Soulstice (17 page)

“Keech.” The scene reminded Reggie too much of what Henry’s Vour had done to his pet hamster.

Aaron observed the dead creatures with a cool distance but said nothing. The killer or killers had taken their time. They
had enjoyed themselves.

“Let’s go, Reggie. And don’t touch anything. Nothing we can do here.”

Reggie walked ahead down the dark hall. It was a mine of destruction: every glass case shattered, every art piece thrown to
the tile floor and smashed. When the Vour inside Henry terrorized her last winter, the film of fear had blunted her anger.
But now with each step down the trashed school hall, her blood pumped harder and hotter at this recklessness.

First, the monster had violated her home, her family. And now it spilled its malice across the rest of her life in Cutter’s
Wedge, and its evil wreckage marked the deterioration of her own fear and empathy. She stalked into the dark cafeteria toward
the double doors that lead into the kitchen.

“Yo.”

A hulking figure stepped out from the shadows and stood right in front of the doors.

“I wondered if you’d show.”

Reggie stopped and thrust the flashlight beam into the large boy’s face. He’d been beaten. His bottom lip bled freely; his
right eye was swollen. He smiled to reveal blood-caked teeth.

“Where is he, Mitch?” Aaron asked. “Where’s Keech?”

“Where I said he’d be. Kicked my ass a little, but I got him.” The boy wiped his lip and rubbed the blood between his thumb
and forefinger. “Don’t know how much longer he’ll last.”

“Hopefully longer than those little animals,” Reggie spat at him. “You did it, too. It wasn’t just that monster.”

“I had to play along. I always have to play along.”

Aaron pulled Reggie away.

“Reggie, forget about the damn rats. He captured Keech. Let’s get to work.”

Reggie tried to push past the Kassner twin but he blocked her path into the kitchen.

“You need to tell me how you do it. Before you go in there and try to kill that thing, you need to tell me. I have to know.”

Aaron stepped in front of Reggie. He looked like a child next to a tree.

“She doesn’t have to tell you anything, Mitch. She’s here to do a job. And if you stay out of our way, maybe she’ll bring
back what’s left of your brother.”

“Will I know him? Will he know me? How are you so sure you won’t fail?”

Reggie took the key and stared up at him.

“I won’t fail. Now get out of my way.”

The boy took a deep breath and moved aside. Reggie walked into the cafeteria and saw the weak yellow light spilling out from
the small square near the top of the walk-in freezer door. Ice lined the edges of the window and wisps of smoke circled inside.
A padlock dangled from the bar lowered across the door.

She approached and stared into the softly lit freezer.

The body inside looked like a barely animated corpse. He had been stripped down to his underwear, and his skin was a frozen
white. He’d been beaten much more severely than his brother, with dark bruises marking his face and torso. Blood had dripped
and frozen into crimson crystals beneath his flattened, broken nose. His mouth had been gagged with a bloody strip of shirt.
But the monstrous black veins that covered his entire body revealed the thing as an inhuman monster.

She twisted the key inside the lock and popped it open.

“Reggie,” Aaron said softly behind her. “Please be careful. If what you find inside—”

“I’ll be okay.”

Reggie pulled the lock from the bar and lifted the cold handle. The freezer door swung open.

“Get him back, Halloway.” The Kassner twin opened the freezer door wide.

Reggie handed Aaron the flashlight and stepped inside. As she walked toward the shivering creature, the thing lifted its eyes
and looked at her with a tired and pained panic. It glanced at her and then at Aaron behind her. Its eyes twitched and it
shook its head from side to side.

“I’m coming to get you.” Reggie was grim and determined.

Aaron looked on, assessing the brute. Those big, burly hands that used to beat on him now hung limply at the Vour’s sides,
cuts and scars circling his wrists.

Cuts on his wrists.

A jolt of fear burned through Aaron. They were the cuts from the duct tape he had used in the alley. This wasn’t Keech—this
was
Mitch
.

The Vour had them trapped.

“Get in,” it urged behind Aaron. “I think I hear someone coming.”

Aaron stood still for a second, and his frosted breath wafted up in front of him. Then with a yell he whipped around and slammed
the flashlight into the side of Keech’s head. The surprised Vour dropped hard to the ground. Aaron set upon him like a wild
animal, the anger boiling up in him giving him a freakish strength. He beat Keech over and over with the flashlight, kicking
him in the ribs as he squirmed on the ground and tried to crawl away.

“Nice try, you piece of shit!” Aaron rammed the front of his foot into Keech’s face.

“Aaron! What the hell are you doing?” Reggie raced over and grabbed Aaron’s arm, but he threw her off.

“You think I give a damn if it was you or the monster you? It makes no difference to me!”

“Aaron! Stop it!”

“It’s Keech, Reggie!” He leaned over the Vour, panting and red in the face. “
This one
is Keech.”

“Aren’t you clever, Cole.” Keech coughed up blood and tried to stand, but Aaron crashed the flashlight down on his head one
final time, and with a last
crack
Keech lost consciousness.

“Yeah. I’m clever. And you’re done, you prick.”

Reggie ran back into the freezer and ripped the gag from Mitch’s mouth. Up close she could see that the marks had been crudely
drawn onto his frozen skin with a black marker.

“Help…”

“We’ll get you out of here, Mitch. You’ll be all right.”

“Not me.”

