by Max Hardy
She was looking at Rebecca: when she said ‘your Son’, she was looking at Rebecca. Eve can see the questions in our eyes, the confusion in our minds.
‘I didn’t get that wrong Rebecca, Jacob is your son too.’
Chapter 41
The small motor boat pulled out from the shoreline and headed off into the Firth of Forth, towards the looming frame of the Rail Bridge. A full moon shimmered in a cloudless sky, its reflection floating on the gently lapping waves as they smacked into the wooden panels of the boat, rocking it gently. Pastor Bentley sat at the back of the boat, naked and unconscious, his body wrapped in barbed wire. Twenty six Tupperware containers with the severed hands inside them sat in the bottom of the boat along with a manila folder containing pictures of the women Pastor Bentley had killed. Adam was at the helm, directing the boat toward one of the supporting bases of the rail bridge out in the middle of the Firth. Eve sat behind him in her Pierrot outfit. One of her eyes was covered in white makeup.
The boat butted up against a small jetty floating on the granite base of the bridge and Adam tied the mooring rope to it. He jumped onto the jetty and grabbed Pastor Bentley’s shoulders, heaving his heavy body over the side of the boat. He dragged him a short distance to the base of the main steel span of the bridge. A lift used for painting the bridge was sitting parked on the base, its safety doors open. Fastened to the metal cage of the lift was a wooden crucifix. Adam dragged Pastor Bentley up to it and hauled his body against the down beam. He grabbed a length of barbed wire that was sitting in the cage and wrapped it around Bentley’s midriff, fastening him to the crucifix. He then secured his arms to the cross beams.
Adam picked up a hammer and some nails. He positioned one of the nails in Bentley’s right palm and smacked it through the flesh into the wood, unflinching. Bentley awoke and screamed, the noise lost in the open, empty expanse of water. Adam repeated the action on the other hand, Bentley screaming again. ‘Time to face the music old man.’ he said, Pastor Bentley scanning his surrounding in confusion.
Eve arrived beside him, carrying some of the Tupperware containers and the Manila folder and dropped them into the bottom of the lift next to a megaphone. Both of them returned to the boat and retrieved the remaining containers and brought them back to the lift.
Eve climbed into the lift and closed the safety door, stepping to the far side of Bentley, where the controls were situated. Adam followed her on the outside.
‘Look after them. They have a lot to learn and not all of it is going to be pleasant. But they did well today. Our family is stronger now they know we exist. It will be stronger still when they know everything.’ she said to Adam, leaning over and kissing him full on the lips, letting her tongue dance inside his willing mouth. She pressed the ‘up’ button, tongues still entwined as the lift started to rise, their lips touching until the last possible moment.
Across the Firth the noise of blaring sirens broke the quiet tranquillity of the lapping waves, the flashing blue lights of police speedboats visible on the horizon.
‘You better get going Adam, the police and press are on their way.’ she said, smiling sadly down towards him. Adam blew one last kiss and then jumped for the boat, quickly unfastening the mooring rope as he landed on board, then sped off out into the mouth of the river, away from the oncoming lights.
The lift slowly ascended the bridge, passing the main railway bearing, on which more flashing blue lights were visible in the distance, approaching quickly down the rail track. Blaring sirens coursed around the frame of the bridge, echoing off the steelwork as the police boats arrived at its base and the police vehicles on the track. Up above, the distinctive sound of helicopters filled the glowing night sky, heading in from Edinburgh Airport a few miles away.
The lift was near the top of the main beam now, almost one hundred feet in the air. Eve looked down at the larger flotilla of vessels arriving and at the TV cameras mounted on their surfaces, pointing at the lift. Helicopters started circling around and above, less than twenty metres away, the cameramen visible as they captured the vista.
Behind her, the full moon hung low over the Firth, the bridge bathed in its glorious glow. With her one remaining hand, she picked up a megaphone from the bottom of the lift and raised it to her mouth, speaking.
