The door groaned, lifted, clanged open as it hit the metal side of the bull.
Air. Cold. I fell out, slid down the side of the bull and collapsed onto the stone floor. The scene in front of me looked precisely how I’d imagined it: fire burned in trays once positioned under the bull, which now lay on its side.
I could not catch my breath at first, but was grateful for the cold air in my lungs. My chest hurt, my body felt on fire, my skin burned. My eyes would not open properly. And I could not lie still. I had to be alert. Whoever had drugged me and placed me in the bull could still be here, watching. Reverend James. Reverend James and Linda.
I squinted up at the eight dangling dummies, at the beheaded corpse, at the iron maiden. I inhaled the crisp air more freely now, grateful to be alive, grateful to breathe, grateful to be free of that hell. Slowly, my brain cleared as oxygen made its way through my system. I could stand again, so I smothered the fire by spreading out the coals, crushing them, stamping them out. My hands stung even more with cold. I could see welts and blisters already forming on my skin, and my face throbbed.
I had dropped the dagger on the floor. It was cool now, so I pocketed it, but I hunted along the display for a more formidable weapon. I deliberated over the cat-o’-nine-tails, executioner’s axe and a long spear. I chose a beautifully polished, doubled-bladed axe. I wondered how many heads this axe had severed. Maybe it was just a modern replica. I tested the blade with my finger. This would do. Although heavy to carry, it felt good in my hands, an extension of my rage, my pain.
I pushed open the door, wary, looking into the dark corridor out of the corner of my eyes where the light was best. If they thought I was dead, I had the element of surprise. But I had made such a racket, I doubted that. I kept to the shadows and made my way back to the women’s bathroom where I had been attacked. I wondered what had happened to Emily and Suzanne.
How long had it been? I had no idea. Hours? No light came from the end of the passage by the living room. I stood by the door, wary of what I would find. ‘Emily. Suzanne.’
The thumping on the other side of the door told me they were alive. Thank God.
Emily’s voice: ‘Rafe, what the hell?’
‘You’re still here!’
Suzanne’s voice: ‘We can’t get out. Our key won’t turn the lock.’
‘What happened to you, Rafe?’ called Emily. ‘We heard you cry out, then nothing for hours and then a terrible ruckus. What happened?’
‘Rafe, get us out of here!’
I took the dagger out of my pocket and played with the lock, fiddled with two tiny screws and managed to loosen one and pull off the cover. I saw three wires leading into the lock. Maybe if I ripped out these wires, this would release the lock. But maybe it would seal the women in the room instead.
‘Here goes nothing.’ I cut all three wires out with the dagger and the lock clicked.
I pushed on the door. It did not open.
Okay, so I was not a locksmith.
‘Plan B, Emily and Suzanne. Stand back from the door, please.’
I heaved the heavy axe above my head and struck the lock, splintering it from the wooden door. I felt a searing pain in my chest, and my arms hurt like hell. Maybe I had done more than burned myself in that bull. Maybe snapped a tendon. But I raised the axe and struck again. My skin burned as if it was on fire. My chest felt crisped and my lungs full of black ash. But I pushed through the pain. Again. Again. I chopped to the side of the door handle until the whole lock mechanism fell onto the floor. Then I pushed the door – or what remained of the door – open.
Emily and Suzanne had pressed themselves against the back wall of the toilet. ‘Come,’ I said.
‘Rafe!’ I must have looked a sight, because they both recoiled. ‘What happened?’
‘I took a sauna. A little hot, but it clears the sinuses.’
Emily touched my face and I flinched. ‘The brazen bull. Someone stuck me in the brazen bull and tried to roast me alive.’
Suzanne winced. ‘Your face looks terrible.’
‘Someone drugged me and I woke up inside the bull. Obviously, I was meant to be burned alive. But I escaped.’
Emily touched my arm. ‘Ow. We need to put something on your arm. And face.’
