Ted Dekker - The Bride Collector

His vision blurred. “Found her? How?”

When Temple answered, his voice was all too matter-of-fact. “On the wall.”

Images of Melissa and Caroline, white on the wall like angels, flashed through his mind. He couldn’t form an image of Nikki like that.

“Brad, I’m sorry, I know you two were close…”

He switched the phone off and set it in the cup holder. There was something wrong. They’d come too close to lose now. Andrea had figured it out! Roudy had paced all day and exposed the jack. Paradise had told him that Nikki was home. And they had been right, he’d found the note…

They’d cracked it wide open, it couldn’t end like this! Not after what they’d accomplished.

Brad pushed the BMW to its limits, ignoring the repeated horns from all sides, weaving in and out of traffic as he raced toward the crime scene. His head was in a drum, knocking around in the darkness. He wasn’t thinking straight.

At least half a dozen cruisers had beat him to 2435 4th Street. Lights were flashing on four of them. Yellow tape already formed a barrier around the entrance to the courtyard inside. Spectators hung back on the street and under two large trees, watching. Low-rent district. The rental information would take them nowhere; the Bride Collector was too careful, too smart.

Brad stepped over the yellow tape and flashed his badge at an officer. He might have said, “FBI,” but he wasn’t sure. His eyes were on the open door across the courtyard, up on the second floor where several more police stood talking quietly.

He ran. Through the entrance, up steel stairs, down the walkway, past two uniforms at the door, into an unfurnished apartment. Someone was saying, “Hey, hey!” behind him, telling him to slow down. But he couldn’t get to the room quickly enough.

And then he was there, in the room down the hall marked as the crime scene. The room was empty except for a plainclothes detective, a uniformed officer. And Nikki.

She was on the wall and she was wearing a white lace veil.

“FBI, out!” He flashed his credentials. “Both of you, out now.”

“Now, hold on just-”

Brad grabbed the detective by his shirt and shoved him toward the door. “This is my partner, this is my case, now get out!”

They stumbled out and he slammed the door behind them, breathing as heavily from what was on the wall as from the run. He turned slowly and faced her.

Nikki’s skin was like ivory, drained of life. Naked except for her underwear. Her arms were spread wide and her head tilted to her right so that her dark hair draped over her shoulder. Eyes closed, lips ruby with lipstick, fingernails manicured and polished.

She’d been positioned exactly as the others. But she was in an apartment. And there was a small pool of her blood on the carpet beneath her feet. The Bride Collector had left without plugging her wounds. He’d taken the bucket of blood and left her dead.

Brad slid down the door to his seat, gripped his face with both hands, and cried.

THE BUZZ AT the bottom of Quinton Gauld’s brain had come and gone repeatedly since the last favorite, Nikki Holden, had turned it on. Her absurd accusation that everything he was doing was a pathetic attempt to become God’s favorite was outrageous. He was no hunchbacked freak willing to serve his master in any capacity to win favor. She hadn’t said quite as much but he knew that she was thinking precisely this.

He’d delivered her to God two days ago, and he was now sure that she had indeed been chosen because of her mental illness, as God’s way of reaching out to all the world. Because God loved them all, even the densest of the dense. And especially him.

He dismissed Nikki’s claim.

Quinton walked to his kitchen and opened the refrigerator, hungry for a snack. Maybe some peanut butter on a slice of orange. Organic peanut butter. Nature’s Choice.

He pulled out the jar, chose a particularly large orange from the fruit bowl, washed it thoroughly, and sliced it up while thinking ahead. Back on track.

He’d done his part and now he could focus on the prize at the end of his race. On the true bride. The most beautiful woman in the world, without exception. He’d watched her for years, waiting, knowing that in the fullness of time he would take her and present her blameless to her suitor, a perfect bride.

Quinton knew just how perfect she was because he had known her. Not in the biblical sense, although not for a lack of trying. But she hadn’t appreciated his advances, and now he understood that she’d been right to save herself for God. She was a virgin, he was sure of it.

What was particularly tricky about the final bride was that she must come willingly. Not just die willingly, but join him of her own accord.

He’d considered a thousand scenarios over the years leading up to this date. Stepping out on the sidewalk with a bright smile. “Hello, Angel. Remember me?” She’d likely slap him and scream rape.

He might send her boxes of chocolates with sweet notes, pretending to be a handsome man with a heart of gold inviting her to dinner. But she wasn’t the kind who met strangers for dinner.

He even considered getting plastic surgery and attempting to win her as a suitor, but he wasn’t confident in his ability to pretend long enough to earn her trust. She undoubtedly had many potential suitors, and the only reason she wasn’t yet married was because she could afford to be picky. Any man with more than half a brain would fall for her, not that there was an abundance of those.

He’d eventually narrowed his options down to a couple that might work if he was very clever, one involving her family. And now Rain Man had inserted himself into the picture, like a gift from God, allowing Quinton to settle on a plan so perfect that it gave him chills.

The only problem was this buzzing in his brain. This buzz, buzz, buzz. The onset of a particularly harsh psychotic break, the doctors would say. Truth was, he was the poster child for psychosis. But so few really understood psychosis.

Quinton sat at his table and wiped a small portion of peanut butter on a slice of orange, then placed the whole circle in his mouth, peel and all. So many nutrients in the orange peel.

See (and he waved a finger in the air as he thought this), people didn’t understand the nature of psychosis. It was defined as being out of touch with reality. Psychosis was a thought disorder, like schizophrenia, which disconnected one from reality, unlike multiple-personality disorder, which caused the afflicted to split. The former was very common, the latter was extremely rare.

Over time, the world had attempted to correct psychosis with myriad inhuman treatments, ranging from electric shock to carving out parts of the brain with a knife. In the same way that the world now cringed in memory of such treatments, it would one day cringe at having drugged up the afflicted and locked them in prisons as if they were witches.

There was a growing suggestion among scientists that psychosis was a sign of evolutionary progress, the brain’s way of growing brighter, at least in some cases. Like Quinton’s.

In truth, being “out of touch with reality” could only occur when one understood reality itself. Quinton’s superior mind was indeed out of touch with the world’s understanding of reality, yet supremely in touch with a higher reality, largely misunderstood by the world.

Namely, the spiritual reality, which gave him purpose and destiny. The smooth texture of peanut butter combined with sweet popping orange-such a perfect snack, it should be called a food group all by itself. Some probably would think peanut butter with oranges strange. What they failed to see was that from another perspective, they were strange.