FEAST OF THE FEAR (8 page)

He shook his head.

“
Let me refresh your memory. We were on our way to Lake Tahoe from Los Angeles. Or rather you were. You didn’t know I was on board. It was then that I confronted you with the affair.”

“
Affair? I don’t understand. Who are you? Who am I?”

“
You see that ring around your neck?”

He reached up and touched it.

It’s all yours now. You own it. . .

“
You never would wear it on your finger. Instead you put it on that chain and you’d tuck it under your shirts. I guess you were ashamed. I don’t know. Why would somebody marry a person they were ashamed of? Maybe for money, huh?”

“
No,” he said, backing away.

“
But I knew the moment you began the affair. You thought I was stupid? I could smell her on you. You were going to leave me for her and I couldn’t allow that to happen.”

He was beginning to remember now. It had been just the two of them on the plane. He and Daphne. But she wasn’t supposed to have been there. She’d snuck on and had waited in the aft section until they were airborne. He was supposed to meet his lover in Tahoe, and he wasn’t just planning to leave Daphne . . . he and his lover were going to . . . kill . . . oh, God, could he really have been that heartless? They were going to make it look like an accident. That way he’d have all her money. But somehow Daphne had found out. When she’d come up behind him holding the gun to his head he knew it was over. No amount of explaining had been enough to quell her anger or change her mind. Her intent was to take them both down in a blaze of glory.

“
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 19
^th

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 his 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.