Die, Arla, just die.
A memory came back then, a proper harsh one, like a flashback. I remember sitting in Paulette’s bedroom when I was young. Her mam didn’t mind us having the music on and that, and we used to be able to smoke fags out her bathroom window. I remember we were all sat on the floor – me and Paulette and Debs – and Skexxixx were on and the air smelled of nail-polish remover. We had a bottle of voddy that we kept passing round. All we were getting ready to do was go out to wander about the streets!
Anyways, I remember that voice from back then. But back then it were only a whisper.
They want you dead, Arla, both of them. When you go to the bathroom, they’re planning how to get rid of you. They’re going to stab you up and burn your body.
I remember leaving Paulette’s bedroom and crouching outside the door, but I couldn’t hear nowt. Then I burst back in.
I remember their faces, they were looking at me as if I was insane!
It were so hard to hold on, to not act out like that, down in the polytunnel. So hard, because I knew who it were who were saying those things, but I didn’t want to acknowledge them, you know? But they just kept going – over and over and over – and I could hear them, the voices of those kids, their questions, asking me, Why, why, why? Then the dancing boys’ voices after them – those were the loudest ones. They were telling me I was nowt but a slag, calling me all these dirty names, all those dirty words. Their questions and those names and their hands were rolling all over me – over and over like waves. And I stood there in the polytunnel with sweat on my face and my hands all covered in soil.
And I knew they’d all come through – I’d let all of them in, each one with each game I’d played. It were all my fault…
And I were screaming, screaming and screaming and screaming.
That were yesterday when I had to go to my room with a pill and just wait until they all stopped.
I lay on my bed and closed my eyes. And I knew they were outside the window – I could hear them crying. And I knew if I opened my eyes the dancing boys would be there…
They would all be there and they would all be telling me why everyone hates me, they would all be telling me to die, to just end it. It’d be better for everyone. Cos everyone knows what I’ve done…
I let them in.
But you’ll be proud of me, cos I did open my eyes.
And there were nothing but shadows – shadows and eyes in the corners.
Which is better, I suppose.
Episode 4: Brown-Eyed Girl
—I saw her around, yeah, but I never had … I never had any reason to go and talk to her. Like, we were both girls, yeah, like, the same sort of age, so why didn’t I just go talk to her? Man, it’s hard to explain now I’m older – it just doesn’t make sense anymore. Maybe I was just shy or something? Maybe I had no idea what to even say…
Back then I didn’t know who I was yet, you get me? Like, I wasn’t comfortable with myself. I used to run with bad boys. And I was horrible to girls, yeah? So I wasn’t gonna go up to her and be all like ‘hey’, you know?
But I knew I liked them, you get me? Girls. Like, I liked them in that way. I’m cool with it now, yeah? But not then – not when I was fifteen, yeah? It’s not easy when you’re someone like me.
I tell you what, yeah: the thing is with girls like her, when you’re young, like, when you’re a teenager, you think everyone’s like you. When you’re young you think everyone just wants attention. Cos that’s all you want when you’re a teenage girl. Man, you want attention, but at the same time you want everyone to leave you alone, yeah?
The voice you’re hearing is that of twenty-four-year-old Angel Mawson. At least that’s the name she’s given me. Angel has allowed me only to reveal a select few details about her. And these details are all I know as well. Angel lives in London. We meet in the back room of her friend’s hair salon, and it’s in this tight room, with the tang of chemicals in my throat, that we talk. Angel wears her hood up the whole time, shading her face. I’m surprised she didn’t want to conduct this interview via phone or audio-only Skype, but Angel point blank refused those suggestions.
I had no idea of Angel’s existence in the story of Arla Macleod until she got in touch with the show and told me a few things – things that have driven me to this place in the capital to conduct our interview.
It’s evening time and the salon is closed. The lights are low in both the back room and out front. Passers-by are visible through the slats in the window shutters – ghosts dancing beyond the empty, hulking chairs and treatment tables in the other room.
—So I’m out, man – I don’t give a fuck, you know? I don’t make a thing about it, though. I just get on. But back then? Man, I didn’t even know what I was doing, yeah? I didn’t have any idea what I was, what I wanted.
But we’re not talking about me, are we? You’re not sat there wanting to know about my life and shit, right? I don’t matter. You want to know about her, don’t you? Arla Macleod.
It’s been long since then, though, man, yeah? Long since then.
But yeah, I knew her. No one else knows that I knew her. Sort of. At least I thought I did. For a bit. For that week.
Welcome to Six Stories. I’m Scott King.
Over these six weeks, we are looking back at the Macleod Massacre – a tragedy that occurred in the year 2014, when a twenty-one-year-old woman killed her mother, stepfather and younger sister. We’re looking back from six different perspectives – seeing the events that unfolded through six pairs of eyes.
Then, of course, it’s up to you. As you know by now, I’m not here to make any judgements or draw any definite conclusions. I’m just the organ-grinder, the facilitator.
