The Soul Collectors

54

Darby had her gun raised, pointed up at the first-floor hall of beige-coloured walls. Lots of sunlight up there — the bedroom doors must be open, she thought, and she saw at least one opened door past the banister of decorative white spools. It was a bathroom. She shifted her stance and caught sight of a blue shower curtain hanging on a metal rod.

She made her way around the lower railing, noticing that the thick burgundy runner was the same as the one in the Rizzos' Dover house. Then she stood in the foyer waiting for the sounds she'd heard to repeat — the soft thump of something solid bumping into a wall or floor. Like a body. A body shifting around in a hiding spot.

But that other sound, that nasal squeal… her mind tried to identify it, this foreign sound, and came back empty-handed.

The first-floor layout came back to her: the bedroom Mark Rizzo had used as a home office was to the right of the top step. Across from that was the master bedroom, and at the opposite end of the hall, two more bedrooms. The twins had used the one on the left, the bigger of the two.

Darby took the first step, aware of her shadow against the wall, aware of the blind corners waiting for her up there. Another step and Coop's parting words about her luck having to run out at some point came back to her, and the warm feelings his presence had created vanished, swept away by the tide of adrenalin washing through her pounding heart, while her mind was racing, trying to identify that goddamn sound, where was it coming from and what the hell was it?

She turned the corner and saw the last part of the stairs. Saw no one, just more beige walls and two opened doors. She moved up the steps quietly, listening, then swung into the doorway on her immediate right, Mark Rizzo's old home office. The blue-striped wallpaper that had covered the walls was gone now, replaced with bright blue paint. A nursery. A half-assembled crib in the corner, the instructions and other parts waiting to be installed lying on a dark throw rug.

The monitor strapped to her arm didn't flicker once.

Moving inside the master bedroom, she found the bed made and folded laundry sitting on top of a long bureau waiting to be put away. The master bath was empty, the big jacuzzi still there, clean, just like everything she'd seen downstairs. Everything up here clean and tidy, no sign of a struggle, and the air felt just as hot, if not hotter. The thermostat on the wall just outside the bathroom doorway also read 95 degrees.

Bweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek.

Scattering sounds followed, both noises coming from the other end of the hall.

Darby moved out of the master bedroom with her gun raised and checked the next bathroom and found it empty. After a quick glance over the banister to look into the foyer — clear — she moved against the far wall and looked into the bedroom where Charlie Rizzo had once lived. Instead of Star Wars bed sheets and Darth Vader posters hanging on the scratched white walls, she found a room painted a deep yellow, almost gold in the sunlight. Across from the end of a bed covered with a purple comforter was the closet door, painted white now and covered with Polaroid-type snapshots of a frightened young woman.

Darby looked away, her gaze dropping to the fingers of blood that had soaked the carpet near the bottom of the closet door. She turned away from the images and swivelled around the doorway of the other bedroom, found bunk beds with tangled sheets and more Lego pieces scattered across a tan carpet. Curtains covered the windows and she heard the wind slapping against the house and shaking the panes of glass as she moved inside to check the closet. The twin doors were already open, the tiny walk-in area holding children's clothes.

Three quick steps and she moved across the hall and stepped into the gold-coloured bedroom with her gun raised and got a closer look at the pictures.

Eight or so had been tacked to the wood, and each one featured the same young woman with lightly tanned skin and long blonde hair tied behind her head with a red elastic band. A teenager, Darby guessed, looking at the terror on the young girl's face — Jack Casey's daughter. Had to be Sarah Casey. Darby saw the resemblance in the face, the same blue eyes and the same angular nose with the small bump on the tip.

Here was a close-up photograph of duct-tape wrapped around the girl's wrists. Darby saw chipped red nail polish on the long, slender fingers, and she looked up at another picture, this one a snapshot of the teenager's frozen scream. One snapshot showed the tape around her mouth and another showed blood smeared across a white T-shirt, the fabric strained as if being pulled.

Scattering sounds from behind the door, like dry twigs scraping across wood.

She gripped the doorknob knowing that whatever waited for her behind it was dead. Casey had told her this group would send a message and as she turned the knob she prayed to God the man was right, that she'd wasn't about to find his daughter's body.

Darby threw open the door as she stepped back, raising her gun.

A nude body covered with bloody red welts and missing patches of skin sat on the floor of the closet, underneath bright and colourful clothing draped across hangers. Not a woman, not Casey's daughter. Male, one with wild, curly black hair matted with dried blood and sweat. Darby looked at the face, expecting to see Mark Rizzo, and found it covered by some alien-looking spider the size of a dinner plate. It reminded her of the face-huggers from the Alien movies. This thing had a long, pale, cylindrical body, and its eight spiked legs were gripping the man's swollen and bloody cheeks while a pair of big red mandibles or pincers or whatever the Christ they were called were busy feasting on the few remaining scraps of soft meat left in the eye sockets. And it had inserted its backside into the gaping mess of the lips and was pumping away as if it was laying eggs.

Darby backed away, bile shooting up her throat, and saw more spiders — Tarantulas and smaller, quicker ones — crawling across the body and into the darker recesses of the closet. Another one of those big, pale, ugly things sat on a shoe rack, its oily black eyes staring at her. Then it let out that awful alien scream, like it was going on the attack.

The spider jumped into the air with a frightening speed and as she leaped back she felt it land on her vest with a considerable thump. She moved to swat it away with a quivering hand but the spider had already bounced off her chest. Darby stared after it, cold dripping through her limbs like pieces of ice as she watched it scurry underneath the bed to hide.