by Conrad Jones
“I like it,” he opened one of the sliding windows as he spoke. We stepped out onto the expansive deck and I inhaled the sea air deeply. Sirens spoiled the silence and the rumble of a helicopter echoed off the mountains behind us. “You can see why I don’t want the ex-wife to get her claws on it.”
“Definitely.”
“Do you want that beer yet?”
“Yes, please.”
“I’ll get them and then you can tell me what you need.”
I took in the view again. The half moon was reflecting off the ripples close to the shore, the wide sandy beach taking the momentum from the swell further out in the bay. Despite the late hour, the street lights and neon signs in the town beckoned the onlooker to enjoy the bars, funfair rides, arcades and gift shops. They had closed hours earlier but the lights burned through the night. I imagined the empty streets, fish and chip wrappers swirling in the sea breeze while the resort slept. Yesterday it was just another declining seaside resort. Now it was my Dunkirk. A peninsula sealed off by the police and my only remaining exit was the inky black sea, which stretched to the horizon where it met the star studded infinity of the sky. I inhaled again, savouring the fresh air and then followed Joseph inside.
“Can I put the news on?” I asked. “I’m curious about what they’re saying.”
“Take a seat,” he said opening a fridge, which was the size of a wardrobe. “I’ll stick Sky News on for you.”
The plasma came on and the crystal clear picture impressed me. The colours were as vivid as I’d seen on any screen. Joseph passed me a beer and made me a plate of chicken sandwiches while I was engrossed in the news. I ate them hungrily and we sat in silence mesmerised by the images. I watched twenty minutes of news footage before it began to repeat itself. The reporters were bandying about the word ‘vigilante’ far more than I expected. It’s a word defence lawyers use for killers to justify murder. I was labelled a victim twice and they indicated that I was fleeing for my life rather than hunting for random victims to shoot. Victims of abuse from all over the world were coming forward claiming to have been forced to have sex during rituals of varying descriptions and the list of missing persons connected to the nexions was growing.
“It sounds like the message is getting through,” I shrugged when I’d heard enough. “I wanted to upload a message giving my side of events, but maybe I don’t need to.”
“I think that you should,” Joseph sipped his beer. “Tell me how it all began and what you’re planning to do next and we’ll take it from there.”
One hour, four bottles of beer and ten menthols later, I had told Joseph the whole sorry tale. His voice was impassive when he asked questions and his eyes showed no judgement or disgust when I recounted the killings. “Jesus, Conrad,” he said when I was done. “You need to record everything that you’ve just told me. I’ll keep it on a memory stick and when you get away from here, I’ll upload it to every news station that wants to see it.”
“Okay,” I thought it was a good idea, “but I need you to upload it between me leaving and Friday night.”
“Why Friday?” he asked confused. “What’s the rush?”
“Friday is Lammas Day on the Satanic calendar,” I explained. “This year, it also coincides with the full moon. The niners are going to use the ley lines and standing stones on Anglesey to tap into a mystical energy source and I’m the guest of honour.”
“Sounds like bollocks to me.”
“A year ago I would have said the same thing, but that’s where they will be.”
“How do you know this?” Joseph frowned.
“She called me,” I smiled. “I took mobiles from the dead niners and she guessed that I had them so she rang me and invited me to their little shindig.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know exactly,” I sighed. “She told me to go to Trefignath, which is a site of ancient standing stones on Holy Island. It’s special because it’s on the intersection of three ley lines. Experts call it a ley gate but I don’t think that she’ll be there. I think Trefignath is a decoy, a trap to capture me and then they’ll take me to wherever the real ceremony is taking place.”
“Ceremony?”
“There’s a Satanic calendar, which specifies what they do on certain dates, orgies, rape, sacrifice of a female, male or child, depending on the date,” I explained and watched his expression darken.
“How the fuck do they get away with it?” He was incredulous. “I mean where do they get their victims from?”
“Some of them are willing victims of the abuse,” I shrugged, “some are less willing obviously. As for the children, they breed them.”
“Breed them?” he frowned. “You’re going to have to explain that one to me. Sounds like pig farm!”
“It’s the only way they can use children in their rituals without attracting attention,” I said trying not to sound patronising. “Missing children are big news. A child disappears and the search goes viral in days. They can’t risk that kind of exposure so they breed within their tribes. They’re organised into nexions or what they call sinister tribes, which consist of adults, husbands and wives, boyfriends and girlfriends who have kids, right?”
“What and they use their own kids?”
“Bingo.” I looked at the expression on his face. He looked shocked. “Let’s say they find a weak female, a homeless girl who has been abused all through her childhood, someone who doesn’t know any different.”
“Okay, I’m following.”
“They befriend her, give her a nice place to live, feed her, spoil her with nice clothes, introduce her to their little gatherings and then snap the trap closed,” I slapped the settee with my hand making Joseph jump. He eyed me warily. There was something about Joseph. He had an aura of strength and calm. He was dangerous but meant no harm to me. I could sense it. “She’s hooked and they impregnate her. No one knows about her, let alone any children she may have. Multiply this process by dozens of lost females across the country and there they have their own battery farms breeding children who will never be missed, because they never existed. If they’re born into the tribe, then they don’t know any difference but abuse.”
