Twelve Days

by Paul Williams

  The whole ten days rewrote itself. That niggling suspicion about him, Emily’s intuition – all gelled now. Reality – what we call reality but is only a kaleidoscope of impressions and assumptions and narrative constructions – shifted and adjusted itself. Pieces of the puzzle clicked into place. Not all of them, but enough.

  The front door was unlocked. I shook myself off in the hallway and walked over to the living room. I found my three remaining fellow guests exactly as I had left them, huddling by the fire.

  I decided to keep the discovery of the concierge’s car to myself, for now – until I figured out exactly what it meant. But an idea was forming in my mind.

  ‘Thank God you’re safe,’ said Suzanne. ‘We were so worried about you.’

  ‘Rafe, you’re soaked,’ said Emily, leaping up. ‘What happened?’

  ‘I just need to thaw out,’ I said, moving over to the fire.

  ‘I’ll bring you something hot to drink,’ said Suzanne.

  ‘You okay?’ said Reverend James.

  ‘Did you hear anything upstairs?’ I asked. I scrutinised each face in turn. But no one revealed anything amiss.

  Emily shook her head. ‘I did hear some banging, footsteps, but I thought it was you. What were you doing outside?’

  ‘I want to know if you were here all the time I was gone. Give me your word that no one left the room.’

  They looked puzzled. No one had left the room, they assured me.

  I was dry pretty quickly in front of that blazing fire, but the trembling would not stop.

  ‘Thank God you’re okay, Rafe,’ said Suzanne. ‘We were worried.’

  ‘You all right, Rafe?’ said Emily. ‘You look, I don’t know, wild.’

  ‘Tell us what you found,’ said Suzanne.

  ‘I need to show you all something. I want you all to come with me. No one stays behind. I want everyone to see exactly what I saw – and then we will find the killer. But first of all we need to find a ladder.’

  ‘I saw one in the back of the pantry,’ said Emily. ‘Why? Where are we going?’

  ‘Back into the torture museum, and up into the ceiling.’

  ‘What? You went up?’

  I nodded. Watched each face carefully.

  Suzanne shuddered. ‘I’m not going up there.’

  ‘We all are.’ I herded them into a group. ‘I’m not going to wait for the next clever little trick, the next torture device. We go after the killer. We find an appropriate torture device to string him or her up.’

  For a response, Reverend James fell to the ground, clutching his stomach.

  ‘Get him some water.’ Emily knelt by his side and felt his brow.

  ‘What’s wrong with him?’

  ‘I’m okay,’ said Reverend James, struggling to speak. But he clearly was not. He leaned over to one side and retched, vomiting up the contents of his last meal. His brow felt clammy and he looked feverish, and kept shivering even after we moved him near the fire and wrapped him in a blanket.

  He sat, mute, on the couch. It was clear he was going nowhere today.

  Instead of leading the charge to the hidden room, I had to wait in awful tension, anticipating attack. Reverend James was delirious, spouting Bible verses, pointing at me and Suzanne, and pushing Emily away when she tried to give him water to sip.

  ‘It’s all been too much for him,’ said Suzanne, ‘and me.’

  My stomach suddenly clenched with fright. ‘Was it something he ate?’

  Emily said, ‘Could be. Either some bug he picked up or food poisoning. If it’s food poisoning, it should pass through his system soon.’

  ‘Food poisoning,’ said Suzanne. ‘But we ate what he ate, and we’re fine.’

  ‘You prepared the meal,’ I said to Suzanne.

  She glared at me. ‘Meaning?’

  I shook my head. ‘I’m just saying.’

  ‘Do you think I–’ Suzanne gave me a look of pure venom. ‘After all we talked about. I trusted you! I–’ She stormed off into the kitchen.

  ‘Suzanne. Please. Stay here. We can’t trust anyone anymore. It’s nothing personal.’

  I found the aluminium ladder propped up against the back wall of the pantry. I pulled it out and hauled it to the living room. This would allow us to go up into the living room ceiling and into that recess I had seen from above at the end of the rail.

  But by afternoon, Reverend James had fallen into a feverish sleep on the couch. Emily mopped his brow with a damp cloth. ‘He’s burning up and dehydrated.’ She kept giving him sips of cold water, but most of the time this dribbled down his chin and he pushed her away.

