Jar of Souls by Bradford Bates Read Free Book Online
Authors: Bradford Bates
full Lycan. Gaston implored me to allow him to animate a human corpse, but the line had to be drawn somewhere. That is what started the rift between us. I pushed for more knowledge, more control before we took that next step he thought we were ready for.”
“So why is it that the reanimated seem almost mindless in their pursuits? Why do they not act as they would when they are alive?”
“That is what we needed to find out. Our powers could reanimate them—the force of our will was enough to make them move, and with enough effort, we could expand their senses. What we could never do was make them act or control them as if they were alive. After enough research, we came to the conclusion that once the soul had left the body, it was just a shell. We could control and manipulate it, but it was nothing like what it had been when alive.”
I sat back in my own chair for a moment while Adam continued to talk about some of the things they had done. The testing they had done sounded extensive, but most of it was beyond my understanding. The thought of working with dead bodies creeped me out and for some reason filled me with a sense of prolonged dread. Would someone use my body to do some dreadful act after I had moved on? As a scholar, I understood the need for knowledge; as a man, I felt a sense of loss that my order had been corrupted in such a way.
With a sigh, I asked the question that I had been dreading. “So did you try and find a way to keep the soul attached to the body at death, to make the corpse easier to control?”
“Gaston suggested there was a way to do that, that with enough time he could find a way to end a life and keep the soul in the body. That is when our relationship soured completely. I forbade him to experiment on live animals or people to bring his new ideas to fruition. That was a line even I wasn’t willing to cross. I had my doubts about Gaston, though. Even if I could never prove it, in my heart I knew he never gave up.”
“So just what was I being sent to guard? Why was he so upset?”
“I have to go back a bit further in our tale before I get to that. When I forbade his research on live victims, he continued to research into the more occult uses of the gift. He found mentions of necromancy going back a thousand years. Through all of his research, there was one powerful item that seemed to come up again and again in his research. Each telling of it shared just enough of the same facts that it had to be the same item. It was last seen in Egypt and was given the name the Jar of Souls.”
“So what did this Jar do exactly?”
“The writings indicated that it trapped the souls of the dead and that someone with control of the Jar could force those souls into empty bodies and control them.” He pushed a journal into my hand. It was titled The Jar of Souls and had dates and copies of text from his research documents. “The object was feared, and those who came into its possession often faced violent deaths. For everything we found, there was no mention of it ever being destroyed. Gaston told me that if I would finance his search for the object that he would drop all his other research.”
“So you agreed.”
“I did. I had hoped that with time he might come to see the error of the path he was on. Instead, he became more and more dedicated in his quest to find the Jar. I never thought he would actually succeed in finding it, but then a month ago he did.”
“So if he found the Jar, why are the corpses he reanimates still so lifeless?”
“I said he found it; I didn’t say he had it. When he came to me with the news, I knew I couldn’t trust him to retrieve the Jar himself. He was overeager to test it, to use it. Knowing just what could happen if he did, I sent a team to retrieve it. When he found out, he was livid, and when I wouldn’t tell him where it was being stored, he overreacted.”
“So that is when I saw him leaving your office?”
“No, this was about two weeks
“So why is it that the reanimated seem almost mindless in their pursuits? Why do they not act as they would when they are alive?”
“That is what we needed to find out. Our powers could reanimate them—the force of our will was enough to make them move, and with enough effort, we could expand their senses. What we could never do was make them act or control them as if they were alive. After enough research, we came to the conclusion that once the soul had left the body, it was just a shell. We could control and manipulate it, but it was nothing like what it had been when alive.”
I sat back in my own chair for a moment while Adam continued to talk about some of the things they had done. The testing they had done sounded extensive, but most of it was beyond my understanding. The thought of working with dead bodies creeped me out and for some reason filled me with a sense of prolonged dread. Would someone use my body to do some dreadful act after I had moved on? As a scholar, I understood the need for knowledge; as a man, I felt a sense of loss that my order had been corrupted in such a way.
With a sigh, I asked the question that I had been dreading. “So did you try and find a way to keep the soul attached to the body at death, to make the corpse easier to control?”
“Gaston suggested there was a way to do that, that with enough time he could find a way to end a life and keep the soul in the body. That is when our relationship soured completely. I forbade him to experiment on live animals or people to bring his new ideas to fruition. That was a line even I wasn’t willing to cross. I had my doubts about Gaston, though. Even if I could never prove it, in my heart I knew he never gave up.”
“So just what was I being sent to guard? Why was he so upset?”
“I have to go back a bit further in our tale before I get to that. When I forbade his research on live victims, he continued to research into the more occult uses of the gift. He found mentions of necromancy going back a thousand years. Through all of his research, there was one powerful item that seemed to come up again and again in his research. Each telling of it shared just enough of the same facts that it had to be the same item. It was last seen in Egypt and was given the name the Jar of Souls.”
“So what did this Jar do exactly?”
“The writings indicated that it trapped the souls of the dead and that someone with control of the Jar could force those souls into empty bodies and control them.” He pushed a journal into my hand. It was titled The Jar of Souls and had dates and copies of text from his research documents. “The object was feared, and those who came into its possession often faced violent deaths. For everything we found, there was no mention of it ever being destroyed. Gaston told me that if I would finance his search for the object that he would drop all his other research.”
“So you agreed.”
“I did. I had hoped that with time he might come to see the error of the path he was on. Instead, he became more and more dedicated in his quest to find the Jar. I never thought he would actually succeed in finding it, but then a month ago he did.”
“So if he found the Jar, why are the corpses he reanimates still so lifeless?”
“I said he found it; I didn’t say he had it. When he came to me with the news, I knew I couldn’t trust him to retrieve the Jar himself. He was overeager to test it, to use it. Knowing just what could happen if he did, I sent a team to retrieve it. When he found out, he was livid, and when I wouldn’t tell him where it was being stored, he overreacted.”
“So that is when I saw him leaving your office?”
“No, this was about two weeks