The Dead Man: Eater of Souls (Kindle Worlds Novella)

by Joseph Nassise

  * * *

  The dream started innocently enough, as dreams often do. Matt walked beside his wife, Janey, along one of the paths at the school, enjoying the warmth of the setting sun on what felt like a late spring afternoon. He knew it was a dream because she had been dead for more than four years by now, but it was his dream and so she was with him, just as he’d always wanted her to be, full of the same vibrant enthusiasm for everything in life that he remembered from the days when they’d been together.

  She laughed at something he said and the sound of her voice was like music to his ears.

  Then someone snickered behind him, a dark and lowly sound.

  He spun about, startled, but there was no one there, only the long expanse of brilliant green grass waving gently in the light breeze.

  “Is something wrong?” Janey asked.

  “Not when I’m with you,” he replied, but when he turned to face her the crack of a rifle split the air and he watched in horror as the bullet struck her in the face, obliterating her features in one blood-and-bone-splattered instant. What had once been her face was now dripping down his own in wet, ragged clumps as he reached out to catch her falling form, only to have her body fade into nothingness as his hands clutched at her in futility.

  The sound of more shots being fired snapped his head around and he found himself looking out over the previously empty quad, discovering that it was now full of students screaming in terror and running for cover. Even as he watched several of them were gunned down, their blood blooming across their clothing in horrid flowers of crimson hue as their bodies crumpled unmoving to the grass.

  “No!” he said to himself.

  Then louder, “No! No!” until he was shouting it out. This isn’t right! This shouldn’t be happening!

  He spun around, looked back toward the library. Even though he was dozens of yards away he could see Mr. Dark standing on the rooftop, rifle in hand, firing at the students who were running helter-skelter before him and laughing wildly, the sound echoing in Matt’s ears as if the bastard was right there beside him.

  Someone bumped into him as they ran past, knocking him to his knees. He looked up to see a dark-haired teenager in jeans, t-shirt, and engineer boots running toward the library, a blue duffel bag clutched tightly in one hand. The boy glanced back, shouted something in his direction, but his words were snatched away by a sudden gust of wind and Matt didn’t catch them.

  The teen looked familiar though…

  The dream shifted then, the bloody quad and the screaming students being replaced by a long, dimly lit hallway lined with students in hooded sweatshirts, their faces hidden in the shadows. Matt and the teen were running the gauntlet between them, racing toward the double doors at the other end. The boy was in the lead, ten, maybe fifteen paces ahead of him, but no matter how hard they pushed themselves or how fast they ran, the doors never seemed to get any closer.

  A low moaning began to issue from the mouths of the students around them, a sound that twisted and turned back upon itself, rising in volume each time it did so, until Matt had to clamp his hands over his ears to block out the sound.

  The doors ahead of them were flung open to crash against the walls on either side and there stood Principal Stevens, grinning from ear to ear. She opened her mouth and tentacles sprang forth, reaching for them down the length of the hall, twisting and turning and stretching, while all around them the students’ mouths began to open as well…

  Matt bolted upright in bed, bathed in sweat, his heart pounding and a scream about to burst from his lips. Movement in the bed beside him had him scrambling backward, a clenched fist rising to protect him, but it was only Olivia.

  She reached out to him, moonlight reflecting off her bare arms, and for a moment he saw tentacles again, just as he had in his dream. He shook it off, let her wrap him in her arms and pull him back down into the warmth of the bed.

  “Sshhhhh,” she said sleepily, “It’s alright. It was only a bad dream.”

  Right. A bad dream. He should be getting used to those by now, shouldn’t he?

  Despite the fact that so much of his waking life seemed like a bad dream every since he’d first encounter Mr. Dark, Matt was no more used to it than he’d been in the beginning and for that he was grateful. The day he got used to it was the day he needed to turn that axe on himself…

  Olivia draped an arm and a leg over him possessively as she wandered back down into the sleep’s dark vales, but Matt remained wide awake for some time afterwards, his thoughts whirling.

  What was he missing?

  * * *

  Outside in the yard, dark forms gathered under the shadow of the trees and stared in the direction of the house, listening to a voice only they could hear.

  Deeper in the trees behind them, something scuttled.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Matt woke the next morning, knowing something was wrong but unable to put his finger on just what. Even an hour of chopping wood in the early morning light outside Olivia’s house didn’t do any good; where he normally came away relaxed from such an effort today it only made him tense, like a wind-up toy whose spring had been wound too far.

  He showered, dressed, left a note for Olivia and slipped quietly out the front door. He grabbed his axe from over by the woodpile and slipped it through the bungee cords he’d been using to secure it to the motorcycle. Not wanting to wake his host, he then rolled the bike a short distance down the street before climbing astride it and kick starting it into to life.

  An ugly suspicion had raised itself in the back of his mind while he’d been mulling things over that morning and he needed to see for himself if it was, in fact, correct. That was why, when he arrived back on campus, he drove straight to Jefferson Hall and parked out in front of the steps. It was still quite early, so no one was out and about yet, which suited Matt just fine. He used his keys to open up the building and then quickly climbed the stairs to the second floor.

