Naomi orchestrated the resurrection of Zach Crystal. She called on Ed Sheeran, who recorded ‘World in Our Hands’ with Zach at Crystal Forest, and organised the appearance at the upcoming Lazy Dayz festival in Hyde Park.
—It was getting better. Much better. Zach was starting to turn things around, but the allegations kept coming. The #metoo stuff was happening then. I needed to tell the world that it wasn’t Zach, that it was James who had done it, who had done everything.
—And why didn’t you?
—There was the accident, at Lazy Dayz, those two technicians. Zach told me he’d foreseen it, that there was something in Crystal Forest, some spectre, some death omen. For the first time, I listened to him.
—Did you tell him what you’d seen? The lights?
—Maybe I should have done, but I just couldn’t. He already believed it fully, anyway. And I was so busy working out how to go public with the James Cryer stuff – police, newspapers. It had to be a planned strategy. Zach could not be implicated. This would either save his career or destroy it utterly.
This was March 2018, not long after the scheduled appearance by Zach at Lazy Dayz. Naomi said she was working flat out, 24/7, on Zach’s career, on his finances, hiding what she had to hide, trying to right all the wrongs of James Cryer. She had to do this for her family. Plans were under way for Zach Crystal’s triumphant return; the Forever tour and the new album. At the peak of all this, when the world was back on side, Naomi would spill the beans about James Cryer.
Bonnie, at this point, was spending more and more time with her uncle. Yet she seemed to be getting worse rather than better. She was becoming more withdrawn and argumentative. Her fear of the forest was becoming pathological.
—Zach was encouraging it. He said he was seeing it too. It was all getting too much. I was stuck. If I told her it was all fake, I would have to tell him too, and everything would all come out. And to be honest, after what I saw in that forest, I was having trouble convincing myself it wasn’t real. What we needed was to get away from Colliecrith; sell up, go live somewhere else. Put it all behind us. I couldn’t live with it anymore, the guilt of it.
It was now late-March 2018. There was a skeleton staff at Crystal Forest, and Naomi was viewing a number of potential properties that the three could move into, as well as seeking some help for Bonnie. She went up to the tree house. Bonnie had gone up there to watch a horror movie with her uncle.
—It was just so normal … just a normal day. I went up there and it’s dark and all the fairy lights are on, as usual. Zach’s bedroom is huge; there’s this projector screen on one wall and I expected to find them snuggled up watching, I don’t know, something horrible. But I walked in and Bonnie’s sat, curled into a little ball on the bed. Just her eyes peeping out. The look in them sent a chill through me: she was just staring, straight forward, at the screen, but not at the screen. She didn’t even look up when I walked in.
‘Where’s Zach?’ I say. But I can see that there’s something wrong. The light from the screen is flickering like a strobe and some monster’s screaming, roaring … and then I smell something. That’s what all it was at first. Blood. I smelled blood. I start feeling my breath coming fast, and I turn on the light.
Zach’s laid there on the bed; blood everywhere.
And Bonnie’s just sat beside him, her back to him, rocking back and forth.
She was still holding the knife.
I had to pull her fingers off the handle, one by one.
Almost eighteen months before Crystal Forest burned down, Zach Crystal was dead.
Bonnie Crystal, his thirteen-year-old niece had stabbed him several times in the throat and in the belly. She sat beside him as he bled to death. She wasn’t going to take it anymore. As Naomi tells me this, her voice is steady. It feels like there’s a rushing sound, like we’re in a bubble. All I see is my own face reflected in those vast sunglasses.
—You’re serious?
—She told me it had been going on for the last year. She told me she was scared to tell because he’d told her she’d end up like all the others – the world would go after her, everyone would hate her. Most powerfully though, he told her no one would believe her. She told me she couldn’t take it anymore. She couldn’t see him go on tour again and this happen to any more girls. She said she was sorry.
Naomi’s voice trembles, nearly breaks, but she holds it together.
