by Will Carver
She buys into it and agrees.
I think I may just want to see her, to have that kind of company again. To break my current routine. To remind me of Audrey. I function better when I feel guilt. Self-reproach is my fuel.
I arrive at her place in South London wearing the same clothes I wore to work, my suit and shirt – no tie. That way it is still work; it does not look like I have made an effort. Apart from the bottle of wine.
I tap my knuckles loudly against the mottled window of her front door and look around cautiously to see whether anybody noticed. Two urban foxes creep past on the pavement. A figure descends from the stairs that lie directly behind the door. I hear her rustle the chain then she opens the door to greet me.
‘Detective David,’ she smiles, ‘do come in.’
The sleek hair, perfectly applied make-up and fitted suit are gone. Her hair seems more natural, less styled, and her skin is somehow more pure. She is wearing dark blue jeans, which hold all the right shapes of her legs, and a simple white T-shirt, also tight but flattering. Her feet are bare and delicate.
I hand her the wine and stutter something about my gratitude to her for taking the time out to help. She thanks me but says we won’t need any this evening.
She leads the way upstairs and I follow, my gaze fixed on the way her body moves from behind, remembering Audrey’s legs and buttocks and back and neck.
And betrayal.
The hallway leads directly into a large kitchen area. Most work surfaces are covered with flowers. It seems excessive but I realise it must be part of the Ostara celebrations as the route down another set of stairs into the garden is lined with blossoms too. This is where she wants to take me first.
‘I have beer or mead, if you are interested,’ she offers, setting the wine down on an out-of-the-way surface. I remember that this is the traditional choice for drinking this evening and hope I haven’t offended her with the wine.
‘Mead would be great.’ I don’t like it but I think it may go some way to showing my commitment to this process.
I ask whether we will be going anywhere tonight.
‘There are celebrations of all sorts. Some Sabbats I enjoy sharing with others, some I prefer to be solitary. If you’d like to get involved though …’
‘Oh, er, thanks but I think I might get more from observation, you know?’ I take a nervous sip of the drink, trying not to grimace at the bitterness.
‘That’s fine.’ She smiles that faultlessly straight-teeth smile. ‘Follow me outside.’
The yard outside is lit with white candles. It is paved, with a wooden table, six chairs and bench decorating it. There are several potted plants to add colour and a large timber rectangle full of home-grown herbs.
She lights a scented wood and incants words in different directions of her inner-city garden.
‘I am offering the cedar to the four directions and praying to the Great Spirit,’ she explains.
I nod in acknowledgement.
‘The cedar not only acts as a purifier but it also attracts the good energies.’
This is the first time that she has really spoken in the way people stereotype this belief. Wishy-washy. Flowery.
I wonder whether the killer is performing something similar at this moment. Perhaps the taking of Graham White’s life was the killer’s purification ceremony.
‘Any other questions?’
‘No. It’s all very clear, thanks.’ I sip politely at the mead.
‘Then, please, follow me back inside for the smudging.’
Inside she takes what looks like a wand and lights the edge. The distinct smell of sage is emitted and I follow her around the house as she waves her hand to force the smoke in the direction she desires.
‘It’s important to get it into the corners because energy gathers in these places and festers over the winter months. This drives out the negative entities and protects the area.’
I wish that would work on my mind.
I glean very little about the Wiccan life from watching her perform these rituals but I enjoy her company. Before I realise, she is topping up my glass and we are leaning against the kitchen cupboards talking about the case.
Her insights are valuable; I have a strong sense of the killer. But that is not why I am here.
Eventually, we slide our bodies down to the floor until I am leaning against the cupboard which holds her saucepans, one leg stretched out, the other with a knee pointing towards the ceiling. She sits cross-legged next to me, facing my profile.
I feel comfortable.
And I tell her about The Two and the things I have seen.
She does not judge.
‘I’m standing up this time but half blind; only my left eye can see. Blinking furiously, I start to panic, maniacally shaking my head from side to side, hoping my right eye will kick in. As I look down towards my feet, I notice a line. A perfectly straight line that bisects my body, cutting half into light and half into darkness. I breathe to steady myself again.’
She nods and drinks beer from a tumbler, never taking her eyes from mine, allowing me to talk without embarrassment.
‘I look ahead, my left pupil a speck, my right, a saucer. But The Two are not where they should be. They are closer this time. They are either side of me. To my left is the girl, I’m certain, five metres from where I stand, the closest I have ever been to her. She shuffles from her left foot to her right, the rhythm bringing my breathing back to an acceptable level. But I can only hear her.’
She cannot be seen.
‘Ostara is a time of balance,’ Alison observes. ‘Black and white. Blindness and sight. But you already knew when the next murder was likely to take place so they must be trying to tell you something else.’
She believes me. She hears that I have vivid, cryptic visions the day before a murder is committed and she does not scoff or placate. She listens. She makes suggestions.
She helps.
