Tattered Souls (Broken Souls Book 1)

by Richard Hein

  Contents

  Title

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Epilogue

  Other Books by the Author

  Tattered Souls : A Broken Souls Novel

  Copyright © 2017 by Richard Hein

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  Richard Hein was born in the Pacific Northwest in the late 70s, though he spent some time living in Wisconsin and Illinois before moving back to Washington with his family in 1987. He's lived in the scenic Skagit Valley since then.

  Interest in writing began early by writing stories for his classmates in Kindergarten, winning a young-authors award in the Sixth Grade, and spending much of his high school classes writing instead of learning.

  Chapter 1

  I slowed my breathing as I lined up the shot. The eldritch horror’s head was visible by a fraction, but I was sure I could hit it from here. I lifted a little, and its dark, void eyes met mine. This was it. Nothing else mattered. I had to make this shot count. Unwavering, singular focus, I told myself. My finger twitched with the growing anticipation, but I was a consummate professional. I had this.

  My finger moved as I took the shot.

  The paper triangle flicked up and off my desk, arcing over my monitor. It crumpled against a drawing I’d scribbled and taped to the soul-sucking gray felt cubicle wall and fell into the Graveyard of Paper Triangles and Tangled Wires. My arms shot up into the air as I spun in my chair, the little casters giving a cheap groan and threatening to upend me as I did my victory lap. The mind-destroying entity from beyond existence was neutralized. I twirled a second time for good measure, watching my computer monitor go zipping past, feeling proud of myself. What the hell. I’d earned it.

  The powder blue of a crisp button-up shirt brought me to a halt, killing my third lap and any chance of my team showing up for the championship. I felt that familiar sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach, that sensation you get when you used to watch the tide come in as a child to sweep away your sand castle. Inevitable doom. For a frantic moment, I almost wished I was back fighting actual mind-breaking horrors that lurked in the shadows beyond reality, instead of my boss.

  Almost.

  I glanced up at him, to his tie that probably cost more than whatever my final paycheck would be, to his meticulous corporate hair, and a grin that had been permanently stapled to his face since the day he’d been promoted to middle management. An elbow lifted over the edge of my cubicle wall. I gave every effort left in me not to sigh, and instead settled for a grumbling sort of wheeze.

  “Sammy!” the corporate honcho said, pointing a finger at me and firing his imaginary gun my way. I stared at it. He stared at me. I couldn’t remember his name, and I’d been working for him for three months now. Hell, I had about a dozen coworkers I interacted with on a daily basis and I knew two of their names, and that didn’t count the other trillion workers that swarmed around me each day. This time, I did sigh. I hadn’t even made an effort on this job it seemed, and it was time for the inevitable train to leave the station.

  Choo choo, I thought, happy at least I wouldn’t need a box to clear my desk into.

  “Are you ready for your three month review tomorrow?” Honcho asked, bleached-white teeth flashing in the fluorescent lights. “Doing everything possible to secure your future with us?” I tried to wrack my brain to remember a name, to prove to myself that I’d given a modicum of effort this time, unlike the last four jobs I’d been let go from. It started with a T.

  Maybe a Z.

  “I can honestly say it’s the only thing on my mind right now,” I said, nodding with forced sincerity. “I’m even wearing my power tie. You can’t get more serious than that, boss.” I hefted my neck noose, and Bugs Bunny made eye contact with Honcho.

  Honcho’s mask rippled for a second, as if something lived just beneath the surface of his flesh and strained to get out. I shivered at the thought. It wouldn’t have been the first time I’d seen such things. For a second psychotic moment, I almost wished that were the case here. Facing down hordes of extra-dimensional creatures bent on tearing through one’s soul, or the doldrums gray of cubicles and middle management.

  Well, it’s a toss up for me.