—It was him and James, all along. I realised that I’d been duped as much as everyone else. Zach and James had been doing this to teenage girls for years.
—So this surely was the perfect time to tell the police, let the public know? Surely.
—I’m going to tell you something. I’m going to explain now why I agreed to come and do this with you.
I’ve been someone all of my life. I’ve been Naomi Crystal for forty-six years. I’ve been Zach Crystal’s sister. Everything I do or say, now, is watched, is reported on, is commented on. It’s even worse now Zach is gone. Ever since I sat in that park, beside the cenotaph in Barlheath, I’ve just wanted to be no one. I’ve wanted to be like everyone else, one of the herd, just living my life. But that’ll never happen. There’s no way.
Bonnie, though, she has a chance. I don’t want her to have to live her life in the spotlight. Zach chose that for himself, but she never got to choose. So I helped her.
We hid Zach’s body in the forest and we planned her escape. Zach had the legacy of a god, a deity. He had enough riches to be someone. Those riches now meant Bonnie could be no one.
—But the fire, the interview with Ruby Rendall?
—Zach had never done a full-length interview before. Thanks to James Cryer’s great idea to make him an enigma, no one really knew what Zach looked and sounded like exactly. So we called in Zach’s decoy. We drew up the papers and left him a lot of Zach’s fortune. He has the rights to all of Zach’s music, the estate. I took what I needed for Bonnie to disappear. Then we spent our year making her vanish.
Zach Crystal’s year-long disappearance was Naomi’s plan to protect her daughter. Everyone across the world was searching, but not for the right person. Bonnie Crystal vanished in plain sight as the world looked for her uncle.
Crystal’s reappearance, the announcement of a new album, a tour, the Ruby interview, then the fire at Crystal Forest in September 2019 and the discovery of the charred remains of Zach Crystal, were also carefully orchestrated, in true Crystal style, creating media mayhem, keeping the public’s focus, while Bonnie escaped.
—What about Ian Julius. Was he lying? Who was it he caught, if he caught anyone?
—I think Sasha Stewart was right about him – he’d do anything for money. Even my money. I don’t know who he was chatting to. And I certainly didn’t meet anyone at Inverness airport, like he says. But you see, I couldn’t let Zach get away with what he’d done. He would not end up as a martyr. So I decided to let Ian Julius go public with his fabricated story. Suing him was just a way to make the story as big as possible. The accusations came thick and fast after that, so making Zach’s death look like suicide made absolute sense. And we had the benefit of showing Zach for what he was. Not a god, but someone who was too scared to face what was coming to him. I know how the media are, I know how the fans are. I wanted that question out there just when a tour and the album were most anticipated, just when everyone thought the great Zach Crystal was back, defying his accusers. I did it for his victims. I wanted Crystal-mania to be at its height, so they would be heard. If there’s enough voices out there, they can unite. Now people will listen to them, when they may not have done before.
And after hearing this, they will. They can and they will.
—And me. Why me? Why this podcast right now?
Naomi passes me something. A phone. It lies on the table between us. I don’t even want to touch it.
—I’m passing on the story, Scott. The story of Zach Crystal can stop with you. All the questions, the focus, the spotlight – you can share
some of it now. You can use what’s on this phone to validate everyone who has been brave enough to speak up against my brother. You can be the hero of this story, Scott. This is James Cryer’s phone, the one I found in his desk drawer. It also contains the ‘SG’ plans, the lights in the forest. Zach’s Frithghast.
I don’t want to ask if the pictures are on it. I don’t want to know. But I have to know. We all do. Naomi’s right. I came here looking for answers, and now I have them. However awful they are, I have the answers I’ve been looking for.
I am the one now to denounce a god.
—Why though? Why not keep it? Why not let the world believe the lie? If what you’re saying is true, the authorities will come for Bonnie, surely.
