by Raven Taylor
On fleeing her flat I ran blindly out into the pouring rain, the sound of sirens ringing in my ears and my head filled with the notion that everything I touched died, that I was responsible for them all, for Ransley, Dr Kingston and now Lilly. What was there for me now? I had thought that she was the centre of everything, that once I had found her nothing else would matter but now I was torn with the idea that she was in league with my tormentors. Yet how could it be so, that this beautiful thing for which I felt so much love could ever be involved with something so dark and malevolent as the one called Cane. I did not want to believe it and part of me didn't. Why dismiss her own theory out right? It was possible that she was telling the truth and that I was the and one who had stalked her form afar and crept into her flat and stole from her while she slept. The truth seemed more out of reach than ever and there was only one person who could possibly help me get some answers. I had to go back to The Witchery.
I hammered on the door to the reception for the Witchery's guests rooms until a starchy man who walked like he had a rod up his back finally opened the door a crack and looked at me with distaste.
"Are you a resident Sir?" he enquired stuffily.
"No, I need to speak to Dylan, I know he's here."
“Yes Sir, he is on house keeping duties this week.”
“I’m a friend of his, would it be possible to speak with him?”
The stuffy porter nodded with obvious irritation and closed the door on me before he disappeared. When he returned Dylan was following behind him. His eyes grew wide when the door was opened and he saw me and he looked as if he was about to turn and run but I put a firm hand on his shoulder.
“What’s this all about, how do you know Cane?” I hissed angrily.
He gave me a pitiful smile and shook his blonde head.
“I can’t really say, it could put my life in danger.”
“Listen,” I could feel my anger and fear rising, “If you know who he is you have to tell me. I think he may be responsible for something terrible that happened to me. He may be a criminal. You can’t even imagine how important this is, he stole a whole chunk of my life from me. If you tell me where he is I won’t involve you at all, I’ll go to the police but I won’t mention you.”
Dylan laughed maddeningly and shook his head again.
“The police? Such things are beyond their control.”
“All right,” I was struggling not to shout and cause a scene, “Tell me what you’re talking about. You recognised me, where have you seen me before?”
“Then it’s true, you really don’t remember a thing?”
“I asked where you’ve seen me before?”
“Here of course.”
“In The Witchery? When? Who with?”
“I’ve already said too much.”
“Is he threatening you? Cane?”
“He wouldn’t hurt me.”
“Then why won’t you talk?”
“It’s easier this way, for all of us,” he said sadly, “You’ll understand one day.”
“Never mind one day! I need to know now. You’re coming with me.”
I glanced around. The streets were mercifully quiet at this early hour. He was a small, frail thing and when I shoved him in the direction of the street he stumbled and let me push him out of the door.
“No, please, you don’t understand.”
I dragged him up the street by his arm and forced him down a small close where I held him up against the wall.
He was crying now and I felt sorry for him, I did not like being the bad person but I had no choice.
“You don’t know what you’ve done,” he wept, “They’ll kill me now, don’t you understand? That’s it, they’ll kill me. it’s one thing to talk to you inside The Witchery, they can’t see in there, but out here, out here they see and they know and they’ll kill me.”
“Who’s they?”
His eyes were screwed tightly shut now, his head turned to the side, his mouth stretched across his perfect white teeth in a hideous grimace.
“The Angels.”
“Who are the Angels?” I released him from my grip but he was hysterical now and he sank to the ground, “Some kind of gang? Is Cane their leader? Are they a cult? Was I one of them?”
“You where one of them alright,” he cried, “The Witchery is their safe house.”
“Where is Cane?”
“You can’t see him.”
"People are dying, don't you understand?"
"People always die, they will continue to die, it's about time you learned there is nothing you can do about it."
“Well fuck this!” I shouted and I punched the wall beside his head. He was talking in riddles. Refusing to give me straight answers.
"Well what about Lilly then?" I asked suddenly, "What's her involvement in all of this?"
"You shouldn't turn away from her, she needs you." he said, he looked utterly terrified, as though he thought at any second the sky was going to rain down thunderbolts on him just for talking to me.
"Talk to me Dylan, please," I begged him, "Let's go to the police, we'll go together, you'll be safe. We can end whatever it is they're running from this fancy hotel."
"It's already too late," the look of fear was immeasurable, it twisted his features and all of the energy seemed to drain out of him as he slid to the ground.
"Have it your way."
I left him weeping in the gutter. As I emerged back onto the Royal Mile I looked up at the Witchery. Was he in there? Was Cane closeted behind one of those doors in those luxury rooms? Perhaps he was even watching me from one of the windows.
“Where are you? You bastard, you coward!” I yelled and turned about in circles, “Come out Cane, I want to speak to you.”
