CHAPTER THREE.

(The Story Starts To Pick Up.)


The man known as Mosquito was well respected, if in no way well-liked. He had been found, like Hiro and Azusa, just outside the town boundary, torn to pieces and strewn about in no particular manner. It was if the killer had ripped him apart in search of something deep inside his body. Although what that was, Soul could not say, and more importantly, according to Doctor Stein's casual glance around the scene - "Nothing much is missing."

And then:

"I appreciate you not vomiting on the crime scene this time, Eater."

"Don't mention it."

And Soul knew all of this because he was the one who had stumbled across the dismembered corpse of the dislikeable town miser, when heading out on an early morning ride with Falada. He had to at least try and start avoiding the dead bodies that appeared to be strewn around the outskirts of this town like tumbleweeds. And apparently this made him a person of interest in the four murders, one of which he can admit he directly benefited from.

He could see where Sheriff Albarn was coming from - he had found two of the bodies, the first body's, poor Hiro's, untimely demise had opened up a job for a transient stranger who just happened to be passing through the town at the time. He couldn't think of anything that might connect him to Azusa, but if he were a man on a murder spree he supposed he might have just considered her a lucky break.

Yes, he could absolutely understand why some people might find that incredibly suspicious, and that simply saying that he did not murder four people might not hold too much water around here. But, and he would appreciate if everyone knew this, he did not kill anyone.

So not only did he see all this happening, he saw all of it happening while under the vigilant glare of Sheriff Albarn, who, once sobered and reasonably separated from anyone in a skirt was not wholly incompetent.

This, for some reason or another Soul would rather not dwell on, included his own daughter. Upon sighting her striding across the murder scene, the good Sheriff's legs went from under him. She stepped over him with a practised callousness.

"Mr. Eater, what are you doing here!?" Miss Albarn exclaimed, and her father traded the thin veneer of competence and respectability in order to cling to her skirts and begin sobbing. She ignored him coldly, and didn't allow herself to be distracted from the matter at hand.

"Good day to you too, Miss Albarn," Soul said, tipping his hat. "I am to be accused of murder presently, I imagine."

"Oh, are you really?" Miss Albarn was surprised. "What on earth makes you think so?"

"Yes," Soul nodded. "Doesn't look good when you stumble upon the eviscerated corpse of a fellow who was rude to you. Would you look after my Falada?"

Falada, who had been seized and tied up apart from the other horses, hated any person who wasn't Soul bitterly, and she was only tenuously fond of him, but there was no one else who he could ask in the immediate vicinity. He would have to ask Falada very nicely to go with Maka, as she had already tried to bite anyone in reach.

Mosquito was rude to everyone, but he had been rude to Soul very recently, and apparently that made a significant difference in likeliness to have been murdered by.

Soul wouldn't be lying if he said that Mosquito's barb hadn't injured him deeply and personally, and he was lying when he'd replied to Sheriff Albarn's earlier line of inquiry with: "I took no offense, as Mr. Mosquito had intended none."

What Mr. Mosquito had said - "I'm sure whatever resided in that hole you crawled out of considered this music, but I implore you to widen your exceedingly narrow range," - was very much intended to cause offense, but Soul didn't want to seem like the kind of person who mulled over these things as they tore at the very core of his personhood and sought violent retribution on the perpetrator. He was just deeply wounded by the comment, that was all.

Immediately after the utterance, Miss Liz had, without looking up from where she gathering up a handful of empty tumblers, five of them pinched together in one hand, shot right through Mosquito's ridiculous and over-priced hat and asked him to leave. Soul had a inkling he was supposed to be ashamed that a woman had defended his honour, but he was too pleased that someone would even consider leaping to his defense to care about such things.

He was learning that this town was not bound by the high society rules he had left behind. He found it refreshing, and pleasant, although he often found himself longing for the large, silent houses or the simple luxury of distance between him and the rest of the world.

Mosquito's passing also helped to soften the blow somewhat.

"Oh, he's rude to everyone," Miss Albarn said dismissively, and then, with absolute conviction: "I don't think you did it."

"Why not?"

"You damn near lost your lunch into poor Hiro's coffin," Miss Albarn's eyes sparked when she smiled reassuringly at him. "And everyone knows that it was you who threw up on-"

"You don't have to - " Soul was saddened to recall that nobody had spared him the indignity of the entire town knowing that he had thrown up at the sight of Akane.

"There's no way my Papa'll arrest you-" Maka began, but her father detached himself from her hemline and straightened, feigning a semblance of dignity.

"Mr. Eater, I am placing you under arrest for the murders of Mr. Hiro Bolton, Mr. Akane Hoshi and Mr. Moscol Tito and the murder of Miss Azusa Yumi," Sheriff Albarn produced a set of manacles from inside his vest. "Get away from my Maka."


