Souls on a Shelf
I pushed open the door and entered, my eyes not quite registering all that it was forced to see all at once. Aunt Celeste’s showroom was like something out of the bowels of the TLC channel. It was Hoarders meets Hoarding: Buried Alive, meets Clean this House. Words couldn’t adequately describe the absolute horror of the third floor.
There were so many shelves and bookcases overloaded with every manner of tchotchkes and knick knacks that it looked like a nightmare Martha Stewart might have. Everything from old fashion china dolls, to 1950’s tins were stacked next to rocks, ceramic clowns, tacky plaster elephants, small dog and pig figurines. Precious moment statuettes were set next to Faberge eggs (which I was pretty sure were just decent looking knock-offs), and every manner of cuckoo clock ever built in the country seemed to line an entire wall. There was so much stuff everywhere, my poor brain couldn’t keep up with the visual feed it was getting from my eyes.
The only thing that seemed to be missing were books. There were bookshelves but no real books anywhere. That was kind of hard to believe. Old people loved books. It was a well known fact – surely Aunt Celeste had to have hundreds of books she’d picked up over the course of her life somewhere in this mess.
I moved carefully among all the debris and boxes of crap stacked everywhere. I was only in the first room, which seemed to be some kind of large living room. I was pretty sure her kitchen, dining room and bedroom were past this overcrowded front room. I bet her books were lined up in towers in her bedroom. Since I was looking for information, and books were a great source of all kinds of interesting information, that’s where I headed.
When I finally made my way to the back, I realized I’d been wrong yet again. Aunt Celeste wasn’t like any other old person I’d ever known in my life. All she had in her tiny bedroom was a bed smaller than the cot I had upstairs in the attic. It didn’t even have a headboard for Pete’s sake. To make matters worse, she didn’t have anything else for me to dig through. Not a single bedside table, dresser, mirror, or even a closet. It was just a four walled room with a dingy little bed, one pillow and a blanket.
There wasn’t even a window.
Disgusted with that whole situation, I turned and made my way to the kitchen. At least this room was about what I’d expected, though it was a little bigger than I'd imagined it’d be. It was a good thing too, because this was where she’d kept all her books. Cookbooks were lined up next to James Patterson novels. Nora Roberts shared her shelf with Stephen Hawking and Anthony Robbins. She had books on lunar cycles alongside nature guides, bird books, and an old College Guide from 1981. The woman was such a hoarder. Didn’t she believe in throwing anything away?
I went through all the stacks on the floor, crowding the counter, and even the ones under the small table she had in there. Nothing that screamed: Answers To All Your Questions! Most everything were the kind of books you’d buy at garage sales, used bookstores, or snag out of a donation pile somewhere. Letting out a frustrated breath, I opened up her fridge, but quickly closed it as something immediately assaulted my sense of smell.
God, she really was one of those of psycho hoarders that couldn't even throw out expired food. Gag. Good thing I only ever ate stuff out of the mini-fridge and cabinets she had in the back of the shop. It made me wonder if that had more to do with Dante than Aunt Celeste. Each time I’d dug around back there for something to eat, it was only after watching Dante go through and put a few groceries away. He must’ve known what Celeste was really like and only ate stuff he bought. Smart guy.
I left the kitchen now, walking back into the main room and taking a closer look at my aunt's shelves. I figured if there was anything that I could use to find out about what she’d done to Chase, it had to be in this room. Compared to the others, it was at least somewhat orderly, if ridiculously crowded.
As I walked by the shelves, one in particular seemed to draw my attention more than all the others. I moved to it – six small figurines were lined up like perfect little soldiers. There didn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to the pieces. One was a small handheld compact, the kind with fancy etching and scrollwork on the outside. Sitting right next to it was a small golden bull. Next to the bull there was a green, porcelain apple. After the apple, there was a large, silver ladle, like the kind you might find in a full size soup pot. Alongside the ladle, there was a small statue of a hobo sleeping on a park bench.
Dante appeared next to me. I hadn’t even heard him come inside, but since I was getting used to his ninja ways, I barely even jumped this time.
“What are these?” I asked, noticing the last item on the shelf was a small statue of a screaming Medusa. It looked just like the one I’d seen the pretty girl carrying out of the store just a couple of days before. Good God, had it only been a few days since I’d seen her? It’d felt so much longer than that.
“It’s the same one,” Dante said, answering the real question that was on my mind. I was getting less surprised about his knack for doing things like that as well.
“Really? But I saw the girl leave with it.”
“Yes, and when she’d used it’s power to get what she wanted it came back here.”
“For what?”
“To wait.”
