The Wrong Goodbye

by Chris F. Holm

  Turns out, I was right.

  It's embarrassing, really, because in retrospect, it was so damn obvious. But when I'd first approached the camp, I had no reason to assume Collector. I just figured one of Varela's competitors had beaten me to the punch, in which case Varela's massive chestwound made sense – I mean, he had to die of something. But when you take a soul, the body dies. So, then: why the bloodied chest?

  I retreated to the fire, toppling the spit and sending the hunk of now-charred meat into the flames. For the first time, I realized how recently this must've all gone down – the meat, though burned, had yet to cook off the spit, and though the air was hot and thick with moisture, the bodies weren't bloated, and showed no signs of rigor. Whoever'd done this had beaten me by a matter of minutes. Of course, that knowledge didn't help me much – a few minutes was plenty of time for any Collector worth his salt to disappear. I pushed aside all thought of pursuit, instead focusing on my immediate task. I shoved one of the support branches from the spit into the embers until it caught. Then I returned to Varela's body, torch in hand.

  The flame danced in the sudden breeze as I swung the branch at the writhing mass of bugs that blanketed Varela's chest. Reluctantly, they parted, frightened by the fire but unwilling to relinquish their blood meal. As they shifted, I caught a glimpse of something odd – letters, three inches high, carved into the dead man's flesh.

  I lost my patience with the flame and dropped to my knees, scattering the remaining insects with a sweep of my arm. Beneath them was a message, ragged and crusted brown with drying blood:

  SAM –

  WE NEED TO TALK.

  YOU KNOW WHERE.

  – D

  That bastard, I thought. I should've known.

  I must've spent a half an hour sitting there, marveling at the presumption, the sheer arrogance that pervaded every grisly slice. Eventually, though, I rose and left the camp behind, plunging once more into the jungle – this time heading south.

  Toward Bogotá.

  Toward Danny.

  2.

  The first time I met Danny Young, I wanted to kill him. I don't mean figuratively, like he was some jackass who rear-ended me at a stoplight when I was late for an appointment. I mean I literally wanted to wrap my hands around his neck and squeeze until his face went purple, his eyes bulged out of their sockets, and that incessantly wagging tongue of his was finally still, so I could sit and sip my drink in peace. Not the kindest of impulses, I'll grant you. But in my defense, I was having one hell of a lousy day.

  It was the fall of '53, and I was in a dingy basement pub in Amsterdam, a few blocks south of De Wallen, where, in the shadow of the Old Church, prostitutes peddled their wares. Ten yards of earth and stone were all that separated the place from the canal beyond, which no doubt contributed to the damp chill that had settled in my weary limbs. Of course, it wasn't the ambience that brought me here so much as their reputation for a heavy hand with the jenever – a local spirit that tastes like gin and turpentine in equal measure. I'd had three of them, maybe four, and still I couldn't stop my hands from shaking. I told myself it was the cold, but I wasn't yet drunk enough to believe it. Not after the job I'd just pulled.

  His name was Arnold Haas. A doll-maker by trade – and from what I'd heard, a damn good one. The way Lily told it, his dolls weren't the type you'd see dragged along the sidewalk by some jam-handed toddler – they were more the fetch-five-figures-atauction sort of deal. Now, you might be wondering why I'd care about a thing like that, but normally, that kind of information is pretty helpful to a Collector. See, there's two kinds of folks who wind up marked for collection: contract kills and freelancers. Contract kills are the ones who went and made themselves a deal with a demon, usually chasing fame or fortune, or maybe love, or lust, or revenge. Most contract kills are decent enough people – they just want a better hand than they've been dealt. Believe me when I tell you, most times, it ain't worth the price. Freelancers, on the other hand, are a nasty lot. They're the ones whose actions are so heinous, hell won't wait around for them to die. Given the quality of Haas's work, I'd assumed he was the former.

  I was wrong.

