The Two

by Will Carver

  Overcome with lust, I force another kiss. She moves her head back as if trying to move away, but at the same time forcing her pelvis into me a little more. I thrust as if I am already inside her, pinning her sharply upright, her buttocks slapping hard against the wood of the door.

  Using my left forearm to press her arm back, I grab a clump of her hair in my fist and tug her head back to stop her moving. We look at each other without saying a word. Her eyes are glazed with a thin film of tears.

  I release my grip slightly, allowing her to move her head freely.

  Slowly, cautiously, her chin lifts as her mouth moves closer to mine. She takes my bottom lip in between her teeth, not tightly, not biting, just enough tension to grip it firmly, and pulls at it, all the time looking me in the eyes. With a quick jerk backwards she wrenches my mouth back to hers and we kiss passionately again. She kicks her right leg up and around my waist, her thighs like pincers gripping me, writhing against me, arousing me further.

  I release my clasp of her arms so that I can unbutton my trousers. She uses her free hand to reach down in between her legs and rips her underwear ferociously to one side.

  With my trousers now loose, Gail grips me hard and eases me an inch inside her before thrusting herself downwards until I am completely swallowed within her. She lets out a guttural pant as she comes crashing down.

  This is not like the first time we had sex.

  It is, in fact, the complete opposite.

  But that night was not Beltane.

  It was not Walpurgisnacht.

  That night, it wasn’t even sex. It felt more sensual than that, more emotional. There was a physical tenderness, an emotional maturity, taking into consideration the baggage that we both brought with us to the situation.

  Tonight, we are just fucking. And, as we both land on the floor next to the wine bottle, panting, exhausted and bruised, I think of my wife.

  And I weep.

  And I blame Celeste Varrick for making me feel these things. And this is the last time she gets away with it.

  January

  IT MAKES NO sense. Tomorrow is not Beltane, it is not 1 May. Tomorrow is the day before Beltane. The last day in April.

  So, why are they here?

  I sneeze violently. The dust in this perpetual black box replicates pollen as the temperature proves warmer than usual. The sound does not echo.

  This does not feel indoors.

  Everything is black for a while.

  I wait. Sitting down, legs crossed like a schoolchild, I don’t need to reach forwards to realise that I am inside my invisible protective tubing. Alison believes that this represents the salt circle, that the killer may be trying to safeguard themselves or feels as though they are protecting the victim somehow.

  I am learning to read all over again.

  I’m not scared, I know that I just have to wait for the shuffle and, eventually, it comes.

  I remember everything for Alison.

  I can smell mown grass. The scent of flowers and wet cloth wafts its way through me. The dust and dirt being transferred from right to left only a few metres in front of me, but all is dark and I do not know which of The Two dances ahead of where I sit.

  And I see two small lights flash green.

  Then red.

  Then white.

  And I know it’s the boy.

  So I don’t feel as safe as I did a moment ago.

  Where is she?

  Then it all happens quite quickly.

  The boy drops to his knees, his eyes, a bright white, focus intently on me. I get up to my feet and his head tilts up to keep that gaze fixed on my expression. The warmth grows more fierce, as if he is radiating heat. My face starts to tighten. I start to perspire.

  His head darts quickly to his right as if hearing a noise over his shoulder.

  Then he looks back at me.

  All the while, the heat increases, somehow making the dark turn to light.

  His head looks over his shoulder again. Distracted by a sound.

  I smell something burning.

  The stench of recent fornication drifts by and sticks to the sweat beads that slide down my temples.

  Then she appears. Running into the scene from my left.

  She sprints straight towards the boy and I expect them to collide. He seems oblivious. His two bulbs are burned into my skull.

  He does not see her.

  As she gets closer to him, her partner, she avoids impact and instead chooses to run around him. Circling him again and again at speed. Punching her fists in the air, screaming her silent scream.

  The boy appears to ignore her.

  I sneeze again.

  I smell red wine.

