The Lost Soul Crusades

She woke up in an alleyway, surrounded by unfamiliarity. It was a moonless night, and clouds blanketed the stars from view. It never occurred to her to be afraid.

Her clothes were torn and ragged, but she did not feel violated, only slightly confused. Then she noticed the piece of paper in her hand. It was black with red lettering that read: "ALL LOST SOULS ENTER HERE," with a red arrow pointed to her left, down the alley toward the street. Curious, she turned, and noted that the arrow on the page turned as well, now pointed to the phrase printed above it but still toward the street.

The young woman followed the direction indicated, and did not think it strange at all. She wasn't thinking at all. There was nothing in her mind to think about.

She reached the street, and referred again to her compass of sorts, and saw the arrow now pointed to her right. She turned.

The path she followed seemed to go on forever, but she saw no one along the way. Her surroundings now seemed slightly familiar, though she did not recognize them; almost like it was the town she might have lived in, except empty. There were no doors on the buildings, only few scattered black windows. They did not allow her to see in, and offered her no reflection, they just were.

Consulting her guide, she noted that the arrow now pointed to the bottom of the page, back the other way. She had gone too far. She would not lift her eyes from the page again until she reached her destination.

Tracing her steps back, nothing had changed, until the arrow abruptly turned left again, and there was a red door in the building there that she had not seen there before. She opened the door and went inside.

***

She entered the small lobby area, and approached the reception desk. A frail looking old woman with white hair sat, back turned to the door, typing away furiously while the cigarette hanging from her lip burned away.

The young woman cleared her throat to announce her presence. "I know you're there honey, I just gotta get this report finished up...," came a deep husky voice the young woman was not expecting. She struck a few more keys, then spun around on her swivel chair. "Now, what are you here for?"

She simply held out the black paper for the receptionist to look at. "I see," the old one said. "So you're the one who wouldn't go into the light. Haven't had one of those in a while." She took the page from the young woman's hand. "If you don't mind, I'll hang onto this, save it for the next one. You wouldn't believe how expensive these are to have printed!"

The old woman bent to tuck the page in a file, and pulled another from her desk drawer. "I can see you're still in shock, you must have gotten here pretty quick. Usually it's worn off by now." She paused, flipping through various forms, until she found the one she wanted. "That's all right, you have a little while yet before the orientation, you don't have to talk 'til then. Can you at least nod?" The young woman found that she could and did. "Good. That'll help."

She used a red pen to mark on a black form, "Do you know your name?" The young woman shook her head no, and the old one checked the appropriate box. "Do you know where you are?" No again. "Do you know what happened to you?" A third no. "Do you remember anything?"

The young woman then suddenly had a flash of memory, in which she was terribly afraid, felt excruciating pain, and then saw a very bright light beckoning her. She remembered turning her back to it. Finally she spoke, "Only fear, and then the light."

"Well, ok. Now we're getting somewhere!" She jotted down a couple of notes, "It's always easier when they can at least remember the light."

"Was that...I mean...did I see 'The Light?'"

"Yes."

"So I'm dead."

"Yes."

"How?"

The old woman sighed. This was the hard part of her job. "Probably something bad, murder most likely. I don't know that part, they'll tell you in the orientation."

"You said I didn't go into it?"

"You wouldn't be here if you did."

"But why?"

"Only you know why, they'll help you figure it out. There aren't many left, most have resolved their issues and moved on into the light. So you're the rookie for now, but probably not for long."

"Rookie of what?"

"The Lost Soul Crusades."

***

Madge showed the young woman to a 7' x 9' room with dreary gray walls, and a folding table with two chairs for furnishings. "Sorry it's so bare around here. The budget's been dead for years!" she chuckled to herself, as she gestured for the woman to sit down. "He'll be here for the orientation in a few minutes."

"Who?"

"Charles."

She waited, there was no clock, thus she had no concept of time. Days could have passed and she would not have noticed. Then the door opened, and Charles walked in.

He did not strike her of someone of importance; he looked to be in his early twenties, middle height, average build with brown hair and eyes. Very average, just like her.

