by Will Carver
Celeste
I AM STILL here.
Hidden in plain sight, just as V has been this entire time.
The shadowy figure leaping up and down on the bed in the background of the action is me, Celeste Varrick. The long, dirty blond hair bouncing around as this ghost reaches for the ceiling is mine. I am that presence.
Not this impostor.
I watch as he calls her a name she does not recognise and rejoice at her distraction. I aim to rub away a part of the painted star and symbols above me. If I just disturb them enough, I can leave this circle. I can get out while he cannot see me.
V is not startled by the banging behind him, I see him smile, like this is another part of his scheme; everything is how he wants it to be.
Until January David enters my cell.
He pulls V’s arms at the wrists, rotating his shoulders backwards and forcing him down to the wooden floor with a thwack; I feel the pain as his head collides with a floorboard and cease my acrobatics.
Despite the pain, he does not let go of his weapon.
The detective attempts to pummel V’s knuckles into the ground to force him to release but V is strong, his mind is unstable but his will is intense.
‘Go! Get out now. While you can.’ I shout to the other woman V has been calling Celeste. ‘This is your chance,’ I continue.
But she does not listen.
She stands steadfast, ignoring my advice, panicking as the two men grapple each other for supremacy.
I look back at the men and V is atop the detective, straddling his chest, forcing the dagger towards his neck from above. The detective uses all his force and training to keep the blade from piercing through his windpipe. He twists V’s wrists so that the point of the blade faces away from him, he holds the weight of the killer above his chest.
The woman who is not Celeste, she is not me, shrieks, ‘No. January. No.’
Why does she not leave?
Why will she not listen to me?
Does she not want to be saved?
I can save you, Alison Aeslin. I can restore balance. Just as I did with Lily and Totty and Talitha and Graham and Laura.
January David uses V’s own weight against him, forcing him sideways, taking himself out of danger. But V will not loosen his clasp on that sacred dagger.
The men are now standing. Detective David has my captor pinned against the wall, the knife now pointing at V’s chest as they both push in opposite directions, cancelling one another out.
He does not want to kill V, he wants answers. He wishes to get to the bottom of this case. That is why he tries to, once more, force the blade to the side, the light from the streets bathing them in a warm red glow.
Get out, woman. Leave them be. You can live. It is too late for me.
The light dims suddenly as a larger-built man appears in the doorway just in time to witness January David plunge a seven-inch blade through the heart of the man who has been killing for a God who promised the world.
V gags or coughs or loses breath, or does all of these things at once, letting out a noise I have never heard before; a long guttural bellow as he does so. His scream sounds like two voices at the same time, one much lower than the other. And slides down the wall onto his knees. I drop down onto the mattress, mirroring his movements; he sees me again.
He knows that this is over. I watch him as he speaks one final time in his mind.
He pulls the knife from his chest, twisting it as it exits his body, increasing the size of the entry wound and the blood begins to flow even faster, heavier. He drops the knife onto the floor and lowers his arms back to his sides, slumping his buttocks in between his lean calf muscles so that he balances in a kneeling position, his eyes fixed on me as the life drains from him.
January David comforts the woman, holding her, while his partner in the doorway stares on in disbelief.
I don’t know what to do.
Am I safe now too?
Should I care?
V’s mouth moves slowly like a goldfish blowing bubbles as if he is trying to say one last thing. I manage to move my head forward a little, trying to determine his words. The only thing I can make out is that the word has a b in it somewhere, because his mouth makes that shape. The movement gets slower and slower as he nears his final breath, a puddle forming in front of him just as it did when I tried to save Totty and Lily.
Then his lips stop moving and a sweet smile creeps onto his face, his eyes still open, looking in my direction but not necessarily at me.
The blood-drenched knife on the floor dances from green to red.
And I feel completely paralysed.
We are darkness.
V
AGAINST THE WALL, January David grips my hands, which hold the handle of the dagger, and twists, forcing the tip of the blade away from my heart, aiming it sideways, towards my shoulder at the worst.
He is not my saviour.
It is too late for that now.
I wish I had not gone for a run today, my strength is waning. It takes one final surge of adrenalin to cancel out his efforts, to guide the sharpest point of the blade back towards my tensed left pectoral muscle. Another exertion backs the knife away from me and closer to my adversary, just as he did to me on the floor only moments ago.
He uses all of his weight and the power from his legs to nullify my own efforts.
And then I release.
I relax.
And the force is freed in the direction of my heart like the energy being liberated from an elastic band catapult.
Slithering down the wall, I drop to my knees and speak one more time with the Lord I have never seen but have been in the presence of; have never heard but has spoken to me; who asks me to prove myself but only ever appears in my mind. I tell him that I have done everything asked of me and now I wait on my knees for my reward.
I pull out the knife, spilling more crimson onto the wood beneath me, and still he does not come. He does not answer. But my own wretched distress keeps me holding on until the end. This is my last hope. My final misguided chance.
