99 Souls

by Gabriel Burns

  “Relax,” Trevor said in a soothing voice. “This is a safe place.”

  It didn’t look like a safe place.

  “You know, you’re the first one I’ve ever brought down here.”

  Brandon wasn’t bound to his chair. He could have tried to wiggle off and run, but he knew the bad man would grab him before his feet touched the ground. “Please let me go home.”

  “I can’t. But I want you to understand what’s going on. You see, where we are now is a safe haven, of sorts. All the evil is out there in the world. Here, nothing can harm you. I brought you here to protect you, son.”

  Looking at his lap, Brandon mustered up the courage to ask, “Why do you want to hurt me?”

  Trevor stood. He leaned against the worktable with his hands in his pockets. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

  “But you hurt that woman,” he said.

  “I did.”

  “You’ll hurt me, too.”

  “No, I won’t.”

  “Why?”

  “I promise I won’t.”

  “Just like you hurt all those other people.”

  “What other people?”

  “The ones I saw in the bedroom,” Brandon said.

  “Interesting. What did you see?”

  Brandon looked down at his hands. He was afraid to say more than he already had.

  “They can’t be spirits,” the bad man prodded.

  Brandon wasn’t sure how the bad man could know this, but he was right. “They’re not.”

  “What are they?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What did they look like?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Please tell me.”

  Brandon fearfully ran one hand over the other, squeezing his fingers. He whispered: “You’re a bad man.”

  “I’m not a bad man.”

  “If I tell you what they looked like, will you let me see my mom?”

  “Son, look at me.”

  Brandon’s eyes flashed up for only a second before returning to his hands.

  “Look at me!” the bad man shouted. His volume doubled, tripled as it bounced off the cinderblocks.

  Brandon winced, but obeyed. He looked up. This time, he kept his focus on the bad man. After silence had reclaimed the room, the bad man softly said, “Please tell me what you saw.”

  The ceramic dolls were in Brandon’s peripheral vision. At first, they were just a blur of muted colors. Then he noticed that several of them looked identical to the ghosts of ghosts he’d seen in the room upstairs. “That’s what I saw.” He pointed to the dolls. “I saw them.”

  Brandon started to cry. To hell with the boys in his class. They could talk trash all they wanted. Nobody was about to turn them into dolls.

  The thought shocked him, but it made sense. That’s why he was so mad when Brandon broke the doll that looked like him. It’s also why he was still alive.

  Trevor returned to his chair and scooted it closer to Brandon. “You’ve been given an amazing gift, son. But the world is a terrible place. Even with your gift, a lot of awful things would happen to you over your lifetime. I can’t allow that. I want to protect you, just like I want to protect them,” he said, nodding sideways toward the dolls. “They’re your brothers and sisters and I want to protect all of you, just like any father should.”

  “I don’t have any brothers and sisters,” Brandon said through his tears.

  “You do. You have thousands of brothers and sisters. Until recently, I’ve been a rotten father to all of you. But no more. I’m trying to make things right.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “It’s difficult to explain. Imagine a butterfly. Have you studied those in school yet?”

  The bad man put a hand on his shoulder and somehow, inexplicably, Brandon became calm. His crying subsided to sniffles. When it did, he shook his head no and the bad man took his hand away.

  “So, butterflies are born as caterpillars. You’ve seen a caterpillar before, right?”

  Brandon nodded.

  “Did you know they become butterflies?”

  Brandon nodded.

  “Well, that’s what I want to do for you. Those dolls over there are like cocoons. They hold the souls of your brothers and sisters. When the time comes, they will all emerge as beautiful butterflies. Do you understand?”

  “Uh-uh.”

  “A terrible thing is coming to this world, Brandon. There are some out there who want to stop it, think they can stop it, but they can’t. Only you can stop it. With your gifts, like your ability to see them in your bedroom”—he nodded his head toward the dolls—“and science, you can stop it. However, we, you and I, don’t want to stop it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s also a very good thing. When it comes, the world will be wiped clean. It will be new and fresh. No more crime. No more violence.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “How?”