"Hope I haven't kept you waiting too long?" She shook her head no. "Good. I suppose you are starting to wonder what all of this is?" She shrugged her shoulders. "Still not very talkative. Well, after what you went through, I suppose it will take a little while longer. So I'll start filling in the..." he stopped mid sentence as his head suddenly tilted to the right in a most unnatural fashion.

With both hands he lifted his head off of his neck and set it on the table. "Please excuse me, this is the third time today." He turned his head to face his body, and his hands reached under the high collar of his shirt in an apparent effort to adjust whatever mechanism held his head there. "That's it. Now," he lifted his head back into place, and gave a little twist before his hands fell back to his sides, "where were we."

She suddenly snapped out of her disoriented state and screamed. Then she started laughing. "Okay, I get it now, I'm having a nightmare. I'll wake up soon, and then I'll know my name."

"You're right, this is a nightmare," he replied. "But I'm afraid it's the one we live in now, there's no more waking up because we don't require sleep."

The smile melted from her face, "You're serious?"

"No, I'm dead. And so are you. Now, would you at least like me to tell you your name?" She nodded. "Katarina Lindberg. But your friends called you Kat."

She felt like it suited her. Kat - she mused over the sound of it as though it hadn't been her name for twenty years. With the revelation of her name, bits and pieces of her life began to come back to her, her family, friends, Johnny. Wasn't she with him when...

"Is it coming back now?" Another nod, "Good, now slow down. We need to approach what happened carefully or we might have to start again. You need to prepare yourself, because what happened to you was horrific. Tell me when you are ready."

She remembered both of their dads were cops. Partners, and good ones. They couldn't have been happier that Johnny and Kat were together. She remembered they had gone to a concert at the park, and then were walking home. "Tell me."

He glanced down at the papers on the table before him. "I'll stop whenever you need me to. Just say the word." He cleared his throat and continued in a very matter of fact fashion, "You and Johnny were walking home when a black sedan pulled up next to you. Four men got out, grabbed and chloroformed you both. When you came to you were in a motel room tied to the bed, naked. Johnny watched as they beat you, and then they put a noose around your neck, looped it around the bed frame and strangled you."

She was knocked back in her chair by the force of memory. Every moment of that terrible night replayed in her head, right down to where she saw the light. "How long ago, hours?" she asked.

"No, just over a week. The transition takes a lot out of you, most take at least two weeks to sleep it off, sometimes more."

"Where's Johnny, did they..."

"No. Right now he wishes they did though."

"But why leave him alive...and who? I don't..."

"You're confused, I know. Just try to relax, getting upset isn't going to change anything now."

"All right, now what?"

"I'll start with why. It was no random act of violence, it was a set up. The men who did this work for the Valentino organization." Their fathers had just put three of Valentino's boys away a couple of months ago. Two sons and a nephew. So it was revenge.

"Why didn't they kill Johnny too?"

"Then there would be two murders, and no scapegoat."

She gasped as her hands flew to her face. Her poor, sweet Johnny! He had to watch the girl he loved ..., and he was going to go down for it. Their father's lives would both be ruined. She hoped they knew the truth.

"I know this is a lot to take in..."

"No, I want to know everything." She let her hands fall back to her lap. "So do they have Johnny in custody?"

"Yes, he's being held without bail, and it looks like they are moving very quickly for a trial." Charles looked her straight in the eyes, "They did it outside of your fathers' jurisdiction, so their department was in no way involved with the investigation." Of course.

"Madge said I 'wouldn't go into the light?'"

"Well, one of four things happens when you die. One: bad souls go to Hell, do not pass go, etc. Two: Souls that have a little repenting to do get stuck in Purgatory, and when they've repented they can go into the light. Or, three and four kind of go together. Three is that pure souls are offered the light right away, and the fourth option is the soul chooses not to go into the light."

"So I chose not to because I need to save Johnny?"

"You didn't know they were setting him up before you died. My opinion, you wanted to make Valentino and his men pay for what they did to you. Now that you're here, you can do both."

