When the Soul Catcher Knocks
by MM Schreier
An overlarge crow rappity-tat-tapped on a crumbling headstone engraved with the words: Ada Mahoney, 1878 - 1897. If Ada still had vocal cords, or the breath to move them, she would have yelled at the bird to shove off. Of course, shouting wasn’t very ladylike, but who cared about manners when you were a hundred-some years dead? Life had been messy and loud. All Ada wanted now was to lie there in the quiet with her graveyard dirt blanket pulled up to her chin.
Rap-rap-rap.
The crow was insistent. While it had the standard glossy black wings and throaty cackle-caw, Ada didn’t trust the bird. It had such uncanny, shifty eyes. Worse, the cursed pest wanted her soul.
She’d seen it time and again. Some poor corpse would arrive in the cemetery––it didn’t matter if it was in a pine box or a gilded casket––and the crow would be waiting. The mourners paid it no mind, menfolk standing stoic with red-rimmed eyes, their ladies weeping openly.
Ada’s bare vertebrae rattled. No one had wailed over her fever-broken body; no pale-faced husband, no sobbing child.
Rat-tat-tat.
Regardless of ritual or ceremony, the burials all ended the same. When the last shovelful of dirt filled the grave and the pallbearers took their leave, the crow would come knocking. Nothing good could come of it, but for some reason, the newly dead just couldn’t resist the tapping. Maybe they were in shock, still adjusting to their new reality. Or perhaps everyone buried around her in this dreary cemetery was a fool.
Ada’s departed neighbors would poke their ghostly heads from their burial plots to investigate the rapping. Once they moved beyond the tether of their bones, that devious crow would snatch them up in its talons, fast as a viper striking a mouse. The Soul Catcher would drag them away, down the old well at the back of the cemetery, then return empty-clawed, to wait for the next funeral rite.
Ada remembered visiting this same cemetery with her Ma when they’d laid Pappa in the ground. Living Ada had been too young to feel the lead weight of grief, and, as children do, her attention wandered while the priest read dull passages from his tome. Instead of listening, she had counted the gravestones and watched a caterpillar inch across a bouquet of bone-white lilies. Though the memory was time-smudged, Dead Ada was certain she hadn’t seen the gaping maw of the crow’s well that day.
Even a century later, the living never seemed to notice it.
Tap-tap-tap.
Ada ignored the bird. She was going to lie right there, snug in her grave, and not peek out around the headstone. Best not make herself a target for that grabby beast. While she had no idea what was down that horrible well, she had no desire to find out. The spirits the crow carried into the depths of the ominous stone shaft never returned.
A beetle tickled her shinbone. It felt familiar, safe. This was where she belonged, cozied into the thick, loamy soil.
The crow huffed and ruffled its feathers.
Overhead, the sun lowered in the sky, turning the mild fall afternoon into brisk twilight. The hairlike roots of the grass growing above Ada’s skull murmured plans for winter dormancy. Still, the crow hovered. She could wait it out. After all this time, her patience was infinite.
Rap-tap-tat.
A sneaky breeze tiptoed across the cemetery, blowing dried leaves around a freshly dug grave across the footpath from where Ada was buried. Tomorrow, the mourners would come to chant their prayers, cry their tears. The newcomer’s rectangular hole was an uncomfortably small one. Ada dismissed the pit of vipers writhing where her stomach should have been and blamed the phantom unpleasantness on worms crawling through the dirt.
She told herself a funeral was a blessing. The crow would have a new soul to hound, some unsuspecting unfortunate to drag down the well into the harrowing underworld. A perfect way to distract the feathered menace from its crusade to lure her weary spirit from her resting place.
Ada let out the memory-echo of a sigh. Finally, she’d get some peace from the bird’s incessant rapping.
#
Charley exchanged her black funeral dress for black leggings and a sweatshirt.
This is who I am now, monochrome and mute.
Maybe not mute, but the words had bottled in her throat all day. There was no reasonable response to platitudes like “I’m sorry for your loss” and “Let me know if I can do something.” As if there was anything they could do. Charley had to figure out her own goodbye.
