The Shaman's Tale

 

Clara was shocked when the police let her in to see The Shaman. He told the cops that she’d be coming and was his only living relative. The cops brought him in and left them alone, though there was a suspiciously large mirror on the wall. The Shaman told her not to worry. He said no one was listening.

She had expected to see Edgar in his eyes, but he wasn’t there. It was just the Shaman grinning that evil grin. He repeated what he said to the media, and she didn’t believe a word of it. She accused him of using Edgar as an excuse. He laughed.

He explained that he had hoped to use her spare soul to pull this off, but it was too innocent, and she seemed too strong. Edgar fit the bill better. Now, all he had to do was to pawn Edgar off on some weak-minded person, have them kill someone, and he’ll be proven innocent.

Clara explained to him that he just confessed. She went and banged on the mirror. "Did you hear him? He confessed!" He told her not to waist her breath. They didn’t care what he said now, he’d already confessed to the killing. She sat down, almost in tears. He reached to hold her hand, but she knew better than to let him touch her. "You learn quick." He said.

She left the police station and sat on a park bench, trying to figure out how to stop him. The surprising problem though was trying to find a reason to stop him. She assumed that he’d pick Edgar’s next victim in prison, who would then probably kill someone else in prison. Where would it stop?

Were those people her responsibility? Edgar wasn’t hers. He was Paul’s. Though, she wouldn’t have had Paul’s soul if it weren’t for Edgar. And what was she to do? Her main advisor for such things was now the enemy. Or was he always the enemy?

The enemy? She rolled the phrase around in her head for a while. It had a certain power. An importance. Was he worth killing? Clara had never considered killing someone before. Would it help? What would happen to Edgar if The Shaman died?

She had never before thought of killing someone. Could she do it? Would it help? Did she want to go to jail? Too many questions. She got up and started walking. Walking away from the thought of murder. You can’t just kill someone. You have to keep control.

Control? Paul controlled Edgar. Or rather, the drugs that they gave Paul controlled Edgar. Or rather, the drugs they gave Paul made it impossible for Edgar to make Paul do anything. Could Clara use that to stop The Shaman? Was he too smart for that?

The secret to fighting someone bigger than you is to use their weight against them. Redirect their force rather than facing it head-on. How does one redirect whatever Edgar is? What does he really want? A body of his own? A body of his own. Redirection!

It took a bunch of meetings with police, social workers, more police, and finally, a mass murderer who recently found God. The plan was stupid elaborate, but in the end, just about everyone decided, "Why not?"

So The Shaman was declared mentally fit and sentenced to life in prison. When asked if he had anything to say, he replied, "I’ll prove you all wrong." The next day he was brought to the penitentiary and placed in a cell with a fellow murderer, who wouldn’t stop reading the bible, out loud.

That Saturday, he was surprised when a guard came to get him. He had a visitor. His niece. Clara was sitting at a table in what appeared to be the guard’s break room. He’d expected to be behind a glass wall and having to talk over a phone.

Clara told him that they were meeting here because the warden thinks The Shaman is crazy. Then she put a thermos on the table, explaining that it was the rest of the goop that made her throw up. She said she decided he was doing the right thing. He had been planning a month’s worth of incantations, but the potion would be a lot quicker. He took the cap off and sniffed. It smelled right.

Clara couldn’t resist returning to the penitentiary the next day. She had to see for herself if the plan worked or not. It was worth it for the The Shaman’s shocked look alone. He asked her what she was doing there. She asked him what he was doing there.

He told her that he was there to give emotional support for his roommate at his hearing. Clara told him that this was no hearing. The Shaman had been so freaked by Clara being there he hadn’t looked around. He went pale when he noticed the isolation booth.

Just then, they brought in the born-again killer. He still had the goop on his face. He winked at Clara as he was led into the booth. Through the bulletproof glass, she watched him get strapped to a table. They put an IV into his arm, the minister blessed him, then everybody left the booth.

As they locked the door The Shaman started screaming, but the guards were ready for this and dragged him away. Clara watched. At exactly one PM, a guy in a lab coat hit a switch, and a dark liquid started to flow into the killer’s arm. Soon he was asleep. Another button pressed, and a clear liquid appeared.