The Jailhouse was just about what he expected a jailhouse to be, in a small town with no real call for a jailhouse. It was dry and clean, but with an underlying smell of vomit that told Soul it was mostly used to dry out drunks for a day or two.

It would be remiss to say that he'd spent a night in such a place before, because despite everything, Soul was a law abiding man in most places. Especially in places such as these, where the law was both reasonable and somewhat lenient.

Not mention, but The Law had also insisted he wasn't a murderer and promised not to speak to her father ever again. Soul wasn't entirely sure if that was because Miss Albarn was passingly fond of him, or that her deep sense of moral justice was highly offended by the very notion of an innocent man in jail.

It was most likely the second one.

But here he was, full certain that the penalty for this most unfortunate of coincidences that led him languishing in this not wholly unpleasant jail cell would result in his death. By hanging, he suspected. And his death by hanging would mean that all his running and hiding wouldn't mean shit, because he'd be dead and if he was dead and doomed to hellfire and damnation he might as well just have stayed at home and died and been doomed to hellfire and damnation there instead.

Hopefully, Miss Albarn would somehow miraculously prove his innocence or charm her father into letting him go free, otherwise he was not looking forward to what happened next.

Being strung up like a two bit common criminal, that was what happened next.

He was just settling himself into what couldn't possibly be a good night's sleep when he heard a whisper, tugging at the edge of his ears, too faint and far away to make out any of the words. Like the pull of wind through skeleton bare winter trees, except that there wasn't a tree to be found for miles around.

This was a scrubby little town in the middle of a desert, clinging to something akin to prosperity by the tips of its fingers.

"My blood is black."

It was getting closer, and Soul rolled off the bench and stumbled to his feet. He twisted, searching for the source of the voice.

"My blood is black."

There it was again, accompanied this time by the slow squeal of something sharp being drawn across something hard.

It was whispering all around him, an insidious voice like one summoned from the very deepest, darkest parts of his own soul. Only he'd been injured enough to know that his blood ran red still.

And still it circled, filling the space and him.

"My blood is black."

Soul clutched at his necklace of coins, the only thing something like a weapon he had to hand, and even then, not very much like a weapon. His hand settled on the big golden coin, the one punched clean through by a trick shot.

The one the old crone had stopped playing the interminable card game to listen. He prayed to any god who might listen, not that he suspected one might be inclined to after what he did, and he raised the coin to his eye.

Like stepping out of shadow and into the cell, a sickly skinny creature appeared. Their bones had the look of something easy to snap, and their tendons protruded. Their hair fell in matted tangles over their eyes and they were dragging behind them a sword that squealed against the cold stone floor of the cell.

"My blood is black."

Soul stumbled away from the creature, something like human but far enough away from it to be of immediate concern. There was a distant darkness around the edges of his vision.

"This one, he sees me," the voice said, but the creature's mouth didn't move. "The Old Ones, they gave him a gift."

Soul fell to his knees, but he clutched the coin in his shaking hand still. His palms were slick and his breathing was quick and panicked. There was a tightness in his chest, like something was squeezing his lungs.

"Oh no," the creature stopped. "I don't know how to deal with this."

Soul couldn't find his voice to ask what this was, and it seemed to be in increasingly short supply. He suspected that the wisest course of action was simply to not say anything at all. After all, they seemed to be hesitant to do anything when faced with him or this or whatever unseen circumstance seemed to be puzzling the creature.

"There's something wrong with his soul," the creature mused, laboriously pondering over the problem before them. "If I kill him -"

"You'd, you'd be wasting your time -" his voice was quiet and gasping, there wasn't enough air to make it louder.

"He's talking to me - I don't know how, I don't know how to deal with that!"

"Someone's already laid claim over my soul."

The creature turned and looked at him, staring right through the hole in the coin, looking right at him, and at his forfeit soul. Their hair fell back to reveal pale, silvery eyes that glowed in the darkness of the cell.

They moved their hand flippantly, and Soul was raised to his feet, pulled up just too high by some invisible noose tightening around his throat, the tips of his toes scrabbling to find purchase on the floor. He clawed at his neck with his free hand, but there was nothing there apart from his necklace. The coins were chill against his throat as he held the golden one to his eye.

When the creature spoke again, it was no longer the high and thin, sing-song voice of a child. It was coarse and rasping, reverberating deeply and it grated on his skin rather than crawled.

"Who?"

Soul's stomach turned at the idea of naming the demon to whom he owed a debt. A debt he was currently attempting to welch on to the best of his ability.

He shook his head mutely.

He was a fool to do what he'd done, but he wasn't stupid enough to say a name aloud. Names held a lot of power.

"How?"

