Deity

by Matt Wesolowski

  The Shaw family owns a great swathe of Colliecrith National Park. Interestingly, around 70% of the park is privately owned, and used for rough grazing and managed moorland. The parts of the aspen forest neighbouring Crystal Forest have been in the Shaw family for over three hundred years. As Craig says, the curse and the Frithghast are said to centre only around that family.

  —When the Kerrs were working for them, the Shaws had us do very little in the way of maintenance – the bare minimum, you know? They liked it dense, wild. It was there, right there on the edge of Crystal Forest where we found those girls.

  So, over the years I was working for Mr Crystal, we’d had a bit of back and forth with the Shaws, you know. They were happy to let us get on with the maintenance of Mr Crystal’s property. What we couldn’t get them to do is come and take a look for themselves. That day in 2007, the weather had been awful – winds and storms. Trees on the borders between the properties had snapped off and fallen. It was a mess. A dangerous mess. I got in touch with the Shaws and they asked me to take photographs, so that’s what I was doing that day, taking photos of the trees that needed clearing. There were a good few, all tangled and broken, matted together like hair. It was going to be a bit of a job, I could see that. There was one of those little ridges, a wee bank hidden by undergrowth. It was a mess. I went down the hill, picking my steps carefully. It was slippery, dark and muddy. And real quiet – colder and darker once you got down there. There was these little gusts of wind, making the leaves on the trees rattle. In and out, in and out. Like the forest was breathing. I’m right down, almost under the bank, when I finally find it again – that cave: a load of rocks, great big slabs, all covered in moss with these markings all over them. There’s a nasty smell too … And I had that feeling again, from all those years back, all the hairs on my body standing up, and I remembered seeing those deer, how they’d looked up then vanished. I remembered my father’s hand tightening around mine.

  And that’s when I saw it. It was down there, right under the hill, when I thought I saw … I mean, it was just cos of all the chat, you know? Everyone at Crystal Forest talking about it … It must have been a dream or something, a hallucination.

  —What did you see?

  —It was there, in the distance behind me, way back in the densest part of the trees. It was a trick of the light of course. Or it was my mind playing tricks that made it look like that.

  —Look like what?

  —A shadow, black against the green of the ferns. I thought it was a deer at first. It was a deer I suppose. But … not … It was more like a shadow; like a deer that had rotted away. I only saw it for a second … white bone. A skull. Looking at me with those empty eye sockets. Gave me the shivers, it really did. That old story, that old childhood fear. It all just got to me in that darkness, in those woods.

  —Did you take a photo?

  —I wish I had. I wish I’d thought. But in that moment it was like … it was like all rational thought had just gone out of my head. It was like that shadow had got inside me, like there was a black cloud over my brain. It was horrible. It stank and the leaves were hissing and shimmering, and I just … I needed to give my head a shake.

  So I ducked under some broken boughs, to hide, you know, to get my head together. But under there was where the cave was.

  Frightened and shaken, Craig moved back into the cave, its rim thick with trailing roots, and there he saw two shapes in the semi-darkness.

  —I’d seen that print so many times, you know? It was the black-and-white image of him, half his face covered by his hair – the ‘ZC’ logo above. It was that print, on a kiddie’s rucksack. Just sat there in the entrance to the cave. This horrible feeling went through me, and I knew. I knew it was going to be bad. I just knew.

  Craig crept forward along the muddy floor and into the back of the cave. He was met with a grisly sight. Two cadavers.

  —I thought it was only one at first. She was lying flat on her back and … she was a mess, a mess.

  Lulu Copeland was only recognisable as human by the remnants of the Zach Crystal T-shirt she was wearing and her trainers.

  —I threw up, and it wouldn’t stop. I was dry heaving, coughing up bile. I never saw the other one, I never even saw her. I couldn’t look anymore.

  Jessica Morton was at the back of the cave, curled up in a foetal position, also dead.

  Exposure was the official cause of death for both girls.

  Zach Crystal and his team stayed tight-lipped about the whole thing. It was a tense time and Craig tells me all of Crystal’s other employees were silent too, terrified of speaking up and getting it wrong. In hindsight, he thinks it wasn’t the right strategy for the star and his people to take.

  —He should have come out then and said something, been sympathetic, you know? Shown some compassion. I think his PR team feared these deaths would ruin his image completely. This was when Damage had just come out – Mr Crystal was probably the biggest star in the whole world at the time. I think, honestly, he just left it to his people to sort out and they made the wrong call.

  Indeed, the wall of silence from Crystal concerning Lulu and Jessica only led to speculation about the case. I’m not entirely sure where and when they started, but there are rumours of some truly gruesome details about the bodies that have never really been explained.

  Reading the ghoulish threads on Reddit and the archives of forums speculating about what actually happened to the two young girls is a horrendous experience, but I’ll try to summarise the principal theories. These are that the body of Lulu Copeland had effectively been butchered, and that her head was missing and a good deal of the flesh from her thighs and arms had been hacked off.

  These rumours also suggest that some of Lulu’s flesh was found during the autopsy.

  In the stomach of Jessica Morton.

