Soul Thief (Blue Light Series) Read online

  SOUL THIEF

  By Mark Edward Hall

  Apocalypse Island

  The Lost Village

  The Haunting of Sam Cabot

  The Holocaust Opera

  Servants of Darkness

  The Fear

  Mark Edward Hall Library, Vol. 1, (Boxed Set)

  The Hero of Elm Street

  The Immortal Breath of Life

  Haunted Tales

  SOUL THIEF

  Copyright ©2013 by Mark Edward Hall

  Published by Lost Village Publishing. All rights reserved.

  Book Description:

  The Brotherhood of the Order is one of the oldest and most mysterious organizations on earth. Its primary mission is to protect one of the most carefully guarded secrets in human history, an object so enigmatic and powerful that in the wrong hands it could wreak havoc upon the earth. In the right hands it just might have the power to save humanity from its own destructive impulses.

  Doug McArthur, hit in the face by a young friend at the age of seven, is suddenly able to see a supernatural creature who calls itself Collector. Doug’s life is turned upside down when he realizes that it’s not just the creature he sees, but the atrocities it commits.

  Since marrying Annie his visions have been quiet and Doug is grateful. Now Annie is pregnant with their first child—a child that promises to be special—and their world is in the process of coming apart, beginning with the destruction of their home and forcing them to run for their lives, back into the world of Annie’s childhood, the De Roché dynasty, to a murdered mother and a cruel and enigmatic father.

  Doug, whose love for Annie borders on the obsessive, has a deep and abiding hate for her father. He is nearly insane with grief over their plight, but soon finds that De Roché is the least of his worries when he begins to hear the pleading voice of a lost child that he cannot possibly save.

  And then, in the midst of Annie’s mother’s funeral, Doug is given a strange artifact, along with a dire warning by a dying priest. He must leave Annie and his unborn child and begin a sojourn into the darkest regions of the human heart.

  In his attempt to save his wife and unborn child, Doug finds that there is much more at stake than the lives of two people, perhaps the very salvation of the human soul.

  Soul Thief is the second novel in the Blue Light Series, a supernatural thriller that will keep you guessing until the startling conclusion.

  Look for On the Night Wind, the third book in the Blue Light Series, scheduled for publication in 2014.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

  Visit the author’s website:

  http://www.markedwardhall.com

  PART ONE

  ARIEL

  PROLOGUE

  APRIL 19th

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Part Two

  The Artifact

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  PART THREE

  PAST PRESENT AND FUTURE

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  PART FOUR

  THE TRUTH

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  EPILOGUE

  TWO YEARS LATER

  PART ONE

  ARIEL

  Prologue

  April 19th

  The Callaghan family from Exeter New Hampshire was watching television when death came knocking on their door.

  “Would you please see who that is?” Ben asked his son Jason. Survivor was on and the interruption was an irritation.

  Ben Callaghan, husband, father and little league coach worked in the plumbing and heating business. Peg was a full time mother and housewife. They had two children: twelve year old Jason and six year old Ariel.

  When the knocking began, the family dog, a yellow Labrador retriever named Ringo, raised his hackles and began to bark.

  “Sure,” Jason said, getting up off the couch and heading for the door. There were two doors, actually, an inner door that led out onto a glassed-in porch and an outer door that led to the front steps.

  When Jason opened the inner door the dog rushed past him barking frantically. This did not bother Jason much, for the dog always barked when someone came to the door. It was usually an excited, tail-wagging bark, because the Callaghan family had many friends and sometimes these friends brought treats for Ringo.

  Jason switched on the outside light and saw the silhouette of a person standing beyond the glass of the outer door. Jason could not discern any features; just the vague form of someone who seemed very tall, dressed in what looked like a black raincoat with an attached hood. Outside the howling wind of a spring storm gusted sheets of rain against the door’s window. Ringo saw the silhouette too, and this only heightened his frantic baying.

  “Come on,” Jason said, taking Ringo by the collar and dragging him back into the house. The dog did not want to go. He began to yelp and yowl, pulling to get free. His teeth were bared and a ring of white foam had formed around his mouth. This was not like Ringo at all.

  “Who is it?” Peg asked in irritation, looking up at her son from the program on the television.

  “Don’t know yet,” Jason replied in exasperation. “But the dog’s acting really weird. Would you keep him in here?”

  “Sure.”

  “It’s the Collector,” Ariel said.

  “What did you say?” Peg asked, looking over at her daughter in puzzlement.