  It was dusk when I'd arrived at Haas's house. Amber streetlights shone against a sky of deepening blue, and reflected off the still waters of the canal that ran parallel to Haas's street. The house itself was an elegant brick row house in the Dutch style, with tall, narrow windows and a gabled roof shingled in slate. The porch light was unlit, and the windows, save for one, were dark. I spent the length of a cigarette watching the house from beneath one of the many bare, skeletal elms that crowded the banks of the canal. Occasionally, a shadow would pass across the face of the one lit window – a bedroom, no doubt, as it was situated in the top-left corner of the house, just beneath the steep pitch of the roof, and three stories above the street on which I stood.

  Good, I thought – that means he's home.

  The lock was nothing to sneeze at: a thick, meanlooking deadbolt I couldn't have picked in a week. But the door was inlaid with several squares of leaded glass, and those weren't so hard to handle. I wrapped a kerchief around my fist and knocked out the pane nearest the knob. In seconds I was inside.

  I hesitated a moment, just inside the door, waiting for my eyes to adjust. The house, I realized, was cold – bitterly so. The air was thick with the spicy scent of potpourri, and something else as well, earthy and unpleasant. Beyond the entryway was a tidy living room – a floral couch, draped with lace; two highbacked armchairs, camel-colored and accented at the arms and legs with dark-stained wood; a thick mahogany coffee table, gleaming faintly by the light of the streetlights that trickled in through the sheer white curtains. A small iron fireplace sat unlit in one corner of the room, set into a rose-colored wall. But for that three-foot strip of wall, which stretched from mantle to ceiling, the entire room was lined with shelves – heavy, floor-to-ceiling shelves, stained so dark they appeared black in the dim light, and lined with thousands upon thousands of dolls. Some of them were made of simple cloth, with hair of yarn and button eyes, while others stared at me with eyes of glass, set in faces of ghost-white porcelain. All were resplendent in their Sunday best, an oppressive cacophony of bold prints and elaborate brocades, of chiffon and satin and lace. Their blank, implacable gazes unnerved me as I passed, cutting through the living room to the stairs that lay beyond.

  I left my shoes at the foot of the stairs, and headed upward in my stockinged feet, as quiet as could be. The staircase walls were graced with floating shelves at irregular intervals. Too small to support whole dolls, these shelves were adorned with delicate porcelain hands and feet and eyeless heads – stark white and unfinished. Something about those empty sockets bothered me, though why, I didn't know. I ignored them and pressed on.

  At the second floor, the staircase turned. The unpleasant odor I'd caught wind of downstairs was stronger here, but I was so focused on finding Haas, I didn't pay it any mind. Through the delicate balusters above, I caught a glimpse of a half-closed door, silhouetted by the light of the room beyond. I headed toward it. The landing floorboards creaked in protest beneath my weight, and I winced. But this Haas was a doll-maker, I told myself, not some hardened criminal – what did I care if he heard me coming? So like an idiot, I threw caution to the wind, taking the stairs two at a time, and sprinting toward the open door. When I reached it, I kicked it inward – and then I froze. Haas wasn't there. But what was there was so fucking awful that for a moment, I forgot myself and just stood there, agape and staring.

  There were three of them, propped around a table laid with silver as though they were enjoying a midday tea.

  They weren't.

  The farthest of them, an older woman, sat across the table from where I stood and beamed back at me with an expression of charmed delight – or rather, that's what it would have been, were she not dead. The putrid stink of her was overwhelming, and it was all I could manage to keep my feet. Her silver hair was pulled back into a bun,
revealing flesh the color and texture of old shoe leather, cracked and peeling. Her mouth was set into a smile, revealing gray-brown teeth and gums of withered black. What I first took to be dimples were, in fact, metal pins, inserted into the flesh to preserve her expression. Her eyes were not eyes at all, but large, vaguely iridescent buttons, an X of rough twine at each of their centers, affixing them in place. I had a shock of recognition, but disfigured as she was, it took me a moment to place her. Her photo sat atop the mantle in the living room. This was Haas's wife.

