my one good eye. More blood than I expected. If I didn’t put pressure on that soon, I’d be lucky if I managed to stay conscious.
Then I saw what Haas was doing, and I wondered if lucky was the right word.
He was standing at a workbench at the far end of the room, stringing twine through a heavy darning needle and humming softly to himself. A small man, stooped and heavily lined, he wore a tweed vest over a blue Oxford, with matching tweed pants. His bald pate gleamed above a crescent of wispy gray. When he saw me watching him, he smiled.
“Ah, good,” he said in lightly accented English. “You’re up!” He riffled through his toolbox for a second, producing a handful of assorted buttons. “Tell me —which of these do you like best?”
I tried to speak, but my head was full of angry bees, and the words wouldn’t come. The effort damn near made me puke.
“I rather think this one,” he said, crossing the room and holding it to my cheek appraisingly. “It complements the gold tones in your hair.”
He knelt beside me, sliding the needle through a button-hole and pressing the point against the lid of my swollen, ruined eye. “Do try to sit still,” he said. “I’m afraid this is going to hurt quite a lot.” The needle pierced the tender flesh of my eyelid. I screamed in agony, and tried to pull away. Haas expected that, though —I was hardly his first, after all —and he held my head fast, one bony hand an iron grip at the base of my neck. Blood ran hot and sticky down my cheek, and with it came a fresh wave of pain —exquisite, clarifying. Suddenly, I realized what I had to do.
If back wasn’t an option, I was gonna have to go forward.
I lunged toward him with all I had, driving the needle through the tender flesh of my eyelid and into the soft tissue beyond. Haas, startled, tipped backward. My hands were up in a flash. I landed atop him, the needle buried deep in my eye. Despite the searing pain, a manic grin spread across my face, so pleased was I my gambit had worked. Then everything went a little gray around the edges, and I realized I didn’t have much time before this meatsuit gave out on me.
Haas struggled to get out from under me, but I had a good fifty pounds on him, so he wasn’t going anywhere. My hands found his chest, and plunged inside. Suddenly, the room around us disappeared, replaced with a swirling blackness, a keening wail —the light and song of Haas’s withered soul. I wrapped my fingers around my prize, and now it was he who screamed.
“Sorry,” I muttered, “it’s nothing personal.” It’s something I say to all my marks —my way, I guess, of reminding myself this collecting thing is just a job. This time, though, I wasn’t sure I meant it.
I rolled off of him, yanking free his soul as I did. As it tore free from his chest, the darkness around us flickered and receded, and his song faded into nothing. My consciousness threatened to do the same. I mustered every ounce of strength this meat-suit had, and hurled my being toward Haas’s lifeless form. But this body I’d borrowed was broken and bloodied. I didn’t know if every ounce of strength it had would be enough.
Death, as a Collector, isn’t final, but that doesn’t mean it’s a walk in the park. When a body dies, the link between soul and flesh is severed, and the soul —whether native or invading —is unseated. Now, for a native soul, the shock of being dislodged from its earthly vessel is considerable —and believe me, that’s a good thing. Shock makes you numb. Shock makes you forget. But a Collector isn’t afforded that luxury. We experience death in all its unfiltered glory, which means for us, it’s excruciating. Plus, there’s the added indignity of eviction. See, the body finds its native soul familiar, and will house it long after death if necessary until collection. An invading soul, on the other hand, is unnatural —unwelcome. The body’s constantly trying to expel it —which is why a meat-suit pukes every time someone like me hops in for a spin. When a meat-suit dies, it sends any invading soul packing. But since we Collectors can’t exist without a body, we wind up reseeded into another body at random —no big deal if it’s a strapping young man with energy for future body-hopping to spare, but you get stuffed into an infant and it’s nothing but diapers and pureed peas until they get strong enough for you to up and leave. Many a Collector’s gone mad as a consequence of an unlucky reseeding. I’d really rather not be one of them.
