by Giles Ekins
Four black pained cubes are stacked up one on top of each to form a cabinet. Charlie opens the door of each cube and Selene decorously steps inside the cabinet, giving the audience a little wave as she does so. Charlie closes all four doors in turn and then immediately opens them again. Selene’s head and shoulders in the topmost cube, her chest and upper torso in the second, her lower torso and upper thighs in the third, her legs and feet in the lowermost cube. He then takes sharpened steel blades and divides the stacked cubes, slicing Selene into four pieces. With the silent aid of Keith he separates the cubes again, placing the four cubes on stage. Again without a word being spoken, he stacks the cubes again and once more opens the front of each to reveal; that her head is where her thighs should be, her feet where her head should be, her chest where her feet should be and her thighs in place of her torso. As the gasps of amazement echoes around the audience he quickly un-stacks the cubes, rearranges and then stacks them once more. He removes the blades, opens the cubes to show that all of Selene’s part are back where they should be. Charlie has always wondered if in fact he did actually cut her into four pieces. Nothing surprised him anymore.
Benny Marsden is still impressed. He has seen the Mis-made Girls performed in Las Vegas, the mecca of magic shows, and Charlie’s performance was up there with best.
Kellick’s Volvo, accompanied by three other cars and a police van leave the police station yard set out for the seafront and the Seville Theatre where Charles Chilton is to be arrested and questioned in connection with five murders. Kellick wants the arrest to be as public as possible; he’d actually like to arrest Charlie on stage, how dramatic would that be? ‘Kellick of the Yard arrests Headhunter Killer on stage’ what a headline .that would make.
FORTY-TWO
Whitburn on Sea, later still
‘Who does he think he is, the prick? The fucking Sweeney?’
THERE IS NO INTRODUCTION. NO ANN-OUNCEMENT. The Mis-made Girl cubes are removed and Charlie and Selene have left the stage and an excited, anticipatory susurration shivers and buzzes around the audience. They know what is coming.
All the lights go out, plunging the theatre in sudden eerie darkness, the audience as one scream and yell in expectation, in blood lust, excitement and in fear, a sudden quickening of the heartbeat.
The death knell tolls, echoing around the walls, the acoustics are not the best but the effect is just as electrifying.
‘For whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee…’ Charlie, as usual quoting John Donne to Selene.
‘No Charlie, it tolls for you.’
Donnnnggggg. A spotlight spears out of the darkness, Charlie and Selene stand centre stage, silent, still, statuesque, in marked contrast to the almost manic presentation of the opening illusions. For long seconds they do not move.
Donnnnggggg. A spotlight casts the shadow of the guillotine onto the front shoji screen and even though the audience knew it was coming there is still gasp of surprise. Apart from the spotlight on Charlie and Selene and the others illuminating the guillotine, the rest of the stage and the audience are in total black darkness apart from fire exit signs… Charlie makes the announcement that they are re-creating the execution of Marie-Josephine and calls for a volunteer. ‘Thank you, madam, can I have your name, please?’
‘Maureen, Maureen Collings.' She then writes the name of her dog, ‘Foxie,’ somewhat shakily, onto Selene forehead.
The dread bells tolls again, three times.
Selene kneels down before the guillotine and Charlie locks her into the lunettes. ‘On the count of three. Charlie exhorts the crowd
Kellick and the convoy turn off Mafeking Street on the corner by the Imperial Hotel and onto the Promenade, he is now less ,than five minutes from the theatre.
Charlie drops the blade. Screams of delighted shock from the audience. Selene slumps forward, headless. More screams.
Swiftly Charlie reaches into the basket, lifts out Selene’s head and holds it out towards a white faced Maureen.
‘I didn’t know it was like this,’ she whispers, hands to her mouth.
‘Don’t worry, pet, it’s fine. Now, Maureen, is this the name you wrote, the name of your dog?
‘Yyyyessss. Yes.’
Selene’s eyes do not open wide She does not ask for a kiss.
Benny is stunned, realising something is not right, he can see from the look on Charlie’s face that this is not supposed to happen. Something has gone wrong, very badly wrong. The de Vale sisters are not going to be happy if there is an accident with all the attendant bad publicity and falling attendances. Indecisive, he stands, not knowing what to do, to go on stage and see what’s going on or…or what? So typically Benny Marsden does nothing, except to hope it will all turn out to be a retrievable hitch in the illusion. ‘Christ, I need a drink. Badly.’
