The soul bank, p.24
The Soul Bank, page 24
“Well, the groundskeeping lodge is at the rear of the property. If you go through the bar, there’s a back door that leads across a courtyard, then go through the walled garden and the lodge is right there. You can’t miss it.”
“Excellent. Thank you so much.”
I’m sure the receptionist is wondering why we want to see Thomas, but she doesn’t mention it.
Chloe grabs my hand and leads the way.
As we get to the door of the bar, I stop. “Ron and all might still be in there. I don’t want to get caught up with them now.”
She nods and goes through, cautiously. She comes back. “Coast is clear.” She sniggers. “This is fun, isn’t it? All very clandestine.”
“If you put it that way, I suppose. A bit of adventure.”
“Come on.” She pulls me through into the bar, and then to the back where the door is. Outside is a nice little courtyard. A beer garden. They probably do weddings and things here. We traverse the space into the walled garden through a rusty gate. There’s a herb patch and a sprawl of nasturtiums growing all along the wall. Then at the back, the lodge as mentioned. You can’t miss it.
“What now?” I turn to Chloe. Suddenly nervous.
“Well, I guess we knock at the door?” She laughs.
“But what do we say? Hello, are you Thomas, the weird bloke in our dreams?”
She chuckles. “We’ll wing it.” She steps forward and knocks on the door. My heart thuds in my chest.
Presently, the door creaks open and a dark figure appears in the doorway. He steps forward, and there’s no doubt. He’s Thomas, but not as imposing. An old gent, maybe in his late seventies, stooping with the gravity of ages. He fumbles for a pair of glasses which are on a chain around his neck. “Yes?”
Chloe takes the lead. “Hello, are you by any chance, Thomas?”
He looks up, now wearing his glasses. “Ah, yes. I have been expecting you.” He grins. “Come, come. My old bones feel the cold.”
He motions for us to follow him inside. I turn to Chloe. She shrugs and goes through the door.
Inside is a pleasant room, pot-plants everywhere, knick-knacks on every shelf. Figurines, carvings. A smell of oldness. The room is dim, but a fire blazes in a hearth. Thomas slowly creaks down into a beaten old armchair that sits in front of the fireplace. “Sit.” He nods towards an equally beaten old couch opposite. We do as we’re told.
“You’ve been expecting us?” Chloe asks. I’m glad she’s taking the lead. I don’t even know where to start. “Do you know who we are?”
“Yes, of course. You are the delightful Chloe, and your quiet friend here is Andrew… Andy.” I look up. He seems like a friendly old chap. Not at all as I remember him from the dreams.
“You know what’s going on?” Chloe asks.
“I do.”
“Well, thank heaven someone does.” I sit forward. “Thomas, would you mind telling us what on earth is going on with our dreams?”
He smiles. “To do that, I must tell you the history, first.” He looks at us, wide-eyed. Oh, boy. I should tell Ron to come and listen… “In seven hundred years, you are the first to join me here.”
I turn to Chloe. She looks at me with a shrug.
“Edmund, second Earl of Cornwall, an obnoxious man. He caused this.” He spreads his arms out wide. “All this was his doing.” He chuckles. “With my knowledge, of course.” He shakes his head.
He looks over at us. “I should start at the beginning.”
Thomas tells us the same tale as is printed in the hotel brochure. But he adds some nuance that Edmund was not a pleasant chap, and had a strong desire that he should live forever, never meeting death in battle or age. He commissioned the building on this site as a monastery, where he hoped eternal life would be granted him through the research that the monks would be working on. Thomas tells the tale as if he was there.
“My work was blasphemous. I should never have studied the stones.” He shakes his head. “And now God has forever forsaken me.”
“The stones?”
“You must know by now? The lodestones. The soul stones. They trap you inside their shell.”
“I think that’s the part we aren’t clear on.” Chloe offers a smile.
