Realising what she was suggesting was everything I wanted the last year, without even thinking, I made sure to give her the space. I told her to give me a call later that night, or the next day, and we parted with a deep, loving kiss. I hugged her goodbye, making sure to take in the scent of her perfume once again.
I put my jacket on and reached in the pocket to grab my car keys, to find the locker key card for the bus station I had taken from the crime scene the day before. I quickly stuffed it back in before Arianna could see it and see me snap back into ‘work mode.’
We blew kisses at one another, before parting ways. I left, incredibly content, incredibly happy, and excited at what the future could bring. I figured the quickest way to kill time until I received that phone call was to go to the bus station and see what awaited me.
The drive was blissful, full of positivity, and heart-warming thoughts, thinking back to our lovemaking. I laughed, thinking how happy I was considering I thought the conversation and day would have, and could have ended much different. Telling her the truth lifted the mental and emotional anchor that bound me to negativity. I felt free. Rejuvenated. The drive was automatic almost, with little thought going into the actual driving, more into my mental happy place. Before I could even look at the time, I was at the bus station. No rain either, just a dusky grey sky.
I pulled out the locker key card from my jacket and assessed the scene. The station was fairly quiet and not very used. A couple of busses moved in and out, but you could tell that most people were opting for rail travel. It was quite desolate, which was a shame as this used to be one of the biggest transport hubs in town. Locker 25A, row X. Arthur better watch out, as I felt so alive and I knew I was getting close.
I hopped out of the car and walked past the few people in the station. I asked a rather cheery individual where the locker stations were, and he merrily pointed in the general direction and wished me good evening. He had to be the happiest person in the place, until I turned up and took the crown after my afternoon. There was a definite spring in my step as I found the correct row and scanned the lockers. I inserted the key card and an almighty buzz released the magnetic lock.
The contents of the locker were quite anti-climactic considering. The contents included a bloody letter opener, and an envelope? I was half expecting a severed head, or the remains of Mr Hardiman’s face. Upon closer inspection, it was evident that the blade was what was used, as remains of flesh were noticeable on the knife-edge. I opened the envelope and found a letter inside, addressed to Detective Blackwood.
Another riddle and a flower were pressed inside, a gladiolus. He was trying to tell me something else with the flowers too. The riddle was far more convoluted than the last:
Formed in an instant, lasting a lifetime; I draw you back to where it began.
A bare-faced lie; he carried something new, weightless unlike the guilt of the past.
Deities Apollo and Artemis protect us, he defiles us.
Chronos mistaken affiliation, despite devouring his own, puts reflection on who the victim may be.
Even I wasn’t that good to solve this straight away. I pondered for a minute and felt my phone buzzing. My heart skipped a beat of excitement when I read that it was Arianna.
“Hey, gorgeous, I’ve only been gone a few hours, so you’ve clearly had time to think. Not to hone my detective skills, but when are you coming home?”
I was met with silence.
“I know I have thought about it and I don’t want to rush if you feel uncomfortable but…”
Nothing.
“Can you hear me, darling? I might have a poor signal.”
I looked at my phone and noticed I had a perfect signal.
“Darling?”
Heavy breathing could be heard down the phone. The skipped beats of excitement started to slow and then speed up again for a completely different reason.
“Arianna, is everything okay?”
I could hear someone on the other end of the line.
“Detective Blackwood. You’ve been looking for me, haven’t you?”
I closed my eyes in defeat, in despair. I knew that voice. Maniacal laughter ensued. It was Arthur and he had her. What perfect moment we shared earlier felt like a distant memory. She was in immediate danger and I was hours away from her.
“Listen here, you son of a bitch, it’s me you want. Let her go and come and find me. This isn’t how the game is played.”
“The game, Detective? The only game we are playing is the one where I make the rules. Oh, how I envy you. You have this beautiful specimen in your life and you instead choose to hunt me. You flatter. Allow me to flatter you, Sebastian. I’ll try and live the life of you for a day.”
I heard him inhale loudly and heard a slight fearful whimper down the line. It had to be her.
“Arianna, if you can hear me. I’m coming. I promised to protect you; I’m going to.”
“Oh, Sebastian, you fool. You shouldn’t make promises you cannot keep.”
“Don’t hurt her. Please. I’ll do anything–”
He hung up on me and I could only scream in fear. I threw the letter opener across the row of lockers and heard an almighty crash as some of the blood marked the ground. My scream echoed through the desolate bus station.
“Fuck you, Arthur, FUCK YOU!”
Be safe Arianna. I’m coming.
Chapter Six
I had already spent nearly eighteen months in Fort Rose and gotten rather close to a lot of my new family. Robert and I were like two little enforcers for Alexia. Robert was like my own personal bodyguard too. He had a real affinity for me since the day I protected his sister when I first came. I still couldn’t believe we were still all together after nearly two years. I’d spent one birthday here since the incident and didn’t really know how many more I would have. Birthdays were an odd, joyful celebration here, not that we really had much joy in this place, but birthdays were something that Father tried to focus on. He felt they were important because they marked another year of survival, of strength.
