Thief of Souls

by Neal Shusterman

  Drew was asleep. A mosaic of moonlight shining through the patterned window grille painted his face as he lay beneath a down quilt.

  “Drew?” Michael ventured forward, and spoke in barely a whisper. “Drew!”

  Drew shifted in bed, and opened his eyes. “Who’s there?”

  “It’s me, Michael.”

  Drew didn’t say anything for a moment; he just stared at Michael, not sure what this visit was all about. Michael sat down on the edge of the bed.

  “I came to give you something you want.”

  Drew took a moment to think about it, then pulled his knees up beneath the covers. “Don’t play games with me, man. It’s cruel.”

  Michael smirked, knowing what Drew must have been thinking. He should have realized how this secret visit might appear to Drew—but that sort of liaison was not what Michael had in mind. There was a wicked power in knowing his own intentions but keeping the secret from Drew for just a moment longer.

  “I didn’t come here to be with you, Drew. I came to give you a gift.”

  “What kind of gift?”

  “It’s a surprise,” said Michael. “Close your eyes.”

  “I don’t know if I should trust you . . . . You killed me once before.” But the fact was, Drew did trust Michael. In the end, Drew closed his eyes, and leaned back on the pillow, waiting for this mysterious gift.

  Michael had no idea how to accomplish this, for he had never done it before. So he took a deep breath, and pressed his fingers to Drew’s face, in something that resembled the Vulcan Mind Meld.

  Perhaps, thought Michael, this won’t be so difficult after all. He summoned up a depth of confidence he had only recently found in himself. Then, with hands pressed firmly against Drew’s forehead, he focused on the deep core of Drew’s nature, forced his way into Drew’s mind—an intrusion far more intimate than anything physical—and then Michael began to reroute the many feelings held within.

  Somewhere outside, a single cloud began to turn itself inside out.

  THAT SAME AFTERNOON, OKOYA had advised Lourdes as well. Not with words of comfort, but with a single, unhappy suggestion.

  While Michael stole song from Okoya, Lourdes brooded around the Rose Garden. After the day’s grueling session of fixing, Lourdes tried to spend some time with Michael, but found herself performing another painful skate down Michael’s endless cold shoulder. Since the moment she had kissed him in Newport Beach and received nothing in return, she knew capturing his affections would be an uphill battle, but it had always been a battle she was certain she would win. Now she wasn’t so sure.

  Okoya eventually joined her in the Rose Garden, and told Lourdes point-blank that Michael’s interests lay elsewhere.

  “Watch him,” said Okoya. “Watch him tonight, and you’ll understand what I mean.”

  So Lourdes did as she was told. She watched Michael through dinner, she shadowed him throughout the evening—and late at night. When she heard the door of his room creak open, she followed in darkness through the winding corridors, and up the stairs to the Celestial Suite.

  She knew very well whose room that was.

  Standing at the closed doors, she couldn’t quite make out their whispers, but her imagination painted for her a picture as complete as could be—and never once did it occur to her that she might be wrong, because it made so much sense. In fact, it all made sense now: the strange way Michael and Drew had avoided each other’s looks in the light of day; the quarrel they had on the boat that led to Michael’s tornado; the reason Michael returned none of Lourdes’s affection.

  Because his interests lay elsewhere.

  For Lourdes, it felt as if a dislocated joint had suddenly, painfully, slipped into place. She stumbled through the cold hallways, and down stone stairwells, until she finally found herself in the kitchen . . . where Okoya sat, having a midnight snack.

  Lourdes sat beside Okoya and told her exactly where Michael was. She began to sob freely as Okoya put an arm around her to comfort her. No matter how bad things had gotten in the past, she had never cried like this.

  “Poor Lourdes,” Okoya said. “Poor, poor Lourdes. A will so strong, you could control the movements of armies, but you can’t have Michael . . . and now you know you never will.” Okoya cut a huge wedge of cherry pie, its filling glistening in the kitchen lights, and piled it high with ice cream. Then Okoya pushed the plate in front of Lourdes.

