I recognized that bundle. Of course, I should have —I’d buried it two days and a continent ago.
It was a soul —Varela’s soul. And suddenly, the insects that surrounded me made sense.
These creatures were Deliverants.
They were Deliverants, and they were angry.
I wasn’t yet sure why, but I was beginning to get an idea. Whatever was going on, Danny Young had set me up.
He’d set me up, and he was going to pay.
7.
That fucking son of a bitch. In all my time as a Collector, I’d never once had occasion to interact with my Deliverants, and now after my meeting with Danny, they flat-out reject the soul I’d buried? That was too much of a coincidence for me to swallow. The question was, why had they rejected it? What exactly had Danny done? I didn’t know, but I had an idea how I might find out. So I left the motel in my rearview, and headed out into the night to get some answers.
I eyed the door before me. It was typical for the front door of an apartment —stainless steel, and reinforced, at that. But the jamb was standard pressure-treated lumber, and the building wasn’t young, which meant that all that held this tank of a door closed was a latch installed in a plank of aging wood. Not great if subtle’s what you’re shooting for, but easy enough to pop if you don’t mind a little noise.
Right now, I didn’t mind a little noise.
I glanced back toward the front of the building where I’d left the Fiesta, but the night was getting on, and there wasn’t anyone about. The place itself was nestled in an upscale residential neighborhood, and from the curb, it looked to be yet another in a line of neoclassical homes, all stark white and austere, with a series of four columns flanking its massive, transomed entryway. But the hearse in the large circle drive out front and the tasteful, somber sign beside it indicated otherwise. No, the only living going on around here was in the apartment tucked around back —and that’s just where I was headed.
The first kick made a hell of a noise, but the door didn’t budge. The second, and the wood began to splinter. If this were some cheesy dime-store novel, I suppose the third time woulda done the trick, but the fact is, I had to kick that fucking door a half a dozen times before it finally gave, swinging inward with a sickening crack and a hail of wooden shards.
I was inside in a flash. Ethan Strickland was cowering behind an upturned kitchen table, a Louisville Slugger in one hand and a cordless phone in the other. He was trying desperately to dial the cops, but his hands were shaking so bad, it was all he could manage not to drop the phone —that, or bean himself with the bat.
I spotted the base of the phone on an end table beside the couch, and I dove for it, wrenching the phone cord from the wall. Ethan stared in horror for a moment, and then leapt at me with a guttural —if not entirely manful —scream, his bat brandished high above his head.
I rolled. He missed. His bat instead met the floor with a crack, and Ethan yelped in pain and surprise as his wispy frame was wracked by the reverberations. He tried to wheel toward me, but I’d already found my feet, and I sidestepped the blow with ease. Then I wrenched the bat from his hands and drew it back to strike. It was instinct, nothing more, and when I saw him cowering on the floor, his hands raised to protect his tear-streaked face, I tossed the bat aside. Then I extended a hand to help him up. But he just lay there, cowering, and regarded my hand as though it were an asp about to strike.
“You OK?” I asked him.
He said nothing. I stooped a bit to bring my hand closer, and he flinched.
“Look, I’m sorry about the entrance, but I had a feeling if I knocked, you weren’t going to let me in.”
Still nothing —that is, unless you counted the sobbing.
“Damn it, Ethan, I’m not here to hurt you —I’m here because I need your help! Now will you take my hand so I can help you up?”
He blinked at me a moment, and then accepted my offer with one trembling, hesitant hand. I helped him up off the floor. He wiped the tears from his cheeks with his sleeve, gulping air all the while, and cast a sly sidelong glance toward the gaping apartment door.
“I wouldn’t,” I said, and he deflated slightly.
“P-p-please d-don’t…” he stammered as he tried to bring his panicked breathing under control. “Don’t tie me up again. I couldn’t take it.”
“Yeah, I’m sorry about that, but it was for your own good. As for whether I’m going to have to do it again, that’s going to depend a lot on you. Besides, you look like you came out of it OK.”
“Took me six hours to get out,” he said. “My legs still hurt like hell.”
“You call the cops?”
“No,” he said too quickly.
“OK, I’ll take that as a yes.” His eyes bugged out in panic, and he went a little green. “It’s OK, Ethan —I would’ve too if I were you. But it does complicate things a little. Which means you’re going to have to make it up to me.”
His eyes narrowed. He took a small step backward. “What do you mean, make it up to you? Make it up to you how?”
Fuck it, I thought. The truth was probably the safest thing I could tell him —after all, who in their right mind was gonna believe him?
“The fact is, Ethan, I am not the guy they wheeled in to your funeral home. That guy’s dead and gone —I’m just borrowing his body for a while. As for who or what I actually am, that’s complicated, and you’re probably better off not knowing. Suffice it to say, I’m a guy who’s got a job to do, just like you. Now, if you help me do my job, I promise you I’ll walk out that door tonight and you’ll never see me again. If, on the other hand, you don’t…”
Ethan swallowed hard. It seemed he got the picture. Good thing, too, because that whole implied violence thing was nothing but a bluff —the worst I was going to do to the guy was tie him up again until I got what I came for. Still, this night was going to go a whole lot smoother if he’d cooperate, so I’m glad he was on board.
“W-what,” he said, wincing at the quaver in his voice. “What is it that you need?”
“What I need, Ethan, is a body.”
“You sure this is the best you got?”
Ethan shrugged his shoulders. With his willowy frame, he looked sort of like a twitchy scarecrow. “It’s been a slow week, death-wise. Besides, uh, you, Mr Frohman’s all we’ve got. He was the sausage king of Chicago!” he added helpfully.
“Yeah,” I said, “he looks it.”
Though the guy wasn’t an inch over five-four, he must’ve gone four hundred pounds, and every inch of him was covered in a thick mat of hair —well, every inch that wasn’t on his head. Even in death, his face had a sort of pinkish hue; I couldn’t help but think it was his sausage subjects who’d eventually dethroned him. Eh, I thought, he’ll do. And hell, it’s not like I’d have to worry about him making a break for it.
I fished Varela’s bundled soul from my pocket and picked at the dirt-caked twine until finally, the knot untied. The tiny orb swirled gray-black atop the scrap of fabric in my open hand, and Ethan stared at it, entranced. “What is that?” he asked, his voice full of awe and wonder.
“Gumball,” I replied. The pale man frowned. He was standing at the corner of the mortuary table, scant inches from Mr Frohman’s bald pate. I jerked my head by way of indication, and said, “You may want to stand back a little —this is liable to get messy.”