‘Let’s get to the living room, where it’s warm – not that I want any more heat, but you look blue with cold.’ I grabbed the axe and led the way down the corridor. Now the real pain kicked in. No one needed to tell me that burned flesh is one of the most painful of wounds; all the nerve endings lie close to the surface of the skin. I pulled a chair from near the fire to the centre of the room where the heat could not reach me and the cold could not freeze me.
‘I’m going to the kitchen to get some cling film,’ Emily said.
‘Be careful.’
When she returned, she gave me three paracetamol tablets and wrapped the burned skin with cling film.
Suzanne watched, a distant air returning to her demeanour, her eyes alternately on my free hand, which rested on the axe, and on Emily’s face as she went about her work. ‘It’s going to sound like a horror story,’ she said, ‘but how did you get out of there alive?’
‘Through the udders.’
Emily stopped dabbing and considered the scenario. ‘Seriously?’
‘Remember, we saw the tits on the brass beast on our guided tour of the museum. They were a later addition, so I could pry them off.’
‘Like Survivor,’ said Suzanne. ‘Only here the camera crew is not about to appear and say, “well done, you won”.’
I grimaced at the ceiling, disassociating from the pain as Emily wiped the wounds, but also annoyed at Suzanne’s analogy. Survivor! As if everything was a movie or TV show to her. ‘The terrifying thought is that if the murderer had succeeded, Emily and I would be dead and you, Suzanne, would be the only one left. You’d be the survivor.’
She turned and gave me a look – of fear, of guilt, I was not sure. ‘Rafe, you said something earlier that doesn’t make sense. How exactly was the murderer planning to keep me going on my own until the eleventh day? It’s only the eighth day now.’
I shook my head. ‘I have no idea. Maybe things are not going according to their grand plan.’
‘I think we’ve already messed up the plan,’ said Emily. ‘Only trouble is, they’ll want to finish the job. Do you think they know they botched the job, that you escaped?’
‘I’m sure,’ I said. ‘Notice how you’re saying “they” now.’ I pushed her hand away. ‘And thanks, you can stop wrapping me up now like a mummy.’
‘Reverend James and Linda,’ said Emily.
‘It’s hard to imagine Linda being part of all this,’ said Suzanne. ‘I can’t picture it.’
Emily’s expression was grim. ‘I can.’
‘I still can’t believe they want us all dead.’
I stood up, carefully, and reached for the Bible on the dining room table. I leafed through it to the notes. ‘The sermon for day nine. Nine ladies dancing. The nine fruits of the Holy Spirit.’
‘How does that help us?’ said Emily.
‘On the eighth day, it was meant to be me. Eight maids a-milking. He used the brazen bull, the idea of milking. So all we have to figure out is what torture device is associated with dancing.’
‘Who is number nine?’
I consulted the Reverend’s notes again. ‘Linda. And James is ten. Maybe they plan a double suicide.’
‘It doesn’t make any sense,’ said Suzanne. ‘Especially if I’m number eleven.’
I shut the Bible and sighed. ‘I could use a meal.’ I put the Bible back down and hobbled to the kitchen, brought back leftover curry and rice and canned rice pudding. We ate it cold. I kept a wary eye on the door and the axe close at hand. Now I knew how wild animals feel when they feed.
After supper, I yawned. ‘I’m exhausted.’
Suzanne gave me and Emily a suspicious look. ‘But how do we sleep?’
‘We sleep in one bedr
oom,’ I said. ‘I disable the locks on the door. We barricade ourselves in.’
Emily and Suzanne exchanged glances. ‘So we all sleep in the same room?’
‘Yours, Em,’ I said. ‘I get the floor. And we take turns at guard duty.’
We collected our clothes, and I gathered my mattress and bedding and dragged them into the corner of Emily’s room. I searched everywhere for anything suspicious – hidden cameras, secret entrances, spy holes.
Now the door. I unscrewed the lock as I had done before, pulled the wires out and the door clicked and remain locked.
‘Safe enough for us to get some sleep,’ I said without conviction.
Night fell. Emily’s room creaked and groaned in the wind. Ghosts of the castle walked upstairs, rattled at the window to get in. Reverend James and Linda also lurked somewhere between these castle walls. So many questions: What were they doing? Where were they? Did they know I had escaped?
