There were three of them, propped around a table laid with silver as though they were enjoying a midday tea.
They weren't.
The farthest of them, an older woman, sat across the table from where I stood and beamed back at me with an expression of charmed delight – or rather, that's what it would have been, were she not dead. The putrid stink of her was overwhelming, and it was all I could manage to keep my feet. Her silver hair was pulled back into a bun, revealing flesh the color and texture of old shoe leather, cracked and peeling. Her mouth was set into a smile, revealing gray-brown teeth and gums of withered black. What I first took to be dimples were, in fact, metal pins, inserted into the flesh to preserve her expression. Her eyes were not eyes at all, but large, vaguely iridescent buttons, an X of rough twine at each of their centers, affixing them in place. I had a shock of recognition, but disfigured as she was, it took me a moment to place her. Her photo sat atop the mantle in the living room. This was Haas's wife.
The other two sat on either side of the old woman, facing each other across the table. They had the look of a couple in their thirties, and they were fresher, it seemed – their flesh less desiccated – but their treatment had been the same. Worse, in fact, in the case of the man – his eyes had simply been stitched shut, his smile painted on; and though his shirt was clean and freshly pressed, an ugly smear of brain and blood streaked across his forehead still. But the woman – whose resemblance to Haas's wife suggested daughter – was truly a masterpiece. Gleaming eyes of glass stared out from bloodied sockets. Red lipstick graced her lips. Her teeth he'd replaced with the finest porcelain, at least mostly. A plate of yellowed molars and a pair of pliers sat atop a brown-stained rag on the table in front of her, and beside her was an empty chair. I guess I had interrupted Haas's fun.
You want to know where I went wrong? I was so freaked out by what I'd seen in that room, I went and dropped my guard. A creaky landing isn't much of a concern when you're sneaking up on a kindly old man, but when that kindly old man turns out to be a human-doll-making nutjob, it's kind of a big deal. Which is to say, I should've seen that mallet coming.
Of course, I didn't know it was a mallet at the time. Felt like he hit me with a dump truck. All I know is one moment, I'm taking in this nightmare tea party, and the next, I'm on the floor. He hit me again, and I heard something snap. Pain blossomed in my head like a firework, and the room went white.
And then, for a while, there was nothing.
When I came to, my hands and feet were bound. My head was pounding, and my left eye was swollen shut. I raised my hands as one to touch it. The flesh was all hot and pulpy and wrong. I cast a glance at my fingers with my one good eye. More blood than I expected. If I didn't put pressure on that soon, I'd be lucky if I managed to stay conscious.
Then I saw what Haas was doing, and I wondered if lucky was the right word.
He was standing at a workbench at the far end of the room, stringing twine through a heavy darning needle and humming softly to himself. A small man, stooped and heavily lined, he wore a tweed vest over a blue Oxford, with matching tweed pants. His bald pate gleamed above a crescent of wispy gray. When he saw me watching him, he smiled.
"Ah, good," he said in lightly accented English. "You're up!" He riffled through his toolbox for a second, producing a handful of assorted buttons. "Tell me – which of these do you like best?"
I tried to speak, but my head was full of angry bees, and the words wouldn't come. The effort damn near made me puke.
"I rather think this one," he said, crossing the room and holding it to my cheek appraisingly. "It complements the gold tones in your hair."
He knelt beside me, sliding the needle through a button-hole and pressing the point against the lid of my swollen, ruined eye. "Do try to sit still," he said. "I'm afraid this is going to hurt quite a lot." The needle pierced the tender flesh of my eyelid. I screamed in agony, and tried to pull away. Haas expected that, though – I was hardly his first, after all – and he held my head fast, one bony hand an iron grip at the base of my neck. Blood ran hot and sticky down my cheek, and with it came a fresh wave of pain – exquisite, clarifying. Suddenly, I realized what I had to do.
If back wasn't an option, I was gonna have to go forward.
I lunged toward him with all I had, driving the needle through the tender flesh of my eyelid and into the soft tissue beyond. Haas, startled, tipped backward. My hands were up in a flash. I landed atop him, the needle buried deep in my eye. Despite the searing pain, a manic grin spread across my face, so pleased was I my gambit had worked. Then everything went a little gray around the edges, and I realized I didn't have much time before this meatsuit gave out on me.
