by Jason Arnopp
My imagination ensures that every grotesque, contorted tangle up ahead is Maria Corvi, waiting patiently for me.
At the very bottom of the backpack, my fingers close around smooth brass.
Without having to see, I know it’s the Zippo. Sherilyn must have packed it for me, then forgot to hand it over.
I squeeze the lighter in my hand while hauling myself to my feet.
I plant a slow kiss on the warm brass casing.
Then I toss it away and walk into darkness.
AFTERWORD BY ALISTAIR SPARKS
Inspector Tacito Vivante’s phone call came through on the morning of 13 November 2014.
I was getting dressed in the master bedroom of my Suffolk childhood home, which Chloe and myself had inherited from my dear departed mother. That afternoon, I was scheduled to run twenty kilometres for MND (Motor Neurone Disease) Research. As soon as I heard the tone of Mr Vivante’s voice, however, I knew I would not be taking part.
At midnight on 31 October, Italian fire services had arrived at a location two miles east of the church where Jack had witnessed an exorcism that day. A small cottage was ablaze at the foot of the hills, and despite the firemen’s best efforts, there would be no survivors.
One of two badly burnt bodies was identified as the cottage’s seventy-five-year-old owner, Sergio Acierno. Horrifically, Acierno had been crucified against his own kitchen wall by rusty nails, then received a third to the forehead.
It took the Italian authorities longer to confirm that the other remains belonged to Jacob Titherley. The process had been delayed by his nationality, his pseudonym and the process of securing dental records from Brighton. Jacob’s sole cause of death had been incineration, although his body exhibited other wounds consistent with his accounts in this book.
When Vivante broke this news, I sat heavily on the bed, where I stayed for hours, half dressed in running gear, until Chloe arrived home from work. I had expected drugs or alcohol to take my brother’s life for some time. Yet the impact of him dying like this knocked me off my feet. It was made all the more poignant by sitting in the very bungalow where Jacob and I grew up together.
Jacob had been found in the bedroom of the cottage, where the police believe Mr Acierno had granted him a place to rest and improvised a makeshift splint around his left leg. While the fire immolated the bed and much of the room, a netbook computer remained untouched on the floor. Small-town superstition blended all too easily with tabloid hyperbole when one ‘inside source’ told La Repubblica newspaper, ‘The computer lay open on its side, with a perfect circle of untouched floor around it. The screen, the whole thing, it remained utterly unmarked by ash.’
That netbook was taken into police custody along with other items from the scene. I have been legally advised not to attribute blame, but it is a fact that Jack Sparks on the Supernatural then leaked on to the internet in its raw, unedited form.1 Starting off in the web’s darker, more esoteric corners, the torrent file spread slowly before gathering speed. By the time Jack’s death was officially announced on 19 November, the internet seemed to explode. Many fans rounded on me, ridiculously blaming me for Jack’s decline – even for his death – and making my online life a misery for months to come. Meanwhile, the British press conspired to make my real life a misery too.
Jack’s death, when coupled with his leaked book, suited whatever your agenda happened to be. If you were an anti-drugs campaigner, then Jack Sparks had finally suffered an inevitable mental breakdown, murdered Mr Acierno, then burned down the cottage himself. If you were a true-crime aficionado, then Jack and Mr Acierno had fallen foul of the psychotic Devil-worshipping teenager Maria Corvi. If you were a believer and/or a subscriber to Fortean Times magazine, then you took Jack’s account at face value and Jack Sparks on the Supernatural became compelling evidence for everything from the afterlife to time travel.
Myself? I have no agenda and much prefer to stick to the facts.
Fact One: Jack was unable to face up to our beloved mother’s passing, either before or after it happened. Despite what he thought, I never held this weakness against him, but this book clearly expresses his lingering grief and guilt, exacerbated by drug addiction. I suspect this toxic combination warped his previously held scientific views, creating psychological inconsistencies and extreme delusions. Which leads me on to . . .