  Craig doesn’t doubt that the bodies were in a mess. He says that’s probably what started the rumours. Or else there was a leak from someone inside Crystal Forest. He has no idea who might do this and why they’d suggest such horrors.

  —There’s plenty of scavengers out there. Badgers, pine martens, wild cats. That’s what they think did most of the damage. That’s what must have been living in that cave, see? I think something like that ripped her open. Some scavenger. For whatever reason, it left the other girl, Jessica, alone. I think that’s what caused these terrible stories, these rumours. This terrible accident mixed with the story of the Whispering Wood, then the radio silence from Mr Crystal’s people. It all made it sound so much worse than it probably was.

  But I still can’t explain it – why one of those girls was eaten and the other left alone. I don’t want to think about it really. What I do know is that I’ll never go back there, to that forest, to that place. Whatever it was I felt when I was a kid, it was a warning. That forest secret I saw was a warning, and I didn’t heed it.

  —What did you do when you found the two girls; what was your first action?

  —You know who I phoned first? It wasn’t the police. It was him. It was Mr Cryer. I phoned him first to tell him what I’d found. Says it all, doesn’t it? About the power in Crystal Forest at the time.

  I have sympathy for Craig where he has little for himself. He tells me Zach Crystal’s team weren’t trying to cover anything up, they were just concerned with limiting any potential damage to Crystal’s image. I wonder, though, if Zach Crystal himself knew about what had happened, or knew of the rumours that abounded later about Jessica Morton eating her friend’s flesh. We also cannot ignore the horrific parallels between this and the old story of the Frithghast.

  —Aye, he knew what people had started saying in the aftermath of the whole thing. There was a meeting about whether he should put out a statement or something, but the team was dead against it. They knew the papers and the TV would twist it all up. So that’s when Mr Crystal really stepped up his charity work, you know? The work he did for young lassies like those two. I think he thought that would
make it go away.

  —Did you ever tell anyone outside Crystal Forest about what you’d seen?

  —No. No way.

  —Why was that, do you think?

  —You didn’t mention it. You just kept your mouth shut about things like that. Everyone knew that. It was better to say nothing. I’m not daft. Even talking to you about it now, after the fact … you know it still scares me.

  —Craig, I’ve heard that there were times when Zach Crystal led his fans out into the forest at night, is that true and if so … why do you think he did this?

  —I … I don’t know where you heard that. In fact I don’t want to know. I can only say that I never understood it, but sometimes, yes, that’s what he’d do. I used to ask if he wanted us to come with him – you know, keep them all safe. But he wouldn’t have it. The forest was his, Mr Crystal said, and he’d walk in it alone if he wanted to. I don’t want to remember those times. It was just awful, it just felt like something bad was going to happen.

  —Why was he doing it, though?

  —I never knew. None of us ever did. When you’re dealing with someone like that, he does what he wants, when he wants. You just get used to it. You just have to keep your mouth shut and let him get on with it. Sometimes I think I kept my mouth shut for far too long.

  The deaths of Jessica Morton and Lulu Copeland should have made much bigger headlines than they actually did. Their vulnerable status, the fact both of them had criminal records, combined, possibly, with the weight of Zach Crystal’s own PR, meant the story seemed to disappear very quickly. The grisly rumours that came out after the fact, however, have never gone away. I’m shocked that what could have been such rich tabloid fodder … simply wasn’t. Craig, however isn’t. He tells me that you never underestimated the power wielded by Zach Crystal and his team.

  —Do you think this was one of the reasons that Zach Crystal was so rarely interviewed, because he controlled the narrative so much?

  —Oh for sure. And I think those deaths only made him withdraw more, if that was possible. He handed the media just a few scraps.

  Zach Crystal’s presence seemed to make his rare interviewers nervous. They would often trip over their words or else seem completely enamoured by him. He, in turn, was very reluctant to speak at all, and if a journalist managed to catch him he’d often walk away with a coy wave of his hand.

  —Believe me, he worked a lot on his presence. His answers were pre-scripted and what sometimes look like spontaneous interviews were all strictly and carefully choreographed by Crystal’s team. He read a lot of books about power – you know those self-help ones: about how to be in command the whole time. He was a master at it. We were all in awe of him at Crystal Forest. Even more so as he got bigger. When he was there, it was a different atmosphere, you could feel it.

  But the next year, it just all fell apart.

  2009 was another significant year for Zach Crystal. His relationship with Zadie Farrow ended abruptly, and, tragically, both his parents passed away. Maureen and Frank Crystal died, one shortly after the other, of ‘natural causes’ at the luxurious home their son had bought for them on England’s south coast. Zach and Naomi both attended the funeral with three-year-old Bonnie. They were photographed, rather tastelessly, by tabloid newspapers and gossip magazines, crying together. Naomi wears her trademark sunglasses but is dressed modestly. Zach, however, wears a full Victorian-style veil over his face along with a black cape. He stands hand in hand at the graveside with his niece and his sister.

  Craig tells me that after the funeral Crystal became an almost permanent resident at Crystal Forest, up in the tree house. He was rarely seen, but his presence was everywhere.

