Beast

by Matt Wesolowski

  Frustratingly, it’s time for me to leave. I extend my deepest sympathies to Harold and Mildred Barton. It is they who will have to live with their decision the night before Elizabeth was killed. How they will live with themselves is beyond the realms of my understanding.

  I actually feel like I now understand some of Jason’s anger toward his parents. He knew about this incident – perhaps it was them who told him about it. It makes sense that he hasn’t seen them since. Maybe he feels like the apple of blame for his sister’s death doesn’t fall too far from the tree.

  For the Bartons, Meer, Meldby and Flynn’s motives are something they may never understand. For now, the place where their daughter was is an empty hollow where their memories are forever echoing until one day they’ll fade.

  So what have we learned from a pair of grieving parents? I don’t want to say nothing, but I do believe there is more to the murder of Elizabeth Barton than we see on the surface. I want nothing more than to explore in greater detail the motivations of those that took her life. Whether each of them had their own axe to grind with Elizabeth and fate flung them together, or whether they came together through some eldritch belief in vampires, I still don’t know.

  What does seem clear is that the links between Elizabeth and her killers are beginning to emerge. Ergarth is a small place, and George Meldby and Martin Flynn were certainly friendly with Elizabeth as they grew up. In fact both seemed to have developed a rather unhealthy obsession with her. Was unrequited love enough to drive them to force Elizabeth into Tankerville Tower, leave her to die and then remove her head? What was it about Solomon Meer that overruled their adoration and invoked such brutality?

  Solomon Meer remains enigmatic in all of this. Meer was indeed the antithesis of Elizabeth Barton, but was this enough to kill her? And were Meer’s powers of persuasion strong enough that he could convince the other two that Elizabeth Barton was the second coming of the Ergarth Vampire?

  Next episode, I want to get closer to those convicted of killing Elizabeth. Especially Solomon Meer. There are not many who knew the three personally, but as I am swiftly learning, every page of this story needs turning in order to judge it properly.

  This has been Six Stories.

  This has been our fourth.

  DISD CHALLENGE: Day 5 | Lizzie B

  895,111 views. March 2, 2018

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  Lizzie B

  3,689 subscribers

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  I’m going to meet a vampire tomorrow,

  That vampire’s going to take my life.

  Tomorrow, I’ll be dead.

  OK guys, I’m sooo sorry. I know you’ve all been waiting for the ‘Rob from the Rich, Give to the Poor’ task. I know I haven’t done half of it and I just … I’m really sorry, OK?

  Thanks so much for all the love for the compilation video. The comments are totally amazing and you’re all so lovely. I really enjoyed visiting the Ergarth Foodbank and meeting all the guys there. Hopefully that video gets loads of likes and views and stuff! I know that’s only the second half of the challenge.

  Truth is, yeah … it’s like, I just can’t do it! I can’t steal! Who am I going to steal from? Like, I don’t know any proper rich people, at least no one who deserves to be stolen from. I don’t want any of you guys doing stuff like that either. Sooo, I’m pretty stuck.

  I think you’ve got me, Vladlena. I think you may have won … sad face!

  But there’s something else I need to tell you guys about. Things have been getting really weird all up in here and … let’s have a little walk … through my room … because something happened last night … oops, just move that a sec … hang on.

  So last night I was in my bed – just here. I was all snuggled up, fast asleep, you know? I hear this noise. I wake up and it’s freezing – the heating wasn’t on. My breath was in actual clouds. Like in that movie: ‘I see dead people!’ But, you guys, that wasn’t far from the actual truth!

  So I go out on the landing … just here and … duh, duh, duhhhh!

  Yeah. So there’s nothing here now. But last night … let’s have a look at some weird stuff, OK? So like, here is this little window on the landing, and it’s closed now, but last night it was open. That’s why the house was so frickin’ cold!

