“See you in a month, 2209,” said the prison officer. “If you can take it, that is. We’re running a sweepstake that you won’t make it out of here.”
Michael Dean said nothing as they shoved him into the cell. The whole area could not have been more than the size of an average bathroom. At least they had released him from his handcuffs, but that also meant he had more to do, something to do, with his hands. The cuffs had been uncomfortably tight, and had dug shallow moats into his wrists.
Not all English prisons had a cell like this. Their use had been commuted a lot on the basis of some Human Rights Act, or something or other. Some prisons upheld the use of such cells, stating that they helped the prisoner understand his actions, which would not be tolerated in a modern prison, never mind out there in normal society.
To the north wall, there was a very narrow window, maybe no more than six inches wide by maybe thirty-six inches in height. No way to get through that, although it surprised Michael Dean that there was a window in there at all.
The bed was a metal one. A single narrow sheet, and thinly puffed out pillow rested on top. An area for nature’s call, and that was pretty much it.
The lights were on right now, but were at the prison’s discretion as to how long they stayed on. In his own cell, Michael Dean had certain comforts, but here, all that was taken away from him.
“I won’t give in, I won’t succumb to madness, no matter what,” said Michael to himself. “I won’t be like No Fingers.”
In the deafening silence, Michael sat down and resigned himself to the fact that he would not be leaving this place any time soon.
“A man could go crazy, in a place like this. I won’t let it happen to me.” Michael thought it was best to keep thinking positive. There had to be a way to pass the time, to beat the odds, the system. There just had to be.
“I can help you with that,” said the voice of Don Curie.
Michael cheered up at the sound of the voice. If he was imagining it, he was happy to do so.
“I can help you escape, Michael. But you’ll have to do something for me.”
“What?” He was not sure where the voice was coming from nor to whom he was addressing. “You’re a clown. There’s no escape from here.”
“Of course there is. I know a way. Why don’t you just listen and let me prove it to you.”
Michael Dean scratched his head roughly, so hard that bits of his scalp gathered under his nails. This is what true insanity must feel like.
“I will unlock the door. But you will do something for me. When you get on the outside, you will kill a girl. You know who she is. Bethany O’Neill. She must die.”
“Beth? No! I am no killer. Anyway, she is the only one who knows I am innocent.”
“Innocent, yet you are in the jail. Innocent, yet you are in this hole because a man died calling out your name. You are never getting out of here, Michael. Not by conventional means anyway. Agree to kill Beth O’Neill, or stay here until time, old age or madness takes you.”
“No.”
The voice fell silent. Michael had heard about people in the hole, how they comforted themselves by imagining things. That was the only way to pass the time, to stop oneself from going insane.
Maybe a day passed. An hour. A week. It was so hard to tell. Michael had stopped eating food. All he wanted was that voice to speak again. God yes, he’d kill Beth O’Neill if he got out of there.
“Alright, Curie! I’ll rip her to fucking pieces. Just give me the chance. I will fuck her up good, you’ll see. She’ll beg for death before the end. Just let me the fuck out of here.”
Silence.
“Please!”
Finally, the voice spoke. “The door is open, Michael. The guards won’t see you leave. You’ll be a ghost to them. You’re free.”
The door unlocked. Michael Dean smiled. This was his chance. He would kill Beth, otherwise the owner of the voice would kill him.
Michael took a deep breath as he passed the first night officer, who surely could see him, yet he could not. Then Michael broke into a run. He could pass through the iron gates in front of him. So foreboding in appearance and so final when they locked shut, they now represented no threat to him.
He thought about ignoring Curie’s demands, and wanted to tell him to go and kill Beth himself. But he had to be grateful. But for Curie’s intervention, he would still be rotting in the hole.
Finally, he was beyond the twenty foot high wall, with Don Curie meeting him on the outside.
“Where will I find her?”
“She’ll be in Gorswood Forest in about a week’s time. You can hide out in the old mental hospital until then. I doubt the police will be looking for you there.”
“How do you know?”
“Just be there. And if you don’t fulfill your end of the bargain, you will be wishing the police had caught up with you before I do. You’ve seen me once, so you’ve done good. If you see me twice, you’ll have done bad. Now listen close about Beth. She must suffer like no-one in the history of humanity has suffered before. We understand each other?”
Michael nodded. The shape of Don Curie disappeared from view. He had heard of course that the old caretaker had met a grisly end, but from beyond the grave, it would appear he was now commanding others to continue his work.
Michael had entered the jail an innocent man. To have any chance of staying out of the clutches of Don Curie, he would now have to slay the only person who could have exonerated him.