The end draws closer and I begin to understand the peace that comes with passing. It doesn’t feel like a conclusion but an introduction to something new. I smile as the darkness makes its way towards me, mouthing the word of my son’s name as I believe him to be near. This is how Lily must have felt. And Totty.
All of them.
I see Celeste’s face one last time as she kneels on the bed across the room from me like my echo. I am her shadow. The blackness draws in, closing the aperture of colour beamed to my retinas. I say his name one final time.
My son.
‘Jacob.’
And this life stops.
January
‘CALL AN AMBULANCE!’ I yell at Paulson, holding Alison in my arms.
I’m not sure there’s anything that can be done, Jan.’ He screws his face up in uncertainty.
I know there’s nothing that can be done but this is what we have to do.
‘Speak to Higgs too. Make sure he has Brooke Derry. She is going to fill in the holes in this story.’ I drop straight into the role of an investigator.
Murphy pulls up outside the building. He’ll be up here soon. I want to deconstruct this scene before he gets the chance to interfere.
‘You’re safe now,’ I speak softly to Alison, rubbing her shoulder for comfort, ‘it’s over.’
Paulson flicks the light switch and I feel the need to cover my eyes as the brightness crashes down. Alison nestles her head further into my chest.
My eyes adjust to the new conditions and I pursue the areas of the room I could not see before; my breathing still heavy from combat.
The man on the floor is definitely dead; I can see the amount of blood he has lost. His position is the same as the other victims. There appears to be jewellery splayed out across the floor – the personal trinkets taken from each of the victims. Paulson mouths at me from across the room.
‘Salt circle.’<
br />
There are no candles this time but there is a symbol on the ceiling, a large circle with a five-pointed star in the centre and what looks like a goat inside that.
Paulson sees me lift my head to view it and moves his mouth silently again.
‘Pagan talisman.’
He’s right, but not in this case.
He’s making the pattern fit the theory.
I beckon him over to support Alison while I pick up the remaining details from the scene.
‘Listen, Alison, I am going to leave you with DS Paulson for a moment. I need to check on the body, make sure there are no more surprises. I will be in the room. OK?’
She nods and composes herself but refuses to look up.
I place two fingers on the kneeling man’s neck, but can’t feel a pulse over the sensation and sound of my own heartbeat. I never expected to.
Murphy arrives with a junior officer and stands speechless for a moment in the doorway.
‘What happened here?’ Murphy finally pipes up.
I ignore his inane question and bend down next to the spot where I had V pressed to the wall. I recall almost stumbling on a loose board while we were in conflict. Using my keys, I dig into the grooves at the edge of the wood and lever it out of its slot. Murphy and Paulson look on in anticipation as my grazed hand slips into the black hole and retrieves a small tobacco tin that we know will contain a five-pence piece, some dirt and two pictures. We will come to know that they depict Sammael Abbadon – one as a child and one as a younger man.
This is it. The eighth and final box.
‘Nooooooo. Saaaaaam.’ The hallway woman has finally given in to temptation, ignoring everything Paulson just explained in her apartment for her own safety. She falls heavily to her knees, screaming Sammael’s name as he kneels in front of her, his body only part-filled with blood, not responding.
‘For Christ’s sake, Murph. How did she just get past you?’ It all happened too quickly for him and the graphic nature of the scene temporarily stunned him.
We have seen worse.
‘Paulson, get her out of here. Find out what she knows. Get her to identify this man.’
He escorts her out again, leaving Alison slouched and vulnerable.
I remain in the room piecing together the last details of the case that Sammael Abbadon has cleverly arranged for us to conclude that Celeste is in fact the serial killer we have been searching for, and that he was going to be the final innocent on her list. That she has been working towards his death from the very beginning.
I think about the moment his strength seemed to just evaporate and the blade pierced through his sternum.
He was always going to die tonight.
Perhaps he wanted to. He became like the victims he had taken.
It was supposed to appear as though Celeste had been preparing for this moment, the last Sabbat on the list, and she did not want to share it with anyone. So, instead of culling Mr Abbadon in a public place like the others, she kept it as a private moment between the two of them.
None of it was true.
He has failed.
The picture that Murphy leaked was nothing but a hindrance.
The woman in the picture was not the killer; the killer is the man on his knees in a growing mere of blood. The man whose heart I thrust a knife through.
‘Murph, you need to wait here for the photographer and forensics. I’m going to take Alison to the hospital and then home. You think you can handle things here?’
‘Of course, Jan.’
‘Paulson is just down the hall, he’ll come back with you to the station. Brooke Derry is on her way in for questioning. I’ll meet you all there later. OK?’ It’s not really a question but I know how he responds to direct orders.
Alison finally looks up at me with a wary warmth and I half smile to let her know again that the worst is over.
