99 Souls

  “Anybody! Pleeeease!”

  Trevor swept across the room to the girl and picked her up. As soon as he touched her, she stopped screaming. By the time she was off the ground, she was unconscious. As he carried her out of the room, Trevor grabbed a stuffed Raggedy Ann doll off the floor.

  Once downstairs, he laid Ashley out on a red velvet sofa in the den. He stared down at his daughter. With her still and silent, he could see in her the innocence of her youth. He recognized his DNA in her nose and her chin.

  “It’s for your own good,” he said. “You’ll understand soon enough.”

  He kneeled next to the sofa. Holding the doll in both hands now, he stared from it to Ashley. “I wish I had the time to do this properly. I hate to put you in this... thing,” he said with disgust, squeezing the doll tightly. “But it’s only for a little while. I promise.”

  He placed his hand on hers. Energy tangled, twisted, sparkled, spat, expanded, contracted, and expanded further, glowing brighter as it intensified, seeping out from the space between their bodies until the light overtook the room.

  In those milliseconds of blinding whiteness, Ashley’s soul traversed the bridge of energy Trevor had formed between her and the doll.

  As soon as she crossed it, the bridge closed. The light disappeared.

  Trevor knew Ashley was still alive — in the most important way, at least. She could not move her limbs. She needed no food or drink. But behind those doll pupils, her soul lived.

  She could hear, though she had no ears. She could see, though she had no eyes. And she thought the way only a soul could—with a single, uninterrupted flow of emotion, ideas, and understanding.

  Without a body, she would never tire. She would never sleep. Until she was released, she would stare without choice at whatever Trevor put in front of her.

  Every time he transferred one of his children’s souls to a doll, he felt a profound sadness for the torture they must endure. But...

  “It’s only for a little while,” he whispered to Raggedy Ann.

  He took the doll to the basement and placed it on a wooden shelf among almost one hundred ceramic figurines. The shelf was one of six that sat atop steel brackets, attached to a brick wall.

  “At least you will not be alone down here,” he told her before he left. As his gaze scanned across the dolls, he added, “I love you... All of you.”

  WHEN TREVOR RETURNED to the living room, he found Ashley Draven’s body stretched out on the couch as he’d left it. Still, lifeless, she seemed at peace. Her eyebrows no longer furrowed. Worry no longer forced an unconscious clenching of the muscles under her jaw. Tears no longer stained her smooth, youthful skin.

  But this was nothing more than illusion, an escape into self-deception. No doubt Ashley was not at peace. As she stared into a dark basement, silence all around her, unable to move or speak, she suffered.

  Trevor knew he was responsible for this suffering. But he was also confident he’d saved her from much worse. If The End were not coming, if he had let her life carry out as it may, how many men would have broken her heart? Would she have been raped one day? Would she have been mugged? Would a lover have gotten her hooked on drugs? Would she have ended up on the streets? In a shelter?

  As he imagined all the horrors that could have befallen her, all the horrors that had befallen so many of his children, Trevor’s rage at mankind’s cruelty grew.

  It was time to deliver The Message.

  God is blind.

  Although cryptic to the public at large, the message was actually so simple and clear Trevor couldn’t think of any other way to state it. His children weren’t just children, born of the natural and supernatural. They were the eyes through which God watched the world.

  God IS blind.

  While getting out of Atlanta by nightfall was still important, this time, he would not simply dump the body somewhere with his words burned into her skin. He would be bold. With Brandon now in his grasp and his doll nearly done, Trevor had no fear of failure. Thus, he would do all he could to reign down terror on mankind, to make them suffer and worry as his children had for centuries, until The End came.

  He scooped up Ashley’s body and walked through his house to the attached garage. There, he put her into the trunk of his car and pulled out into the afternoon sun.