Walking with Demons
It was him. I knew it was him, even before I looked up. I knew how he walked. The sound of his footsteps. Yet it could not be him. He had been injured by the Zeryth. I vividly remember the gaping wound on his neck.
The last time I saw Troy Jackson, he was turning into one of them. The image of us, together, existed only in my mind. He had been Toril's boyfriend in life. Now, in this death, this void, whatever it was – he existed there.
I didn’t look up. I did not dare. I hugged my knees together and kept my head down low, so I couldn’t see anything.
“Rom.”
No. It couldn’t be. This isn’t real. It’s the demon playing tricks on me.
“Romilly. I know it’s you. I’d know the top of that head anywhere. You have a double crown, remember? That’s what you told me.”
It’s true. I do have a double crown, and I did tell Troy that. Slowly, I looked up.
It certainly looked like him. Through bloodshot, mascara spoiled eyes, I decided to look at him. Through the driest of mouths, I decided to speak.
“If it is you, Troy, you best stay back. I’m seeing only darkness these days. I have a demon inside of me.”
He extended a hand to me.
“I know all about your demon. Come with me, and I’ll give your demon a hell where it can live.”
I looked at him blankly, as if I thought he was talking crazy. He sought to reassure me.
“Because Hell exists inside of me.”
“You were hurt….how did you…all those zombies…your legs disappearing….the void….how did you…how did…”
I trailed off, because as I spoke, I could hear the words. I knew I was making no sense at all. I couldn’t believe that Troy was standing here in front of me, offering his hand. Always playing the big brother role with me.
“Yep,” said Troy, “Keep on talking like that for a few hours, you might just catch up with me. There’s a lot to tell you, Rom. Not all of it is pleasant.”
“I wasn’t banking of any of it being pleasant,” I replied. I grabbed his hand. It felt real enough. He was as strong as ever. As kind as ever.
We walked slowly together. I was looking down towards the ground as I walked. Troy ruffled my hair playfully.
“Hey, knock it off, Troy.” Whatever was I saying? “I mean, sorry. All this is a bit overwhelming, you know.”
“I missed you Rom, that’s all,” Troy let his hand fall and patted me on the back.
“Are you r
eally you?” I blurted out.
“As real as you are,” he replied.
“How did you escape the void?”
“You mean to say that you don’t know?”
“I have no idea what you’ve experienced, Troy.”
Troy told me everything. That is, he told me his version of everything. I listened intently, how he followed Dana whilst keeping out of sight. Alix had not returned, but it did seem he had escaped the void, or had died trying. There was nothing to lose by trying.
“It doesn’t explain how you found me here, under this tree,” I quizzed. “Just how is it that you ended up close to me, and not in the middle of the town somewhere? Or with Toril? Especially with Toril?”
“All good questions, Rom,” smiled Troy. “Anyone would think you’ve been hanging around with a former girlfriend of mine, for far too long.”
We stopped walking. That is to say, I stopped us walking.
“What? What do you mean? Where is Toril? Why didn’t you go to see her first?”
I stepped back from Troy. I was having doubts whether or not it really was him. His story wasn’t convincing me.
“Rom?”
I slipped the gloves off my hands. He knew what it meant.
“You had better tell me the truth, all of it,” I snarled.
“Romilly, calm down. I know you lost your parents, Beth is messed up about hers, and Jacinta…well you know about Jacinta. We have to come to terms with what happened to Toril.”
I just blew a fuse. “What the hell has this got to do with Toril?”
“For pity’s sake, Rom….Toril’s gone. She’s just….gone. Dana killed her.”
No. That’s not possible. The dreams, that were my nightmares, could not be coming true. I wouldn’t accept it.
“Where is her body then? Where is it?”
Troy bore the most pained of looks. “Christ, Romilly. There was nothing left. She tore her limb from limb.”
“You’re lying! Toril survived that attack.”
“All I know is, that Toril visited me in the void. But Romilly, Jesus….it wasn’t her. It was the demon ghost of Dana Cullen.”
I stood a foot or so away from Troy, or whoever this was supposed to be. I was about to strike down this figure, when I felt pity for him.
He dropped to his knees. I had never seen Troy cry. He seemed too manly for all that, but he was genuinely broken up. “It wasn’t Toril. She was wearing her pentacle, and possessed her wand. She looked like Toril. I couldn’t believe it, but I did believe she had come to rescue me from the void.”
He looked up at me.
“Rom, it’s the truth.”
I softened a bit, but kept my guard. “Go on.”
“We were kissing, a lot. I mean, I hadn’t seen her in what felt like a lifetime. We were kissing anyway-”
“Spare me the details,” I spat. I didn’t need to hear this part of his story.
