The Truth Collector (4 page)

CHAPTER FOUR

Eric and Miranda's house was small just like all the others, but it stood out with its fresh paint and well-manicured lawn and picket fence. A porch light glowed at the end of the walkway, signaling them home. Other lights splashed against the street-side curtains, and a television screen flickered somewhere near the front of the house.

It seemed this was a place for proud people – people who refused to let a lack of zeroes in their bank accounts make them hang their heads. Or maybe they were just as lost as everyone else, trying to make things look good on the surface, clinging to the top layer while everything else beneath it spun.

It didn't matter, really. The news would break them. Even if there were a confession and reconciliation, the wedge would be in place. They'd lie to themselves and each other and say everything was going to be fine, but they wouldn't be able to pull out that wedge. Malcolm knew these things – not from personal experience but from his repeat clients. They were the saddest of a sad lot – so sad he offered them loyalty discounts.

“Jesus,” Malcolm said. “Here we go again.” He pinched his nose and sent the muscles in his face scrambling in a dozen different directions. “Loop around in the cul-de-sac. You can park across the –”

“I don't think so.” Paul shook his head. “I'll drop you off, but I'm waiting down at the corner. If things don't go your way I hope you brought your running shoes.” He stopped the car in front of the walkway. “Now or never.”

Malcolm patted his shirt pocket, felt the tape. “No problem. In and out.” He went to shut the door. The taxicab was already moving. Momentum closed it for him and left Malcolm surrounded in a cloud of dust. For a moment it looked like the taxi wouldn't stop at all until it reached their duplex. Finally the brake lights lit up and it coasted to a stop at the corner. Paul killed the headlights, and Malcolm turned to the only other source of light nearby: Eric and Miranda's front porch.

He walked up the little walkway, so clean it looked like it had been power washed earlier that day. His hands trembled as he moved them towards the door. This wasn't supposed to happen. He was a professional. But something was wrong. Relax. Give him the tape, take the cash, and get the hell out. That's all he had to do. And that started by knocking on that door.

Malcolm did.

He tapped softly at first. No movement behind the curtains, and definitely no money raining down from the sky either. Nothing. Malcolm knocked louder, and when that didn't work he started ringing the door bell. Looking through the window, he made out bits and pieces of a cramped living room: an easy chair, a pair of tennis shoes that looked like they'd never been worn, and a spinning ceiling fan. The television was on, splashing commercials onto an empty couch.

Malcolm stopped pressing the doorbell and held his finger on the button instead. It chimed inside in a single uninterrupted burst, completely neglected. He put his boot into the bottom of the door a few times, which made the pictures vibrate on the walls but didn't do a damn thing to bring the house to life.

Off the porch and around the side of the house he went. A pickup truck and a sedan rested on the narrow driveway in single file. Two cars for two people – people that should have been home but weren't. The garage door was shut, and it didn't budge when Malcolm tried the latch.

He swore to himself and rounded the side yard into the back. A swarm of mosquitoes were on him within seconds, buzzing at each other for the best spots of his exposed skin. Flicking them off, Malcolm peered across the backyard and found trees and empty space and a small pond beyond. The grass squished when Malcolm walked across it, even though it hadn't rained in weeks. Here was where the pristine image they'd created in the front started to fall apart. Here was where putrid standing water spilled onto the yard and spread its foul stench. His shoes sunk into it, nearly coming off several times, but no fences or dogs or shotgun shells stopped him.

Malcolm reached a patio and found the back door. He knocked on it, scraping dirt from his shoes onto the concrete, but it was no use. The few windows on this side of the house were covered in drapes, and there was no light to guide him. Past the backyard, the other side yard wasn't any more interesting than the first. He found a few windows wedged between the hedges hugging the house, but all they offered were teasing glances into a laundry room and a bathroom. Malcolm pounded on them and moved on, not stopping until he'd rattled damn near every contact point connecting the inside of the house with the outside world.

His legs carried him back to the front porch, banging the door again. Sweat droplets flew from his face as he let the door have it. He knocked over picture frames and rattled the baseboards… and still no one came. He yelled and pounded until his rage simmered into exhaustion. Defeated, keeling over he turned from the door and faced the street.

Then something seized him: madness, or the best idea he'd had in a long time.

He lunged for the door handle and twisted it. It opened without a sound, releasing a blast of cool air from the ceiling fan above the entryway. Malcolm glanced back at the street before slipping inside and closing the door gently behind him.