Fact Two: Jack died on the night of 31 October 2014. Ergo, he could not possibly have experienced the twenty days that followed, as ‘documented’ in the book. Unless we open a whole other kettle of worms and posit that Jack did not actually write Jack Sparks on the Supernatural himself (a rabbit hole down which endless internet essays have disappeared), he must have written the book way in advance of his death, perhaps even in tandem with, or directly after, Jack Sparks on Drugs. I believe he researched real people like Father Primo Di Stefano and the Hollywood Paranormals in order to create a credible narrative. A narrative that, while wildly fanciful to the point of madness, ultimately seemed to confirm the afterlife. Wishful thinking all the way. This book is fantasy fiction rooted in autobiography, much like Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, the best-selling 1971 novel by Jack’s writing hero Hunter S. Thompson. Nothing more, nothing less.
Fact Three: for many years, the scientific sceptic and former magician James Randi has offered one million dollars to anyone who can prove their psychokinetic powers. The prize remains unclaimed. With or without the Devil’s help, the Hollywood Paranormals did not create a psychokinetic gestalt entity formed of their own egos that ultimately destroyed them. Such a concept is absurd.
Fact Four: the Devil is a part of Christian mythology, having been invented by man to keep other men in line. And not even the wacky world of quantum physics has begun to prove the ludicrous concept of time travel. So Satan most certainly did not send my brother off on some sadistic, time-warping forty-day journey in order to teach him a lesson about ego and certainty. Contrary to so much fan theory, my brother was not sent two years forward in time at Rome airport, just so that he could buy The Devil’s Victims, only to be whisked back again. And neither did he have a panic attack on a flight out of Rome while some ‘future’ incarnation of himself died in a burning cottage thousands of feet below. I have no idea who stewardess Isla Duggan dealt with on that Rome–Gatwick flight, but it was manifestly not my brother.
Ever since my brother’s death, hundreds of blogs, essays and articles have agreed with the above facts, while an equal number set out to dispute them. How the latter group love to cite ‘evidence’ that supposedly contradicts the facts. They point out that the LAPD found traces of Jack’s DNA at the Big Coyote Ranch murder scene. Not to mention all those eyewitness reports of ‘Jack’ during his supposed twenty days after Halloween, from Brighton to Hong Kong to Los Angeles. One theory, more than any other, has gained traction while attempting to explain such alleged inconsistencies.
The Impostor Theory suggests that one mentally unstable person – perhaps an obsessed fan and/or a Satanist – acted out the key events of Jack Sparks on the Supernatural between 31 October and 20 November. They somehow gained access not only to a draft of the book, but to Jack’s personal effects such as his laptop and passport. Perhaps, some theorists offer, this impostor stole them from my brother before murdering him and Mr Acierno. Certainly, the Italian police have yet to prove their own thesis that Maria Corvi committed these murders, and the teenager remains missing as I write. The impostor, it is said, may also have planted Jack’s DNA up in the Hollywood Hills.
The Impostor Theory would admittedly explain someone having stayed in Hong Kong and Los Angeles hotels under the name Jack Sparks; the Hollywood Paranormals group having worked with someone who was never captured on film in any of their session footage; and Sherilyn Chastain having met someone who to this day she insists was Jack Sparks.2
As I recently told the Sun newspaper and Closer magazine, the fact that I actually spoke to someone impersonating my brother has lent grist to the the Impostor Theory’s m
ill. After Jack’s agent Murray Chambers and I learned of Jack’s death, Murray alerted me to the fact that someone had been posting on Jack’s social media accounts since Halloween. Together, we fought to have all these accounts shut down and deleted. YouTube was the last site to comply. Cruel hoax phone calls from West Hollywood were then made to Murray and myself within minutes of each other on 18 November. Just as described in the book, a voice admittedly similar to Jack’s begged us for help. We both hung up in shock and disgust. On reflection, of course, we could have kept this impostor talking, but hindsight’s twenty-twenty.
Editor Eleanor Rosen and I elected to insert the segments of additional material between certain chapters for two reasons: (a) to provide extra value for those who bought this official book over the inferior torrent file; and (b) because some of these segments could be seen to track the impostor’s activities. But of course, you are at liberty to interpret the material as you choose. To each their own.
