The Collected Souls, page 1
The Collected Souls
Mallory Spencer
Copyright © 2025 by Mallory Spencer
All rights reserved.
No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher or author, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.
Developmental editing by Larissa Melo Pienkowski: https://www.lmpeditorial.com/about
Copyediting by Rebecca Brewer: https://www.brewereditorialservices.com/
Proofreading by Heather Hudec: https://simplyspellboundedits.com
Print format ISBN: 979-8-9988896-0-8
ebook format ISBN: 979-8-9988896-1-5
Publishing house: mountainlightspress.com.
TRIGGER WARNINGS ON FINAL PAGE
For Kate. Whether it was the sibling rivalry or the world I saw you create (who really knows), you inspired me to write.
Contents
1. Tess
2. The Keeper
3. Tess
4. The Keeper
5. Tess
6. The Keeper
7. Tess
8. The Keeper
9. Tess
10. The Keeper
11. Tess
12. The Keeper
13. Tess
14. The Keeper
15. Tess
16. The Keeper
17. Tess
18. The Keeper
19. Tess
20. The Keeper
21. Tess
22. The Keeper
23. Tess
24. The Keeper
25. Tess
26. The Keeper
27. Tess
28. The Collector
29. The Keeper
30. Tess
31. The Keeper
32. Tess
33. The Keeper
34. Tess
35. The Keeper
36. Tess
37. The Keeper
38. Tess
39. The Keeper
40. Tess
41. The Keeper
42. Tess
43. The Keeper
44. Tess
45. The Keeper
46. Tess
47. The Keeper
48. Tess
49. The Keeper
50. Tess
51. Thane
Acknowledgments
About the author
Trigger Warnings
1
Tess
Fuck Hunter. Fuck him. Me, cheat on him?
I clench and unclench my fists as I stride down a crowded Court Street, largely unimpeded due to the other pedestrians looking at me askance and jumping out of my way.
I snort to myself. All I could think to retort was a basic “Go to hell!”?
I’m so wrapped up in my rage that I nearly miss the turn onto West Union Street. With a harrumph, I pivot and begin searching for Ada’s silver Corolla.
Where is she? She said she was parked near Jackie O’s.
A fat drop of cold rain strikes my face. I screw up my face in anticipation of a downpour (and maybe a tantrum).
“Teresa! Tess!” The sound of my name in a familiar voice cuts through my haze of anger, and I trace it back to a person with bubblegum-pink braids standing next to a silver car, waving wildly with a broad smile.
Almost instantly my fury begins to ebb. Despite myself, I almost smile.
God, it has been a long afternoon. But it is over, and I can move on from it.
Well, it’s more than a single afternoon that I need to move on from, but I’d prefer not to dwell on that right now. And seeing Ada’s face, I don’t even want to simmer on it. I’ll simmer when I’m alone, in a few hours.
Ada shrieks and dives into her car as the dark clouds above release their burden all at once.
I yelp and sprint the last few yards to her car and jump into the passenger seat.
“Hellurrr!” My best friend and roommate greets me with a laugh as rain hammers on the roof of the vehicle.
I bring my almost-smile into a full smile as I echo her hearty greeting.
As I relax into the seat, I check that my phone didn’t get too wet (it didn’t, but it’s almost dead). My gaze slides from the battery icon to the lock screen wallpaper.
Hunter, arm around his black labrador, smiles at me from the screen.
Instantly any pleasure at seeing Ada evaporates. I press my lips together and shove the phone deep into my purse.
Rat bastard.
Ada pulls us away from the curb and turns down the Portugal. The Man song that plays barely loud enough to hear over the rain. She glances at me. “Uh-oh.”
I scowl at her. “What?”
“Don’t talk to me like that; you can’t intimidate me,” she teases. “But ‘uh-oh’ as in, ‘I know that look and someone got on your bad side.’”
I don’t answer.
“Wait, was it Hunter?” The humor vanishes from her voice. “You two were just on a date, right?”
“Yeah,” I mutter. “It was Hunter.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
Before I can think of whether I do, a blinding flash of gold light sears my retinas. I screw my eyes shut and hold up my hand to block the light.
“Agh!” cries Ada. The car swerves slightly. “Goddamn, that is some lightning! Never seen any so bright.”
I blink away the afterimage, but it doesn’t appear to be in the shape of lightning—it just seems to me that the whole dang sky lit up at once.
And… I don’t hear any thunder.
Maybe the rain is too loud to hear thunder? I bite my lip.
“Are you okay, Tess?” Ada jolts me back to the reality of my life as it stands now.
I close my eyes, rub my forehead with one hand. “I don’t wanna talk about it,” I say flatly.
“Okay.”
We ride without speaking from Athens to Jacksonville, an eternity I fill by taking deep breaths and trying not to implode from Hunter’s assholery. My eyes burn (hopefully from the effort of holding off disaster and not from anything else).
“I’m bored with my music,” Ada says abruptly. She unplugs the aux cord from her phone and hands it to me without taking her eyes off the road. “Play some of your own.”