Why did he haunt me like this but never show his face? How did he manage to creep into locked homes and hide in the shadows, tracing my every move, mapping my every thought? Why did I feel such hatred and love whenever I thought of him? Just who was he and what was the secret Dylan was keeping?
I was close now. I could feel it. So infuriatingly close to the key that would unlock my past and bring everything about me to light. I was standing on the edge of my own life, it stretched before me like an abyss that I could not quite reach into.
The Angels. What kind of business was it they where into and what exactly had been my part in all of this? Oh how I deliberated over this while The Witchery disappeared behind me as I walked the empty, sleeping streets. And what was it Dylan had told me? That Lilly needed me? Where was Lilly now? The ambulance would have taken her. She was probably at the hospital.
By the time I got back to your flat I was exhausted and soaked to the skin. I was careful to be quiet as I entered for although I desperately wanted your advice, your practical, sensible view on things would have been most welcome, I did not want to wake you.
Instead I crept silently into the living room. It felt wrong to do such mundane things as turn on the lamp when she was alone in hospital. It did not seem right that I should sit on a comfortable couch when I had fled like a coward and left her twitching on the carpet. My mind wandered back to our kiss and I closed my eyes until I felt once again her soft lips on mine. In that moment I had been so blissfully happy. It seemed an eternity away from the misery I now felt. How was it possible for ecstasy and agony to walk hand in had like this?
I opened my eyes and took out my notebook. It was becoming a sort of journal to me now, a record of my musings and the meandering paths my mind wandered. It was filled with theories and speculation that might forever remain just that. How many more scenarios would I invent for myself before the truth finally came out. I began to write and debate with myself on the paper.
The Angels, I told myself in this new hypothesis, were a cult, something underground, secretive, unsavoury. If Dylan was to be believed, then I had been one of them. Dylan was terrified that simply talking to me would put him in grave danger. He had even feared he would be killed. This suggested to
me that he was an unwilling recruit. It was likely his involvement was simply in keeping their presence at The Witchery low key. The fact that they had done something to me that had traumatised me to the extend that I was robbed me of my memory before abandoning me on a remote road made me think I must have done something to betray them.
I saw it again. The thing that had upset Lilly so much yesterday evening; the dark alley way and the struggle she had with the stranger.
"Of course," I muttered to myself, "That was them too. I tried to intervene somehow, Yes! I remember something!"
I realised that I had just shouted in my excitement as small pieces began to fall into place. The sound of my raised voice brought you into the living room and you looked startled as I rushed across the room.
"She's not involved, she isn't playing games with me!" I shouted triumphantly.
"Winter are you alright?"
"Yes! I was in the window, that was me up there, watching, I was the one who pushed the terra-cotta pot from the ledge so that it hit the man who was trying to hurt her. That's how I knew about it and I did do something. I did follow her around but only because I was secretly trying to protect her from them, from him."
"Winter, what are you talking about?" you looked bemused and I grabbed your hands and pulled you across the room to the sofa.
"Look, it all makes sense," I pointed out what I had written and explained my new theory, "They where after her for some reason. I did stalk her and watch her from afar but not in the way that she thinks, in a good way, because I was trying to protect her. Only he found out and saw it as a betrayal and did who knows what to me before dumping me."
You looked as though you were struggling to comprehend what I was telling you. I was quiet for a few moments to let you make sense of it all in your own head.
"What do you think?" I asked.
"I find it hard to believe that you were ever part of a cult," you said, "I don't want to think that you are a bad person, you're not a bad person."
"I wouldn't need to be," I assured her, "There are all kinds of brain washing and weird things out there. It would explain so much. Perhaps I was even born into them, that's why no family or friends have come forward to say they recognise me."
You were mulling this over in your head, I could see that you were starting to see where I was coming from.
"A cult sounds plausible," you agreed at last, "The Jeremey Kyle show did a whole feature on cults once, it scared me to be honest, how grounded, normal people could be so easily controlled and made to believe anything. Some of them even had to be deprogrammed when they left the cult to get their brains back to normal."
"Yes," I was encouraged, "The memory loss fits in perfectly. And the scars!"
"Some form of branding?"
"Exactly!"
It seemed odd to be smiling over the prospect that I had been a member of some kind of insane cult but it all seemed to be coming together, in my head at least, this explanation satisfied me greatly. I was so caught up in it I had almost forgotten about Lilly, until you reminded me.
"So what happened at Lilly's house? Was she ok?"
"Oh no," I groaned as the scene from the flat came flooding back; the fight, the harsh exchange of words, her sudden collapse, that date on her skin, "And the dates, of course, it makes sense, they are the ones who put the dates there."
"Dates?"
"Lilly and I had a fight," I explained, "Someone had been in her flat and left a bottle of Jack Daniels on the table. It was that Cane character, I'm certain of it. Anyway, I showed her the pendant that was round my neck when you found me and it belonged to her. Understandably she got very upset and accused me of stalking her and sneaking about in her flat. I in turn accused her of being in on the whole thing and implied that she was simply pretending she did not know me because this was part of their game."