“Hello?”

His voice felt heavy, like he was interrupting silent prayers of a religion to which he didn't belong. He knelt down to pick up a picture that had fallen and placed it on a little table with its more fortunate companions. Glass shards cast green and red and white lights across the linoleum tiles.

Malcolm followed them down a hallway flanked by little keepsakes and baby pictures. That little girl from the park again, looking at him with those big brown eyes. Asking him questions to which the answers made sense as an adult with the ability to lie to himself, but not an untainted child:

Why are you inside my house?

Why do you want to ruin my family?

He looked away from them and crept along the hallway, careful to not let his fingers touch the walls. He reached a break in the wall on the right side, stopped walking, and poked his head into a little kitchen. The light was off, but a few dishes gleamed on a drying rack where the moonlight came in through the window. The room was sparse but spotless. A tea kettle rested on one of the stove burners. Malcolm put his hand above it, felt warm steam gathering in his palm.

Then there was a whisper.

He couldn't make out the words. They sounded like the hiss of a hydraulic machine that had overheated. Every limb in his body froze except his right hand. It slipped into his pocket, where a loaded pistol was waiting. This was one contingency plan he hadn't told Paul about.

Another hiss, and something else:

Footsteps.

They filled the hallway now. Malcolm crouched behind the stove and waited. Breathing shallow, gun out of his pocket. He pointed it into the hallway.

One thump. Another. Then a tight rattle.

Malcolm stared into the darkened hallway, clutching the pistol with both hands. More footsteps… and a figure along with them. An eye poked into the kitchen threshold, shining green in the sliver of moonlight inches away from Malcolm's gun.

“Paul?”

That eye bulged, and the figure attached to it stumbled backwards into some pictures along the hallway wall. Everything came crashing down in a heap of wood and flesh and sound.

Malcolm lowered the gun and stepped out of the kitchen, shaking his head. He looked both ways down the hallway before turning his attention to the man pressed against the wall with his hands in the air.

“Don't shoot,” the man said in that same half-hissing, half-yelling sound as before. He closed his eye, like the gun would disappear as long as he couldn't see it.

Malcolm went over and helped him up. “Relax. I thought you said you were staying in the car?”

Paul opened his eyes. His body trembled against the wall where the pictures had been. “Yeah, well I didn't know breaking and entering was on tonight's menu and I'd rather not be an accomplice. But I guess that's what I get for trying to stop you – a gun in my face. Speaking of which… you didn't tell me about that.”

Malcolm shrugged. “I've never had to use it. But when your client's an emotionally unhinged steroid user? You never know how things are going to play out. It's just to protect myself.”

“Maybe you wouldn't need protection if you didn't break into people's houses.” Paul's eyes flew around the house. Fear had reached in and untethered them from their sockets.

Malcolm pointed at the end of the hallway opposite the front door. “I'm going down there. Either come with me or go wait in the car.”

“How about I go to the car and leave your ass?”

Malcolm started walking. “Do what you have to do.”

But Paul didn't leave. He fell in behind Malcolm, filling the hallway with his short steps and nervous energy. “Nobody home?”

Malcolm shrugged. “That's what I'm trying to figure out. Someone just made tea, but no one answered when I called out.” They pressed forward, stopping at a pair of doors. Malcolm opened them and revealed a bathroom and a linen closet, but the rooms were empty.

A new smell emanated from this end of the hallway: garlic and iron and onions. Malcolm turned back and found Paul crinkling his nose. The scent grew stronger as they walked. On they went until they stood at the end of the hallway. The door there was cracked open, but the lights inside the room were off. There wer
e sounds too
. They pressed their ears against the door to hear them.

A woman was crying inside the room. She cried in a long, dry sob like she'd been at it for a long time. She kept on crying and crying like her body had forgotten to do anything else.

“Miranda?” Malcolm said.

“Hello?” Paul said from over Malcolm's shoulder.

The crying stopped. A rustling sound replaced it. Malcolm pulled the gun from his pocket and put his shoulder into the door.

Someone – or
something
– charged out of the room at the same time they charged in. Malcolm pointed the gun, but there was nothing there to shoot. Just a disturbance in the air he couldn't see, but feel. That force rushed at them like a hurricane. It cut right between them, Malcolm raised his arms to protect himself…

And a warm hand punched him in the chest. It was wet too, soaked with salty tears. That hand sent him sprawling into the hallway. He reached out for it and it was gone. Paul looked over at him from the other side of the hallway, grabbing at his chest. Footsteps thudded away, the sound changing when the thing responsible for them reached the linoleum tile entryway.

