The Soul Eater

Content Warning: physical abuse, murder, child death

Produced by the CREEPY Podcast - Episode air date: February 25, 2024

“Andrew, come here. Sit down.”

My voice is weak, barely a croak. I try not to pay attention to it, just like I try not to pay attention to the man across the room who isn’t a man at all—who only looks like a man for my benefit.

My grandson Andrew turned nine in November. I know this because I’ve been watching the solemn-looking brunette boy from what I thought was a safe distance all these years. His big brown eyes are just like his father’s, my son. I wasn’t there for much of Kipp’s life either. He was Andrew’s age when I asked a favor that changed the rest of my life forever, and I stopped being Kipp’s father and Martha’s husband, and became…something else.

I’m certain the only reason Kipp agreed to let me meet Andrew is to honor an old man’s dying wish. I don’t want to meet Andrew this way. If I could spare him this, I wouldn’t meet him at all. But such is the nature of the…favor…that I asked, all those years ago, that I am bound to have this conversation with the boy who already looks afraid, even if he doesn’t know why. Death isn’t just something that happens. It’s a feeling. As much as good. As much as Evil. It’s tangible. Like the warmth of the sun on your bare skin on a summer day, or the stinking, icy breath of the grim reaper standing behind you with his scythe.

My name is Willem Greene, and I’m here to tell my grandson about how I became a Soul Eater.

He enters the room slowly, and looks back at his dad, my son, out in the hall. I’ve promised Kipp what’s left of my money—a mighty fine sum—for this time alone with Andrew, and I’ve assured him that everything will be OK. I’m lying through my rotting teeth—not about the money, but about…everything else. Everything certainly will not be OK. I don’t like to lie and I’m not a bad man—once I thought myself a very good man—but I don’t have a choice. What I did—what I’ve done—has all been for the love of my mother, and for that I wouldn’t—I couldn’t—change a thing.

But then I look at Andrew…

He sits in the chair to the left of where I’m lying on the bed. Monitors attached to my arm beep in time with my heart, reassuring me that—for now—I’m still among the living. Behind the bed, a fluorescent light brings out the dark circles under Andrew’s eyes. If the skin of a nine-year-old looks pallor in this light, it’s no wonder he’s afraid. I must look like death itself…which isn’t far from the truth.

“Hello, I’ve waited a long time to meet you,” I tell him. He shifts farther into the seat, like he’s getting comfortable. Kipp must’ve promised the boy a bike or a fancy new game console if he humors his old grandpa for a few minutes. Aside from some discomfort over not knowing me, and spending time this close to death, I’m sure Kipp assumes his son will come away from the encounter unscathed. I wish that was true. I want to ask another favor, but I am plumb out of anything to offer.

When the boy finally speaks, he asks the usual questions: how come I’ve never met you? Why haven’t you come for Christmas? He tells me about his other grandpa, Grandpa George, who does come for Christmas and longer visits every summer because he’s refired. I chuckle despite the heaviness in the room and tell him that Grandpa George is retired, not refired. Andrew, stubborn as his father, insists he’s right, and goes on to ask me if I’m also refired, and I tell him almost. Though, in my case, refired is certainly more accurate.

“That’s why we’re here,” I say. “I want to tell you about my job. It’s very special. Would you like to hear about it?”

He looks out into the hall, but his parents aren’t there anymore. They probably went for coffee or a snack. It’s better if they aren’t here. They can’t stop what’s going to happen any more than I can, but it’d be better if they didn’t have to watch.

Andrew agrees, as if sensing that the only way out of this room is through the story I’m about to tell. So, I commence to telling it…

The events leading to my unique employment actually started many years before I got the job, specifically the night of July 8, 1962. It was blasted hot that summer. The heat made people do crazy things. Robert and Janice Greene of suburban Chicago were not immune to the weather. Theirs was not usually a happy home, but the first weeks of July were worse somehow, as if ensuring things could not have gone any other way that sweltering summer night.