Father was quite a complex individual. I couldn’t really pinpoint where his heart lay, or what his intentions were. A matter of weeks after I arrived, I witnessed and bore a real sympathy for him, where he spent the entire day with the kids in the back garden, overseeing a barbeque; allowing us to play and splash in a small pool. He was smiling ear to ear and showing a real love for us all. That was my birthday, and some of the other kids were clearly quite jealous. They didn’t get that sort of treatment from him.
That said, it was one of the few times where there was peace in the building. The entire staffing team were present, including Mallory. Smiles were filling the place and we were generally very happy. Those times were incredibly rare and short-lived. It had been so long since we experienced a normal, joyous moment that it faded into distant memory, almost to the point we would question if it even happened. We were like a family for the first time ever.
Much like that had faded into memory, so did this myth of the cage that children would go to when we were bad. Whether real or not, there was a real fear of the cage. I’d never been in it and the last child that did go to it hadn’t been seen since. We knew what rules would need to be broken to go there and made damn sure not to risk breaking them. Anything that could be viewed as insubordinate or a direct attack of the “love” Father had for us would be severely punished.
One of my sisters, Erin, once got a severe beating for writing that she hated everyone on the blackboard. We didn’t take it personally, knowing she was acting out because the Gardener had shouted at her. Father was horrified to read the comment. I had never seen him so angry before. He shouted about how ungrateful we were and that we were the garbage kids of the world no one wanted. He bellowed through our room claiming we were nothing and he was making us something.
That comments were so damaging. We were already raw, separated from loving families and a part of this deranged one. That comment practically cemented an
y ill feelings of self-worth we may have had and more than likely made them permanent baggage we’d all carry for the rest of our lives.
Father beat Erin so much and so hard she eventually stopped crying, beaten her beyond recognition and to the proverbial pulp that could be found in the garbage. As his one free fist flew into her curled up body, his other firmly around the top of his cane, his feet would occasionally join in as he shouted abuse at her.
We all felt so powerless. I wished I could swap places with her. I wanted to take some of the beating and couldn’t do anything; I was frozen and helpless. My inability to react and share the burden or the pain was my weakest point. I swore that day I would grow up and protect those that needed help. If I couldn’t swap places and protect my poor sister now, maybe someday I would be able to help someone else.
Erin’s weakened, youthful body ended up so battered and bruised she walked with a limp and was blind in one eye. It was clear she never got proper medical attention after the attack because it would have exposed Father and the awful people here for the beasts they were.
Screaming children, crying children, and a silent Erin caused a chain reaction of sorts. I was incredibly proud of my sister Alexia, who eventually ran to her and begged Father to stop, shielding her from further kicks. Alexia received such a slap I felt it myself, having almost shared in the feeling of the beat down Erin received.
Father’s biggest mistake was assuming Robert would let that one go.
The next surge in the chain reaction was the spark that fired in his body. He just watched Father attack his biological twin sister and was rightfully furious, more so than being made to watch Erin’s beating. I’d witnessed a defiance in him that actually made me proud, again, another memory I’ve always carried with me through life: fighting for the right reasons, to protect the weak.
Robert ripped Father’s cane from his steady hand whilst he towered over my cowering sisters, one lifeless and the other shaking. An almighty crack on Father’s back caused him to shout in pain; and the whole room stopped. No one cried, no one screamed, just silence. Everyone was unsure as to what was about to happen next.
No one ever physically stood up to Father before. This was a league beyond the time I took the blame for the writing on the blackboard when I first arrived eighteen months ago.
As if watching a movie, Father turned around in slow motion, in the eerily silent room. I heard his laboured breathing from the exertion depleted from Erin’s pasting. Robert stood back, with the cane still in his hands, a slight tremble. I don’t know if the tremble was from fear, or the sheer adrenaline coursing through his veins. Knowing how headstrong he was, I’ve always taken it as the latter of the two. Father bellowed across the room, with his roar stirring deep inside the hearts of all the children.
“You ungrateful little shit. How dare you bite the hand that feeds? Rabid dogs should be put down. You–”
Robert knew he had crossed a line and it sounded like a real threat. All he could do was try and hit Father again to prevent the inevitable thrashing he was going to get. He swung the cane in a vertical motion from behind his back, aiming to get Father on his head.
Father, burning with rage, caught the cane in his hand as it came down with force and didn’t even flinch. He caught it like a professional baseball player would catch a ball travelling at high speed. He pulled himself up to Robert and grabbed him by the throat. He started to squeeze and as Robert’s breath left his body and his eyes and skin started to go blue, Father let go of the cane. It dropped to the ground having been abandoned by Robert, who was fighting to release the grip around his throat.
Father must have sensed the fear in Robert’s eyes and sudden lack of fight probably had him seconds from death, so instead he punched Robert square in the face, breaking his nose in the process. The force from the punch, and immediate release from the deathly grip, caused my brother to fall into a pile of flesh and bone. Another lifeless child hit the ground and Robert fought for air, coughing and spluttering.
“Such fire, boy. There is only one place for you.”