“I don’t understand,” I replied, shaking my head. This was still so crazy and hard to process, even though I knew it was all true. I'd seen too much to believe otherwise.
“These are souls, Eliza – six to be exact. The ones Celeste collected before you sucked her into the painting,” he answered, a little overly dramatic in my opinion.
I looked over at him and sighed, “Are you ever going to let that go.”
Dante just frowned but didn’t say anything else about the Monet fiasco. It wasn't as if he was actually unhappy about where Aunt Celeste was now. He wasn't running around trying to get her out of that damn painting that was for sure.
I turned back to look at the everyday items on the shelf. “They don’t look like eternal souls. Shouldn’t they be glowing or something?”
"Why would they glow?" he asked, one eyebrown going up in mild curiosity.
"I don't know. Why wouldn't they?" I asked right back. Ok, so I didn't have any good reason for them to glow, but it sure seemed like eternal souls should glow, at least flicker a little bit.
“These objects are just vessels,” Dante explained.
“You mean like Gladware containers?”
He nodded, his eyes crinkling at the corners a tiny bit. Did he actually find something I said funny for once? “You could say that.”
"So, if there are souls in each of these things, are the people they used to belong to you know…dead?” I was still having a hard time with everything. I knew Aunt Celeste could act like an evil witch sometimes, but she really was an evil witch, and that was a little different than just acting like one.
She’d been preying on innocent kids for decades, tainting their eternal souls for Asher. For what? So she could live a little longer? And now thanks to me she could go on indefinitely inside that stupid haystack painting, never once being called to the carpet to answer for her sins?
Dante interrupted my internal flagellation, “Not yet.”
Wait. What was that? “Are you saying these people are still walking around without a soul? They can live like that?” I didn’t think such a thing was even possible.
He nodded again, but now his face was just grim. “Just for a short time and it’s a pretty empty existence, the body just sort of passes through the motions, but yeah, for all intents and purposes they’re still alive. Once the set is complete they all die, kill themselves in different ways, some look like accidents, none of them are. Once they’re dead Asher comes for them.”
"How do we stop him?” I asked, swallowing back the growing fear that was gathering in my throat. If I spent too much time thinking about the mess I was in, I was apt to choke to death on it.
"First we have to keep your boyfriend from committing his sin. If we can do that, then we can buy some time to deal with Asher.”
“Do you think we can stop him?” My heart seized in my chest just thinking about what was happening to Chase. Or maybe it was the fact that somehow, I was supposed to make it better. I couldn't make anything better. My whole life had been a testament to that.
"He’s fixated on you. You’re the object of his lust, so long as you don’t give in, then we have a chance.”
“Do you think, he’ll you know…move on to someone else that will give in to him?” I asked, not really sure how to feel about that. Part of me felt horribly responsible for what was happening to Chase, but part of me also didn’t want to be the object of his lust. At the same time, I knew the real Chase was still somewhere inside him – the one who would never hurt anyone. He didn’t deserve any of this and neither did anyone else. I didn’t want anyone being hurt any more.
“I’ve never seen it happen. Not with lust. The person stays fixated on one person. The taint grows stronger with every passing minute until it’s too late.”
“What do you mean?”
“He’ll hurt you. He’ll think you’ll want what he wants – but he’ll be too far gone to stop himself even if he realizes he’s hurting you. We need him to commit a virtuous act before he’s fully acted out the curse.”
"What kind of virtuous act? Like volunteer down at a soup kitchen or something?” I knew I was being flip, but this was really heavy stuff, so my natural inclination was to make fun of it.
Dante just ignored my commentary as usual. “Chase has to commit a virtuous act in line with his sin. In the case of lust it would be chastity.”
“So what, he has to not have sex with me?” That didn't seem so bad. It wasn't like I was the kind of girl that made that sort of thing easy.
Dante gave me a withering look. "It is more than that. He has to remain fully chaste…as in not have sex with anyone.”
I practically choked on my own saliva. “Forever?” I asked appalled.
He inhaled deeply like he was trying to stay patient with me. I don’t know why he was the one taking a deep breath, I was the one that was going to have to get my lust-ridden boyfriend to give up sex for the rest of his life.
“No, until he’s given his wedding vows to the person he loves above all others.”
Ok, so that was a little bit better than forever, but just barely. “What? Are you saying he can’t ever have sex until he’s married? Do you know what country we live in? Or the century for that matter? How’s he even supposed to do that?”
“There’s another way, but I wouldn’t recommend it.” He shrugged, “Though it might be something to think about as a last resort if all else fails.
“What kind of last resort?” Anything had to be better than my choices so far. Really, things couldn’t get much worse for either one of us.
“You have to take his sin.”