For newer listeners, as frustrating as it may be, I am not a policeman, a forensic scientist or an FBI profiler; and this isn’t an investigation. I don’t reveal new evidence. My podcast is more like a book group, a discussion at an old crime scene. We discuss things with the help of others, those who have agreed to look back on a tragedy.
Angel Mawson is dubious about me. We talk about any possible legal ramifications – whether she would have to answer for anything if the Macleod Massacre case is re-examined. I tell her it’s possible, but I don’t know. I can’t say.
I’m not doing this to find a killer – that’s been done already. I’m here to look at why Arla Macleod killed her family on the 21st of November 2014.
—So, like, what? You want me to go way back, yeah? So, like, way back about me? This thing ain’t about me though, is it?
—I guess it depends. But I’m not going to tell you to say anything you don’t want to.
There’s a moment of tension after I say this. Angel pulls her hood down further and glances out through the salon, towards the street. I catch a glimpse of her face, momentarily. Her expression is serious, hard.
It’s rush hour in London and the rain is lashing down. The lights of the passing cars drift by.
—Let me ask you something, man? So … like, have you ever recorded one of these things and it has been, like, I dunno, like it went nowhere? Like, you had a case and that, yeah, but you got nothing? It was too … easy? Like, someone killed someone and they just did it – like, there was nothing else?
It’s a good question. A really good one. I’m honest when I tell Angel that my breakthrough series – the one about Daniel Murphy, the teenage spree-killer who shot several of his classmates in Devon – nearly floundered. I actually thought I’d bitten off more than I could chew then – there was just so much to consider in Murphy’s case. I tell Angel I nearly gave up halfway through.
—There’s always something though – always a detail that gets overlooked: a person, an opinion that pulls these cases tight like shoelaces. At least that’s how it feels for me.
—Am I that person?
—I don’t know yet.
—OK, man. So let me tell you a bit about me, yeah? I grew up in the care system. I was bad, I mean bad �
� a fighter. I had all this … this rage inside me that I just didn’t know what to do with, yeah? I mean now I know what was fuckin’ me up – I was angry at my mum, yeah? At my dad for giving up on me. Like, for them, having a kid was too much hard work. It was too much for them so they just got rid of me, yeah?
—I understand.
—Also, there was the gay thing. Like, they say you should come out to someone you trust, but I had no one back then, man, no one! Any adult who tried to get close – teachers, social workers, foster carers, all of them – I just pushed them away, like. I made myself unlikeable so they didn’t even have a chance, you know. That way they couldn’t be disappointed, yeah? It’s fucked-up logic but it was what it was back then.
—So were you still that angry girl when you met Arla? What were the circumstances in which you met her?
—I’d been moved again for fighting – this time down south. I went to these carers, Emma and Gary Young. They were good to me, man, they were chill. It didn’t work out in the end for me with them – I was too angry, too hard … too damaged. And Gary and Emma, they were too soft, too nice.
—The Youngs were the ones who took you to Cornwall on holiday, right?
—Yeah man, they did. They were good like that, you know – they meant well, taking this bratty little care kid to this, like, big posh place on the coast. I think they thought it would be good for me, you know? But I saw the looks we were getting, I saw the way the staff pulled their lips tight and whispered to each other whenever they turned their backs.
From what I can gather from a combination of Arla’s and Angel’s scattered memories, the hotel was one of many all-inclusive family hotels perched on the Cornish coast. I have an idea which one, but I don’t think it is right to reveal its name – it’s not relevant to what happened.
It seems there weren’t a great deal of activities for young people going on during the day there – a games room, giant chess and an adventure playground in the grounds. And there was entertainment at night as well. The Macleods’ holiday was in the peak of summer, so there must have been a lot of young people and their families there.
—I stuck out like a sore thumb. That’s how it felt anyway. All the other kids were all so wholesome – privileged, rich. They stank of it.
Gary and Emma, man, they’d saved for this for a long time. They’d arranged for me to do all this stuff – scrimped and saved and paid for me to do all these activities. It was sport and archery and shit, you know? I wanted to join in, but I just couldn’t. However much Gary and Emma tried, I was never that type of kid. But I felt so bad – this was their holiday too. And I knew they wanted a break from me as well. They’d go for little walks down the beach, have afternoon tea and that. And I’d tell them I was having a great time and they would look so pleased.
—What were you actually doing?
—Ah man, you see, people like me, people like I was back then, we find each other.
—And you and Arla found each other?
—Not at first, nah. I found the bad boys, didn’t I?
The ‘bad boys’ that Angel describes I cannot account for. Angel says she can’t remember if they were locals or hotel guests. At the time she didn’t care. She describes walking around outside the grounds of the hotel and meeting the first ‘bad boy’ – a young man of around eighteen years old who introduced himself as Kyle and gave Angel a cigarette. We’ll hear more about Kyle later, but right now, we’ll concentrate on Angel’s first meeting with Arla.