“Placed under the old abbey are twenty stones, sourced from all over the world as we knew it then… I spent my life collecting, honing, testing and refining. But eventually, I had a method.” He breaks into a fit of coughing. I move to stand up and help, but he waves me down. He grabs a glass of water from a small table next to his chair and takes a sip. Pausing for a moment. “I am not as young as I once was.” He grins. “Corporis libero animum.” He chants the words and gazes up to the ceiling. “Free the soul from the body. It seemed obvious, then.” He shakes his head, then looks at us directly. “Your souls are trapped inside the stones. As is mine. We share our dreams because we are together under the building. In a soul bank, if you will.” His eyes wide.
“Sorry, our souls are trapped inside the stones?”
“I imagine it was the storms that did it, the dynge struck and caught you fast.” He shrugs. “I’m uncertain. But here you are.”
I glance at Chloe. “Thomas, may I ask, how old are you?”
He laughs. “This body, I guess around eighty, eighty-two.”
“But you talk as if you were the one who laid these stones, seven-hundred years ago?”
“It was I, yes.” He grins. “My soul has passed through many stones. Eighteen, I believe, at last count. Each stone a body I stole. Each life displaced into nothing.”
“But, how?”
“The method is simple. A suitable donor is found and coaxed, by fair means or foul, to the room below. The night must be stormy, but this valley attracts lightning. We chose this location well. A rod of iron directs the strikes to the cellar. Then, we wait. I place the new stone on the donor’s body as he lies incapacitated. The thunder takes care of the rest. I wake in my comfortable new body and carry on my long life. The previous stone is spent, the energy is gone.”
“Incapacitated?” Chloe tilts her head.
“Yes, it used to be a messy business, much easier now I have the device.”
“If I may summarise?” I stand up. “Are you saying that you are the same soul as built this ‘soul bank’ seven-hundred years ago?”
“I am.”
“And you have passed your soul through eighteen different people’s bodies over those years, by lightning strikes and magnetite stones?”
“Now you have it. Vitam aeternam. Eternal life.” He taps his nose and looks up at me.
“But we didn’t do any of that?” Chloe looks a bit worried now. I sit back down next to her.
“No, but you must have stayed here during a storm? They were doing some maintenance on the building recently. I’d wager that the electrical work has changed the direction of the flow. You were unlucky. Dragged into this realm to join me.”
An awkward silence lingers for a moment while we all seem to soak in what he’s said.
“What about Edmund?” I sit forward. “Wasn’t this soul bank for him?”
“The fool died before I could carry out the process on his soul. He became ill and withered. I used the stones myself.” He shrugs.
“Right.” I ponder for a moment. “You say there were twenty stones, and you have passed through eighteen of them, leaving two for,” I nod towards Chloe. “us?”
“Quite correct, child. We have come to the end of our adventure.”
“What happens when we die, then?” Chloe seems scared.
“Your bodies will rot, your souls will stay in the stones, as long as they are protected. Each lodestone is paired with peridot to ward away evil.”
“Oh.” She leans forward. “I’m not sure if I like the idea of that.”
“I don’t doubt it. After this long, I despise the idea myself.” He shrugs. “My soul is damned. I went against God’s will.”
“May I ask, Thomas, why did you do this?”
“I was young and foolish. It was a different time, then. I wished to prove my worth to the Earl.” He steeples his fingers to his lips. “And since then, the world has changed. I knew the end was coming soon, and you two have merely shortened my time a little. No matter, I am ready to face God’s wrath.”
“Err, is there anything we can do?” I look around at Chloe. “To get our souls out of the bank and back into our bodies? Make a withdrawal, as it were?” She nods.
“There may be a way. I can’t say for sure, but since you arrived by alternative means, perhaps your transfer wasn’t complete.” He ponders. “If only a fragment left your bodies, then perhaps, when released, the fragment would be drawn back.”
“And how would we release them?”
Thomas stands up and walks to a huge old dresser that’s in the corner of the room. He opens a drawer and rummages inside, pulling out a big hammer.
“We break the stones.”
Thomas leads us through the Lodestone Bar, into a storeroom behind, then down a set of steps. The building rapidly changes from modern to ancient. The steps are worn smooth from ages. There’s a musty smell, but also the stench of burning oil. He gets to the bottom and pauses. “Do not enter yet. I must deactivate the device.”