  Ariel sat forward in her seat staring at the door. “The Collect
or. He collects special souls and I’m one of the important ones.”

  “What are you talking about, Ariel?”

  “The Collector. I have to go with him.”

  Peg Callaghan stared at her daughter, a small expression of alarm on her face. “Don’t be ridiculous, Ariel. You don’t have to go anywhere.”

  “Oh yes I do.”

  The dog began to howl again, long and mournful, like a wolf baying at the moon.

  “Will somebody shut that dog up?” Ben Callaghan hollered, picking up the remote control to raise the volume.

  Jason backed quickly out onto the porch and closed the inner door behind him, hoping to block out the dog’s incessant caterwauling. In the distance he heard his father yelling angrily at Ringo.

  “Coming!” Jason said to the caller whose tall, dark silhouette was still visible beyond the rain-smeared glass. But something made Jason hesitate. He had this strange feeling in his chest, like there was a hand around his heart giving it a squeeze. His breath had gone shallow and an eerie coldness surrounded him. For a moment he thought he might throw up. He stood for a long moment looking at the door listening to the dog wailing behind him. He’d answered the door hundreds of times to dozens of friends and family and had never felt this way before. He could not understand what was happening to him.

  Open the door, Jason! A cold voice inside his head seemed to say. Open it now!

  Jason obeyed the voice. Walking trance-like to the door he put his hand on the knob and pulled the door toward him. And the last thought to enter his mind before he died was, there’s something wrong with this man.

  Inside the house, the dog bayed so loudly it sounded like a scream of terror.

  Chapter 1

  The telephone call that saved their lives, and nearly destroyed them, came at five o’clock on a rainy, windy morning in April.

  Doug McArthur was having a terrible dream.

  No . . . please, God. Not after all this time. I need to wake up before this gets out of hand.

  But it was already too late; he was fully immersed in the nightmare and there didn’t seem to be any way out of it. He saw the shape standing on the door stoop—tall, impossibly tall—wearing the familiar black robe, the hood covering the head, the single burning red eye bright as a miniature sun. And he saw the kid’s startled expression a split second before his body calcified—like Lot’s wife hardening into a pillar of salt for venturing a glance back at Sodom. And it was so real, like he was somehow a part of it, connected to it in some fundamental way. Yet he knew it was impossible. He was asleep in his bed with Annie beside him.

  But the dream that could not be real would not end. He knew the Collector was aware of him watching, knowing that he knew, and taking some sort of perverse pleasure in knowing. He saw the shape streak like stretching metal past the fossilized kid and move into the house.

  He heard the dog’s hysterical baying halt in mid-stream, and then he again saw living human beings turn instantly to fossils, the little girl running, hiding under her bed, the red eye watching her, ancient and implacable, like a permanent rent in the fabric of space-time.

  Come out, little girl. I’m not going to hurt you.

  You hurt my mommy and daddy, the little girl said. And you hurt my big brother.

  I had to, little one. It was time for me to come for you and they would have tried to stop me.

  I know I have to go with you, the little girl cried. But I don’t know why.

  Because you have been chosen for a very special purpose.

  What purpose?

  I’m afraid you won’t know that for a very long time, love, but you can trust that it is so. Come now, I won’t hurt you, I promise. You can live with me in my House of Bones until your time comes round.

  But I don’t want to live in your House of Bones!

  You must, little one; it is your destiny. Come so that I may prepare the way.

  The burning red eye exploded suddenly inside Doug’s head, fragmenting his psyche and scattering it into a thousand black and flailing creatures, like pieces of living confetti. Doug sucked ragged breath into his lungs as he tumbled from the edge of a cliff and fell into an abyss. His raging howl of desperation resounded in his head even as the fluttering bits of confetti morphed into birds—hundreds, perhaps thousands of them—squawking, squealing, shrieking, trying to drive their evil noise into his brain. He was sweat-soaked and trembling with fear. His saliva tasted like acid on his tongue and his heart pounded out a brisk rhythm in his chest.

  He tried to come awake, knowing somehow that he must, that his life, and probably Annie’s, depended on it. He felt himself rising slowly up out of his thick stratum of slumber, panic fighting fatigue, lunacy battling common sense.