With a dramatic and totally unnecessary squeal of brakes, Kellick pulls up in front of the theatre and leaps out of the almost before it has stopped moving and hurries towards the theatre entrance. ‘Who does he think he is, the prick? The fucking Sweeney? Bill Cleverley thinks, still annoyed at the berating Kellick gave him, ‘Not my fault the traffic was so bad.’
As much as he would like to arrest Charlie on stage, Kellick knows that in reality he cannot, apart from annoying the audience, not that he gave a fig about that, if it went wrong the comeback would be enormous, ‘Kellick of the Yard arrests the wrong man on stage,’ a headline that he could do without. He knew that Charlie would have finished his act by the interval and so he would arrest him then. Not as dramatic or satisfying but safer. He could make his public headlines in the morning escorting Charlie out to the car to transport him back to Manchester…
‘Selene? Selene?’ Charlie asks, his heart pounding so fiercely that he thought he might faint. ‘Selene’ he asks again, more urgently as the ice chills take root in his stomach and lungs, circulating through his bones. ‘Come on Selene, come on, stop pissing about. A joke’s a joke but this has gone on long enough,’ but he knows in his gizzard that this is no practical joke and that Tchort’s words have come chillingly to pass, ‘that Selene remain a virgin. Without that she remains a virgin, the illusion cannot work.’ And another of Tchort’s pronouncement floods into his consciousness to freeze his frantic heart, you would not suffer such an easy fate should you defy me on this.
‘Is this supposed to happen,’ Maureen asks hesitantly, ‘it wasn’t like this on the telly?’
‘No, no, it’s…just a…technical…’ The curtains around the guillotine suddenly drop and with a start Charlie slowly lowers Selene’s head back into the basket and taking Maureen’s arm he ushers her down the stage stairs back to her seat.
All the house and stage lights come on.
Keith, watching from the wings, turns and walks unhurriedly away. Job done.
FORTY-THREE
Whitburn on Sea, immediately afterwards
Was it an accident, a trick gone wrong? Or was it murder? Either way, the mess was on his doorstep, stinking to high heaven.
CHARLIE STAGGERS OUT THROUGH THE STAGE DOOR, his bottle of Jack Daniels clutched tightly in his hand and makes his way around the rear of the theatre, down then a narrow piss and vomit stinking side alley and then across the Promenade and down onto the beach. He is not noticed by the police pulling up the front of the theatre, or if he is noticed, he is just dismissed as another holidaymaker drunk. He leans against the rough, damp, seaweed smelling sea wall, trying to get his head together, but his brain seems to be coagulating, his thoughts as slow as a snail in treacle. Selene is dead, and I have killed her! Selene is dead and I have killed her,’ the only coherent thought his snarled and aching brain can embrace.
How he got to the beach, how he even got out of the theatre is a confused blur. He remembers hearing the audience begin to scream as they realise that Selene might be dead, screams mingled with sobs of shock, .Of horror. He must have picked up the bottle of JD from the table in the wings as he fled the stage but has no memory of that
, or of pushing past Jack, the venerable stage hand. ‘Summat wrong, Charlie? Summat gone wrong wi’t trick?’ Jack asks. ‘She all right, the lass? Not hurt, is she? You need an ambulance?’
‘No, no. course not,’ Charlie answered wild eyed, thrusting his way bullishly through the other members of the show who were beginning to gather as the word spread that there had been some sort of accident on stage. He barges into Norah Littlehampton, one of Alyson Wonder’s backing girls, ‘Here, go steady Charlie, I bruise easily, you know,’ she protested rubbing her arm, but he does not heed.
Neither does he hear Benny Marsden, ‘Now you tell me right now, Charlie, what the fuck is going on?’ he insisted with all the authority he could muster, ‘Charlie, don’t you walk away from me now, not until I find out what’s about,’ trying to grab Charlie’s arm, but Charlie in a surge of rage, brushes off the restraining arm swings around to punch him, overbalances and lurches into one of the tour stage hands who steadies Charlie on his feet. Blindly he rushes on, ignoring Benny’s shouts and brushing past anybody in his way, heading down the back stage corridor to the stage door and out into the night.
