you. Remember, he's got the mentality of a toddler, so use simple, direct words.'

Darby nodded. 'Anything else I need to know?'

'Don't look upset when you see him, he's very sensitive to that. It'll get him upset, and we can't really give him anything to calm him down. Guy's got Graves' disease and, on top of that, a bad ticker. Play it cool and calm and he can be a teddy bear.'

Roy cracked open the door. 'Hello, Darren. It's me. Roy. Your friend.'

A thump of footsteps and then a moan creaked through the darkness.

'Do not be scared,' Roy said, enunciating each word. 'I am coming in to say hello. I have a friend with me. A nice lady. She wants to meet you.'

Roy put the night-vision goggles over his head and stepped in first, Darby following into the semi-dark cabin. It had a window, and the flashing lights on the wing parted the darkness and revealed that the furniture had been removed. She could see the holes and bracket marks left on the carpet, the paper and crayons and clothes. Hospital smocks, she guessed, along with dirty socks and a pair of soft-soled white sneakers with Velcro straps.

To her left was a small room, its door removed, and she could make out a tangle of bare, crooked limbs trying to hide.

Roy grabbed her upper arm and gave it a small tug to keep her from moving forward.

'Darren,' Roy said, his voice kind and gentle. 'Come out and say hello to my friend.'

The limbs unfolded — she still couldn't see him — and then Darren Waters plodded out of the room backwards, nude, a Frankenstein mess of deformed bone. He was severely hunched from osteoporosis, and she could make out the crooked vertebrae bulging from the deathly pale skin covered with row after row of round, welted scars. They covered his back, buttocks and thighs, and she thought of the puncture wounds she had found on Mark Rizzo.

Darren Waters kept his face pointed at the corner wall, out of view.

'Do you feel shy?' Roy asked.

Waters bobbed his head up and down, up and down. He rocked back and forth.

'How about we all sit down and colour?' Roy asked. 'Would you like that?'

'Aye-ah,' Waters garbled, and turned. She caught a flash of a crude scar the size and thickness of a bicycle tyre left from his castration, and most of his right ear had either been chewed or torn off.

Waters plodded over to the crayons. He was about to sit when he noticed her and then decided to come over for a closer look.

'This is my friend,' Roy said, and she felt his finger dig into her arm. 'Her name is Darby.'

'Hello, Darren.'

Jagged scars the colour of jelly and smaller, neat ones left from a scalpel were slashed across a face of missing eyebrows. Goitres, the result of his Graves' disease, covered his neck and half of his left cheek. His nose had been broken she didn't know how many times and what was left was a pulpy, crooked mess. He tried to smile but the lips twitched. No teeth, just like the thing with the egg-white skin she had tied to the tree.

He snatched the envelope from her hand and then retreated to the corner, making some sort of nasal but gleeful sound as he went to work tearing off the paper like it was a Christmas present.

The pictures spilled across his lap. He picked up one, turned it over and looked, then tossed it aside and went after another one. Darby watched him do it six or so times before his head darted up, his hand waving a sheet at Roy.

'It's a picture,' Roy said.

Waters performed some sort of sign language, then picked up one of the photographs and held it close to his face.

'Then you need to turn on a light,' Roy said.

Waters kept shaking his head.

Darby felt Roy release his grip. He reached into his trousers pocket, came back with a small flashlight, placed it on the floor and sat next to Waters in the corner.

'Darren, would you like to use this?' Roy asked, tapping the floor where the flashlight lay.

Waters tilted his head to the side. He made some signs again and his gnarled fingers scooped it up.

'You're welcome,' Roy said. 'Can my friend Darby sit with you?'

'Aye-ah.'

She sat next to Roy. Waters turned on the flashlight and she felt her stomach slide south — not from fear of seeing his ghoulish face with its scars and lumps but more so out of anger and piercing sadness. This group had abducted Waters at four, tortured and beaten him over decades and turned him into this ghost of a human being.

Why in the name of God did they do this to you?

'Darren,' she said.

He looked up from the picture.

'Do you know Mark Rizzo?'

No reaction.

'Can you tell me anything about this?' She pointed to the picture in his hand, the one showing the archway formed from human skulls.

No reaction.

'Do you know this place?'

Water picked up a blue crayon and began colouring one of the skulls.

'Too many words,' Roy said to her. 'Darren knows only basic language.'

'Darren,' she said kindly.

He looked up, tilted his head to the side.

'This,' she said, tapping the picture. 'Where?'

She pointed down. 'Below the ground?'

He didn't understand.

'Darren, can I use a crayon and paper?'

He didn't understand and looked at Roy, who used sign language. Darren nodded and handed her a piece of paper and his box of crayons.

She drew a quick, crude picture of an outdoors scene dotted with trees and flowers. Below it, she drew a tunnel; inside it, a floor and the archway.

She put the drawing on the floor. Pointed to the picture of the archway he was colouring and then pointed to the one she had drawn.

Waters brought his hands together, kissed his palms and then made waving motions with his hands, like rising flames of fire.

A voice came over the speaker: 'Darby McCormick, report to Situation Room 102.'

Darren Waters pressed his hands over his deformed ears.

After she stepped outside with Roy, she said, 'That sign language at the end, what was he trying to describe? Hell?'

Roy shook his head.

'Heaven,' he said.

74

Her face flushed, Darby opened the door to the situation room and found three men dressed in SWAT gear picking up weapons from the table.

Casey wasn't here, but Sergey was, leaning back in a leather chair with his legs crossed. He had loosened his tie and was eating peanuts from a bag, reading a stack of papers.

'What took you so long?' he asked, a half-grin cocked on his face.

Вы читаете The Soul Collectors
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