The Bride Collector

by Ted Dekker

  A beat. “Okay, so it is somewhat personal. The point is, I need you to scream. Your life doesn’t mean much to me. But I need the little bride to come, you understand? I think she might be stupid enough to have fallen for you now that you’ve rescued her. So I need you to scream and scream like a little boy who’s having his teeth drilled without a drop of Novocain.”

  Rain Man seemed unruffled. “You can’t catch her. She’s gone. I can scream until you beg me to stop. But you won’t draw Paradise in.”

  “Really?” Quinton pressed the trigger briefly and the drill whined. “You seem to think you know her quite well.”

  Rain Man was still unimpressed. “Even if she were close enough to hear my screams, she knows there’s no way she can stop you. She can’t burn the barn down, she can’t shoot you, she can’t jump in the truck and drive off, she’s powerless. She knew that before agreeing to run. You can kill me, but you will never touch Paradise.”

  “Is that so? And what’s to stop me from tracking her down next week?”

  “I’m not that stupid. You’ll never find her where she’s going. As far as you’re concerned, Paradise no longer exists. She’ll be in a vault so far from you that no attempt on your part will turn up a single lead.”

  The sincerity in his tone unnerved Quinton.

  “You know, for a while there, I was bothered by your character. But now you’ve turned into a bad liar, and it’s making me feel better about my decision to kill you. I hate pretenders.”

  “Shut up and drill me, Quinton. I’ll scream my head off and it won’t help you.”

  Could the holy fox have outfoxed him yet again? Why was he inviting pain? Perhaps he really had lost his mind. Quinton’s nerves were uncharacteristically taut. He was deeply bothered.

  So he leaned over, squeezed the drill’s trigger, and pressed the quarter-inch diamond-tipped bit against the flat of the man’s shin. The motor screamed high, then ground slower as it caught.

  He straightened and examined his work. The man was looking up at him, face white, lips trembling, leg bleeding. But he did not scream or even moan.

  “No scream?”

  He had to be careful or Rain Man would pass out.

  “Scream, Rain Man. Scream until you make me want to plug my ears.”

  Nothing.

  “No? Because you lied to me, Rain Man. You won’t scream because she can hear, and you’re afraid that if she hears you scream she’ll come. Because that’s what beautiful people do, Rain Man, we both know that. They come running to save the poor saps in trouble.”

  Nothing from him. With each passing moment Quinton respected, hated, loved, loathed the man more.

  “I’m going to drill you full of holes, and if you don’t scream, then I’m going to scream, and she’ll come running, and when she does I’m going to drill her, too.”

  The man’s eyes darted over his shoulder, then widened.

  “Hello, Quinton.”

  Except for over the phone, it was the first time he’d heard her voice in seven years, and the sound of those sweet, tender vocal cords pierced him in a way no sound this side of heaven or hell ever could.

  He turned slowly toward the main door. There, dressed in her red blouse and cutoff jean shorts, stood Paradise. Her arms hung by her sides and her unblinking gaze held him.

  This was also the first time Quinton had looked into her eyes since that night so long ago. Those devastatingly beautiful eyes.

  “Hello, Paradise,” he said.

  41

  BRAD SAT IN defeat, begging God for one last mercy. Please, please don’t let her come. Send her far away. Don’t let her hear.

  He watched the Bride Collector hovering over him with his drill, heard his threats, but his mind was on his prayer of desperation to God in heaven, if he was indeed listening-and Brad had to believe now that he was.

  Protect her, I beg you. She’s innocent, she’s naive, she will run here for love, but don’t let my love draw her. Not now, please, not now.

  Then Quinton bent over and pressed the drill into his shin and the pain was so vicious that Brad’s whole leg began to shake violently. His stomach rolled and his vision blurred, but he could not allow the scream tearing at his throat a moment’s breath.

  Quinton stood. He was talking, but Brad didn’t hear him. His mind was begging all the more earnestly. Please, please save her. Save her, please. She’s your child. Save her…

  Movement from the corner of his left eye stopped him, and he looked and he saw what he had begged not to see. She stood in the wide barn doorway, like an angel of mercy.