See, that’s why I was so against assuming anything. Just when I thought it had to be a better choice, it turned out that it wasn’t.
Not at all.
I looked at Dante and shook my head. “Aunt Celeste was such a bitch.”
Dante nodded his head in agreement. “Yes. She sure was.” Then he explained the last resort and my know-no-bounds-absolute-hatred for my aunt grew tenfold.
And people thought I was too unyielding and emotionally stunted. I showed them! I could totally hate the person I’d unwittingly sucked into a painting on a whole new level.
Who was the stunted one now?
~~ ~
We left the showroom floor and headed back to the main part of the shop. Dante was warning me that wherever Chase said he was taking me it was probably just a way to get me alone. I was to avoid being alone with him at all costs.
“Ok, here’s what I don’t get, Dante...” I started, watching him treat my wounds. He’d offered to help clean me up once we’d settled back downstairs. I took that to mean getting me some antibiotic cream and a few band-aids, but instead he was actually healing all my wounds. It was crazy. He just touched a cut on my arm and it sealed up, the skin reverting back to its original state. Normally such a thing would’ve tripped me out, but after the things I’d seen today, it didn’t even make the top ten list of weird things I was keeping track of. I glanced back up at him. “Why are you so willing to help me now? Is it because I sucked your boss into an impressionist hay stack?”
“No,” he answered, and for the first time he wasn’t looking at me look I was just another pain in his neck. Then he said something that really shook me to my core. “You set me free.”
“I what?” I asked, not sure I heard him right at all.
“You heard right.”
“Stop reading my mind!”
“I’m not. You just thought it really loud.”
“So you don’t read minds then?” I asked dubiously.
“I don’t have to when you’re mentally shouting things at me. Do you want me to explain or not?”
I just huffed a little and said I did.
He continued, “Celeste had me essentially enslaved. You guessed she was forcing me to stay here, and you were mostly right. I was tied to her on this plane so long as she lived.”
That little 40-watt bulb turned into a super bright LED searchlight in my head. “But I got rid of her without actually killing her!” I said excitedly.
Dante nodded and one small corner of his mouth lifted up in the briefest hint of a smile. The effect was dazzling. I was dazzled. Struck dumb that for a moment I didn’t even know how to think. I got over it the second he opened his mouth and insulted me again. “As ridiculously hard as that is to believe, considering you just bungle your way through every day life, you actually did.”
Ugh. He was even a jerk when he was thanking me. Still, he was a jerk that was now helping me and I could live with that.
“Hey! Why’d you get so mad at me then when you saw what I’d done to Aunt Celeste?”
“Because, you’ve taken over her job, Eliza. You got rid of her and freed me, yes, but now you’ve become accountable for what she’s done,” he answered.
“But I didn’t hurt anyone,” I argued. Aunt Celeste was the one sucking innocent people into crappy knick knacks and mirrors. She was the one selling sins to unsuspecting people and turning them into whatever kind of horrible fiend Asher was.
"No, but you’ll be the one turning over seven fresh souls to Asher soon enough. Then your damaged just like she was.”
“Not unless I don’t turn them over,” I reasoned.
But Dante only shook his head, like I wasn’t getting it. “They’re already his, Eliza. They’re marked, that means there is no place you could take them that he wouldn’t find them. They’re his.”
He said it with such finality I could only shake my own head in denial. “No. I can’t accept that.”
"You don’t have to. That’s the way it is.”
“No. Chase isn’t his. Not yet.”
Dante looked at me and something in his face made my insides go a little gooey. His blue eyes darkened as I watched and he looked almost excited. “No, not yet, and therein lies your only viable way out of this mess.”
“Which is?” I barely breathed. With Aunt Celeste trying to kill me, Dante yelling at me, finding all those souls upstairs, and talking about Asher I’d totally forgotten how cute Dante was. Really, that was just plain stupid of me.
“You make a new deal – one that replaces the one Asher and Celeste originally struck.”
My brain reeled from the impact of what Dante was saying. I was a stubborn, wrench-in-the-machine type of girl, but even I wasn’t sure if I could pull of something like that. Save the cute local boy from eternal damnation? On it! Trap my evil, soul stealing great aunt in a work of art? Done! Negotiate a new deal for the rest of my life with a creature from Hell? This one might be a problem.
“And how do I do that?” I asked feeling just a little overwhelmed by everything.
Dante’s eyes never left mine, and this time his face betrayed little to no emotions as he answered, “Carefully Eliza…very, very carefully.”
Crap.
This was going to be such a pain in the butt!
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*A/N: The song selection for this chapter is Hollywood Undead's Outside. Enjoy! Thanks!!