The corridors were already empty when Victor came out of the classroom with his exam copy in his hands. He’d flunked this one too and the teacher had asked him to stay a little after school to go over his problems.

The sunlight had grown dim early, as it always did in the winter, and its weak rays painted soft shadows on the old floorboards. While his sister Anna travelled to and from school by bus, he generally rode his bike with his friends. This time, however, they had left before him, so he would be going home alone. It wasn’t a problem in such a small village, where everybody knew everyone.

A clanking noise caught his attention on the way to his locker. It came from the area reserved to the second grade classrooms, at the other end of the corridor. He went over to see what was going on and recognized three students from his grade, hard at work redecorating one of the lockers. Anna’s locker. He approached and said, “Hey, what are you doing?”

The three boys turned around and the shortest one of the group dropped a can of spray paint in his surprise. “Crap, that’s her brother!”

“You better clean it up!” Victor ordered. He glanced at the unflattering words painted in red on the locker. His stomach churned as he read them. There was no way he would let Anna see this tomorrow.

“Don’t tell us what to do!” a dark-haired boy retorted. He looked like he was the boss. The third one, the tallest of the three, added, “Yeah, just deal with it, your sister is not human!”

Victor seethed with anger. He pushed the boys away from the locker and tried to wipe off the paint with his sleeve. The trio chuckled at his vain efforts. The boss came directly behind Victor to taunt him. “She’s always talking to herself! All the little kids are scared of her! Even the teachers are freaked out.”

In one lightning-quick movement, Victor spun around and punched him in the face. The boy stumbled back, holding his cheek. Victor wasted no time in jumping on him and tackling him to the ground.

“Hey! He’s gone crazy too!” the boss yelled while he struggled to free himself from Victor.

The tall boy came to the rescue. He pinned Victor face-down on the floor while his friend recovered. “Clean it up!” Victor insisted, “or I’ll tell the director you did it! You’re already in trouble, this time you’ll get suspended!”

The boss grinned like a shark. He didn’t seem bothered in the least by the threat. “Let’s go play some game.”

The trio dragged Victor and his schoolbag to the banks of a small lake, a few minutes away from the school. Because of the recent drops in temperature, a layer of ice had formed on its surface. In the middle of winter, the villagers often enjoyed skating there. However, it was much too risky to do so early in the season, when the ice was still thin.

While the two followers were busy taping Victor’s hands behind his back, the boss explained his intentions. “I bet you 20 piaels that Victor will make it halfway to the middle of the lake before the ice breaks.”

The minions paused and observed each other a moment. The tall one, who’d been holding the captive still, said, “But, hum… Josh, isn’t it super dangerous?”

The small one agreed. “Yeah, I mean…”

Victor growled, “I’m not doing this!”

Josh took out his phone from his pocket. He looked through his files and then turned the screen toward Victor. “If you don’t do it, I’ll let everybody in the school see this.”

He played a video showing Anna standing in an isolated corner of the schoolyard. Even though she was alone, she seemed to be having a lively conversation with something only she could see. Victor gritted his teeth. It was exactly the kind of things he kept telling his sister she shouldn’t do in public.

“So?” Josh prodded.

Victor remained silent. The other two boys took the absence of protest as an assent. The tall one said tentatively, “I guess… I bet 20 piaels he makes it to the middle of the lake before it breaks.”

The small one added, “I bet the ice won’t break at all.”

Josh grabbed Victor by the arm and pulled him toward the lake. “Walk!”

The instruction made the task sound much simpler than it was in reality. Victor tested the ice with one foot, and then took his first step. The center of the lake was about seventy meters away from the banks. He was torn between crossing that distance as quickly as he could, just so he could be done with it, or as slowly as possible to avoid breaking the ice. He shivered. They hadn’t let him pick his coat before they’d left the school. His fingers were getting numb and the cold made it hard to think. He decided to go with the second strategy: careful and slow, testing the ice before committing each step.

About a third of the way in, he became aware of the ice bending under his feet. He paused and looked back toward the bank only to find his three captors going through the stuff in his bag. “Hey! That’s mine!” he yelled at them.

Josh waved him away. “Keep going.”

Victor resumed his walk, thinking of all the ways he would beat up the three assholes once he made it back. He was almost there. One more step and…

Suddenly, an ominous pop resonated. Its echo bounced off the mountains around the lake. The ice cracked and Victor was swallowed up by the lake before he even realised what was happening.

