Feast of Fear

by Mark Edward Hall

  “You remember what happened next, don’t you Jack?”

  “Is that my name? Jack?”

  She nodded.

  “And your name is Daphne.”

  “Correct again.”

  His last clear memory of the events before he woke up in the forest was Daphne saying, “I knew what you wanted from the beginning, Jack. And it wasn’t my love. It was my money, my homes, my private jet that I paid for you to learn to fly. Well, Jack, It’s all yours now. You own it!”

  Then something happened, some sort of phase shift. He remembered looking down at the altimeter and thinking, It happens at twenty thousand feet. Now we’re at fifteen thousand. Maybe it didn’t happen. But was that now, or was that then? He couldn’t remember. Suddenly he was at the controls again, thinking, I have a chance to stop this before it happens. But he remembered the sound of the gun going off, and the momentary relief that she hadn’t shot him in the head. That maybe he had stopped it before it happened. But the window had blown out and he felt the terrible sensation of decompression. Almost enough to rip his guts out through his asshole. After that he did not remember anything until he woke up in the woods with that phrase cycling through his head. It’s all yours now. You own it . . .!

  “But we survived, Daphne,” Jack said. “Somehow we got out of that mess alive. Maybe it didn’t happen. Maybe we’re just dreaming this. I wanted to tell you before you pulled the trigger that it was all a mistake and that I want to make it up to you. What I mean is, maybe I did tell you. Maybe it didn’t happen.”

  “You’re kidding, right, Jack?”

  “Look at me,” he said, patting his body with his hands. “I’m alive.” But when he looked up again Daphne was gone. He heard her laughter though, like the sound of breaking glass.

  Maybe it didn’t happen, he kept thinking as he made his way back in the direction of the tracks. Maybe it’s still not too late to stop it from happening.

  It took him most of the day to slog out of the woods and find his way back to the old railroad spur. By then he was exhausted and the pain was numbing. He lay on the tracks for a long time trying to catch his breath. He closed his eyes and might have slept.

  And then that noise again, rumbling, roaring, air escaping a monstrous deflating balloon. He remembered looking down at the altimeter and thinking, It happens at twenty thousand feet. Now we’re at fifteen thousand. Ten! Five! Maybe it didn’t happen. But was that now, or was that then? He couldn’t remember. Eardrums bursting inside his head. Blood spewing from his mouth and nose. Altimeter spinning wildly backwards.

  Pitching, yawing, screaming.

  He opened his eyes. The moon had come up above the trees and he watched it rise into the sky.

  He heard a sound, sat up cocking his head, straining to make sense of it. He had dreamed but could not remember what it was about. In his mind there was a vague recollection of some sort of tragedy.

  He stood on shaky legs, looked back the way he had come. The forest was still. Nothing was in sight.

  It’s all yours now. You own it. . .

  The man did not know what that phrase meant any more than he had four days ago when he had come awake in the woods injured and afraid with it cycling through his head.

  It’s all yours now. You own it. . .

  THE END

  Now begins the special preview of my upcoming novel Soul Thief, scheduled for release in mid-summer 2012. Enjoy!

  SOUL THIEF

  A Novel by Mark Edward Hall

  “The Soul Thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to destroy.”

  John10:10

  PART ONE

  TRINITY

  PROLOGUE

  APRIL 19th

  On the night of April 19th the Callaghan family of Exeter New Hampshire was settling down to watch television after their evening meal. The Callaghans were an ordinary American family. Ben Callaghan, husband, father, little league coach, worked in the plumbing and heating business. Peg Callaghan was a full time mother and housewife. Ben and Peg Callaghan had two children: twelve year old Jason and six year old Trinity.

  Just after eight PM the doorbell rang. The family dog, a yellow Labrador retriever named Dingo, raised his hackles and began to bark.

  “Would you please see who that is?” Ben Callaghan asked his son Jason. He was watching Survivor on television and the interruption was an irritation.