—All bases are covered, Scott. I’m sure they’ll come after me. They might even find me. They won’t find Bonnie though. She’s had ample time to escape, to become nobody. That was the whole point, all this time – give her time to become an entirely new person. Then wait for the best opportunity to drop this bomb. And then you fell into my lap. The perfect platform for the truth.
—What about Zach’s decoy? What will become of him?
—What’s he done wrong? Except do his job and be paid well for it?
—There’s a couple of questions I need to ask, Naomi, before we finish. It’s about the video, the one with Lulu Copeland and Jessica Morton. In Crystal Forest.
—What about it?
—Is it real? And if it is, were those two really trying to get in to Crystal Forest … or were they trying to escape?
Naomi lets her shoulders rise and fall. I wish she would take off her sunglasses.
—The thing with someone like Zach, eventually it becomes very difficult to distinguish between what is real and what isn’t. I wish I could tell you.
—Why can’t you?
—The monster in the woods, it’s just another story isn’t it? All stories have a purpose. Like the story I’ve told you. I can’t tell you if the video is real or not because I don’t know. What I can tell you is what I suspect: and that is that maybe, maybe, it was created by James, or Zach, or both of them together. Why? Because they were ready to do anything to get people to believe their stories about monsters in the forest. It became another part of their brainwashing. That’s what I suspect. They’ve always wanted to control the narrative, and if two young girls die so that narrative – and all their victims – can be controlled, what of it? That would’ve been their thinking.
I can leave you with something I do know, however. That’s that there were girls who tried to escape Crystal Forest. Quite a few of them. Why do you think the security was so tight? And I know that the belief in that Frithghast among the girls was unshakable, thanks to Zach and James. So if that horrific story is true – that one ended up eating the other’s flesh – that’s down to them. To what they made those girls believe. Mark my words though, Scott, this story – the story of my brother – is a poisoned chalice. You might be the hero when you put the facts out there, but they’ll come for you too. The fans, the followers, the believers, those who think they love him still. To them, it doesn’t matter what is real and what isn’t. He is all that matters to them, and soon you’ll see just how much.
Goodbye.
And with that, Naomi Crystal leaves. A few heads turn her way, but the tourists, some wearing ‘Zach Crystal is Innocent’ T-shirts, turn back to their drinks and their food.
I don’t know what to say. What to do. I could call the police, but then what? Ian Julius, Sasha Stewart, Craig Kerr, Skexxixx and Naomi Crystal – they’ve all played a part in the construction of the story of the world’s most famous pop star. But that’s all it is – a story.
Maybe Naomi’s lying. Maybe she’s not really Naomi Crystal. Is Zach Crystal guilty or innocent? Right now, I have only stories. It is not me who now needs to be listened to.
I sit for a long time by myself, with all of these stories whizzing through my head, and gradually, a shadow builds at the back of my mind, it sprouts horns and a pair of glowing, red eyes. It snorts through its skull-like face, twin breaths of steam.
It is a conscience.
The right decision lies with me. I take the phone and without looking at it, place it in my bag.
You see, it’s now up to me to destroy Zach Crystal – just as Naomi intends me to, the final stage in a plan she hatched in March 2018. With the pictures on this phone, I can wipe away the happy memories and defining moments Zach Crystal’s music was part of, for many. I wonder how many people’s first dance was a Zach Crystal song, how many people leaned into those lyrics when times were hard. How many children delighted in singing along? How many young girls sat and yearned for a man like this to take them away?
If Naomi Crystal’s telling the truth, the pictures on this phone will shatter it all.
The pale bone and glowing red eyes of my conscience push me forward, out of my seat and through the doors of The Sow.
I walk through Barlheath for a while, breathing in the fresh air. I walk past Zach Crystal’s childhood home. The place where he dreamed of something beyond an ordinary life. I wonder if these terrible impulses were already there then. How much of it was learned and how much of it was innate? Was a monster swimming below the surface, out of sight, biding its time?