Her gesture, even so small, makes my throat tighten. Don’t you dare fucking cry, Tess. “Thanks,” I force out. After a few moments of pondering, I settle on George Ezra’s Wanted on Voyage to soothe my soul. I start with “Over the Creek” and close my eyes, letting the music wash over me and assuage the inflammation of my soul.
It stops raining by the time we reach my parents’ home, the blue two-story house I grew up in, fronted with a child’s dream of a yard and surrounded by woods.
Without warning, my reality whacks me upside the head the moment Ada puts the car in park; my anger snap-freezes into dread, and I find myself unable to move.
Ada swings her legs out of the car before noticing that I haven’t budged. “Are you good to do this? We can go home now if you want.”
Hunter’s words blare on repeat through my head.
Oh shit, I can’t do this. My breath hitches.
“Hey,” Ada says in a reassuring voice, “just because you’ve known for a year today, doesn’t mean you have to tell them now.”
Ada and I had planned this family dinner to tell my parents I’m bi, a year to the day after I had learned about this part of myself.
The same day I’d intended to come out to Hunter.
The same day I did come out to Hunter.
“I’m fine,” I lie, steeling myself for whatever might come next and climbing out of the car.
“Hi!” I call out as I enter the front door, taking off my shoes.
“We have arriiiiived!” sings Ada from just behind me.
“Hi, Tess!” my mom calls back. Her voice comes from the back of the house.
Ada and I follow her voice to the kitchen, the delicious smell of alfredo sauce strengthening along the way.
My stomach growls. I’d had lunch what seems like a lifetime ago, decades before Hunter had said what he did.
I round the corner into the kitchen and can’t help but release a shocked bark of laughter—my parents have draped themselves in white bedsheets. They wave their arms around underneath the cloth, and upon hearing me laugh, they begin to wail in a manner reminiscent of ghosts in old children’s cartoons.
“What do you think of our Halloween costumes?” the taller white form moaned.
“Did you…forget to cut eyeholes or what?” I ask. “Can you see anything?”
“Noooooo,” the shorter supposed ghost howls. “Your father and I didn’t want to ruin perfectly good sheets!”
“Oh my god.” I shake my head. “Are these seriously going to be your costumes?”
The taller form throws off the sheet to reveal my father. “Nah,” he answers in a normal voice. “We’re planning on being Medusa and a petrified victim.”
“Oh, nice!” Ada says.
“Thanks,” my dad replies. He looks down at his companion. “Are you done playing ghost, Maureen? I’m hungry.”
My mother scoffs, tossing off her own sheet. “Didn’t you have a late lunch?”
“Yes. What’s your point?”
Ada breaks in. “Hey, Asher. How are midterms going for your class?”
My dad beams and commences rambling about the inorganic chemistry class he teaches at the local university, where I had studied nursing for a year before dropping out and working full-time at a local bookstore.
I chew my lip, zoning out of their conversation. Do I even want to tell my parents tonight? Tell them I’m bi, and/or that I broke up with Hunter? I mean, Hunter is pretty freaking likely to come up, considering we’d been dating for three years, and he is (was) a significant reason why I decided to go back to college next year.
We’ve migrated to the table and begun eating when my mom pulls me back to the plane of existence I typically reside in. “Have you completed your re-enrollment form yet? The early action deadline is next month, right?”
“November 15th,” I reply absentmindedly, dragging some pasta around in sauce with a fork. “And no, I haven’t.”
“Are you ever going to tell us what you want to major in this time?” my dad teases.
My throat tightens. I slowly set down my fork, staring at the blue-and-white-striped placemat. “Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies,” I whisper.
There’s only a heartbeat between my words and any response, but it’s long enough for my eyes to burn with tears.
“Honey, that’s great!” my mom exclaims. “But what’s wrong?”
I swallow without looking up. “Hunter and I broke up.”
“Oh, honey,” my mom murmurs.
I shake my head frantically. “No. I don’t want pity right now. I don’t really even want sympathy right now. I don’t want to talk about it, I don’t want to think about it. Not right now. Please, can we pretend that everything is normal?” My being starts to crack apart.
No one says anything.
Then Ada clears her throat. “Well. I have something to admit: I made a huge mess out of the kitchen during lunch today when trying to fix stroganoff. I think I cleaned it all, but if you find something splattered say, on the kitchen wall, Tess, I hope you can forgive me.”
Somehow I make it through the rest of dinner without imploding.
And without telling my parents what I really wanted to tell them. I can’t. I just can’t.
Ada and I say our goodbyes and drive back toward the apartment in silence, no music to cushion reality or distract from it.
Meanwhile, I try to glue my cracked self back into one piece, so I don’t fall apart entirely.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Ada asks about halfway to Athens.
I think back to what he said to me that solidified the need for a break-up. “Yeah, I don’t know. I just thought I could trust him. He fooled me for three years.” I shrug miserably. “I just—I don’t know.”
“I’m sorry, Tess.”
