“The Soulless” by Alex Finch

              “Thank you for calling the Federal Bureau of Investigations. Can I get your name, please? And your phone number? Thank you. How may I help you today? Uh huh. 17 people? Really? Oh… they’re not? Of course, I trust your medical expertise. A bioweapon?”

              I sat forward in my chair, suddenly interested. I heard tips every day, most of them nonsense, but bioweapon reports, true or false, were highly unusual.

              “Dr. Travis, please try to relax. I understand, sir. We’ll send someone out if we can. Do you have a police report? Thank you. Can you fax it to us? Thank you again, sir.” He hung up and spun around to face me. “So, Sigrid…”

              “Bad news first, Dex.”

              “Colorado, 17 people, in… it’s hard to explain, he said it’s not a coma, but like, not dead either. And we should be getting the police reports in-“ The sound of the fax machine printing cut him off.

              I took the first few pages and scanned through them. The local police had investigated 17 different scenes in Aurora, Colorado, and the surrounding cities. Each event took one victim. I skimmed the descriptions; ‘Victim found alive but unconscious with bloody hips with small lacerations. No forced entry. No witnesses, security footage had been edited.’ ‘Victim found comatose with blood on left hip and small wounds. No forced entry. Body was discovered by the victim’s son.’ ‘Victim found comatose with blood on right hip and arm, very thin wounds on hip. No forced entry, security footage tampered with, one witness, unreliable.’ I stopped reading. “Anything better in those pages?” I asked, seeing Dexter flipping through the rest of the reports.

              “Comatose victims, damaged security footage, only one witness, and she’s a 5-year-old girl who said she saw a monster. What’ve you got?”

              I sighed, putting the papers down. “More of the same.”

              “Same pattern, same area, a few days apart, and the police haven’t found anything. I’ll start the paperwork; you finish looking over those reports. I get the feeling we’ll be needing your eye for detail here.”

              I nodded picking up the papers he’d been holding, looking for any details I could’ve missed in the efficient wording of the police reports. Dexter’s typing became white noise as I kept reading. I made a mental note to ask for medical reports, autopsy reports, witness statements, and any other data that could help. All the victims were found at night, found by their children, and all the houses with cameras described the footage as ‘edited,’ ‘tampered with,’ or ‘damaged.’

              “And how long are you going to pretend to wait for approval before packing your bag?” I asked, trusting his 6th sense for when a tip would end in deployment.

              “I’ve already planned our first day.”

              True to Dexter’s world, within hours we were sent to Aurora to investigate. Neither of us spoke much on the flight, he refreshed his email repeatedly, searching for any updates, and I couldn’t stop thinking about the words he’d used. ‘Not in a coma, but not dead.’ The threats of war and terrorism were nothing new to an experienced agent, but a chemical agent like this raised some questions. Why didn’t it kill? What did it do instead? Who created it? Who’s administering it? And why? The longer I thought about these questions, the less sense it made. Hopefully the evidence would clear everything up. A strange feeling was settling its way into the back of my mind as we landed, a feeling that something wasn’t quite right.

              When we landed, a police car, a cop, and a man in a white coat met us. Dexter and I grabbed our bags from cargo before making our way over to the car. The man in the white coat held his hand out for a handshake. “Hello, thank God you’re here. I’m Dr. Malcolm Travis, neurologist, I spoke with your organization on the phone earlier. You two are the agents, right? They told me to wait here and then drive you to-“

              Dexter cut him off. “Yes, we’re the agents. My name is Dexter Davis, and this is my partner, Sigrid Kelly.” We showed our badges, already in our hands out of habit.

              I scanned Dr. Travis. His hands were fidgeting with the hem of his coat wearing it to threads. The nails of those hands were short and ragged, bitten nearly to the nailbed. His body, outside of his hands, was strangely still, with straight posture and unshifting feet. His voice was deep, but panicked.

              I cleared my throat. “So, doctor, you said you were instructed to drive us to the hospital, to take a look at the victims, is that correct?”

              “Yes, ma’am, of course. I-“ He turned around fast, bumping into the cop cruiser behind him. “I’m so sorry. You… you guys can choose where you sit, I can sit anywhere.”