‘Fear and Faith. Faith and Fear.’ she repeated, then recited in full the poem that the other Angels had said in part. ‘In whose faith is your fear founded, which gods atonement do you seek, whose penance keeps your soul grounded, when spirits avarice is preached. What mortal flesh would you divest, to appease your saviours wrath, who’s pious wrote would you impress, while seeking raptures righteous path. Which numen’s dogma is decreed, to despoil innocence last breath, forced to embrace your litany, on the sanctity of life's death. Interring loved ones in the ground, in whose faith can your fear be found.’
Eve put the megaphone down and took a handkerchief out of a pocket in the Pierrot costume. She wiped the last of the face makeup away from her eye, picking up the microphone once again.
‘We all wear masks. We all hide behind out fear and insecurities. Mine is now removed and you see me as I really am. I am Eve. I am the mother of the ‘Fallen Angels’. Tonight I bring you the last in a line of religious leaders who use faith as fear. This man has killed twenty six women. He has tortured them, he has mutilated them, cutting off body parts which he then subsequently ate.’ Eve announced, her voice filling with fervour.
‘He lured these vulnerable women with the opportunity of freedom, with the opportunity of a future without abusive partners. Then he imprisoned them and made their remaining life a living hell. And why? Why did this man, Pastor Bentley inflict such atrocities on these women? He did it because they were women. He did it because in his world, in his religion, like every other religion, women are considered substandard. He expected these women to be subservient, to do everything their men told them to do. He had no sympathy at all that their partners beat them, in fact, he believed their partners were weak for not taking it further. He definitely took it further. He took it to the extreme.’
Eve paused, looking out over the Firth, watching as more vessels approached the bridge with more cameras pointing towards her. Spotlights started dancing over the structure of the bridge, illuminating Special Forces Officers starting to scale the steelwork towards the lift. She took the whole scene in, her whole demeanour serene.
‘We will no longer stand in the shadows of his god and let these atrocities prevail. We will no longer let the prejudices of the sexes, of women, be a weapon for fear. We will no longer allow innocent Angels to bleed in the ignominy of his seed. Even Fallen Angels have wings.’
Eve raised her arms, pulling the release cords tied around her wrists. The Velcro on the back of her Pierrot suit ripped apart and two glorious white wings unfurled along the length of her arms, shimmering in the orb of the moon behind her. She moved her arms and the wings flapped in the gentle breeze. She opened the safety door at her end of the lift and stepped up to the edge, looking down to the granite base of bridge one hundred feet below. Eve raised the megaphone to her lips one last time.
‘We are the Fallen Angels.’ she finished, throwing the megaphone away.
Eve jumped, thrusting her arms out as she did, the wings ruffling furiously in the turbulent air as she descended. Steel flew past, her Pierrot outfit buffeting in the wind. She forced her eyes to stay open, tears streaming out of them as the cold air smacked onto the balls. She looked down at the onrushing granite base, a contented smile sailing across her face as first a wing, then a torso followed by her legs and lastly her head smacked into the uncompromising stone, killing her instantly.
Her body twitched once, then sagged lifelessly on the edge of the base, her open emerald eyes catching a mirage of the moon one last time in the slowly dilating irises. After a second a trail of blood snaked from under her crushed skull and trickled down the granite, meandering slowly through the grooves in the old stone, seeping into the wa
ter, where it pooled on the surface. It flowed further, catching the edge of the rippling white reflection of the full moon, turning it blood red: Her Moons Denouement.
To Be Continued……
The thrilling conclusion to the trilogy,
‘The Murder Path’,
will be published on 28th August 2015.
Read the riveting first chapter on the next few pages.
Chapter 1
The hinges of the heavy, solid oak door squealed as it was pushed forcefully open, the grating din reverberating around the white tiled walls and floor of an empty corridor that it opened into. The din was augmented by a piercing scream that quickly rose in intensity above the squealing hinges, amplified tenfold by the acoustics of the corridor. The scream emanated from a single, naked, blood spattered woman who agitatedly bounced off the door she was pushing open as it hit the wall, and stuttered in a half run, half hop down the pristine white corridor, leaving a trail of bloody footprints in her wake.
