Thief of Souls (5 page)

“Not someday. Now!” demanded Laraby. “They say he's gonna die, so you gotta do it now!”

“It doesn't matter if he dies,” Dillon told him. “I'll come back later, and fix him anyway.”

The cop had no response to that. The very idea tied his tongue.

Dillon broke free, sliding the rest of the way down the wooded slope until he could see the Columbia River through the trees far up ahead. He could hear the officers from the other car on his tail, but the image filling his mind was that of Laraby's face; the desperation as he had gripped on to Dillon's shirttail; those eyes staring at him in fearful, hopeful awe as if Dillon held both salvation and damnation in his fingertips.

And then there was Weller.

Dillon had shattered the man. He had sworn he would never shatter anyone ever again. Dillon had been so certain that his destructiveness was in the past.
But I had no choice,
he reasoned.
I had to escape.

Dillon told himself that he would come back and fix the man someday, although he knew it would be a long time before he could surface in Burton again.

He continued down the slope, bouncing off trees like a pinball, stumbling through the mud and peat.

It was foolish of Dillon to think the people of Burton could keep quiet. It was human nature to whisper the things that no one should hear, and it was only a matter of time until all of those whispers grew loud enough to bring out a swarm of badges from a dozen government agencies. And despite what Weller had said—they
did
believe in what he could do. Otherwise they wouldn't have sent out a posse of state troopers to find him.

Now they'd be on the lookout for him everywhere “the
virus” had hit. Foolish, because it was their meddling that would prevent him from fixing the mess.

The dense woods suddenly ended, and he stumbled over a gnarled root, to the muddy edge of the river.

“Down here—this way!” his pursuers shouted.

Dillon leapt from the bank into the raging torrents of the river, swollen by a storm upstream. The cold hit him instantly, sucking the heat from his limbs. His muscles seized into tight knots, but he stretched his arms and legs out so he wouldn't cramp. He was quickly spirited downstream, pulled away from those chasing him. The opposite bank seemed much more distant than it had from shore, but he willed his arms to move. Yes, his limbs had grown strong from his work. Even in the cold waters, he could force his arms to stroke and legs to kick, long after many would have drowned, until he finally collapsed on the far shore.

His mind hazy, and his body leaden from the cold, he tried to catch his bearings as he knelt on all fours, coughing up lungfuls of river water. He tried to stand, but moved too quickly, and a wave of dizziness brought him back to the ground. He rolled over onto his back, forcing deep breaths, trying to will a steady flow of oxygenated blood back to his head.

He never heard them approaching. He didn't know they were there until their silhouettes eclipsed the light of the gray sky.

“He's all right,” said a voice just above him. A female voice.

Dillon gasped through his chattering teeth. The voice was familiar, and in his confusion, he felt sure he knew who it was.

“Tory?” he said. There were others around him now. “Winston? Lourdes? Michael?” He had hardly known the other four shards, and yet for months they had occupied most of his thoughts. Only now did he realize how much he needed
them—to talk to, to be with. He thought he saw their faces before him, and it filled him with comfort and gratitude.

He sat up, and as his blurred vision cleared, his heart sank like a boulder in the furious river.

“No,” said the voice. “It's me, Carol Jessup.”

There were more gathering around him now. He was mistaken—these were not his friends, they were all residents of the town. He knew them all—the Kendalls, the McMillans, the Schwartzes. He had spent time with each of them, restoring the life of a loved one. He had entered each of their lives, and returned them back to order.

“We're glad the police didn't take you away from us,” said Carol.

Dillon began to feel his gut slowly churn and he knew it wasn't just the cold.

“Don't worry,” said her husband, taking his hand. “We'll protect you.”

“We'll take care of you,” said one of the others, rubbing Dillon's sleeve.

“We won't let them hurt you,” said another, reaching out and touching Dillon's hair.

This is wrong,
Dillon thought.
This is terribly, horribly wrong.

“We'll follow you,” said another voice. “And we'll help you do your wondrous works.”