I continue. ‘The boy joins in to my right. In the darkness. Copying her tempo, he wears all black. He is the same distance away from me. I can see him. His eyes flash purple. They flash green. Yellow. In the air I taste sweetness. I taste sugar. Honey. Then the boy beckons me as he did before. I look left for the girl.’
‘You feel safer with her?’
‘Perhaps. Yes. Is that significant?’
‘Maybe. At some point.’ She sips her drink again.
‘She is waving at me. Shaking her head in slow-motion. Exaggerating her movements as if talking in sign language. I can’t see her, but somehow I know this.’
I explain how I attempt to move towards the boy and he drops down into the darkness ten feet for every step I take. All the while, staring at me, tempting me nearer.
‘The closer you want to get, the further he falls,’ Alison chimes in with her suggestion.
‘I thought that maybe they were trying to tell me where the murder would take place. Somewhere with three levels or a lift, maybe. But that doesn’t fit with the church where we found the victim. I couldn’t feel the cold this time so I knew it was inside but that’s it.’ I gulp down half a glass of the mead I now have a taste for; my mouth is dry from all the talking.
Now more animated I move to my knees so that I face my new friend and I impart the final section of my vision.
‘I take a step towards the light; my blind side. Looking back over my shoulder, I see that the boy has fallen to his knees and that his eyes are shut. The flashing has stopped. With each new step I take towards the girl I turn back, like an ant ensuring his path in the sunshine. The boy doesn’t move. The gradient alters and I find myself moving downwards. Three steps. Four. My hands are stretched out in front of me and, on the fifth step, they touch something.’
‘The girl?’ she questions, open-mouthed.
I nod, bouncing excitedly.
‘I look back to the boy. But he is gone. The girl waves her hands and shakes her head only centimetres from where my hand had just been. She is trying to tell me s
omething.’
Gesturing to a blind man.
Screaming silently to a man who can’t hear.
‘As I turn back to the girl, the boy appears behind her, holding a large piece of black cloth. He lifts it up, illuminating the white figure briefly before me, then throws it over the girl, dropping us all into black and I wake up.’
I settle back down, sitting on my heels. Alison picks out the segments she feels she understands as Wiccan. The scents, the black cloak, the pursuit of balance. She suggests that, perhaps, The Two are not representative of murderer and victim.
‘Maybe there are two killers.’
Disciple murderers could fit the profile.
But I do not get the sense from my visions that they are working together. It is their opposition that creates balance. The crime scenes also suggest someone working alone.
‘Perhaps that is why the faiths seem so muddled,’ she adds.
Alison is wrong about the case but correct about my visions. She has helped me unpick more of their meaning and place within the case.
In a position where our faces are so close, the alcohol coursing through our blood, a seemingly successful decryption of The Two’s message, I feel I want to thank her, kiss her. This would be the opportunity.
But Audrey will not let me.
Beltane
May 2009
Celeste
GOD OF THE green,
Lord of the forest.
I offer you my sacrifice.
I ask you for your blessing.
Tonight is a time when mortals and faery are close; the opposite to Samhain. This is the time of the green man, consort of the goddess.
When we welcome in summer.
The festival of fire and fertility brings with it another victim.
Someone else to be saved.
You are the deer in rut,
mighty Horned one,
who roams the open woods,
the hunter circling round the oak,
the antlers of the wild stag,
the lifeblood that spills upon the ground each season.
Tonight, on this final darkness in April, as we welcome in the dawn of the new month, myself and my captor are closer than ever, sharing this date, the importance of this time is equalled.
*
God of the green,
Lord of the forest.
I offer you my sacrifice.
I ask you for your blessing.
Many rituals are taking place around the heath. Nobody sees me. I walk like a ghost. I work alone.
Undetected.
Undetectable.
Behind me, a large bonfire grows, illuminating the night sky, ushering in the dawn. The women wear circles of flowers on their heads, some men wear antlers. The god of the forest has chased the May Queen around the roaring flames three times, and their passionate kiss has turned into something far more erotic. The on-looking partners, after banging their drums loudly and chanting, form their own coital partnerships. Some are merely covered with a blanket on the grass, some move further into the woods. Sometimes a man will leave with another man, and sometimes a woman will take a woman.
I am in the wooded area with a woman.
Laura Noviss.
She is already dead.
My ritual is almost complete.
In the darkness of the undergrowth, the man who calls himself V watches me. Wanting to take me now. Knowing he cannot.
He tells himself that I won’t get away with this.
With the girl kneeling in front of me, shadowed by trees, I take the bag from my shoulders and empty the contents. A white candle, a bowl, a bottle of water, five perfectly formed pebbles and a bottle of wine as an offering.
I feel him watching me.
And surround myself with an unbroken line of salt.
Now I am protected.
Because I believe.
‘I am Celeste Varrick,’ I pronounce out loud, ‘and I stand before you, goddesses of the sky and earth and sea. I honour you, for your blood runs through my veins. One woman, standing on the edge of the universe. On this night, I make an offering in your names.’
