THE SOUL STEALERS by Chester S. Geier Wraithlike, they came out of the darkness--dead men who walked among the living. What grim secret lay in their sightless eyes--a warning to all other men! [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy October 1950 Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] A chill touched Bryan as he looked down at the figure on the hospital bed. He had seen dead men before--too many of them. He had seen them sprawled on European battlefields, had seen them huddled in wrecked cars or lying waxen and stiff on morgue slabs. But he had never seen a dead man like the one who lay there on the bed. For, paradoxically, this man was still alive. He still breathed, his heart still pulsed. Yet it was clear that these were little more than automatic processes. In the only respect that mattered, he was as truly dead as though in the last stages of dissolution and decay. He lay on the bed with an unnatural supineness, his head lolling at a slack angle. His eyes were open in a blank stare, eyes as empty as a waiting grave. He did not move. He made no sound. A thread of saliva ran from a corner of his gaping mouth and made a glistening path down the side of his jaw. A mindless idiot would have shown more animation than this man. Something vital and precious had gone from him, leaving him a mere shell. His was a death-in-life, a thing somehow more terrible than a shattered skull or a torn chest. Bryan fought back a shudder and turned to the balding white-clad man at his side. "What can you tell me, Dave? Just what seems to be wrong with this fellow?" The doctor sighed. "Wish I knew, Terry. I've never seen anything like it in over twenty years of medical practice. Not even the specialists seem to know. And we have several good ones here, who donate their services to the hospital--men with experience in unusual cases." "But don't you have any idea at all about how he got this way?" Bryan persisted. "Isn't there any possibility that he has some sort of rare brain disease?" "We gave him a careful examination, Terry," the doctor returned. "We could find no evidence of disease--no evidence of concussion or injury, either. Except, maybe, for one thing." "What's that?" Bryan asked quickly. "When he was first brought in, we found a sort of reddish mark near his left shoulder. As though something hot had touched him. The skin wasn't broken or burned, however." The doctor shrugged. "It's gone now. I doubt if anything so light and temporary could have been important, anyway." "This might be a case for the psychiatrists," Bryan suggested slowly. "Maybe this fellow had a terrific shock of some kind--a psychic trauma, or whatever they call it."