The Truth Collector (Demon Marked Book 1)

by Corey Pemberton

  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 walle
t. 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.

  Malcolm nearly crashed into Paul at the front door. He'd pulled up from his sprint and stood in the doorway completely frozen. “What is it?” Malcolm said. “Go God damn it.”

  Paul pointed at the f
ront porch. “Listen.”

  Malcolm stuck his head out the door and heard crying. It was the same sobbing as from before, soft but unmistakable. When he turned around he saw the things creeping forward in the hallway. “Move.”

  Paul shook his head. “It's another one. One we can't see. I'm not going out there.”

  Malcolm grabbed him by the neck. “Out the kitchen then. Hurry.” They raced back the way they came – right towards the things that were dead but now alive. He and Paul yelled as they rushed through the hallway towards them. For a second the things pulled up like they were confused. But then they started to move forward again like wheeled machines dragging over rough terrain. Progress was slow, but inevitable. Everything in their path be damned.

  Paul dove into the kitchen and Malcolm followed right behind him. Around the little island they went. Paul unlocked the door and kicked it open, and then they stumbled out onto the unlit patio.

  The last thing Malcolm heard was a gasp.

  CHAPTER SIX

  They scrambled through the backyard. The grass was spongy, wet with dew. At least Malcolm told himself it was just dew – it felt a lot like blood from the bedroom carpet. He pointed at the swamp, peeking through a cluster of willow trees where the yard ended. “We can go around. We'll find another way back to the car.”

  Paul nodded, breathless.

  They went around a plastic playhouse and trampled through a garden. Something squished beneath Malcolm's feet as they walked in the compost – a tomato, maybe – but he didn't stop to look back until they were safely behind a stand of willows. The bedroom light was still on: he could see it through the little window facing the backyard. But that room was empty. They'd left the kitchen door open in their haste. The lights were off there, but there was plenty of moonlight to watch.

  Malcolm grabbed Paul's shoulder and pushed him forward. “Let's go.”

  “Your ankle...” His eyes were someplace else – locked on the open door leading to the back patio – and almost as dead as the ones they had seen in the bedroom.