It seemed like forever that I hung there in the vertiginous nothing that stretched between Haas and the mutilated corpse I’d left behind. There was no light to guide my way, no sound to mark my passing. I tried in vain with limbs I no longer had to reach for that fresh vessel, so tantalizingly close just seconds before, but now an eternity away. For a moment I thought I’d failed. Then the world lurched, and my eyes, uninjured now but rheumy with age, sprang open to reveal the bedroom ceiling some eight feet above. I swear I could’ve danced a jig.
Haas’s body, though, had other plans. Its stomach clenched, and I doubled over, puking. You’d think I’d be used to that by now. It’s sort of par for the course for possessions —the body’s way of trying to rid itself of something that’s not supposed to be there, I guess. Still, after the trauma of hopping bodies, it’ll surprise you every time.
Once my stomach was empty, I wiped my mouth with the back of one liver-spotted hand, and took a look around. My last body was lying on the floor beside me, the darning needle buried a good six inches in his head. A puddle of blood expanded slowly beneath him like an oil slick, and the tiny swirling orb of Haas’s soul was still cradled in his lifeless hands. I struggled clumsily to my knees, and then collapsed, Haas’s limbs slow to relent to my commands. I tried again —the same result.
That’s when I heard her crying.
It was the faintest of whimpers —so quiet, in fact, that at first I thought I had imagined it. But as the roar of my pulse in my ears subsided, there was no mistaking it. I cast my gaze around the room, looking for the source of the noise, but there was no corner of the room I could not see, no closet in which to hide.
There was, however, a chest.
It was an old wooden affair, glossy with layer after layer of honeyed lacquer, and fastened with an ornate iron hasp. A matching iron key lay atop its lid. I shambled toward the chest, my new meat-suit still sluggish and unresponsive, and pressed my ear to it. I heard a single, hitching sob, a sharp intake of breath, and then nothing. It seemed whoever was inside had heard me coming.
I snatched the key up off the lid and jammed it into the lock, hearing tumblers catch as I clicked it home. The lid was heavy, stubborn. I heaved it open with a grunt.
She was a girl of maybe three, dressed as the dolls downstairs had been, in a pinafore of purest white over a loud floral dress. White stockings adorned her legs, and her feet were clad in patent leather Mary Janes. Curly hair framed a delicate face far too young to be painted as thoroughly as it had. She was made up not like a woman would be, but like a doll, with circles of red at the apples of her cheeks, and her lips painted to appear permanently pursed in an expression of coy innocence. The illusion was shattered by the streaks the tears had made down her cheeks, and by the look of wide-eyed terror on her face. Instinctively, I reached out to her, but she recoiled, trembling. Of course she’s afraid of you, I thought —you’re wearing the flesh of the man who did this to her. I lowered my hand, and told her softly it would be all right. Of course, being Dutch, she probably couldn’t understand a word I said, but then, I wasn’t sure that I believed it anyway. Whether she understood or not, it was clear
As I sat there, looking at her, I couldn’t help but notice the resemblance to the couple at the table —her parents, no doubt. Which meant this girl was Haas’s granddaughter. I wondered all the sudden if, for Haas, hell was punishment enough.
Unsure what else I could do while in the body of her tormentor, I lowered the lid of the trunk, and left the girl in peace. I wrapped Haas’s soul in a scrap of fabric torn from his dead wife’s skirt and stuffed it in my pocket. Then I went downstairs and dialed the police. I told them in a whisper I was being held against my will, and gave them Haas’s address. When they asked me for my name, I hung up. Then, with a silent prayer for the girl I’d left behind, I left the house, letting the door swing open behind me.
My head was reeling as I left the row house, and my stomach threatened mutiny. I told myself it was just the standard-issue hiccups of an unfamiliar meatsuit, but I knew that wasn’t true. The job had gotten to me. Haas had gotten to me. After nine years of doing this, I didn’t think that was still possible.
A few blocks from Haas’s house, I stopped at the base of a gnarled old elm, and buried Haas’s soul beneath six inches of chill black earth. Then I covered it over with fallen leaves and headed straight for the fucking pub. The night I had, all I wanted was a little peace and quiet in which to get stinking drunk. Thanks to Danny, though, I had no such luck.
“Pardon me, mate —anyone sitting here?”