  Brad could not breathe.

  “Hello, Quinton.”

  Quinton started. Then slowly turned. For a moment they stared at each other and Brad could only imagine what vile thoughts were running through the mind of this psychopath.

  “Hello, Paradise.”

  Brad wanted to scream out to her. Run, Paradise! Run away! He’s a monster and he’s going to hurt you. You’re too naive! Run!

  A moan broke from his mouth, nothing more. He struggled to keep from passing out. It couldn’t end this way! She had to run.

  Paradise just stood there, staring at the killer. And Quinton stared back.

  Brad found his voice, breathy and stretched with fear. “Run…” Then again, in a cry. “Run, Paradise, run!”

  “No, Brad. Not this time.”

  Her voice was so light, so sweet, so innocent. And it sent a shaft of searing anguish through his chest. She was going to die on account of him! And she was too stubborn to see it.

  Quinton walked over to the table, set down the drill, and picked up his pistol.

  Paradise looked at Brad, cheeks wet by trails of tears. But she didn’t flinch.

  He leaned against his ropes, frantic for her to run. “Please, Paradise, you can’t do this…” But she wasn’t listening. “Please…”

  Her head turned back to Quinton, who stood in the middle of the quilted stage, before the wall on which he intended to drain Paradise.

  Brad started to speak again but couldn’t. His words were only noise in his mind. A great lament rolled through him.

  Forgive me, Paradise! I’m sorry that I let you love me. I’m sorry that your tormented life has led you here to me, to the first man who showed you any love. You don’t have to give your life for me! It doesn’t work that way! Those are the foolish ideas in stories. I’m not worth it, I’m a wretch. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, Paradise!

  Twenty feet down the middle of the barn separated them now. Quinton seemed caught in some kind of trance, as if in facing the culmination of his plans he could not find the words to express the import of the moment. He stood with his gun at his side, watching her. No wise words, no gloating, no expression of hatred, no cursing, not even a twitch on his face or a tremble in his hand.

  He just stared at her, dumb.

  Perhaps he couldn’t believe that she really was stupid enough to come back, knowing what faced her. Yes. Yes, that had to be it. Both he and Quinton saw the same thing. Only someone so raw, so idealistic could have stepped willingly into harm’s way with no hope for survival.

  “You’re wondering why I would come back,” she said.

  She stepped forward cautiously and stopped ten feet from him. Her face showed no expression, but new tears broke from her eyes.

  “It makes no sense to you,” she said. “Does it?”

  He answered after a moment. “You’re innocent and foolish,” he said. “That’s what makes you so beautiful. That is why I have to kill you.”

  “Then you’ll be killing the one thing you want.”

  They watched each other.

  “I’ve been thinking about it, Quinton. That’s why you came to me that night seven years ago. You wanted the innocence and beauty that you saw in me.”

  “You can’t manipulate me with your words. You’re the most beautiful woman in the world, and I have been sent to kill you.”

  “Because you can’t possess me?” Her
voice quivered.

  “Because you’re God’s favorite and no one can have you.”

  “The truth is, you’re afraid of me, Quinton. I terrify you.”

  “I can break you like any doll.”

  But she was undeterred. “I terrify you because you’re afraid that you can never be beautiful like me. You’re like a jealous boy, and now you’re throwing a fit.”

  Brad stared, caught off guard by the exchange between them. This was the Paradise who had first drawn him with her simple insight and logic, seeing and speaking about what only she could see outside the window. The naive girl who could see ghosts when others could not.

  “You were mixed up then and you’re still mixed up now,” she said. “You are a lost, lonely boy who was hurt by his father. Just like I was.”

  HER WORDS CAME to him and in an instant the buzzing stopped. The world went silent, as if someone had pulled the plug.