              The police officer nodded to us silently from her seat in the front of the car. I turned to Dexter. “You take the front seat and I’ll sit in the back with Dr. Travis?”

              “Sounds good.” Dexter sat in the front seat. I opened the back door and gestured for Dr. Travis to enter first. He did, fumbling slightly with his seatbelt as I climbed into the car. The inside of the cruiser was spacious, on the better side of cop cruisers I’d been in. The officer in the front seat started driving slowly, presumably to the local hospital. According to Dexter’s itinerary, we had about a 10-minute drive from the airport to the hospital. I turned to Dr. Travis.

              “So, Malcolm, can I call you that?” I made my tone as friendly and nonthreatening as I could hoping I wasn’t scaring him. I knew federal agents could scare anyone, guilty or not.

              “Yeah, of course.”

              “Great. You can call me Sigrid. Before we enter the hospital, I have a few questions. You didn’t really give us much background. I know we didn’t talk much on the phone, but you seemed certain the victims aren’t dead but also aren’t in a coma. Can you tell me a little bit about that? I just want to know what I’m getting into.” I tried to sound friendly, conversational.

              “Well…” he hesitated. “I’m not sure how to describe it. I mean, of course, there are the medical basics, their hearts are beating, their lungs are moving, we’ve done brain scans of all the victims, but they’re just… gone. There’s nothing in there. They’re alive, technically, but they don’t respond to anything. Their eyes don’t move. There’s nothing in their brains except the most basic survival needs.”

              “I see… now, I’m no medical expert, of course, but can you tell me how it’s different from a coma? Because I’ve seen people in comas before, they’re completely unresponsive.” Dr. Travis seemed to get even more nervous as he talked about the victims. Up close, I could see that his eyes were rimmed with dark circles, and bloodshot, as though he hadn’t slept in days. His outfit seemed wrinkled, as though he’d been wearing the same clothes for days. My watch buzzed with a message from Dexter. ‘Suspect?’ it read. I considered it for a second. Nervousness, the medical expertise to create a biological agent, and access to a lab. I couldn’t rule it out.

              “Well, for starters, people in comas have more electrical impulses in their brains, beyond the basic ‘heart, pump blood. Lungs, expand’ impulses. Their internal and subconscious thoughts are still active, if on a lower scale, and about 20% of coma patients can hear and comprehend stimuli around them, even though they can’t respond. None of these patients have any internal activity outside of basic bodily functions. They’re not hearing anything, thinking, dreaming, nothing. It’s quiet in there. Silent in there. And none of them have woken up. It’s like brain death, but the body’s still technically alive.” He shuddered, his skin turning pale. “You just… you have to see it to understand.”

              We finished the ride in silence, Dexter nervously refreshing his texts and email for updates, Dr. Travis de-threading the frayed hem of his coat, and the driver nervously tapping the wheel. I made a mental note to figure out her involvement in the case. The car pulled to a stop in front of the hospital, a building that looked borderline ominous in the afternoon light, a morgue filled with victims of terrorism. I took a deep breath before getting out of the car. Dr. Travis stayed there, staring at the doors through the windshield. “Malcolm, are you coming with us?” I called.

              After a moment’s hesitation, he climbed out of the car, pausing to do the Sign of the Cross before entering. He led us down the labyrinthine hallways, talking as he went, seeming slightly more at peace inside the hospital. “We originally kept them in the ICU, but we moved them to the neurology wing for testing. And because they were scaring the patients and their families. Now we keep them in the back corner of the hospital.” We had paused at a blank door, one with security cameras on the outside, they seemed recent, like a new installation in light of current events. I instinctively shifted my hand to rest over my gun. Why would a hospital have cameras to guard a door that held only comatose victims?

              Dr. Travis opened the door, holding it as though he expected Dexter and I to walk in first. I took the door slightly forcefully. “Please, lead the way.” I said, waving him inside. With a deep breath, he walked in, followed closely by Dexter and I, into a roomful of beds surrounded by curtains, one that smelled faintly of antiseptic and was filled with the asynchronous beeping of various heart monitors. “Can you direct us to the first victim?”