The coroner would normally now go in and declare him dead, but it was agreed to wait two hours. Nobody knew how long Edgar could survive without a body, but two hours seemed good.

She read later that the killer was declared dead at three PM. Six months later, there has been no word of any possessed killers. The world felt safe. Clara felt alone.

Edgar's Tale (Continued from SPARE SOUL)

Clara woke up in a hospital room. She pushed the nurse button and was quite relieved to learn that she was no longer in the mental hospital. She and Paul had fainted simultaneously. Neither would wake up, so they were both rushed to the emergency room. Paul was under heavy guard down the hall.

There was something wrong. At first she thought her spare soul was gone, but when she relaxed and let herself inside herself, she found that it was still there, but it felt different. It felt damaged. She tried telling the nurses about it, but they thought she was traumatized and not thinking right.

Then a nurse introduced him to the head psychiatrist. She was afraid she was going to be committed, but he asked her questions that made her believe he believed her. He then confessed that he'd been talking to Paul, who was all excited that he finally had a soul of his own.

When they entered the meeting room, Paul jumped up to hug Clara, but the orderlies shoved him back into his chair. He thanked her for taking such good care of his soul. He was talking about how he could finally start a life of his own, but the orderlies kept telling him that he was still committed.

After the asylum’s lawyer explained the process towards freedom Paul cheered up again. Then he frowned and said, "I wonder what happened to Edgar."

It turns out that Edgar was the name of the soul that kicked out Paul’s soul. Now Edgar was gone. Hearing that Clara took a few deep breaths and looked inside herself. She still had an extra soul, but it was very different. She knew it was Edgar and she knew she was in trouble.

Paul’s tale of growing up was horrifying. The older he got, the stronger Edgar got. When puberty hit, it was over. Paul’s consciousness was stuffed into a corner, and Edgar took over. Paul then learned to fight back. The more weight he gained and the less exercise he did, the more Edgar hated being inside him. Then Edgar killed a man in a failed attempt to jump to another body.

Fortunately, Paul’s attempts to explain Edgar to the authorities led to him being declared criminally insane. He wound up at the mental hospital under heavy medication. Medication that allowed Paul to detach from Edgar.

Unfortunately, when Paul’s soul recognized his true vessel he jumped across the void, leaving Edgar a path to escape. However, Edgar was unable to dislodge adult Clara’s soul and was very unhappy playing second fiddle.

Clara was worried and uncomfortable. Her spare soul was gone. She felt the emptiness where it once was. Then there was this new thing. Not a soul. Something evil. Something that wanted to hurt her. Something that was trying to convince her that it was harmless. She knew better. So did the Shaman.

Unlike the spare soul, Edgar was something the Shaman said he could handle. Clara went to his place, and he had all these candles and things burning. He had her drink this foul drink, and after that she could feel Edgar screaming.

The Shaman had her sit on the floor and he began circling her and chanting. He placed a large bowl in her lap. The third time around, Clara started to twitch. The fifth circle and she vomited. With the vomit went Edgar. She was free.

She went to thank the Shaman, but froze when she saw the Shaman drinking her vomit. He drank it all. He went to put the bowl down and fell over. He started convulsing violently.

Clara went to find some water. She didn’t know why she thought she needed water, but she did. She found a glass in a kitchen cabinet, filled it and brought it to the Shaman. He wasn't convulsing anymore though. He was standing and smiling an evil smile.

He told Clara that she should leave. She was free and unburdened. She told him that her body and soul may be hers now, but she felt responsible for that evil smile. He laughed and told her that Edgar would be no problem for him. He was strong enough to control Edgar till it was the proper time to dispose of him.

Clara did not sleep well that night. Both her emptiness and her fear for the Shaman played catch with her attention. She finally distracted herself by planning her future life as a unisouled person. That was wonderfully boring, and she drifted off to sleep an hour before her alarm went off.

She had no excuse now for not having a normal life. It was time for a career, not just a job. Maybe a boyfriend, not just a few dates. Her life, body and soul were all hers and only hers. For the first time in a long time the future was hers.

Hers, for three days anyway. First she heard it on the radio, and hoped she was wrong. Then on TV, proving she wasn’t. The Shaman had killed three men. There was no question. There were witnesses. The Shaman confessed, but said right into the camera, that it wasn’t his fault. It was Edgar’s.