  He drove to the massive Christ Cathedral. Located at the corner of Habersham Road and Peachtree Street, it featured six rooms for worshiping. With high ceilings, stained-glass windows, and intricate, ornate artwork, each was more impressive than the last. The cathedral also had a full kitchen, a dining hall, a youth center, meeting rooms, and play areas for children.

  Due to its size, beauty, and address, the church attracted an influential and prestigious crowd for Sunday worship. Among those regularly in attendance were half-a-dozen news anchors from CNN and The Big Three, a smattering of actors, and the governor.

  Trevor drove into the back parking lot, which was deserted but for one other car—an old beat-up Volvo. Despite the cathedral’s size and the crowd that would be in attendance tomorrow, the parking lot proved what Trevor already knew: He would have very little company on a Saturday afternoon.

  With nobody nearby, he scooped the girl from his trunk and slung her over his shoulder without bothering to twist the light around them. Then he strode to a side door and tried his luck. There were probably fifteen exterior doors for this cathedral. He wouldn’t be surprised to find one, or even several, unlocked.

  Unfortunately, it was secure.

  After readjusting the lump of dead flesh that hung over his shoulder, he summoned the energy around him, twisting it, knotting it into a bright, sizzling ball, and focused it on the door’s lock.

  He didn’t summon as much energy as he had at Sarah Winslow’s house or Ashley’s apartment. He didn’t need to burst through the door in a flurry of horror and confusion. He only needed to get inside.

  When the light transcended the exterior of the door, he heard the steel lock crack. The wooden door creaked open a few inches.

  Trevor stepped into a dark hallway, closing the door behind him. He’d been inside the church several times as a worshiper before he’d turned his back on God, but the corridor in which he found himself was foreign land. He was somewhere deep within the guts of the cathedral. The ugly plaster walls and cheap tile floor made him feel like he had somehow stepped into another building. Clearly, this part of the church was used by clergy and staff only.

  As he walked down the hallway, his footsteps echoing around him, he passed doors on the left and right that appeared to lead to a series of small offices. Dim security lighting and the glow from the emergency exit sign kept him from being completely blind.

  Eventually, he found his way to a part of the church he recognized. It came upon him suddenly, with the same jolt he experienced when first entering the cathedral.

  A wooden door with a simple aluminum handle took him from private hallways into an ornate lobby with velvet carpets. He picked up his pace, ascended a set of stairs, and navigated his way to the largest of the worship centers.

  So far, he hadn’t encountered anyone.

  He walked down the center hallway to the altar, where he heaved Ashley’s lifeless body onto the floor. After he took a breath, he turned to face the pews. He imagined the hundreds of people who came here every Sunday to praise God, heads bowed in their seats, hands clasped before them. He imagined how those same people would look tomorrow when they found his message, and he smiled. Their terror would be exquisite.

  Before he set about his work, he took a moment to admire the artistry surrounding the nave. Along the two parallel walls that led to the altar, massive stained-glass windows depicted scenes from The Bible in incredible detail. Between each window had been mounted a sconce holding fresh hydrangeas. Behind the altar, on either side of a gold cross, large marble columns rose between life-sized statues of the saints.

  He pulled off Ashley’s tee shirt with one hand. Her torso jerked
and her head bobbed as it found its way through the neck hole. The sleeves yanked her arms upward as they turned inside out.

  He cast the unwanted garment aside. Ashley had not been wearing a bra, so she was now fully exposed from the waist up.

  Trevor summoned the energy around him. A blazing hot light, no larger than a dime, appeared in the air above his index finger. Directing his finger toward his daughter’s torso, he seared into her flesh the same message he’d left upon every one of his children’s empty vessels: God is Blind.

  The words were spelled out one per line and covered her from shoulders to waist. The smell of burning skin wafted up into the air as he crafted those letters, the unblemished pale canvas cracking, turning black, purple, red.

  When he was done, the light above his finger vanished.

  After waiting for her flesh to cool, he positioned her with her head to the foot of the cross, her arms stretched outward, her legs together.