  “Sure,” Jason said, getting up off the couch and heading for the door. There were two doors, actually, an inner door that led out onto a glassed-in porch and an outer door that led to the front steps.

  When Jason opened the inner door the dog rushed past him still barking frantically. This did not bother Jason much, for the dog always barked when someone came to the door. It was usually an excited, tail-wagging bark, because the Callaghan family had many friends and sometimes these friends brought treats for Dingo.

  Someone’s coming to the door. Good. This shouldn’t take any time at all. They’d better shut that dog up, though. I hate dogs almost as much as they hate me.

  Jason switched on the outside light and saw the silhouette of a person standing beyond the glass of the outer door. Jason could not discern any features; just the vague form of someone who seemed very tall, dressed in what looked like a black raincoat with an attached hood. Outside the howling wind of a spring storm gusted sheets of rain against the door’s window. Dingo saw the silhouette too, and this only heightened his frantic baying.

  “Come on,” Jason said, taking Dingo by the collar and dragging him back into the house. The dog did not want to go. He began to yelp and yowl, pulling to get free. His teeth were bared and a ring of white foam had formed around his mouth. This was not like Dingo at all.

  That’s good, the dog is going away. I won’t have to do anything unpleasant out here where people might see. Wouldn’t be good for public relations. Now it’ll just be me and the boy. After that, well, I’ll go inside and party for a little while.

  “Who is it?” Peg Callaghan asked in irritation, looking up at her son from the program on the television.

  “Don’t know yet,” replied Jason in exasperation. “But the dog’s acting weird. Would you keep him in here?”

  “Sure,”

  “It’s the Collector,” Trinity said.

  “What did you say?” Peg asked, looking over at her daughter in puzzlement.

  Trinity sat forward in her seat staring at the door with wide eyes. “The Collector. He’s come for me.”

  “What are you talking about, Trinity? And how do you even know that word?”

  “Collector?” Trinity said with a shrug. “I don’t know. I might have learned it in school. Or maybe I heard it in a dream.” She shrugged again, her eyes glassy and distant. “But I’m not kidding. You’ll see.”

  The dog began to howl again, this time they were long and mournful wails like that of a wolf worshiping some distant heavenly body.

  “Settle down!” Ben Callaghan hollered at the dog, picking up the remote control to raise the volume. His command fell on deaf ears. The dog would not shut up.

  Jason quickly backed out onto the porch and closed the inner door behind him, hoping to block out the dog’s incessant racket. In the distance he heard his father yelling angrily at Dingo.

  “Coming!” Jason hollered to the caller whose dark silhouette was still visible beyond the rain-smeared glass. But something made Jason hesitate. He had this strange feeling in his chest, like there was a hand around his heart giving it a squeeze. His breath had become shallow and an eerie coldness surrounded him. For a moment he thought he might throw up. He stood for a long moment just looking at the door and hearing the dog caterwauling behind him. He’d answered the door hundreds of times to dozens of friends and family and had never felt this way before. He could not understand what was wrong all of a sudden.

  Open the door, Jason! A cold voice inside his head seemed to say. Open it now!

  Jason obeyed the voice, walking trance-like to the door. He put hi
s hand on the knob and pulled the door open. And the last thought to enter his mind before he died was, there’s something wrong with this man.

  Inside the house, the dog bayed so loudly it sounded like a scream of terror.

  Chapter 1

  APRIL 20th

  The telephone call that saved their lives, and nearly destroyed them, came at five o’clock on a rainy, windy morning in April.

  Douglas McArthur was having a terrible dream.

  No . . . please, God, no. Not after all this time. It couldn’t be happening all over again. I need to wake up before this gets out of hand.

  But it was already too late; he was fully immersed in the nightmare and there didn’t seem to be any way out of it. He saw the shape standing on the door stoop—tall, impossibly tall—wearing the familiar fleshy. black robe, the cowl covering the head, the single burning red eye bright as a miniature sun. And he saw the kid’s startled expression a split second before his body fossilized, turning to something akin to sandstone, and then crumbling to dust at his feet. And it was so real, like he was somehow a part of it, connected to it in some elemental way. Yet he knew it was impossible. He was asleep in his bed with Annie beside him.