  She knew this? It was a guess, of course, anyone could guess that someone had been abused as a boy, hadn’t half the world? But her tone didn’t hold even a hint of question. Her eyes were reaching past him, into the place of secrets. This was hallowed ground, a place so deep and holy that he himself was only rarely allowed to step into it.

  And yet she was walking in, trampling his soul underfoot. Quinton felt suddenly and forcefully violated.

  The silence between them stretched, and he searched for the buzzing, the voices, the calm, the intelligence that had made him so powerful and such a worthy servant. He hated her for stripping them away.

  And then the buzzing was back, screaming in his mind like a swarm of angry hornets. His whole body tensed and his fingers clamped down on the gun by his side.

  He’d removed the silencer when he’d replaced the weapon in the case. The discharge thundered through the barn as the gun bucked in his hand and sent a bullet into the ground by his feet.

  Paradise did not flinch.

  “Your father hurt you just like my father hurt me. That’s what first drew you to me,” she said.

  “No.”

  “I didn’t have a father to tell me that I was one of God’s favorites,” she said.

  He saw something so unnerving that he would have lifted the gun and shot her in her forehead if not for the fact that he had planned so long to drill her. There was empathy in her eyes.

  “But that’s one thing you’re right about, Quinton. I am one of God’s favorites.”

  “Please, be quiet.”

  “My father never told me who I was, just like your father never told you who you were.”

  Why didn’t he move? Why didn’t he just shoot her? Why didn’t he grab her and tie her down and drill her full of holes? Why did he feel as if the glue that held him together was melting?

  “Because you are one of God’s favorites, too, Quinton.”

  BRAD DARED NOT utter a word, not now, not while Paradise was speaking and Quinton was listening. The slightest shift in tension might set him off, as it had discharged his gun moments ago.

  Quinton had gone stiff. Sweat beaded his forehead. His hands were balled into fists, and his blood vessels ran like cords down his forearms. At any moment it would all end. Brad knew what Paradise was trying to do, but it wouldn’t work!

  The rage in the killer would overtake him and he would crush her. She was naive enough to believe that if she just reached out to him he would understand and change.

  But men like Quinton Gauld did not change, not this side of a cosmic shift in their souls far beyond human words or any kind of psychiatric soothing. He might play along. He might even give in to the pain that her words clearly evoked. But in the end the monster would rise up and rip into her.

  Even so, Brad dared not utter a single word.

  He hopelessly worked to free the ropes that bound his wrists, but there wasn’t a millimeter of play in them. He pulled at the post, but it was anchored deep.

  And then in the long silence, something changed. Paradise began to cry. Her small shoulders began to shake in a sob.

  She drew a deep breath. “I don’t want to do this anymore.”

  What was she saying?

  “I’ve lived with this pain so long. I can’t do it anymore.” She sobbed and sucked at the air, lips trembling. “I don’t want to hide in the closet anymore. I can’t take the darkness. I can’t take the fear!”

  Her words sounded obscenely loud in the barn. She stood shaking, gasping for air, looking now at Brad with pleading eyes, then back at Quinton.

  “I can’t do it… I can’t live like this…”

  She was crying for herself, he realized. She’d said it in the field and now she was saying it here. Paradise was here as much for her own rescue as for his. She needed to free herself from the claws piercing her heart.

  This wasn’t about manipulating the man who’d violated her seven years ago in the hope of destroying him; this was about casting off her own fear so that she could be free.

  “I can’t fear you anymore, Quinton. I can’t fear my father. I can’t take the hate and fear that’s trying to kill me.”

  Quinton stood on the quilts, eyes wide. His fists were shaking.

  “I forgive you, Quinton.” She spoke the confession in a sob and then walked forward, stood in front of him, and reached out her hand slowly.

  Pressed her palm against his belly.

  The moment her fingers made contact with him, she sucked in a short gasp. But then, she could see ghosts, couldn’t she? She was seeing something now, or was she only shocked at her own audacity?

  Quinton was so appalled, so stunned, by her actions that he seemed to forget his options. He looked frightened. Lost.