  Suzanne hovered around the couch where he lay. ‘Will he be okay?’

  Emily nodded. ‘If it’s a normal case of food poisoning, yes, in twenty-four hours.’

  ‘We don’t have twenty-four hours,’ I said.

  ‘But,’ she added, ‘if it’s something more serious…’

  I did not want to go off again and leave him here alone. So we waited.

  I feared sabotage. I feared that this was his death sentence. Poisoning. That because he didn’t die on the rack, the murderer had devised another form of torture for him. Maybe one of the early Church martyrs in the Foxe’s Book of Martyrs had been poisoned on the tenth day of Christmas.

  Some hours later in the afternoon, he was sleeping more peacefully, but still not fit enough to move let alone climb into the attic. As it was getting dark, I resigned myself to holding out for another long night. What use was it that the pieces of the puzzle were coming together when we were still trapped here at the mercy of the killer?

  We stood in the kitchen that evening making supper. We were wary of the food now, but I took charge, searching for alternatives to the food that had been prepared for us. We were starving and had to get our strength up for the final assault, which would be, I decided, early the next day.

  ‘I’m not accusing you of anything,’ I said to Suzanne, who was still not speaking to me. ‘Just looking at every possibility.’

  To replace the pot roast designated for tonight’s meal, labelled and frozen in a Tupperware container, I found some cans of chicken soup, which I figured would be safe because they were sealed, had not expired, and on inspection, had not been opened and resealed. Emily gave the Reverend some dry crackers, but he could not hold anything down and could only manage a few sips of water.

  We served the soup in the dining area and ate cautiously. And we agreed that from now on, we would avoid the food left for us by the concierge. Just in case.

  I had to figure out the safest place to sleep. Every room had a trapdoor in the ceiling, and even though I had ripped out as many cameras as I could, there still might be more, and the murderer, or murderers, had access to any room they chose. I decided that my room was safest. So we spent the evening hauling mattresses into my room, then pushing the desk to the centre of the room and wedging a bed against the ceiling so the trapdoor could not be opened.

  Reverend James could hardly walk, but with two of us supporting him, he made it up the stairs and collapsed on a bed. Emily tucked him in. ‘Food poisoning is intense but short. Let’s hope that’s all it is and he’ll be all right in the morning.’

  Now that we were all inside the room, we shoved the heavy wardrobe in front of the door. While Suzanne was making her bed in the other corner of the room, Emily whispered to me: ‘Tell me about this plan of yours.’

  ‘It would spoil the surprise.’

  She pouted. ‘You still don’t trust me?’

  I pointed up. ‘I pulled out the camera wires I could see, but the room could still be bugged. Just trust me. Do you trust me?’

  ‘Of course.’ But the look she gave me told me otherwise.

  11

  Eleven pipers piping

  ‘Rafe, Rafe, wake up.’

  A grey light poured in from the window. Morning. Suzanne was shaking my shoulder. She looked like a ghost. Emily was crouched over Reverend James.

  I sat up. ‘H
ow is he?’

  Emily’s face was expressionless as she turned to me. ‘He’s dead.’

  I sat up. ‘My God! What happened?’ I immediately looked up at the trapdoor then at the door. Both remained secure, as we had left them.

  She shook her head, then opened his mouth and examined his tongue. ‘I was so stupid, I really thought it was just food poisoning. But his heart stopped. He has been deliberately poisoned, Rafe. With something powerful.’

  I reached over and took his pulse. He was stone cold. ‘Right in front of us.’

  ‘We couldn’t have done anything,’ said Emily. ‘Truly. He needed hospitalisation.’

  I swore. ‘The tenth day. Bang on schedule. Right under our noses. So there was poison in his food. But we were all in the kitchen. When could this have happened?’

  The way we looked at one another, I knew now that we all harboured suspicions of one another. Emily shot Suzanne a quick glance, Suzanne returned a hostile one, then they both stared at me. Any of us could have easily slipped cyanide into Reverend James’ food. I wished I could tell them what I knew, but that would have to wait. I was not sure of what I knew yet.