Something metal clinked.

The front door flew open and Malcolm pointed his gun at the empty front porch. At least it looked empty. But that didn't explain why footsteps were echoing there, down the steps, and into the street beyond. Then there was silence. That thing left the front door wide open and their mouths wide open with it.

“Wh – what the hell was that?” said Paul, staring down the hallway as he rubbed his chest in little circles.

Malcolm shook his head, looked down at his crooked tie and the creases in his dress shirt where that thing had shoved him. “No clue. Did you get pushed?”

“Hell yeah I got pushed. At least I think I got pushed. I don't know, man. All I know is we need to get out of here
now
.”

Malcolm pulled himself off the wall. “That's a perfectly reasonable conclusion. But I need to see what's in that bedroom first.”

Paul shook his head. “No. No way. I can't.”

“That little girl – if she's in there – I need to make sure she's okay.”

“Nothing about this is okay – ah, shit. That's her bedroom?”

Malcolm pointed at the bedroom walls where some of the light from the hallway was getting in. “They're pink. Has to be.”

Paul nodded without a word. He pressed his body forward like a condemned man making his ascent to the executioner's block. His eyes were somewhere else.

They were already dead.

Malcolm stepped into the room blind and felt along the wall for a light switch. After he found one he took a deep breath and flipped it.

And then Malcolm and Paul screamed.

CHAPTER FIVE

Bodies lay on the floor.

They rested beside the little girl's bed in a tangle of carpet and blood and limbs. Malcolm couldn't say how many there were. That was just fine. He wanted nothing more than to bite off his finger for ever flipping the light switch. He wanted nothing more than to run out and never come back – leave it all behind for a sun-kissed beach whose name he couldn't pronounce.

But there was the horror right in front of them. And what was seen couldn't be unseen – couldn't be undone.

Paul rushed forward, spilling sweat and strings of curses Malcolm had never heard before. He skirted around the bed and fell to his knees. “Jesus,” he said. “Oh, Jesus.” Then his eyes traveled over something they couldn't bear. He covered his mouth, shaking his head and groaning and maybe even crying too. “We did this,” he said through his covered mouth. “We set this into motion. If you wouldn't have taken this job…”

Malcolm stepped forward. “Stop it. Just stop it. Is it the girl?”

“No. She isn't here, man. Thank God for that. But we gotta call someone. The cops or the sheriff or whoever.”

Malcolm exhaled deeply. “Don't touch them. Don't leave any prints.”

Paul groaned behind his hands, backing away so fast he tumbled onto the carpet. “No. No one's going to think we did this, right?

“We did break into the house.”

“
You
broke into the house. Oh, God. I can't handle this.” His eyes landed on the bodies again and he started to retch.

Malcolm held his breath as he walked around them to the foot of the bed. With one hand he pulled Paul away from the corpses. His eyes settled on them and grew heavy. He couldn't pull them away even though he tried dozens of times. Maybe even hundreds.

The blonde hair caught his attention first. It belonged to the woman from the park, but it looked like she'd tried to dye it with blood instead of packaged overpriced chemicals. It spread from her scalp in every direction. Patches of pale skin poked through, her face gone from an object of male admiration to frozen chicken breasts left out too long to thaw. She wore cotton shorts and a t-shirt of an unidentifiable color.

Her husband lay next to her. Eric's muscular frame looked ridiculous in death, resting on top of Miranda's sternum with his eyes rolled back in his head. Malcolm covered his fingers with his shirtsleeve and reached down and shut them. His forehead was still warm when Malcolm touched it. He pulled his hand away, careful to avoid the blood that had congealed on the man's tank top.

It was an impossible task. Blood was everywhere, seeping into the carpet and spilling under the girl's bed. More blood than there should have been. More blood than seemed humanly possible. Were there more bodies somewhere? They hadn't seen the rest of the house…

“They're cut.”

Malcolm started when he heard the voice behind him. He'd completely forgotten about Paul.

“Of course they're cut,” said Malcolm, pointing at the meat cleaver next to Miranda's face. Her head was twisted towards it, eyes staring at it – probably the last thing she saw before she died. But from the looks of it she and Eric had seen a lot of it. An assortment of cuts – everything from nicks and gashes to one so deep it had nearly taken off Eric's right arm – covered their bodies.