  But the dream that could not be real would not end. He knew the killer was aware of him watching, knowing that he knew, and taking some sort of perverse pleasure in knowing. He saw the shape streak past the dead boy and move on into the house.

  He heard the dog’s hysterical baying halt in mid-stream, and then he again saw living human beings turn instantly to fossils and crumble to dust, the little girl running, hiding under her bed, the red eye watching her, ancient and implacable, like a permanent rent in the fabric of some alien universe.

  Come out, little girl. I’m not going to hurt you.

  “You hurt my Mommy and Daddy,” the little girl said. “And you hurt my big brother.”

  I had to, little one. They were bad. But you’re not bad. You’re good. You’re pure. I won’t hurt you. I promise. I never hurt the pure ones. The pure ones all live forever in my House of Bones.

  “But I don’t want to live in your House of Bones!”

  You must, darling; it is my Darkness, my Sanctuary. Come with me so that I may prepare the way.

  The burning red eye exploded suddenly inside Doug’s head, fragmenting his psyche and scattering it into a thousand black and flailing creatures, like pieces of living confetti. Doug sucked ragged breath into his lungs as he tumbled from the edge of a cliff and fell into an abyss. His scream resounded in his head even as the fluttering bits of confetti morphed into birds—hundreds, perhaps thousands of them—squawking, squealing, shrieking, trying to drive their evil noise into his brain. He was all sweat-soaked and trembling with fear. His saliva tasted like acid on his tongue and his heart pounded out a brisk rhythm in his chest.

  He tried to come awake, knowing somehow that he must, that his life, and probably Annie’s, depended on it. He felt himself slowly rising up out of his thick stratum of slumber, panic fighting fatigue, lunacy battling common sense.

  In a sudden scene-change he was sitting up in bed. Somehow the evil creatures—confetti birds—had broken through the windows and into the bedroom. They were streaming in by the hundreds, gathering on the mantle, the chests of drawers, perching on the bed posts. They looked to be some sort of blackbirds, but alien, a species he did not recognize; birds from hell, their bodies and heads misshapen, plumage disheveled, unkempt, black and shiny like wet tar. Staring menacingly out of their misshapen heads were bulbous eyes the color of arterial blood. He looked over and noted, in a wholly clinical mind, that Annie’s face was completely covered in the grotesque creatures. And as he watched, the loathsome things began to abandon their feast, and he saw that Annie’s eyes had been pecked out. A viscous mixture of pus-like fluid and blood poured from the blank eye-cavities and ran down the sides of her face in variegated streaks. The dreadful mixture pooled on the pillow around her matted blonde hair. Annie’s half-eaten tongue hung bloodily from her mouth.

  Doug moaned loudly and came awake with his heart in his mouth. He had to grasp the edge of the mattress to keep from tumbling off the bed. His breath burst from his lungs in a painful gasp as sweat trickled down the sides of his face. Oh, dear God, he thought. Such terrible, terrible dreams.

  “Annie!” he cried out, still not entirely certain of his consciousness. But he could see now that she was okay. Her eyes were closed in sleep but decidedly intact, as were the windows. There were no alien birds in the room, no pieces of living confetti, but somehow he still felt their menacing presence, as though they had been there and they’d left some sort of bitter residue at the center of his psyche. A phrase suddenly surfaced in his mind, more a plea than anything else: Please, mister, my name is Trinity. I’m lost and I need your help.

  Oh, God no, Doug thought. This can’t be happening. I can’t do this again.

  But the voice reiterated: I’m lost and I need your help.

  “Where are you, Trinity?” Doug whispered, knowing even as he acknowledged the plea what the answer would be, and that it was futile to begin with; he could not help the child. How many others had he tried to help and had failed them all.

  “I’m trapped in the House of Bones and I can’t get out. You’re the only one who can help me!”

