Duet

by O'Gorman, Brian

  “What the fuck are you talking about? Why do you need Patrick? What the fuck has he ever done to you?”

  “If I told you, you would never understand little man.”

  “Why don’t you try me. If I’m going to sell out my friend for you, I want to know why I’m doing it,” said Jack. He had sweat coursing down his face. The pain from his shoulders throbbed like a rotten tooth.

  “Fair point Jacko, fair point. I need Patrick’s DNA. His dear Daddy invented a machine, a healing machine. But, something went wrong with it and it created a monster. That monster is getting more and more out of control and it needs to be healed. Patrick’s DNA carries the cure. I find Patrick, I find the cure, simple.”

  Jack laid his head back against the back of the armchair and closed his eyes for a moment.

  “Why do I get the feeling that you are oversimplifying it,” he said.

  Mask chuckled, “Listen Jacko, that’s between him and me. I’m sure that we can work this thing out, no problem.”

  Jack smiled at him, that smile was full of pain and hopelessness. It made Mask feel uneasy for a moment, but just for a moment.

  “I tell you what Mr. Mask. I think you are going to kill me whatever I say. I think that you have already killed Donna. Perhaps you raped her first. Perhaps that is the only way a snivelling piece of shit like you can get any pussy.”

  Mask felt his control beginning to slip, he started to feel anxious. He didn’t like being called out like this.

  “Shut the fuck up Jacko, I’m warning you.”

  “Hit a nerve have I? Is that the truth of it? Can’t you get a hard-on without using a weapon on a girl, is that it?”

  “Shut up Jacko, I will kill you I swear to God I will…”

  “Mummy not love you enough? Or did you love Mummy too much. Did you get a hard-on for Mummy, you sick fuck!” roared Jack.

  Mask uttered an almost inhuman scream and leapt up from his seat. He brought the knife with him and plunged it into Jack’s navel. Jack bellowed in pain and began to throw himself from side to side. Mask pulled the knife upwards using both hands, sawing at the flesh as he did so. A revolting combination of blood and bile began to spill out of the gaping wound and Jack’s intestines began to pile out of the hole and into his lap. Mask stopped sawing when he reached the base of Jack’s throat. He stood back, breathing hard from the exertion of gutting Jack. Jack’s head was lolling backwards against the back of the armchair. Mask leaned in to whisper a goodbye in Jack’s ear and suddenly Jack’s head popped up. He spat a half clotted wad of blood onto Mask’s face. Mask recoiled and saw that Jack was grinning at him, his teeth were smeared with his own blood. His eyes were wide and bulging out of their sockets.

  “Rendor,” said Jack in a raspy voice.

  Mask looked at him with horror rolling through his body. He wasn’t accustomed to feeling afraid. He gripped his knife firmly in his hand, his knuckles turning white with the force of his grip.

  “What? What did you say?”

  “Rendor…..Rendor…Ren….dooorr,” hissed Jack.

  Mask stepped forwards and brought the knife across Jack’s throat as hard as he could. His neck split open and a small trickle of blood spilled out of the wound. Jack’s head fell back again and he went silent. Mask stood looking at him, not daring to move until he was sure that Jack was dead. He still had fear running through his insides. He was certain that if he tried to go pat him that Jack would suddenly come back again, perhaps he would scream

  Rendor

  at him. Perhaps he would break his ropes and throttle him, the same way he had strangled Donna just half an hour ago. He tried to calm himself, taking deep breaths and trying to listen to the voice of his God inside his mind. It was hard to hear it at first, but he focused on it, and then it was there. It was telling him that he came here for a reason and he needed to find what he had come for. He glanced around the room and then he caught sight of a mobile phone sitting just under the television. He picked it up and pressed the button to bring it to life. There was mercifully no passcode on it so he was able to see all of the messages on it. The most prominent one was Patrick. There were a ton of messages on there for him. He had found the jackpot. All he would have to do was to send Patrick a little message asking him where he was and then he was sorted. He now had a direct line to his redemption.

  He looked up from the phone at Jack’s dead body, still wary of it, still thinking that at any moment he was going to come back and take his revenge on him. He put the phone in his pocket, and gathered his shotgun off the sofa. All the time he was doing it he never took his eyes off the bloody and mangled corpse sitting in the chair. He walked slowly to the living room door, still keeping his eyes locked on the body and then suddenly bolted for the front door. He didn’t stop running until he could see the graveyard that was near his home. It was only then that he began to feel like he was back in full control of himself. After he had showered, he sat in his living room, turning the phone over and over in his hand, itching to send the message that would lead him to Patrick Hurst and his next appointment with the Pharmacon. He decided to wait until the next morning, it was the sensible thing to do. He might make him suspicious if he did it now. He needed to play it cool. He was drumming his feet in anticipation of what tomorrow would bring. Tomorrow would bring his redemption.

  7.

  He had tried to sleep but it had proved to be impossible. No matter how many cigarettes he had smoked or how many nips he had from his supply of whiskey, it wouldn’t happen for him. He had even tried wearing the mask to bed to see if that would help, but his God was being quiet. The joy of a double murder and a rape had silenced the voice for the most part. He realised that sleep was a futile exercise when at around three in the morning his God had begun to whisper that word inside his head.