  “It doesn’t matter how. All that matters is that after it comes, all those people out there will be gone. There will be no one left to hurt you.”

  “What about my mom? Will she still be here?”

  Somebody banged on the front door, then rang the doorbell.

  “Stay here and be quiet,” the bad man said as he headed for the stairs.

  TREVOR LOCKED THE basement door. No evidence of the recent battle with his inhuman guests lingered in the foyer. The fabric from which they were made had untangled slowly after their deaths, rising off their bodies like evaporating steam, until nothing remained.

  Trevor looked through the peephole to see a uniformed cop standing outside. He was young, lean, and strong, with dark brown hair parted to one side. Putting on a welcoming smile, Trevor opened the door. “Hello, officer.”

  “Good day, sir.”

  “How can I help you?”

  The officer was carrying a small stack of papers. He handed one to Trevor. On it was a photo of Brandon, acquired from Sarah’s house. “Have you seen this boy?”

  Trevor pretended to study the photo. He frowned and said, “No, I’m sorry. I haven’t. Is everything all right?” He offered the photo back to the cop.

  “Keep it. If you see him, please call the number on the bottom right away.”

  “Sure.”

  “Have a nice day, sir.” With a subtle tip of his hat, the cop left.

  Trevor closed the door. He dropped the photo onto a crescent-shaped table, then returned to the basement. Halfway down the stairs, he looked over at Brandon, who was sitting in his chair, slumped over, rocking back and forth.

  By the time he was within sight of the boy, he had pieced together the events that had led the police to his neighborhood. No doubt the phone call Brandon had made earlier had been received by law enforcement. This would have nullified their suspicions of Sarah Winslow, despite the diary he had left in her house.

  Last night, he was confident that the small minds of man would not look to him for Brandon’s whereabouts. Now he began to worry that his facade was starting to unravel. He should complete his work with the boy and leave Atlanta as soon as possible.

  But he couldn’t do it just yet. He still had to finish the doll. So he set a deadline: nightfall. That would be doable, but tight, and meant cutting short his conversation with the boy.

  Chapter 36

  WITH BRANDON BACK IN THE guest bedroom, tucked safely behind lock and key, Trevor toiled in the basement. Using delicate, careful brushstrokes, he painstakingly mixed colors until he matched the exact hue of Brandon’s eyes. Under the bright lights of the two desk lamps, he dotted the doll’s pupils with black paint, then mixed colors again until he had the right blue for the pajamas.

  When he finished with the pajamas, he painted the hands, the feet, even the fingernails. He’d done all this many times and could do it quickly. But when mixing colors to match the shade of Brandon’s hair, he hit a snag. He needed yellow paint. He’d used the last of hi
s supply on Brandon’s previous doll. The dolls and their painting were entirely symbolic. Nonetheless, Trevor wanted to see this doll, of all the dolls, finished correctly. After all, it was for the most important of his children.

  Leaving the lamps spotlighting the clay and the kiln smoldering, Trevor hurried out of the house, hopped into his Mercedes, and drove to the arts and crafts store fifteen minutes away. To the staff at Color and Form, he was a wannabe artist pushing his golden years. A “never-was, never-would-be nothin’,” he’d heard one of the teenage cashier girls say. That was fine with him. Nobody remembered a wannabe.

  The store was filled with steel shelves squeezed together to form tight, makeshift aisles, providing almost everything a budding artist might need. Not an inch was wasted. Dimly lit and depressing, it was the perfect environment for the tortured soul. Hats off to the owner, Trevor had thought the first time he shopped there. The man knew his audience.

  Brandon’s escape had drawn the police’s attention too close to Trevor’s home. He knew he had little time to waste. After he finished with Brandon, he’d pack up his dolls and leave his Atlanta home for good. Perhaps he’d make his villa in Italy his primary residence until he had completed his mission.