  He was about to leave when he heard a voice: “You can’t be in here. The church is closed to guests right now.”

  Trevor turned around to see a priest standing at the back of the nave.

  Once the priest realized he was looking at not just an intruder, but also a dead body, his indignation turned to shock, then panic. He took several unsteady steps backward, almost falling over, then turned and ran back the way he had come.

  Trevor pursued. He wasn’t going to let one man ruin his surprise for Sunday Mass. Trevor caught up with the priest just after he pushed through one of the doors that led from the grandiose public chambers to the bland private corridors.

  The priest was huffing and puffing, moving his chubby legs as fast as he could.

  Trevor grabbed him by his neck and threw him against the wall. When his head hit the plaster, he let out a yelp, stumbled, and fell face forward. Trevor jumped on top of him, grabbed his head with both hands...

  “Please, don—”

  ...and slammed his head against the floor.

  His last word faded into a groan, then nothing. Trevor found a storage closet that looked unused and stashed the man of God inside.

  Chapter 41

  OFFICER NOAH BRAMSTON WAS PARKED just outside of the kidnapper’s neighborhood when he saw the composite of Trevor appear on the computer in his cruiser. He recognized the subject immediately. He was the officer who’d knocked on Trevor’s door and asked about Brandon. The man he’d spoken to had told him he hadn’t seen the boy, but there’d been something about his demeanor that Noah found suspicious. However, he’d been suspicious of a lot of people and had already been scolded twice by his superiors for acting on suspicion alone.

  It’s a part of the job, they told him. You gotta watch it. Don’t let it run the show.

  Well, this time he was right to be suspicious, and boy was it going to pay off big time for him.

  Noah picked up his handheld radio and called it in.

  Meanwhile, Sarah, Jim, Mark, and Les sat in the conference room, waiting for news.

  While they waited, Sarah told the detectives the same story she had told Jim in the diner. “I’m sorry I didn’t recognize him before. It’s been so long,” she said, then sipped at the overheated coffee Jim had gotten her from the vending machine.

  “Think back to that night, Sarah,” Mark said. “Did he tell you anything about his house? No matter how unimportant it might have seemed, tell us anything you can remember.”

  She shook her head. “It didn’t come up.”

  “Did he have dogs?”

  “I don’t... No, I don’t think so.”

  “Any pets, at all?”

  “We didn’t talk about it.”

  “Did he have any other kids that you know of?”

  Sarah shook her head. “We didn’t talk about it.”

  “Was he married? Divorced?”

  “I really don’t know.”

  “What did he do professionally?”

  Sarah thought back to their conversation in the club, and the subsequent conversation on the drive to the hotel. They hadn’t spoken much. She was guilt-ridden for betraying her husband. He seemed interested only in getting her into bed. The few questions she did ask, he had answered cryptically, and he had followed with none of his own.

  She had asked him his profession, though. It had been among her predetermined donor vetting questions. What had he said?... “Stocks... or investments. Something like that.”

  “He was a stockbroker?”

  That didn’t sound right, but she couldn’t be any more specific.

  Then the door opened. A woman Sarah hadn’t seen before said to Mark, “We got a hit.”

  “You sure?”

  “Positive. One of the cops canvassing the area questioned him earlier today about the missing boy.”

  “You got an address?”

  She held up a slip of paper with something scribbled on it.

  “Great,” Mark said, getting to his feet. “Les, let’s go.”

  “I’m coming with you,” Sarah said.

  “Not a good idea,” Mark responded.

  “Sweetie,” Les said, “it’s going to be dangerous. You should really just let us do our jobs. We’ll bring him home safe.”

  “No way. Not after what I’ve been through.”

  “Fine,” Mark said. “We don’t have time for this. Who knows? Since you have a history with this guy, maybe you’ll be useful.” He grabbed the slip of paper and charged out of the room.

  Chapter 42

  SNAP!

  A small piece of plaster in the corner of the room cracked in two.