  Rendor…..Rendor……Rendor…

  If he knew what it meant, then he might be able to do something about it. He had no idea why the word freaked him out so much, or why it had stuck in his mind the way it had done. He had tried closing his eyes as tight as he could and pressing his hands over his ears, but it wouldn’t stop. He could still hear it ringing around his head like a snatch of jolly music. He had ended up getting out of bed and going into the bathroom. He had splashed some cold water on his face and then looked at himself in the mirror. When he had looked at his reflection he had seen the bloody and mutilated corpse of Jack Samsun standing behind him, grinning that blood stained grin that he had done when he had uttered that curse for the first and last time. His belly was split wide open and his guts were spilling out all over the floor. He whispered the word, just once, right in Mask’s ear. Mask flinched and almost screamed and turned around ready to fight the apparition that was standing behind him. But of course, there was nothing there, no dead Jack, no guts on the floor, just his dingy bathroom. He turned back to the mirror and put his fist into it, breaking the glass. The broken pieces rained down from the frame and jangled into the sink below. That took care of that. If there were no mirrors, he would be able to see any fucking ghosts, and that was alright by him. He stood there in the bathroom for a moment longer getting his breath back and his heart rate back to an acceptable level. There was a thought brewing in the back of his mind, it was telling him that this the sickness was going far and beyond anything he had ever experienced before. He had never had any fear, at least not on this level where he felt like he was going to be harmed, or even killed. He was beginning to become unhinged, the sickness was going to consume him. He needed to get his hands on Patrick Hurst and persuade him to join in with his line of thinking, after all he owed him that didn’t he? If he owed him or not, it wasn’t even an issue, he was going to take what he was owed. He needed to get this damn curse healed so he could get on with something else. What was he going to do without his God to tell him what to do? Could he even dare to think and act without approval? He didn’t know, and he wouldn’t know until he had tried the new cure. Right now, his fear was abating and the du
ll hatred of sinners began to feed back into his system. That felt like normality to him. That felt like the real him coming back. He went through into the living room and sat on his couch. The bottle of whisky was sitting on the table next to his seat, along with his cigarettes. He took a nip from the bottle and then he poked a cigarette into the corner of his mouth and added some fire to the tip. He sat and smoked, occasionally uncapping his bottle and taking another hit from it. It would be dawn soon and time for him to live his last day as Mask. He couldn’t even remember his own name anymore; it was all a blur in his mind. His memories were short and scattered, little snatches of a lifetime swimming around in a fog. Occasionally something would try and emerge and he would snatch at it, but it would soon vanish again leaving him wondering even more about who exactly he was. He remembered Richard Hurst. He remembered going to see him and trying to take his cure, but there was something missing in his mind, something that was supposed to happen but didn’t. He couldn’t piece it together. There were other things too, there were things from early in his life but none of them seemed to fit together, there was no order to it all. He couldn’t go from point A to point B with any of it. Trying to piece it together just filled him with hopelessness, a feeling of being lost in the wilderness with no way back to reality. He….

  His head went down and he slept. His cigarette fell to the bare floor and burned out, leaving a dark patch on the exposed wood. He stayed in that position, rasping in deep snoring breaths. The sun eventually came up, without him even realising and he was only awoken by the sound of the mobile phone he had stolen from Jack Samsun ringing and vibrating on the table next to him. He saw that it was Patrick and he nearly answered it. But he stopped himself before he could do it. He remembered that Jack was with that young girl, he wasn’t going to have been in any position to answer a phone when he was next to a girl like that. He watched the phone ring out and go silent again, smiling to himself because he had been able to keep his head. The phone suddenly rang in his hand again making him jump. He almost dropped the phone on the floor in surprise. It was Patrick again. His hands began to shake with the force of will it was taking not to answer the phone. His God was almost screaming at him to do it. But he had to resist, he needed to know where Patrick was, he needed to get hold of him so he could persuade him to join in with his plans. The phone stopped ringing again. He hesitated for a moment and then he turned the phone off so it couldn’t tempt him anymore. He would get in contact with him when it was time, he just needed things to calm down a little first and more to the point, he needed to calm down too. He stood up and stretched, feeling his bone crackle and pop as he did so. His neck was as stiff as a board from sleeping sitting up in his seat. That was going to bother him all day, but it didn’t matter, soon everything would be cured and everything was going to be made better. He decided to waste some time by drinking several cups of coffee, eating toast that he didn’t even want and cleaning his knife and his gun ready for today’s little excursion. There was fuel in his van, his weapons were clean and he was ready to go. He managed to eat up a couple of hours before he turned the phone back on and typed his message for Patrick. He sat on the sofa, hoping and praying that Patrick was going to answer and tell him where he was. When the phone finally buzzed back at him, his hands were shaking so badly that he could barely see the message that had come back to him. When he read it he let out a little yell of excitement. Patrick was at Layton House; it was almost too perfect. Everything was in place. He gathered up his weapons and deposited them inside his coat, grabbed his keys and left the flat for what he hoped was the very last time.