  You guys know the Ergarth Vampire story, right? She was this beautiful, like, witch from Siberia and they brought her to Ergarth as a hostage in, like, Victorian times. But she conjured up this snow and this ice, and people were dying. They said she could turn into a bat or into fog … and she would come into people’s houses and drink their blood at night.

  Ooky-spooky, right?

  Well, last night, when I got out of bed and went out on the landing I saw this figure. Just standing there in the dark. It wasn’t a burglar, cos, like a burglar couldn’t get through that window, plus if we look here, you can see they’d have to climb up the side of the house. Plus they didn’t take anything.

  I think the vampire was in my house. I’m not even joking, guys.

  Vladlena, if that was you, I’m sorry, OK? I’ll do the rest of the task, I promise. I just need a bit more time and … hang on, what’s that?

  Look, oh my God, guys, she’s been in touch, Vladlena’s sent me a message. I swear, this is live, this is totally not a set-up. Let’s have a look … What does she say? … oh my God, you guys, look at this:

  ‘I’ll accept you completed your task. Just. Last night was your warning. Tomorrow night, you will receive one more task. Pass it on or you will be mine for evermore. Tomorrow night is when I will decide your fate!’

  Oh my God it feels like I’m in big trouble!

  But it’s also kind of exciting, right? No one’s ever got to day six before and I’ve managed it by the skin of my teeth!

  So this is gonna be a total cliff-hanger, but it’s only a matter of hours until we all find out what happens on day six of the Dead in Six Days challenge.

  Hit that like, hit that subscribe with everything you’ve got. I’m still trying to work out some logistics for live-streaming tomorrow. Whatever happens, make sure you’ve rung the notification bell so you can find out the moment I upload what happens tomorrow with the vampire and the final day of the Dead in Six Days challenge.

  Bye for now, you lovely people!

  Episode 5: The Lost Boy

  The wind howled. It wasn’t the sound of a tortured dog, but a hungry wolf. Simon could feel the pain and suffering burrowing deeper and deeper into the very marrow of his bones. That’s all Simon was these days, skin and bones. He smoked cigarettes and drank endless cups of black coffee; pushing away all need for food.

  Simon didn’t sleep well at all on the filthy mattress in a corner of the ancient house that had no electricity. The voices in his brain were as bad as the suffering and gnawing in his bones; the physical and the psychological terrors and gut-wrenching misery clung to him like soaking wet clothes.

  ‘Kill them all, Simon,’ the voice said. That oh-so familiar voice. ‘Kill them all, but especially her. The cause of all this pain. If you kill her, you will be free.’

  ‘Noooo!’ Simon screamed as he sat up in bed, his throat raw like he’d swallowed glass. His screams mixed with the howl of the terrible wind that had woken him. All he could see was her, all he could think of was her.

  Simon lit his first cigarette of the day and swallowed the dregs of a bottle of vodka by his bedside. It was all just a dream, just a terrible dream. Everything was OK. They were together, she was his. She was never going away.

  ‘Well, that’s what you thought, Simon,’ said a voice from the shadows.

  Simon jumped, goose pimples standing up all over his skin. The shape that hung in the dark rafters of his room slid down the wall and sat at the foot of his bed.

  ‘You’re not real, you’re not real!’ Simon begged hopelessly.

  But it was very real. The pale skin, the long fingers, that voice that flowed over its terrible fangs like water over razor-sharp rocks.
<
br />   ‘It’ll only be pain for a moment, Simon,’ the vampire told him. ‘Just a moment, and then you will be in heaven for the rest of eternity. No more pain. Those who pick on you, who ridicule you, you will have the power to smite them with a flick of your little finger. Oh such power I will bestow upon you…’

  Simon took another swig of vodka and gazed into those fathomless eyes. The creature had come to him in his dreams and now was sat here, bold as brass at the end of his bed.

  ‘But I can’t,’ Simon begged, ‘I can’t do it. I can’t become like you. What will become of her?’

  The vampire laughed and it was the sound of terrible bones clattering against a stone floor.

