The Collectors (Karma Police Book 3)

by Sean Platt

  “Of course I’ve got a body, I’m—”

  And then I realize — this is my body, or maybe some a projection.

  This is Ella.

  I look back in the mirror, on the verge of tears.

  “Oh, my God. I’m in my body.”

  “What are you, and what are you doing here, interfering in my life?” Chelsea asks me, her voice on the cusp of accusation.

  “I’m not interfering. I’m trying to help you.”

  “Help?” she laughs. “You call driving my father to almost kill Carla help? Do you know how helpless I felt watching him do that to her? Watching him torture her?”

  Now she’s the one crying.

  “I’m sorry. And to answer your question, I don’t know what I am, or why I’m here.”

  Chelsea looks at me, eyebrow arched. “Bullshit.”

  “I swear. I’ve been waking up in a different body almost every day for the past year. And before then, I can’t remember anything. I don’t choose who I wake up in, nor do I know why any of this is happening to me.”

  I don’t tell her about the assassins, or the weird messages I hear. That would only confuse or frighten her.

  She stares at me, head tilted as if reading me.

  “All I know is that the people I wake up in usually need some help, or I’m given a chance to save someone. I saved a girl from a serial killer a month or so ago. Maybe I’m here to save you.”

  “I didn’t ask to be saved,” Chelsea says, turning away, giving me the teenage angst that annoys me so much.

  “Maybe it’s not up to you.”

  “So, what, God sent you?”

  I laugh. “I don’t think it’s God.”

  “Then what?”

  “I don’t know, but I do know that you don’t really want to die. Why else would you still be hanging out here, popping up around your family? Why follow me into the bathroom? You’re hanging on for a reason.”

  She doesn’t look at me. Still, I know I’m right.

  “You feel bad, especially now that all this has happened, to your parents, to your brother, to Carla.”

  She turns around. “She doesn’t deserve this! Carla didn’t abuse me. She didn’t make me gay.”

  “I know. I was inside her. I know that she loves you.”

  “You can tell how people feel when you’re in them?”

  “Yes, especially strong emotions, like love.”

  “What was she thinking about me?”

  “That she loves you and misses you. That she never meant to fall in love, but now that she is, she’s not sure how she can go on without you.”

  Chelsea wipes tears from her eyes. “What do I do? I don’t know how to go back, how to wake back up in my body.”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t know how any of this works. I don’t even know how we’re here together right now. In the past year I’ve been jumping, I’ve never even seen my own body, let alone someone in a coma. Have you ever had an out-of-body experience before?”

  Chelsea stares past me, to the mirror. “I thought it was a dream at the time. I was six, maybe seven, and I was really sick. I don’t know what I had, but my family was super-worried. My fever was through the roof. They brought me to the hospital. I was in the back seat on the way there. My mom was holding my head in her hands, and then suddenly I was gone. I was at my grandma’s, my mom’s mom, sitting in her tiny apartment, watching as she rocked in her chair, watching Wheel of Fortune. I tried talking to her, to ask her how I got there, but she didn’t hear me. Then she stopped rocking, and I woke back up in the hospital. They said I’d been unconscious for fourteen hours until the fever broke. I didn’t tell anyone about the dream where I went to Grandma’s, but later that morning my mom got a call from her brother that she was dead.”

  “Oh, my. And you never told anyone?”

  “Oh, no. My family would’ve thought it was witchcraft or the devil or something. They used to be a lot more hardcore in their Christianity if you can believe that. They didn’t even let me read Harry Potter when I was a kid, because, whoo, witches. I didn’t read the series until Carla lent me her copies.”

  “Do you think it’s possible that you overheard your parents say something while you were unconscious, that maybe your brain made up the whole thing with your grandma to make sense of what you were hearing?”

  “No, she didn’t get the call until after I’d woken. I remember because she left the room, then came back in crying, and pulled Dad into the hall. They didn’t want to tell me what was going on until I made them.”

  I stare at Chelsea, trying to make sense of what I can't understand.

  “Okay, so you obviously have some ability to astral travel, or something. But why am I here, in the park with you? I’ve never been in this situation. I’m always in someone else’s body. So, why am I here now?”

  “I dunno,” Chelsea shrugs. “I was hoping you’d have answers. Maybe you’re here to help me get back to my body.”

  “If only I knew.”

  “Do you think Carla will be okay?”

  I’m about to answer when I notice a sound, barely noticeable.

  Chelsea repeats her question, but I hold up a finger. “Shh, do you hear that?”

  “Hear what?”

  I cup my hands to my ears. It doesn’t make sense, as I’m not physically here, and therefore my hands shouldn’t be able to amplify the sound to my ears, but using that logic, I wouldn’t be able to hear anything. And I can hear something, like … static.

  And then the sound of a woman’s voice: “The women’s restroom.”

  Oh, no.

  My mind flashes to when The Collectors showed up the last time I saw the assassin. They’d come to eat my soul, she told me before shooting my host in the head to send it elsewhere and out of their reach. She’d saved me, why I don’t know, but what if they haven’t stopped looking for me?