Kellick is now inside the theatre, heading backstage, looking for Charlie. ‘Charles Chilton, where is he? Anybody?,’ having to shout above the growing echoing din as the audience shout and scream and the back stage crew and performers, all speaking loudly at once, add to the deafening commotion. ‘Charles Chilton? And Keith, Keith, where is he and anybody know his second name?’ but nobody bears him mind, the drama on stage is far more enthralling than a bald pot-bellied copper looking for Charlie.
Selene’s body has slumped to the door, a thickening river of blood trickling across the stage floor as though seeking an exit. Sara Asakura, Alyson Wonder’s other backing singer, nervously pushes side the encircling black curtains to look inside and starts to scream.
At last Kellick restores some sense of order into the mayhem milling about in the theatre and on stage. Four police are assigned to guard the stage and Selene’s body, some of the more ghoulish in the audience had tried to climb up onto the stage… The black curtains remain in place, shrouding the bloody scene beyond.
Much of the audience has already fled, much to Kellick’s chagrin, he needs to question them, to ascertain what they saw, especially he needs to talk to the volunteer, Maureen Collings, who has been taken home by her husband and put to bed, suffering from deep shock. He will make her a strong cup of tea with lots of sugar and patiently feed it to her , sip by sip. ‘You sleep now, love,’ he says after she had drunk all the tea, ‘see things differently in the morning, eh,’ kissing her tenderly on the forehead and turning out the light. He will sleep in the spare bed so as not to disturb her.
Kellick set another team of police to search the building for Charlie but already he fears that he is too late, that Charles Chilton has slipped the net. And where, and pertinently who, were Keith and Jon, neither had been seen since the end of Charlie’s act. Had all three escaped together?
No trace of Charlie, Keith or Jon are found in the theatre, Kellick’s worse fear has come to pass, he has missed his man, a fact substantiated when Brian Hart, the stage door keeper, confirms that he saw both Keith and Charlie leaving the theatre, although not together, Keith leaving some minutes before Charlie. Kellick calls Glaisby for reinforcements, a full scale man-hunt will now have to be set in motion. Kellick’s world was unraveling about his ears.
‘Always knew, y’all, that there was something strange about that guy,’ Billy Boy commented when he heard the police were looking for Charlie, ‘Knew he was a cunt, from right off.’
Kellick was a seething mass of frustrations, not only does it seemed that Charles Chilton and his accomplices have fled before he could arrest them, thanks to the fucking traffic and the incompetence of his driver, Pc Cleverley, the useless oaf, I’ll have him broken before this day is out, just see if I don’t, but he now also had the inconvenience of another body on his hands, another headless body on his hands. Was it an accident, a trick gone wrong? Or was it murder? Either way, the mess was on his doorstep, stinking to high heaven.
FORTY-FOUR
Finale, the beach, Whitburn on Sea.
The law is harsh, but it is the law.
.
THE MOON IS FULL, LARGE AND LUMINOUSLY INCANDESCENT, rising above the horizon, shimmering silver across the swelling sea, the sky is crystal clear and a warm soft breeze blows across the sand dunes. The tide is retreating but the sound of the distant waves rolling onto the beach can still be heard, a gentle susurration, soothing and reassuring. Still wet sands glisten and ripple silvery in the moonlight and a series of small pools shimmer like a string of luminous, brilliant pearls.
Charlie staggered along the beach, unmindful of the moon and the shimmering sands. He stopped to take another drink only to find the bottle empty, ‘Fuck.’ He savagely throws the bottle away, vaguely hearing a crash as it smashes against the sea wall. Some poor little kid is going to end up with broken glass in his feet.
Moonlight shivers across the beach, casting hard flickering shadows. He turns to dry retch, his mouth foul from drink and fear, from a grasping terror threatening to tear him apart.
Across the sounding board of the placid sea and still wet beach, snatches of Credence Clearwater Revival’s ‘Bad Moon Rising’ drift across from the amusement arcade at the end of the pier,
Charlie staggers on, the damp sand clogging about his shoes, he weaves and totters as the voices explode in cacophonic pandemonium and bedlam, shredding away the last vestiges of his sanity. Behind Charlie, a vague flickering shadowy shape can be seen, diaphanous, like shimmering grey silk floating in a breeze, indistinct, menacing, minatory and ominous.