  He flipped the light switch at the top of the stairs, then waited a moment for the fluorescents to flicker into brilliance. When they had, he walked down the hall until he came to the locker he had opened the afternoon before on Principal Stevens’ request. He had no trouble finding it, as it was the only one in the long row that was sealed with a long strip of yellow-and-black police tape.

  “Crime Scene – Do Not Disturb,” it read.

  Matt had no intention of doing so. He didn’t need to, really. The sight of the locker had told him all he needed to know, proving his suspicion correct.

  It was the same locker in which Mr. Dark had left his lollipop.

  “Fuck!”

  Why the hell hadn’t he seen it before? And what did it mean? Had Mr. Dark been taunting him, daring him to try and stop David from going on a rampage? Or had David simply been a red herring, designed to keep Matt busy while Dark went about his terrible business?

  He didn’t know.

  Sadly, what he didn’t know could get a lot of people killed.

  He needed to talk with Bateman. Needed to see if the teenager knew what was really going on here, because one thing was for certain.

  Matt was more confused than ever.

  The visit was going to have to wait, though. Being away from the job yesterday was going to be both a blessing and a curse. The former because he’d been able to spend some good, quality time with Olivia way from campus, the latter because he was going to have to clear a fair-sized backlog of minor repairs out of the way before he could call it quits for the day.

  Which means he may as well get started.

  He drove over to his cottage, exchanged his motorcycle for his coveralls and electric cart, and started in on the list of repairs that had been logged in by the switchboard the day before. He did what he had to do to get through the work as quickly and as efficiently as possible. Where he could, he cut corners, knowing that in the long run none of it would matter because he wouldn’t be here for long. He’d briefly toyed with the idea of simply skipping ou
t on all of it, but doing so was a sure path to unemployment and he needed the access to the campus that the job provided if he was going to have a hope in hell of stopping this thing.

  Whatever it was.

  At last, close to three that afternoon, he finished up the last of the repairs in his queue and called it a day. He brought the cart back to the maintenance plant, signed out, and headed for the police station across town.

  He parked in the lot and eyed the front door for a moment, before deciding to move around to the back and look for another way in. There was just too much foot traffic going in and out of the main entrance for his liking; once inside, he’d no doubt be in the midst of a crowd and that wouldn’t do for what he had in mind.

  There was an employees’ entrance around the side and as he walked toward it he saw a man in a custodian’s uniform toss away a cigarette and disappear inside the building, his smoke break obviously over. The sight of him gave Matt an idea.

  He was still wearing his own custodial uniform and he took advantage of it now, slipping in through the side door when no one was looking and heading for the lower level where he thought the holding cells would be.

  A pair of officers was coming up the stairs as he headed down and he braced himself, expecting to be called out for being somewhere he didn’t belong, but they passed on by with barely a glance in his direction. That gave him more confidence and by the time he reached the lower level he simply walked along as if he belonged there and no one bothered him.

  The holding cells were easy to find. Because of his age, the police had David separated from the rest of the prisoners and placed in a cell of his own at the end of the hall.

  “What the hell do you want?” David asked from where he lay on the cell’s only bunk when Matt stepped up to the door and called his name.

  “I need to talk to you. It’s important.”

  “Sure it is. Now fuck off and leave me alone.” David rolled over, leaving Matt to talk to his back.

  Matt glanced down the hall, making sure they were still alone. He had no idea how much time he had and he needed to get this kid talking…

  He decided to take a chance and tell the truth. “You don’t understand. I was sent here to stop this from happening and I need to know what’s going on in order to do that. If I have to figure it all out by myself it will be too late! You’ve got to talk to me!”

  David stiffened, then rolled slowly over. He stared at Matt a long moment.

  “Sent by who?” he asked.

  Matt shook his head. “We don’t have time for me to explain all of that. You’re going to have to trust me. Tell me what those guns were for. Why did you have them at school?”

  David got up from the cot and began to pace back and forth in the small cell. He didn’t even look at Matt when he said, “Protection. They were for protection.”

  “Protection from who?”

  Or what? Matt wanted to add, but didn’t.

  It seemed David understood the unspoken question nonetheless. He came over and grabbed the bars, leaning toward Matt with an earnest expression on his face, part fear and part defiance.

  “You’ve seen them, haven’t you?” David asked, his eyes growing wider at some memory unfolding in his head. “The ones that just stand and stare? As if they’re looking right through you?”

  Matt had no idea what the kid was talking about, but he was talking and that was a good thing. Rather than risk David shutting down again if he admitted to his ignorance, Matt just played along.

  “Yes, I’ve seen them.”

  “Then you know what she’s doing to them.”

  She?

  “No, I don’t. Tell me.”

  But David wasn’t listening. Consumed by his own line of thought, he went back to pacing, talking aloud to himself. “It started small, just a few students. But those students brought her more and with every soul she consumed she became stronger, more powerful. I’m not even sure she can be stopped at this point, but I couldn’t let it go on.” He turned, looked at Matt with pleading eyes, “You can understand that, right?”