Robert was an investment banker by trade and violent drunk by nature. A living portrait of a man who hated himself to the very depths of his soul. After long days at the office, a commute by train, and a few nips at watering holes that knew him by name along the way, Robert would burst through the front door of the two-story house he’d never finish paying for, tie askew and reeking of scotch, and spend the hours before bed punishing his wife and son for everyone who ever wronged him. Neighbors drew their shades at the sound of breaking glass and strangled wails from a desperate woman’s throat that cut through the quiet street at ten o’clock at night. Everyone had their own problems, of course. When confronted with Janice’s latest bruise or broken arm it was easier to look the other way.

And look the other way they did when, on the night of July 8, 1962—when the heat, and the emotions that ran with it, swelled to unnatural levels—Robert Greene died quietly in his sleep.

I remember that night well because it was the last time Mama cleaned her own blood off the bathroom floor. I hid underneath my bed, clutching the tooth that my old man had knocked from my skull when I put myself in his path to spare my mother another smack. I don’t know how long I was under there, but the house was quiet—unnaturally so, and so damned hot I could barely breathe—when my mother gently pulled me from my hiding place and up into bed. I spent the rest of the night with my ear on her chest, sweating through my pajamas, while she stroked my hair and hummed a gentle lullaby. The next morning after my father missed his alarm we found him in bed, his skin hard and cold despite the unrelenting heat.

The doctors asked the usual questions. Was he prone to seizures? Did he have a bad heart? Was he allergic to anything? Mama didn’t think so, but mentioned he was under a lot of stress at work. The collection of empty bottles piled in the garage were all the proof anyone needed that Robert Greene had a drinking problem. His death was chalked up to organ failure from too much booze. After a small funeral and a few weeks with our heads down to give the pretense of grief, Mama and I packed up our house, cashed in my old man’s modest life insurance policy, and moved to Oregon, where the weather was cooler and nobody knew our names.

I scarcely thought about Robert Greene after that. It wasn’t until many years later, when I had my own wife and son, that Mama got sick and decided she couldn’t leave this earth with a burden on her soul. She called me—much like I’ve done with Andrew—to her bedside with a story. Running a tongue over her dry, cracked lips, she reached for my hand with barely enough strength to squeeze it, and said that ever since that night in ’62 when my father died, she’d lived with a terrible secret. One she hoped I would understand.

One she hoped the Lord would understand too.

I tightened my grip on her wrinkled fingers and kissed the knuckles that protruded through her skin. She looked so scared in that hospital bed, it reminded me of those nights as a child when she’d shove me into my room to keep me out of the fray, her eyes wide with apprehension at what was coming. I hated hiding then. It always felt like I was letting her down. A man would’ve taken care of his mother, and I wanted nothing more than to ease her pain now.

She coughed into the bed sheets, and I braced myself for her confession—the one meant for a priest that wouldn’t get there in time—but nothing could’ve prepared me for my mother’s truth.

It wasn’t a heart attack. Or a seizure. Or anything natural, Willy, she said. Then, with a set jaw, she admitted, It was arsenic.

The air left my lungs as I looked at my mother as if seeing her for the first time.

The words started pouring out then. Apologies. Promises that she wasn’t an evil woman. Professions of fear over not being able to protect me. When I started stepping in, she knew she couldn’t let him hurt me. Once she got her hands on that bottle, she swore she never meant to use it. But then he knocked my tooth out…

She broke off crying, weeping the last wails that would ever leave her body. I bent to hold her head against my chest until she was ready to continue, imagining my mother’s delicate fingers squeezing drop after drop after drop of poison into my father’s scotch.

Through her tears, she cried for my forgiveness.

“There’s nothing to forgive,” I whispered into her wispy gray hair. And I meant it. Remembering the way she cradled me that night, how she stayed with me until morning, I should’ve known then. She never slept anywhere but beside my father.

But he was already dead.

Then she asked the question that would change the trajectory of my life forever: What if they don’t let me in?

“Where?” I asked.

To heaven.

She was white as stone, her eyes those of a frightened child—and no wonder. A Christian woman, minutes from death, with a murder on her hands, on her soul, was unsure of where she was going to wake up after her last breath. What could be more terrifying?

That she could be damned to the pits of hell where men like my father burned for all eternity seemed horribly unfair…

And entirely possible.