  The boy reaches inside his pocket and pulls out a stone. As the girl continues to shout her silent profanities he launches the projectile in my direction. It hits my transparent barricade at the exact height of my face and I flinch. But no harm is done.

  She continues to run rings.

  He reaches inside his pocket again, pulls out another object, looks directly at me and launches it. Even though I am protected, even though I know he cannot harm me, my natural reaction is to recoil as it hits. My circle of protection seems to grow smaller.

  I hear the sound of a rustling crisp packet.

  I sniff in a combination of musk and dust.

  The girl slows down and walks around him this time, her hands on her hips.

  Again, he reaches inside his pocket and propels a rock in my direction.

  Her pace increases to a jog.

  The shielding squeezes in tighter on me.

  Seconds later, a fourth missile impacts my safeguard and the girl stretches out her legs to full sprint once more.

  I see light.

  In the distance, a great light rises up, taking the darkness with it.

  The boy kisses his fifth bullet. As he launches it, the white washes over him, the girl runs from it in my direction, following the rock. I see her pale face as it heads towards me.

  She seems to be whistling.

  I want to reach out to her but my arms are pinned to my side.

  But the wave of light catches her first and I wake in bed sitting bolt upright.

  My brain hurtles through the information we have uncovered and channels the musings of Alison Aeslin and her in-depth knowledge. The haze clears as I recall the intricacies of the Beltane goddess ritual, so similar to actions of The Two in my dream, and, for a brief moment, I entertain the idea that the killer may be female. I know the next victim is planned to be murdered at an outdoor location. There is quite clearly a sexual element to this so I flit back to the notion of a male killer. I still do not understand the flashing eyes but the visions are supporting the material evidence.

  I look left for Audrey, to tell her everything is all right. To reassure her it was just a bad dream. But nobody is there. Of course. Just one of Mother’s untranslated journals lying open on a double page with the never-ending, nonsensical sentence: maniswomanismaniswomanisman iswomanismaniswomanismaniswoman …

  Celeste

  I ARRIVE HOME just in time to see it. The dawn of a new day, a new time.

  Standing in front of my bedroom window, I close my eyes and lift my head to the sky. In the distance, the sun is beginning to peep over the rooftops, ushering in the new season, bringing with it all the joys of fruitful loins and high-yielding fields. The light begins to hit me, firstly on my thighs and rising higher with every passing second.

  With my eyes still shut, I place my hands at the top of my legs, stroking the brightness up my body. As it lifts, illuminating the once dark streets, I place both hands between my legs, gently caressing the May lustre towards my stomach, hoping it slows its steady ascent.

  I leave my left hand where it is, working around in small anti-clockwise circles; my right hands strokes upwards to my stomach as the effulgence creeps up my body. I grip my stomach tightly as the skin warms, half of me now awash with gratitude.

  The line
of darkness lifts above my breast; I feel it, this is change. I embrace my left breast strongly, working my fingertips across my heart to the right where I brush in softer, slower lines. My left hand continues, increasing in pace, bringing the pleasure I feel I deserve, the reward for my work.

  My right hand moves up my neck, my fingertips touching my earlobes. The new day is near. This is birth.

  I move my hand around the back of my neck, pushing my hair to the side, my palm edging across the top of my spine and up the back of my head; my thick hair drapes across the back of my hand and I comb through with my fingers, down my forehead, my forefinger and middle finger splitting either side of my eye, my little finger scraping my bottom lip down and opening my mouth. I suck in the sunshine.

  I inhale the summer.

  As my middle finger descends, it hooks onto my teeth for a short time as the movement of my left hand becomes more emphatic. I move it down my chin, the tip damp with saliva; it strokes down my neck, between my breasts and stops at my stomach, mimicking the other hand as it circles my bellybutton.

  I push my knees together, squeezing my left hand tightly between my thighs as I near climax. Eventually, I relax again, opening my eyes to the new dawn; the sky is bright, it’s a new age.