  Lourdes wiped her eyes. “I—I can’t,” she said. “I have to watch what I eat. If I don’t . . .”

  Okoya handed her a fork. “If you don’t, then what?”

  Lourdes thought about it. Then what? Gluttony had nourished the beast that once lived inside Lourdes, packing her flesh with fat. But that beast was gone now, and she could control her own metabolism, indulging herself as much as she wanted. She could eat like there was no tomorrow, and endow the fat onto someone else—anyone else she chose. And why not indulge? She deserved it. She had earned it—and God help anyone who tried to stop her.

  Lourdes took a small scoop of pie on her fork, and ate it. Then she took another, and another, and another, shoveling its luscious sweetness into her mouth, just as fast as she could swallow.

  “Eat, Lourdes!” said Okoya, with deep understanding and sympathy. “Eat . . . . Not because you have to, but because you want to.”

  And Lourdes did.

  MORNING SAW A BRIGHT day filled with muscular tufts of confident clouds that knew their place in the sky. Drew Camden, however, did not concern himself with the weather. He did not look out of the window. In fact, lifting his head out of the Celestial Suite’s toilet would have been a great victory. His body fought itself, like a patient in the throes of chemotherapy.

  Michael’s night visit had been a strange and inexplicable event. He had done nothing more than press his hands to Drew’s face—yet somehow he had done more than that. Michael had somehow entered Drew’s thoughts and feelings as easily as opening a cupboard . . . and then proceeded to rearrange the shelves.

  Suddenly Drew’s whole world had changed. Drew had felt his mind and spirit stretched and folded like taffy, leaving him dizzy and confused.

  He felt many new things now. He thought of the girls in school whose affections he always pretended to return—and suddenly he longed to be back there, finding he now had a lusty passion for them. He thought of the swimsuit issue of Sports Illustrated, and regretted that he had read the articles instead of ogling the pictures. He thought of his cousin Monica’s tits, and wished he could have a nice long talk with them.

  But the more these images filled his mind, the more his head began to spin, and his stomach to churn. Perhaps it was because of the other thoughts still with him. Memories of the feelings he used to have. All those secret, unrealized desires he had shared with no one. They were dead now, but their memories remained—and he now found them so unpleasant, that he wanted to reach in through his eyes, and pull his brain out so he couldn’t think of them anymore.

  This is a good thing, isn’t it, thought Drew. A great thing. Michael has done for me what no one else could do. He monkeyed around in my head, and when he left, he left me straight. Drew clung on to that thought, as he heaved into the toilet again.

  15. DOCTOR DOOM AND NURSE HATCHET

  * * *

  SHIPROCK WAS THE KEY.

  Two weeks into the siege of San Simeon, Dillon zeroed in on the tragic news reports, and they became the key to deciphering the pattern of destruction. Since he had arrived, he had scoured the media and Internet, but until now his searches had yielded nothing but white noise. And then came the Shiprock Massacre, pulling his attention, narrowing his focus. It was a primer that helped him decode everything else. From that moment on, things began to fall into place, like a puzzle constructing itself. In almost everything he saw and read, the pattern of destruction had finally begun to emerge.

  “What pattern?” Winston asked when Dillon tried to tell the others. “I don’t see any pattern.”

  Di
llon had called the others to his suite the moment he was certain he could now read the language of the unraveling. So certain was he that he was blindsided by Winston’s skepticism.

  “If there were anything to see,” challenged Winston, “then I would see it, too.” Winston stood there, his arms crossed. Michael, Tory, and Lourdes were there as well, and none of them was jumping to Dillon’s aid.

  “You won’t see it,” Dillon told him. “Only I can see—you just have to trust me . . . .”

  Silence from the others—but more than mere silence. It was . . . a lack of connection. Not only with him, but with each other. The angle of their stances—the distance they stood from one another—it all spoke of isolation. Disunity. For the life of him, Dillon couldn’t understand why.