He pulls a huge old key from his pocket; I recognise it from my dreams. The smooth metal key was in my gown. He turns it in the door and pushes it open. Inside is pitch dark, but he steps through. He fumbles on the wall and flicks on a switch. The room is bathed in light. Then he bends down, slowly, and picks up a long wooden stick from the floor and pokes it towards a plug that has an old twisted cable snaking off towards the back. He yanks out the plug and stands back up.
“It is safe to enter now.”
“What was that?” I try to follow where the cable went, but it vanishes into the wall.
“It brings panic and fear. An infrasound generator.” He chuckles. “One of my previous hosts had invented it by chance. It makes a low-frequency sound that vibrates the very cockles of the body, causing the sensations. Dread and terror keep any unwanted visitors out of the cellar. The burning of oil is a similar deterrent.”
I look over at Thomas. “Is that what happened, in my dreams?” He nods. “Jesus.”
“He had nothing to do with it.” He grins. “Fear and terror are man-made emotions.”
“Right.”
“Deeper inside, we will find the stones.” He moves onward.
The cellar narrows into a passage. Thomas flicks on more lights as we negotiate our way through the tunnel. It seems to lead on deep under the bowels of the hotel. Eventually, it expands into a circular room. Low ceilinged, I stoop down to enter. The only light is an ancient-looking rusty lamp on the floor. A cable runs along the wall to it, low to the ground.
“Here we are.” Thomas chuckles. “The Soul Bank.” He motions to the wall and spins slowly around. In the wall there are several small cubbyholes chipped into the stonework. In each one there is a green gemstone and a crumpled pile of dust and rock. On a small table near the lamp is a book. Ancient looking. Three words in elegant calligraphy on the cover. ‘Corporis Libero Animum’.
“These are ours.” He turns again and points to three holes in a triangle formation. The stones in these three are whole.
“Which is which?” I peer into the holes, using the torch on my phone to get a better look. A rough and dusty nook, a green gemstone and a dark grey lump of rock. The magnetite is filthy with specs of something covering the surface. Iron flecks, I guess. In the middle of the low ceiling, there’s a spike protruding down, rusty and sharp. Dangerous looking. The muddy ceiling around it is blackened, and a complicated mess of copper pipes leads away from the centre to each of the nooks.
Thomas picks up one stone from the bottom left of the triangle. “This is me. I’m afraid I don’t know which you reside in.”
I turn to Chloe. She is quiet, looking around at the walls and their dusty nooks. She shivers. “Doesn’t matter.” She pulls one of the other stones out. “This is me. I reckon.” She shrugs, then hands me the stone. “Smash it, Andy.”
Thomas hands me the hammer. I was expecting it to be something ancient and worn, like the key, but this has a black plastic handle and a label on it that says £10.99, from B&Q.
“Are you sure this will work?” I turn to Thomas.
“No, not at all.” He shrugs. “But it might.”
“Great.” I look at Chloe. “Yeah?”
“Do it.” She shudders. “I don’t want my soul trapped in here forever. It gives me the creeps.”
“Okay, then. Cover your eyes.” I put the stone down on the ground and kneel next to it. Raising the hammer and bringing it down with all my force. A crack forms in the stone. I do it again and again and the lodestone is turned to rubble. I pick up a small piece and rub my finger along the surface. The iron flecks rub loose.
I look up at Chloe. “Anything?”
She shrugs. “I don’t feel different.”
I stand and grab the other stone from the nook, repeating the process. Smashing it into the ground. I didn’t feel anything either.
“Okay, now what?”
Thomas grips the stone in his hand. He bends down and hands it to me. “Break my stone, Andrew. My time has come.”
“Are you sure? What will that do to you?”
“No, I am not sure. But I feel the need. Whatever happens, happens.”
I look up at Chloe. She nods. “Fair enough.” I lay Thomas’ stone down and whack it with the hammer into smithereens.
