Catharsis (Book 2): Catalyst

by Campbell, D. Andrew

  "Clear. Moving to the outer door."

  Pulling the closet door shut behind me and padding across the thick, expensive carpet, I make it to the open hallway door without incident (not that there's much in the room to cause me any problems). The hall just outside the room is also brightly lit, and after a quick peek in both directions I discover it, like my current room, is also empty.

  "Clear. Moving to the hallway."

  But which direction do I go? To the right and towards the opening that leads to the downstairs, or to the left so that I can check the other rooms in the house. I have a pretty strong sense that he is downstairs (or at least something is drawing me in that direction), and I want to confront him as soon as possible. But, at the same time, following Ren's mental advice of taking it cautiously has paid off so far. And it's probably better to clear the upstairs rooms to make sure nobody can sneak up behind me when I do finally make it down.

  "Checking the rooms. I see five doors."

  Here in the actual house without any insulation to deaden it, the smells and sounds from before are nearly maddeningly powerful. It's all I can do to turn off those senses and focus all my energy into more productive directions. My nose in particular is hit with so many competing scents at once that it almost locks my brain in place. Plugging my nostrils with two fingers and breathing through my mouth, I redouble my efforts to block out every stimuli that I can. It goes against every precaution that I can think of, but it's a necessary one in order to allow me to keep a handle on my sanity.

  The exploration of the upper level is a quick affair as two of the doors lead to empty bedrooms and one leads to an empty hallway closet. The fourth door is a bathroom that appears to have never been used (not even toilet paper in the decorative roll holder), and the final door leads to the master bedroom.

  The master bedroom shows the first signs of having had anyone living in it in any period of time, but even that bit of evidence is sparse. There is a neatly made queen-sized bed pushed against the far wall (No headboard, no nightstands, and the sheets, pillows and blanket are all a stark white. I'm not sure anyone has ever actually slept in the thing, but at least it's furniture.), and a spartan collection of clothes in the one large closet (four plain t-shirts, three pairs of jeans, a half dozen socks and two folded pair of boxers). I check the adjoining bathroom not expecting to find much, and I'm rewarded with exactly what I was suspecting: one towel, one small bottle of shampoo, one toothbrush and one small travel-sized tube of toothpaste. Everything is arranged neatly and carefully laid out in a way that makes it look as if nothing had ever been used. As far as I can tell, he just purchased these items, placed them in the room in locations where he figured normal people would leave them and walked away without ever touching them again. It's spooky.

  "The place is weird, Ren. A hard-to-describe weird. The whole place is empty except for a small handful of personal items that look like they might never have been used," I say and look around the bedroom and bathroom one more time. "Are we sure he actually lives in this place?"

  I know I won't get a full answer from Ren with my speaker turned down, but he does give me two quick buzzes to affirm that, yes, this is where he lives.

  "Well, not much longer then. I'm going down to find him."

  My heart should be beating quickly enough to tear a hole in my chest as I'm about to confront a man who is not only my mental equal - and I hate to admit it - but maybe even my superior. I should be afraid. But I'm not. I'm excited. Not enough to make my pulse quicken (I'm not sure that ever happens any more.), but it's enough for me to know that this Chadwick Morrin has gotten my attention.

  He's somewhere downstairs and I'm moments away from confronting him.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  "Going down the stairs," I whisper and lean forward onto all fours so that I can crawl down the stairs like a cat. I want to be able to see him before he sees me, and that's not going to happen if my feet are preceding my head. Plus, if he does plan to attack me, then I can launch myself into a roll and try to surprise him.

  Creeping slowly down the steps, I get my head low enough so that I can finally peek around the first large bannister and get a view of the main floor and hopefully see my opponent. I see lots of light, very little furniture (one recliner, one couch, one floor lamp and a wall-mounted television and surround sound system), and a ridiculous number of colored, small glass containers strewn about on the floor. At first glance, they appear to be decorative scented candles, but that doesn't make any sense. Why would there be nearly two dozen unlit and opened candles just sitting around on the floor? This is almost getting creepy.

  Hardly any furniture, small glass jars and no person. Definitely not what I was expecting to see down here.

  At least I've figured out where the sound is coming from. On the flat screen is a satellite radio station showing the name of some 80's band and one of their "hit" songs. It looks like he put the TV on a music station, cranked the volume and then walked out of the room. Why?

  "No sign of him yet, Renny. And it's only getting weirder in here."

  Silently, I crawl the rest of the way down the stairs and straighten up once I get to the soft, carpeted floor. Looking around to see if Chadwick might spring out at me from somewhere (not that there are many options of places to hide here), I quickly step over to the nearest glass jar and pick it up.

  "Cinnamon apple scented candle," I read out loud for Ren's benefit. A generic brand name is emblazoned on it that I don’t recognize (definitely not the high quality stuff). The candle's unlit and just sitting in the middle of the floor. Looking around the room, I can easily count a dozen more unlit candles lying on the carpet and several more near the walls sitting on devices plugged into various outlets.

  Stepping over to one of the "plugged in" candles, I bend down and peer closer. Melted wax. A glass jar full of what used to be a scented candle, but is now just hot, liquid wax. I dip my finger into it to verify my guess, and it comes out coated in the opaque, gooey substance. Originally hot to the touch, it quickly cools on my finger.