  Doug put his hands over his ears, trying to block out the voice. “No!” he moaned. “I can’t help you. I don’t know how. This can’t be happening all over again. I won’t accept it. I won’t listen.”

  But he knew it was already too late. Somewhere not far away the morning headline would look something like this:

  FAMILY MYSTERIOUSLY MURDERED IN THEIR HOME! LITTLE GIRL GONE MISSING!

  Doug had this . . . connection. He couldn’t explain what it was, why he had it, or from where it had come. Nobody could. Not the greatest psychiatrists or the most gifted policemen. And oh how he hated himself for having it.

  But he couldn’t think about that now. Something was terribly wrong, something other than the knowledge of the dead family and the missing child. He felt it in every fiber of his being. Awake now, he looked toward the window. The pale light of an uncertain dawn had begun to steal its way into the bedroom.

  “Phone,” Annie said stirring, her voice muffled by the pillow.

  “What?”

  “Phone’s ringing.”

  It was then that Doug realized what Annie was saying; the phone was ringing. It probably had been for several minutes. “Christ,” he said, leaning over and clumsily grabbing it up.

  It was odd, later, when his mind would come back to the events of that morning—as it did often—how he always remembered the sound of the phone, and how it had somehow become a part of the dream, interwoven with the cries and shrieks of the menacing birds.

  “Hello?” he said, his voice oddly tentative.

  “Douglas, this is your father-in-law.”

  Doug stiffened. He was dimly aware of holding the phone receiver too tight. He turned to his wife. “Here, you can talk to your daughter.”

  “No, Douglas! I don’t care how much you hate me! Listen to what I have to say!”

  “Screw you!”

  “Get Annie out of the house, now!”

  “What the hell—?”

  “—Just shut up and listen to me for a moment! Someone is going to try and take her and they will kill you if you try to stop them. Am I getting through to you, Douglas? They killed my wife and they will kill you.”

  “Jesus Christ, Ed, when?”

  “Last night.”

  Annie stretched over and switched on her bedside lamp. She was sitting up now, staring fixedly at Doug, her face pale, like chalk.

  “Go!” the man on the end of the line insisted. “Get Annie out of the house now before it’s too late. They want her and they’ll do anything to get her.”

  “You set this up—”

  “Just do as I say, Douglas, or I promise you, you will be dead. Don’t take time to pack and don’t s
peak of where you’re going out loud. Annie has my secure number. Have her call me when you’re in a safe location.” The phone went dead in Doug’s hand. He stared at it, unable to loosen his numb fingers.

  Annie was still staring at him, but now her eyes were glassy with grief. Wetness stained her cheeks. Doug threw the phone away, jumped out of bed and began dressing hastily.

  “Is there something wrong with Mama?” Annie said.

  “I’m sorry, Annie.”

  “What happened?”

  “Get dressed! There’s no time—”

  “Tell me!”

  “It’s that son-of-a-bitch father of yours!”

  A noise somewhere—not loud or particularly alarming, just unusual—brought Annie to her senses. She moved quickly and quietly out of bed, slipped into jeans and a T-shirt. Doug slid open the drawer of his bedside stand and grabbed the automatic. He pulled the magazine back and chambered a round.

  “Come on,” he whispered.

  In the dim light of dawn he took Annie by the hand and began making his way toward the door, but stopped suddenly, thinking better of it. He could hear the raucous noise of a hundred migrating birds outside in the leafless trees, shrieking in his brain like fingernails on a blackboard. And now the smell. Christ!

  “Oh, Jesus,” Annie said, her hand tightening in Doug’s. “Is that what I think it is?”

  “Fucking birds?” Doug said.

  “No, the smell. It’s gas!”

  “Shit,” Doug said, turning back toward the window. He let go of Annie’s hand and pushed the window up. Outside rain gusted in sheets. Beneath the window there was a small landing with a narrow and steep set of stairs attached along the side of the house. Doug had added it when they’d finished building the place five years ago. Nothing fancy, but protection enough in case of fire.