  There wasn’t much traffic on the roads, which was a bonus. He might have had a bout of road rage had there been too many snarl ups. He was wound up pretty tight ready for his confrontation with Patrick. He was finding it very hard to sit still in the driver’s seat. It felt like his body just wanted to shuffle left and right and drum his hands on the steering wheel as a way to get rid of some of the excess energy that seemed to be coursing through his veins. The energy became almost uncontrollable as he got near to the turn off for Layton House. But he still had some logic left in his mind, he knew he wouldn’t just be able to drive up to the front door and be welcomed with open arms. He needed to be able to assess the situation. Surely the police would have found Denton and his message that he had left for Patrick. That had been part of his design, he wanted Patrick to be afraid before he even got there, then he would be more likely to go along with his way of thinking. He drove past the turning for the long, narrow road down to Layton House and continued up the road which would eventually lead to Hemmington. Soon, he caught sight of his favourite parking area and he pulled the van off the road and parked it in his usual spot under the overhanging tree as he liked to call it. He sat behind the wheel for a few minutes just to get himself back under control again. Then he got out of the van, patted his coat to make sure his weapons were within easy reach and then he set off for a walk into the woods. After he was clear of the road he pulled out the phone from his pocket and sent Patrick another message. He was on his way. Redemption was coming.

  8.

  Neither of them knew what to do with themselves. How many cups of tea could they even drink in one sitting? What good did it do anyway? Patrick was content to pace up and down the room, wringing his hands and looking at his watch as if it could give him the answer to all of his questions. Slater had put the word out on the radio that the killer had indicated that he was going to make his move. He had been told by dispatch that the helicopter was going to be buzzing around Layton Valley within the next fifteen minutes or so. Blythe and his colleague Jennings were both on the door keeping an eye out for anything suspicious. They were the last line of defence until the backup got there which would be roughly the same time as the helicopter got in the air. Blythe was nervous, there was no doubt about it, he had seen what this killer was capable of and he had no desire to meet him face to face. He made sure that Slater didn’t know how nervous he was; he didn’t want to lose face in front of him. Jennings was a different story; he was a nervous wreck. Even now standing at the right side of the doorway he was visibly shaking like it was the depths of winter rather than a pleasantly warm spring day. Jennings was pretty useless as far as Blythe was concerned, but he was all there was until the other officers turned up. It wasn’t ideal, but it would just have to do. He could have murdered a cigarette and a good cup of coffee, but it wasn’t on the cards anytime soon, so he just had to get on with the task in hand. He kept on scanning the scenery within his eye line, keeping a special eye on the trees and bushes that were at the far side of the huge driveway. There wasn’t much in the way of a breeze so it was easy to see if there was anything moving in there. As far as he knew, the back of the house led to a pretty steep drop which would likely break a limb or two if you went tumbling down it. That would mean that it would be next to impossible to climb it without some proper equipment. That would only leave the driveway and the woods at the edge of it as the only feasible ways of getting in without causing too much of a fuss. He was about to ask Jennings how he was holding up when something caught his eye. There was some movement in the bushes in front of them and there was a sound. It was faint at first, but then it became a little bit louder and Blythe recognised it as a human voice.

  “Help me,” the voice said. It sounded choked and raspy.

  Blythe gripped his radio and called Slater.

  “What is it Officer?” said Slater.

  “Sir, something’s going on out here, there is someone in the bushes. If I didn’t know better, I would say that it sounded like a girl.”

  “I’m on my way,” said Slater.

  A moment later the front door opened and Slater came out. He immediately began to scan the bushes for movement. He saw the leaves swirling around on their branches and he reached into his jacket. He brought out what looked like a bright yellow power tool.

  “What the hell is that?” said Blythe.

  “
It’s a Taser. I can take out an elephant with this thing if I needed to,” said Slater. He began to move towards the bushes. Blythe followed him. Jennings started to walk forwards, but very slowly. A nervous sweat had built on his brow and it was beginning to drip down his face. The bushes suddenly parted and Slater took aim with his weapon, and then he pointed it upwards out of harm’s way. Then Blythe saw what had come out from the bushes.

  “Holy shit,” said Blythe.

  There was a woman of about thirty years of age. Blythe guessed that she had blonde hair, it was difficult to tell because most of it was matted with blood. Her eyes looked like they were swollen almost shut and there was a steady trail of gore dribbling from her displaced nose. It looked like she had been wearing some sort of running gear. The bottom half of the running gear had been torn off and her legs were covered with what looked like knife wounds and bite marks. The woman saw the police standing there and she reached out to them. She repeated her raspy cry for help, took three steps forwards and then collapsed on the gravel in front of them. Slater went to his knees and turned the woman over to make sure she was still breathing. She opened her puffy eyes and looked up at Slater.

  “Who did this to you?” he asked, even though he already knew the answer. The woman didn’t answer, she just looked up at him and tried to smile. Then her eyes looked to the right and the smile faltered. Her mouth began to gibber silently at first and then a small noise began to emit from her throat. By the time Slater realised that she was repeating the word ‘no’ over and over again it was too late.