  Wherever he decided to land, money was of no concern. After thousands of years of building businesses and making wise investments, he had enough cash stashed away in bank accounts around the world to rival a small country.

  Trevor found the paint he needed. He also picked up fresh jars of tan, blue, and black. He was just about out of the store when he saw another of his children at the register closest to the door. Drawn to them the same way a compass is drawn north, he was able to identify them immediately.

  He knew he could come back for her later, but homing in on one of his children could sometimes take days. With his current plan to pull stakes as soon as he was done with Brandon, it would be negligent for him to waste this opportunity.

  She was sixteen-year-old Ashley Draven. Exactly how he knew their names when he saw them, he’d never been able to say. Yet he always knew. She was wearing a white tee shirt that said “Screw You” across the bust, blue jeans, and tennis shoes.

  Trevor went to his car, tossed his bag of paint into the passenger seat, and pretended to fiddle with something in his lap until she, too, left the store. She was driving an old boxy Toyota with dents everywhere. Her first car, he suspected. Likely a present from her mom.

  She pulled out of the parking lot and headed south on Piedmont Road. Trevor followed. He kept his distance. One, two cars behind. Sometimes in the same lane, sometimes in another. On occasion, she made it through a green light and he got stuck at a red, but he always caught up.

  When she reached The Hills, a garden-style apartment complex on Roswell Road, she pressed the remote clipped to her visor. The black-iron gate protecting the property rolled open. Then a wooden arm between her and the gate rotated up. She drove through. The arm lowered. The gate closed. Fortress secure.

  Trevor circled the property once, looking for another way in. Sometimes maintenance workers left a side gate open when they only planned to be gone for a few minutes. No such luck today.

  He parked on a nearby street and walked around to the front entrance. Cars went through often enough that he was able to slip in behind a Ford pickup without drawing the kind of attention that tailgating would. He turned left and followed the road around a bend and up a hill. Dressed in one of his many suits, sans jacket and with shirt sleeves rolled up, he was confident nobody would pay much attention to him.

  He spotted her car in a parking space halfway up the hill. Out of curiosity, he glanced through the backseat windows. The interior was a mess. School books were strewn across the seats. Crumpled napkins and fast food bags littered the floorboards. An empty McDonald’s soda cup sat in the driver’s side cup holder.

  He shook his head with disappointment. Then, drawn to Apartment 23, where he could feel her presence, he climbed the stairs of the nearest building and stopped outside the door. The stairways for these apartments provided limited concealment from the outside world. They were not hidden behind walls. No doors obscured visibility—quite the opposite. With the staircases built in the breezeways between buildings, anybody coming or going could be seen easily from either side of the building.

  For your average criminal, that could pose a problem. However, blessed with the power to twist light and shadow, to hide in broad daylight, Trevor wasn’t worried.

  He knocked. More often than not, people opened their doors to see what he wanted. Even those who first used peepholes were often persuaded to let him in upon hearing his time-tested “speed bump” fable.

  Whenever possible, he tried to collect his children when they were alone. It made things less complicated. When that wasn’t possible, he’d use his powers of persuasion to lure them away from company. From time to time, though, isolation and persuasion were not enough. When that happened, somebody had to be framed.

  Such was the case with Brandon. He was rarely alone. Acquiring the child unseen would have been nearly impossible. Thus... the diary.

  However, with Brandon, as with all his children, Trevor had spent time doing his research and forming a plan.

  This was the first time he would acquire one of his children without the benefit of forethought. This was also the first time he would have more than one of his children in his house at the same time.

  He didn’t like unpredictability, but what kind of parent would he be if he left Ashley behind to suffer through the coming apocalypse? Since he had the opportunity to get her out of harm’s way, it was his parental responsibility to do so.

  “Who is it?” asked a male voice.

  Ashley wasn’t alone. Disappointing.

