The next hour and a half passed as slowly as any I can think of, but eventually it was nearly eight, and I switched on the computer. I clicked on the icon which told it to connect to the internet, and the familiar electronic screaming confirmed that the connection had been successfully made.
I’m not sure what I was expecting, but it wasn’t what I found. I think I was probably anticipating something like a scene from “The Matrix”, a white rabbit to appear and lead me to my tormentor, or something flashing up on the computer as soon as I was logged on. Instead, I got nothing like that. I was greeted by exactly the same welcome screen from my server that I’d encountered every time I’d used the internet.
I sat for a while, unsure what to do. My watch had only just moved to eight o’clock, so perhaps it was a little fast and I was too early. If I waited, surely some sort of contact would be made. By quarter past, I had received a message. It was from the server, telling me that I had been inactive for some time and asking if I wished to remain connected. I replied that I did, but I was increasingly unsure why.
It seemed I was going to have to do something more, unless the note had just been meant as a hoax. I glanced again at the note, and called up the search page. I copied the words “serial killer” and pressed the “go” button. The computer thought about it for a couple of minutes and then, to my amazement, returned 38,973 links. How could there possibly be so many sites relating to serial killers?
I found out over the next hour and a half. I freely confess to being an amateur when it comes to the internet. I have a few favourite sites, mostly carrying sports news and gossip, that I visit fairly regularly and a couple of places to buy discounted music and DVD’s, but that’s about it.
When people decry parts of the internet as giving access to unlimited porn and gore, I honestly had no idea what they were talking about. Perhaps that’s why I found the results of my search so troubling.
Not really knowing what I was looking for, I began to work my way through each of the sites listed in turn. Some were just newspaper archive sites, the link leading to an article which contained the words serial killer, but most weren’t.
Broadly speaking, there seemed to be three main groups of sites, in ascending order of depravity. The first group I came to think of as historical sites. These included references to famous killers from decades past, such as The Boston Strangler, but tended to focus mainly on the unsolved murders carried out in London in Victorian times, by the unidentified “Jack the Ripper”. They had great details on his crimes, profiles of all the likely suspects and usually the web site’s owner’s theory of who the guilty party was. Some of the descriptions and illustrations were fairly unpleasant, but they seemed slightly less shocking because they took place such a time ago.
The second group purported to be research sites, but I soon came to think of them as serial killer’s fan clubs. They were much more interested in the plethora of psychopaths that seem to inhabit our own age. Characters such as Ted Bundy, “Son of Sam”, Peter Sutcliffe, and Jeffrey Dahmer seemed particular favourites.
These sites were packed with nauseating detail of the crimes their “heroes” committed, profiles of the victims, and photographs where possible. Most posed as serious information sites, and quite a few began with the wish that “You will find your visit useful”. Useful to who? Are they teaching modules on serial killers at school now? And even if they were, would students really need such obsessively graphic detail?
The sheer number of the sites though showed that there was a widespread fascination with the monsters they depicted, not to mention the enormous numbers of visitors which the counters on some sites proclaimed they had had. A few aimed to deflect accusations of being there to pander solely to the imaginations of the sick, by carrying a “missing child banner”.
This contained photographs and details of children, mostly in America who had gone missing. I hope that sometimes they help in finding children before serious harm comes to them. However, I can’t help feeling that their presence on these particular sites, alongside the images and descriptions of the awful horror that humans are capable of acting out on other humans, is somehow inappropriate. It seemed to me that as much as anything, it was an excuse for some of the more disturbed visitors to fantasise about what the real fate may have been of the innocent, young faces that stared out at them.
These sites were nothing, though, compared to the third group. They usually began with a warning that the site’s contents were only for over eighteen. This was a fact that you generally had only to acknowledge by the less than stringent check of pressing the button marked “Yes, I am over eighteen” as opposed to the one “No, I am under eighteen, please take me to the Disney site”.
Once you’d bypassed that, a second warning declared unconvincingly that “The events described and depicted on these pages are fantasy, and would constitute criminal acts if carried out in reality. This site does not condone the actual use of violence”. You were then free to “enjoy” the rest of the site, which was made up of the most graphic and brutal descriptions of rape and murder. Hatred and rage poured out of every sickening word as, in fantasy, people were tortured, raped and dismembered by the authors. Some carried horrific photographs; stills from films of rape, torture and slaughter which you could use your credit cards to order.
Most of these sites were hosted by people, using names that evoked images of the occult. Some merged fantasy and reality, with the fictitious stories being illustrated with crime scene photographs of real life victims. One even offered its visitors the chance to bid for Jeffrey Dahmer’s tools, some of which “he actually used in the commission of his horrific crimes!”
By quarter to ten, I was thoroughly shaken and sickened, but had been through only a couple of hundred of the nearly thirty nine thousand sites.
This was getting me nowhere. Either the sender of the message had meant to horrify me by bringing me into contact with all this filth, or I was doing something wrong. If there was one particular site that I was supposed to go to, how on earth was I meant to find it?