“It sounds impossible to comprehend.”
“It’s a fact,” I challenged him. “Have you heard of Aleister Crawley?”
“His name has been mentioned on the news a few times.”
“He was a nutcase, but he’s revered by the niners because he openly admitted to holding orgies where men and women and children were raped,” I looked at the television screen as I spoke almost wishing it would show something that would back me up. “He admitted to sacrificing hundreds of children to Satan.”
“Hundreds?” Joseph whistled. “They’re sick in the head. This is madness.”
“The world is mad,” I chuckled. “Humankind makes it mad. You call them sick, yet they see civilisation as mundane and a waste of their short lives. They think we are mad for living a life within boundaries set by leaders we neither like nor trust. ‘Do as thy wilt’ is their philosophy. Do what you want, whenever you want to and fuck what anyone else thinks. If anyone tries to stop you, kill them.”
“And that’s what they have in mind for you,” he raised his eyebrows as he spoke.
“Without a doubt.”
“You know it’s a trap, but you’re still going there?”
“What else can I do?” I laughed sadly. “To kill Jennifer Booth, I have to go to her.”
“Giving yourself to them is pointless after everything that you’ve been through,” he emptied his beer. “Are you going to die like a rat in a trap and let them win?”
“Well I’m intending to live long enough to blow Jennifer Booth back to hell.”
“What about the police?” he looked serious. “If you know where she is, let the police arrest her.”
“It would never be over, Joseph,” I sighed wearily. “Look how easily she escaped last time. As long as she’s alive, they’ll be after me and th
ey’ll get me in the end.”
“Okay,” he smiled. “She has to die but we need to find a way of doing it that doesn’t involve you dying too.”
“I’m all over that if you have any ideas,” I laughed again. His simple acceptance of the fact that I was going to kill Jennifer Booth regardless, seemed extraordinary. I couldn’t work out what made Joseph tick. He was different.
“There’s one thing that I don’t get though,” he sat forward and looked me in the eyes. “Why you, Conrad?”
“Because I wrote a book, which implicated them in several murders,” I shrugged. “The exposure it caused pissed her off no end.”
“And you think that all this is about the book?” he shook his head as if the concept didn’t sit right with him.
“Well it started there and then they tried to burn my house down.”
“And you shot the copper and went on the run?”
“Pretty much.”
“But they didn’t leave it there?”
“Neither did I.”
“Why?”
“Because I can’t leave things alone and everything that I touch turns to shit.”
“What do you mean?”
“Jobs, relationships, businesses and even my writing,” I replied, being brutally self scathing. “I become obsessed with things to the detriment of those around me. I have a talent for fucking things up.”
“Sounds like you’re beating yourself up.”
“Not really,” I smiled, “it’s true.”
“I still don’t get it,” he frowned. The muscles in his jaw twitched. His neck was thick and powerful. He looked like he could be a handful if crossed. “I don’t see why they didn’t just walk away and leave things to settle down.”
“I’ll ask Jennifer when I meet her,” I said sarcastically. “She seems to be calling all the shots, so she is the only one who can answer that question.”
“So do you really believe that this woman is something other than human?”
“Right here and now, no, but when I was near her, there was something about her that I can’t explain. Maybe it’s all just in my head.”
“But you said you felt a connection with her immediately.”
“I did,” I thought back. It all seemed so hazy now, like a dream. “She has got something up here.” I tapped the side of my head trying to explain the telepathic connection, which I had felt with her. “I can’t explain it rationally but she knew things that she shouldn’t; Things that I’d seen in my head.”
“Did anyone else feel her ‘power’?” Joseph tapped his head cynically. “You know, people involved in the initial interviews?”
“Nobody mentioned it if they did.”
“So she singled you out.”
“Maybe, or maybe I was just weak and susceptible to her thoughts.” I remembered back to the first time I had seen her in the secure unit of the mental hospital. “She said it was because I was a writer, because of my imagination. My imagination made it possible for her to connect.”
“I don’t buy that,” he frowned. “It sounds to me like she staged the whole thing to get to you.”
“It did feel as if she set me up from the start,” I agreed. “I’ve thought about that but then it just makes me feel paranoid. You know, when you’re on your arse and you wonder, why me?”
“Maybe she did set you up.”
“Why though?” I asked myself out loud. “I just think that there has to be more to it than that stupid book.”
“Why?”
“Because as you said earlier, the focus would have moved from them eventually,” I shared my theory, which had been developed during many hours of lonely contemplation. “She could have stayed in the shadows and sooner or later, she would have been forgotten.”
“You said she disappeared from the hospital and then turned up at that farm with the funny name?”
“Brunt Bogart,” I reminded him. “They told me at the hospital that she’d committed suicide and then the next time I saw her, she was being bundled from the back of a car. I thought she was dead. A doctor at the hospital told me, so why would I think otherwise?”