The last year has seen dramatic changes in my life. Defying all social media trolls, I became outspoken in urging the paranormally and religiously minded to turn to science. I also signed up for my TV debut as the host of a forthcoming documentary series for the Sky Living channel. I do not think of myself as a natural celebrity, but the opportunity was rather thrust upon me. By all accounts, I also seem to have shown aptitude for the work.
Entitled Alistair Sparks Debunks the Devil, the series sees me adopt my brother’s surname as a mark of my deepest love and in order to keep his name alive. It will also address some of the theories surrounding his demise. In the first episode, you will see the pilgrimage I made to West Hollywood’s Sunset Castle Hotel with Father Primo Di Stefano in tow. Regardless of what I believe, Jack seemed to fear that his spirit would end up trapped in the hotel’s boiler room for eternity. So as a gesture of respect, I had Father Di Stefano perform a simple rite intended to help Jack move on. It was a very profound, personal and private experience, which you can see in full in Episode One.
The recent release of Father Di Stefano’s book The Devil’s Victims triggered a great outcry among some of Jack’s fans. They felt Mr Di Stefano was ‘cashing in’ by appropriating the book title Jack had used in Jack Sparks on the Supernatural. Mr Di Stefano denies this, ‘in the strongest possible terms’, insisting he had planned to employ this title for years.
One passage of The Devil’s Victims has provoked shock and sorrow in Sherilyn Chastain and a portion of Jack’s followers, for reasons I reject. This passage documents our joint visit to the Sunset Castle and the days that followed. Perhaps if you buy into the supernatural, then this passage lends Jack’s story some form of coda, but it’s not my cup of tea. Still, in the spirit of giving something back to Jack’s fans, who have suffered such uncertain heartache, I shall include the passage here, by kind permission of Chiesa Books.
As I knelt on that dirty floor in the middle of the hotel boiler room, I tried not to let the TV cameras affect my ritual. I commanded myself to focus only on the spirit of Mr Jack Sparks, whose soul I believed to have been kidnapped by that execrable fiend Satan and imprisoned here. Mr Sparks and I may have had our differences during the brief time I met him in life, but he is God’s child like any other, and so deserved saving.
Despite my concentration being momentarily broken by a highly frustrating incident when the producer asked if I could pause while one of the cameramen switched batteries, I successfully made contact with Mr Sparks’ essence.
Mr Sparks was melancholy at first, fearful that we might enrage his ‘master’. Then he became excited when I told him I had the power to set him free. I did just as I had promised and spent the rest of my time in Los Angeles feeling blessed for my ability to help people.
Then came the vision.
The most powerful vision I have suffered in three decades.
It struck a full week after the ritual, while I was walking across a cobbled square in Vatican City. It consumed me to such a degree that it was all I could see and hear. I was forced to stop dead in my tracks. Two onlookers phoned for an ambulance, fearing I had suffered a stroke or suchlike.
I beheld a distressed Jack Sparks, in his spirit form, drifting east through the sky from the Californian coast, across America. He struggled limply and tried to resist, but it was no good: some dark agency compelled him. This cast a terrible shadow upon my soul, because I knew I had failed. Rather than my ritual freeing Jack Sparks, it had merely prompted the Devil to relocate him.
As Jack Sparks flew east, his human spirit form disintegrated, until he resembled dark tempestuous smoke.
Overlaid on this image was a green clock face, its hands spinning forwards at speed, over and over again.
I saw Jack Sparks’ spirit stop on England’s east coast.
Then the clock face became red. Its hands spun backwards, back into the past, as unholy winds swept Mr Sparks further east, until I saw him crossing Asiatic waters . . .
Finally, all of these images faded away and I saw only one thing.
One new image. A cryptic sight that puzzles, intrigues and concerns me deeply to this day.
It was a small bright-red glass bottle with no lid, floating in the sea. The contents lost forever.
The last six months of filming have seen me interview people everywhere from Los Angeles to Waco to the Gaza strip to Lusaka to London to Rome. Now that all those air miles are behind me (until Series Two, one hopes) and my work on this book is done, I feel I have completed an emotional journey.