  His eyes hardened to cold agates, and the friendly image slipped. Ah, crap. There was no way in hell that my report card was going to read anything other than does not play well with others now. I stared at my boss and let my mind wander, waiting for the tirade to kick in. I’d faced creatures from beyond reality. A forty-year-old man with a too-perfect smile and too much self-authority barely even registered. Still, in the dark recesses of my mind, I was worried about paying my rent next month.

  I was way too sober for this crap.

  Three jobs in three years and number four was lining up to kick me on the way out the door. Each one I got the boot from made the next one all the harder to secure. I knew I should suck it up and give the mundane life a serious go. My mind felt like thick bands had tightened around it, squeezing at my thoughts. How did everyone else make it through the day being so… so normal? A soul-deep weariness swept over me as I nodded in appropriate places. Honcho vomited his corporate tirade full of this year’s buzzwords all over me, and I had to admit something.

  The obnoxious twit was right. I could do better. It’s not like slapping keys on a computer was particularly hard or anything. So what was my excuse? It’s hard to punch a clock after spending a decade dealing with sanity-shattering horrors from beyond reality, boss.

  Wait, no. That’s a pretty good one.

  Honcho trailed off, his words dwindling to nothing like an old tube television being powered off, staring at me with a vague look of discomfort I’ve come to recognize. His arm slipped off my cubicle, and he took a slow, unconscious step back. It was like he had smelled something rotten wafting around me, but couldn’t quite put his finger on it. He’s seen something on my face, a trace of my old life. A dozen emotions played across that normally plastic visage of his. Worry and fear and a feeling like something just danced naked on your grave. I’ve lived it, and it scares the crap out of me. He was just getting the downwind taste of it, and the cracks on his fake smile were starting to appear.

  “You okay there, boss?” I asked. Maybe I could salvage this situation. It galled me, fawning for my job, but I actually liked my tiny little apartment and would rather not have to scrounge up a refrigerator box to live in. It’s not like I had relatives I can crash with. Or friends. I could swallow a couple buckets of pride if it meant I might pull passing marks on my review tomorrow. Hell, I could even smile if needed, but that’s usually reserved for special occasions.

  Whatever he had been about to say was lost as the elevator doors gave a sterile chime and swept open. Honcho glanced over his shoulder, the stern and disapproving demeanor evaporating with perfected corporate skill. I’m sure he’d been to seminars to master control like that, hundreds of middle managers crammed into folding metal chairs and practicing their game faces. He drove right past the practiced mask and straight on to energetically cheerful.

  �
�Well now,” Honcho said, straightening up. Wheels squeaked as I pushed back and craned my neck around the corner of my cubicle. Down past the street of soul-sucking boxes that housed my nameless coworkers, standing before the polished metal doors of the elevator, stood a woman in a simple purple dress clutching a purse tightly to her chest. I could see why Honcho was staring, but there was something guarded about her stance.

  I couldn’t blame her. I hated it here too.

  She intercepted a passing drone and exchanged a few words. The suit pointed right at Honcho, who flashed a smile down at me as if we had suddenly sprouted a friendship in the last thirty seconds. The woman slipped down the aisle toward us and paused just beside my cubicle, glancing between Honcho and I.

  I could see dark circles under her eyes. Her shoulders were set just like I was positive mine were at the end of a shift here - full of tension and feeling like the slightest loud noise might send me screaming into the Seattle rain.

  “Grant Meyer,” Honcho said with the same too-friendly tone he’d thrown at me earlier. Huh, I thought. Grant. I’d been way off. “Supervisor. Is there something I can help you with?”

  Her eyes flicked up to him and held his gaze for a long moment. She promptly turned her back to him and faced me. Her gaze drifted down to Bugs, and the corners of her mouth tugged up into a faint smile, though it faded almost immediately.

  “Samuel Walker?”

  I blinked, and the tension in my shoulders ratcheted up to an eleven. An icy knot of dread filled me, and the chicken and pepper-jack nachos I’d scarfed down for lunch pounded on my stomach. No good could come of this, I was sure. Someone from beyond the corporate farm had come to find me. That usually meant only one thing.