              “Of course.” He led us to the back of the room, pulling the curtains apart to reveal a woman in a hospital gown hooked to monitors with a tube down her throat and a fluid drip in her arm. I felt a strange chill as her blank eyes stared at me, not following my movements, not perceiving. She’d become a shell of a person, her heart still beat, feeding a thoughtless brain that didn’t dare to respond. She was empty, alive without living. I suddenly understood what Dr. Travis meant when he said, ‘you have to see it to understand.’ There was something wrong with this patient, one that went beyond the comas I’d seen. She was alive… in the technical sense alone, her vitals completely stable, but everything within her gone. She was gone. I remembered her name from the files I’d read, Anna Leatta. It didn’t fit her anymore. I stepped back, almost involuntarily. My mind cleared slightly as I looked anywhere but at the victim before me. “How long…”

              “3 weeks. Total.” Dr. Travis seemed, if possible, more nervous after being confronted with this sight. Dexter, mercifully, pulled the curtains shut, his face pale and his hands shaking slightly.

              “And why aren’t they under quarantine?” My FBI training came back to me biological agent containment procedures running through my head, like an old routine, something that calmed me slightly, and I desperately latched on to it.

              “Because when the victim was first brought in, we thought it was just a coma. We didn’t put her in quarantine or anything along those lines, and nobody who’s come in contact with her or anyone in this room has gotten…” he paused “has wound up like this. We don’t think it’s contagious. And the dead one, no abnormal signatures, nothing strange in the bloodstream, I assure you, we tested every inch of the body, there’s nothing coming out of it, nothing strange moving through it. Whatever it is, it’s taken its’ toll and gone.”

              Dexter interjected. “What do you mean by ‘the dead one?’”

              “Oh, they didn’t tell you? We had one victim come in with a DNI order, and without the nutrition and fluids, they passed. We ran an autopsy; I can get you the reports if you need them.”

              “I’d like to talk to the coroner directly, if you don’t mind, now if possible.” Dexter’s expertise in forensic pathology would be useful here, no matter how strange I found his fascination with the dead, I had to admit, it was helpful in most cases.

              Dr. Travis nodded. “Of course.”

              I checked my watch. “Dex, we’re supposed to meet with the police and interview the witnesses-“

              “Right, yeah, can you take her to… wherever the witnesses are and then take me to the coroner?”

              Dr. Travis nodded. “Of course. Just follow me, Ms. Kelly. Mr. Davis. You can follow us or wait outside here.” He didn’t even mention staying inside as an option. I didn’t blame him; those hauntingly empty eyes were burned into my brain.

Dr. Travis walked me to a light wood door covered with pictures of smiling cartoon animals. “This is our secondary pediatrics wing. Our primary is handling all the patients, and this room has essentially become our command center. The children are being kept here with parent permission, and they’ve all undergone questioning and are currently undergoing psychological treatment. The kids were, understandably, traumatized. Severely. Officer Luca will take it from here.” He opened the door, revealing what was clearly once a waiting room turning into a makeshift command center, with a large table in the center covered in paper. 2 officers sat at the table, the woman who’d driven us to the hospital, and a man who looked like he hadn’t slept in days.

The woman looked up at us and smiled. “Hi, Ms. Kelly, I’m so glad you’re here. Before we begin, any initial questions?”

Only about a thousand, I thought. Instead, I said “No, not yet. I want to hear what you’ve uncovered so far.” I glanced at the table, seeing the spread of papers, written words and pictures, none of the pictures clear, and the words ‘monster’ and ‘demon’ scattered across the written sections.

“Well, we’ve been looking over the footage, frame by frame. Looking for anything the killer couldn’t erase. The strange thing… whatever software he’s-“

“They’re.” I corrected automatically. “Could be a person of any gender, could be a group, could be a country. Never limit your suspects”

“Right, okay, whatever software they’re using, it leaves no traces of editing. It’s almost perfect. The footage didn’t even look tampered with, except for a few obvious things.”

“And what are those?”