  ‘Her – the girl who pretends to everyone that you don’t even exist? Why she will mean nothing in the end, Simon. Once you are one like me, mere girls will become echoes; echoes of a life long ago, echoes of a life, long snuffed out.’

  —Not bad, is it? Not bad at all, considering. I was impressed. I was thinking of selling it on eBay. I’m joking of course, but really, it would get quite a lot, I imagine? Of course it’s totally unethical for me to have kept old students’ work…

  Solomon Meer could have done something creative, if he’d got the help he needed. That’s what I’m saying, I suppose.

  Welcome to Six Stories.

  I’m Scott King.

  This is episode five.

  There is no question that the murder of Elizabeth Barton in 2018 was committed by three young men from the North-Eastern town of Ergarth. Solomon Meer, George Meldby and Martin Flynn were all convicted of murdering Elizabeth by locking her in Tankerville Tower on the night of the third of March 2018. Temperatures dropped to nearly minus 10°C as that exposed part of the North-East coast was assaulted by the freezing, Siberian winds of a polar vortex known as The Beast from the East.

  The evidence presented at the trial included fingerprints and DNA from all three young men, taken from the grate that was placed over the entrance to the ruined tower. It remains unclear which of them decapitated Elizabeth’s corpse after she passed out and died from hypothermia.

  Digital evidence showed a text message from Solomon Meer’s phone, asking Elizabeth to meet him at Tankerville Tower that night. No reason for the meeting was given and Elizabeth did not reply. However, it appeared that she did, of her own accord, go and meet Solomon Meer, George Meldby and Martin Flynn at around ten p.m. on that fateful night. The only explanation the three offered for the killing was that it was ‘a prank gone wrong’, apparently corroborated by a video clip from Solomon Meer’s phone that shows Elizabeth’s body with Meer’s voice repeating, ‘What have we done?’

  All three men are now serving prison terms. Over the previous four episodes, a couple of possible motivations for the killing have emerged: the first is a combination of jealousy and unrequited adoration of a gregarious young woman who was moving up the ladder of celebrity. The second is that the vampire-obsessed Solomon Meer coerced the other two into believing Elizabeth Barton was undead.

  So why do I find myself here in Ergarth, investigating this case? I have been drawn here by a slogan painted on the wall of the Bartons’ house – apparently a message from Elizabeth’s younger brother, Jason:

  ‘Who locked Lizzie in the tower?’

  To this question, I have received some answers as regards to who. That was never in question. ‘Why’ is what I really want to know; and ‘why’ has also proved the most difficult to answer. Elizabeth Barton had power in this small town; power over hearts and minds. I have heard conflicting accounts about Elizabeth. Speaking to her parents and her younger brother, I have two differing pictures of her. One, from her mother and father, is of a hard-working, sociable and high-achieving young woman; the other, from her younger brother, is that of a manipulative and narcissistic bully. Could I put this down to sibling rivalry, two children vying for attention from parents who were absent much of the time?

  There is also a new question. What was Solomon Meer doing in the Bartons’ house the night before Elizabeth was killed and why did none of the Bartons tell the police?

  In this, our penultimate episode, we are going to speak to a woman who has asked to use a pseudonym. I’ll call her Jo. Jo was a learning mentor at an educational unit for eighteen- to twenty-five-year-olds who were at risk of prosecution by the police, or worse, prison. The now-closed Leighburn Educational Unit was often used as a ‘last-chance saloon’ and at-risk young people could be referred to the unit by the court rather than face a custodial sentence or the prison system. The stipulation was that attendance was mandatory.

  This was quite a novel scheme and was successfully piloted in Ergarth until its funding was cut and the unit closed in early 2019. Jo taught GCSE-level English at Leighburn and tells me she saw many people who had left school with nothing, and were in trouble with drugs and crime, manage to leave, proud of themselves for getting some qualifications, but more importantly, with the knowledge they could achieve something.