Back on the bank, a noise forced the three boys to lift their head from Victor’s possessions. They noticed something strange; one second, Victor stood on the lake, the next, he was gone. What kind of disappearing act had he just pulled off?

The small boy was the first one to voice their fear, “G… guys, I think he fell.”

The tall one said, “Crap! We need to call for help!”

He took out his phone, only to have the boss slap it out of his hand. “Are you dumb? We’ll go to jail!”

“What? No, we won’t…”

Josh ignored the protests of his friends and got up. “Leave his stuff here. You don’t want to be found with it.”

His two friends watched him walk away. The small one made a last attempt, “But what about Victor?”

“He’ll be fine! Run!”

They gave one last worried look at the quiet lake before running away with their leader.

***

Over the next couple of weeks, the missing soul incident turned into an epidemic. Every other day, I would show up to a place indicated by the Seer, only to find an empty corpse with no trace of a soul left. It seemed the golem, or whoever controlled it, had gotten more careful because no one I managed to interrogate after the fiasco at the car crash scene mentioned its presence again.

I spent one morning in the human world observing a bunch of demons as they investigated the scene of yet another missing soul. We were situated on a narrow country road running along a small lake. I recognized Anna’s school close by. The area was mountainous and from my vantage point, I could also see the town center a little farther down.

The protective suits from the Underworld looked a lot like old diving suits. They consisted of an unattractive overall topped with a round helmet that covered the whole head and neck. The two clunky cylinders of air each demon carried with the help of a harness barely allowed them to stay in the human world for one hour. Somehow, no demon had been able to come up with a better design. Probably due to a lack of budget or whatever.

The body of the victim had already been taken away by the human authorities, so the investigators observed the surroundings for any clues that could suggest who or what had stolen the soul and where it might have come from. One of them came up to me on the side of the road. She told me, through a speaker situated on her helmet, “There were two human witnesses, apart from the victim. The witnesses said that the victim fell in the lake after meeting face to face with someone that looked just like you… or rather, you in your funeral form. You had nothing to do with this?”

“Of course not! That’s completely unprofessional!”

It was illegal to cause the death of a human, even if my hunch told me that they were slated to die seconds later. I had no idea why the golem would have done such a thing.

“Ok. We found evidence that there might have been a fourth human involved, although we couldn’t track down their identity. Are you sure the soul that disappeared was the one you needed to collect?”

“No, I’m not sure! Usually, I need to question them a bit before I know, but there was nothing left to question when I arrived.” I paused to take a deep breath because I realised I had been yelling the whole time. I resumed more calmly. “Maybe you should go search for a second body or…”

A cloud seemed to be passing. It cast its shadow directly over me. Somehow, I got the disquieting impression that it was zooming in on me. I looked up and met face to face with a full set of claws.

I fell down on my bum with the distinct feeling that I had been caught in the middle of a pillow fight. I mean, I had never been in a pillow fight, but I imagined it would look like this. Feathers floated everywhere and I inhaled one or two. The investigator bent over to observe the projectile that hit me. “Hey there, Mr. Messenger,” she said. “How’s it going?”

At that moment, I noticed the Messenger sitting beside me on the asphalt. He looked even more shifty than usual. “Good morning! Sorry to interrupt, I have a message for the Soul Collector.”

He sprang up to his feet, pulled me up and dragged me away from the group of investigators. “Hey, what’s wrong?” I asked.

He stopped after we’d passed a curve in the road, where a wall of rock hid us from the others. “I just checked on her.”

The Messenger obviously meant he’d been to Anna’s place. He said, “Something happened to her brother yesterday evening. She and her father found him on the bank of the lake, completely drenched. Victor wouldn’t talk about it, but I have the feeling he might be the fourth person you were just talking about. I’m afraid that if the investigators start looking for him…”

Then, they might get too close to Anna. “You want me to lie and make it sound as though there was no fourth person?”

Although he hadn’t voiced this request, I understood where he was getting at. His cramped smile told me I had guessed right. “I wouldn’t call it lying… You’re only misleading a few people. For the greater good.”

I sighed. He had a point. I would need to go question Anna afterward to learn more about whatever happened the previous evening. That whole mess was my problem now.