  “I’ve gotta go,” I say.

  “What? Where?”

  “I don’t know. There are these things after me, Collectors. They eat souls.”

  I spot a long row of windows above the toilets.

  I step into a stall, climb onto the toilet seat, and hoist myself up enough to peek out the window.

  There, in the center of the soccer field, I see the two mothers who were jogging with their carriers. They’re just standing there, staring at us. The carriers are on the jogging path, children abandoned, oblivious that something has taken over their mothers’ bodies.

  The Collectors look up and see me, and as they do so, their faces blur and refocus.

  Oh, shit!

  They start walking toward us.

  “Oh, God!” I scramble down from the toilet and run up to Chelsea, putting both of my hands on her shoulders.

  “What?” Chelsea asks, her eyes panicked.

  “They’re here!”

  “The Collectors?”

  Something else occurs to me. What if they’re not here for me? What if they’re here for Chelsea? Come to collect her stray soul?

  “Yes. Can you get us out of here?”

  “I don’t know how I got here! I just show up places. I don’t have any control!” Chelsea cries, her voice rising in pitch.

  “Maybe you do. Maybe you brought me here. I need you to try. Think yourself somewhere else. Maybe think both of us somewhere else.”

  “How? I don’t know what to do!”

  “Close your eyes, imagine us somewhere else. Anywhere else!”

  I run back to the toilet and peek through the window. The Collectors are closing in, maybe thirty yards away. They’re not running, and it’s almost scarier that they’re not. They’re walking straight toward us, no doubt that they’ll catch us.

  I wonder if we should try to run, but something stops me from suggesting it. I don’t know if it’s instinct or fear, but I have a feeling that we’ll never get away if we run. Somehow, these things will catch us.

  “Lock the door!” I yell.

  Chelsea runs to the door and f
lips the lock. I wonder how she turned it, or, for that matter, how I opened the door if our bodies aren’t really here. Is it some form of energy we’re exerting, even without a physical shell? Or are souls somehow able to interact with objects? I feel like I’m trying to figure out ghost logic, but I can’t stop to consider any of this now. I need to help her focus, to try and teleport us somewhere else — away from those things.

  She comes to me as I back out of the stall.

  “What do we do now?”

  “Keep trying to think us somewhere else.”

  “How?”

  “Close your eyes, think of somewhere you’ve been. Think of the details, imagine them so real you can almost touch them.”

  Suddenly, I have another idea.

  “No, forget that. Focus on someone you have a strong emotional connection to.”

  “Like Carla?”

  “Yes, like Carla.”

  The door shakes in its frame, someone trying to open it.

  No, not someone, something.

  Chelsea’s eyes are wide, terrified. “Oh, God.”

  “Just focus,” I tell her.

  The door shakes harder.

  Now pounding.

  The Collectors don’t speak. Or demand entry. They just act.

  They’re pounding on the door. The handle is rattling.

  The way the door is moving in its frame, The Collectors must be stronger than the women they occupy.

  Can they break down a door? And once they do, what will happen? Will they take my soul? Or Chelsea’s?

  The assassin said that I’m dead if they catch me. Worse than dead, whatever that means.

  We’ve got to get out of here. Now.

  Chelsea is squeezing her eyes shut, crying. “I can’t.”

  I look at the door, shaking harder. Grunts come from the other side — animalistic sounds from demons determined to get to us.

  I look at Chelsea. Her eyes are wide open, staring at the door. She can’t focus.

  I reach out and put my hand on her cheek.

  Startled, she looks away from the door, and toward me.

  “Think about the painting you made for Carla. She still has it. She’s waiting for you to finish. You need to finish it, Chelsea. You will finish it.”

  The door breaks open.

  And in an instant, Chelsea vanishes.

  I turn to see The Collectors storming the restroom.

  * * * *

  CHAPTER 6

  I wake with a gasp, startled and relieved to find myself in a teenage boy’s dark and messy bedroom.

  She got away.

  We got away.

  But I wonder if and when The Collectors might come searching for me again. I escaped them the first time only because the assassin killed my host. But killing the host isn’t an option for me. I can’t kill innocent people just to escape these Collectors.

  I’m not sure how I escaped this time. The only thing that makes sense is that Chelsea somehow brought me there, and once she was gone, my reason for being went with her, and I was sent to wherever my body goes when I’m out of a host.

  So, I escaped. Again.

  But what happens when they come for me when I’m in the body of a little kid or someone’s parent? It’s not like I can fall asleep on command. Given that those are the only ways I know of jumping to another body, I feel trapped like a hunted animal, without any means to fight back.

  I look at the clock and see that it’s five after noon on Sunday. I didn’t miss a day. I went from being Susan on Saturday to waking up early Sunday as myself, and now I’m waking again, this time back in a body. Not just any body, but Anthony Rocco.

  I sit up, excited that maybe this is the chance I’ve been waiting for — a chance to find out who the hell blackmailed Chelsea into making that video.

  I get out of bed, step over piles of dirty clothes, books, and video game boxes, and find Rocco’s iPhone sitting on a desk littered with pornographic pictures that look printed from his computer, empty Mountain Dew cans, and a half-eaten box of pizza sitting wide open.