What we want is an end, everything tied up and placed neatly into little boxes. Zach Crystal should be exposed for what he was – a predator, an abuser. Those who excused him or validated his behaviour should be condemned too. Blame should be laid at the feet of James Cryer, who coerced and manipulated, preyed upon the vulnerable and led them, like some kind of pied piper into the lion’s jaws. Then took his share of the spoils.
I want justice for the victims of Zach Crystal; for Kirsty Owen, for her mother, for Bonnie Crystal. But I also want justice for everyone who had a Zach Crystal poster on their wall, for everyone who dressed up like their idol and sang those words, feeling like they’d been created for them and them alone. Anyone who found solace in the words of Zach Crystal, who felt that the world was against them – I want justice for all of you.
It feels like we were all deceived.
Zach Crystal went from being powerless, a nobody, a poor kid from the Hopesprings Estate in Barlheath, to an untouchable deity. Through the power of his music, he became a god. Whether his songs were written by Skexxixx or by his sister, Naomi, it doesn’t even matter anymore. What we know is that Crystal was the vessel that carried these songs, that made them into what they were. Weaponised them.
All the talent, the music, the lyrics, the stage shows, all of these things have been betrayed, turned into weapons by someone who was so used to getting exactly what they wanted, they never stopped to think whether what they wanted was right or wrong. And those who enabled and those who stood by and did nothing to stop him, betrayed the music too.
I turn away from the house, the shrine to fame in the midst of a bleak council estate in the English Midlands, a beacon to those who have no hope. I am going to take what I know to the police in Barlheath and in doing so, will extinguish that hope forever.
Because it’s the right thing to do.
Like Naomi says, I know what’s coming now. I know that by the time this final episode airs, my name will be mud. The community of fans who believe in Zach Crystal, who adore him, will see no words said against their idol. Just like Frank and Maureen Crystal, just like the staff in that Christian children’s home who once coerced a young boy named Leonard Myers into believing that the evil in this world came with cloven hooves, a pitchfork and a promise.
It is possible to believe in Crystal’s genius and to believe he was a monster too. It is also possible to reject the bad and keep the good, close your eyes and ears to the pain of others and believe what you like, cherry-pick what brings you happiness and gives you peace. I believe that Zach Crystal was haunted, but not by any ancient spirit. Going up and hiding in the wilds of the Highlands didn’t stop him from being followed everywhere by the terrib
le knowledge of what he was doing and how it was wrong. He just believed he didn’t have to be accountable, and placed enough people around him to assure him he was right.
For me, I am decided. An old part of me still wants to sing along with Zach Crystal’s music, remembers the spine-tingling magic that even the mention of his name would invoke. But the side of me that has heard six stories about Zach Crystal now feels very differently, and whatever joy Zach Crystal brought to the world now has to turn to disgust.
I am going to act. Regardless of what that will bring to me. I am going to ensure that there is a degree of justice for the victims of Zach Crystal, even if that justice is simply to be believed.
Because it’s the right thing to do. Because to say nothing is to be complicit.
I’ve proudly been Scott King.
I’ve proudly told stories. For Lulu Copeland, for Jessica Morton, for Bonnie and Naomi Crystal.
This has been our sixth.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I wrote the majority of Deity during the first coronavirus lockdown in the UK, which began in March 2020. I could pontificate for ages about how hard it was to write a book during that time, but really, sitting in an attic, making up a story was one of the easier ways to get through the existential horror that descended upon us all. The people who really helped write this book were the supermarket workers, the cleaners, the care-home staff, the NHS workers; the nurses, doctors and dentists; the educators, lecturers and bin collectors; the delivery drivers, the postal workers, the carers, the chefs. The people who kept our spirits up: the comedians, musicians and entertainers, the writers, editors, proofreaders. You all helped write this book. Those who worked tirelessly and gave everything they had to keep us going – you helped write this book.
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