‘I’m going to take you out of here but I need you to look at one thing before we go. Do you think you can do that?’ I am speaking too quietly for anyone else to hear but Alison. I point towards the symbol on the ceiling and ask whether it is Wiccan.
Her head cranes up slowly and she squints her bloodshot eyes at the painting.
‘Parts of it are, yes. But in its entirety it would appear to be a devil’s trap.’ Her head drops a little from the emotional exhaustion.
‘A devil’s trap?’ I urge her to continue.
‘It’s allegedly used to trap demons or evil within its circumference. Once something passes within the circle it cannot then get out unless the trap is erased or a gap is made within the circle. Can we just get out of here?’
I look up at the insignia once more then directly down at the ruffled bed beneath. Whatever he was trying to trap he was going to tie to this bed.
But there is nobody there.
Forensic evidence will show that the only person to sleep on the bed is the man who now kneels dead opposite where it stands.
Not Celeste Varrick.
There was no Celeste Varrick. Not here.
At Litha, the man who only knew himself as V, who the rest of the world will know as Sammael Abbadon, never caught a woman by the name of Celeste Varrick. He trapped himself.
V
I AM NOT with my son.
It was a lie all along.
I’m nowhere.
I’m no one.
I fucked up.
Seven people have died at my hand, eight if you include my own pathetic suicide, and all that exists is blackness and nothingness. I wasted my life and have now wasted my death.
God did not speak to me, the Devil did not make a deal; he did not strike a bargain. None of this happened. Desperation spoke to me and I answered. Hopelessness struck a deal and I was all ears. Misery, torment and loneliness were the things I believed in. Disheartenment and agony were my faith.
After cutting Celeste’s hands free, I knew that I was going to be the one to die, and she would have to suffer with living. I buried the box, painted the devil’s trap, faked a protective salt circle for nothing. To condemn innocence.
Perhaps there were darker forces at work, but we were not working symbiotically.
I wanted my wife to read the newspaper tomorrow and see the story of Celeste’s capture; the article praising the efforts of the police, in particular the work of January David’s team, but she will not read this. She will not shed a tear for the man they call Sammael Abbadon, the one they should refer to as the final victim.
She mourned his death the day our son died.
The son I misguidedly performed this elaborate routine for.
Maybe Celeste could have saved me. Perhaps shown me that there is a light. Because there was no light as the last of my breath was expunged from my lungs, as the gush of blood eventually turned into a useless drip of seeping life force. Nobody met with me, not my son, not my father and certainly no Holy Spirit.
This whole exercise, the entire plot of my life for the last year, soaking up the voices and instructions to kill and maim and make into a monster; the heinous burnings and sacrifices and stabbings all in the name of self-interest to reunite with a family I never knew, deserved or cared enough for when I had the chance, all of these things have not led me anywhere. I have not progressed or moved forward; it has only helped me reach the conclusion that I knew already, the deduction that dropped me into a deluded alternative life, that friends and family who have passed before you are not waiting with open arms, you are not greeted by the Lord in any form when you die, no matter what life you choose to lead. There are no gates, no stairs leading up or down, there is more and more non-being and nothingness.
And nobody is listening. Not to me.
Nobody has ever been listening.
Nobody has ever been there.
January
I‘VE COME FULL circle.
Completed the twelfth step.
I know who I am.
At the beginning of this case, I allowed myself to believe; it was always my sce
pticism that kept me sharp before. For almost a year I have not been Detective Inspector January David, I have been my mother. Accepting wholeheartedly the extravagant and eccentric idea of spiritual guides above everything else. Falling into the trap of so many beliefs where everything else is wrong and only your own dogma holds the truth.
My mind was narrowed.
I feel I may be punished.
That the visions will stop.
The last year has not always been about this case, it has not even been about finding my sister; it has been the grief of losing Mother and my father and Audrey leaving and being completely at the mercy to a strange power that I didn’t want to accept then ended up over-accepting.
Then it became about finding a belief again.
In myself.
And now I feel I have a renewed sense of vigour, a hunger for this profession and the crusade to find Cathy. It is due in a large part to the support of Paulson and the arrival of Alison so serendipitously into my life.
The doctor tells her that she needs to rest and prescribes some low-level Valium to help her sleep tonight. He also provides the details of a private professional dealing with post-traumatic stress. I inform her that the force will foot the bill after everything she has done to help.
She says very little in the car back to her house. I am so desensitised from the things I have seen that my demeanour remains unaltered. It disturbs her to see that stabbing a man through the heart has not had some profound effect on my state of mind.
He was a killer.
He stopped pushing the knife away.
‘I’m so sorry you had to see that, Alison.’
I want her to know that I am here for her, that she can feel safe around me. The way I always imagined Audrey felt.
‘I wish I’d just stayed outside like you said.’ Her face is expressionless. There is no response to this that will elicit something positive; I simply tense my lips and say nothing.