  In a sudden scene-change he was sitting upright in bed. Somehow the evil creatures—confetti birds—had broken through the windows and into the bedroom. They were streaming in by the hundreds, gathering on the mantle, the chests of drawers, perching on the bed posts. They looked to be some sort of large blackbirds, alien, a species he did not recognize; birds from hell, their bodies and heads streamlined, plumage slick like wet tar, sleek like little winged machines. Staring menacingly out of their streamlined heads were eyes the color of arterial blood. He looked over and noted, in a wholly clinical way, that Annie’s face was completely covered in the grotesque creatures. And as he watched, the loathsome things began to abandon their feast, and he saw that Annie’s eyes had been pecked out. A viscous mixture of pus-like fluid and blood poured from the blank eye-cavities and ran down the sides of her face in variegated streaks. The dreadful mixture pooled on the pillow around her matted blonde hair. Annie’s half-eaten tongue hung bloodily from her mouth.

  Doug moaned loudly and came awake with his heart in his mouth. He had to grasp the edge of the mattress to keep from tumbling off the bed. His breath burst from his lungs in a painful gasp as sweat trickled down the sides of his face. Oh, dear God, he thought, such terrible dreams.

  “Annie!” he cried out, still not entirely certain of his consciousness. But he could see now that she was okay. Her eyes were closed in sleep but decidedly intact, as were the windows. There were no alien birds in the room, no pieces of living confetti, but somehow he still felt their menacing presence, as though they had been there and they’d left some sort of bitter residue at the center of his psyche. A phrase suddenly surfaced in his mind, more a plea than anything else: Please, mister, my name is Ariel. I’m lost and forgotten. You need to find me.

  Oh, God no, Doug thought. This can’t be happening. I can’t do this.

  But the voice reiterated: Please, you have to find me.

  “Where are you, Ariel?” Doug whispered, knowing even as he acknowledged the plea what the answer would be, and that it was futile to begin with; he could not help the child. He had tried to help other children years ago but had failed miserably.

  I’m trapped in the House of Bones and I can’t get out. You’re the only one who can help me!

  Doug put his hands over his ears, trying to block out the voice. “No!” he moaned. “I can’t help you. I don’t know how. This can’t be happening again. I won’t accept it. I won’t listen.”

  But he knew it was already too late. He suspected what the morning headline would look like:

  FAMILY MYSTERIOUSLY MURDERED IN THEIR HOME! LITTLE GIRL GONE MISSING!

  Doug had this . . . connection. He couldn’t explain what it was, why he had it, or from where it had come. Nobody could. Not the greatest psychiatrists, the smartest scientists or the most gifted policemen. And oh how he hated himself for having it.

  But he couldn’t think about that now. Something was terribly wrong, something other than the knowledge of the dead family and the missing child. He felt it in every fiber of his being. Awake now, he looked toward the window. The pale light of an uncertain dawn had begun to steal its way into the bedroom.

  “Phone,” Annie said stirring, her voice muffled by the pillow.

  “What?”


  “Phone’s ringing.”

  It was then that Doug realized that Annie was right; the phone was ringing. It probably had been for several minutes. “Christ,” he said, leaning over and clumsily grabbing it up.

  It was odd, later, when his mind would come back to the events of that morning—as it did often in those terrible days that followed—how he always remembered the sound of the phone, and how it had somehow become a part of the dream, interwoven with the cries and shrieks of the alien birds.

  “Hello?” he asked, his voice oddly tentative.

  “Douglas, this is your father-in-law.”

  Doug stiffened. He was dimly aware of holding the phone receiver too tight. He turned to his wife. “Here, you can talk to your daughter.”

  “No, Douglas! I don’t care how much you hate me! Listen to what I have to say!”

  “Screw you!”

  “Get Annie out of the house, now!”

  “What the hell—?”

  “—Just shut up and listen to me for a moment! Someone is going to try and take her and they will kill you if you try to stop them. Am I getting through to you, Douglas? They killed my wife and they will kill you.”

  “Oh, Christ, Ed, when?”

  “Last night.”

  Annie stretched over and switched on her bedside lamp. She was sitting up now, staring fixedly at Doug, her face pale, like chalk.

  “Go!” the man on the end of the line insisted. “Get Annie out of the house now before it’s too late. They want her and they’ll do anything to get her.”

  “You set this up—”

  “Just do as I say, Douglas, or I promise you, you will be dead. Don’t take time to pack and don’t speak of where you’re going out loud. Annie has my secure number. Have her call me when you’re in a safe location.” The phone went dead in Doug’s hand. He stared at it, unable to loosen his numb fingers.