  Dillon dragged his fingers through his hair in frustration, and for a moment he felt his hair stand at wild angles like a mad scientist, but a single shake of his head brought it back into place. “It’s not like I’m guessing about these patterns—I don’t guess!”

  Still nothing. Winston stood with folded arms, Michael’s shifting slouch radiated indifference, and Lourdes seemed more interested in the ceiling architecture than in Dillon’s warning, as if this meeting were an unwanted obligation.

  Tory seemed to be the only one who was even slightly with him on this. “Maybe if you explain it to us . . .”

  Dillon took a deep breath to balance his thoughts. “Explain it . . .” He looked around his suite, searching for clues that could translate to their understanding—but how could he verbalize a cognitive sense that they didn’t possess? He began by handing Tory an article—a small one about a candidate in an upcoming election.

  “What is it?” asked Lourdes.

  Tory skimmed it, and wrinkled her brow. “Some old fart is running for Congress.”

  Winston glanced at it over her shoulder. “So?”

  “That old fart,” Dillon explained, “just happens to be the president of the Flat Earth Society. Two weeks ago, he didn’t have a chance. Now, all of a sudden it seems like half of Nebraska is voting for him.”

  “Have you ever been to Nebraska?” said Winston. “Pretty easy to think the world is flat if Nebraska’s all you see of it.”

  Seeing he was getting nowhere, Dillon switched gears, moving to the computer in the corner. He clicked a button, and brief messages scrolled up the screen.

  “I downloaded these this morning from an online chat room.”

  He let them scan the notes for a few moments, then asked, “Do you see?”

  “See what?” asked Lourdes.

  “The notes! These people aren’t talking to each other, they’re talking at each other.”

  Michael laughed. “That’s nothing new!”

  Dillon tried one more time. He flipped open a magazine, and presented it to the others. “Nielsen ratings,” he told them. They all took in the lists of shows and numbers, but it might as well have been written in Arabic for all it mattered.

  “See, look,” Dillon said, pointing it out as best he could. “Ratings on the most popular shows have dropped off—and the shows no one ever watches are beginning to get followers.”

  They kept looking at the ratings, then back to Dillon as if there should be more.

  “And that’s the end of the world?” Tory asked dubiously.

  “No, but this is.” And Dillon presented them with a picture from the morning sports pages. Crowds at a NASCAR race. “This says it all. I mean, look at them. Look at the way this woman is slouching—look at the angle those people are standing—and the directions they’re all looking. It’s as if they’re not there to watch the race—they’re just passing time. It’s like they’re waiting for something else—something bigger—but they don’t even know it yet.”

  “I’m sorry, you lost me,” said Tory.

  “Okay,” said Dillon, pacing across the rug, and flexing his fingers to keep from pulling his hair out. “It’s like a tsunami. You know—just before a tsunami, all the water pulls away from the beach, and it gets quiet—as if the shore is waiting for the wave to hit: Well, that’s what’s happening now.”

  He picked up the article about the flat-earth politician. “People everywhere are slowly losing their sense of reason.” Then he went to the computer screen. “People are forgetting how to communicate.” Then he held up the magazine of Nielsen ratings—“Everyone’s changing their alliances at an abnormal rate”—and finally the picture. “And everyone’s waiting for something to happen.” He took a moment, realizing he had hyperventilated and was feeling faint, then continued, trying to lock on their eyes one at a time.

  “These things that would mean nothing to you, mean everything to me. They show me the pattern that no one else can see.” He took a deep breath, and spoke slowly. “Within one month,” he said, “some crucial event is going to occur—something that no one can explain. That event is going to get stuck in people’s minds, and when they can’t reason it away, miscommunication will start to spread. Half-truths, and flat-out lies will spread around the world until no one knows what truth is anymore . . . and alliances will shift.”

  He turned and grabbed a globe off of Hearst’s private desk. “After that, there’s going to be a great gathering. I’ve been studying changes in airline schedules and travel statistics—they all point to it.” He showed them the globe. He had already penned in a thousand flight patterns, leaving nothing but blue pen covering most of the world, darkest over southern Europe and the Mediterranean Sea.

