Chapter 5: The Collection Box

Chapter 5: The Collection Box

The words hung in the air, potent and suffocating. He’s here for you now. He can help you, too.

David remained pressed against the living room wall, the rough texture of the paint a grounding sensation against his back. He stared at his daughter—at the sweet, familiar face now twisted into a vessel for an ancient horror. The loving compassion in her eyes was a grotesque parody, the sympathy of a predator for its cornered prey. The revelation about Savannah had been a fault line, splitting his world in two; this was the aftershock that brought everything crashing down.

He was no longer just a grieving father. He was prey. He had been targeted, analyzed, and deemed sufficiently lonely for "help."

A new energy, born from the ashes of his despair, surged through him. It was a frantic, wild thing, clawing its way past the paralysis. Action. He needed action. He couldn't fight a whisper or a feeling, but this thing, this Mr. Pins, was leaving artifacts. The pin on his floor. The needle in Savannah’s bracelet. The drawings he’d foolishly thought he could get rid of. There had to be more. There had to be a source, a nest.

He pushed himself off the wall, his movements jerky, and stalked past Maisyn without a word. She watched him go, her head tilting with that same unnerving curiosity, as if observing a fascinating but predictable specimen.

He took the stairs two at a time, his heart hammering a frantic rhythm against his ribs. He burst into Maisyn's room, a space that had always been a sanctuary of pink-and-purple innocence. Now, it felt like enemy territory. The cheerful stuffed animals lining her shelves seemed to watch him with glass-eyed judgment. The fairy decals on the wall felt like mocking sprites. He was violating her privacy, tearing apart her sanctuary, but the time for gentle parenting was over. This was an exorcism.

He started with the obvious places. He pulled the comforter off her bed, shaking it out. Nothing. He dropped to his knees and looked underneath. Just a few dust bunnies and a forgotten sock. Her closet was next. He pushed aside the small, neat rows of dresses and t-shirts, patting down pockets, checking the floor. Nothing but a pair of light-up sneakers.

His desperation grew. He was working on pure, terrified instinct, driven by the monstrous idea that this entity had been circling his wife, and now it was nesting in his daughter’s room. He rifled through her toy chest, tossing dolls and building blocks onto the floor with a clatter. He emptied her school backpack onto the rug. Crayons, a half-eaten bag of crackers, a spelling test with a gold star sticker. It was all so painfully normal.

Was he wrong? Was he truly going insane? The thought was a cold spike of fear.

Then he saw it.

On her small white bookshelf, tucked behind a row of fairytale books about brave princesses and friendly dragons, was a small wooden box. It was plain, unvarnished pine, the kind you buy at a craft store for five dollars. It was utterly innocuous. And that, somehow, made it the most sinister thing in the room.

His hands trembled as he reached for it. It was light, and he could hear a faint, dry rattle from within. He sat on the edge of Maisyn's bed and lifted the simple, unlatched lid.

The breath caught in his throat.

The box was filled with pins.

Dozens of them. They lay in a tangled, metallic heap, a dragon’s hoard of malice. Safety pins of all sizes, long hat pins with pearlescent heads, simple sewing needles, dress pins with colorful plastic tops, and dark, rusted tacks.

But they weren't just pins. Attached to the head of each one was a small, neatly folded scrap of paper. With a shaking finger, David picked one out. It was a small silver safety pin, the kind he’d found in his coffee mug. He unfolded the tiny piece of paper attached to it. On it, written in Maisyn’s careful, looping, first-grade print, was a single name: Liam.

He dropped it as if it had burned him. His eyes scanned the chaotic collection. He saw another, a bright yellow dress pin, and knew without looking what he would find. He unfolded the paper. Chloe.

His heart pounded. He dug through the box with frantic urgency, his fingers clumsy. He found a rusty tack with a slip of paper that read Gary The Mailman. He found a sharp, slender needle marked Mrs. Starkey. It was a ledger. A collection log. Each name was a soul that had been targeted, cataloged, and marked for indoctrination. This was Mr. Pins’s trophy case, and his daughter was the curator.

He tipped the box, spilling its contents onto the pink comforter. The pins scattered, glinting under the bedroom light like malevolent stars. And near the bottom, he saw it.

It was different from the others. A single, elegant pin, the kind used to fasten a corsage. It was silver with a tiny, perfect faux pearl at its tip. It was the kind of thing Savannah would have loved, simple and beautiful. The slip of paper attached to it was slightly yellowed, as if handled more than the others.

He didn't want to look. He knew what it would say. But he had to. He unfolded the paper.

Savannah.

The name stared up at him, a ghost on the page. It was real. All of it. The whispers, the knowledge of her depression, the claim that the entity had known her. This was the proof. This was the pin she never received. A placeholder. A reservation. A monstrous IOU. A wave of nausea and grief so profound it buckled him forward. He choked back a dry sob, clutching the pin in his fist.

After a moment that felt like an eternity, he forced himself to look at the last pin left in the box. It was a hat pin, long and black-headed, identical to the one he had stepped on in his bedroom. The paper was crisp and new. He didn't need to unfold it, but he did anyway. His own name stared back at him.

David.

The final piece of the puzzle clicked into place with horrifying certainty. He wasn't the next target. He was already on the list. He had already been collected.

He heard a floorboard creak in the doorway.

He looked up. Maisyn was standing there, her small frame silhouetted by the hall light. Her face was calm, her hands clasped behind her back. She wasn't looking at him. She was looking at the spilled contents of the box on her bed.

"You found his collection," she stated. Her voice had changed. The childlike lilt was gone, replaced by a cold, flat resonance. It was the voice of a museum guard finding a vandal.

David scrambled to his feet, holding up the box as evidence, as if he were in a court of law and not a seven-year-old’s bedroom. "Maisyn, what is this? You have to tell me. We have to stop this."

She took a slow step into the room. Her eyes, when they finally met his, were not her own. They were ancient and cold and utterly devoid of love. The shift was absolute. His daughter was gone, and this other thing was looking out through her eyes.

"You shouldn't have touched it," the thing wearing Maisyn’s face said, its voice a low, chilling whisper. "He doesn't like it when people touch his things."

David flinched, a primal fear seizing him. He felt a sudden, intense drop in the temperature of the room. A cold spot, right behind him. The hairs on his neck and arms stood on end. He could feel a presence, a weight in the air, a silent, vast attention focused directly on the back of his head. He didn't dare turn around.

Maisyn’s lips curved into a slow, slight, terrible smile.

"It's rude to go through someone's things when they're in the room with you," she whispered, her gaze flicking to a point just over his shoulder. "He's standing right behind you."