  I look out through the glass at nothing, just brightness, just hope. I haven’t tried to make myself invisible; my act has been on full view to anyone who cared to watch, but it was not about that, it was about embracing the moment.

  I drop back onto my bed and allow myself to drown in the light. I make a promise for this new year, that I will continue my work with increased vigour. That I will search and open myself up to more people who have a troubled mind, an endangered soul.

  That I will hunt these people down and save them from themselves, from their own desperation.

  In those last moments when death is imminent, when they pray that there is a god, I will be there as their saviour, to let them know that there is worse.

  January

  PAULSON IS STILL awake when I call, playing poker online, fleecing a legion of unsuspecting drunkards; he has eight different games playing at the same time on one screen, and still has the mental capacity to answer the phone.

  ‘Jan. It’s late. Everything OK?’ he asks, not surprisingly sounding slightly distracted. I hear the tap of the keyboard as he sends the word ‘unlucky’ to AcesHigh39.

  ‘It’s tomorrow,’ I say.

  ‘It certainly is: 3.26 a.m. That makes it tomorrow, I guess.’ He clicks once on the mouse to go all in on an Ace and a Five before the flop.

  Everyone folds.

  ‘OK.’ I sigh at this late-night humour. ‘Tonight, someone is going to die. Tonight.’ I pause briefly to allow him time to digest this information. ‘Thirtieth of April.’ I wait again. ‘Not the first of May as we originally thought.’

  In the game at the top left corner, BrumAndy1975 sends the message ‘U SUK’.

  ‘Fuck. The thirtieth? But …’ He lets out a long breath. ‘The whole Pagan thing …’ He trails off again. ‘Where does that …’ Annoyingly, he can’t seem to finish a sentence because he’s too preoccupied by the £600 re-raise on table 145683235.

  ‘Look, I don’t know yet,’ I hope that Alison might, ‘but we need to get on this now. It’s not making sense and the clock started ticking as soon as I woke up. So …’ I hear a crashing as Paulson moves things around on his desk, collecting his wallet and keys and badge, shutting down his games or ticking the small box that allows him to sit out the next hand as long as he pays up the ante on his turn.

  ‘I’m coming over.’ He’s already racing his way down the stairs of his house, focused on getting to me, deciphering the vision, catching this slayer.

  I go to respond but he has already folded his phone in half, cutting me off to concentrate on getting here as quickly as possible.

  I kill twenty-three minutes by drinking an overly peaty whisky and laying the various pages of the case file out onto the living-room floor. With a large blue marker, I start to write on the wall; I have no whiteboard at home and no one to tell me to do otherwise.

  Paulson’s tyres displace the stones in the driveway, alerting me to his arrival. I open the front door and wait on the doorstep for him, his steps making heavy going of the pebbles.

  Seeing me waiting, he says, ‘Better get the kettle on, eh?’ I lift my glass up as if to say, I’ll be fine with this. And I walk back in, Paulson following closely behind, eager to get down to business.

  I am still writing on the wall when Paulson finally enters after brewing himself a pot of his favourite Mocha Java. I have set it up to look identical to our room at the station. I should have thought of doing this before but I never liked bringing work home with me when Audrey was here.

  On the far left it says:

  Lily Kane

  31 Oct, ’08

  Samhain

  Parsons Green

  Below are pictures taken from the scene in black and white.

  Next to this, in the same format, I have written:

  Totty Fahey

  21 Dec, ’08

  Yule

  Trafalgar Square

  I repeat for Talitha Palladino and Graham White:

  Talitha Palladino

  1 Feb, ’09

  Imbolc

  Speaker’s Corner, Hyde Park

  Graham White

  21 Mar, ’09

  Ostara

  St George’s Cathedral, Southwark

  On the far right it says

  ?

  1 May, ’09

  Beltane

  ???

