The Girl Must Die: A Suspense Thriller With a Supernatural Twist

by Peter Repton

  ‘Hey, Lisa it’s Nick how are you doing honey?’ he said.

  ‘Hi, sugar I am good. I have just been doing some more research about my human dispersion out of Africa theories. How are things with you?’ she sounded real sweet.

  ‘I am sorry dinner tomorrow will have to wait. Something has come up I need to go on a kind of field trip with Bob as he is heading out to the UK. I said I would join him. I am not sure how long it will take honey,’ he said it with sadness in his voice that Lisa immediately picked up on.

  ‘This is sudden, isn’t it? What could have happened overnight to bring this about?’ Nick took a deep breath.

  ‘It’s the English guy Kempston again I’m afraid, something else he has said or done has got old Bob real fired up. When he’s like this, nobody is going to stop him doing anything. I said I would go with him as he’s my buddy then I can keep an eye on him. Like I said I am really sorry Lisa,’ he meant it.

  ‘I have never been to Europe. I, unlike most Americans, have a passport. Do you think three would three be a crowd?’ her question stunned him. He was speechless.

  ‘Are you still there Nick?’ Lisa asked. Nick managed to find his tongue at last. This girl was amazing Nick had never known a mind react as fast as hers and nothing at all seemed to faze her.

  ‘Sure honey I am here. I just didn’t figure you for the kind of girl that would just up and go places at the drop of a hat that’s all. I am surprised and I don’t know what to say.’

  ‘Yes, Nick. Just say yes. Your buddy decides to up and go just out of the blue, and you say you are going with him to keep him out of trouble. Who is to say that I can’t also decide to do the same with you? You did promise me a Saturday night dinner after all sugar. Now didn’t you?’

  ‘I guess I did honey,’ Nick laughed out loud, very pleased at her attitude and directness.

  ‘You have only an hour to be ready though so pack light. I will swing by your place in a cab on route to Denver International then fill you in when we get there, what is your address. Lisa told him her address. She said her goodbyes before he could change his mind, and rushed off starting to pack a suitcase. Lisa got dressed and was ready well before Nick arrived in the cab just under ninety minutes later.

  She wore a red outfit like the blue one she wore for lunch. It was a scarlet double-breasted suit with a tight matching skirt four inches above the knee. She wore classy red stiletto shoes with ankle straps that entwined her shapely brown calves. Her outfit was coordinated with a small red clutch purse. They made small talk about the journey to England as Denver International came into view.

  ‘What the hell is that?’ Lisa pointed at a huge statue of a horse rearing up on its hind legs. Standing at least thirty-two feet tall and painted a bright cobalt blue colour. Nick replied.

  ‘The locals call it Blucifer because it looks like a demon with its glowing red eyes at night. They say that it killed its creator when a section fell off, severing one of his arteries and killing him during its construction,’ Nick fell silent again as the main airport came into view. Inside the building, there were many strange almost apocalyptic murals on the walls. Nick told Lisa.

  ‘As well as all these murals and the crazy blue horse outside, the locals say huge underground bunkers are all over the place around here. They claim lots have links to this airport; they got the funding out of homeland security money. The security services and military commands are all underground in nuclear proof bunkers here. So the Russians have done the same thing and built a sixty square mile underground command centre under the Ural Mountains.’

  Nick and Lisa checked in luggage then passed through security into a large open area. Their flight was not boarding for another hour. Nick got them both a coffee at Starbucks, passing her the coffee, he said.

  ‘Before I picked you up Lisa, I watched the videos that Bob forwarded onto me. They were recorded in a prison interview room. This English guy David Kempston has been making some very profound statements. I think you should see them now so that you are up to speed with what we know so far. I would also value your opinion of whether you think he is just plain nuts. Or if there is a possibility of any truth in what he says.’