  Now in a soft voice, Paradise pleaded with him through her tears. “He’s trying to kill you. The same monster that’s trying to kill me because I’m God’s favorite is trying to kill you, too.” Then very quietly so that Brad could barely hear her: “You’re like me. He’s trying to kill us both.”

  A slight quiver had swept over Quinton’s whole body. Brad didn’t know what to say. He wanted to tell her to run, to claw at Quinton’s eyes and sprint, to dart around him and throw the lamp to the ground and then run for the back door.

  Instead she spoke softly, now without tears, like an angel sent here for his sake. “I’m sorry you were hurt by your father, Quinton. But you’re still a favorite. You don’t need to prove yourself to God, or be jealous of his favorites.”

  What happened next drained Brad’s blood from his face. The quiver that had reached Quinton’s extremities intensified. Tears pooled in his eyes, ran down his face. His lips twisted with despair and right there with the seventh favorite’s hand on his belly, Quinton began to cry.

  And Paradise cried with him.

  But Brad could see no reason for gratitude or relief. He could only see this monster’s guilt being exposed by his own innocent victim, and it made him sick with fear.

  “Paradise…” He still didn’t know what to say, because to say the wrong thing could as easily bring about her end as save her. And she wasn’t paying Brad any attention.

  “If I’m his favorite, then so are you,” she said. “And he loves them all. Even me. Even you.”

  Now the man towering over Paradise came unglued. He broke apart from the inside out. Shaking with his sobs, he began to sag. His hands went limp, spread wide. The gun fell from loosed fingers and he sank slowly to his knees.

  Brad could not shout down the warning bells that clanged in his head.

  Run, Paradise! Run!

  Run because you are right and he knows that you are right and he can’t live with that knowledge. He’s going to snap, he’s going to cut you, he’s going to kill you, Paradise! Run!

  Brad’s mouth was parted, but he couldn’t risk undoing what she was doing. He could only beg God for mercy.

  Paradise did not run. To Brad’s continued horror, she placed her hand on Quinton Gauld’s shoulder, and he settled back on his haunches, a sobbing, slobbering mess of a man.
/>   It was true, Paradise was the most beautiful woman in the world. She, who stood just a hair over five feet tall and wasn’t too experienced in the fine arts of hygiene, makeup, and fashion, was the most stunning creature God had created.

  And Brad knew that the Bride Collector was going to kill her.

  QUINTON DIDN’T KNOW what had happened except that he’d been thoroughly violated. The very woman he had violated had returned and with a few simple words peeled back the layers he’d so lovingly wrapped around himself over the years.

  He was a man who could not deny the truth, but neither could he accept that truth, not now.

  He could only feel its effects and mourn his own pathetic nature, while before him stood the one whom God had granted such a lofty status.

  He had been right. She was the most, most, most beautiful! It was no wonder he’d fallen madly in love with her. And he would again, because the man who could not or did not love Paradise needed to be summarily shot and buried in a deep bed of wet concrete.

  And when she said that he, too, Quinton Gauld, the man who had violated her, was as loved… The earth had crumbled beneath his feet and hell itself had sucked him deep. It could not be true. To compare him to Paradise was to compare a slug to a peacock, a dove, a bird of paradise.

  Yet it was true. He knew it the moment the words came from her mouth.

  Then she told him that evil was working in him to make a mockery of them both, and he knew not only that this, too, was true, but that he was powerless to change it.

  So then he would have to kill her. She was crying with him and her hand was on his shoulder, and now he had to kill her.

  PARADISE TOUCHED THE man the way she imagined a mother might touch another mother’s hateful son who was having a change of heart. She felt no intimacy. He was still a monster.

  It had occurred to her as she waited in the ditch that perhaps the killer was dead. Not physically dead, but spiritually and mentally. That, like her, he had died a long time ago when his father had taken his life as a boy.

  And when her hand made contact with his chest, she had seen that in many ways she was right, he was dead. Because in that moment her mind had filled with the image of a small boy weeping on his knees as a bearded man twice his height stood over him with a piece of pipe.