I fled from my mother’s hospital room and down several floors before stumbling into the empty chapel. The small, stuffy space with stained-glass windows to nowhere and tiny church pews was like a generic miniature of a real church, its mauve carpeting and bare wooden cross lacking the Godly essence that made a man feel connected to something higher than himself that I’d felt on those visits to Mass when I was a child. God was supposed to be everywhere, but I didn’t think heaven would hear me in here.

And I was right.

Since I was desperate and my mother was out of time, I fell to my knees in the back row of pews and prayed to anyone or anything that might be listening.

“Please, please God. My mother is a good woman. If you know her then you know that. Please, I’ll do anything. Anything. She’s always taken care of me. She was just doing what she thought she had to do to keep me safe. She doesn’t deserve to go to hell. Please, if her crimes will keep her out of heaven, please…give them to me. Give them to me, Lord. I’ll take them. Unburden her soul and I’ll gladly carry her sins. Please, please, just let her into heaven. Please.”

I closed my eyes, leaning on the pew in front me, tears I hadn’t cried in my life pouring down my cheeks. Bargaining—one of the stages of grief, I’ve heard. But this was different. I wasn’t begging for the Almighty to give a dying woman more time. I was fighting for her very soul. I didn’t say it, but I knew in my heart I’d sell my own to the Devil himself to save my mother.

As soon as that horrifying realization materialized, I heard the sound of someone clearing their throat. I’d been alone in the chapel, but when I looked up for the source of the sound, there was a man sitting on the other side of the aisle in the second pew. I jumped back, startled by his presence. It wasn’t just that I didn’t know where he came from—he must’ve quietly snuck past me while I was bargaining—but there was something off about him, something unsettling that I could sense from the back of his head and the upturned collar of his dark jacket. I shivered and the man cleared his throat again.

Was it my imagination, or had the light changed? It looked darker than when I entered, a subtle orange glow emanating from the sconces on the wall that were previously unlit. And there was a smell…something dank and filthy that I couldn’t place…that tasted ashen on my tongue and coated my lungs with what felt like soot with every breath.

I glanced down at my arms and saw that my skin had taken on the slightly greenish hue of pea soup. That couldn’t be right. It must’ve been the tears, so I wiped my eyes to clear my vision, but the room was still glowing orange and my skin was still green, and as I pondered this, the man in the second pew shifted in his seat. Without turning to look at me, I heard him ask simply: Well?

“I—” I choked out. Well, what? I was too afraid to ask, too stricken that this chapel had suddenly connected to something otherworldly—but perhaps not something holy, like I had hoped.

Then I remembered why I was there, which was more important than fears that might send me running from that room and back to my mother empty-handed. I approached the man. The gritty air closed around me with every step, like it was denser near the man, the very molecules of oxygen trapped within his orbit. Once I reached the end of the second pew, also fully in his orbit now, he pulled me to the seat beside him. The man looked like a man, mostly…if you didn’t dwell on the fingers that were a little too spindly, or the neck that was a little too long. Sitting perfectly still, staring with interest at the pulpit, he smiled and said he’d been waiting for me.

The blood in my veins froze then reversed direction and the room grew darker still. I asked him if he was…if he was him. The Devil. A bead of sweat slipped down my forehead as I waited for his answer.

It was getting hot in the chapel. I wasn’t imagining that.

He said he wasn’t the Devil, not the way that I knew him. He certainly couldn’t meet me in a church if he was.

He was right, I supposed. What I knew of Evil—the kind they warned us about in preteen Bible study—was that churches were sacred; safe havens from the scaly, cloven creatures that lurked below the ground. Even tiny hospital chapels should’ve provided sanctuary. I turned to the cross in the front of the room, expecting to find it upside down like in the movies when Evil with a capital “E” made its presence known, but it was right-side up, and slightly brighter than the shadowy pulpit around it.

As if reading my mind he told me that the lines between good and evil weren’t as fixed as my religion would have me believe, then reminded me that we didn’t have time to unpack my misbegotten philosophies because I had a life to save.

Or, rather, a soul.

He turned to me then and I wished he hadn’t. I wished I never got a good look at the face that was mostly average, mostly human. It wasn’t his features that bothered me as much as what he could do with them. A twist of his smile, the gleam in his eyes, were so unnerving they could upend a man with a single look. And I was upended.

“She’s a good woman,” I managed to shake the words from my body. “I don’t know if there’s time for her to repent.”