As the two women slept, I took the first shift. I managed my pain, as I had read in books on Zen philosophy, by watching it from the outside, feeling it, observing it as a foreign thing, and that way I was in control. You are not your pain, you simply have a pain. Your body is not who you are.
I watched them sleep. Emily, her duvet tucked tightly around her, Suzanne lying on her back, hair over her face. I observed something else at work here in me. The ache that I had carried all my life about Suzanne had dissipated. Perhaps the suspicions of her involvement in these deaths had dried up any feelings I had. Or maybe just seeing a real, un-idealised woman had done it. In my heart, in that place I had nourished and kept alive for all these years, was a hard, dry stone.
What of Emily? It was true that Emily and I were friends – close friends – but I was old enough to know that in life, boundaries, like arguments, were messy and frayed around the edges. She had loved me and I had kept her love at bay, seeing her as a friend only.
I could not sleep, even though I was exhausted. Pain kept me alert and conscious. I puzzled over the moral fibre of a pastor and his wife capable of carrying out this outrageous killing spree. I listened to every creak, every howl of the wind, every thump on the floorboards, waiting for them.
I had failed miserably. I had not prevented Alison’s death. I had been too slow. Perhaps it was failure of my imagination. I had not been able to conceive of such sadistic evil – and the lengths it would go to. Since I had no personal experience of wanting to kill anyone, I could not relate.
I thought of the story of The Wizard of Oz. The story was profound, philosophically speaking – it was about the unmasking of God. What Dorothy and Scarecrow and Lion and the Tin Man feared was the omnipotence, omniscience and omnipresence of this great Oz whom everyone worshipped and feared. But Dorothy unmasked him and revealed that he was just a puny man whose powers were all illusion.
Reverend James was Oz, a weak little man playing God. We had to unmask him, find the screen behind which he now hid.
Where could he be?
I began to make plans. If we were still alive in the morning, I would carry them out. At midnight, I woke Emily and she took over guard duty, and I slept like a dead man.
I woke on the mattress on the freezing cold stone floor, wrapped in a blanket. My burns stung. It was still dark, and Suzanne was prodding me on the shoulder. ‘You okay, Rafe? You were having a nightmare.’
I sat up, felt the pain return, and winced. ‘Thrashing around. You were drumming on the floor with your feet and groaning.’
I pressed my fingers to my eyes, which felt roasted.
Emily opened her eyes. ‘Good morning!’
‘How did you sleep, Em?’
She rubbed her face with her hand. ‘Nightmares too. I still feel that thing on my face, his creepy hand on my neck.’
‘I have a plan.’
‘What?’
‘First we have to get out of this room.’ Though I had disabled the lock, I pried the door open with the axe, and we ventured out into the corridor. Emily took the carving knife, and Suzanne took out the can of mace she had collected earlier from her bedroom.
We tiptoed down the corridors like thieves. My heart beat rapidly, and I was prepared for ambush. I held the axe out in front; Suzanne brandished her mace spray and Emily brought up the rear, her knife at the ready. We made it to the living room and I peered in. Sunlight was pouring in through the windows. The wind had died down. It was eerily quiet. The snow was bright outside, like the first morning of creation. I was fully expecting an attack, but a cursory glance showed it appeared to be safe. I closed the door behind me and we searched every possible hiding place. We secured the kitchen and made breakfast and coffee, then sat and nursed our fear all morning.
I had told the women a white lie: I didn’t actually have a detailed plan. Yes, we had to leave this house of horrors, but while we worked out how to do that, we had to create a safe space here.
My mind turned on itself. How would a murderer think? An accomplice? I had to imagine what they were planning next. If their plans had backfired and Emily and I were meant to be dead, then Suzanne was the next target. But we were all targets.
If we stay together, I thought, we will be safe, for now. Until I recovered sufficiently to do battle. Until we could come up with a strategy.
Although I knew that Emily and I weren’t ones for sitting around waiting for something to happen to us, I was weak and in pain. I took painkillers, bathed my wounds, and drank glasses and glasses of water to avoid dehydration, under Emily’s instruction. But I was restless, so I racked my brain to think of a plan. They had to be hiding somewhere in the castle, but where?