Her head was shaking frantically as she screamed, her arms flailing in arcs, her fists clenched white tight and pummelling her own temples over and over again. She was slim, lithe and toned, with a sea of fiery auburn hair billowing behind her as she ran. Blood was smeared over her wide, panicked emerald eyes and agape lips. Blood was spattered across her pert breasts and tight stomach. Blood had been massaged into the tattoo of a snake, from the head of it near her belly button, to the body of it coming out of her vulva. She smacked into another oak door at the far end of the corridor and fell to the floor in a quivering heap, pulling her legs tight into her torso foetally. She continued to bang the palms of her shaking, bloody hands off her temples as she stared in terror back down the corridor. The screams abated, to be replaced by a low, guttural inaudible mumbling.
‘Was it the susurrations of the lungs?’
The voice, deep and gravelly, yet calm and assured came from the room behind the door she had thrust open. It was followed by the steady measured footfalls of black brogues that carried the man into the corridor. He was over six foot tall with a broad, muscly frame, dressed in a tailored three piece silver Armani suit, sporting a scarlet pencil tie. His hair was totally white and greased back over his head in a quiff, framing a wrinkleless, angular handsome face, with piercing green eyes that stared humorously down the corridor toward the woman.
In his right hand was a stainless steel scalpel, a line of blood on its edge that was forming a drop at the tip. He lifted his hand and placed the tip of the scalpel against the tiled wall as he walked, tracing a bloodline as another searing squeal emanated from the contact.
‘Or was it the palpitations of the heart?’
The squealing continued as he dragged the scalpel along the wall, as he assuredly walked up to the quivering woman who was still looking frantically down the corridor through him, until he knelt down in front of her and removed the scalpel from the wall and rested it on her mumbling lips.
‘I think it was the eyes.’ he started, moving the tip of the scalpel up her cheek, allowing it to break the skin as he raised it to her eyelid, letting it scythe a few lashes before resting the blunt side of the blade on her eyeball. She didn’t flinch at the contact, simply continued to quiver and mumble, continued to bang her palms off her temples and continued to stare straight through him to the open door at the far end of the corridor.
‘What are the voices telling you Eve? Are they telling you that it is wrong? Are they telling you it is evil? Or are they telling you to succumb to the temptation?’
Her mumbles grew audible at the questions. ‘Thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt not kill.’ she repeated over and over again.
He smiled as he heard the words, nodding gently as he removed the scalpel from her eyeball and raised his hands to take hold of hers, stopping them from battering her temples, sliding the scalpel into her left palm deftly as he did. He held her wrists firm and leant in closer, bringing his eyes to within a millimetre of hers.
‘That is how you think as a human. Think Eve. You aren’t a human. You are a God. There is no fear, there is no good, there is no evil, there is no ‘Thou shalt not’. There is only what you want to do. It was the eyes, wasn’t it?’ he finished as he stood up, raising Eve to her feet as well.
She obliged and stood without resistance, her eyes refocusing from down the corridor to look into his calm and gentle gaze. She breathed out heavily, the quivering of her lips lessening, the shivering of her naked body abating as a semblance of control overtook her demeanour.
‘It was the eyes.’ Eve answered in a broken whisper. ‘He was just so ecstatic at the prospect of the pain. It freaked me, it just freaked me out.’
‘That’s alright. It’s your first time. It is only natural at this stage that your mind will go back to the morality that has been instilled into it. That’s why we practice. That’s why we learn in a controlled manner. So you can learn to control. Are you ready to go back in?’
She took a deep breath and looked from his questioning eyes, to his hands gently securing her wrists, to the bloody scalpel clenched firmly in her palm. Her body straightened on the rise of the inhale, the last vestiges of nervousness and panic shed as she stood tall and majestic, a palpable aura of authority oozing from every pore of her being.