I shrug again, not wanting to say anything more.
About five minutes away from our apartment, Ada starts patting down her pockets. She swears. “Tess, I think I forgot my flash drive in the library when I was there this morning. Do you mind if we stop by so I can see if it’s there?”
“Yeah, sure,” I say glumly. When will the glue dry? Will it have a chance, or will I shatter before then?
We soon enough pull up in front of the university library. Ada, parking the car on the edge of the road, turns on the hazard lights and runs inside.
I slouch in my seat and stare at the building after my friend. After a few moments of scanning the façade, something catches my eye.
Something that had never been there before: a red door.
I stare vacantly at it for a while, trying to comprehend its presence. Cardinal red, frame and all, with a brass doorknob, it looks like the entrance to someone’s home. But what is it doing there, against the solid brick wall of the library? What is its purpose, considering there is no corresponding door on the inside?
It must be some college student prank.
My eyes drift away but are immediately drawn back when the door opens inward (into the wall?) and out spills light and a person. Both collapse onto the sidewalk.
I straighten in alarm. When the person crumpled on the sidewalk doesn’t move, I hurriedly unbuckle my seatbelt and exit the car. I run across the empty street to where the warm light, much like midday sunlight, illuminates the motionless body.
Before me lies a rangy, brown-skinned man, perhaps in his mid-to-late-twenties. Blood trickles from his nose and from beneath his rather floppy dark hair.
I check for breath and a pulse as soon as I reach him—both present, both steady.
I remove the bandana holding back my hair and press it against the cut I find along his hairline. Meanwhile, I glance along the length of his body, wondering if he has any identification or emergency contacts on his person.
The only thing I can glean is that he has a vaguely unusual fashion sense: he sports a battered navy jacket, a white sash around his waist, Bangs high tops, and…what looks like a pocket watch hanging from his neck?
I survey my surroundings to see if anyone else is around. No one is here; everyone must be busy partying or studying for midterms; it is a Saturday night in October, after all.
With one hand, I pat my pockets for my phone. I curse when I pull it out to find it dead.
Is there anyone on the other side of the door? Fear rises in my throat when it occurs to me that maybe this man had been hurt by someone on the other side. That fear turns to terror when I see what lies on the other side of the door.
Because it is not the inside of the library. Nor is it a brick wall.
There stands before me a cavernous cylindrical room ten stories high and ringed by walkways and doors. Doors of all colors and designs, scores of them. More walkways and even stairs arch across the room, connecting one level to another. Vines and flowers drape over handrails and snake up the wall, fed from above by a bright light almost like the sun’s. Directly across the room is a mirror, three feet high and ten feet long. Below that is a console of the same length covered in all sorts of buttons and switches.
I swallow and turn back to the man. Who the fuck is he?
As if in response to my thought, he opens his eyes. “Rhys?” He looks up at me but seems unable to focus on my face. “Rhys—where is she?”
I withdraw slowly to avoid startling him into action. My heart hammers in my chest.
With effort, he sits up, swaying slightly. He runs his hand over his face.
The blood and cut vanish. Not smeared, not wiped onto his hand, just gone. Entirely.
I gasp and jump to my feet.
His eyes focus and fall on me. His eyebrows shoot upward. “Teresa?”
“Wh—? H—how do you—?” I can’t even choke out how does this stranger know my fucking name.
The man stares off into the distance, exhales strongly. His eyebrows knit together before he turns back to me. “Where are we?” His voice is urgent.
“Uh… Athens? Ohio? United States.”
Why did I just answer that? I should probably be running the fuck away from here.
“What is your national language? What is the most popular book in the world? How is your calendar organized?” He speaks so quickly, and in an accent I don’t think I recognize, that for a second I can’t understand him. As he reels off the questions, he makes his way to his feet.
“Are you serious? What the fuck?”
“Tell me.”
“We don’t have a national language, but it’s basically English. Probably the Bible, but I’m not sure, and don’t ask which version. What was the last question?”
He shoves his hands into his hair. “Deep hells, this is number twenty-six. How is it the twenty-sixth?”
I find this an excellent moment to creep toward the library doors.
I’m halfway there when he snaps his gaze back to me. “Teresa. She will be coming after you next.”
“Oh, hell no. I am not entertaining shit. Goodbye.” I hurry to the entrance.
Before I can get more than two feet farther away, a strong hand snaps around my wrist.
I shriek and struggle to free myself.
“I’m sorry,” the stranger says. “But I’d rather you not get far away from the ISERE. See, the Collector is coming for you.”
I clench my jaw to keep it from trembling as I try to figure out what the word ahy-sare-ee is. “Um, do you speak in the third person sometimes? Are you this Collector?”
“No, I am the Keeper. The Collector is like bone—signifying death, with white hair, white skin, white dress.”
“Y-you’re insane.”
Am I the insane one? There’s no way a man fell out of a door that opened into a brick wall. There’s no way a room exists on the other side of said door. There’s no way I could have really come across a stranger who knows my name and says such bizarre things.
