by Lee McGeorge
At six in the evening Joseph Frady switched the lights from daylight to moonlight. Part of the breeding cycle for the fish. They were beautiful in the dark. Thousands of inch long fish suddenly glowed against a royal blue light. Row after row. Thousands and thousands of swimming glow-sticks.
He said goodnight to the students and researchers in his lacklustre way. He carefully attached the yoke and knives that were stashed in his bag and concealed them with his coat and ambled out towards the dark and rain of Euston. He would walk to King’s Cross, in the rain, cooling down. It would take thirty minutes if he controlled himself and went slowly.
Nisha was in the basement.
It was playtime.
----- X -----
Latis rode the train back to London feeling tired. His head was leaning against the window and he had become mesmerised by the drops of rain on the glass being blown into vertical streaks towards his eyes. Today had been productive but DeMarquis gave a picture of McGovern that didn’t sit comfortably. The McGovern that DeMarquis was describing was not the same person who chopped up Nealla and Raul. Corneliu’s instinct was cold on the idea of McGovern as the killer.
The real gold of the trip to Oxford was DeMarquis had introduced him to Ellen King, a student on the same undergraduate course as Paul who had stayed on for a Master’s. Ellen and Paul weren’t particularly friends, but they knew each other and she was very eager to help. What Ellen had of value was a list of names and telephone numbers, many matching the names from Paul’s online social networks. Paul and Ellen seemed to move within the same network of friends and she was more than happy to help.
His phone rang.
The name on the screen. Noica. He answered and listened.
“Cornel?” Noica asked.
“Hello, Lucian.” Latis could feel his voice sounding sleepy.
“Are you not at the hotel? I thought we arranged a conference at six o’clock your time?”
He didn’t remember making the arrangement. “I’m sorry Lucian. I was out of London today. I would have been back sooner except I met a young lady who has many of the same friends as McGovern and she gave me all of their phone numbers.”
“Is that useful to you?”
“Well, if I’m going to talk to his friends... yes, it is... very useful.”
“Oh, good. Is there anything to report from today?”
“Well... I only spoke with two people, his former personal tutor and the girl who knew him. If I’m honest Lucian, I can’t for the life of me connect Paul McGovern the murderer with the Paul McGovern I learned about today. Are you certain there can’t be a mistake?”
“Not at all. In fact, it’s what I expected.”
“OK, listen, the Paul McGovern I’m learning about here is a very quiet, very shy, studious, academic. His tutor is what I would call ‘bookish’, yet he called McGovern and I quote, ‘as bookish a young man as you’ll ever find’. I even broached the subject that McGovern was implicated in a crime which made this old professor laugh in my face.”
“It is what I expected, Cornel.” Noica reiterated.
“I hear you... But my policeman’s-instinct is demanding I find out more and make no assumptions.”
“Policeman’s-instinct... I like that. Very good,” Noica said with a smile to his voice. “But Cornel, in seriousness, I’ve seen men like Paul McGovern. It’s the same story over and over again. Men who are harmless, men who would never do anything bad, men who would die defending their families. Then all of a sudden, they change and become violent.”
“What causes somebody to do that, Lucian?” Then as an afterthought, “My old chief said that you were a vampire hunter. Is that how you view McGovern? Because I don’t believe in vampires.”
“Vampire is not the word I chose to use. Every case is different but there are common threads. I wish I knew what caused it, Cornel. We’ve been studying it since the 1950’s but the progress has been... disappointing.”
Latis sat up straight and shook his shoulders to wake up. “Did you say you’ve been studying this since the fifties?”
“Not me personally, but I am the lead researcher on the phenomena now.”
Latis felt a cold chill and found himself very much awake. This wasn’t some random act of violence. The old wives tales of men becoming vampires had in the blink of an eye stopped being an old wives tale. Noica was a researcher in this thing. Decades of research. Decades.