(to be continued…)

Spare Soul

 

Clara’s name needed nine letters to spell it correctly. For her eighteenth birthday her parents gifted her an official name change, an embossed letter of apology, and the family’s hand-me-down Opel Station wagon.

The name change didn’t have much effect. She’d been using the simple spelling since she was old enough to realize that nobody cared to enforce her spelling, outside the first day of third grade when the teacher insisted on using the full spelling. That only lasted a few days.

The freedom from the tyranny of her archaic spelling didn’t have the expected effect. Though it was nice to have her own car, even the least cool car ever built. However, there was still something wrong. Something she had always felt. Something she thought was part of her name.

It was still there. The “something” she carried was inside her and was nowhere. It wasn’t imagination. It wasn’t a tumor. She felt the weight of something with presence, but no mass or substance. Something that interfered with her being a normal human being.

She went to a string of doctors, physical and mental, but none offered any assistance. She slowly drifted from conventional to the spiritual. On a dare from her friend she went to see a native shaman. As she described her problem to him his smile grew.

She finally asked him what he was smiling at. He responded with a series of questions about things she’d seen and felt. He knew her answers before she could say them. He finally stopped the questions and told her that her problem was that she had one soul too many.

For the next hour the shaman was unable to answer any of Clara’s questions, mostly relating to where did this soul come from? He kept saying things like, “Where did the penny on the ground come from? Who put it there?” He finally, she thinks he was enjoying this game, told her that she was the only one who could identify the soul’s origin and purpose.

Carla had been so busy worrying about how, she hadn’t considered the why. Then all the questions flooded her head. Who, what, why, when and how. So basically, all the questions.

She waited a few days to let the weirdness sink in. At first she tried to deny it, but somehow she knew it was true. Later she realized that knowing made it easier to deal with. Accepting this she started working backwards and suspected that it must have happened sometime between conception to just after birth.

It took the length of Sunday dinner and a couple after dinner drinks to work up the courage to discuss her spare soul with her parents. They were surprisingly unsurprised. They knew nothing of the spare soul, but admitted that something happened just after her birth.

She was born a normal crying baby, but a couple hours later the crying suddenly stopped. Everyone told the parents they were lucky, but they were worried. The doctors said that Carla was perfectly healthy. As she grew, she progressed as normal. She just cried less than the other kids.

She still didn’t cry as much as other people. At least that’s what people tell her. Having only need her for her whole life she really had no other experience to go by. She always thought her friends to be the unstable ones. Perhaps the other soul comforts her.

Carla made the rounds again. Therapists, gurus, kooks and quacks. Nobody could help her. Most chose not to believe her. Finally, two years after the Shaman’s revelation she started looking for answers internally. Meditation did not come easy. Clearing her mind took several months to go from pretending, to trying, to achieving.

One day across the void of her empty consciousness came a voice. It startled her out of her trance. After that she went from meditating for an hour to meditating for hours. She took time off from work, told her family she was skipping Sunday dinner.

It was a tiny voice. Very far away, or rather, very deep inside. It said two words. Always the same. She started whispering what she thought the words might be. She assumed it was a name. She tried for a week till she whispered, “Paul Watson.” Her brain exploded like she was being electrocuted.

She woke up to her mother shaking her. Carla asked her who Paul Watson was. Her mother didn’t know. Her father did, or at least his friend who was a cop did. Paul was Carla’s age but was too crazy to go to school, so she never knew him. He finally killed a guy and was sentenced to the mental hospital.

Carla did not tell anyone her plans to visit Paul. She was sure that have her committed right alongside him if she did. It took some talking to get by the receptionist, but she was finally allowed to see Paul’s doctor. He was odd receptive so she figured she should be open with him. She told him the whole tale and when she was done he nodded hi head and said, “Fits.”

The doctor called and had Paul taken to a visiting room. On the walk down he explained that Paul, who insisted they call him Edgar, had always complained about his missing soul. Carla nearly fainted when he said that. The orderly at the door unlocked it and told the doctor that Edgar was calm today.

The man sitting at the table was calm, well dressed and almost handsome. Nothing like what Carla had expected. He greeted the doctor then smiled at Carla. He started to say something when he froze. Carla felt the need to flee. The tiny voice inside her was screaming for help.

(to be continued...)