He snarled at the word repent, as if it was just another lie told in Sunday school, before informing me that repenting wasn’t enough. Sins didn’t just disappear. They must still be accounted for. And sins like my mother’s—sins like murder, no matter how she wanted to paint it—always came with a one-way ticket.

“But she’s a good woman. Doesn’t that matter?” I cried. “She prays every night. Goes to church every Sunday. She’s not a heathen. My father was a heathen. He belongs in hell for what he did to us. Not her.”

The man—who was not quite a man—shrugged and said she also wasn’t God and couldn’t make Godly decisions without punishment. That a balance must be maintained: a life for a life. My father, vile though he was, didn’t kill my mother. She killed him. Most killers, besides the very colorful few, did so out of necessity and could argue that they had no other choice at the time.

“He beat her,” I insisted. “He beat me. Every day for years. She acted in self-defense. She was just trying to protect me.”

There’s a special place in hell for his sort, the man-who’s-not-a-man said. And…a special place in hell for hers.

The room had continued darkening while I pled my mother’s case. How was it happening? Tendrils of black mold curled from the corners of the ceiling, reaching for the pulpit, and the air was prickly now, scraping my lungs like burning fingernails with every breath.

“No, she can’t,” I wheezed. “Please. All she ever did was try to keep me safe.”

He let me sob for a moment before saying he didn’t make the rules but was sensitive to my plight. Said he knew my offer to take my mother’s sins as my own was serious or he wouldn’t be there. He’d come, it seems, to make a counteroffer.

Before he laid out the terms, he told me that not every man and woman who quaked with fear on their deathbeds for something they did in their youth—something they felt they had to do, something that’s haunted them every day since their lives diverted into darkness—had a devoted child willing to sell their own soul to save their beloved parent.

“Sell my soul?” I whispered because it was such a strange, horrifying thing to discuss. But that’s what we were doing, wasn’t it? More sweat dripped down my face and off my chin.

The man-who’s-not-a-man tipped his head and told me the simple selling of a soul wasn’t enough. If I wanted to take on my mother’s sins, I needed to take on all the sins. Not the whole world’s, he said, but as many as I could with the rest of my life. In exchange for wiping my mother’s slate clean, from the moment of her death, I would become a Soul Eater.

Soul Eater. Even as he said it, the room plunged into darkness I could no longer deny until his face was barely visible through the shadows, and the eerie orange glow was now a deep, pulsing red. I doubted we were in the chapel anymore. Sure, we were sitting in the second pew, and the cross at the front of the room was still there, but subtle and not-so-subtle changes had occurred around us. The Bibles lining the pews that had once been forest green were now black with the same mold that covered the entire ceiling, and the stained-glass windows depicted scenes of carnage instead of Biblical promises of hope.

A glimpse of where I was headed if I accepted his offer. The man-who’s-not-a-man waited while I considered, and my gaze fell on the window closest to us where an old woman prayed on her hands and knees before the grim reaper in his frayed black cloak.

If I wanted to save my mother, I would inherit the burdens of as many souls as I could for the rest of my days. At the end of my life, I would carry those burdens—my mother’s included—to hell…for all eternity.

I’ve been talking a while. Andrew is rapt with interest now, and probably fear too. This is, if nothing else, a ghost story. I know he’s too young for it, but we’re out of time. The man-who’s-not-a-man is no longer standing in the corner, but a few feet behind Andrew’s chair. I don’t know when he crept forward, I’ve been so engrossed in the past—in the story I must impart on Andrew so he understands his own fate—that I somehow missed his progression. The sand is almost out of the hourglass now.

“Do you follow me?” I ask my grandson, the boy with the too-wide eyes whose skin is beginning to look green, like watery pea soup.

He asks me in a barely-there whisper if that’s what I am…a Soul Eater.

With tears in my eyes, I say it was her soul or mine, so I took the deal. What else could I do? It was her soul. I ask the frightened boy if he knows what a soul is.

I didn’t know if Kipp raised Andrew Catholic, as I had been, or any religion at all. The boy nods. I wonder if he can feel the man-who’s-not-a-man at his back. The otherworldly have a way of pressing into this world. We might feel their weight without knowing why. The room grows darker still, and black tendrils of mold reach from the corners of the ceiling toward my bed and Andrew’s chair.