  —We were scared then. Scared of him, scared of Mr Cryer.

  —What was so scary about him?

  —He was just … unpredictable. In the lead-up to his parents passing, his behaviour was just … peculiar. More than usual.

  —How so?

  —So … sometimes Mr Cryer would get me on the phone. 11.00pm, 3.00am, whenever, and I’d have to go out – out into the forest and do a sweep of the property. Now. That minute, that second.

  —Really?

  —Aye – he would always tell me to ‘report anything, anything you see or hear’.

  —Was he looking for something in particular?

  —If he was, he didn’t tell me. Everyone had their theories. Once one of the housekeepers told me that Mr Crystal had seen something out of his window. He was terrified up there, blocking up all the windows and doors. Screaming, chucking stuff about.

  —The Frithghast?

  —Maybe. I don’t know for sure. No one would say anything. They were all too scared in case something got out. There were cameras everywhere, a brand-new security system throughout the property. Everything was transmitted up into the tree house. He knew exactly who was where at all times. Remember as well, we were pretty much under siege too; there were journalists and fans all over the place, trying to get in. I think it was all too much for Ms Farrow, she couldn’t take it anymore. There were also groups of young girls coming for visits every other week. The security was stepped up; they were all signing confidentiality agreements, NDAs. It was a tough time. Then, after his parents passed … it felt like he wanted to be everywhere at all times, in control of everything.

  —Omnipotent, perhaps?

  —Aye. That’s a good way to describe it. Omnipotent. He made sure he was. You could hear him screaming at staff. The cleaners were forever cleaning up after he’d trashed rooms. Then you wouldn’t see or hear him for weeks. He’d be up in the tree house.

  —What caused these outbursts?

  —It was the media coverage. He was obsessed. He read everything, and anything negative sent him into a fury. The Bastard Squad got bigger, more ruthless, they would go after anyone who said anything, bring them down.

  Zach Crystal reached an out-of-court defamation settlement with the Daily Mail in 2010 – rumoured to be for around £60,000 – for their coverage of the star in hospital in 2004, in which they accused him of faking his broken leg.

  —Basically, the Mail had sent journalists and photographers dressed as orderlies into Raigmore to get photos of him in bed. He wanted all of them tracked down and charged. The irony being that Mr Crystal had his own photographers doing exactly the same thing.

  Bloggers, YouTubers and columnists who suggested anything untoward about his liaisons with troubled teenage girls were either threatened or sued, or both.

  For Craig, though, even more troubling was Crystal’s need to control others’ behaviour.

  —He wanted people tracked, he wanted people followed. He was paying PIs all over the place. It was like he wanted full control over what anyone thought and said about him. It was crazy. As the years went on, it became a way of life. Everyone was in a high state of alert a hundred percent of the time. He asked to join us on our patrols, eventually. Nearly every night, trudging through the forest, stopping at very noise, every movement. It was exhausting.

  —What do you think was wrong with him?

  —Hard to say. I don’t want to defame the guy, even now he’s dead. I’m too … still too scared I suppose. But he was utterly consumed by this idea of something in the Whispering Wood – it was like he was desperate to see it. Maybe he thought that, if he did, he’d be able to predict the future – have control over that too.

  He still had the lasses coming to visit too – all of them up in the tree house. I think they were all saying they saw things too. It was getting out of control – feeding his paranoia.

  —Did any of that ever trouble you? Did you find or see anything else that made you wonder what was going on in the tree house?

  —Thing is, see, Mr Cryer was always up there too – he always organised the visits. That’s why I just kept my head down, got on with my work. I thought, if Mr Cryer’s up there, then it’s OK. Mr Crystal organised gifts and money and all sorts for those girls. He spared no expense. He was defiant about it,
right to the end. That’s what he wanted to do, so he did it. No one could tell him ‘no’. Not even Mr Cryer.

  A few people, including Sasha Stewart, have speculated that Zach Crystal saw the Frithghast twice more. Once before his friend and aide James Cryer had his accident in Crystal Forest and then before the fire. I put this to Craig. He shrugs.

  —Maybe he did. I don’t know. He never saw it with me. But, believe me, he was looking for it, all day every day. So who knows?

  —Are you OK to talk about those two events?

  —Aye. I mean, I felt like I’d been pretty much pushed away by that time. I only ever really ate and slept in my room, you know, I spent most of my time in the woods. It was Naomi who found Mr Cryer, the poor sod.

  Naomi Crystal – concerned about her brother’s state and the increasingly loud voices from the #metoo movement that were supporting his alleged victims – moved to Crystal Forest permanently in 2017 from her home in LA. She brought her daughter with her – Zach’s niece Bonnie, who was then thirteen years old. Craig tells me Naomi’s presence brought a sense of much-needed calm to the place.

  —Aye, she was sound, she had her head screwed on. She was forceful. Firm but fair, like a teacher. But she didn’t let up. She was very protective of him as well. She took over – took full control of the place. She was her very own Bastard Squad. She stopped the lasses visiting, which was a relief. She kept him away from any limelight. Honestly, I think it was her idea for him to just vanish for a bit, get away from it all. Especially after Mr Cryer died.