‘I am ready.’ she answered firmly, rolling her wrists to free them from his grasp. She smiled, seductively slinked past him and headed off down the corridor back towards the open room, her naked hips sashaying with attitude as she walked, her feet still leaving bloody prints.
‘Excellent. Now, what have you learned today about the physical anatomy?’ the man asked, admiring her lascivious figure as he fell in behind her, dodging her footprints.
‘How far you can break it, and still keep someone alive.’
‘And how far can you break it?’
‘As long as you keep five things intact, everything else can be broken.’
‘Well done. And what have you learned about the mental condition?’
Eve laughed as she approached the open oak doorway and then answered. ‘I have learned that the human mind can handle any kind of pain you throw at it. I have learned that the more you throw at it, the more it wants. I have learned that I am not quite a God. I am more than a human, but not quite a God.’
‘Not quite, but nearly. You now need to choose a trophy, and then you will become a God.’ the man answered as he followed her into the room and stood beside her where she had stopped to admire her creation.
The room stank of faeces, urine and the overpowering copper taste of blood that imbued every particle of the cloying air. Once crisp, freshly painted white walls were now spattered with dozens of blood trails which glistened in the shafts of sunlight that flowed through the slightly open blinds in the large bay window opposite where they stood. In the centre on the room, the solid oak floorboards were covered in a spreading pool of congealing blood.
From the ceiling above the congealing pool of blood hung a meat hook on a thick metal chain. Impaled on the meat hook, through his anus, with the tip of the hook poking out of the end of his penis, hung the ravages of a man. Steel manacles clasped his feet to the ceiling either side of the meat hook. His whole body was unnaturally contorted and stretched, to a point that his hands where palm down and nailed to the floor. His legs had been broken at the knees, with the skin serrated to allow them to stretch double their natural length. The same had been done to the arms. Loose flaps of skin exposed the glistening sinew and muscle below the surface which had been slashed and elongated. Bits of broken bone poked out at random angles all the way along the butchered limbs. A square of skin from just above the belly button to just below the larynx had been cut away from his chest and lay discarded to one side on the floor. His ribcage was fully exposed and from behind it could be seen the murmuring of his shallow breathing lungs, behind which beat his purple heart. Trails of blood trickled down his upturned face to plop ungraciously onto the floor below his head. He wore an upside
down smile, his eyes glazed and dilated, but alive enough to watch Eve as she observed him.
‘I want you to pierce my eyes with that scalpel. I want to feel them burn in my skull. I want to squeal as the pain sears through my brain. Then I want you to thrust it into my heart so I can experience the end of life as it ebbs from my broken body.’ the upturned man slurred through bloody lips.
‘What if it wasn’t a scalpel? What if it was something blunt and coarse? What if I gouged them out instead?’
His eyes brightened briefly, a lewd tongue running over his dry lips at the same instant. ‘Oh that sounds just divine. What do you have in mind?’
Eve approached his body and stood unashamedly naked directly in front of him, his line of sight straight toward her shaven, pulsing vulva. She tentatively stretched out a hand and ran a finger over the first rib at the top of the left side of his ribcage, behind which his heart beat. She let the finger slide through and touch the beating organ, a shudder visible over her body.
‘Is it exciting you? Is it making you wet?’ the upturned man slurred.
Eve didn’t answer and let her fingers count up the ribs, letting them slide through and touch the warm lungs below. She counted up to seven and her hand stopped moving.
‘I will take back what created me, and use it to end you.’ she said, letting her fingers inveigle their way around the wet, glistening rib. She yanked, breaking the rib away from its cage. The upturned man howled, his whole body convulsing involuntarily under the rage of the pain, the chains that contained him clanging, before the howl turned to anticipatory groans.
‘My eyes, take my eyes!’ he moaned, his body still shaking in pain.
Even crouched down and lowered the broken end of the rib, with its shards and splinters of bone, toward his left eye, letting it rest on the shining iris. The upturned man blinked furiously while at the same time trying to force his face into the rib.