  Melted candles? I wonder. Why is there a room full of unlit and liquefied candles? What is this guy up to?

  I contemplate turning off the television, or at the very least muting it, but it's not worth alerting him that I'm here. As far as I can tell, he has no idea I'm in the house, yet, and there's no point ruining that surprise just so I can get a reprieve from the constant pummeling of bass guitars and snare drums. I'll just have to put up with it for a little bit longer.

  There are a couple doors and a hallway coming off this room as well as the front door, but I sense my real destination is the kitchen. That's where our first confrontation was, so it just seems appropriate for this one, too. Exhaling and steeling myself for whatever might come next, I move towards the archway that nearly doomed me earlier in the night.

  "Going into the kitchen," I say and flinch at even that amount of sound. There's no way any other human could hear me in this house right now over the pummeling pound of the TV’s noise, but I'm still cautious.

  Through the open area of the kitchen I notice the backdoor that I had been blown through a few hours ago. It is now covered by heavy plywood that has been nailed into place. It wasn’t the most impressive job and it appears to have been attached a bit crookedly, but it is effective. I’m definitely not going back out that way as easily as I did the previous time.

  Not only is there heavy plywood covering the smashed out window in the backdoor, but I also notice that there are sheets of the same material covering the other two small windows in the kitchen. The entire place is sealed off from the outside world.

  I wonder if that explosion he set off did more than just throw me through a window. Did it also blow out all the glass in here? It’s a thought that piques my interest, but not enough to pull me from my current mission. It’s just something I can ask him about later. After I’ve already wrung a confession from him.

  At the archway, I gently rest my pal
ms against the heavy wood that so easily hid the detonation wires he used to surprise me last time. I'm tempted to look up and check out how he had done it, but being this close to my prey consumes my attention. Getting distracted now would be detrimental to what needs to be accomplished.

  Preparing my body to leap at any moment (If I peek and he sees me, then I plan on sprinting straight at him.), I slowly lean forward and get my second (and final) view of Chadwick Morrin's dining area and kitchen.

  I get a slow reveal of the kitchen table, counters, fridge, sink and far wall. But no Chadwick. Leaning my head all the way around the corner, I look in to verify what I was beginning to suspect.

  "He's not in here, either," I tell Ren dejectedly. I had really been looking forward to finding him in here. I had felt like this was where I was supposed to be.

  I'd better check the garage and other hall next, I think.

  Turning around, I take two steps into the candle-filled living room and freeze.

  Something was in the kitchen. I hadn't picked up on it at first with my disappointment at Chadwick's absence, but there was something in there. Closing my eyes, I replay everything I just saw in the kitchen to figure out what it is that is nagging at my brain.

  Plywood-covered windows and back door. More candles on the floor and in the corners. The entire fridge emptied out onto the table and counters. Piles of vegetables and meats and open jars of spaghetti sauce. And pictures stapled up on to the far wall next to the open pantry door. Something about the pictures tickles my interest and pulls me back towards them.

  "I'm checking something out in the kitchen, Ren," I say and walk briskly back in the opposite direction. "He has pictures up on the wall, and there's something about them..."

  My voice trails off and dies in my throat as I get closer to the kitchen's far wall and realize what I'm looking at. Pictures of a young girl are plastered all over the wall. The girl at Chadwick's house. The girl standing in his back lawn. The girl standing in the very kitchen where I'm now standing. Even candid shots of the girl with friends that appear to be from social media pages.

  And in the middle of all the photos is a printed out copy of the girl's MISSING poster from the police and FBI. She went missing about a year ago from this very town.

  And the girl in every picture? It's me!

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Standing and staring at the wall of pictures of myself (the me from almost a year ago in some of the photos is nearly unrecognizable in comparison to the me of today), I'm speechless. I stand and gape at this surreal shrine of myself for almost a full minute as my mind spins through the possibilities of why it's here.

  It wasn't here earlier in the evening when I stopped by. How did it all get up so quickly? And why? Chadwick now knows my name (It is highlighted and circled on the MISSING poster.), and that must have been how he got the pictures from my old social media sites (I never took them down after I left home last year. I didn't see the point in it.). How did he figure out who I was so quickly?

  Leaning in to the pictures and studying them more closely, I can see where several of the shots of me here at Chadwick's house must have come from hidden cameras. There is one of me from my earlier visit in the evening and I'm standing in the same kitchen I'm in now. I study the photo and then compare it to the kitchen's layout to try and figure out the angle and where the camera would have been. After spinning in place for a moment, I see that it must have come from an air conditioning vent in the ceiling.

  I'll have to check that out in a minute, I think, and turn to re-examine the pictures. I want to see if I can figure out the locations of any other squirreled away recording devices.

  There's a shot of me bent over at his backdoor that grabs my attention. It was when I was sniffing the door jam in an attempt to see what was going on inside the house. He has several consecutive shots of me as I moved my nose up and down, and I wonder if he figured out what I was doing from watching me. Is that why he is burning candles?