Joseph stared at his beer bottle and peeled off the label, deep in thought. I hadn’t noticed before but his forearms were wiry and strong. The tendons looked like steel cables beneath the skin. “She suckered you at that farm,” he drained his beer and went for two more.
“Do you think so?”
“Definitely,” he plonked a fresh beer next to me. “She knew that you’d go and try to rescue her. Why else would she let her followers put her in the boot of a car?”
“Because she was wanted by the police?”
“She could have put a flat cap and sunglasses on,” he joked. “It worked for you!”
“Yes for about an hour!” I laughed and it felt good. Talking about the entire crazy story with an outsider gave it some perspective. Joseph was completely objective, thus he saw things with a clarity that I didn’t have. “But if she wanted me to go into that farm, then she must have had an idea what would happen.”
“Maybe she didn’t care if any of them got hurt.”
“What do you mean?”
“Let’s assume that her number one objective was testing your resolve,” he shrugged, “to see if you would kill to protect her.”
“To see if I would kill them?”
“Maybe.”
“She asked me to let go and join them,” I pondered her words. “She was like a wild animal, Joseph. I had scratches and bites that didn’t heal for weeks.”
“I had a girlfriend like that once,” he chuckled.
“Not like this one, trust me.”
“Maybe she wanted to see how far you would go before she tried to recruit you?”
“Who knows?” I shook my head. I’d been over it all in my head so many times that none of it made sense any more. “If all this is right, then the entire thing was planned.”
“You said she had a child soon after and that she says it is yours.”
“Yes.”
“You did have unprotected sex with her.”
“In a fashion,” I squirmed uncomfortably.
“You either did or you didn’t.”
“Okay we did,” I said resigning to the obvious truth.
“And was the timing of the birth about right?”
“Yes I think so.”
“You said that after you had sex, she tried to kill you.”
“Yes, Evie Jones saved me.” The mention of my dog’s name made me cry inside. I missed her terribly. I missed my old life terribly. My recent past had been a melee of blood and fear. My future would be more of the same. I wished that I could see Evie one more time.
“So she had what she wanted from you and then you were just another sacrifice, but the key is she got what she wanted.”
“Sex?”
“Sperm,” he laughed. “She wanted to be impregnated.”
“That still doesn’t explain why she targeted me.”
“Because she chose you,” he pointed his finger as he explained his idea. “You had a connection and you killed people who tried to kill you and you killed to protect her,” Joseph offered an alternative theory. “You passed her test.”
“She has thousands of followers,” I disagreed. “Anyone would have done the same.”
“Bullshit,” Joseph laughed. “Are you taking the piss?”
“No,” I was taken aback.
“You shot anyone who stood in your way and killed niners without giving it a second thought,” he changed his tone. “How many of these so called followers are truly capable of blowing someone away without any thought of the consequences?”
“Not many, I suppose.”
“When your house burned down and you shot that rogue copper, most people would have crumbled and turned themselves in. You lived on the run for how long?”
“Over two years.”
“That’s what makes you so special.”
“What?”
“She wanted a child,” he pointed again, “your child.”
“She could have picked any of her followers,” I disagreed. “It would have been much easier.”
“No, think about it for a minute,” he raised his eyebrows. There was something very rational about his manner. Even when he disagreed it felt like he actually agreed. “She wanted a child with someone who was on the same wavelength as her, someone who could kill at the drop of a hat.”
The concept he described was as if someone had kicked me in the guts. I knew what I had become, but could she have seen that in me? Could she tell that I had the capacity to kill without remorse or regret? “If you’re right,” I closed my eyes. “Then this is all about the child.”
“Exactly,” Joseph agreed as if that was his point all along.
“She once said to me that the baby would be ‘A Child for the Devil’ but I didn’t really put much thought behind what she’d meant.”
“You mentioned that Friday is something special to them, right?” Joseph stood up and grabbed a slim silver laptop from the kitchen counter. “If we can work out what this ceremony is all about, then maybe we can come up with some answers.” He opened it up and Googled Lammas Day. A page of sites about the first day of Autumn appeared. Most of them linked the date to a celebration of harvest, nothing to do with Satan. “This all looks innocent enough.”
“Put the year in too,” I thought out loud. “I read somewhere that some of their sacred days don’t happen every year. Put 2013 in.” Joseph typed it in and this time the search revealed much darker sites. “Click on that,” I pointed to a posting about ‘The Feast of the Beast’. It opened and we read it before looking at each other in amazement.
“At the Feast of the Beast on the twelfth day of the eighth month in the year 2013 a virgin child born of two of the blackest hearts, one mortal and one shapeshifter, will be presented to Satan himself as a bride. The child must be of mixed blood and color. The sire of the child will be sacrificed on Lammas Day, twelve days before, in conjunction with the full moon near to the sea. When the dark one appears amongst the mortal and immortal, he will choose to take the child for his own, or he will share her and feed on her during the ensuing feast. The ceremony must take place within the walls of a sinister dwelling on European soil.”