"I struck a bargain," Soul started, his voice suddenly steadier, though the tightness in his chest lingered and the invisible noose tightened and the air was still far too thin. "Made a deal."

"What deal?"

"The piano," Soul said. "Ten good years before he'd come to call, ten years afore he'd come to collect my soul, ten years I'd be a master pianist."

"When?"

When? What did when mean? When'd he make the deal? When was he due to pay to pay up? When was he past due to pay up?

"When?" The rasping voice asked again, more insistently.

"A year ago - my soul was due in hell just about this time last year -"

"I don't know how to deal with this -" the thin, high voice was back, and the rasping voice attempted to placate it.

"Another, we'll find another."

The thin voice must have agreed that it was better to find someone else than deal with the less than ideal conditions and availability that came hand in hand with his. They turned, the blade scraping in the stone as they left, passing through the walls of his cell.

Soul fell to his hands and knees, gasping and breathing air that was suddenly so easily gained.

By no means did everything suddenly fall into place or become clear to Soul, but one thing most certainly was immediately clarified - or perhaps three things, depending on your count.

The creature was the murderer, it was after souls, and if it could not kill Soul for his own soul it would resign itself to seeking out another victim.

He offered his voice to the world, yelling out for anyone's attention so that someone might be spared that terrible fate, shouting and roaring for anyone to listen.

And when no one did, when his voice cracked out from under him and he could only rasp as the sun crept in through the window, he whispered.

Soul didn't have much left to bargain with, but he prayed that whoever was about to die because he was not suffice would not suffer overmuch.

He did not expect to be granted this small mercy.


He was still praying when Sheriff Albarn showed up, rattling his keys and looking down on him.

"Heard you screeching like the banshee of the old country in the night," Sheriff Albarn said, which it seemed like he may have been rehearsing. He noticed the praying then. "Huh, didn't take you for a religious man. Trying to save your soul?"

Soul wasn't much for irony, but he knew it when it interrupted him praying. He snorted, a chuff of laughter escaping.

"You here to let me out?" Soul asked instead of answering.

"Not unless you have some evidence that turned up in the night as to why it wasn't you who killed those people."

Soul didn't think 'actual murderer who is a demon came a'callin' last night through the walls' would make him sound anything other than a complete lunatic. So he decided not to mention that and said instead:

"No, but I was hoping you realized I didn't kill them."

"Nice try." The Sheriff frowned deeply. "How'd these scratch marks get here?"

A long narrow gouge was carved out of the stone.

"D'you do this?" Sheriff Albarn asked fiercely. "D'you mark up my nice clean floor?"

"What? No," Soul frowned, "Look, it goes out of the cell, way past further than I can reach."

Then Sheriff Albarn left Soul to stew.


Soul didn't expect that Sheriff Albarn would continue to allow his daughter to be corrupted by his influence for very much longer, so he really wasn't expecting her to call in. Especially since he was confidant she had found some evidence that he'd committed the murders.

He hadn't, but that was just his luck.

"Mr. Eater!" Miss Albarn burst into the jailhouse, looking rather flushed.

"Miss Albarn!" Soul sprang to his feet, eager not to appear ill-mannered despite his poor night's sleep and very reasonable cause to be ill-tempered. "It's lovely to see you."

She didn't say anything for a minute, so Soul took the liberty of filling the gap.

"How's Falada?"

"She hates me with the fire of a thousand suns and misses you something awful," Miss Albarn said. "She's very upset by your absence. She won't eat a single thing."

"Really? Have you tried pouring a mug of John Barleycorn over her oats?"

"She likes beer?"

"Most horses do," Soul shrugged. "'S the hops."

"I didn't know that," Miss Albarn was frozen by this revelation for moment.

"Any joy on proving I didn't kill anybody?"

Her silence was telling, along not quite as telling, perhaps, as the outburst that followed it.

"Of course, no one who knows you believes you did it - and everyone who knows Papa knows that he's letting our… our… " she stamped her foot and waved her hand between them instead of finding a word in her vocabulary, which Soul knew to be extensive. "Get in the way of doing any real work to find who the killer is! He's looking under every rock to find some clue or another that you killed all those people, instead of being, of being objective and looking at the facts!"

Soul thought, rather to himself than daring to think it aloud that Sheriff Albarn was not alone in having a biased approach to the investigation of this case. He didn't say it to her though, because Miss Albarn's bias was on his side as opposed to the side that would see him hanged. And he while would prefer not be hanged, he also made the very compelling argument - to himself - that he hadn't killed anyone.

Also it appeared that a demonic creature of shadows and darkness had committed the murders, so he was acutely aware that the only thing that would clear his name was if the creature decided to murder someone else while he was in here.

He wasn't proud of it.


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