The Soul Catcher (Harry Styles)

35 - Hope

“I like the night. Without the dark, we'd never see the stars.”

― Stephenie Meyer, Twilight

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The Council had a new assignment for us, but it was nothing like what we have done before.

“What?” I finally asked, breaking the silence.

Merrill looked rather annoyed, which barely surprised me anymore. Maria took it upon herself to repeat Juliet’s words. “You’re going to Miami to save a young woman from dying.”

“I don’t get it,” Elaine admitted.

Merrill sighed and disappeared, leaving only Maria and Juliet behind. The whole situation was intimidating, but I tried to appear fierce.

“Katlyn, a 17-year-old girl from Miami, took a whole bottle of sleeping pills with the intention to kill herself,” Juliet stated.

Elaine and I exchanged worried glances. This was our second suicide assignment within only a few days. Frankly, I had never met the first girl, but that didn’t calm me down at all.

“But how are we going to keep her from dying? We only catch souls that are, well, dead.” Elaine nodded along to my words.

“You see, there is a realm between the living world as everyone knows it and the afterlife,” Maria started explaining.

Elaine shortly interrupted her. “Yes, that’s where Harry caught me. That’s where we catch souls.”

Both women shook their heads and Maria continued explaining what she was actually talking about, “That already is the afterlife. The other realm is between the living world and the afterlife. You’re not really alive anymore, but you’re not quite dead.”

Juliet spoke up, “Older people often reach this realm when their heart slowly gives up.”

“Actually,” Maria interrupted, “nearly everyone reaches this realm. Some just remain longer than others. Elaine, you were in this realm when you drowned. There were a short few minutes between the moment you lost conscious and the moment you stepped into the afterlife.”

I hummed. “Makes sense. I died immediately, thanks to the branch drilling a hole through my head.”

Maria nodded, her eyes lighting up a bit – I hoped it was because of my understanding and not because she was thrilled about my death.

Something else clicked in my mind. “Wait. So you’re saying that this girl, Katlyn, is still alive but her body is slowly dying?”

Elaine’s lips parted in surprise as she realised what I just had.

“Exactly,” Juliet confirmed my fears.

“But how are we going to save her?” Elaine asked with wide eyes.

I held my hands up. “But will taking too many sleeping pills really kill her?” I received weird looks. “What? Won’t she just … sleep for a long time?”

“If she gets medical help soon, yes. But otherwise it will harm her organs and they will slowly fail. Cardiac problems arise and so on,” Elaine explained, then shrugged. “Hell, I’m not a doctor, but it definitely will slowly kill her.”

“Depending on what kind of pills you take, you might just feel sick. Katlyn, however, took very strong ones, a whole bottle of them,” Maria told us. She was absolutely serious and that honestly frightened me.

“What do we have to do?” I asked, my voice raspy and deeper than usually with all the worry I felt.

“Katlyn hasn’t reached our realm yet, but she’s slowly escaping the world’s realm. Every time her body pushes her in our direction, you can talk to her,” Juliet said, taking a step forward. “And sometimes her body will pull her back into the world of the living.”