“She was laughing. But I realised it wasn’t her, and her body crumbled in front of me. I was kissing a corpse, Romilly. A seventy-year old corpse. I recoiled in horror, and was left with her ashes seeping through my fingers, and then, she revealed who she was.”
I knew who he meant. Dana had taken Toril’s pentacle and her wand, and left her for dead. As Toril had put it, she was pissing around with her.
“I really thought it was her, Rom. But it was at that moment I knew she was dead.”
I tried to look at it, the way Toril would. “We’ve got no evidence of that. If Toril were here now, she would look at all this logically.”
“I don’t know why Dana took Toril’s things. She’s not a trophy collector. She just kills because it amuses her, right? You should have seen her face when she told me Toril was dead. She just did that horrid laugh. How can anyone deal with anything like that?”
“You can’t,” I said, honestly. “We have rules, structure, discipline. These are the things that guide us. Dana….well, she doesn’t have rules. To deal with her, we’d have to break rules of our own.”
“You mean, become like her.”
“In a manner of speaking, yes,” I said.
We resumed our walk. “I don’t think I can face telling her parents,” said Troy. “Would you come with me?”
“Troy, we need to find a body. We cannot just go up to the Withers household and say hi, did you know your daughter’s dead? No, Troy.”
The sky darkened ahead of us. When Troy saw I was smiling, he seemed to know instinctively why.
“The Gorswood Equator,” he laughed. “This side…sunny, that side, all dark. You still want to go?”
“Sure thing.”
We were used to such things in Gorwsood. Small town, but big forest. When Troy found me, I was in the northernmost point, just about as far away as I could be from home. As we made our way south, my smile started to fade.
“It’ll be alright Rom, you’ll see.”
Troy was squeezing my hand. Oh, the warmth of his touch. But I could not accept that anything had happened to Toril. With my other hand, I fumbled around for my phone. The network might not work so well out here, but I would try nonetheless.
The Demon spoke with menace in my head.
‘I wouldn’t bother calling her. Not while her boyfriend is holding your hand.’
I didn’t need the Demon to speak up. I had my own misgivings about what Troy was doing. I had many questions to ask him. Right now, we were just two friends, trying to help each other recover. In defiance, and reassurance, I squeezed his hand right back.
“Thanks, Rom.”
‘Don’t thank him back, Romilly. You can tell yourself you are just friends, that you’re just holding hands for support, that it is innocent. But evil is found in the most innocent of things, right, Romilly? You’re holding the hand that threw the weapon that killed Jacinta. Feel better?’
“Stop it, damn you,” I said out loud.
“What?” said Troy.
“Oh.” I looked around, pointlessly. What was causing the problem, lay within. “It’s..it’s nothing.”
“I hear them too, sometimes,” said Troy. “Maybe we can silence them together.”
We walked, but in silence. My grip had loosened in Troy’s hand. If Toril was alive, she wouldn’t like this. If she was dead, she would haunt me to the end of my days.
Okay, Demon, you win, I mused. Gently, I slid my hand out of Troy’s, and widened the gap between us.
I hadn’t realised there was a sheer drop to my left, and could only hear Troy’s shouts as my body hurtled downwards, ready to be smashed by the ground below.
The Blood-Splattered Girl
“You’re awfully quiet, Beth,” said her grandmother. “It’s not good for a girl of your age to be on her own so much, and quiet all the time.”
“I’m alright, Gran, honestly.”
Beth would not want to worry her grandparents, who were well into their eighties.
“You haven’t been with that nice girl for a while. Have you? Mallory, isn’t that her name?”
Christ. If Beth knew anything about me, it was my hang-up about my name.
“Romilly,” said Beth. “You mean Romilly, Gran.”
“Oh, that’s right, silly me. Well, you should go see her, and not be moping around here all the time.”
“I’m not moping around, Gran.”
“Well, your grandfather didn’t want to say anything, but we both think you look terrible, and in need of a good rest. Now if you’re not going out, how about getting some sleep?”
Sleep was the thing Beth needed most, but she could not get any quality sleep.
While she was thinking it through, her grandmother spoke once more.
“That…that habit of yours won’t help either. I found the bottle, Beth.”
Beth looked up at her grandmother. She thought it had been hidden well enough.
“I don’t even like Jack Daniels, Gran. Just helped me get to sleep, that’s all.”
“Unnatural habits take away the plea
sures of the normal ones, Beth. If your mother were here, she’d remind you of that.”
“I know.”
Beth was getting angry, but her grandparents had only ever been kind to her. She decided she would just lie down on the bed, just to cool off. Maybe she would get some quality sleep after all.
“I’ll go for a lie down.”
“You do that. Don’t forget to say your prayers.”
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