So, the cage was real after all. Robert was dragged away in pain, coughing and wheezing, fighting for air. Erin was left in a pile. Alexia never moved from her, continually shielding her. The remainder of us looked on, disappointed with ourselves for selfishly not reacting for fear of the same. Then, the creepy old man from the garden wandered in. He never came into our room, so Father had obviously sent him. I still never knew what his name was; we always made a point of avoiding him. He was just known as the “Gardener” to us kids.
He spoke through his missing teeth, practically spitting at Alexia to move and scooped Erin up in his arms. She was still unconscious, and her head fell back to join her motionless body. He muttered about having to look after such a badly-behaved child being a disgrace to the rest of us and that he couldn’t wait to teach her a lesson. He looked around the room at the children; in what I can only describe in hindsight as a seductive way. I was too young to realise the intent behind the stare.
He grinned through his single front tooth and the image of that moment has been permanently etched in my mind. Younger me had no idea what kind of predator he was, but I could still sense he was dangerous in a different way. I’d experienced it first-hand the day he threw me down and twisted my ankle, as his hands did explore me briefly before I was thrown down. Erin wasn’t being taken somewhere safe to be nursed back to care. The beating was probably the least of her worries.
It was disheartening to think that all this destruction came from one mere comment spouted in anger about hating everybody. That’s where I had decided to teach my brothers and sisters a few tricks from my past.
Over later weeks and months, I had gone so far as to use the blackboard in our bedroom play area as a means to teach people how to speak in code. We had a simple system where we would write a sentence and then write the previous letter in sequence in place of the one we meant, excluding vowels. Vowels were replaced with numbers. An A was a one, an E a two, and so on. For an F, we would write a D, for a Y, an X, and so on.
It was kept fairly simple, solely because some of the other kids weren’t bright enough to grasp some of the other codes or ciphers I had tried to teach them originally. Alexia did enjoy the challenging codes though. We played our own games where I would create ciphers for her to break, like my real parents used to do. She said she couldn’t wait to show Robert if he came back from the cage.
My heart sank for my big brother. I wished he was with us and learning the code, but we hadn’t seen him in months. After all, there was little to do to entertain ourselves in Fort Rose, other than reasonably limited verbal communication, written communication through the code, and the rare occasions when we would be permitted to play in the garden. I always assumed he would have gotten a real kick out of the code breaking. There was a youthful excitement knowing we were breaking rules, but safely. It gave us a little confidence, which was something normally absent.
Whenever Father, or other members of the staff would ask what we were doing, we would say that we were practicing handwriting so we would be able to write nice letters to each other, the various numbers strewn across the board gave it a sense of youthfulness that I guess was expected from us given our age. Survival instincts even made us actually write proper letters as a cover story for the handwriting practice, where we would litter them with lies about loving our lives in the orphanage.
I wrote a letter to Father thanking him for saving us, to which he rewarded me with some homemade cookies. The other kids were quite jealous of the ingenuity until they realised I had always intended to save some for them, citing that Father taught me sharing was honourable. He didn’t mind me sharing when I rubbed his ego.
Secret messages were the one way we knew how to talk to each other and how we really felt, without fear of reprimand, or bullying tactics deployed by the staff. In a youthful show of strength, we never uttered a word to the staff, even when pressed. It was a unifi
ed secret that gave us a sense of empowerment.
Erin finally came back to the dorm. She used to be the talkative one of the group; always acting out. She had been forced into a silence, with her new eye patch and large rimmed glasses. She often cried herself to sleep and would react when anyone would get close to her, going so far as to cry whenever she was touched. She was broken beyond repair. I’d always wondered what the Gardener had done to her but in later life, had a pretty good idea. What a shame. One angered moment portrayed in black and white with chalk would subsequently end her life in a twisted butterfly effect.
I hadn’t seen Mallory in a long time. I wished she was here so she could have stopped it. She would have helped us, I’m sure of it. I told myself I had to find her and tell her what was happening and devised a plan to break out of the room and find her. The trouble was, we were always locked in at night. We had brief bursts to the garden on rare occasions and when it was time to eat, we were all marched to and from the dormitory in militant fashion.
Like a children’s adventure movie, we communicated in code and talked about how we could free ourselves to find Mallory. The night we came up with the plan was one of my fondest memories. The camaraderie between the children, realising we controlled our own destinies was inspiring. We all came together, on the same page and listened to everyone’s ideas respectfully. Everything from filling the lock with putty so the key didn’t work, to stealing a screwdriver from the Gardener and taking the doorknob off, to the more creative of us thinking we could break the window and scale the walls like Spider-Man. The youthful exuberance from our group kept smiles on our faces, even Erin, who still hadn’t spoken a word since the night she lost her eye.
We operated like a colony of ants whenever we went out for breakfast, lunch, or dinner. Everyone would report back on what they would see on the walk to the canteen. We’d keep important things written in code on the blackboard, so we had options open. The day we got let into the garden, we even got as far as procuring implements we felt could help us on our miraculous break out.
Dancing With Devils Page 11