“We'll tend to your needs,” proclaimed another.

“We'll be your servants.”

“Because we've seen your glory.”

“We've been blessed.”

“And you'll bless us again.”

“And again.”

More hands. Dozens of hands, reaching out, touching his skin, his hair, his clothes. He felt himself raised from the
ground, and as he looked into the clouded sky, he realized why this all felt so wrong.

His unique talent for making connections showed him a new pattern emerging in the world around him now. There were always a million possible roads, and a million possible futures, but now, every road focused toward one end: a murky darkness of chaos and ruin.

A year ago, during his own dark time, Dillon had sought to trigger the ultimate act of destruction. A quiet whisper that would precipitate a massive chain reaction, eventually shattering every relationship, every connection, every mind until the entire world became like the maddened mobs in Burton. Dillon had thought he'd failed to achieve that final act . . . but now he wasn't so sure. What if his “great collapse” had simply taken a different course? The swarming patterns of destiny he saw when he looked at these people around him seemed to scream back the same answer.

The destruction never ended.

It just hid, dormant until now—and all the fixing he had done would soon be overshadowed by a new threat. Some bleak chain of events spreading forth from this moment, that not even he could foresee.

He wailed again in the pain of this revelation, but the crowd ignored all his protests, as they carried him off in the cradle of their happy, needy hands.

I
N THE RANDOM RUSH
of water, a pocket of stillness formed where the Columbia River had caressed Dillon Cole's body. With Dillon's passing, the entire river slowed . . . and a tiny portion of the river ceased its swirling, defied entropy and came to order, touched by Dillon's unique gift. It became an oasis of focused calm, beneath the surface of the raging river.

The calm pocket carried within it the simplest of bacteria, born from rotting leaves and dead salmon farther upstream. Only, now those bacteria didn't swarm and divide haphazardly. Instead, the single-celled organisms drew toward one another, aligning and dividing in unison; positioning themselves in a choreographed mitotic dance—a perfect pattern, as if the millions of bacteria were all of a single mind.

Farther downstream, where the river spilled into the Pacific, plankton fed on the aligned bacteria, and in turn tiny shrimplike krill devoured the plankton. Farther from shore, a school of fish, ten thousand strong, gobbled up the krill with ease and swam south, their tight formation suddenly becoming more perfect, and more orderly than it was possible for a school of fish to be, as it headed south, toward shark-infested waters.

A
T NINE A.M.
E
ASTERN
S
TANDARD
T
IME
, W
INSTON
P
ELL
bolted awake from a chilling dream to the sound of breaking glass. He knew the sound well by now—it came as regular as clockwork. If it wasn't his window, it was Thaddy's, or his mother's, or the window in the living room.

Thaddy, who should have known better, came scurrying into Winston's room. “Stone! Stone! It happened again!” He yowled as his feet came down on the broken glass.

“Thaddy, your brain's gotta be off in orbit.”

Thaddy hopped onto Winston's bed. “Ow, ow, ow,” he whined, but let Winston look at his bleeding feet. Thaddy trusted his big brother's judgment, now that his big brother had grown taller than him again.

“You'll live,” said Winston.

“How'm I gonna walk?” Thaddy asked angrily. He frowned as if it was Winston's fault. Winston sighed. Maybe it was. He patted Thaddy's soles with a balled-up corner of the sheet. He wished he could heal Thaddy's feet, but his own repertoire of gifts didn't include Magical Suture.

Their mother walked in, turned on the light, and shook her head. First at the broken window, and then at Thaddy's feet.

“We're gonna make the glass-man rich,” she said, then carefully stepped over the glass toward Thaddy, examining his feet. “I just hope it won't need stitches.”

The suggestion made Thaddy groan. She took Thaddy off to the bathroom for Bactine and Band-Aids.

Winston stepped into his slippers and gingerly crossed the floor toward the broken window.