“Then you know how important my job is,” I say. He casts his eyes down into his lap. “I’ve been a Soul Eater ever since. On that day, I said goodbye to my mother as she ascended into her rightful place in heaven, and goodbye to my wife and son—your father—because there’s no time in a Soul Eater’s life for anything other than seeking out the repentant. Do you understand what it is to repent?”

He nods.

“Good,” I say. “But instead of giving their sins to God, people give their sins to me. I go out looking for the truly sorry, truly repentant ones. The souls I can rightly save.”

He asks how I find them, and I tell him that I have plenty of help. In the beginning I spent a lot of time in shelters and tent cities. Many of the homeless don’t just have a run of bad luck, they’re overwhelmed by true horrors and regret. Or I’d wait outside confessionals in church for the really damning confessions. If the person was besotted with grief for their sins, and their sins were big enough, I stepped in and absolved them. Eventually, I made friends with a priest who seemed to understand what I did without me having to tell him, and he’s sent many, many souls my way.

The boy is getting interested now. More curious than afraid, like I’m suddenly more interesting than Grandpa George. He asks me what it feels like when I save the souls.

I explain that most people carry their burdens on their shoulders. It’s symbolic but also true. So, usually I set my hands upon their shoulders, and for a moment I can reach inside of them. I can feel their goodness behind the anguish—the bright white light of a pure soul behind the burden. The sins rise up out of their bodies and into my hands, and the weight of their sins becomes a part of me. The longer I carry it, the lighter it becomes, making room for more. Used to be I could cleanse many souls in a day, but as I got older, a single soul could wipe me out for weeks. My own soul is nearly full with as many burdens as it can hold.

Andrew listens raptly, then glances at the door as if he suddenly notices the darkness in the room. He asks where his dad is and if he can leave.

“Soon Andrew. Very soon. I promise,” I say. It’s a terrible lie, to let the boy think he’ll ever leave this room; a sin no one is coming to save, not that it matters. The weight of lies vary depending on the severity of the falsehood and how many lives it affects. This lie is terrible—deadly to the boy—and will devastate his parents and his Grandpa George. But in all, this lie doesn’t weigh nearly as much as the sin that led to this moment.

“I still have to tell you about my one mistake,” I say.

He looks at me again. Kipp has taught him manners and he doesn’t want to be rude. Reluctantly, his pea green fingers slide out of his lap and clutch the sides of his chair.

“Her name was Betty Clouse,” I tell him, “And she reminded me of my mother.”

I met Betty after she murdered her husband. There was no doubt she did it. She was in the kitchen holding the bloody knife, and somehow the picture was in all the papers before anyone thought if it was too vile for front page news. She was young and…beautiful. I can’t pretend that didn’t have something to do with it.

I had called in a favor with a detective I absolved a few years back so I could have a private visit in her cell. I set my folding chair up in front of her and sat down.

From behind a curtain of red hair she murmured something about me being brave for coming alone, and asked if I was a lawyer. I told her I was just a man named Willem who wanted to help. Quietly, almost to herself, she whispered that there was no helping her. I swallowed what was starting to feel like familiar grief and asked her to tell me the story of what happened—not the version in the papers, but in her own words.

She was sitting on her bed, a metal rack with a wafer-thin mattress. Betty lifted her hands to push the red curls out of her face, and I was suddenly arrested by the wide, haunted eyes I’d seen at the newsstands and on TV, like giant emerald lassos drawing me in. I leaned over in my chair beside the bed, and she surprised me by taking my hands, the shackles digging into her wrists as she clutched my fingers in an ice-cold grip. Her fingernails were still painted red. I was getting old by then but not so old that I wasn’t affected by the touch of a woman. That might’ve had something to do with it too.

Within that cell, she shared with me the story of a young woman who fell in love with the wrong man—a strong woman who never thought she’d let herself get knocked around. Her husband was a gentle man, a kind man—

Until he killed their son.

She blamed it on the bottle that brought his demons rushing out. While my father’s love was scotch, Betty’s husband preferred vodka. She could handle the occasional drunken slap, she said, and she was sure it would get better after they had a child.