The beaten, freezing boy looked into Reggie’s face. Crystal tears lined the bottom of his bruised eyes. Then his gaze shifted
past her to the twin left bleeding and unconscious on the floor just outside the freezer.

“Help him.”

Aaron dragged Keech’s unconscious body into the freezer by his ankle. He dropped the leg unceremoniously. Reggie untied Mitch’s
hands and used the frosty rope to secure Keech’s wrists behind him. Then she helped Mitch stand.

“Take him, Aaron. Find him some clothes or a blanket.”

“I’ll make sure he doesn’t die,” Aaron answered.

His voice was flat. Reggie caught his hand as he guided Mitch out of the freezer.

“That was some display back there. And you saved me. Now let it go.”

He offered her a slight smile and nodded.

“Good hunting,” he said. “And be careful.” Then he shut the freezer door, and Reggie was alone with the Vour.

  
15
  

Reggie knelt beside Keech and patted the side of his bloody cheek with her hand.

“I want you awake for this. Get up.”

Keech’s eyelids fluttered and opened. He looked up and gasped, the conscious sensation of the deep cold finally registering
in him. When he let out a breath, a small puff of black smoke expelled like a coughed-up insect and dispersed into nothing.

“That’s right. Your game is over,” she said.

The monster inside roiled. Reggie felt its malice.

“No. My game is just beginning.”

Reggie moved her hand to Keech’s throat and pushed with her mind. She had learned with Henry that to go into the fearscape
she needed to be in contact with the Vour’s pulse, and now Keech’s throbbed against her fingertips. The confines of the freezer
warped and undulated. She closed her eyes and started to fall. The descent engulfed her and all went black.

An eternal moment later, she was seated in a giant overstuffed chair. A long space with sharply sloping walls and a low ceiling
enclosed her. Furniture stood under white sheets like a crowd of ghosts, illuminated by a single twilit window, and a glass-fronted
cabinet towered in the far corner. Piles of junk rose everywhere, and dust stung her nose and throat.

The most outer place of Keech’s fearscape was an old attic.

She understood how a place like this would frighten a child, but to her it came as something of a relief.

“I was expecting something a bit more blood and guts.”

The Vour had taken him years ago. Keech’s essence undoubtedly suffered somewhere much more sinister, lost in a darker realm
of fear than this. The dust and stench of decay marked an environment abandoned by the boy’s mind; he had long since been
lured into worse places. Places she’d soon visit.

But right now, she needed a way down.

She picked up a sheet of paper among a heap of moth-eaten clothes and old curtains. It was a child’s crayon drawing of two
boys, both in identical red shirts and blue pants, smiling on green grass under a yellow sun. The young artist had signed
it with awkward capital letters:
Keech
. The picture was a shred of hope the boy had left behind. She’d found similar symbols inside Henry’s fearscape: a treasured
stuffed animal, a family photograph.

These small remnants of innocence served as emotional bread crumbs left behind by Vour victims as they spiraled deeper and
deeper into the fearscape.

Reggie folded the child’s drawing and put it in her pocket.

Floorboards creaked as she stepped over stacks of old magazines and sports equipment. When she moved past a red-eyed rocking
horse, it wavered back and forth, then stopped. The toy’s face was twisted with agony, and Reggie realized with horror that
it wasn’t a toy at all, but a real miniature horse whose hooves were nailed to the wooden rockers. It whinnied miserably,
and Reggie stuck out her hand to stroke its snout, trying to soothe it. It nuzzled against her, then licked her palm. Reggie
screamed and jumped back—the horse’s saliva was like acid, and it burned through her skin. She wiped her hand on the chair
upholstery, but the damage had been done: half her palm was eaten away. There was no blood, but the hole in her hand emitted
a gray smoke.

Reggie focused on the wound and absorbed the intense pain. She’d experienced similarly brutal injuries in Henry’s fearscape
that had later appeared as faint black scars in the real world. The marks had since faded and left little trace, though Quinn
had noticed, but it had proved that harm done to her in the fearscape had dangerous repercussions. From time to time, she
had wondered if such wounds could ever truly heal.

But right now now she needed to find a way out of the attic.

In the dim light she saw an outline of a trapdoor in the wooden floor. There was an iron handle with a small keyhole beside
it. Reggie looked around for the key, when something shifted in the giant cabinet across the room.

As she drew closer, a score of tiny round heads looked back at her through the cabinet’s glass-fronted doors. Rows of white-faced
porcelain dolls stared at her with sets of cold blue eyes, their lips all set in unwavering smiles. She peered at them, but
none moved.

She knelt down and gripped the trapdoor’s metal ring, but no matter how hard she yanked on the door, it wouldn’t budge. Something
rustled behind her, and she whipped around. The dolls stood in neat rows at attention with their unblinking eyes locked on
her.

She glanced around the room, looking for something to use as a lever to pry open the trapdoor. A high-pitched giggle came
from the cabinet.

Reggie turned her head slowly and gasped.

Behind the glass, all the dolls stood as they had except for one. A doll with dark curls hung from a noose made of yarn, and
she swung faintly back and forth.

Reggie opened the cabinet doors and lifted up the hanged figurine. At that instant the arms of all the other dolls shot up,
pointing at Reggie. They opened their mouths in unison and began to shriek. Reggie clamped her hands over her ears as the
piercing wail shattered the glass.

The scream was so loud and so high it made Reggie’s teeth ache and throb. She could feel warm liquid welling up inside her
ears and within moments blood was flowing from them and pouring down the sides of her neck.