  ‘Sure,’ Lisa said, ‘Hit me with it,’ Nick opened his Apple Macbook Air and connected it to YouTube, selecting his favourites. He clicked on Kempston Insight, passing it over to Lisa, sipping his coffee as the video played, and watching her eyes. She saw the accused English Doctor giving a statement to an aggressive looking policeman with white hair and piercing blue eyes. Lisa paid real attention. The man heard a long list of charges and Lisa looked both shocked and horrified at the nature of the crimes. But when Kempston told of his alleged abduction, her honey-brown eyes once again widened like saucers in disbelief. The short video ended, looking towards Nick he motioned to her.

  ‘There is more, just watch the next one before speaking,’ Lisa hit the second video. Lisa turned her eyes, fringed with long lashes coated in thick mascara back to the screen. Her eyes became huge, and her jaw dropped open. She gasped as she watched David revealing the process of extinction and death and the release of the souls that he called dark energy.

  Lisa gasped out loud again when he talked about the erasure and replacement of all the dominant species throughout time. When David collapsed on the floor, and the recording ended, she closed her eyes. She held them shut for a long time. Nick did not interrupt her silence and just quietly sipped his coffee. Finally, Lisa spoke in an awed tone.

  ‘You know if what he says is actually true. This revelation makes an absolute real crock of shit of everything that you have taught me so far about anthropology Professor! Everything we have ever believed about our origins. It all makes sense. It all makes perfect sense; the puzzle pieces are all falling into place in my mind. I knew flaws existed in our theories. It just was not logical, but this revelation has ticked all the boxes. It just has to be true,’ Lisa was excited now, and Nick could see her fine mind racing. Her eyes darted left and right as she made lightning connections. Then she finally turned towards him and smiled at him. His heart lurched at the raw beauty before him. She was magnificent and he did not even notice her tits. She had suddenly transformed and was somehow electric. Nick started to feel something warm deep in his chest that he’d never felt before. He thought it must be love.

  ‘I need a drink,’ Lisa said.

  ‘What another coffee?’ Nick asked surprised as she had only drunk half of the first one.

  ‘No, I need a real fucking drink. A Jack Daniels on the rocks, you had better get me a double,’ Nick never heard this angel swear before. Sure she was provocative and suggestive but never foul-mouthed and he did not know she was a whisky drinker. Like an automaton, he arose going over the bar.

  ‘Double Jack on the rocks and maybe you should make me one too,’ he told the longhaired barman who would not look out of place at the front of a rock band. Nick paid for the drinks, wandering back over to Lisa. She was sliding through pages on her MacBook Air. Nick noted it was the smaller version of his own only about eleven inches long and perfect for a ladies purse. She looked up at him, took the whisky and said.

  ‘Thanks, Nick you are the expert in this area I am going to discuss now. But what we learned today needs to get placed into the correct context and time frame. I was a keen student of yours for some time and my research has brought up many anomalies,’ she took a long draw on the whisky and continued.

  ‘My Lord that tastes damn fine. When you need a drink, nothing beats a big hit of old Jack. The big issues I have with human history as we know it are all the damn gaps in the fossil records throughout the timeline.

  In the study books, the claim that "Lucy" the first ape to walk upright appeared almost four million years ago then vanished. They claim Homo Erectus our immediate ancestors appeared 400,000 years ago. Then guess what? They all vanished too. Our species Homo Sapiens appeared 100,000 years ago. At the same time as the Neanderthals. But for some reason or other, the Neandertha
ls then vanished about 42,000 years ago.

  Now I understand what they actually mean since Kempston’s revelations it has become crystal clear. Did it not seem odd when he said that this dark energy gets harvested then enhanced? Harvested then enhanced by what I ask you?’ Nick opened his mouth to comment, but Lisa raised her hand in front of his face.

  ‘Please allow me to continue I welcome your help but hear this first,’ she said in a firm tone.

  ‘He also told us they get erased then replaced. Erased then replaced by who or what? The study books all use the same terminology going way back. For instance, Homo Ergaster became extinct about one and a half million years ago. Following them, after a time Homo Heidelbergensis arrived, they were great big six feet tall muscular hominids.