  The other two sat on either side of the old woman, facing each other across the table. They had the look of a couple in their thirties, and they were fresher, it seemed – their flesh less desiccated – but their treatment had been the same. Worse, in fact, in the case of the man – his eyes had simply been stitched shut, his smile painted on; and though his shirt was clean and freshly pressed, an ugly smear of brain and blood streaked across his forehead still. But the woman – whose resemblance to Haas's wife suggested daughter – was truly a masterpiece. Gleaming eyes of glass stared out from bloodied sockets. Red lipstick graced her lips. Her teeth he'd replaced with the finest porcelain, at least mostly. A plate of yellowed molars and a pair of pliers sat atop a brown-stained rag on the table in front of her, and beside her was an empty chair. I guess I had interrupted Haas's fun.

  You want to know where I went wrong? I was so freaked out by what I'd seen in that room, I went and dropped my guard. A creaky landing isn't much of a concern when you're sneaking up on a kindly old man, but when that kindly old man turns out to be a human-doll-making nutjob, it's kind of a big deal. Which is to say, I should've seen that mallet coming.

  Of course, I didn't know it was a mallet at the time. Felt like he hit me with a dump truck. All I know is one moment, I'm taking in this nightmare tea party, and the next, I'm on the floor. He hit me again, and I heard something snap. Pain blossomed in my head like a firework, and the room went white.

  And then, for a while, there was nothing.

  When I came to, my hands and feet were bound. My head was pounding, and my left eye was swollen shut. I raised my hands as one to touch it. The flesh was all hot and pulpy and wrong. I cast a glance at my fingers with my one good eye. More blood than I expected. If I didn't put pressure on that soon, I'd be lucky if I managed to stay conscious.

  Then I saw what Haas was doing, and I wondered if lucky was the right word.

  He was standing at a workbench at the far end of the room, stringing twine through a heavy darning needle and humming softly to himself. A small man, stooped and heavily lined, he wore a tweed vest over a blue Oxford, with matching tweed pants. His bald pate gleamed above a crescent of wispy gray. When he saw me watching him, he smiled.

  "Ah, good," he said in lightly accented English. "You're up!" He riffled through his toolbox for a second, producing a handful of assorted buttons. "Tell me – which of these do you like best?"

  I tried to speak, but my head was full of angry bees, and the words wouldn't come. The effort damn near made me puke.

  "I rather think this one," he said, crossing the room and holding it to my cheek appraisingly. "It complements the gold tones in your hair."

  He knelt beside me, sliding the needle through a button-hole and pressing the point against the lid of my swollen, ruined eye. "Do try to sit still," he said. "I'm afraid this is going to hurt quite a lot." The needle pierced the tender flesh of my eyelid. I screamed in agony, and tried to pull away. Haas expected that, though – I was hardly his first, after all – and he held my head fast, one bony hand an iron grip at the base of my neck. Blood ran hot and sticky down my cheek, and with it came a fresh wave of pain – exquisite, clarifying. Suddenly, I realized what I had to do.

  If back wasn't an option, I was gonna have to go forward.

  I lunged toward him with all I had, driving the needle through the tender flesh of my eyelid and into the soft tissue beyond. Haas, startled, tipped backward. My hands were up in a flash. I landed atop him, the needle buried deep in my eye. Despite the searing pain, a manic grin spread across my face, so pleased was I my gambit had worked. Then everything went a little gray around the edges, and I realized I didn't have much time before this meatsuit gave out on me.

  Haas struggled to get out from under me, but I had a good fifty pounds on him, so he wasn't going anywhere. My hands found his chest, and plunged inside. Suddenly, the room around us disappeared, replaced with a swirling blackness, a keening wail – the light and song of Haas's withered soul. I wrapped my fingers around my prize, and now it was he who screamed.

  "Sorry," I muttered, "it's nothing personal." It's something I say to all my marks – my way, I guess, of reminding myself this collecting thing is just a job. This time, though, I wasn't sure I meant it.

  I rolled off of him, yanking free his soul as I did. As it tore free from his chest, the darkness around us flickered and receded, and his song faded into nothing. My consciousness threatened to do the same. I mustered every ounce of strength this meat-suit had, and hurled my being toward Haas's lifeless form. But this body I'd borrowed was broken and bloodied. I didn't know if every ounce of strength it had would be enough.