—That first time I met Arla was well weird. There’s loads I don’t remember about that holiday, man, but I remember meeting Arla. It was like a dream or something. So it was, like, afternoon sometime, you know? It was hot, man, like it was abroad, and everyone was dozing and that. All the kids were out in the pool and the hotel was dead quiet. It was kind of like being in another world – all these long, empty corridors. The walls were like marble or something, and I was wearing those jelly sandals that everyone had back then, yeah? My feet were making this slapping noise that was echoing around. I could see this, like, vivid blue sky through all the windows, the staff quietly tidying up the breakfast stuff in the dining room. It was like I was in a dream. I just kept walking around.
I was just wandering round the hotel and I was waiting for the lift and, like, it opened, yeah, and there was … man … there was, like, this vision stood there. It was like something from a film, man. That was the moment! That was the fuckin’ moment when I knew it, man – the moment I knew I liked girls. That’s why … ha! That’s why I wasn’t freaked out.
—I don’t follow – what would you have been freaked out about?
—What that girl was doing in the lift, man! It was some witchcraft shit. She had a load of the buttons pressed, and she was just riding up and down to all these different floors, man, waiting for the doors to open and close and then going to the next one. It was mad!
—Why was she doing that?
—She didn’t even say! At first, she wouldn’t even speak to me! I was, like, ‘What’s up?’ and she just put her head down and ignored me.
—Wasn’t that a bit strange?
—Maybe, but I didn’t even care. I was just, like, mesmerised by this girl. She had these big brown eyes, like a cow, but, like, not dopey. She … like, she was from another world or something, you know? I just, like, stood there, arms folded and attitude out, yeah, just looking at her. It probably looked like I was giving her evils.
—So how did you two get to know each other if Arla wouldn’t speak to you?
—I was just, like, I’m staying here, man. I knew stubborn – I’m just as stubborn now.
—I’m thinking, the way you were back then, you probably saw Arla as a challenge, right?
—Yeah! That’s right – you got it in one! After a minute or something I was, like, girl, you’re gonna talk to me no matter what?
—And did she?
—Of course.
—What happened?
—It was, like, we got to the tenth floor. I remember cos, like, it was either the very top floor or one from the top, you know? I was planning to go up there myself sometime, just to get away from people, yeah? We get there and she just looks at me with those big brown eyes, as if she expects me to say something, you know? I’m, like, ‘What?’ And you know the first thing she says to me?
—What?
—She’s, like, ‘Oh it’s OK, you didn’t get on at the fifth floor anyway.’
—What did she mean?
—I dunno, man – long time since then, yeah? It was like a game or something she’d made up. You had to go to all the different floors or something, yeah. Then, like, you’d go to another world. I wasn’t even listening to that shit. I would have gone anywhere with that girl, you know?
What Angel has described here rings a bell – I think I have an idea about what Arla was doing in the lift: she could have been playing a game that appears to have originated on a Korean paranormal website. I discovered this particular game when researching the Daruma-san bath game I discuss in episode three.
This game is entitled Elevator to Another World and has very specific instructions. I’ll summarise them briefly.
Elevator to Another World can only be played alone. You enter the lift from the first floor. If someone else enters with you, you must wait until they’ve gone and then start the game alone. (I believe Arla must have been some way through the game when she encountered Angel; the reason for that will become clear soon.) Next, press the button for the fourth floor. When the lift reaches the fourth floor, do not get out; instead, press the button for the second floor. Do the same again, stay in the lift and press the button for the second floor again. Do not get out when you reach the second floor. Press the button for the sixth floor. Do not get out when you reach the sixth floor; press the button for the second floor. Do not get out when you reach the second floor. Press the button for the tenth floor.
At this point in the game, people have allegedly heard a voi
ce calling to them on the second floor. If that voice is heard, you must not acknowledge or reply to the voice in any way. I believe that Angel entered the lift with Arla at this exact point in the game. According to Angel, the hotel’s restaurant and reception area were on this floor.
The lift should then reach the tenth floor. Again, do not get out; instead, press the button for the fifth floor.
Arla saying to Angel ‘you didn’t get on at the fifth floor’ confirms, at least for me, that Arla could well have been playing this game. According to the numerous websites and blogs surrounding the game, at this point in the proceedings, a woman may enter the lift on the fifth floor. This woman may be a stranger or someone the player knows. I believe the reason why Arla ignored Angel at first is because, according to the rules of the game, you are not supposed to even look at this woman – you must stare at the floor or the buttons of the lift. If you engage with the woman she will ‘keep you as her own’. What that means, I’m not entirely sure. I have been able to find no credible account of anyone who has ‘come back’ and reported what happens if you speak to the woman in the lift.
Now for the last element of the game: press the button to the first floor; the lift should go up instead of down, reach the tenth floor. That’s when you have performed the ritual ‘correctly’. However, it is important to know that, if the lift does indeed go down to the first floor, you should exit immediately.
If the ritual has been performed correctly, you will have a choice when you reach the tenth floor: you can exit or not. The woman may try and engage with you by screaming or asking you questions. If she does, you must still avoid her. Apparently you’ll know if you’ve reached another world when stepping out of the lift as you’ll be ‘the only one there’. My guess is that, if the lift woman ‘keeps you as her own’, this world is where you’ll see out your days – at least according to the supernatural rules of the game.
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