  They became extinct 400,000 years ago to be almost immediately replaced by Homo Erectus that I mentioned earlier,’ Lisa took a good slug of her whisky as Nick just stared at her.

  ‘There is definitely a real pattern here Nick. But one thing clear and very worrying to me is the massive extinction events occurred only five times. Most of the erasures and replacing that you and I know of do not coincide with the events that killed off all our predecessors. None of these previous Hominids exists at all anywhere today. Because they were all wiped out and replaced by newer versions,’ Lisa turned to Nick and looked him right in the eye.

  ‘If the volcanoes did not kill them all off, then what did kill them?’ Nick loved Lisa’s account of the different variants of hominids meeting their demise. She was showing him all of the timelines visually now as she had surfed the web and found what she was looking for. Now they were on a Smithsonian Institute web page. The great big gaps separating the variants of our ancestors were clear. No missing links to the different groups had ever been found because none had ever existed. Nick did not realise just how good a student Lisa was as he was continually being distracted by her obvious femininity. She was animated and put forward an excellent case. He could not argue with her chronology as he had taught it to her. Nick agreed the apparent evidence was overwhelming.

  ‘I agree with you honey, the facts are all right there. I often wondered why a species as different from our own as the Neanderthals were to us appeared at the same time as we did. We are tall and long limbed and pretty frail. They were just the opposite, with big short frames with large collar bones and shoulders and more suited to the very intense cold of the last Ice Age. They too disappeared without a trace about 42,000 years ago,’ Nick paused and took a deep drink of his whisky. Before he could continue Lisa interrupted.

  ‘I recall that the arrival of the so-called Cro-Magnon’s coincided with the disappearance of the last Neanderthals around 42,000 years ago. These guys were the ones that painted caves and made their own jewellery. They could sew and make their own clothes. We also think they perfected language for the first time,’ Lisa seemed delighted with herself and her abilities to place the puzzle pieces. It was, without any doubt, the most enlightening experience Nick West had ever enjoyed.

  He too was getting quite animated as they seemed to be rewriting the history books. He was feeling the slight buzz of the whisky kicking in and it was enhancing his high. He noticed both of their glasses were empty and Lisa reading his mind smiled and said.

  ‘What the hell let’s get another it’s going to be a long flight. But you still owe me dinner!’

  45

  When they boarded the Boing 737-800, Nick let Lisa have the window seat, he was happy just to be sitting alongside her. A middle aged overweight woman took the aisle seat next to him, smiling at him as the cabin crew prepared for take-off. Nick turned to Lisa, whispering in her ear.

  ‘You know this is not exactly what I had planned for us both,’ she giggled, giving him a light kiss on his cheek. Nick went on.

  ‘I can’t stop thinking about all this crazy shit. I have just recalled a book I read, where the author made an excellent case for a much more recent but less known mass extinction that happened right here in North America. The author believed in the last Ice Age 12,500 years ago a comet hit Canada in the region of the great Lakes, creating them all. This massive impact punched right through five miles of the glacial ice sheet. The Ice sheet covered just about everywhere north of Texas. The explosion threw fireballs into the sky that rained down across the USA for days on end and the meltwater caused the great flood that many old cultures all around the world mention in their scriptures. This catastrophic event also killed off all the Woolly Mammoth’s, Sabre-toothed Tigers and the North American Mastodon. Millions of them all across the Northern hemisphere just disappeared overnight,’ Nicked waited for her reaction.

  ‘That disappeared word is right there again,’ she quipped.

  ‘I just can’t wait to meet Bob. I also have another theory I am working on…’ and with that, she fell asleep on his shoulder. Nick knew it was the whisky, but it still felt mighty fine. Within a minute he was asleep too.

  Several hundred miles to the north Bob Staples was now also in the air on a converging course to Newark Airport. Bob did not drink and he was gazing out of the window and looking in the general direction of where he guessed Yellowstone National Park lay. Bob could only try to imagine the invisible mass of magma rising to fill the chamber under the entire park. Soon all hell would break loose. Bob could not help the selfish thought that somehow he was going to be better off out of the United States.