  Suzanne bit her lip. ‘Hey, we all helped make breakfast. And I swear, I’m not eating another thing here. Not now.’

  ‘Suicide is also a possibility,’ said Emily. ‘I mean he just saw his wife hanged, his flock tortured and murdered. And maybe he knew more than he was letting on. Maybe he took cyanide or something. Maybe…’

  I nodded. ‘He knew something, all right. But now he’ll take it to the grave with him.’

  ‘What do we do?’ said Suzanne.

  I considered. ‘We leave him here. Open the window to keep his body cold. And we go downstairs.’

  I dragged the dresser away from the door and, armed, we moved in a tight trio down the stairs and into the kitchen. Again, we went through the motions of a normal morning. I made coffee, being careful to use sealed coffee packets, bottled water and ultra-pasteurised milk in packets. We sat at the dining room table, opposite the mirror. ‘Not for me,’ said Suzanne as I poured her a cup. ‘I told you, nothing is touching my lips from now on.’ She glared at me.

  The Christmas tree still blinked its garish lights, and the tinsel sparkled in the firelight. ‘Can’t we take that stupid tree down?’ said Emily.

  ‘According to tradition, not until the twelfth night of Christmas,’ said Suzanne.

  I marched over and unplugged the lights. An eerie glow still emanated from the mirror, like an afterimage of the tree lights.

  ‘Look!’ Emily pointed at Reverend James’ place at the table. The mat was newly decorated with ten Sir Topham Hatt figurines from a Thomas the Tank Engine playset around a document. I turned on my flashlight to see a list of the Ten Commandments torn from a Bible, and a chilling Bible verse scrawled underneath in Suzanne’s handwriting:

  Their throat is an open sepulchre; with their tongues they have used deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips – Romans 3:13

  ‘Poison of asps,’ said Emily. ‘The killer is telling us how he did it.’

  ‘Snake venom under his tongue,’ said Suzanne.

  ‘Maybe not literally,’ I replied. ‘But the killer wants us know that Reverend James was poisoned.’

  ‘And so,’ said Emily to herself but so we could hear her, ‘the killer moves on, relentlessly, day after day, and we still have no clue who it is. What day is it today? The eleventh day?’

  Suzanne shivered and hugged her stomach. ‘The fourth of January. My day.’

  ‘He didn’t get Rafe or me,’ said Emily. ‘Suzanne, he won’t get you today. We can beat him.’

  Suzanne gave Emily a pointed look. ‘Or her. Or them.’

  ‘No one dies from now on,’ I said.

  ‘That’s what you said two days ago.’ Suzanne’s eyes were daggers. ‘You said you’d keep us safe. I don’t trust you at all. You said–’

  ‘Calm down,’ said Emily. ‘We need to all calm down.’

  Suzanne now lashed out at Emily. ‘Sure. Reverend James dies in the same room we’re sleeping in and you say calm down. I’m supposed to die today and we haven’t been able to escape this hellhole or stop the killer, and you say calm down. You and your smug little conspiracy, you and Rafe. I swear, I think sometimes–’

  I placed myself between them, but I could see in her eyes what she thought. ‘We’re all in shock, Suzanne,’ I said. ‘But we can’t lose it. Not now. I have a plan. I know what to do.’

  She laid her head on the dining room table and pulled her hands over her head. ‘I can’t take this anymore.’

  Was it just me, or did Emily also sense that Suzanne’s behaviour looked like a melodramatic performance? Maybe I was being ridiculously insensitive here. I had not taken her off the suspects list, not since the first murder.

  Suzanne took three long breaths, then sat up. ‘Sorry, guys. It’s really getting to me. Tell me what we can do.’

  ‘We need to see the modus operandi of this killer,’ I said. ‘The eleventh day. Let me read his sermon.’ I reached over to open Reverend James’ Bible and leafed through his sermon notes.

  ‘But if the Reverend is dead now, then he didn’t orchestrate all this…’ said Suzanne.

  ‘It doesn’t make sense, I know,’ I said. ‘I was sure Reverend James was behind all this, had planned this whole thing. He even confessed he had organised the twelve days to unfold like this. But now I’m not sure.’

  ‘What does his sermon for today say?’ said Emily.

