John Connolly - The Unquiet

And as she reached the kitchen door, she found it within herself to look straight at the man in the booth, and her eyes were bright with fear and anger and shame before she vanished from sight.

“What did you do to her?” I asked.

“Do?” He sounded genuinely surprised. His voice was surprisingly soft. “I did nothing. She is what she is. Her morals are lax. I merely reminded her of it.”

“And how do you know that?”

“Ways and means.”

“She’d done you no harm.”

The Collector pursed his lips in disapproval.

“I’m disappointed in you. Perhaps your morals are as lax as hers. Whether she had done me harm or not is irrelevant. The fact remains that she is a whore, and she will be judged as such.”

“By you? I don’t think you’re fit to judge anyone.”

“I don’t pretend to be. Unlike you,” he added, with just a hint of malice. “I am not the judge, but the application of judgment. I do not sentence, but I carry out the punishment.”

“And keep souvenirs of your victims.”

The Collector spread his hands before me.

“What victims? Show them to me. Display for me the bones.”

Now, although we had spoken before, I noticed for the first time the careful way in which he expressed himself, and the occasional strange locutions that emerged when he did. Display for me the bones. There was a trace of something foreign to his accent, but it was impossible to place. It seemed to come from anywhere and nowhere, just like him.

His hands closed into fists. He allowed only his right index finger to remain extended.

“But you…I smelled you in my house. I marked the places where you had lingered, you and the others who came with you.”

“We were looking for Merrick.” It sounded like I was trying to justify the trespass. Perhaps I was.

“But you did not find him. From what I hear, he found you. You are fortunate to be alive after crossing such a man.”

“Did you set him on me, like you set him on Daniel Clay and on his daughter? Like you set him on Ricky Demarcian?”

“Did I set him on Daniel Clay?” The Collector touched an index finger to his lower lip, a simulation of thoughtfulness. His lips parted slightly, and I glimpsed his crooked teeth, blackening at the roots. “Perhaps I have no interest in Daniel Clay, or his daughter. As for Demarcian, well, the loss of a life is always regrettable, but in some cases it is less regrettable than in others. I suspect few will mourn his absence from the world. His employers will find another to take his place, and the deviants will congregate around him like flies on a wound.

“But we were talking about your intrusion upon my privacy. At first, I must confess that I was aggrieved. You forced me to move part of my collection. But when I considered the situation, I was grateful. I knew that we were destined to meet again. You could say that we move in the same circles.”

“I owe you for the last time we met in one of those circles.”

“You would not give me what I wanted-no, what I needed . You left me no choice. Nevertheless, I apologize for any hurt I inflicted. It appears to have caused no lasting damage.”

It was strange. I should have taken him there and then. I should have rained blows upon him in retribution. I wanted to break his nose and his teeth. I wanted to force him to the floor and shatter his skull with the heel of my boot. I wanted to see him burn, his ashes scattering to the four winds. I wanted his blood on my hands and my face. I wanted to lick it from my lips with the tip of my tongue. I-

I stopped. The voice in my head was mine, yet it was echoed by another. Silken tones goaded me.

“You see?” said the Collector, even though his lips did not move. “You see how easy it could be? Do you want to try? Do you want to punish me? Come, do it. I am alone.”

But that was a lie. It was not only the Collector that those in the bar had chosen to ignore, if they were aware of the others at all. There was now movement in the shadows, dark on light. Faces formed at the edges of perception, then were gone, their black eyes unblinking, their ruined mouths gaping, the lines on their skin speaking of decay and absence within. In the mirror, I saw some of the businessmen push their food away half-finished. One of the afternoon drunks at the bar brushed at a presence beside his ear, swatting it away like the whine of a mosquito. I saw his lips move, repeating something that only he could hear. His hand trembled as he reached for the shot glass before him, his fingers failing to grasp it so that it slipped away from him, falling on its side and spilling amber liquid across the wood.

They were here. The Hollow Men were here.

And even if he were alone, which he was not, even if there was no sense that half-glimpsed presences trailed behind him like fragments of himself, only a fool would try to tackle the Collector. He exuded menace. He was a killer, of that I was certain. A killer just like Merrick, except Merrick took lives for money and, now, for revenge, never deluding himself into thinking that what he did was right or justified, while the Collector ended lives because he thought he had been given permission to do so. All that the two men had in common was a shared belief in the utter inconsequentiality of those whom they dispatched.

I took a deep breath. I found that I had moved forward in my seat. I sat back and tried to release some of the tension from my shoulders and arms. The Collector seemed almost disappointed.

“You think that you are a good man?” he said. “How can one tell the good from the bad when their methods are just the same?”

I didn’t answer. “What do you want?” I asked instead.

“I want what you want: to find the abusers of Andrew Kellog and the others.”

“Did they kill Lucy Merrick?”

“Yes.”

“You know that for certain.”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“The living leave one mark on the world, the dead another. It is a matter of learning to read the signs, like-” He searched for the right comparison, and clicked his fingers as he found it. “-like writing on glass, like fingerprints in dust.”

He waited for me to react, but he was disappointed.

And around us, the shadows moved.

“And you thought you’d use Frank Merrick to flush out the men responsible,” I said, as if he had not spoken those words, as if he did not seem to know things of which he could not possibly be aware.

“I thought he might be useful. Mr. Eldritch, needless to say, was not convinced, but like a good attorney, he does as his client wishes.”

“Looks like Eldritch was right. Merrick is out of control.”

The Collector conceded the point with a click of his tongue.

“It would appear so. Still, he may yet lead me to them. For the present, though, we are no longer aiding him in his searches. Eldritch has already had some awkward questions from the police. That bothers him. He has been forced to open a new file, and despite his love of paper, he has files enough as matters stand. Eldritch likes…old things.”

He rolled the words around in his mouth, savoring them.

“Are you looking for Daniel Clay?”

The Collector grinned slyly. “Why would I be looking for Daniel Clay?”

“Because children in his care were abused. Because the information that led to that abuse could have come from him.”

“And you believe that if I am looking for him, then he must be guilty, is that not right? Despite your distaste for me, it seems that perhaps you trust my judgment.”

He was right. The realization troubled me, but there was no denying the truth of what he had said. For some reason, I believed that if Clay was guilty, then the Collector would be seeking him out.