself to them, when I feel a hand against my arm and everything goes black.

Slowly colour started seeping in, a deep red colour. It looked as though someone had taken rust, mixed it with water to make a paste and spread it over the floor with splatters going up the wall. As more colour seeped in, my view widened and I could see what had made the mess. In the middle of a darkened living room, lit only by a flash sunlight sneaking through a pair of partly opened curtains, was a woman with long black hair, wrapped around her face obscuring all features bar one green eye that looked luminous against the black. She had shallow cuts across nearly every inch of her skin and bruises across the rest. I thought she was already dead then saw her chest jerk with a shallow breath.

That’s when I heard the laugh.

My insides turned to ice as my blood ran hot with fear. Standing over the woman was an immaculately dressed, good looking man. In his hand was a large knife, blood slowly dripping to the floor. Sensing his presence the woman on the ground began to squirm. A softly whispered “no more” floated throughout the room. He laughed again and stepped over what looked like the outline of a circle and knelt in the blood, carpet squelching. He held his arm up in the air with the knife pointing to the sky. Said something I couldn’t hear, and then brought down the knife, slashing it across her throat. The rest of her life drained away in a flash. I watched in a fascinated horror as a purple light began to escape from between the frozen lips of the woman. The room was plunged into more darkness as shadows began crawling from the circle and circling the body on the floor. As more of the purple light escaped my heart stopped as I realised what was happening. The man bent his head towards the light that was now obscured by shadow, and sucked away the purple light.

I come back round to the sound of screaming reverberating in my ears and it took me a moment to realise that it was me that was making the awful sounds. I stopped as soon as I knew it was me and started taking deep breaths to try and calm myself, before scrambling up and out of reach of the person who was talking to me.

“Oh my god, oh my god, I am so sorry. I’m so clumsy. I wasn’t watching where I was walking when I banged into you, where are you hurting? Should I phone for an ambulance? I didn’t think it would have hurt you that much but why would you have been screaming?” The woman continued with her wittering on and all I can do is stare at her as I realise that the woman who is standing in front of me filled with so much life, is the women I had just seen have the strange purple light sucked out her. It was something I had never seen before and it took me another moment to separate the image in my head of what I’d seen in my vision, to the reality of what was in front of me.

Shaking my head I stepped forward and grabbed a hold of hands, keeping a firm hold on them even with her trying to pull away from me.

“Whoever the man is, the one with hair the colour of sand and eyes as blue as the ocean, DO NOT go with him. You don’t what he is or what he’s capable of.” I waited to see the recognition in her eyes that she knew who I meant before I let go of her hands and stepped back. I saw her gulp and let a sigh of relief run though me that she believed what I’d told her and turned around to pick up my shopping.

“Excuse me but just who the hell do you think you are telling me what I can and can’t do?”

Turning back round to face her she’s got her lips pursed together and is standing with one hand on her hip, the other hanging by her side with her shopping and an eyebrow arched upwards. I struggle to think of what to say to her for a moment.

“I just, he’s not a good person.”

“And just how would you know that?” She asks me her, her eyebrow going up even higher than I thought possible.

“I used to, we, I know him OK? I saw your reaction when I told you to stay away from him, you must know what I mean.”

I can see her trying to work out which way to go with this and watch the transformation of her face going from defiant to worried and finally settling on anger.

“Have you been watching us? Are you like his ex or something and you’re trying to warn other people away from him? What a weirdo.”

I watch in dismay as she walks off into the now very dark night. Everything in me is screaming at me to go and follow her, to do anything I can to keep her from meeting up with the man I saw in my vision. I let a quick fantasy run through my head of following her and grabbing her, taking her home with me and keeping her there until I can persuade her I’m telling the truth, but quickly let the though leave my head as I now that could never happen.

I can still see her in the distance so I shout after her to be careful and see her shoulders hunch forward, she slows down for a second and I’m hopeful she’s going to turn around and come back, but she just carries on walking, disappearing round a corner into the night.

I sigh to myself knowing there’s nothing else I can do and I just hope that she’s going to think about what I’ve said. Bending down to pick up my shopping I let out a scream of frustration as my pint of milk has leaked all over my hand as I’ve picked it up. Looking around for a bin I see one in the direction I’m going to be walking. I shove the rest of my shopping into my handbag thanks to the plastic carrier bag being split and make my way down to the bin, throwing the split carton of milk and bag in as I pass.

Finally getting home I put away my shopping, forgoing the ready meal I was going to have for a glass of wine and a bar of chocolate. After working my way through a bottle of wine I still couldn’t get the image of the vision of my head. The wine hadn’t helped to take my mind off things. Or to numb the pain of what I was feeling.

Making my way into the kitchen I open the cupboard I keep my medicine in and take two sleeping tablets with the dregs of the wine before making my way to bed. I’m not proud of the fact I resort to the pills. But if you saw the things that I did. You would need something to knock you out too.