  “Uh,” I droned. My mind was still caught in cold panic mode, and IT hadn’t been sent up to reboot it yet. Honcho smoothed his tie, glancing everywhere but at the young woman, and muttered some buzzword. He strode away to attach like a leech to another cubicle, and I found myself alone with the strange woman.

  “You are Samuel, right?” Without waiting for my answer, she tossed her purse onto my flimsy desk and slid into my cramped office world. I rolled away from her until my back was pressed into my collection of Dilbert comics. Every cubicle was required by law to have between three and seven comics, of course.

  “That’s what my final paycheck will say.”

  “What?”

  I waved a hand. “Nothing. Yeah, I’m Samuel.” I offered her the hand, which she snatched up and shook with a firm grip.

  “Such a strange place to find you,” she said, leaning back against my desk. It groaned and shifted a fraction, but she didn’t seem to notice. “It took me a while to track you down. I found your last job, but they said you’d been let go a bit back.”

  “Yeah, I had a little conflict of—”

  “So, I spent time searching on the Internet,” she pushed, leaning forward to meet my gaze. It was hard not to notice how her eyes burned like sapphires, given the personal space she was invading. Very intense, very desperate sapphires. “Amazing what you can find with some searching. You show up on the Meet our Staff page for this place,” she said, waving a hand in the vague direction of the faceless masses around us.

  “Isn’t the freedom of information a wonderful—”

  She punched into the middle of my sentence again. “I wasn’t sure if I should follow you after your shift ended, but I think it’s important enough that it can’t wait.”

  Oh crap. I pushed my most cheerful, please don’t murder me at work smile onto my face and wondered if I could surreptitiously call security. Maybe she has a gun, I thought, my eyes drifting down to the purse she lobbed onto my desk, still within reach of her. She couldn’t choke me, I decided. Tiny hands. Maybe she had a knife, or a lead pipe, and all it would take is one quick swipe and she’d have me dead in my cubicle.

  Creepy stalker girl, in my cubicle, with the knife, I thought. I was about to make it into the deluxe edition of Clue after this. I raised a hand to my throat in a futile attempt to prevent her from strangling me with my power tie.

  She didn’t miss the gesture. She rocked back onto my desk, bumping my monitor, and let out a little peal of laughter that rang like a klaxon through the Fun Is Forbidden zone of my office. I heard the creak of chairs as a few of my coworkers leaned back to catch a glimpse into my cubicle.

  “Oh, I don’t want to hurt you,” she laughed. The lines of worry melted from her face for a moment, and she looked five years younger. Maybe mid-twenties, with hair so dark I could use adjectives like obsidian or raven. She wore thick-framed glasses that were just as black, which made it look like she was wearing a domino mask when framed by her hair. “I need your help. You’re the only one that can deal with them.”

  I teetered on the precipice of calling security anyway. My comfort zone was a few blocks away at this point, and I still had that icy feeling in my stomach. Dread weighted my limbs, that feeling of inevitability when you know what little normalcy you have is about to be dashed against the wall. No. I couldn’t get involved in whatever crazy thing this woman had in store for me. I had no idea who she was or what she needed, but the days where I did this sort of thing were years behind me.

  “Miss…”

  “Katherine,” she said, pushing her hair behind one ear. “Kate.”

  “Kate,” I repeated, fixing her with a carbon copy of Honcho’s smile. I saw her own slip a little when confronted with the awesome power of middle management. “This whole thing is setting off my crazy radar something fierce. I have a lot of browsing the Internet to do and solitaire to play before my shift ends, and I’d really like to get to it. Thanks, but not interested.”

  A ripple of emotion played across her face. She must have been sure I’d leap to the challenge, that I’d be ready to throw myself headlong into whatever problem plagued her. I could see anger there, mingled with bitterness and resignation.