A sudden inspiration struck me. I went back to the very first search screen. There was an option to “search only within these results”. My hands shook as I typed in the names Jennifer Carter and Christopher Upton.
This time, the search narrowed down considerably. There were quite a number of sites that contained the words Christopher, Upton, Jennifer and Carter, but only one site which had them as complete phrases. Feeling my heart racing, I clicked on that link.
It took me to a site entitled “Serial killers of the world unite”. The opening screen was the usual demand to confirm that you were over eighteen super-imposed on a montage of faces. Thanks to my experience of the past hour and a half, most were now all too familiar – they formed a gallery of the world’s most infamous psychopaths.
I clicked on the button to continue, and was faced with the heading “Webmaster’s Policy” and a short essay. I began to read.
“Ask anyone to name the greatest ever serial killer, and you’ll probably get the usual uninspired list. Clitsko, Bundy, Sutcliffe, Neilsen, Dahmer and so on. Of course, the fact that we know their names is proof that they have no claim to greatness – all of them were stupid enough to get caught.
The greatest killer is, undoubtedly, the one who police never come close to, the one who is only known by their perfectly executed sacrifices. In history, only England’s Jack the Ripper can claim to be truly great. But if you are only as great as the enemies you overcome then he, too, is found wanting. He had merely to contend with Victorian police, plodding around London on foot, deferential to those of a higher class.
How would he have fared with today’s level of forensic investigation, psychological profiling, computerised links between forces. My guess is that he would have been caught within weeks. The real greats are those who contend with all a modern police force have at their disposal, and still emerge undetected.
One such colossus, perhaps
the greatest of them all, is currently at work in York, England. He has already disposed of two victims, Jennifer Carter and Christopher Upton. Insiders predict that there will be several more deaths before he vanishes, leaving no clues to his identity.”
There seemed little doubt that I had finally arrived at my intended destination. Had he invited me here just to read another boast of his superiority? Then I spotted it, at the very bottom of the page. In very small type it read “To find out more, try the chat room”. The words “chat room” were highlighted white, so I clicked on them
I’ve never been into an internet chat room before. From the various scandals that appear occasionally in the papers, I sort of assumed that they were always peopled by aging paedophiles pretending to be teenage boys, meeting businessmen in their forties claiming to be large breasted teenagers with names like Samantha. I had a feeling that this chat room was likely to contain something rather different.
The computer informed me that “to enter this room, you must first select an identity” and gave me the choice of “visitor” or a name I typed in myself. I went for visitor, and pressed on the words “let me into the chat room”. For some reason a picture of walking into a large, white padded cell came into my head.
The computer buzzed, and text began to scroll across the screen;
There is already one person in the room.
Guignol is in the room.
Visitor enters the room.
Guignol:>Hello Jack
To add to my rather disturbing picture of the white cell, I now had a vision of a figure dressed in black, standing in the room. There was no face, just the sort of blurry colours that you get sometimes on television when they can’t show you the face of the person speaking. I began to type, and within seconds, the words began to appear on the computer screen.
Visitor:>Who are you?
There was a pause, and then more words appeared on the screen. Before long, my hands were typing almost unnoticed, as we began our macabre dance.
Guignol:>You’re late. I suppose I should have known that you’d be too stupid to find this site quickly. Have you been enjoying yourself?
Visitor:>Who are you?
Guignol:>I think you’ve missed the point. This is my room, and my rules. Have you been enjoying yourself?
For a moment, I was tempted to just turn off the computer and sever the connection. The thought that if I kept him talking, he might give me a clue to his identity stopped me. I decided to reply.
Visitor:>Not particularly. Why am I here?
Guignol:>Ah, the great existential question. If you mean why are you in this chat room, it’s because I willed it. As to why you exist, I’m afraid I have no answer to that. Your life is meaningless, a fact I mean to demonstrate before I end it.
Visitor:>Why are you doing this?
Guignol:>Your questions are so futile and predictable. I will tell you why, but only in the moment before you die.
Visitor:>Why didn’t you kill me last night?
Guignol:>A slightly better question, I suppose. I could have. I leant over your unconscious body and thought how easy it would be to slit your throat. But I haven’t finished teaching you things yet.
Visitor:>What are you trying to teach me?
Guignol:>I thought that even you could have worked that out by now. I want you to see how worthless your life is. I want you to understand how pitiful and insignificant you are. I will make you see that everything in your life is rubbish. I will bring you to the point where you see what you really are, and beg to be put out of your misery. I want you to hate you as much as I do.
Visitor:>What have I done to you, that you hate me so much?
Guignol:>You’ll have to wait a little while more for the answer to that. But I promise you, you will understand. Perhaps hate is the wrong word. It suggests that you have some worth to provoke the energy to hate you. I despise you. You are like a filthy, dung ridden insect who I will crush under my foot with contempt and revulsion.
Visitor:>If it’s me you hate, then why not just come for me? Why make the innocent suffer?