"Well it sounds like a mess alright," you concluded, "But nothing that can't be put right in the morning. We'll go to the police with all of this too. Everything is going to be ok."
"But it isn't," I insisted, "The fight was not the worst of it. Lilly collapsed like she was having some kind of fit. I called her an ambulance but then I ran before it arrived. Caroline, Lilly is going to die."
Your expression was grave as you dialled the number for the infirmary. I listened in on the call as you pretended to be a concerned friend who had heard she had been taken in and wanted to know if she was ok. There was not much talking after that on your end, just a series of 'Yes's' and 'I see's" before you thanked the receptionist and hung up the phone.
"Well?" I asked anxiously.
"Lilly was there," you said, "But she was treated and sent home again. Obviously they couldn't give me any details as to what was wrong but she's ok, sent home for rest is what they said. See, it's ok, she didn't die."
"No," I said grimly, "Not tonight, but then it was never going to be tonight. Whatever it is that is wrong will kill her in the end though, nothing they do will stop it."
"You shouldn't torture yourself so," you looked at me with pity.
"But it's true," I said, "It's a curse. I see the dates and then they die. It's already happened twice. I wish it would go away, that I could just be normal."
"Oh Winter, you know I would make it go away if I could," of course you did not believe I was actually capable of predicting deaths, "But it's going to work out, you'll see. Tomorrow we will go to the police and tell them all about this cult. They'll go and investigate The Witchery and find whoever is responsible. You can tell Lilly what you told me tonight, she'll see it's true. Then you can start a fresh life here with me, with Lilly and you'll no longer have to trouble yourself with the past."
The picture you painted in my head was perfect and idyllic. I saw long into the future. I saw Christmas's where we sat around a big tree, the three of us and that sister of yours and her baby (in my head now a child of around ten). I saw endless, blissful evenings in Lilly's flat as we sat together drinking wine and laughing. I even saw Lilly in a white dress with a bouquet of red roses in her hand. I saw time pass, I saw us all grow old, untouched by the curse of death. But these were all glimpses of a future that could never be. The seasons would never pass by Lilly and I. Lilly would not even be here to see spring come around and release the world from this harsh winter. A tear slid down my cheek and I rested my head on your shoulder. If I had ever had a Mother I hoped she had been just like you.
"I can't fight it," I said sadly, "It just is. Just as seasons change, people die, the wheel turns. People like her should live forever. What an injustice it is that beautiful things are not allowed to go on. Ugly hateful creatures keep their place in the world, live for decades. Roses die and yet the thorns are permitted to remain."
"I know, I know," you said gently, and you stroked my hair and kissed my head.
When I pressed my face against your chest I could hear you heart. The clock inside of us all that counts the seconds like grains running through an hour glass. I think eventually I gave in to exhaustion and simply cried until I fell asleep against you.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
I was shaking as we sat stationary in your car outside of that ominous building. The rare winter sun that glanced over the rooftops bounced through the streaky windscreen and the strength of it hurt my eyes and made me long for some dark, dank corner where I could hide and just forget this whole thing.
"Come on Winter," you patted my hand reassuringly and turned off the engine, "You know it has to be done."
I swallowed hard, struggling to draw in air through the dry, constricted passage that was my throat. I managed a feeble nod and stepped out of the vehicle. My boots crunched through the slushy grit that had sprinkled on the icy tarmac and I stared up at the sign above the door: 'Lothian and Borders Police.'
"I can't do this," I croaked through my parched throat, "They're going to send me away again."
"It's ok," you guided me through the doors and I was taken instantly back to that night, the fi
rst night, when you had taken me to the station in Dunoon where the exasperated inspector had questioned me. That's what it would be today. More questions. And my answers? My answers were nothing but speculation, nothing concrete.
We approached the desk where a young woman behind a glass patrician was bent over some paper work. She looked up at you as you pressed the brass bell and slid open a little window in the glass so she could talk to us.
"My name is Caroline Hunter," you said, "I called in earlier, we are here to see Detective Summers."
"Oh yes, that's right," she confirmed with a polite smile, "Take a seat please."
We sat on uncomfortable fake leather chairs and I stared at the notices on the information board. My face was there, of course, among them, listed as 'Missing'. Missing from where? I mused. How could something that had no place be missing?
Neither of us spoke as we waited. An eternity seemed to pass before at last the doors to the left of the desk opened and a plain clothed officer carrying a cardboard case file approached us and introduced himself as Detective Summers.
"Well young man," he said to me, his grey eyes scrutinising me, "You've been causing quite a stir haven't you? Everybody has been looking for you."
I said nothing and looked at my feet.