“Noica...” Latis suddenly felt the cat get his tongue. He shaped the words carefully before they came out. “Is Paul McGovern... is he.. is he what the old superstition is about vampires?”
“I thought you understood this, Cornel?”
“I think I misunderstood the gravity of it. I thought we were looking for a man, a criminal; a violent criminal but still nothing more than a man.”
“We are. He is a man, Cornel. There is nothing supernatural about him. But he is suffering from a type of sickness that will change him physically and psychologically.”
“Change him into what?”
“We only understand fragments, Cornel. It’s hard to research because it doesn’t happen naturally very often. When it does, the men suffering from it don’t usually live long enough to study. What makes it even harder to study are those suffering from it have such widely different symptoms. The behaviour is always the same, they become violent and delusional. Physically they undergo a type of acceleration of the nervous system. The neurons of their brain fire faster, their nerves become like superconductors. This is all down to neurochemistry. The upshot of it all is they think and react faster than normal. If you see a man with this in the early stages it is quite remarkable. You would think you’re seeing a man taking drugs to speed up his reflexes. They seem to move and anticipate your movements with an almost superhuman ability; but that is always the beginning of the end, eventually this nervous acceleration makes them jittery and unable to stop moving, eventually they’re unable to control their own muscles correctly until it becomes so bad that they can’t even stand up. They see out their days shaking and trembling in a hospital bed.”
“And you’ve seen this?”
“Cornel... what do you think we do at the hospital?”
Latis fell silent. The hospital? He had been so full of his own thoughts of rejection and worries when they met he hadn’t appreciated what the mysterious institute was or did.
“I think I need to know more about this if I’m... Are you allowed to tell me, or is this like a... like a need to know... classified...”
“You work for me, Cornel. You’re a member of staff. We do have a confidentiality agreement that we make staff sign, but... yes, you’re right. I didn’t appreciate that you were in the dark on this. I’ll email some of the primer materials we give to new nurses when they start with us. That should help you.”
“Lucian... is this why you want to know about McGovern’s background?”
“It’s exactly the reason. We need to try and piece together what his psychology was like before he started changing. We need to have a before-and-after appreciation of him.”
“And McGovern is like the others you’ve seen?”
“Not exactly. McGovern raped his girlfriend and killed two men, that bit we understand. It’s what he did next that breaks the model. Him buying a plane ticket and changing countries is very rare. Most men who change like this can’t even string a coherent sentence together let alone make a plan to vanish internationally. He’s unique.”
----- X -----
As he placed the key in the padlock he noticed his hand trembling slightly. Paul withdrew for a second and made a mental plan on what he would do. There would be no sex. Nisha accused him of rape and this was to be her punishment for that, but he couldn’t give her the moral high ground by becoming the image she had painted of him.
He took off his coat and left it on the kitchen counter beside Nisha’s clothes. He took hold of the knife handles, expecting to leave them here as a safety precaution. He couldn’t
lose his temper with her, he had to remain in control. He realised that leaving the knives only a few seconds walk from the basement wouldn’t make a difference, he shouldn’t have brought them here. He decided to continue wearing them.
He unlocked the first padlock and walked down the stairs. He unlocked the second padlock and pushed the door slightly, watching for the discrete magnet to pull away from the reed switch. It fell and dropped on its thread.
Paul waited...
He could sense her inside. He could almost see her through the door as though he could taste the electricity of her nervous system, her nerves and muscular tension appearing as imagined faint yellow lines of energy before his eyes. Nisha was alive in there and she was terrified.
Beep-beep, beep-beep... the mobile phone, the text message. The detection system worked.
Inside the room he felt Nisha bracing herself, her muscles contracting as she waited for the door to open.
Helpless girl.
He opened the door and discovered her in the exact position he had imagined, curled up in the furthest corner, sitting on the mattress, wrapped in the blanket and staring ahead with terrified eyes.
Paul stepped into the cellar saying nothing. The peach night-light cast everything in dark shadows with dim orange highlights. He closed the door behind him.