"How?"

"You are now a member of the Lost Soul Crusades. We have existed for, oh, forever I suppose. As long as someone has died an unjust or untimely death."

"So what do you do?"

"Well, each of us has our own agenda, or specialty shall we say? But we do collaborate, and work together when necessary, and almost always in the first case, especially when it is revenge."

"So I'm going to spend eternity punishing the unjust?"

"No, just as long as you choose. Are you ready to get started?"

"I suppose the sooner I do, the sooner I can move on?"

"You can move on whenever you decide. I resolved my death thirty years ago, but I personally like trying to help those left living. Maybe when someone I really cared about goes into the light, maybe then. That's how most of us do it anyway; do our work while we wait for our loved ones, then move on." He reached out and took her hand, "You have no obligations left to that life, you can move on."

"No, I can't. There's no way knowing what you've told me now that I could leave Johnny's life in the balance like that. If he even lives until the... Damn!"

"What?"

"Tino's got all kinds of guys on the inside, prisoners, guards. There's even dirty cops and judges - Johnny doesn't stand a chance! Then there are our fathers. Tino wants them to suffer first, because they messed with his kids, and then he'll find a way to have them taken out too. I told Daddy to watch what he was getting into..."

"He did his job, and he saved plenty of lives getting those three put away. Now we'll do ours, and save his."

***

Charles took Kat on a tour of the Office, as he called it. "More like home I guess, since none of us need to eat, sleep, or anything else really, we just sort of all hang out here when we're not working."

He led her down a narrow hall, which was lined with doors down both sides. As they walked, the occasional head (attached to a body) would pop out from a doorway to smile and nod in greeting. There seemed to be quite a bit of excitement in the air.

Kat was still unable to feel anything. It was as if her senses and emotions had gone numb. She could see, hear when spoken to, and feel the pressure of a touch, but there was no sense of temperature, no joy or sorrow. Just nothing. At least she was beginning to form conscious thoughts again. A blank mind is rather dull.

Charles must have sensed her thoughts, and appeared to be relieved that she was thinking. He had been in her position before. It had been a long time, but he still remembered.

They had come to the end of the hall, and paused before the double doors standing before them. "I promise, it won't be like this always. We all learn how to laugh again eventually, even in the face of what we do."

"I'll have to take your word for it," was all she could say.

He opened the doors. She was not surprised, nor was she expecting what lay beyond.

It was a series of open faced rooms, stacked in a fashion somewhat like that of a honeycomb. It appeared that while no two rooms were exactly alike, there were repeating clusters of similar rooms. They seemed to stretch on for infinity up and to both sides, she couldn't possibly count how many there were. Almost every room had at least one monitor of some kind, most had more.

The rooms were connected by a scaffolding, with stairs and platforms to scale from one level to the next. They began the ascent up one such flight, and Kat began to notice the goings on in some of the cells as they passed. She recognized the sounds of several TV shows, and realized they had to have something to do to pass the time. She wondered if they got any movie channels, or if they had the net. But then she noticed others were watching things that were violent, tragic, and just not what would be on TV. Except for the "Sopranos," but this wasn't that either.

"They're doing their research." Charles answered her question before it was asked.

"You mean watching how they died?"

"Only a few haven't gotten past that yet, most of them are working on other projects now. But mostly they stick to something related to how they died." They continued on a horizontal path for a short time before pausing before a cell where a thirty-ish man sat in a comfy looking recliner. "Shhh. This is Tom, watch."

Tom was looking at a screen that was a tranquil scene of a lonely mountain road. It wasn't long, or maybe it was, before they could hear the faint drone of an engine in the distance. Kat could tell by listening that it was going way too fast on such a windy, narrow road.

Suddenly Tom was not in the chair, but in the picture. He seemed to float down the road, and whatever heavenly eye was capturing the scene followed. He quickly came to a stretch where the road was straight a ways, and took his position in the middle of the road waving his arms just as the car came into view.

The freshly waxed, red corvette did not slow at first, but came to a screeching halt just a foot or two shy of hitting Tom. "Not that it would have mattered if he did," Charles said.