“For starters, the killer isn’t in any of the frames. Not fully anyway. It’s like the victim is being attacked out of thin air.” She handed me a still frame of a woman screaming in obvious pain with nothing near her to cause such a reaction.

“Are they using a greenscreen suit?”

“We thought that might be the case. No, they’re not. They’re wearing a black bodysuit with colorful facial features drawn on, and yellow yarn hair. You can see a bit of the black glove in that one, around her wrists, and I’ll get you some of the other still, give me a second…” She shuffled though the papers on the desk, coming up with 3 stills.

I glanced at them, seeing a jet-black creature that looked about a mile from human with blue and green bulging heterochromatic eyes, bright orange lips, and yellow hair that stuck out like the killer had been electrocuted. They looked like they’d been drawn by a child who wanted to use all the crayons in the crayon box, with a frame that looked borderline starved and fingers that would make a pianist green with envy, almost as green as the killer’s left eye. The other stills showed similar images, one with the Crayola-orange lips pulled back into a smile over sharp yellowish teeth. “So, they’re using multiple suits?”

“No. Those two stills were taken in the same video, the mask is shifting, somehow. And this is what makes us think it could be digital erasure software, see how thin they look? The software must’ve cut out the outer edges of the body and left the center. Sure makes them look creepy though. Like they’re not human.”

I sighed. “Don’t even say that. I’ve heard enough ‘aliens live among us’ crap for a lifetime. No, there are no aliens in area 51. No, the FBI isn’t hiding aliens under our desks. They’re human. This is a human, and quite probably a terrorist. Can we agree on this?”

Officer Luca nodded. “I’m going to hold off on that for just a little while, if you don’t mind. We have 4 videos, all from child monitors. And this is where it gets even creepier. In 2 of the videos, the killer enters from offscreen, out of sight, scaring the victim as they turn around. Now, that’s not too weird, but the other 2… You know, I think I’ll just show you. Mike, can you queue up the first video?”

The officer at the table nodded, turning a laptop to face us and pressing play. The video was of somewhat grainy quality and showed a man checking on his kid. There was a soft thump sound, and the man turned around to open the drawer of a nearby dresser. He muttered something quietly as he opened the drawer. The camera flickered, showing a thin black line rising out of the drawer to a height that couldn’t possibly have fit in there. The man backed away from the black line, eyes wide with horror. The line moved, changing in thickness as it did so. It moved inhumanly -no, edited to look inhuman- quickly, shifting with flashes of black and green and yellow and orange as it moved what appeared to be its head over the victim’s hip. In a flash, with a sound of pain, the man keeled over, eyes still open, blankness obvious even through the bad quality camera. The black line stayed still for a second, I heard a faint high-pitched clicking, and it seemingly returned to the drawer, which closed with a bang.

I was silent for a second. “Where did they go?”

“Into the drawer, apparently.” The officer at the table, officer Micheal Williams, if his badge was any indication, offered this answer as though it was the only possibility.

I refused to accept that answer. “No, that’s not even possible. Have you researched everyone in the area with experience with animation and special effects? Amateur filmmakers, anyone along those lines? Even professional software engineers?”

Officer Luca nodded. “We’ve looked. Nobody we’ve checked on has that sort of skill. Let alone the skill and speed required to edit this much work this fast. And… you should see the second video. It gets worse, unfortunately.”

I raised my eyebrows as she clicked on the next video. Two adults, stood in the middle of the room, both female. One of them shuddered and wiped her hand on the side facing away from the camera. Her hand was covered in blood. She turned towards the other woman, holding up her bloody hand and revealing a thin, almost invisible cut, a look of terror on her face. She shuddered again, convulsed, and then went still. She smiled, not a normal smile, a smile like a tiger about to devour its prey. She lunged towards the other woman and then collapsed, the thin black line appearing to step partway out of her body towards the other woman. It appeared to bite her hip, the woman dropping to the ground much like the man in the first video. The black line snaked back into the body of the first woman, her body moving with lurching, jerky movements towards the door.