She slipped on her trainers, looping the laces with muscle memory. Her “mom” voice echoed in her head: double bunny ears; over, under, around, and through.
Eyes smarting, she yanked too hard and one of the laces snapped.
“Dammit.”
The word rasped like a rusted bicycle chain. Charley cleared her throat. This wouldn’t work if Finn didn’t recognize her voice.
She stuffed the too-short-to-tie lace into her shoe and focused on the supplies laid out on the table. Who would have thought the trappings of a half-forgotten hobby would turn into a lifeline?
EMF meter.
Spirit candle.
Bread and “wine.” Or in this case, Finn’s favorite Pop-Tarts and cherry Kool-Aid.
A personal item to focus the energies and target the correct soul.
Charley picked up Mr. Ted. The well-loved bear was missing one of its button eyes and the fur around its ears had a shiny gleam where little fingers had rubbed it nearly threadbare. She clutched the stuffed animal to her chest.
It still smelled like Finn. That specific little boy scent of grilled cheese sandwiches, baby shampoo, and something indescribable that made her think of laughter and sticky-faced cuddles.
She wondered if she would shrivel into nothing when the scent eventually faded away.
Her phone beeped, and she shook herself. Thirty minutes before moonrise. She needed to hurry. Charley tucked the bear under her arm and jammed the other items into a backpack. The zipper caught as she rushed to close it.
Come on, come on.
One by one, the teeth snapped together.
Click-click-click.
She yanked, and the zipper closed, nipping her finger. A drop of blood fell and left a scarlet blotch on the carpet right next to last week’s chocolate pudding stain. Life with a toddler had cured her inner neat freak. For a moment, her lungs became concrete lumps, and she struggled to breathe. The cost of a clean floor was far too high.
Get it together. Finn’s waiting and he’s all alone.
Charley grabbed the backpack and her keys and hurried out the front door.
The rental car looked odd in the driveway where her minivan was supposed to be. She vaguely remembered a voicemail from the insurance company…frame damage…totaled…but she hadn’t the energy to think about it. Her knees trembled at the thought of getting behind the wheel, but the cemetery was too far away to walk.
Her mom had suggested cremation. A small golden urn that could be kept close. Charley refused. It would have made what she was attempting tonight impossible.
She could still fail. So often the ghost hunting had been long, boring nights staring at the lifeless EMF meter with mingled skepticism and wishful thinking. When Finn came along, she’d packed up her equipment, no longer able to spend overnights in creepy old houses and rat-infested abandoned warehouses. Even though the meters and accouterments were dusty and neglected, Charley told herself she still believed. She had to.
The drive took a lifetime, with Charley’s fingers white-knuckled on the steering wheel. Stop signs were the worst. She waited, heart pounding, as she peered down the empty streets, expecting the blinding glare of headlights and a banshee scream of metal-on-metal that never came. By the time she pulled alongside the cemetery’s wrought-iron fence, her shoulders were tight and sweat trickled down the small of her back.
After throwing the car into park, she sat there for a time, psyching herself up. The engine clicked as it cooled in the chilly night air.
Tick-tick-tick.
You can do this.
She gathered up her tools and her courage and got out of the car.
The cemetery looked different at night, all reaching shadows and indistinct shapes. Overhead, clouds raced across the sky, allowing the occasional blink of moonlight to spotlight the rows of headstones. Without the priest and throngs of family and friends, in the absence of prayers or hymns, the wind sounded too loud, too lonely, too alive.
Stiffening her spine, Charley secured her bag and then scrambled over the fence. Some things were like riding a bike––her feet knew what to do. Her hips were wider than they had been the last time she’d done something like this, and she was more wobbly-penguin than graceful-gazelle. Still, she managed to hop down on the other side without more than scraping her hands on the rough metal. She counted it a win.
Charley pulled a flashlight out of her bag and switched it on. It flickered and died. She rattled it, and the light made one last valiant flutter before giving up. So much for the brand-new batteries she’d put in. Half night-blind, she shuffled her way along the gravel footpath that created a line dividing polished marble headstones from older granite slabs covered in lichen. She stopped at a plot on the edge of the new section where no grass grew on the freshly packed earth.