  Unfortunately, not a great deal is known about the four or five years after Meer, Meldby and Flynn left Ergarth High School. What we do know is that Solomon Meer was permanently excluded in his final year for attempting to assault the headmaster. George Meldby was excluded a year before that.

  From what I gather, each drifted for those intervening years; Martin Flynn working at his family’s abattoir, Flynn’s Meats, Solomon Meer working at Ergarth Books, and George Meldby collecting benefits.

  All of them, however, in a coincidence that would prove disastrous, were referred to and attended Leighburn Educational Unit in September 2017.

  —Our place was another option – for those who were on the dole long-term or else they were looking for a new start. Most of the time, to be fair, they weren’t. The majority of them had no interest in being here; the job centre would sometimes refer them to us. It was about getting back those qualifications they missed out on when they were at school, you see. They had to want to work too; if they showed up but only pissed about they were gone.

  Most people, most teachers, when they think of Leighburn, think of a monkey house: chairs being chucked across rooms, that sort of thing. In all honesty, it was a pretty calm place. It had to be. The young people here were people, not animals, and we treated them like people. They were adults now, too. It wasn’t school anymore. There was no punishment and detention. If they threw a hissy fit and walked out, we didn’t stop them. It took a little longer for some of them to get used to that. When you show them that you’re not going to start throwing your weight around, when you show them a little bit of respect, you get it back.

  Jo has worked in alternative education provision for most of her career, she’s in her fifties and she’s fazed by very little. Right now she works at a specialist pupil referral unit for some of the most violent youngsters in her area. Jo no longer lives near Ergarth. She still loves her job.

  —It’s safe to say that ninety percent of young men are the same: big, scary, tough, and yeah, they’re intimidating, but it’s all front. The few truly scary ones don’t act like thugs – they don’t need to.

  I’m interested in Jo’s insight into the three killers and what she has to say about the narratives that surround the young men: that they were driven by jealousy – that Elizabeth’s status and popularity represented something they couldn’t attain, so they took out their frustration by killing her; or else it was about a prank gone wrong, part of a craze in Ergarth at the time known as the Dead in Six Days challenge.

  Elizabeth Barton posted several YouTube videos every day, documenting her shopping trips, her thoughts on issues and of course her participation in the Dead in Six Days challenge. By successfully ‘curating’ her online persona, she became Internet royalty; but with royalty comes resentment. As I know full well, if you stand up, there’s always someone who wants to shoot you down. Often, this sort of trouble occurs when the online version of someone does not correspond with reality. Was this what drove the three men who killed El
izabeth?

  There is another theory about why Elizabeth was killed, and while it is the most unlikely, it is the one that has caught the public’s imagination – the idea that Solomon Meer was under the bizarre belief that Elizabeth Barton was a vampire. To be fair, this has never been reported as actual fact, but the rumour clings to this case like a bad smell. But why? It seems to have the least substance behind it, but I suppose it is the better story.

  So where am I with this one? I find myself questioning all of these explanations. None of them offer enough to really get behind.

  So far we’ve talked a lot about Elizabeth Barton. The common view of her is a benevolent and charitable young woman. Yet there were detractors from this view. Even Elizabeth’s family paint hugely differing pictures of her – the high-achieving and popular vlogger so revered by her parents; and the elusive and allegedly abusive manipulator whose own brother took himself as far away from her in the country as he physically could. Who do we believe? Which Elizabeth was the real one? Or was there more to her than we can ever know? Amirah in episode two, I feel, was vague about her relationship with Elizabeth, and her parents struggled to come up with any answers when I asked whether Elizabeth had close, real-life friends. Jason Barton, however, has provided me with the most intrigue. I feel like after speaking to him, after he told me to ‘force this story’, I’m searching for the right path in a difficult maze.

  So I thought maybe I’m looking in the wrong places. Perhaps the way to solve what exactly happened to Elizabeth Barton is to take a different path. An indirect route.