“Was she questioned?” My instincts kicked in clearly the bioweapon had affected her and… made her act strange… but where had the person in the suit come from? No, clearly the black suited man was cgi, meant to throw us off, and the real culprit was the bioweapon that made ordinary people do it’s bidding, and somehow turn the victims comatose through… biting, so it must be bloodborne. A bloodborne pathogen that allows a strange form of partial mind control in some victims, but a coma in other patients. Yes, that has to be it.

“She was, but she’s in no state to answer questions. She kept saying ‘it made me do it, it forced itself into my body and forced me to move, it made me do it’ over and over again. She died a few hours later, her body was cleanly severed down the middle. Even the bones, cut in half so smoothly, yet with less than a hair’s distance between them, stopping just shy of the opposite side. I’ve never seen anything even remotely like it.”

My mind went blank, unable to come up with even a remotely rational explanation for this, other than large-scale hallucinations. A psychoactive drug? But one that affected so many people? Across multiple days? No, there had to be an answer, there always was, even if my faith in finding one was dwindling by the second. I filed that information away and made a mental note to have Dexter check the autopsy reports on the… accomplice? Victim? The other woman. I sat down before my mind burst and left me curled up in a little ball on the ground. No. There was a rational explanation for this. Somehow. I had to move on, the walls of the room seemed tighter than before, the room suddenly stifling. I changed the subject. “And there are 2 witnesses, to this, right? Can I speak to them?” I took a breath, trying to clear my head. I’d find the answer, I always did. This was just another brilliant murderer with a heart of stone and the mind of a machine.

“Of course, their names are Cassie and Henry, and they’re in rooms in rooms 8 and 3, respectively. Take all the time you need.” Officer Luca sat back down at the table, going over something on the laptop.

I walked towards the door, only to be stopped by Officer Williams. “Here,” he said, handing me notecards with hastily scribbled notes and pictures of the children. “I’m terrible with kids, this is my cheat sheet. Good luck.”

“Thanks.” I glanced at the first card, Henry, a 7-year-old boy. It had notes like ‘very religious, pray with him’ and ‘has lots of siblings, they all play video games together, ask him about video games.’ I walked through the door, scanning the room numbers before entering room 3.

The room was tightly packed with toys, portable game systems, and crosses. Henry was sitting on the floor, using the seat of a chair as a little table to put together a puzzle. I sat down across from him. “Hi, Henry,” I said, trying to imitate how my sister always spoke to kids. “I’m Miss Sigrid, from the FBI, do you know what that is?”

He nodded. “Federal something of investigations. You look into crimes and stuff.”

“Look, Henry, I need you to tell me what you saw. I know you’re probably tired of that, but I need to hear it from you. Can you do that for me.”

He didn’t look up from his puzzle, but I saw his eyes turn glassy with tears. “They live in the closet. I’ve seen them for months, every night. I have to close the door, or they stare at me all night with their big glowing green eyes. They’re like walking shadows, and they can turn invisible. One of them came out of the closet and bit my mom. It said it ate her soul. Then it went back into the closet with the rest of them.” His voice was full of fear and sadness. I reached to give him a hug before pausing. Would he respond well to that? I settled for patting him on the shoulder.

“You’re a very brave boy, Henry. Thank you so much for cooperating with me.” Useless testimony, unfortunately. The kid had nightmares about the event, clearly, and interpreted the killer as a monster in the closet. The only useful piece there was the possibility that the killer spent time hiding in the victim’s homes. I turned to leave.

“Wait!” Henry called out, standing up and wiping his eyes. He rustled around in a drawer and pulled out a set of rosary beads. “Please take these. I don’t want them to get you, too.”

I held my hand out hesitantly, my rational mind telling me to refuse, to just ignore the superstition, but my gut told me to take it, if only to make him feel better. I rolled the wooden bead between my fingers before slipping the beads into my pocket. “Thanks, Henry.” I walked out, scanning for room 8, Cassie’s room. I read her card ‘Age 5, possibility of trauma induced psychosis, loves dragons and Bigfoot.’ Great. Another unreliable witness. I took a deep breath and then pushed the door open.