The driver of the 'vette, a kid no more than sixteen or seventeen, got out of the car and took off his sunglasses. "Dude..."

Tom spoke, "Hey, thanks for stopping; I was having some car trouble up the road, was driving too fast..."

"Guess I probably was too. Need a lift?"

"No, waiting for triple A. Heard you comin' and wanted to make sure you didn't end up like me."

"Thanks man." He turned to get back in the car, "I'll take it easy. She's just so much more fun to drive fast!"

"I hear you, but trust me, it isn't worth it."

"Hey, you sure about the..." the kid turned back around, but Tom was already settled back into his chair.

"How often do you do that?" Kat asked him.

"Oh, at least twenty times a day." Her jaw dropped in disbelief as he smiled at her, "Been doing it for fifteen years now, ever since I went over the edge on my bike."

"Wow, and no one else has died?"

"Well, now I didn't say they all stopped. I'd say it's about ninety nine percent."

"Still, that's so many lives saved!"

Charles patted her shoulder, "That's why he's still here. Come on, we need to get to work on your case now, you can meet the others later."

***

Charles finally stopped their ascent, and gestured for her to step inside one of the empty, darkened cells. "This cluster will be yours."

As she placed her foot on the floor, the room lit up, and revealed that it contained very few furnishings. There were two big flat screen monitors on one wall, and a couch. "You can add your own personal touch at your leisure," he explained. "But I think you have more pressing matters at hand right now."

"Yes, I agree." Kat was beginning to feel somewhat like herself, or what was left of herself anyway. She sat down on the couch and asked, "So what comes next Charles?"

"For starters, you can call me Chuck. Madge insists on calling me my formal name, I guess it's the little bit of grandma she has in her." He smiled, sitting down next to her, "Probably the only little bit." He sighed, then moved on, "Now there is much to do, but there are certain rules I must explain first.

"I know you're waiting to ask, and no you cannot just go to Johnny, or your father, or anyone else for that matter and tell them what is happening. It does not work that way. You can, and will be able to visit them in their dreams and talk with them there. Any of us or those that go into the light can do so whenever we choose. It's good for us, and for them. But under no circumstances should you appear as an apparition to them while they are awake - it usually scares the living and generally is a bad idea.

"Now Tino's guys, that's another story. You will haunt them like a plague - that will be a key part in getting them put away.

"You will be able to leave clues, write notes, etc, but you cannot appear in the police station and give your statement as to who murdered you. You are dead, and as far as that realm is concerned the dead can't speak to the living. It's been tried, and the poor officers that take the statements usually wind up in the mental ward for a little while. We just can't do that to an innocent."

"So are we like poltergeists? Can we be invisible in the room and move things?"

"That's one tactic, yes. And you will practice plenty of it too, I'm sure.

"The one most have trouble with is, you are not allowed to kill your killers. Not by your spectral hand anyway. You can cut the brakes on their car, sink a boat, and do any number of other things that may cause them to perish. Ultimately though, the best revenge is to see the wrongdoers punished, and rotting in prison. Where they have nothing to do but think about the crimes they have committed.

"Under no circumstances can you reveal what you are - a Lost Soul Crusader - the realm of the living is not to know for certain what comes after life. It defeats the whole purpose of discovering the meaning of their lives."

"You know the answer?" Kat was amazed.

"Of course, there really isn't one answer. The meaning of life does not have a universal application, as so many philosophers have tried to imagine, and it is really much simpler than the living make it out to be. It is really more what your life has meant, if you have demonstrated what you are worthy of hereafter. A soul that is pure and lived a good life gets the light. Those that aren't and don't...well we already talked about that. Souls that do not prove the meaning of their life before they die are reborn again and again until they can. It almost always takes more than once, and usually at least four or five times. Me personally, I was on my seventh when I came here. I think you were on your third."

Kat's mind was spinning. She allowed herself a smile at the thought of all of the souls running around looking for "meaning of life," now knowing that it isn't something that they can just find. She felt like she had found the purpose that she had always been looking for. She just wished she didn't have to leave her family and Johnny to do it.