Guignol:>You’re an even bigger fool than I thought. The innocent always suffer. The only strength is revenge. The greatest weakness is people like you who pretend that you can forgive, pretend that you can help other pathetic victims.
Visitor:>I believe that I do help. What good do you do?
Guignol:>Good? You think it’s good to help those feeble women who have let their husbands hurt them, and damage their children. All you do is give them a new life so they can find some other bully to knock them around.
I had the sense that we were touching on something important here. I thought very carefully before typing again.
Visitor:>What would your solution be?
There was a long electronic silence. I was beginning to think that he had gone, but supposed that there would have been some sort of “Guignol has left the room message”. Suddenly, the text began to scroll across the screen.
Guignol:>I think any mother who lets her child be harmed should be sliced up into little pieces as painfully as possible. As for the children, if they’re not strong enough to fight back, they may as well be butchered as well. We wouldn’t want them to grow up to be snivelling cowards like you.
Visitor:>Doesn’t that make you just the same as the abusers?
Guignol:>You lot choose to be victims. I choose to be in control. I’m the one with the power.
Visitor:>So what good did it do to use that power to kill Jennifer Carter and Christopher Upton?
Guignol:>I told you, I killed them to teach you a lesson. Of course, I enjoyed teaching them some things as well.
Visitor:>Explain.
Guignol:>Alright, as it’s the last time we’ll talk before the day I kill you. You went whining to Jennifer Carter about poor you and your horrible life. What good did all that talking do you? She just used words to be superior, to judge people and make them dependant. I killed her for you, but removing her lying lips and tongue was a punishment just for her.
Visitor:>And Christopher?
Guignol:>He was as pathetic as you are. Killing him did the world a favour. And you, going to church and lying to yourself “maybe there’s a God who loves me”. You fool! No-one loves you. You don’t deserve love. There is no God to put everything right for you, to be a substitute parent who will love you properly.
These words were uncomfortably close to ones that my head generated for themselves on the nights when the darkness engulfs me.
Visitor:>So you claim that Christopher’s death was all my fault?
Guignol:>Of course. All of it’s your fault. The deaths there have been and the ones yet to come. Of course it helped that he was a spineless pervert. His life showed what lies religion is.
Visitor:>Why do there have to be more deaths? Can’t we just settle it between ourselves now?
Guignol:> I’ve already picked the next victims, and the dates of their execution. I know when you and I will finally come face to face as well. There’s nothing you can do to stop it.
Visitor:>Leave the others out of it. I’m ready to face you now.
Guignol:>You think you are, but there are still some things you need to learn. I’m going to have fun teaching you. There is nothing in your life, no person, no achievement that I can’t take away with the click of my fingers. You still believe that doing good can make a difference. The only thing that makes a difference is retribution.
There was a pause, and I began to type a demand for him to be brave enough to confront me now. But before I could send it more text appeared on the screen.
Guignol has left the room.
There is one person in the room.
I disconnected from the internet and switched of the computer. I felt somehow unclean, as if some of the disease from his mind had leapt through the electrodes and fastened on to me. I forced myself to try and concentrate upon what he had said in the room. Maybe he had made a mistake somewhere, and revealed more than he in
tended.
First, I tried to concentrate on what he had said about his future victims. If the “lesson” was meant to be my inability to make a difference, then the next target seemed most likely to be someone I was connected with from work. If that was true, then the break in at the centre might have been to find out an address. But if it was, would he just pick someone at random? Or perhaps the killer had a personal connection with one of the women we had helped.
Then there were the slight insights he had into his own character and history. One of the main things I have learned in the job I do is how to listen discerningly to people, how to hear when they are touching on something important or when they are keeping something hidden. I tried to use that skill now.
The greatest emotion in what he had written came either when talking about me, or when he said what should happen to mothers who allowed their children to be harmed. This reaction was so strong, it had to be something very personal. The only explanation that I could come up with was that either he, or someone very close to him, had been badly damaged as a child. This might also explain the phrase about the “face being pushed down into a pillow to muffle screams” in his second note. Perhaps it wasn’t from a file at all but from their own experience.
I was also shaken by the depth of his anger towards me. This wasn’t just someone who I had upset, it was someone who seemed to be thrown into a rage by the very thought of my existence. I went back to my conversation with Brian Taylor. The two names I had given him in connection with the break in, were the only two I could think of who might feel they had reason to hate me so much – Ryan Clarke and Adam Sutton.
The thing was, that neither of them seemed to fit what little I knew of the killer. Given that Adam had battered his own wife and child, the loathing of women who let their children be harmed seemed strange. Was it possible he blamed Jill for not controlling Sophie properly and so “forcing him” to hurt her? Ryan was more likely to have strong feelings about women protecting their children, but he didn’t seem to fit in other ways. “Guignol” seemed very cold and in control, convinced of his intellectual superiority over everyone. None of those were qualities that I’d readily associate with Ryan.
Shaping the Ripples Page 19