  She stared at me, brilliant eyes smoldering with something that made me want to simultaneously agree to help and push her away and never look back.

  Hurt. The weary kind, one built up over time with no way to cope. My chest tightened at the sight of it.

  “Apparently, you’re the one that can help me with them,” Kate said, her voice quivering with the same emotions I’d seen dancing across her unblemished features seconds ago. Maybe getting strangled wasn’t quite off the table for me yet.

  I drummed my fingers on my wrinkled slacks, knowing if I opened my mouth and let loose the next words already forming there, I’d regret it. I’d regretted a lot of things in life, though, so by the time I’d tried to bite down on my tongue and hold myself back, I’d already asked the question.

  “Who do you need help with exactly?”

  Kate shook her head. Her hand snapped out, viper quick, and snatched up her purse once more, fingers wringing at the fake leather.

  “Not who,” she said. She slipped off of my desk, hoisted herself onto the tips of her toes and glanced around at the nearest cubicles before dropping herself close to me. I could feel the heat of her as she pressed her lips near my ears and whispered.

  “Demons.”

  For most anyone else, that statement would have been met with a wide array of responses. Most of them seven different shades of skepticism and laughter. Probably a question of sanity. My response was significantly outside the norm for such things.

  “Ah, shit,” I muttered, rubbing my face with one hand and sighing. My hand trembled, and I thought about postponing the conversation long enough to visit the flask I kept out in my car. “Not this again.”

  “Okay,” Kate said, drawing out the last syllable. Her shoulders slumped, and I felt a flash of guilt. Just a tiny one. I really didn’t want to deal with this, after all. “That wasn’t the response I was expecting.”

  “Look, I’m retired,” I snapped, feeling my calm starting to unwind. “Forcibly, mind you. I don’t do this any more. I can’t help you. I won’t help you.”

&nb
sp; “Demons, Samuel,” Kate hissed, too loud for my taste.

  “Keep it down,” I said, pushing up from my uncomfortable little chair and prairie dogging up like she had only moments ago. Apparently no one seemed to care about demons. Probably because they all know instinctively we work for them, I thought and settled back down. No, that wasn’t true, but was almost preferable. “I’d rather not call attention to myself.”

  “Oh, I can tell,” Kate said, one hand darting out to heft my Bugs tie. I snatched it back out of her hand and glared.

  “Have you tried a church?” I suggested. “I hear they have God on their side.”

  “A few,” Kate admitted, shifting uncomfortably. Her eyes flicked away as she rubbed absently at one temple for a moment. “It’s not like they really believe in this sort of thing. Besides, your name was pretty explicit here. And since you haven’t accused me of being crazy or called security—”

  “Thought of it,” I muttered. Her eyes flashed, but she continued.

  “Then that means you actually know what I’m talking about. My brother’s journal was right. You are the person to contact. Look.”

  She stuffed her hand into the purse and rummaged around. The smell of something acrid rolled over me. Margaret had burned popcorn again. Instead of a knife, Kate pulled out a little leather-clad notebook, the edges worn and well-loved. I smiled at it in appreciation. I owned several like it myself. She undid the band and flipped it open halfway before spinning it to face me.

  I sighed and humored her. The writing was frantic and hurried, all in capitals and marginally legible. Kate tapped her finger by the last paragraph.

  “They’re coming for me soon,” I read, keeping my voice low. My brow furrowed, and I felt a chill seep into me as I read the panicked words hastily scrawled in pencil. Each letter was ragged, few running across the printed lines, the graphite biting deep into the paper. “They gnaw and bite away at my mind. I can feel them in my skin, in my blood. The demons, the shadows. They chew and they spit out my words and thoughts. They watch when I sleep, huddled around my bed like gaunt, starving skeletons looking at their first succulent meal in years. If they can’t have me, I know they’ll go for Katie next. They’ll need her alive if they can’t get me. I need to find Samuel Walker of the OFC. He can protect her. Maybe even stop them.”