"Now that we have all of that out of the way, on to what needs to be done for Johnny." Chuck flipped on one of the monitors with a remote. "Remember, nealy two weeks has passed in their realm now. Let's see if we can find out where things stand."

At first there was just static on the screen, but as he pushed the channel up button, flashes of scenes and people flickered by. "Ah, here," he stopped and set down the remote.

Kat's eyes welled up at the picture she saw. Her Johnny was handcuffed to a table, wearing one of those hideous fluorescent orange jumpsuits, in a drab grey room much like the first one she was in here at the Office. At first she thought she was alone, but then she heard his father's voice.

"I just don't see how you don't remember son," he sounded frustrated. He moved into the picture as he sat down across from Johnny.

"Dad, I do remember," he was shaking. "That's the problem. I remember every last disgusting, horrifying detail of what they..." he bent his head down to cover his face with his hands.

A third man came into view, and as he gently put his hand on the boy's shoulder Kat realized it was her father, and she felt a rush of relief. They're sticking together. "Johnny, I'm so sorry son. I know how much you loved her." He wiped at a stray tear of his own.

Johnny's fists slammed into the table, "I'm the one who's sorry Bill! I should have protected her, I should have stopped them..."

"That'll be enough of that!" his father roared. "WE all know you didn't did this, and WE know who did and why." He was speaking more to the recorders listening in on their conversation than to Johnny at that moment. "We also know, that there wasn't anything you could have done son."

"You're old man's right boy," Bill added. "Nothing and no one will ever replace Kat, but we do still have you, and we need to get you out of here. That's what she would want. She'd tell us to save our grief for later." Her father knew her so well. "Now, there has to be something we missed."

"Well, I can't make any positive IDs from the mug shots you brought. I didn't get a clear enough view of their faces. They were planning this, and they knew for it to work that I couldn't be able to ID them."

"Tino planned it well, that's for sure Paul," Bill commented. "Right down to getting Johnny on tape in the motel lobby. But we've beaten him before, and we'll get him again."

"We've never been able to get Tino - only his men. And we needed to get him yesterday, because my boy doesn't belong in this Hell hole.

Another reason for Paul's desperation dawned on Kat: Johnny was to enter the academy in the fall. He had just finished his AA in Criminal Justice. It was no secret among various departments in the county either, Paul was well known and liked in several precincts, as was Bill, and everyone knew how proud he was his son would follow in his footsteps. Not such a good thing to be known for when you're in the pen. Now, Kat realized they not only had to worry about Tino's guys on the inside, but anyone else who might want to mess with a pig in training. She was feeling more and more helpless by the second.

"Can't I just break him out of there?" She pleaded with Chuck.

"If it were that easy, we wouldn't need to be here." He replied.

She knew he was right. If she could break him out, without revealing herself to him, she would have to be able to hide him too, as he would shoot to the top of the ten most wanted immediately. A cop's daughter's killer. That's a bad label in prison too, from a different standpoint. She was sure though, that their fathers had talked to their friends, and that the guards knew that Johnny didn't do it. Please God, they have to be on his side!

Johnny broke down at that point, and lay his head on his arms sobbing. "They even took the ring Bill, the one I showed you. It was in my pocket - I was going to give it to her that night."

Both men snapped a look at each other the same time as Kat almost fell off the couch. "He was going to give me a ring?!"

Tears suddenly rolled down Paul's face. Standing, he put one hand on Bill's shoulder, the other on Johnny's. In a hushed tone he said "Now, that may be somewhere to start."

"That's what we needed my boy," Bill gave his arm a squeeze. "Do not mention that again to anyone. We'll take it from here."

Could the ring be a key to setting Johnny free? No doubt if they could prove Tino's men had it in their possession, it would prove that they were behind her murder. It would at least be proof that they had contact with Johnny. Then again, they could say he fenced it, and they bought it afterward. "Can we turn this off for now?" she asked Chuck. He picked up the remote and the picture was gone.


To be continued...