Was it really just this morning?
The vacant cemetery made the memory of the funeral feel like a distant fever dream. White roses, murmured condolences, her mother’s claw-like grip on her arm as the casket disappeared into a bottomless pit, the ca-ca-caw of a crow somewhere in the distance.
Icy wind coiled in Charley’s hair and tickled her neck. It seemed to whisper: “Get on with it, while you still can.” She shivered and dug in her backpack to start setting up. It took a few tries to light the spirit candle in the breeze. She sheltered it the best she could in the lee of the headstone. The wavering glow illuminated the marble as she traced crisp letters with fingers that were slowly growing numb.
Finn Brennan 2019 - 2022. Beloved son.
The words felt insufficient.
Next came the EMF meter. She wasn’t sure she really believed anything would happen but mentally crossed her fingers and flipped it on.
Snick-snick-snick.
Eyes wide, Charley fumbled the handheld device. It tumbled to the ground, rolled across the path, and disappeared in the tall, autumn-dry grass. She bit back a curse, just in case little spectral ears were listening.
Silence blanketed the night, heavy as a soaking wet comforter.
Now would be a good time for a cloud break.
The sky ignored her thought and kept the moonlight for itself, leaving Charley to feel around on her hands and knees. When she finally found the EMF meter at the base of an ancient grave marker, it had a crack across the screen.
“Noooo!” The word trickled out in a low moan. She flipped the switch on and off, but the instrument remained silent. With a sigh, she shoved it back in the bag and tried to convince herself it didn’t matter.
If he’s here, he’s here.
The weight of unseen eyes settled on her back, and she spun around. A beady-eyed crow bobbed its head from atop the tilted headstone she’d just been fumbling under.
Gra-caw!
Charley shrieked and jerked back.
“Son of a––” She wiped sweaty palms on her leggings, glad no one had seen her freak out over a bird. “Get lost, you.”
The crow didn’t move.
Shaking her head, Charley turned back to Finn’s plot and set the Pop-Tarts and Kool-Aid on the ground. A gift of food and drink to remind the spirit the material world held simple pleasures. Next, she picked up the candle and swirled it in the four cardinal directions. The crow watched, head cocked like a curious golden retriever.
“With this smoke, I banish negative energies. May they fly away on the wind.”
The words themselves didn’t matter, only that she believed them. A sudden gust whipped around her and blew the flame out. Gooseflesh rippled down her arms.
Charley dug out the container of salt, then paused. Circles contained spirits, but was it really necessary for Finn? She pictured his sweet dimples and messy brown hair. He loved Bluey and the neighbor’s geriatric pit bull. One afternoon he’d spent hours rescuing a colony of ants from a puddle. There was never a kinder, gentler child. She trusted that hadn’t changed, even though Charley’s world had twisted upside down.
The too-alive wind muttered incomprehensible reassurances in her ear. She frowned and sprinkled the salt around the grave. For the first time since she started ghost hunting, she kept herself on the inside of the circle.
From its perch on the old granite headstone, the crow clacked its beak like an irritable old man watching the neighborhood hoodlums doing something they shouldn’t.
Snap-snap-snap.
Charley ignored the bird. After settling on the ground, cross-legged, she pulled Mr. Ted into her lap. She took a deep breath and checked her watch. Midnight. Right on time.
“Hear these words, hear my cry,
Spirit from the other side.
Come to me, my darling Finn,
At this moment, when the veil’s thin.”
She stumbled over the final line, the rhythm off a beat. Like the candle smoke, the words didn’t matter, only the intent, and she had determination for days.
Charley squeezed the teddy bear and hoped.
The wind held its breath. Overhead, the clouds melted away, and silver moonlight sparkled on the rows of polished marble memorials. The crow watched, unnaturally still, as if it too waited for something to happen.
Unwilling to disturb the preternatural silence, Charley fixed an image of Finn’s cheeky I-want-cookies grin in her head and repeated the chant under her breath.