  Brandon’s heart skipped as excitement flushed through his body, cooling and tingling as it went. He forgot about where he was and about the bad man who had brought him here. The only thoughts he could manage through his pure exhilaration were I did it! and I broke it in two!

  More importantly, he’d done it without passing out and without letting his guard down against the ghosts of ghosts.

  After trying several methods, Brandon had succeeded by implementing a technique that, in retrospect, was the most obvious. As he sat cross-legged on the floor next to the foot of the canopy bed, he imagined himself standing and crossing the room to where the piece of porcelain lay. As he did so, he tried hard to ensure the accuracy of the scene playing out before him. He imagined the legs of his pajamas folding in on themselves at the knee as he shuffled forward, his steps unexaggerated, his hands clasped nervously in front of him as he walked.

  If he wanted to, he could see from either his seated position or through the eyes of his dream-self. When he chose the latter, his actual view didn’t disappear. It just faded until it was something akin to background noise.

  His dream-self kneeled in front of the porcelain piece. He placed his thumb on it. To his surprise, he could feel the cold, smooth skin of the paint. Imagining he put all his weight behind his thumb, he pressed down and felt the porcelain split. At the same time, from where he sat, he heard and saw it happen.

  Once the initial excitement passed, Brandon crossed the room to make sure the porcelain had actually broken. Scooping up the two pieces that had been separated by only a hair’s length, he confirmed success.

  He’d gone back from the lock to the porcelain because he wasn’t sure how to use the solution he had in mind—the one that worked—with the lock. The imaginary key he tried before might do the trick eventually. If it didn’t, he wouldn’t be able to say for certain if it was the technique that failed or the key, making it impossible to reach any defensive conclusion from the experiment.

  Brandon put the porcelain down. He wanted to try again, this time with something more difficult. The sooner he could master this gift, the sooner he could escape.

  He sat on the floor to make sure he wouldn’t have far to fall if he passed out. He was determined to perform more than one successful test before trying the imaginary key.

  His mind felt strained from the previous exercise and he found it more difficult to imagine himself wal
king across the room with honest perspective. Nonetheless, he soldiered on, his dream-self stepping forward, closer to the bed.

  Before he could touch the blankets to pull them back as he intended, the mental strain took its toll. The wall separating him from the ghosts of ghosts cracked and Ashley stepped through.

  She ran to the window to try to pry it open. She screamed, but no sound came out. She was the only ghost of a ghost to get through his defenses and he saw her for only a second before he sealed her back behind the wall, simultaneously abandoning his attempt to further develop this new skill.

  His mind would need time to rest before trying again.

  If he were at home, he’d take a nap to speed up his brain’s recuperation. Here, he was too scared to sleep.

  The bad man had killed Ashley.

  Not wanting to be taken by surprise when the bad man returned for him, Brandon returned to his post near the foot of the bed, where he had watched the door for so many hours.

  Acting as his soul’s only sentinel, he waited for the doorknob to turn. He tried to come up with a new plan for escape since slinking out of the room wouldn’t likely work twice. How much could he lift with his dream-self, he wondered, if he were fully rested? Could he lift the bed? Could he lift it and drop it on the bad man? And if he tried and failed, would the bad man torture him for revenge before killing him?

  He wasn’t sure. But the more he thought about it, the more it sounded like a bad idea. Hell (he shouldn’t use that word), he wasn’t even ready to try unlocking the door. If he wasn’t ready for that, he certainly wasn’t ready to try lifting the bed.

  His breathing slowed and, after watching the door for a long time, his eyelids got heavy.

  His eyes closed.

  Don’t sleep.

  He slept.

  Chapter 43

  AS FAR BACK AS NOAH BRAMSTON COULD remember, he had always wanted to be a cop. He couldn’t say why, though. No one in his family had worked in law enforcement. A few family members on his father’s side had even worked against it—smuggling moonshine during prohibition or, more recently, selling pot.