  My pocket buzzes several times startling me out of my reverie, and I realize that I'd completely forgotten about Ren.

  "He has pictures of me in here, Ren," I whisper urgently. "And he knows my name. He has my MISSING PERSONS poster that my family had created after I initially disappeared. Why's he have all this?"

  Ren remains silent after I unload on him. There's no response over the speaker, and I can only assume he is in as much shock as I am.

  Chadwick Morrin is proving to be a much more formidable opponent than I had anticipated. He may be scary and dangerous and evil, but he is also turning out to be smarter than me. He's a step ahead of me, of us, and that's not easy for me to admit.

  These pictures have to be a message to me of some sort, but I don't yet know what that message is supposed to be. That he knows who I am? Who I used to be? What I can do? All of that? And how does that affect my pursuit of him.

  And then I see a picture I hadn't paid attention to previously. And it’s a picture that changes everything.

  "Ren!" I squeal happily and step over to get a better look at the image. "I think he made a mistake. There's a picture up here that's not of me. It's of the kidnapped girls. And it looks like they're in some kind of cage in a basement. They're together and alive. Do you know what that means?"

  Without waiting for his response, I answer my own question. "It means that he must be involved if he has a picture of them after they were kidnapped. This means he's guilty. And he left evidence. I can use this against him, Ren. He's not so smart after all!"

  I giddily reach over to pull the picture off the wall to take with me when my pocket explodes with a series of frantic beeps. Apparently Ren is excited, too. My pocket almost jiggles with all the vibrations coming from the speaker.

  "Don't worry, Ren," I say as I pluck the picture off the wall. "I got it..."

  And that is as far as I get when three things all happen simultaneously. And one of them is the world coming to an end around me.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  As soon as I remove the picture from the wall, I see that there is writing scrawled behind it on the painted surface. Someone has written in black sharpie, "Boom! Goodbye." And they've drawn a creepy little frowny face below the letters. My assumption is that it was done by Chadwick himself as everything on the wall seems to have been arranged by him. By why would he scrawl that message, and what does it mean?

  While I'm trying to figure out the mystery of the words, I notice that the air around me has gone eerily still. Nothing is moving in the kitchen, and all the sound has stopped. No more distracting music or nauseating smells. Looking around, I sense that my adrenaline must be kicked up into full throttle as time has come to a virtual standstill. But why? That only happens when I need to save myself from danger, and as far as I can tell I'm safe in the kitchen. What impending threat could my subconscious have possibly picked up on in here?

  And then I notice a frighteningly thin length of fishing line coming from the back of the picture I've just removed from the wall and heading off towards the stove. A stove that is actively burping out a massive cloud of flame that seems to be eating the air around it faster than my eyes can perceive it. I stare at it for a few beats of my heart as the orange cloud expands outward from its metallic womb and consumes the air around me. It isn't just coming straight out of the oven; it is going every direction at once. All of the air in the entire kitchen is going to feed this new horrendous beast, and even with time at a near standstill it is expanding faster than I can reasonably grasp.

  He set me up, I think and spin to look around the kitchen for an escape route. That's why he had those flameless candles everywhere in the house. He was filling it with gas from the oven, and he didn't want me to notice it. Then he rigged that picture with a booby trap knowing I'd try and take it. He lured me to the center of the house, and then set the whole thing up to take me out.

  Remembering my previous escape through the window in his back door, the reason why he used thick wood to
cover it quickly comes to me. The previous explosion hadn’t shattered the windows in here, he just put wood over them to prevent my using them as a method of escape. I can't just jump out. I'm trapped in here.

  The heat from the fiery cloud around me becomes too painful to ignore any longer, and I take off running for the front room and its windows and door in a valiant hope of an easier exit. As I run through the kitchen, though, the expanding cloud from the oven accelerates to match my speed.

  Apparently all the exertion of filtering out the sounds and smells earlier along with the shock of what I just saw have shaken my concentration and ability to focus. I'm losing my hold on time. I don't think I can sprint at full speed, ignore the scents battering my olfactory organs, forget about what the wall of pictures behind me might imply about my future (If I still have one!), and keep time at a standstill. Something has to give.

  Rounding the arched doorway that separates the kitchen from the main part of the house, I can see the cloud beginning to race ahead of me on either side as it gobbles up pockets of gas that have been leaking for who knows how long. It is almost beautiful. It is like moving through those really cool photos you see of the universe and the nebulous clouds that seem to exist in far off space. Except this particular batch of space is located in the family room of an evil genius. And it's intent on killing me. The beauty of what is around me as I run is astounding and jaw-dropping, but so is the knowledge of how close to death I am. If I don't make it out of this house before this cloud does, then I don't believe any amount of other people's blood will be able to save me. I've only been closer to death one other time in my life, and it took the sacrificing of my closest friend to live through that. That's something I will never do again.

  They're all boarded up!

  The large front door and all the visible windows down here have boards over them, too. I hadn't noticed when I was down here before as Chadwick had pulled the curtains closed to hide them, but now that they stand as my gateway between salvation and death it is easy to pick out the edges of the plywood peeking from around the dark, maroon curtains. And the wood on the front door is painted black and just blends in with the shadows.