  Trevor told a modification of the speed bumps story, this one about petitioning the government to put a traffic light at the entrance to the apartment complex, and was met with an unexpected response: “Get out of here!”

  When isolation, persuasion, and framing weren’t options, he had been known to take more drastic measures. Case in point: the old woman who’d helped Brandon try to escape.

  Just as he had to do with Sarah, he grabbed the doorknob. Light seeped from a crack of shadow between his hand and the knob. Just seconds later, the door began to quiver until it shook violently and exploded inward.

  On the other side, Trevor saw a boy, perhaps eighteen, shielding his face with his forearm as splinters of wood flew toward him. He was wearing rock-n-roll bracelets on both wrists. His naturally brown hair had been died black. His nails were painted to match. With a Misfits tee shirt and torn jeans, he looked every bit the angst-ridden rebel.

  The furniture in the living room was old. Hand-me-downs from family and friends, thrift store purchases, bargain-basement deals, and garage sale casualties. It was the kind of furniture a young man acquired when he was beginning his journey into the turbulent waters of independence. A lopsided, stained white couch sat along one wall. A thirty-two-inch CRT television lived on the floor opposite it. Between the two was a wooden coffee table which played host to an overflowing ashtray and Chinese takeout.

  At the same time the door exploded, the light overhead flickered. The TV momentarily fizzled into static. The doorknob had come free of the door in the explosion and now remained at its previous approximate height thanks to the fact that Trevor was holding it. He dropped the doorknob and stepped through the doorway. It clattered on the cement by his feet, then rolled off the ledge.

  The teenage rebel sputtered out a series of disjointed thoughts, peppered with curse words. “Who the... What the...” Trevor had heard it all before.

  The boy took several steps away from him as he entered the room. At the same time, Ashley rushed into the hallway from the back bedroom, demanding to know what was going on. Alarmed, she was at first unable to process the scene before her. When she saw the splinters of wood strewn across the living room carpet, the shattered door, and the look of terror in her boy
friend’s eyes, she placed one hand on the wall to steady herself and ran back the way she had come.

  The boy, backed up to the far corner of the couch, pulled his cell phone from his pocket. Eyes darting from the keypad to Trevor, he pressed the nine. “Stay back, dude. Just get the hell out of here before the police show up.” Thumb on the keypad, he added a one.

  Trevor ripped the phone from the boy’s hand before he could hit the final digit. He threw the phone at the television screen, which had been broadcasting Judge Judy. Both the phone and the television screen shattered.

  The boy punched Trevor across the jaw. Trevor smiled back at him with amusement, his lips parting to reveal bloody teeth. It was the first time anyone had ever hurt him. Until he’d started collecting his children, he’d been protected by the will of God and not known pain.

  In one fluid motion, he snapped the boy’s neck and threw him across the living room. He hit the wall with a thud and fell face-first into the foldout card table and metal chairs that served as his dining room set. After that, the boy was still. No more threats. No more protests.

  Trevor went down the hallway. Passing two closed doors, his intuition led him directly into the master bedroom. Schoolbooks and notepads were spread around the bed in a semicircle. He was proud she was a diligent student.

  He saw that the balcony door was ajar and knew that’s where she must have gone.

  Trevor went out onto the balcony expecting to see a fire escape. There was none. Made of wooden floorboards and enclosed by wrought-iron railing, the balcony had no visible means of escape. For a moment, he wondered if she had attempted to outwit him the same way Brandon had.

  Was she hiding under the bed waiting for him to fall prey to her diversion?

  Then he heard the balcony door on the floor beneath him rattle in its frame. Less than an inch divided each floorboard. Through those openings, he saw his daughter one level down trying to get into the apartment beneath them. “Ashley!”

  She looked up. Fear made her young face look much older than it should. She climbed over the edge of the second floor balcony and held tight with trembling hands as she lowered her torso. Then she dropped to the ground and landed, knees bent, on the brick walkway that ran behind the building.