Perhaps because of all the strife surrounding my brother’s death, however, I found myself unable to fully grieve for Jacob until this very morning. While rifling through a box of our childhood photographs and playthings, I chanced upon a small wooden donkey. The kind you operate with your thumb. When I made that donkey’s legs crumple, I am not ashamed to say my face followed suit.
Despite my new-found media profile, I hope I can now focus on being a husband and father once again. In recent weeks, my wonderful daughters Xanna (nine years old) and Sophie (seven) have worried me somewhat. To my dismay, they read the pirated version of Jack Sparks on the Supernatural that was passed around between school friends. As a result of the book’s account of the cloakroom in this bungalow, both girls began to dream about seeing ‘Uncle Jack’ in there. Over the last few days, these distressing nightmares have bled into their perceived waking reality, as is so common in the young. The girls have made outlandish claims, such as having heard Uncle Jack laughing from inside the cloakroom. Patently, my children have been just as disturbed as Chloe and myself by this horrendous affair, but I am determined to restore calm to our home.
Despite the trauma of losing my brother, domestic life must go on, with all its reassuringly earthy chores. The refrigerator needs a new light bulb. The garage needs a clean. My family need and deserve my full attention once again.
I hope to see you over on Sky Living.
Until then, as I say on the show: keep it rational.
1 This text was missing the transcript of Sherilyn Chastain and Rebecca Lawson’s supposed ‘ego exorcism’ of Jack. However, because the ‘SherilynBexJackConvo.mp4’ audio file was also leaked, some devotees created their own inferior, typo-ridden ‘fan edit’ of the book, which added this material – Alistair.
2 In case you were unaware: Miss Chastain eventually made a full recovery after being assaulted in the Sunset Castle’s boiler room in the early hours of 20 November. Miss Chastain insists her prone body is depicted in the widely circulated YouTube video featured in the book, even though this is impossible. Tragically, of course, nurse Pio Accardo, Marc Howitz, Rebecca Lawson and all seven members of the Hollywood Paranormals were murdered in a manner broadly consistent with the descriptions in Jack Sparks on the Supernatural. The translator Antonino Bonelli did also commit suicide, seemingly in the wake of allegations of his incestuous paedophilia – Alistair.
NOTE FROM THE PUBLISHER
While the majority of Jack’s media accounts have now been de
leted out of respect after his untimely passing, at the request of his fans, we have left select parts of his site www.jacksparks.co.uk online as a place for his followers to share memories and theories about the events leading up to his death. Please feel free to visit and pay your respects.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This novel was fuelled by help from many people, not least my agent Oli Munson who believed wholeheartedly in this story from its birth as a mere paragraph, my editor Anna Jackson whose input, enthusiasm and trust has been utterly invaluable and everyone else in the wonderful Orbit team.
I’m hugely grateful to Sarah Lotz, John Higgs, Rebecca Levene, Esther Dickman, James Moran and William Gallagher for their reading, razor-sharp thoughts and encouragement. Big salutes go to Ian ‘Cat’ Vincent, without whom Sherilyn Chastain would be a far less convincing combat magician, and to Dijana Capan, without whom she’d be less convincingly Australian.
Other great and helpful folk: Dave Morris, Ray Zell, Oliver Johnson, Peter Brain Taylor, Daisy Campbell, Phill Barron, Benjamin Cook, Scott K. Andrews, Greg Taylor at the Daily Grail, Andrew Smith, Shardcore, Steven Barber, Natasha Von Lemke, Sparrow Morgan, Ian Richardson and everyone else on Facebook who fielded incessant questions about cars, MRI scans and other things I know nothing about.
A highly appreciative nod goes to A. R. G. Owen, Iris Owen and the other Toronto researchers who conducted 1972’s the Philip Experiment, which became the Harold Experiment for the purposes of this book. I would encourage any interested readers to hunt down their non-fiction account Conjuring Up Philip: An Adventure in Psychokinesis (1976).
Last but definitely not least, massive respect to film-making legends Roger Corman, Eduardo Sánchez and Daniel Myrick for agreeing to appear in this book as themselves. That still blows my mind.