Haas struggled to get out from under me, but I had a good fifty pounds on him, so he wasn't going anywhere. My hands found his chest, and plunged inside. Suddenly, the room around us disappeared, replaced with a swirling blackness, a keening wail – the light and song of Haas's withered soul. I wrapped my fingers around my prize, and now it was he who screamed.
"Sorry," I muttered, "it's nothing personal." It's something I say to all my marks – my way, I guess, of reminding myself this collecting thing is just a job. This time, though, I wasn't sure I meant it.
I rolled off of him, yanking free his soul as I did. As it tore free from his chest, the darkness around us flickered and receded, and his song faded into nothing. My consciousness threatened to do the same. I mustered every ounce of strength this meat-suit had, and hurled my being toward Haas's lifeless form. But this body I'd borrowed was broken and bloodied. I didn't know if every ounce of strength it had would be enough.
Death, as a Collector, isn't final, but that doesn't mean it's a walk in the park. When a body dies, the link between soul and flesh is severed, and the soul – whether native or invading – is unseated. Now, for a native soul, the shock of being dislodged from its earthly vessel is considerable – and believe me, that's a good thing. Shock makes you numb. Shock makes you forget. But a Collector isn't afforded that luxury. We experience death in all its unfiltered glory, which means for us, it's excruciating. Plus, there's the added indignity of eviction. See, the body finds its native soul familiar, and will house it long after death if necessary until collection. An invading soul, on the other hand, is unnatural – unwelcome. The body's constantly trying to expel it – which is why a meat-suit pukes every time someone like me hops in for a spin. When a meat-suit dies, it sends any invading soul packing. But since we Collectors can't exist without a body, we wind up reseeded into another body at random – no big deal if it's a strapping young man with energy for future body-hopping to spare, but you get stuffed into an infant and it's nothing but diapers and puréed peas until they get strong enough for you to up and leave. Many a Collector's gone mad as a consequence of an unlucky reseeding. I'd really rather not be one of them.
It seemed like forever that I hung there in the vertiginous nothing that stretched between Haas and the mutilated corpse I'd left behind. There was no light to guide my way, no sound to mark my passing. I tried in vain with limbs I no longer had to reach for that fresh vessel, so tantalizingly close just seconds before, but now an eternity away. For a moment I thought I'd failed. Then the world lurched, and my eyes, uninjured now but rheumy with age, sprang open to reveal the bedroom ceiling some eight feet above. I swear I could've danced a jig.
Haas's body, though, had other plans. Its stomach clenched, and I doubled over, puking. You'd think I'd be used to that by now. It's sort of par for the course for possessions – the body's way of trying to rid itself of something that's not supposed to be there, I guess. Still, after the trauma of hopping bodies, it'll surprise you every time.
Once my stomach was empty, I wiped my mouth with the back of one liver-spotted hand, and took a look around. My last body was lying on the floor beside me, the darning needle buried a good six inches in his head. A puddle of blood expanded slowly beneath him like an oil slick, and the tiny swirling orb of Haas's soul was still cradled in his lifeless hands. I struggled clumsily to my knees, and then collapsed, Haas's limbs slow to relent to my commands. I tried again – the same result.
That's when I heard her crying.
It was the faintest of whimpers – so quiet, in fact, that at first I thought I had imagined it. But as the roar of my pulse in my ears subsided, there was no mistaking it. I cast my gaze around the room, looking for the source of the noise, but there was no corner of the room I could not see, no closet in which to hide.
There was, however, a chest.
It was an old wooden affair, glossy with layer after layer of honeyed lacquer, and fastened with an ornate iron hasp. A matching iron key lay atop its lid. I shambled toward the chest, my new meat-suit still sluggish and unresponsive, and pressed my ear to it. I heard a single, hitching sob, a sharp intake of breath, and then nothing. It seemed whoever was inside had heard me coming.
I snatched the key up off the lid and jammed it into the lock, hearing tumblers catch as I clicked it home. The lid was heavy, stubborn. I heaved it open with a grunt.