A heavy branch had punched through the window like an elbow. Winston noticed that the tip of the elbow-shaped limb held new growth that hadn't been there yesterday. The tree would have to be cut down to save the house. Just like the tree that had rooted up the septic tank, and the one that had lifted the home off its foundation.

The fact was, ever since Winston had come home from his mysterious journey west, he wasn't the only thing growing like a weed. He stood five foot eight now, and while his predicted height was expected to top out at six foot one, the plants and trees around their home had no such limit. These days, his mother's garden coughed up blueberries the size of tomatoes, tomatoes the size of cantaloupes, and cantaloupes the size of pumpkins. The grass had to be mowed on a daily basis, and you couldn't see the house for the trees.

“Some green thumb you brought home with you,” his mother had said when they first began to notice how profound Winston's effect was. “Guess we're gonna get lifted to the clouds by a beanstalk one day.”

As he contemplated the trees invading his bedroom window, a feeling came to Winston's limbs, like a fugitive breeze.

A cold river. A wail of agony. A cry for help.

What had he been dreaming about? It was coming back to him now, and the memory made the tight curls of his short-cropped hair feel as if they were curling tighter.

He was dreaming about Dillon Cole. Something was wrong in the dream; Dillon needed help. There were hands all around him. The hands meant to comfort, but did not. One thing more . . . Winston knew this was not a dream. Dillon had cried out, and Winston had heard it—it was not his imagination.
It had to be a pretty nasty bit of business going on, if Winston could feel it this far away.

He's in trouble,
thought Winston.
Well, good. He deserves it. I won't go help him.
Winston had seen the damage Dillon had done. Buildings destroyed, people turned mad. When they had parted ways, Dillon claimed to be repentant—claimed that it was all because of the dark parasite that had leeched onto his soul. But how much of it was the beast, and how much was Dillon? Winston found it hard to have any sympathy for him.

In the bathroom, his mother bandaged Thaddy's feet. Winston watched her, marveling. She had been out of her wheelchair for almost a year now. Winston's touch, which had once been the cause of her paralysis and all forms of stunted growth, was now responsible for making her get up and walk. His curse under the tyranny of his parasite had turned into a blessing once the thing was dead: a gift of growth in every sense of the word.

“Heard you thrashin' in your covers even before the window broke,” his mother said, finishing up on Thaddy. “Must have been some fright you were having.”

I won't go help Dillon,
Winston told himself.

“Just a dream,” he told her.

“Guess that's what you get for sleeping in.” His mother never probed for details. Winston had never spoken of his experiences out west to her, and she had the wisdom not to ask.

They ate breakfast quietly, Winston's mind full of heavy, distracting thoughts. He knew his mom could read the troubled look on his face.

“You know, I've been thinking of putting the house up for sale,” Mom said. “Too much bad blood between us and the neighborhood, anyway.”

Winston shook his head sadly. Folks around town hadn't
known what to make of him before, and now they surely didn't. But that was okay. Winston had grown to understand them a bit better now. Their fears. Their superstitions.

“Momma,” he said, before he knew the words were coming from his mouth. “Momma, I gotta leave.”

His mother took a deep breath. It had become her habit to take Winston's pronouncements in stride.

“I suppose it was only a matter of time till you outgrew this place,” she said. “Although I didn't think it would be so soon.”

“Stone ain't outgrown it,” chimed in Thaddy. “His feet don't hang off the end of the bed or nothing.”

Winston chuckled. “That's not what she means, Thaddy.”

In the year since coming back home, Winston had found himself driven to think. To learn. He had pulled down all of his father's dusty books—the ones his father had treasured—and he read them all. “Education is a black man's greatest ally against injustice,” his father had been fond of saying. He kept a fine library that was left to his wife and sons when he died. Books of science and art, classic literature and world history. Volumes on philosophy. Great thinkers, with grand thoughts. Winston downed all he could at home, at school, at the library. He hadn't come up with any grand answers to the mysteries of life yet, but now at least he felt he knew some of the questions. He had grown to know how much he didn't know.