After lunch, I took the key and tried to unlock the passage door. It would not open. I pushed it. Tried the key again. In panic, I tried the kitchen door. It was also locked and I could not open it with the key.
‘Damn,’ I said.
‘Shh,’ said Emily. ‘I hear something.’
The crackle of the loudspeakers, the hiss of a recording beginning, and the same computerised voice we had heard days before began. But this time, the voice began singing: ‘On the ninth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me…’ And then stopped.
Then it repeated the line with an inflection at the end: ‘On the ninth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me?’
‘He’s live,’ whispered Emily. ‘He can hear us.’
‘I doubt it,’ I said.
‘On the ninth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me?’
‘Nine ladies dancing,’ said Suzanne to the speaker.
‘Correct. Nine ladies dancing,’ repeated the voice.
I froze. Emily was right. He was live.
‘Shit,’ said Suzanne. ‘He can hear us.’
‘Who are you?’ I demanded.
‘Eight maids a-milking, seven swans a-swimming, six geese a-laying, five golden rings… You want to know who I am? I am your guide, fellow travellers on a journey to hell.’
I listened intently. The voice was disguised electronically, but I was checking for intonations, pauses, characteristics of Reverend James’ speech patterns.
‘I trust the three witches are brewing fear nicely in their stomachs. And Macbeth, are these three ladies you see before you? Triple them!’
‘James Miller, stop playing games,’ I called. ‘We know it’s you and you will not escape. Your attempts on our lives failed.’
‘Beware!’ said the voice. ‘Women have always been the downfall of man. Eve tempted Adam. Suzanne, Emily, Linda, witches three, multiply by three and you have nine ladies dancing around you.’
‘What are you talking about?’ said Emily. ‘Linda is with you. Don’t pretend she isn’t part of this.’
The voice continued as if she hadn’t spoken. ‘The nine ladies dancing are the nine fruits of the spirit. You know what they are, I hope. This is another test for you. A riddle. Tell me what they are. Nine fruits of the spirit? Anyone?’
I picked up the Reverend’s Bible and opened it to his sermon for the
ninth day of Christmas. I read aloud. ‘Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Faithfulness, Gentleness, Self-control.’
The voice waited until I had finished and then continued. ‘Exactly, exactly. Now ask yourself, all of you, honestly, how many of these virtues do you possess? These virtues would have saved you, but alas, you have none of them. I know your hearts, your blackened hearts. You are the unbelievers. I have isolated you. Spared your lives to give you a chance to repent. All you need to do is repent. Give up your life to God. Stop worshipping idols. Mammon. Self. Reason.’
A pause. Emily twirled her finger around her ear. ‘Seriously?’
I spoke to the speaker, as I assumed the microphone was placed there. ‘You killed the others who were all believers. If you want an argument, a logical, rational argument, I can talk to you. But you’re not even listening.’
‘And you, Rafe, the female sex will be your downfall. I know all about you and your affairs. Even under this very roof, you have polluted the retreat. I know. I know everything. Debauchery. Sin. Immorality.’
Emily nudged me. ‘He doesn’t know about platonic relationships, obviously.’
‘I know about Linda’s affair with Glen. She will be punished. Suzanne, I have watched you debauch the female species, you whore of Babylon. Emily, you temptress who seduced and ruined and polluted the Church. Rafe, your loose morals and affairs. And so you are condemned to death if you refuse to repent. All of you. Suzanne, Emily, Rafe. And Linda in absentia. All of you.’
‘He’s speaking as if Linda is not with him,’ whispered Suzanne.
‘Where are you?’
‘I am everywhere. The cellar, the kitchen, the living room, in every room. I am omnipresent, omniscient. Dance, ladies, dance.’ The microphone clicked off, the hissing in the speakers stopped, the door locks slid open, and the performance was over.
Suzanne stared at me. ‘Shit! What the hell do we do now?’
I folded my arms. ‘Game on.’
Twelve Days Page 20