“Mommy?”
#
It wasn’t polite, but Ada would have rolled her eyes if she could have. The so-called “ghost hunters” were a strange development these past few decades. They showed up with their contraptions that did nothing but beep and whir, then offered food to people who could no longer eat.
Tonight’s hunter flicked a lighter.
Snick-snick-snick.
Whirling smoke had no effect beyond making Ada faintly itchy as if she were wrapped in a prickly wool shroud. Her linens had disintegrated ages ago, leaving her bones bare. Not that her nakedness embarrassed her anymore. She saw what women wore nowadays, showing more skin than Ada would have on the wedding night she never got to have. She’d spent a decade or so being scandalized by the short skirts, before deciding she didn’t care.
Salt, though. That myth was real. Ada could feel the sting of the barrier. Even the thin sprinkle a row over felt vast as the sea and viscous as blood. Ada was glad it wasn’t any closer.
The woman began to chant.
“Hear these words, hear my cry,
Spirit from the other side.
Come to me, my darling Finn,
At this moment, when the veil’s thin.”
There was something about the words, Ada thought. It wasn’t magic, or a power to compel. A silly little rhyme couldn’t force a spirit to show themself. What balderdash. It was the woman’s voice, threaded with grief and desperation and hope that caught Ada’s attention. It caught the new boy’s, too.
I wouldn’t, child. The Soul Catcher’s watching.
Ada surprised herself, warning him. This was the way of things––the crow was meant to drag newcomers down the well, be they old men or innocent children, and leave her to sleep.
She wondered what it might have felt like to hold a wee babe in her arms, all soft cooing and sweet-smelling milk-breath. What was that lullaby her mother used to sing? Her jawbone chattered in a half-remembered rhythm.
Clack-clack-clack.
The boy shifted. Ada could feel his soul moving through the ground, away from the safety of his corpse.
“Mommy?”
The mother’s sob filled the night. She murmured words, soft and warm. Ada stretched, trying to hear. Perhaps she’d take a quick look. Surely the crow was distracted by this heartfelt reunion and would pay her no mind.
Her wooden casket had long since crumbled. She swooshed past the earthworms and beetles, circumvented a family of voles, snuggled in their burrow. Grabbing a tree root like a guideline, she slithered to the surface and peered around her headstone.
The boy––Finn Brennan she presumed––shone pearlescent in the moonlight. His mother knelt before him, tears streaming down her cheeks. Still, she wore a bittersweet smile. Not everyone got a chance to say goodbye.
Cackle-ca-caw!
A shiver ran through Ada, right down through the earth to where her bones lay, just out of reach.
Vast wings swooped, bearing down on Finn, who let out a silent yelp and ducked. Again, the crow dove for the boy. He cowered behind his mother. The woman cried out as sharp talons grazed her cheek.
Clouds covered the moon, and black feathers melded into shadow. Finn stood out, a bright target in the night. His mother spun, trying to anticipate the next attack.
Without thinking, Ada threw herself forward as a shield. She bounced off the salt barrier in a shower of sparking bee stings. The wind howled, mirroring her outrage.
Break the circle!
The hunter hesitated, then scuffed her sneaker through the crystal line. It was enough. It had to be. Ada stretched thin, pouring herself through the gap in the circle. The salt burned. Somewhere, below ground, she felt her tenuous connection to her bones twang. She was too far.
It didn’t matter.
She flung herself in front of the boy, just in time.
When the crow’s claws grabbed her, they were gentle. Of course, she had no body to pierce and bleed, but still, she’d expected it to hurt. All she felt was a sense of weightlessness as they circled above the graves toward the well. She gave in. It was enough to give the hunter and the boy a little more time to say goodbye.
Below, Finn’s mother mouthed a silent thank you. Ada smiled. Lips and teeth and crinkled eyes. It felt real.
The world tilted as the Soul Catcher dove. Ada could almost sense the drop in her stomach. A hundred years dead, and she thought there were no surprises left. She laughed at her hubris. The well was full of light.