  Matt ignored the question, going right to the heart of what he needed to know.

  “Who is she, David? Who’s behind it all?”

  David stared at him, his eyes blazing. “I’ve written it all down. Everything I’ve seen, everything I’ve witnessed; it’s all there. I wanted a record of it all, in case...well, you know.”

  In case something happened to me.

  A chill washed over Matt as he stared at the teenager in front of him. It was clear that the stress and strain of whatever he had witnessed was getting to him, but Matt could hear the ring of truth in David’s words and that worried him. Worried him a lot.

  He’d come to Harpers Bay to stop what he thought was going to be a school shooting. Everything seemed to point in that direction, including David’s involvement. He’d been instrumental in getting the kid locked up, for heaven’s sake! And now his carefully erected theory was crumbling about him like a house of cards as it became obvious that Mr. Dark had manipulated him like a carnival rube, removing the one piece from the game that might have been in a position to stop whatever scheme he had underway.

  You’re fucking idiot, Cahill.

  But there was still a chance he could make this right.

  “Who, David? Tell me who it is!”

  “Hey! You! Get away from there.”

  The police officer stood at the entrance to the cell block and he didn’t look happy to see Matt. Thankfully it wasn’t one of the officers he’d interacted with yesterday during the investigation. He had a hundred other questions to ask David but knew he couldn’t push his luck or he’d end up parked in the cell right next to David. Deciding to get out while the getting was still good, Matt slipped out past the angry stare of the cop, mumbling something about being new along the way, and retraced his steps back out of the police station.

  He needed to find that journal and he thought he knew right where it was.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Matt didn’t know if it was fortune or fate, but just as he pulled onto the Bateman’s block he saw their black Mercedes drive by going in the opposite direction. Through the windshield he could see that Mrs. Bateman had been crying, but her husband still had the same stoic look he’d had when Matt had first seen him.

  Guy’s life is falling apart around him and he’s too wrapped up in himself to even notice. We don’t need Mr. Dark to interfere, Matt thought, we’re pretty good at screwing things up all on our own.

  Knowing that the house was empty, Matt made a split-second decision. Instead of driving past as he’d intended, he turned in into the driveway. Just before he reached the garage he dismounted and then quickly wheeled the bike around behind the house where it couldn’t be seen from the street. He cut the engine and pulled off his helmet, sitting there astride the bike for a moment, listening.

  Somewhere in the distance a dog was barking but that was all. No shouts of alarm, no windows or doors opening in the house before him.

  Matt dismounted, slung his helmet over the handlebars and then pulled the axe from the straps that held it to the bike. With it in hand, he mounted the porch and approached the back door.

  It was a nice neighborhood, so the chances they had an alarm were pretty good. He figured it would take the police four, maybe five minutes to respond and that would only be after the alarm company gave the residents a minute or two to call in case the alarm had been set off by accident. Call it seven minutes tops. Seven minutes to get in, grab the journal, and get out again.

  No problem.

  He tried the door.

  Locked.

  Raising the axe, he brought it whistling down into the door immediately to the right of the doorknob, shattering the wood and popping the lock free with a single blow.

  Matt started counting. One one thousand, two one thousand, three…

  He moved through the kitchen and into the hall beyond, searching for the staircase to the upper fl
oor.

  Six one thousand, seven one thousand.

  Up the stairs and down the hall to the room at the end, heart in his mouth, breath rasping harshly in his ears as the adrenaline pumped through his system.

  Find the journal and get out of here. Move!

  Into David’s room.

  Either the kid’s parents or the police had been in here for it looked like a hurricane had hit it, belongings strewn everywhere, drawers pulled out of the dresser, their contents dumped haphazardly on the bed.

  For a moment he panicked, convinced that they had found the teen’s hiding place, that the journal would be gone, seized as evidence in the investigation.

  He stepped over the piles of junk and approached the closet, the countdown still ticking ominously in the back of his head.

  Fifteen one thousand. Sixteen one thousand. Seventeen…

  The clothes had been pushed to one side, the shelves emptied, but the rear wall looked intact and untampered with.

  Matt flipped the axe around and used the base of the handle to poke the back wall of the closet at just about the point where he’d seen David do it the other evening.

  The false panel popped open.

  Yes!

  He pulled the panel aside, reached inside the opening, and drew out the leather journal he’d been hoping to find. He flipped through it, saw that it was filled with fine, tight writing, and smiled in satisfaction. He stuffed it into the inside pocket of his coat.

  Somewhere in the distance a siren sounded.

  Apparently, his calculations had been way off.

  Get out, now! a voice said in the back of his head and Matt obeyed it, not even bothering to replace the false panel, figuring in all the mess no one would even notice.

  Twenty-three one thousand. Twenty-four.

  Matt dashed back down the stairs, through kitchen and out onto the back porch.

  Where he came skidding to an abrupt halt.

  He was no longer alone.

  Three teenagers dressed in hooded sweatshirts and jeans were standing on the back lawn. The edge of their hoods hid their faces from view but Matt knew they were watching him; he could feel the weight of their stares.