  On the adjacent wall I have taped a street map of London. Each murder location has a drawing pin. Paulson stops with his mug of coffee and stares at the green dots that mark the four deaths so far, trying to find some kind of pattern.

  It looks like a lopsided trapezium.

  There’s nothing there to go on; it does not form a Pagan symbol, perfect square or straight line.

  This is the real police work. Elimination.

  I don’t even mention the intuition until he brings it up.

  I turn around from the wall after adding the last dot of punctuation. Paulson looks at me wide-eyed and sips at his too-hot coffee.

  ‘We need to turn these question marks into a location.’ I point at the three under the word Beltane. ‘Otherwise this’ – I direct the felt tip at the single mark above the words 1 May – ‘will become another innocent person’s name.’

  I throw back the remaining few millimetres in my tumbler.

  ‘Tell me what you saw this time, Jan. What do we know?’ He drops his weight down onto the leather.

  I stay standing.

  ‘It’s outside. It’s definitely outside.’ I explain the lack of echo in my vision, the heat on my face, the smell of the grass.

  All of the murders have been outside with the exception of Graham White, but they have all been conducted in an open environment with plenty of possible witnesses, but this isn’t giving us huge insight into the mind of our killer.

  We fixate on the scent of grass and decide that it has to be in a field. We rule out graveyards that have grassy areas because the volume of living people you’d find there would not follow the pattern of the previous four murders.

  I move over to the map and cross off Hammersmith Cemetery. I scribble over Brompton Cemetery. I move east, colouring in any burial grounds or churchyards, any necropolis that is insignificant to our plight.

  A line through St Luke’s Burial Ground.

  A cross through Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park.

  A blot on Ladywell Cemetery.

  ‘There’s still a lot of green on that map, Jan,’ Paulson points out, sipping his coffee.

  But this is really only the beginning.

  ‘Do you think one of the bigger parks?’ he questions after a large gulp. ‘Battersea Park and Regent’s Park seem out of the area the killer has been occupying so far.’ He stands up, walks over to me and taps on the m
ap with his index finger. ‘Maybe Green Park or St James’s Park.’ He draws an invisible line with his finger connecting all the pins and says, ‘Those are the more populated outdoor spots in this vicinity.’

  And he sits down, almost triumphant, like he has just solved the case.

  ‘There’s no pattern to these locations.’ I wave a finger dismissively at the place where Talitha Palladino was executed.

  ‘Yet,’ he interrupts.

  I ignore this interruption and continue, ‘It could just as easily happen at Regent’s Park or Hampstead Heath or all the way over in Victoria Park, maybe even Greenwich. The killer chooses the location of each murder for a reason, whether it is part of the ritual or something to do with the victim. I think these are calculated. The choice of victim is more last minute. There is no line to link each location and no perimeter this person will stick to.’

  Now that I have successfully deflated the both of us, Paulson asks me to recount my last intuition of The Two.

  The doorbell rings.

  Paulson is shocked that I called Murphy too.

  I didn’t.

  It’s Alison.

  I retell the events of my mind.

  Paulson interjects my story with repetitions of the elements he considers to be of interest or importance:

  The scent of fornication.

  Bulbs in his eyes.

  Five pebbles.

  Burnt wood.

  Alison remains quiet, absorbing my words, making her own connections. She wants me to make more use of the visions; Paulson hopes for more conventional reasoning. I want to use them both.

  I punctuate my story by popping two of my regular caffeine pills and washing them down with a swift glass of malt liquor.

  ‘Careful, Jan.’ I know he’s worried that I’m about to erase my hard work over the last few months.

  ‘There’s no way either of us can sleep today, Paulson.’ I shovel two more pills into my mouth and chew them, using my tongue to move them around, massaging the chalk into my gums.

  ‘I know. I know. Just take it easy.’ Then he downs the rest of his coffee, oblivious to the parallels.

  An awkward silence ensues, and I click the pen lid on and off while perusing the map and the etchings on my living-room wall – the replica of my office wall that I have been staring at for months.