  ‘The eleventh day of Christmas,’ said Suzanne. ‘Eleven pipers piping. Whatever that means.’

  ‘Eleven faithful disciples,’ I read. ‘And one traitor. One betrayer of The Twelve.’

  Emily leaned over. ‘Read us his sermon, Rafe.’

  ‘It’s not a good one.’ I skimmed through his notes. ‘Babylon. Eve. Seduction. Lilith. How women are temptresses and seductresses of men. A Biblical verse about some great whore committing fornication…’ I turned the page. ‘Temptresses, blasphemers, adulterers, Hollywood is the new Babylon, sex the new Babylonian religion. This is such shit.’

  Suzanne grabbed the Bible notes from me and peered at them, her hand shaking. ‘He always said Hollywood was like Sodom and Gomorrah. Like Babylon.’

  I took the Bible from her and slammed it shut. ‘We’re going on a treasure hunt,’ I said. ‘Get warm things on. We’re going outside.’

  Emily wrapped her cardigan tightly around her. ‘I thought we were going up into the ceiling.’ She pointed at the ladder propped up in the living room.

  Suzanne eyed me with distrust. ‘I don’t know. Why should we come with you?’

  ‘Because I don’t want anyone else to die, that’s why.’

  Through the window, the sun was a white Communion wafer climbing into the weak blue sky. The snow glowed on the ground. The valley was smothered in a deep blanket of snow.

  It would be all over soon. I could sense it. This was the endgame.

  ‘Where are we going?’ said Suzanne.

  At the entrance hall closet we pulled on warm clothes and jackets, plus hats, scarves and gloves, and headed for the front door. I gripped the axe. I would go nowhere now without this weapon. I expected the door to be locked, but it wasn’t. I opened it.

  The snow looked incongruously beautiful, glittery and white, and as the sun strengthened, I could feel warmth on my face. I took it as a promise. And even though it was well below zero, I felt it refresh my spirit. It cleared the mind.

  We stepped into the deep snow and shuffled around the walls of the castle.

  ‘Stay close,’ I said.

  I would not, could not, risk leaving any of them alone again.

  I located the fuse box at head level under the eaves of an overhanging gargoyle, a demon eagle perching on the edge. The door to the fuse box was open, and inside I spied fuses in neat rows and a wheel going around measuring electric current. Main switch. Up: on. Down: off.

  I opened the fuse box
and switched the main power off. And for good measure, I raised the heavy axe into the air, brought it down and smashed the fuse box.

  ‘Here goes nothing,’ I said.

  ‘What are you doing?’ said Emily, clutching my arm.

  ‘Are you crazy?’ said Suzanne. ‘We need power.’

  She looked at me, and in her eyes I could see her thoughts. I was the killer. I had led them all outside to kill them. She cowered up against Emily.

  But Emily, I was sure, was thinking the same about her. Who had served Reverend James food yesterday? Suzanne. It would have been easy for her to slip some poison into his food or water. Yet she acted so sincere, so afraid today. But the key word was ‘acted’. She acted so well in her movies, this role would be a cinch.

  Emily shrugged. ‘Great plan, Rafe. Would you mind telling us why you’ve just cut the power?’

  I huddled them close to me. ‘Simply, we have to render any cameras or electronic door mechanisms inoperable. The murderers need power to control things. And now, our next step.’ I led them back to the front door.

  Inside, the living and dining room and the kitchen were dark and foreboding. Embers glowed in the fireplace.

  I did not want to let go of the axe, so I directed Emily to place the stepladder underneath the square trapdoor in the middle of the ceiling. I watched both of them carefully for their reactions. ‘It’s going to be dark up there.’ I steadied the ladder. ‘We’re going on a ceiling tour. You first, Em,’ I said, indicating the steps.

  Emily held back. ‘Why don’t you go first?’

  ‘I’m going last. And I went up yesterday. It’s okay.’

  She shrugged. I held the ladder while she climbed.

  ‘Now just give the trapdoor a shove,’ I said. ‘And then go in. Turn on your flashlight, and move forward so we can follow.’

  She climbed up, pushed the trapdoor upwards and loosened it. It gave easily, revealing the dark, musty space above the room. She shone her flashlight into the void then climbed up.