“Wait,” Paul said. “Look at their faces.”

Malcolm did. There were more cuts there, smaller than the others. These were the precise, exacto knife cuts of a professional. Someone with steady hands. Malcolm saw identical cuts on their cheeks, precise and shallow.

“They look like garden spades,” Paul said.

Malcolm nodded. “Or playing cards. Every psychopath leaves his mark.”
“We gotta call someone,” Paul said. He knelt next to Malcolm, tracing the bodies in the air with his finger as if he could make them whole again.

“To do what?” said Malcolm. “Send the cops right where we just broke in?”

“Where
you
just broke in. And yeah. This shit's only going to get worse if we don't tell anyone what happened.”

“We will. Let's just see if the girl's here first.”

Paul nodded. “All right. You think your client went crazy and offed her?”

Malcolm shook his head. “No. Even if he went crazy and killed her, he'd never kill himself with the girl around. He loved her way too much. Someone else did this… or that thing. Whatever it was.”

Paul nearly fell, reached out and grabbed Malcolm's shoulder. “Oh yeah. That thing. How are we supposed to tell the cops what happened? They won't believe us in a million years.”

Malcolm crept closer to the corpses, caught a strong whiff of blood, and nearly added his own horror to the bedroom floor. After he caught himself, he wrapped his shirtsleeve around his hand and scooted around the pile until he found a bulge in Eric's pant pocket. He looked at the dead eyes – eyes he'd closed – one more time before reaching into the pocket. Paul hissed but Malcolm ignored him. He pulled out a fat leather wallet, steadied his fingers, and opened it.

Inside were stacks of credit cards and incomplete punch cards from sandwich shops and even a library card. He opened the inner pocket and produced his prize:

Six bucks.

Six
fucking bucks.

All in a day's work.

He pulled the money out anyway before replacing the wallet. Then, just as he went to put the grubby bills away in his coat pocket, something stirred behind him. “Relax,” Malcolm said. “I'm just taking what I'm owed. If I'm going to have to deal with the cops because of this guy the least I'm going to do is get paid.”

But that thing didn't relax. It filled the bedroom with anxious movement. Malcolm flattened the bills in his pocket and turned. “Paul?”

He was gone.

Then what was that movement – those sounds he heard? Malcolm held his breath and looked down at the corpses on the floor.

Something gasped.

“Paul?”

No answer.

Nothing but that desperate gasping. The breathing sounds were wet, like someone was shaking a baby rattle filled with phlegm. They made Malcolm freeze on one knee in front of the bodies and every little hair on his arms stand on edge.

Then the bodies began to move.

The flesh and limbs pulsed and writhed on the ground between him and the door. Gasp, move, gasp. Something pressed on Malcolm's chest, squeezing the air out of it. “Paul?” But the pressure on his chest lowered his voice to a whisper. Malcolm grabbed the bed frame and pulled himself up, forearms and calves quivering. He only looked down at the bodies once he was sure he was out of arm's reach.

“Miranda? Eric?”

Eyes flew open in the bottom of the pile. Malcolm watched pale lids lift and reveal even paler eyeballs. The pupils were gone, rolled up somewhere in her skull never to return, but her eyes were open all the same. Miranda – what was left of Miranda – squirmed. She twisted her neck toward the sound of his voice, smearing blond hair and blood across the carpet. With one mighty gasp she pushed herself up onto her side and rested on her elbow.

Malcolm found himself backed into the corner of the room, watching. If he could only make himself as unobtrusive as possible. If he could only shut up and not say a word…

But Paul did. He stormed back into the bedroom from the hallway, and his face answered the question Malcolm didn't need to ask. The girl wasn't here. Paul looked across the room and found Malcolm pressed against the back wall. “What are you...”

Then his eyes drifted to the corpses. Except one of those corpses wasn't a corpse anymore. It rested on its elbow, gasping and coughing up blood. Paul clutched the door frame, the last anchor to reality in a world gone mad. “What in the hell?”

The thing that had been Miranda whirled. Paul looked at its face, and it took the words and wind out of him. Malcolm watched him crumple on his feet like it was he who'd been stabbed, holding onto the door frame with his fingertips as his body sagged. His eyes caught Malcolm's, searching for answers or reassurance that he hadn't gone truly insane.