“It is done. Now we can sleep, perchance to dream alone.”
Thomas goes back to his lodge, after setting his infrasound trap again in the cellar and locking the door. He said we shouldn’t have the dreams anymore if our soul fragments have left the stones now. His stone acted as a plug, stopping his soul from leaving the body it currently inhabits. Now he expects that when he passes, his soul will be judged and damned for all eternity for his crimes. I’m not convinced if I believe that, but to be honest, I’m not convinced I believe any of what happened this evening. Soul stones in a soul bank? Breaking them to release the souls back into our bodies? It seems ridiculous.
Chloe is quiet. I think she’s a bit shaken by the experience.
I open the door to the back of the Lodestone Bar for her. “Well, that was smashing! Fancy a pint?”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Bleary-eyed, I mash at the wake-up alarm ringing on my phone. I think I need a holiday soon. A proper one. Two weeks of peace and nothing. No agenda, no hangovers. My body is rebelling. I slept like the dead last night.
I feel a stroke at my back and jump. I turn around. Chloe, lying beside me, serene and messy with bed-head hair. She’s beautiful. I lean down and peck her on the cheek.
“Work. Bleh.”
I shuffle out of the bed, but Chloe grabs my arm.
“Did you dream?” She doesn’t open her eyes, her face pressed into the pillow. The words come out squished. I chuckle.
“No. Not that I remember.”
“Me either.” She peeks open one eye. “Do you think it worked?”
“What, the stone smashing?” I raise an eyebrow.
“Yeah, all that malarkey.” She sits up.
“I mean, I find it very hard to believe any of that stuff.”
“Yeah, but…” She points to her head and then to me. “We were linked.”
“You have a point.” I hesitate. “Do you believe in souls and whatnot?”
“I don’t know. Some days I do, some I don’t.”
“Today?”
“Today, I do.”
I nod. “And Thomas. Do you think his soul is seven-hundred years old, or is he just a nutty old man who’s read a load of history?”
“I believe him.” Her black eyes are wide. “Andy, he knew us. He knew our dreams.”
“Yeah.” I rub my chin. “Just, when you’ve slept on something, you tend to find the logic.” I chuckle. “I mean, stones in a soul bank? Does it make any rational sense?”
“Does anything?” She laughs. “We’re monkeys that spin around a star on a ball of rock and water. What the hell do we know?”
“Fair enough.” I smile. “You know what? Sod it. I’ll believe Thomas. For want of any better explanation.”
She smiles and squeezes my hand. “Yeah, me too.”
“I have to shower and go to work.” I make a sad face, but an idea pops into my head. “Care to join me? At least for that first thing…” I raise an eyebrow.
“Oooh, don’t mind if I do.” She sniggers, coy.
I grab a coffee and a piece of toast in the breakfast-room. I’m feeling a bit more alive, today. The solid night’s sleep did me a world of good.
Ron is holding court at the breakfast table, telling a tale about a project he was working on years back for a customer in Ireland. I’ve heard this one many times. They wanted a server farm, on a farm, and the bloke’s name was Mike Wazowski, like that green monster from the Pixar movie. Hilarious. I roll my eyes.
I sit down opposite Dave. “Morning, mate.”
“Hey, you okay?”
“Yeah, not bad. Not bad at all.” I smile. “Tell you all about it later.”
“Someone’s in a good mood, today.” He grins. “Nice one, mate.”
I am feeling good, now I think about it. Something is different. No headache. No dull thump, no gauze over the world. I’m not tired, not sluggish.
I suppose that means the smashing did work, and I have Thomas to thank for my new found vitality. Maybe we’ll visit him later, see if anything has changed for him.
Ron notices me at the table. “Hey, morning, Andy.”
“Ron. Lads.” I nod to John and Sandra.
“Missed you again at dinner last night.”
“Oh, yeah. Sorry.”
“Andy had some family business to take care of.” Dave butts in.
“Right.” I clear my throat. “Don’t worry, all taken care of, now.” I flash a disarming smile. “Looking forward to dinner, tonight. Where are we going?”