I kneel down opposite the dead girl and place the large white candle between us. I dig a small hole, burying half of the candle and patting it tight so that it does not move and cannot fall.
I light the candle and make the offering of the wine, opening the bottle and pouring half onto the earth between us, the two women present. Again, I rise to my feet and call upon Isis, Ishtar, Tiamat, Inanna, Shakti and Cybele, the mothers of the ancient people.
‘Your strength has flown through me,’ I declare. ‘Your wisdom has given me knowledge.’
The one who calls himself V digs his fingers into the bark of the tree he hides behind.
On this night of all nights his anger can transform into lust. Tonight, especially, all emotion ends in lust.
I drop back to my knees. I place the bowl in front of my circle and fill it with the water from my bottle.
A branch snaps in the blackness of the woods where the one I will come to know as V is invisibly pacing.
This is venom transforming into lust.
‘I am Celeste Varrick and I kneel before you to honour the sacred that have touched my heart.’
I drop the first pebble inside the bowl and announce, ‘I honour Lily Kane, who showed me the way. My maidenhead.’
I give her a short moment of silence.
I repeat the process three more times aloud.
I honour Totty Fahey.
I honour Talitha Palladino.
I honour Graham White.
All who have passed.
Each receiving their own moment of reflection.
With the fifth and final stone, I retain my focus on the girl ahead of me; she is my dark reflection. I drop the stone and silently, in my head, I say, ‘And I honour you, for you are the most special of all.’ I do not yet know her name. She was chosen only for her weakness.
I finish by standing and stating that, ‘I am Celeste Varrick and I honour myself, for my strength, my creativity, my knowledge, my inspiration and for all the remarkable things that make me a woman. For everything I am now and yet to become.’
Looking to the sky, I feel the heat on my back and the top of my head from the blaze behind me. I sense the sexual desire and lasciviousness that breeds and multiplies around me in the grass. I tremble, a fulfilled shudder as the one who calls himself V sinks his gaze into my breast.
Hatred metamorphosing into a desperate urge.
I try to focus my attention back to the girl with no life in her, the latest victim, whose journey is just beginning. I attempt to meditate on the ritual and reflect on the feminine energy. Those around me are part of this ceremony without knowing. I need them.
With passions high I exit the circle, making myself vulnerable, and I run. Sprinting across the green, leaving my candle to burn out, vacating my altar, travelling in the opposite direction to the man.
He watches me disappear into the crowd, waiting for my golden hair to cease from shining as I pass the spitting embers of the celebratory inferno. And, when I am gone, when consternation gives way to rationality, he makes his way over to see what I have done to the girl.
He is there when I disappear.
He is seen when I am not.
For him I am the darkness and he is the light.
His eyes cover the entire scene and surrounding area. He looks over his shoulder at the merriment that continues on the heath, the participants unaware of the brutality that lies yards from their frivolity.
He bends down, blows out the candle.
And leaves.
Not everyone can be saved.
V
I LEAN AGAINST the back of the door to my flat; my forearms and hands rest against the wood, my head not quite touching the door, looking down at the floor between my feet. I feel relieved to be home.
The scene of Celeste Varrick’s ritual still lingers in my mind, keeping me on the
edge of seething rage and, alarmingly, carnal explosion. The confines of my own haven soothe me and I take a few deep breaths to attempt some calm.
But this is an important night.
And I can’t shake this feeling.
Soon, I find myself rocking, unable to remain still. Incapable of focusing. I swing my hips from side to side. Left to right. Left to right. I rock back on my heels and tap my toes on the floor. I breathe again, out through my mouth, a long, drawn-out breath.
In through my nose. Then out through my nose. My nostrils flaring. My breathing hastens again, in through my nose, out through my nose, until I am panting and rocking and tapping my feet, until it builds within me and I release with a five-second clamour, pounding my fists rhythmically against the wood of the door.
Gail hears this from her apartment across the hall.
I run both hands over my face as I turn to the living room, brushing my stubble in both directions, the bottle of Merlot on the table screaming at me.
I am gulping down the earthy claret liquid by the mouthful when somebody bangs against the door from the other side.
‘Sam? Sam?’ Gail’s voice calls out in between rasps. ‘Is everything all right?’
She waits a moment.
My eyes widen, as if I can see her through the wood.
I glimpse left at the room I will soon keep Celeste contained within. So she can no longer interfere with these people
Gripping the bottle by the neck in my left hand I stride towards the door.
‘Sam.’ She knocks again, harder this time. ‘Sa—’
I open the door and drag her in by her blouse, creasing it instantly. She tries to open her mouth to ask me what is going on, but I have her inside the flat by this time, the door closed behind her. I press her up against it while forcing my lips onto hers.
Initially she tries to shake her head from side to side but I am too strong for her.
I release my grip on the bottle but it doesn’t break as it hits the floor. I use this hand to grab hold of Gail’s left leg, plunging my fingers around her hamstring and levering her knee up to my waist. Leaning my chest on her breasts puts more weight on her, pinning her back in position.