Malcolm jerked his head towards the little bedroom window. Paul held himself in the doorway without moving, shaking his head. He shook his head harder when Malcolm grabbed the window latches, opened them, and began to struggle with the stubborn pane. The thing on the ground turned to face the noise. It grabbed the dead weight that had been its husband and pushed. There was a terrible groan – more blood – and Eric's body fell aside like a chopped onion onto a cutting board.

The thing was free now, writhing on the ground trying to make sense of how to use its limbs. It scooted away from the other body and towards the bed. Tiny hands – those serving spoon hands Malcolm had noticed in the park – reached for a bedpost, wrapped around it, and began to pull. The girl's bedspread went from a pristine white to a crimson finger painting as the thing pulled itself off the floor.

Malcolm tugged at the window with all he had. Paul was yelling now, yelling for Malcolm to run past the damn things and let's just get out of here the way we came. Malcolm tried the window once more. For a moment the pane wiggled from side to side in its frame. He pulled at it, white-knuckled, but then the window slipped under his sweaty fingers. The air was heavy in the bedroom, burdened with fear and confusion and wayward souls. He grabbed the window one last time and it refused to open. There were fingerprints all over it now. The police would find them, but that wouldn't matter if that thing got its hands on them first.

He looked up at the reflection in the window and saw it gathering itself at the corner of the bed. It stood stoop-backed and it was gasping again, using the bedspread to pull itself up onto wobbly legs. Those empty eyes settled on him, boring into his back. But that thing didn't seem quite sure of itself. Not just yet at least…

Malcolm charged through the bedroom across carpet and blood. Past the moving thing with its outstretched arms. Over the other body that lay still in a single, desperate jump. His feet left the ground and then he was flying, soaring through the air just below the ceiling fan. He landed on the other side and steadied himself.

“Come on!” Paul said.

Malcolm glanced back and saw the thing that was Miranda at its full height. It eased away from the bed on unsure legs, pushed along like a dummy on invisible tracks. There was no grace in its movements – just awkward, jerky steps. He turned away from it and ran.

That was the plan at least.

That was the plan… until he landed face-first in the carpet. Covered in blood, he struggled to his feet.

A strong hand wrapped around his ankle and tugged.

Malcolm fell again.

When he looked back he found a new pair of eyes. These belonged to the man. What had been the man. Those eyes were just like the woman's: empty and dead. Blood flowed from a giant gash in its stomach as it crawled, flopped around on the carpet. Malcolm kicked and tried to scoot away, but the grip on his ankle was unbreakable.

Someone screamed, but Malcolm couldn't say who. Everything was lost in the confusion. He kicked and kicked until his legs burned. Yet he was still stuck to the ground. That thing crawled forward on hands and knees, fingers creeping up his ankle, sinking in to the meaty part of his calf. And the thing that had been Miranda came forward too, stutter-stepping across the blood and her late husband's torso.

Malcolm flipped onto his belly. He kicked and felt the sole of his boot crash into the thing's nose. He didn't need to look back to see if he'd broken it. He heard the geyser of blood erupting. But the thing didn't cry out. It just let out a little grunt and pressed on. Paul ran up as Malcolm struggled to his knees. He bent over and held out an arm, never taking his eyes off the horrors behind him. Malcolm reached out and grabbed it, kicking backwards at the same time.

The thing's grip slipped from his calf down to his ankle. For a moment he was almost free. Paul's grip was desperate but short lived. The thing's strength asserted itself, inevitable as a drill press. Malcolm's ankle burned in pain as the thing's grip dug into it. Something snapped – a tendon, maybe – and he lay suspended in a tug of war between man and beast. But that flight or fight adrenaline was fading as the vice grip on his leg strengthened.

Malcolm gritted his teeth and kicked one last time.

The toe of his boot connected with the fleshy part of that thing's hand. It groaned, and Malcolm lunged forward when the grip loosened. And then he was free. He and Paul got up and ran for the hallway as the two things chased, one walking and one crawling. That's when Malcolm saw why the thing that used to be Eric was crawling: its legs were severed cleanly just above the knees. That explained all the blood. But it didn't explain where the rest of his legs had gone.

Paul slammed the bedroom door behind them, slipping a hand under Malcolm's armpit. “Holy shit. Your ankle. Can you walk?”

Malcolm gritted his teeth and nodded. “Let's just get the hell out of here.” That was all the encouragement Paul needed. He charged through the hallway knocking pictures off the walls. Malcolm tried to keep up, hobbling along and wincing every time his hurt ankle touched the ground. The bedroom door flew open behind. It smashed into the wall, and the gasping sounds followed.