“Cassie?” I stepped into the mostly empty undecorated room. Unlike Henry, who had toys on every surface, Cassie only had a backpack full of thin paperback books.

She looked up from the book in her hand, reading as she sat on a table. “Are you here to look at my brain again?”

“No, I’m from the FBI.” I sat in the chair near her, as she seemed quite comfortable on the table. “Is it alright if I ask you what you saw on the night your dad was…”

“Oh, when his soul was taken?” She spoke as though giving a fact, casual as you please as she talked about her dad’s murder.

“Ah… yes, Cassie, on the night your father was attacked, did you see anything?” Words moved through my head, instructions for interrogating the psychotic don’t call them crazy, don’t tell them they’re wrong, filter the truth from delusion, stay calm and upbeat, use their names a lot…

“Do you want to see them? You can meet my dad, too, after. But they don’t like it when I talk to my dad too much.” She sniffled. “I really miss him. I wish they’d let him visit me.” She started crying, like any normal kid, blotting her eyes and nose with a tissue. She probably had a picture to share or something.

“Of course, Cassie. I’d be more than happy to see them. And maybe then you could tell me what you saw?” She hopped off the table, her head barely coming up to my chest. It occurred to me for the first time just how young these kids really were, to be dealing with something so painful.

“Close your eyes,” she ordered with the bossy determination of an eldest child. Feeling a little stupid, I closed them. She grazed her fingertips over my eyelids, gently. “Now, this is going to be… strange, okay. Don’t worry, it’ll wear off soon.”

“Of course not, Cassie. I’m sure it’ll be fine.” I opened my eyes and recoiled in horror. An inhumanly slim jet-black figure stood in the corner of the room, with a wide orange smile and blue and green eyes that seemed somehow more grotesque in person. From up close, I notice that the figure’s skin glimmered like obsidian, as though it was carved from cave rock. A series of high, sharp clicks rang out, the walls of the room suddenly shifting into a writhing mass of black and bright colors, crawling out of the shadows. The clicking noise came from what appeared to be the leader, its’ smile never faltering, not for a second. “What the hell are you.” I whispered, mostly to myself, my mind still reeling from the horrifying sight. This was no hallucination. This was real.

“We? We have many names.” The leader spoke in a high voice, like the voice of a young child. The figures on the walls clicked in response, some of them peeling off the wall to take their place beside the leader, calling out words as they did so.

“Devil.”

“Rakshasa.”

“Jinn.”

They continued to call out names as the leader leaned down to Cassie. “You shouldn’t do this so often, kid. It’s dangerous.” The demon spoke in a whisper, shadowy hand reaching for her. I grabbed her by the shoulders, pulling her towards me as she wrapped her arms around me.

“You stay away from her!” I screamed to the monster, barely noticing that its hand was invisible from the side, like a paper doll, 2-dimensional. “What do you want?”

The creature stepped back, cruel bulging eyes level with mine, although I could’ve sworn it was taller just seconds ago. “Souls. Yours. Hers. Everyone’s.” The high voice stayed level, calm. “And we won’t stop until the world is ours. Tell them what you saw… Sigrid.” The demons said my name in a strange way, giving it a sharp edge.

I didn’t stop to think as I opened the door and pulled Cassie out with me, dragging her down the hallway, trying to find my way out the way I came. The officers saw me walk through the doors. I didn’t hear a word they said, all I could say was “they’re everywhere, evacuate now. Everyone has to leave.” The world blurred around me. I had to leave.

Outside the building, I saw Dexter leaving the doors looking confused. “Sigrid!” he called. “It was so weird, all the hearts stopped beating at once, and then we got this evacuation code-“

“Burn it all. It’s… it’s all contaminated. We need to get everyone out of here. We need to burn it.” Dexter trusted my judgement. Within days we’d have the area cleared out, evacuated, and the demons would be gone. They’d never kill again. They’d burn with everything else. And they could never follow me.

It was strange, though, as I walked away. I’d never noticed that my shadow… glimmered.

Alex Finch is an American author with a love for horror, from the lighthearted satirical kind to the darkness that haunts their deepest nightmares. Alex enjoys cryptography and daydreaming in their spare time.