  Only the very wealthy or the privileged few with access to secret bunkers would survive the forthcoming events. But even then they could not survive the next thousand years of the ice age that the volcanic winter would surely bring. Bob now believed it was true the end of days revealed in the book of revelations was here. Armageddon was how others refer to it.

  Bob desired to meet with the one man who forecasted it with his incredible gift of insight. Bob had a great many fundamental questions to put to him before he met his end. He smiled then as he realised how pointless this was. Unknown to Bob right at that moment, Samosir Island in Sumatra was alive again with intense volcanic activity. Hot springs everywhere were now overactive. Large areas of the ground near the large tourist resort of Tuktuk had started steaming. The massive dome forming on the far side of the island within an island continued to swell by the hour. The whole area was now suffering from increasing earthquake swarms.

  The media were having a feeding frenzy. Reports said Samosir Island rose over 1,350 feet since the time of the last major eruption as the dormant caldera swelled.

  TV pictures showed old images of tourists on sun beds sunning themselves. These pictures were set in beautiful surroundings amid lush greenery and quaint holiday homes with oriental pointed roofs. How this had all changed. The media frenzy continued to build many thousands of miles away in the United Kingdom too. The latest editions of the major newspapers proclaimed;

  “THE DEVIL IS COMING TO HARVEST OUR SOULS,” cried the Daily Mirror. The Sun had a very similar theme, “THE END IS NIGH,” The Telegraph continued with the theme, “THIS IS THE END OF LIFE AS WE KNOW IT,” bold, brazen headlines were breaking news on all television channels. The Guardian simply announced, “WE WILL OVERCOME,”

  Chief Inspector Jack Ford looked at the broadcast on Sky News. His mouth hung open as the attractive anchorwoman made an announcement.

  ‘A Sky News journalist who was undertaking a Google search for the murderer David Kempston and has just found a YouTube video of a police interrogation recording called “Kempston Insight”. In this video which we will show you now, Dr. David Kempston makes several profound statements that some viewers will find shocking. We would not usually release such a video as it may be regarded as police evidence. But as it is already in the public domain and has now gone viral, we are releasing it,’ Ford was agog as the interrogation he had conducted in private was broadcast far and wide. He was now staring across the room right at Robert’s, who had turned a bright shade of crimson as his face flushed. In that exact moment, Ford sensed betrayal and his face d
arkened, his bright blue eyes turning black under a dark scowl and yelling.

  ‘You fucking filthy ginger toe-rag. I know you have done this, just look at this fucking mess you have caused. How you dare to release confidential police videos out to the media I don’t know. You could fuck up our case when this goes to court,’ Ford was so angry and exasperated he started to shake. If looks could kill Roberts would already be dead. Wilson was also scowling at him with a menacing look in his deep green eyes. Paul felt the colour drain from his face and turned on his metal heels then ran from the room. Ford barked at Wilson.

  ‘Well don’t just stand there you pussy; go and fucking get him!’ Wilson looked towards the door and saw a huge crowd of media people pressing towards it. They rushed forward with cameras and microphones in their hands and turning back to his boss Wilson said.

  ‘I think we may have more important things to worry about right now,’ as the cameras starting flashing.

  46

  The odd-looking trio sat in the departure lounge at Newark, New Jersey airport awaiting departure to London Heathrow. Having met earlier exchanging hugs and pleasantries, they were now eager to be on their way. The marvels of modern technology and social media kept them up to speed with events in real time and they saw the news headlines about the coming apocalypse. Mass hysteria now gripped the whole world. Nick was focusing on his area of human ancestors and kept adding detail. Bob was preoccupied with a new fissure just erupting in Yellowstone.

  The latest eruption at the massive Yellowstone volcano was now throwing over fourteen hundred tonnes of ash an hour up into the atmosphere. Lisa had been quiet for a time when she threw a curved ball onto the group.

  ‘You know in a weird kind of way religion has been right all along,’ she hesitated until she had their full attention before saying.