Ted Dekker - The Bride Collector

The story overwhelmed him, and he couldn’t think of an appropriate response. “I’m sorry,” he offered weakly.

“It’s okay. I lived, obviously, I’m here, right? I just remember the darkness and the knocking on the door, begging me to open. Pleading for me to open because he loved me. Then the gun and that’s it. The rest I know because they told me.”

“I’m so sorry, Paradise.”

“You asked if I have any other fears, well yes, I do. Mnemophobia. The fear of memories. I can’t seem to remember the really bad things that happen.” Tears pooled in her soft brown eyes, but they didn’t run down her cheeks. “I feel the feelings, so I know something terrible happened, but I can’t remember what exactly.”

“Maybe that’s a good thing.”

“Yes. Maybe.”

“What about things that have happened since coming here? Do you remember those?”

“Yes.”

What could he say to her? He hadn’t come here expecting his heart to be broken, but seeing Paradise swallowed by such a cruel past, like the stuffed chair that enveloped her now… A part of him wanted to rush over and give her a hug and insist that she would be safe with him.

If not for her twin phobias, Paradise probably could have left the center long ago. Who knew what she would be today except for them? Married with children or working on Wall Street. Serving with the FBI-she certainly had the aptitude. In fact, Paradise’s unique perception of the world might be invaluable to any investigative body.

Yet her illness compromised her acceptance of him. As long as there was a possibility that he held the proverbial shotgun behind the door, she couldn’t trust him.

Unless he disarmed himself and gave her the shotgun.

“I was once in love with a woman named Ruby. She was beautiful. Dark hair, like yours, about the same length. Quite short, a real bundle of energy, you know. We played on the tennis team together at UT. But she didn’t think she was beautiful, so she killed herself. I don’t think I’ve ever recovered. I’ve only told this to one other person.”

He let the confession stand and watched her face.

“Do you think I’m beautiful?” Paradise asked.

Brad had expected any reaction but this, but he immediately saw the connections she was making. Suicides, death, heartache-these were all things she was overly familiar with and shut out as a matter of survival, like she shut out terrible memories. Instead, she focused on the fact that he’d lost a beautiful woman.

When he didn’t respond immediately, she spoke.

“No,” she said, “but that’s okay. I don’t have the faintest clue about beauty. All I know is that I don’t fit in anywhere but here. This is my home. My own father rejected me, the world rejects people like me, I don’t know how to be beautiful or what clothes to buy or how not to stink.”

Her words crushed him, but he didn’t know how much of what he felt was empathy and how much was respect.

“I don’t think you realize what women on the outside are like because you’ve been trapped in here for so long,” he finally said. “It’s not all that it’s cracked up to be.”

She looked at him with those haunting brown eyes. “It must have hurt,” she said quietly.

His breath suddenly came hard. She had that knowing tone, and it made the hair on his neck bristle.

“You still wonder how she could have killed herself if you made her life worth living.”

The words felt like a gut punch. Emotion swelled in his throat and he turned, fighting off a wave of sorrow cresting under the force of her words.

“It’s okay,” she said. “I struggle with self-worth, too.”

And then she was quiet. But in that moment, whether or not she’d meant to, Brad felt as though she’d made them equals. Bearers of the same awful secret. Soul mates of a kind, however absurd that might sound.

And then he pushed the feeling aside, cleared his mind, and offered her a polite grin. “Don’t we all,” he said. “Life can be hell.”

She didn’t respond, but her eyes refused to move from his.

Brad brought his thoughts back to his purpose for coming. The killer was out there, and Brad was here to stop him, not wallow in his own past.

He cleared his throat. “You might be able to help me out. To be honest, I wasn’t sure what I expected coming here. We’re running out of options and if we don’t find a way to stop the killer, he’s going to kill more women. But now that I’ve met you, I think maybe you can help us save an innocent girl’s life.”

“You’re trying to manipulate me. But put that way, how can I refuse?”

“I’m not… Manipulate is too strong a word. What would you do in my situation? A girl’s life is at stake.”

“I doubt I can help. You seem intelligent enough, why do you need me?”

“Because you might be more intelligent than you think. Because we’re here. Because I feel like I’m chasing a ghost and you see ghosts.”

She nodded. “Okay. What can I do?”

“Allison said you see things about the dead. We have a dead body.”

She looked at her fingers in her lap, swallowing. “Sometimes people die here, the older ones. A couple of times I saw some things. I think I saw the last things they saw.”

Crazy as it sounded, Brad had come across another report of a similar psychic phenomenon, a person’s ability to somehow connect with the freshest memories stored in a deceased person’s brain. He’d dismissed the report as rubbish.

“Ghosts,” he said.

She looked up, concerned. “I would have to be with them. In the same room. I have to touch them.”

Brad nodded. “I can assure you I would personally accompany you and…”

She stood to her feet, face white. “No. No, I can’t leave.”

He instinctively stood and stepped closer, reaching for her. But she slipped to his left and hurried around the chair like a scared rabbit.

“We could keep the shades drawn, you wouldn’t even know-”

“No. Absolutely not.” Her eyes darted toward the window. “You don’t understand, I can’t leave.”

The color had vanished from her face-now she really did look like she’d seen a ghost. She bolted toward the door and slammed it shut behind her.

Brad jerked himself from a moment of immobility, leaped over the chair, and threw the door wide just in time to see her fleeting form disappear into the hall.

Then she was gone.

Allison stood from her seat across the room, smiling.

Always smiling.

“That evidently went well,” she said. “Maybe she’ll change her mind.”

“Do you think?”

“No.”

“WHAT DO YOU mean you said no?” Roudy demanded, marching across the lawn. He frantically pulled at his goatee with both hands. “This is an outrage, my dear, they ask you for our help and you turn them down?” He spun back and glared at Paradise. “Your selfishness and insensitivity will ruin my reputation!”

I see you and your ghosts, Sherlock, and at the moment your ghosts are shouting at me so I will ignore them. Begone, ghosts, or I’ll dispatch you all with a word of power that lives deeper in me than in you. It sits on your shoulder like a butterfly, so watch out, Sherlock…

She thought the words as if they were water flowing through her mind. Fuel for her soul. Ideation was her lifeblood. She’d long ago exchanged hopeless attempts to stem her imagination for the challenge of focusing it.

… because that butterfly is truly a dragon!

“Your reputation doesn’t extend beyond this place, Roudy,” Paradise said quietly. “They want me to leave this place.” Her throat felt as though it had been tied in a knot, and if she wasn’t careful she would burst out in tears right here. “You know I can’t do that.”