Page 10 of To Trap a Soul

It spooked to the side once more. She was almost trampled, but Lindi didn’t care.

Not when her tears spilled to the dirt as she watched her father sink to his knees with a sword through his gut. Crimson seeped into his white sleep shirt and spread fast when it was pulled from him. As he cupped his wound, the assailant booted his chest so he would collapse to the ground on his side with a heart-wrenching thump.

“What the fuck, Sal?!” Gregory roared, grabbing the man by the scruff of his armour.

Sal, with his sword still bloodied, shoved back at him. “Piss off! He swung first.”

“There’s three of us! We could have subdued him. There was no need to kill the man!”

Sal raised a shoulder. “Who cares?” Then he shoved his sword into its scabbard and turned for Lindi. “We have the girl. That’s what we came ’ere for, ain’t it?”

He lifted Lindi on the back of the horse with the help of the third man, who had never spoken. Shocked, and unable to do anything else but cry as she tried to absorb that her father lay dying not even a few metres from her, Lindi was pliable.

She did nothing but weep as she was placed there, wishing more than ever that Nico had just stayed inside. That he hadn’t come out to save her. What about her mother? What was she supposed to do now? Lindi was being taken, and Allira’s husband wasn’t going to be there to help her through it.

You silly, courageous man,she thought with anguish, licking at the tears that wet her lips and forced her to drink her own sadness.What about Ma? How could you abandon her like that?

She couldn’t believe her father hadn’t stopped to consider the worst possible outcome: his death. What a foolish man! He’dthought with his heart and not his head... when he should haveknownthere was nothing he could have done.

What is going to happen to me?she thought with a sob.What about Lindi and her future?

She wanted to know that. She wanted to know why they had targeted her, when she barely left her home – even to go wandering through the village. How did they even know about her?

The men argued about Nico’s death, Gregory apparently against the unscrupulous killing, whereas Sal appeared to be vibrating with glee over it. The two men’s views didn’t seem to align, and the third man, Mathews, remained ever silent on the topic.

She was cold, she was frightened, and her heart was breaking in her chest. The last thing she saw of her home that night was her mother running out to her father’s corpse to collapse next to it, shake it for life, then abandon it to chase after Lindi.

Lindi knew Allira’s wails would forever haunt her for the rest of her – perhaps fleeting – life. And the sight of her chasing after them as they kicked up speed would live in her nightmares and the depths of her sorrow forever.

Why me?

April 26th, 1683

Lindi had heard the rumours – then again, who hadn’t?

The rumours about disgusting monsters that hid in the darkness of night. Creatures with strange, void-like flesh that often glistened like starry skies, or like inky water. Evil spirits that looked nothing like humans or animals, but often a horrifying mesh of both.

Apparently they smelt of rot, decay, and infected blood. Their very breath was said to be putrid as they fought with big, sharp fangs.

Such things couldn’t exist.

They were merely make-believe to ensure little boys and girls came home before bedtime. To make sure they were good and ate all their vegetables, did all their chores, and went to bed on time so they could hide under the covers and protect themselves under the sheets.

They had to make sure they tucked up their feet to protect them from clawed hands grabbing them from under the bed.

Some people called them devils, as if they came from the verydepths of hell as a vengeance for all the sinful wrongdoings of humankind. The followers of the church clung to them as a way to turn people to their faith, convincing them to follow the teachings of the Lord for protection. And, of course, people at their most vulnerable clutched their new rosaries in fear and prayed for forgiveness. They were to kneel before their Almighty God, repent, and promise a life of their holy morals.

Lindi had never needed such convincing; the Heavenly Father had always been on her side... until now.

She’d believed, just as her mother and father had – and their parents before them. The idea of true devils escaping the fiery pits of hell to take them from the land of the living had never been a fear, but the threat of greeting them in the afterlife had always kept them firmly on their path of faith.

She’d never met one, neither had any of the people she’d known, nor had anyone they’d encountered. Yet the rumour persisted, and no one knew of its truth or its origin.

Not once in all this time travelling since she’d been taken had any sort of monster jumped out from the bushes. The rumours had been nothing but lies, especially as it was believed that the scent of fear brought the creatures upon their victims with a vengeance.

And Lindi had been afraid this entire venture.

No, the rumours were just foolish little bedtime horror stories to invoke obedience.

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