  Death, as a Collector, isn't final, but that doesn't mean it's a walk in the park. When a body dies, the link between soul and flesh is severed, and the soul – whether native or invading – is unseated. Now, for a native soul, the shock of being dislodged from its earthly vessel is considerable – and believe me, that's a good thing. Shock makes you numb. Shock makes you forget. But a Collector isn't afforded that luxury. We experience death in all its unfiltered glory, which means for us, it's excruciating. Plus, there's the added indignity of eviction. See, the body finds its native soul familiar, and will house it long after death if necessary until collection. An invading soul, on the other hand, is unnatural – unwelcome. The body's constantly trying to expel it – which is why a meat-suit pukes every time someone like me hops in for a spin. When a meat-suit dies, it sends any invading soul packing. But since we Collectors can't exist without a body, we wind up reseeded into another body at random – no big deal if it's a strapping young man with energy for future body-hopping to spare, but you get stuffed into an infant and it's nothing but diapers and puréed peas until they get strong enough for you to up and leave. Many a Collector's gone mad as a consequence of an unlucky reseeding. I'd really rather not be one of them.

  It seemed like forever that I hung there in the vertiginous nothing that stretched between Haas and the mutilated corpse I'd left behind. There was no light to guide my way, no sound to mark my passing. I tried in vain with limbs I no longer had to reach for that fresh vessel, so tantalizingly close just seconds before, but now an eternity away. For a moment I thought I'd failed. Then the world lurched, and my eyes, uninjured now but rheumy with age, sprang open to reveal the bedroom ceiling some eight feet above. I swear I could've danced a jig.

  Haas's body, though, had other plans. Its stomach clenched, and I doubled over, puking. You'd think I'd be used to that by now. It's sort of par for the course for possessions – the body's way of trying to rid itself of something that's not supposed to be there, I guess. Still, after the trauma of hopping bodies, it'll surprise you every time.

  Once my stomach was empty, I wiped my mouth with the back of one liver-spotted hand, and took a look around. My last body was lying on the floor beside me, the darning needle buried a good six inches in his head. A puddle of blood expanded slowly beneath him like an oil slick, and the tiny swirling orb of Haas's soul was still cradled in his lifeless hands. I struggled clumsily to my knees, and then collapsed, Haas's limbs slow to relent to my commands. I tried again – the same result.

  That's when I heard her crying.

  It was the faintest of whimpers – so quiet, in fact, that at first I thought I had imagined it. But as the roar of my pulse in my ears subsided, there was no mistaking it. I cast my gaze around the room, looking for the source of the noise, but there was no corner of the
room I could not see, no closet in which to hide.

  There was, however, a chest.

  It was an old wooden affair, glossy with layer after layer of honeyed lacquer, and fastened with an ornate iron hasp. A matching iron key lay atop its lid. I shambled toward the chest, my new meat-suit still sluggish and unresponsive, and pressed my ear to it. I heard a single, hitching sob, a sharp intake of breath, and then nothing. It seemed whoever was inside had heard me coming.

  I snatched the key up off the lid and jammed it into the lock, hearing tumblers catch as I clicked it home. The lid was heavy, stubborn. I heaved it open with a grunt.

  She was a girl of maybe three, dressed as the dolls downstairs had been, in a pinafore of purest white over a loud floral dress. White stockings adorned her legs, and her feet were clad in patent leather Mary Janes. Curly hair framed a delicate face far too young to be painted as thoroughly as it had. She was made up not like a woman would be, but like a doll, with circles of red at the apples of her cheeks, and her lips painted to appear permanently pursed in an expression of coy innocence. The illusion was shattered by the streaks the tears had made down her cheeks, and by the look of wide-eyed terror on her face. Instinctively, I reached out to her, but she recoiled, trembling. Of course she's afraid of you, I thought – you're wearing the flesh of the man who did this to her. I lowered my hand, and told her softly it would be all right. Of course, being Dutch, she probably couldn't understand a word I said, but then, I wasn't sure that I believed it anyway. Whether she understood or not, it was clear she didn't believe it; she hugged her knees to her chest, and clenched shut her eyes against the tears.