The sight is horrifying enough to scar any unsuspecting person for life. But this isn’t my first dance with a Soul Wraith.
The first time I saw one, I was barely old enough to understand what it was, or what it meant that I could see it – what it meant to be an Emo, an elemental with the ability to sense emotions and energies.
Soul Wraiths are corrupted energies, born from traumatic deaths. If left uncleansed, they twist and corrupt, transforming into demons that feed off fear, grief and despair. Only an Emo can see a Soul Wraith in its exposed form, and it only reveals itself to otherelementals when it assumes a human face. Soul Wraiths haunt and pester, causing a slow decay to the people and places around them.
By the time Elara saw her first Soul Wraith, she didn’t have our parents to turn to for guidance. We were two little girls, huddled together with five other foster children sleeping in beds around us.
I remember telling Elara to ignore the demon. To instead focus her talents on the positive energies that surrounded us – the warmth of our tiny bodies pressed together, and the lingering sweetness of the boiled sweets we pinched from our foster mum.
Elara never saw another Soul Wraith again after that night. At school, the scholars marvelled at her ability to control, manipulate and absorb positive energies. I was proud of her – jealous, too. Because no matter how hard I tried, I’ve never been able to sense anything positive after our parents died.
Where most Emos can choose whether to embrace negativity, I was thrust into it, compelled to master it, because it was the only option I had.
“You like testing my patience, don’t you?” I ask, though I’m fully aware there’s no chance of a response from the Soul Wraith.
I make my next calculated move quickly, snatching a chair from the small dining table behind me and hurling it at the old lady.
She screams a high-pitched screech that makes mewince. Her figure disperses; an eruption that splatters the midnight-blue liquid all over my body.
“Thanks,” I drone, wiping the sticky substance from my eyes and stepping back.
The exposed Soul Wraith flits past me in a shroud of black, only vaguely resembling something human. It zooms through the kitchen, toppling the remaining three dining chairs, and slithers around the doorframe back into the hallway.
I sigh as I try to scrape the liquid off my face and out of my straight black hair, but it clings, stretching into slimy strings before splattering on to the floor. The odour catches me off guard. It smells sharp and metallic. I didn’t register what it means before.
Most Soul Wraiths I encounter are spawned from untimely deaths caused by accidents – manifesting as black smoke – or illnesses – erupting as white smoke. It only strikes me now… Midnight-blue liquid means poison.
Chills ripple across my skin, but there’s no time to consider the implications. I hurry across the kitchen into the hallway, where I bend to collect my bundle of sage. It’s no longer burning, so I have to rekindle it.
The hallway is still. Even the shadows seem to hold their breath. To my right is the staircase in front of which the old lady first appeared. The stairs stretch up to a sunny landing, but, despite the warm rays streaming through the window, the air is chilly – that’s how you know an exposed Soul Wraith has come through here.
I follow the chill down the hallway into a parlour at the front of the cottage. An ancient piano sits in the corner. On the wall above it hangs a row of family portraits. A man and woman, ageing together over the years.
I recognize her tiny figure and white hair, a cardigan hugging her small frame. She’s smiling and her brown eyes are warm, gleaming with kindness. It seems so beyond the realm of possibility that she was once kind, now that a Soul Wraith dons her face.
The fading plumes of sage follow me through the parlour. I glide my fingers along the intricate details of the fireplace, pausing for a beat as I stare into the dark abyss of the chimney’s gaping mouth. It would be a good place for a Soul Wraith to hide, but I’m not sensing any energy inside.
I tiptoe towards a small leather trunk next to a battered emerald sofa. There’s nothing special about its appearance. But I can sense it. A vibration so subtle, stirring such faint inky-black tendrils through the air that I nearly overlook it.
“Got you,” I whisper as I edge closer, sage in hand.
The Soul Wraith stirs inside its confinement, but I’m ready. The trunk is slightly ajar. I slide the sage through the crack, and a torrent of energy bursts forth, wild and untamed.
It flies over my head, and I gasp. My first instinct is to fling myself back across the sofa, reaching out with every ounce of my being. The moment my fingers brush itsfeathery tendrils, the Soul Wraith succumbs to my touch, and I absorb it like I’m inhaling it.
The sofa envelops me as I close my eyes and let myself be consumed by the unfolding vision. It’s old and fractured, marred by the Soul Wraith’s shadow, but I can make out the form of the old lady, captured in a world of despair.
She’s sat by the kitchen table, sunlight streaming in through the window and surrounded by earthy fumes bubbling up from the cauldron. She wields a golden pincer in her thin, shaky fingers, harvesting starbliss zest from a potted starflower in front of her.
Something startles the old lady. Someone, rather. I can’t make them out, but the sight of them stains the old lady’s soul with anguish, which darkens throughout their verbal exchange. I can only make out fragments.
“What are you doing here?” the old lady demands.
The intruder speaks in a smooth, melodic tone, but her words drip with a poisonous edge. “I’m here to collect my inheritance. From my dear brother, rest his soul. Isn’t it tragic how he died? Bandits, I hear. Ambushed him on his way to the capital. I don’t imagine he had much to steal, by the looks of this place.”
“He didn’t leave you anything. He wanted nothing to do with you.”
“His feelings towards me are irrelevant. He had some … family heirlooms in his possession. Now that he’s gone, they rightfully belong to me.”