“Hello, Nisha,” he said. His voice growled low, gravelled and demonic. Her eyes widened but she didn’t say anything until he took hold of the chain that went through the ceiling eyebolt and started taking the slack. It made a satisfying clinking noise as the links around her waist and neck pulled. The slack was gathered from the chain around her neck, it pulled her out of the corner making her scream.
She fought against it, holding low on her haunches, pulling back, shouting and gasping words. “Please don’t hurt me. Please don’t hurt me.” Then the words became an unintelligible wail as the chain hoisted her from her haunches onto her feet. The sound she made was shocking and distressing, like a mewling cat, laced with desperation and horror. She gripped the blanket to her chest, trying to cover her breasts and body.
Paul locked the chain once the noose had pulled her to standing. Her soles were flat on the floor but she had no slack to walk or even step outside a twelve inch sweet spot below the ceiling eye-bolt. Paul didn’t make eye contact. He grabbed the blanket and yanked it away from her. She yelped as the fabric flew to the side and clasped one hand over her pubis and her forearm across her breasts to cover her nudity. As far as the chain allowed she pushed her bottom out to withdraw. “Please... please don’t hurt me.” Her voice gasped and her body trembled in huge spasms. “Please, let me go... I won’t tell anyone... I... I... please.” The last ‘please’ became a wail that dragged out as tears streamed from her eyes. Her crying went silent in tone but voluminous in her actions. Then came the noise. “PLEASEEEEEEEEE!”
“You brought this on yourself, Nisha.”
With his words, her body went rigid and she stared at him, looking at his face scrutinising.
“I didn’t do anything,” she mumbled. “Please. I didn’t do anything... I didn’t...”
“DON’T YOU FUCKING SAY THAT!” The sound came as a blast of energy that ended in a frozen image. Nisha was pulling backwards against the chain. Paul had his arm outstretched pointing at her. “Don’t you ever say that... You know what you did to me.”
“I’ve never seen you before,” she cried.
Paul stepped back for a moment and turned his back. Control... Keep control... He bit his lip for a second. It was the beard. He’d changed, his body was bulky, his voice was low and gravelly, his hair was unkempt. He turned back to her feeling an urge to gut her here and now, to fillet her slowly, cutting the bones from her body as she begged for mercy.
“You know me...” Paul whispered. “I am Paul McGovern.”
“Who?”
FUCK YOU BITCH!
Without knowing from where the vampire was in control of his body. He punched so hard into her ribs he felt them crack and almost saw the pain impulse rushing along her nerves. The second blow to her flank hit as hard as the first and knocked her feet from under her. Another punch, another body blow. Another. Another... How. Fucking. Dare. You. Bitch!
Take control... Regain control...
He stepped back as Nisha spun from the chain around her neck. Her knees were bent and her feet couldn’t find the floor. The chain pinched into the skin around her neck, her face turned blue as she gagged. She made little sound other than painful gasps.
“You fucking cunt!” Paul said again as his foot slammed into her stomach, again knocking her off her feet. The hanging was what hurt her, he could see it. He rushed in and grabbed her ankles, pulling her towards him, jerking her legs to make the chain around her neck bite into the skin.
You fucking whore bitch, you fucking... control... control...
He dropped her ankles and walked through the small corridor to the toilet at the far end. He stared into the bowl. It was almost entirely black here, the night-light not reaching far enough to illuminate this very dark corner.
From behind he heard Nisha cry out as she found her feet. Then she began really screaming. “HEEEEEELP... HEEEEEEEEEELP. PLEASE HELP ME!” Her voice was shrill and scratchy.
Paul returned when he regained some of his prior calm. Nisha went quiet. Control. Make this an exercise in control.
“I’m sorry, please... I’m so sorry.”
“Do you know who I am?”