The voices. The voices. The voices spear into his brain, he mumbles
Incoherently, mimicking the voices tearing his head apart, adding his own demented fear-born ranting, muttering and swearing, stumbling and lurching, a disintegrating dement.
Everything bursts in his brain at once, a firestorm of scalding psychic pain, ‘Mr. Tchort demands his fucking tribute, I’ll give him tribute, given him his tribute,’ ’He stops for a moment, swaying, his head a morass. ‘How did you like my tribute eh, Mr. Asmodeus Tchort?’ he shouts to the wind. ’A fallen angel is all I am, a fallen angel, he says. Fuck that, the Devil, Lucifer, is all you are.’ .Behind him the fluttering, menacing wraith, is ever closer, ever more ominous, evil, minacious and boding.
‘Take the dirty bitch down to beach and kill her. The time has come Charlie .On the beach now, kill her. Cut off her head; take her head for the glory of Tchort. Pay your dues; you pay your dues, Tchort, you bastard.’
‘Fucking bastard Tchort, the very same machine last used to decapitate…some murdering frog. Fuck him. Give us a kiss, that’s all I did. Lilywhite Lilith, one of us now, Charlie, one of us forever.’
He sobs, dropping to his knees, his head in his hands. Behind him, the death grey wraith is closer, briefly outlined against the brilliant rising moon, still indistinct, a vague shadowy obscurity, latent with menace, a malevolent harbinger of horrors to come.
‘Lilywhite fucking Lilith, turning me into a vampire. Aye, and Selene the Virgin Ice Queen, you keep the faith, Charlie, you keep the faith, I could’ve had it all, Las Vegas, fame, the fucking lot but she did it for me the cock-teasing bitch, leading me on, flashing her twat at me all day, Bitch, she’s not a virgin, the trick won’t work and that fucker Tchort, a fallen angel is all I am, well shit on you Tchort, whoever the Hell you are, we mean you no harm, one of us now, one of us forever. I showed her, fucking showed her, too good for the likes of me.’
He staggers to feet and stumbles on a few more paces, stops, turns and looks up wildly as a dark shadow passes over him and a shudder of icy fear turns his bowels to water.
Lilith van Dante stands before him, dressed in grey, a dress clinging to her body as vividly as the red one she wore that day in Michaelmas ‘s workshop, an eon, a lifetime ago.
‘Well
. Well. Look who it isn’t, Lilywhite Lilith as I live and breathe.’
But not for much longer, Charlie. ‘You did not keep the faith, Charlie…’
‘Aye, well, faith ain’t what it used to be. Funny seeing you down here, you looking for Selene? Snow Queen Selene?’ and Charlie is struck by a fit of hysterical giggles, ‘she’s quite lost her head, you know. Quite lost her head.’
‘You broke the faith Charlie and now the time has come for you to pay.’
‘Cash or credit card? he responds, still convulsed in giggles.
Lilith body shivers, her eyes flare a burning red, the fiery pits of Hell, her scarlet lips draw back revealing slavering venomous fangs and a snakes flickering forked tongue. Her hands mutate into hooked bestial claws, the dress drops away and her skin beneath is reptilian, rippling scales that ooze foul slime, her face a rictus of demoniacal snarls, before his eyes she is a nightmare demon, bestial, hideous, diabolical.
He screams and tries to flee but before he had gone three paces she was on him and bore him to the ground, straddling him in a foul parody of the seduction scene on the sofa in the workshop. Her breath is as foul as the stench of a thousand rotting corpses as she forces open his mouth with her claws and lowers her face to his. Charlie fights with desperation but her strength is demonic, she fastens her mouth on to his in a diabolic kiss and blows deeply into his mouth and throat with the fiery breath of Hell, incinerating his vocal cords so that he can no longer even scream out his agony. Relentlessly the thing that is Lilith continues to breathe into him, his lungs burn with intense heat, he trashes in agony, in torment, as she gradually, tortuously burns all his internal organs to a charred and blackened ash, even after his death she continues to incinerate his viscera, it is decreed that he be burnt alive and driven from our midst in the avenging flames.