  “It’ll be somewhere in the Mediterranean,” he told them. “Millions will go there . . . and die. But it won’t stop there. Death will spread out from that spot, until there’s nothing left. Human, animal, or vegetable. Unless we can change the pattern.”

  “Is it nuclear?” asked Tory.

  Dillon shook his head. “No, that’s not part of the pattern. It’s something else. Something worse. And so far, all the good we’ve done hasn’t changed a thing!”

  Then he clicked on the TV, giving them a final dose to drive his point home. Yet another interview with a Shiprock survivor. There were so many witnesses, the media was having a field day, and would have weeks’ worth of interviews to horrify and tantalize the viewing public.

  “Take a look at what happened in Shiprock, and tell me if you need any further proof. A man begins a killing rampage that’s continued by one of the deputies who arrested him.”

  “Big deal,” said Michael. “So a couple of lunatics decide to start blowing people away. It happens all the time—how are these psychos different from all the others?”

  Dillon clenched his fists. “I don’t know yet—but this is different. It’s important—I’m just not sure how. You have to trust me!” He waited in silence for their response—hoping their thoughts, and their strength, would bolster his own. He knew they could rise to this challenge. These four had risen to defeat their beasts, they had risen to defeat Dillon in his own dark days. United, they had the power to—

  “This is a waste of my time,” said Lourdes. “Where’s lunch? I’m starved.”

  “Are we through here?” said Winston, looking at his watch. “I have things to do.”

  “I’m going swimming,” announced Tory.

  Michael smirked at Dillon, laughing—mocking. “The secrets of the universe in TV ratings and chat rooms? C’mon, do you really expect us to take you seriously?”

  But Dillon suspected nothing he could have said would have provoked anything but indifference from them. Dillon’s frustration was a palpable thing now—he could feel it in the air around him, and he had a sudden urge to lash out in anger. He turned away from them, like someone turning to sneeze, hoping to deflect his sudden burst of fury. Then he released it from his mind, full force upon a water glass that sat on his dressing table. The glass shattered, into a thousand pieces. The others turned to look at it with only mild interest.

  “Cool trick,” said Michael, nodding to the place where the glass had been. “Bet that’ll be a rea
l crowd-pleaser with the Happy Campers.”

  When Dillon glanced at the spot where the glass had been, he had to double-take. Yes, he had shattered the glass, but the water was still there, suspended in its cylindrical shape. It was his own power of cohesion that held the water together, refusing to let it spill across the tabletop.

  But if he could effortlessly bind these molecules of water, why couldn’t he bind the five of them together toward a single goal?

  “Later,” said Winston, and the four of them drifted out.

  Dillon stood there in the vacuum of their exit, completely bewildered. What had happened? Why weren’t they listening? Although his encounters with them had been brief before they arrived at the castle, he had thought he knew them. He thought he knew their hearts, their minds, their convictions . . . .

  And their alliances.

  The thought made him shiver. It played in his mind for the rest of the day. It still tinted his thoughts later that afternoon, when he met the Shards again for their daily repair work.

  There were more than fifty today. It was a bloody business, as there were more injured than sick. The other Shards did not bring up their little summit meeting from earlier that day, and so neither did Dillon. He merely watched them, and listened.

  “You’re all so damned slow,” Winston commented to the other Shards as he moved from one amputee to another, as if he were on an assembly line.

  “Can’t you hold still?” Tory snapped without a shred of patience, at a woman whose infection she was trying to purge.

  Lourdes grumbled about all the places she would rather be, and Michael just sat there, peering out of the window, aloof and apart, letting his sedate mood settle on the wounded behind him.

  It wasn’t just that they had gotten good at the work—they had also developed an immeasurable distance from the patients over whom they loomed, as if their lives were now on some exalted plane. If the people lying before them were to die in their arms, and Dillon weren’t there to revive them, Dillon doubted that the four of them would care in the least.