She was a girl of maybe three, dressed as the dolls downstairs had been, in a pinafore of purest white over a loud floral dress. White stockings adorned her legs, and her feet were clad in patent leather Mary Janes. Curly hair framed a delicate face far too young to be painted as thoroughly as it had. She was made up not like a woman would be, but like a doll, with circles of red at the apples of her cheeks, and her lips painted to appear permanently pursed in an expression of coy innocence. The illusion was shattered by the streaks the tears had made down her cheeks, and by the look of wide-eyed terror on her face. Instinctively, I reached out to her, but she recoiled, trembling. Of course she's afraid of you, I thought – you're wearing the flesh of the man who did this to her. I lowered my hand, and told her softly it would be all right. Of course, being Dutch, she probably couldn't understand a word I said, but then, I wasn't sure that I believed it anyway. Whether she understood or not, it was clear
she
didn't believe it; she hugged her knees to her chest, and clenched shut her eyes against the tears.
As I sat there, looking at her, I couldn't help but notice the resemblance to the couple at the table – her parents, no doubt. Which meant this girl was Haas's granddaughter. I wondered all the sudden if, for Haas, hell was punishment enough.
Unsure what else I could do while in the body of her tormentor, I lowered the lid of the trunk, and left the girl in peace. I wrapped Haas's soul in a scrap of fabric torn from his dead wife's skirt and stuffed it in my pocket. Then I went downstairs and dialed the police. I told them in a whisper I was being held against my will, and gave them Haas's address. When they asked me for my name, I hung up. Then, with a silent prayer for the girl I'd left behind, I left the house, letting the door swing open behind me.
My head was reeling as I left the row house, and my stomach threatened mutiny. I told myself it was just the standard-issue hiccups of an unfamiliar meatsuit, but I knew that wasn't true. The job had gotten to me. Haas had gotten to me. After nine years of doing this, I didn't think that was still possible.
A few blocks from Haas's house, I stopped at the base of a gnarled old elm, and buried Haas's soul beneath six inches of chill black earth. Then I covered it over with fallen leaves and headed straight for the fucking pub. The night I had, all I wanted was a little peace and quiet in which to get stinking drunk. Thanks to Danny, though, I had no such luck.
"Pardon me, mate – anyone sitting here?"
Shit. I'd picked this place because the drinks were tall and cheap, but the trade-off was it was an oldschool pub, with long, narrow tables and benches to match – the kind of bar where strangers sat together and left the place as friends. Only I had all the friends I could handle – zero, to be exact – and I wasn't in the market for another.
My would-be new acquaintance was a lanky kid of maybe twenty-five, standing at the end of the table with an expectant half-smile pasted on his face as he awaited my reply. British, by the accent, and a bit of a dandy, if his outfit was any indication. He was decked out in a darted charcoal sport coat over a crisp white dress shirt, open at the throat. Pale khaki chinos terminated in loafers the color of cognac. A tartan scarf hung loose around his neck, and a porkpie hat tilted rakishly atop his head. I fixed my gaze on him a moment, and then dropped it back to my glass, hoping he'd get the message.
He didn't.
"You're a Yank, aren't you?" he said, sliding onto the bench opposite me with a casual grace that spoke of moneyed arrogance. "You've got that look, like you think in English, or at least what passes for English on your side of the pond. I'll tell you, mate, I'm glad to have found you – I haven't had a proper conversation for bloody ages. I mean, yeah, most of these guys, they muddle through well enough, but you can tell by the way they screw their faces up when you talk to them they've got to concentrate, and they're not exactly
chatty
. Everything's all 'yes' or 'no' or 'toilet is jusht down ze hall'. It's nice that they try and everything, but you know what I mean?"
I said nothing. Just sat and stared at my drink.
"Or maybe you don't," he said. "Bloody hell, you ain't drinking jenever, are you? I wouldn't wash brushes in that stuff. I swear, I could murder a decent pint right now, but all they've got in this place is some God-awful Pilsner that tastes like rat piss. I'd have to be completely off my face to even get it past my lips, and even then, I'm not sure I wouldn't spew it straight back up."