Tears began streaming down her porcelain cheeks. It was a mistake. She was adamant about that. If she had known her husband was drinking before he came home, she never would’ve left him alone with their son. That night she was folding laundry in the bedroom when she heard shouting in the kitchen. Then, the screams…

Her grip on my hands tightened. I didn’t need to hear any more. I had already decided to help her. But she insisted on finishing, like so many of them did. She told me it happened so fast that by the time she got to the kitchen, her son was lying in a pool of blood and her husband was on the floor with a knife in his hand. When she saw her child, she went out of her mind, swearing there was nothing else she could do.

Do you understand why I had to do it? Her panicked voice echoed through the cell.

For a moment I was back in that Chicago suburb on that hot summer night in ‘62, wondering what would’ve happened if the arsenic hadn’t worked. My mother could’ve been the one in shackles, and I could’ve been the little boy who died at his father’s violent, vengeful hand.

“Yes, I understand,” I whispered, because I did. Without another word, I stood and put my hands on her shoulders, allowing the blackness of her soul to fill me. It was pouring in as heavy as tar when her pupils dilated, and she asked me in awe what I was.

I didn’t answer, just kept pulling, lifting her sins, trying to find the light beneath them but it never came. It never came. There was always white underneath the sins, the pure essence of a repentant soul. If I could just get there…

As I pulled, her face started to change. The corners of her mouth curled up in a vile, mocking smile, and she laughed. God, she laughed, and it was a horrible, maniacal sound. I didn’t need her to tell me that I’d gotten it wrong; so very, very wrong. Then, as if she was somehow showing me my own folly, I watched the scene replay in the kitchen as if I had been there myself under those harsh lights, standing on that checkered tile floor as blood flung in wild splatters, painting the yellow walls and sheer curtains with crimson specks that continued to drip even after the first slaying was over. Then I saw her husband, who really was a good man that married a very, very bad woman, holding his briefcase in stunned shock at the sight of his wife standing over the lifeless body of his precious child—so frozen with horror that he didn’t see her come at him with the knife until it was jutting from his guts and a bright red stain crept through his button-down shirt.

With her laugh still ringing in my ears and around the small jail cell, I tried to break the connection. God knows I tried. But it was too late. I had absolved the stinking sludge of a soul that should’ve burned for all eternity. It would never be clean. But it would also never rot in the deepest pit of hell where it belonged. When it was finally over, Betty’s cheeks were streaked with tears of blood. She licked her lips and thanked me for a good time.

Behind her, the man-who’s-not-a-man materialized from the shadows on the cell wall with news from…below.

I trail off. The man-who’s-not-a-man isn’t a shadow now. He puts his hand on Andrew’s shoulder. Andrew doesn’t see it, maybe doesn’t fully feel it, but he slumps like he can sense the change. I’m out of time.

He’s out of time.

I continue quickly: “There is only one rule when saving souls, and it’s that you can only save the truly repentant. The ones who were inherently good and would have a place in Heaven were it not for their mistake. And I…I failed.”

The room is almost black now, with a faint red glow from somewhere behind Andrew that isn’t in this room at all. The boy knows he’s in danger but doesn’t know what he can do about it. Now that the man-who’s-not-a-man’s hand is on Andrew’s shoulder, he wouldn’t be able to leave if he tried. He coughs on ashen air that scorches his throat, air we’ll both be breathing for a very long time.

“I’m sorry Andrew,” I utter as the remaining light goes out and the room becomes very, very warm. “I’m so sorry.”

I think back to the chapel the day my mother died, to what the man-who’s-not-a-man said from the second pew when laying out the rules of my new job.

Cheating hell is cheating the Devil himself. Do you know what happens if you cheat hell? he asked. I didn’t, of course. He said, A soul for a soul. No one cheats hell.

No one cheats hell. If I explain that to Andrew in these final moments, when we’re not quite there but we’re not quite here either, before the blast of nuclear heat sets his lungs on fire as he fights to live, he won’t understand. It was an honest mistake, something in the fine print of the otherworldly contract I signed many years before Andrew was born, and it isn’t fair. As the big brown eyes melt from the sockets of a truly innocent little boy, he won’t understand that either.

Fair or not…the Devil always gets his soul.