Nisha shook her head a tiny way. She had her hands held up, palms out. She looked wonderful like this. Naked, her dusky skin so inviting. Fine breasts, dark nipples, soft hair. Every bit the Bollywood princess he remembered, but now with the helplessness and begging terror he had fantasised. She was going nowhere. Make her an experiment. Control. Control the vampire.
“My name is Paul McGovern... do you remember me?”
“I remember someone called Paul McGovern.” It was a whisper. Then she shook her head as though confused.
“I have changed, Nisha,” he growled. Paul reached up and held the handles of the knives fixed to his chest. Control... keep control... He put his hands back down. “Tell me, what do you remember of Paul McGovern?”
“He is nice... sweet... a nice man.”
“NO! NO, THAT’S NOT WHAT YOU REMEMBER!”
Nisha cried out in fear of attack, she backed away pulling the chain tight, her hands were up in defence again. “Please I’m sorry... I’m sorry. I don’t know what to say.”
“SAY THE TRUTH!”
“It is the truth, I remember Paul McGovern, he is a nice man.”
“I am Paul McGovern.”
“No!” Nisha exclaimed. “You’re nothing like he is!”
Control...
Paul took a step backwards and considered his next words carefully. He was pleased he managed that. The beast wanted to attack, yet somehow he fought it back and managed not to let it get the better of him.
“I wanted to love you, Nisha. Did you know that?”
Nisha shook her head as far as the chain allowed.
“For months I watched you and I was too afraid to speak to you. Then I met you at Donovan’s Halloween Party. Do you remember that? You were dressed up as one of the twins from The Shining.”
“Yes, I remember that...”
“Go on,” Paul demanded.
“I... I was one twin. My friend Susan was the other. It was her idea... She... she found the dresses. We splashed them with nail polish to make the blood.”
“You met up with me at that party.”
Nisha’s eyes focussed on his and she stared, scrutinising him. “Paul... is it... are you really Paul?”
“You took me to a room upstairs to have sex.”
“I was drunk...”
“Then you accused me of rape. YOU FUCKING ACCUSED ME! YOU THREATENED ME... YOU CALLED ME A RAPIST SCUM!”
“Oh God, I’m sorry... Paul... I... I didn’t mean...”
Control...
&nbs
p; Fuck control...
Paul withdrew the two knives. Nisha screamed as she saw the blades coming out. Tears streamed from her face, her palms out forward for defence. Paul swung one and it caught across her fingers. Blood poured. She grabbed her hand to a fist and pushed the other hand forward for defence, tiptoeing away, getting as far back as the noose of chain allowed. Paul swiped upwards and caught across her palm.
She cried.
Control...
Both her hands were held as fists against her chest. Blood dripped through her fingers. Her face turned up to the ceiling and her eyes closed, unable to look anymore, unable to reason.
Control...
Paul waited for a minute as she struggled against the panic. He kept hold of the knives but he didn’t move. She was so gorgeous, so desirable. Blood ran down in streaks under the chain around her waist, over her stomach and between her legs. She shook fiercely and uncontrollably, eyes tightly closed, face to the ceiling. She was waiting for the attack to come. It wasn’t. He had control. A minute or so later she began mumbling prayers. He wouldn’t attack, he had control.
Eventually she calmed enough to look towards him. She didn’t make eye contact, her gaze skirting around his face. He realised she was also avoiding the knives. Paul holstered one back in the yoke and stepped towards her.
“Nisha... I can hurt you with this...” He stretched out his arm and touched the tip of the blade against her nose. Nisha backed away, shaking, her eyes skirting the room so as not to look. He lowered the knife blade to her lips. “I can cut you into little pieces over a very long time... unless you do as I say.”
“I’ll do it. I’ll do anything... please... don’t... don’t hurt me.”
Control.
Paul stepped back. “Look at me. Do it, Nisha. Look at me... or I will hurt you.”
Her body barely had any control. He could see she was trying to comply but was too exhausted with nervous energy to function properly and he suspected that she may even faint into unconsciousness if she had no chance to recover.