  Wonderful.

  Doesn’t this kid have parents? In every other teenage boy I’ve been in, they’ve at least made an attempt — half-assed as it might have been — to hide their pornography. But Rocco leaves his right out in the open. And not even the tame stuff, but hardcore smut that looks borderline illegal.

  I sit back down on the bed and swipe his phone.

  It’s password protected, but the password comes instantly to mind.

  I’m in.

  I find a text thread between him and Blake Wellington starting back from forever ago.

  I start thumbing backward, looking for anything mentioning Chelsea or the video.

  A recent text from Blake says:

  Yo, maybe you should delete some of that shit. A lot of heat might be coming down with this suicide attempt.

  Rocco responded:

  Already done.

  But as I thumb back and find the beginning of the conversation, I realize he lied.

  The first message is from Blake, and it says:

  Yo, Rocco, look at good lil bible girl.

  Seems like she’s not such a “good girl” after all, is she? More like a big slut!

  P.S. Now you owe me.

  Attached: Good_Christian_Slut.mov

  The preview thumbnail shows Chelsea in that dark room as she lost everything to these sick fucks.

  And it wasn’t Rocco. Blake was the one who had been blackmailing her. After that it’s a back-and-forth between the jocks, laughing, saying how “surprisingly hot” she is, and debating whether or not she’s any good in bed. Later in the thread, Rocco asked:

  How did you get her to do all that freaky shit?

  Blake: LOL. The ladies love me.

  Rocco: No, for realz.

  Blake: Let’s just say I recorded her and a certain dyke art teacher licking each other.

  Rocco: NO WAY!

  Blake: Yup. And I told her if she didn’t put on a show for me, I’d send it to everyone. Maybe even to her Daddy, or the news.

  Rocco: MUST SEE DYKE VIDEO.

  Blake: No. I promised her I’d delete it.

  Rocco: No way you deleted it! Bullshit.

  Blake: Maybe, maybe not.

  Rocco: Trade?

  Blake: What you got?

  Rocco: Okay, here. Attached: drunksex_Becca.mov

  I click on the thumbnail and immediately wished that I hadn’t.

  It’s Rocco coercing some drunk girl into sex, recording the whole thing from a hidden camera focused on his bed.

  I can’t see her face, just from her chest down. She’s in a shirt and skirt, but not for long. He’s taking them off.

  She’s resisting, but he’s not taking no for an answer.

  Soon, he’s between her legs.

  She’s barely conscious, but he doesn’t care. Hell, that might be what makes it so thrilling.

  This is rape!

  I’ve seen enough of the video, but then, just as I’m about to turn it off, her face comes into frame, and I realize it’s that Becca, the redhead who told me that Chelsea was sleeping with the teacher.

  She seemed nicer than the others in her crew. She also seemed so uncomfortable telling me that news.

  And I realize — they made her tell me. They wanted the student-teacher affair to get out there, maybe to take the focus off the video.

  Those fuckers.

  In response to the Becca video, Blake wrote:

  Awesome. Keep ’em cumming. And maybe I’ll send you the dyke on dyke action.

  Rocco sent him eight more videos, each with a different girl’s name.

  No. These can’t all be him. Can they?

  I click on the first one, and it’s the same setting and scene as the Becca video. As are the next three.

  I can’t watch any more.

  These people are monsters.

  Later in the thread, Blake texts, pissed.

  Blake: Did you upload the Chelse
a shit to porn sites?

  Rocco: Wasn’t me.

  Blake: Nobody else has the video!

  Rocco: It wasn’t me!

  Rocco: Oh, shit, I bet it was Kris.

  Kris is a cheerleader fuck buddy of Rocco’s.

  Blake: What? You showed Kris?

  Rocco: No, I didn’t SHOW her. She saw it on my computer and asked what the hell it was. Thought I was sleeping with Chelsea. I told her no, someone sent it to me.

  Blake: You had it on your computer?

  Rocco: Kinda hard to jerk off on a phone video. Too small, so I sent it to my computer. And she was over here using it for her report. She laughed, calling Chelsea a fucking hypocrite. But I had no idea she was gonna upload it to a porn site! I swear!

  Rocco: U mad?

  Blake didn’t respond until a few days ago when he made the comment about erasing the texts because the heat would be on them.

  If Blake ever sent the video of Chelsea and her teacher, it wasn’t on Rocco’s phone. But there are a ton of other videos on there, all with different girls’ names.

  Did he rape all these girls?

  Pretty ballsy, or damn stupid, not to delete any of them, especially after Blake told him that shit might get hot with Chelsea’s suicide attempt.

  I’m getting some memories indicating that Rocco was hanging on to the Chelsea video and the texts as leverage against Blake, in case Blake ever decided to fuck with him.

  The blackmailer getting blackmailed over his blackmail video.

  Seems appropriate, even if I’m disgusted by both of these scumbags.

  I have to do something. I’ve got the evidence to nail both of these monsters and put them away for a long time.

  Suddenly, I hear a girl say, “Gross!”