by Luca Veste
He was close enough to me that I could smell the sweat and expensive aftershave mix of him.
“Why did you come here?” Chris continued, a mark across his face, a shovel in his hand. He laid it down on the ground and crouched over me. “I didn’t want you to see this.”
“What…what’s going on?”
“If you had all just let me deal with this, nothing would have happened,” Chris said, his voice exactly how I’d always heard it. No darkness, no evil in it. Normal. “I just had to take care of the ones who were going to say something. Not you. Not Nicola. Not Alexandra.”
“Who are you?”
“I’m your friend,” Chris said, and I felt his hand on my shoulder. “I wish you hadn’t come here. It would have been okay.”
“Nicola?”
He looked away quickly, and I could hear something approaching emotion in his voice when he spoke again. “I don’t want to talk about that.”
“What have you done?” I tried, strength returning to me in stages. I still couldn’t move, but I knew why now. I could feel the ties binding my wrists and legs. They kept my body in place. “Where is she?”
“I said I don’t want to talk about it.” His voice close to my face, my ears ringing suddenly with the force of its scream.
I tried to breathe in and out. Calmly. There was no calm. Not there. My insides felt as if they were being churned around and my heart was crashing against my chest.
There was no way out from this.
“You killed her,” I said, louder now, as my voice came back little by little. Word by word. “You loved her and you killed her.”
“Stop.”
“How could you? Who are you?”
“I said stop.”
When the blow came, it was almost in slow motion. A crunch of something unseen against my body exploding into a billion stars of pain. I cried out, but I couldn’t hear it. My vision went dark again. It returned quicker this time, and Chris was still next to me.
“I didn’t want to do this,” he said, softly again, like the Chris I knew so well. “This isn’t what was supposed to happen. I thought we could deal with all of this.”
“Why? I don’t understand…”
“You’ve never understood, Matt,” Chris said, talking over me as I continued to try to work out a way out of this. “You thought everything was okay when we were being treated like shit at every turn. When we were being forced to be people we weren’t. All those people out there who think they can treat us like we’re nothing. I couldn’t take it anymore. I was going to explode. You were always able to shrug it off, but I never could. So I found a way out of it. I found a way to feel better.”
“Tell me then,” I spat out, turning my head to face him. His eyes were bloodshot and dark. The red candles flickered around us, and I could smell wax and blood. “Talk to me. Don’t I deserve that at least? What happened in those woods? What happened to Mark Welsh?”
He sighed and stood up. I watched him walk away and then come back, something in his hands. Outside, I heard rain fall onto a corrugated iron covering above our heads, and the wooden structure creaked and moaned in response.
“I’m not who you think I am.”
I stopped myself from saying anything, but I wanted to scream in response. Twenty-five years of friendship and I didn’t know him.
Of course, I did, on some level. Had missed the signs, but read them all the same.
“I always thought the Candle Man was a ridiculous name.”
And there it was. Finally, I could see what had happened. No Stuart killing Mark Welsh and being discovered. Then covering it up by faking his own death. Tattooing another body, as if that was ever the likeliest option. No son of a serial killer we had murdered in the woods.
No Candle Man.
Only my friend. Only Chris.
“Why?” I said, and it wasn’t enough. It would never be enough. “Why would you do this?”
“I need a release every now and again. That’s all. There’s nothing wrong with that. I’ve learned to keep myself under control, but sometimes…sometimes I need more. Every now and again, that’s all. It’s no big deal. Always people that deserved it. I get what I need, and they get what they deserve.”
I tried to follow his twisted logic but failed. Tried to accept what he was telling me and failed again.
“Do you remember that night a year ago?”
I croaked a response, which he took as an agreement.
“The way Michelle spoke to me. To all of us. And Stuart, standing there and taking it. For you, it was nothing. An argument, quickly forgotten. That’s because that’s who you are—you’re a pushover. You accept the unacceptable. You respect the disrespectful. I don’t. I can’t. After something like that, I need to do it. I can’t live with the anger inside me. It has to come out; otherwise, I can’t go on.”
“Mark Welsh…”
“I saw him earlier that day. He barged into me and Nicola and didn’t apologize. Spilled our drinks everywhere. I followed him around after that. Watching every step he took. After Stuart and Michelle argued and divided us, I found him. I knew where he was camping. I took him into the woods. It would have ended there and no one would have been the wiser, only I was interrupted.”
“William Moore,” I said, picturing the farmer walking through the woods with his fishing gear. That was the weapon he had. A hook of some kind, fighting for his life against us. “He saw what you were doing.”
“It was an unfortunate thing. Stuart had heard me leave though—that was even less fortunate. He came looking for me, and it all became chaotic. I managed to get away from the farmer, but he came across Stuart and thought it was me. I didn’t have time to do anything. Thankfully, you all came too and it made things a little more manageable.”
“His body?”
“That was me. I moved it before you came back, so it wouldn’t be discovered. It would have been found where we left it. I couldn’t have that. It didn’t take me long. When you went back to look for your wallet, you almost stumbled onto where it was, as a matter of fact. I went back later and gave him a proper burial, close to the road. A few others over the years are in those woods. In fact, I heard about the festival when I was on another trip down there. Then, there was the man’s son… I buried him with his father. I got lucky. No one knew who they were. I sold the farm to a nice guy named Jim, and that was it. It was a mess to deal with, but I dealt with it. Just like I always have.”
My mind refused to accept all of this—confusion reigned within me, as I tried to comprehend what he was telling me. It didn’t make any sense. There was no part of me that thought Chris was anything like this.
That there was evil in him.
He was just my friend. How could he be…this?
“I thought it was all over,” Chris continued, quieter now as he moved out of my eye line. “Then, Stuart starts poking around where he wasn’t needed. I wish it hadn’t gone the way it had—and in the manner it did—but I had no choice. He was always suspicious. Kept asking questions about where I was when he left the tent. Then, he called me and asked to meet me. I knew why. He wouldn’t listen to reason. Wouldn’t hear me out. It was…it was an accident.”
“You killed Stuart.”
“It wasn’t supposed to be that way. I didn’t even hear the train coming. I wanted to deal with it in a different way. He fought with me and then…and then it was over. I almost went under with him, but I got out of the way in time. If he had just disappeared, maybe he would have been the only one. If I’d had more time to speak to him, I could have ruled everyone else out. I couldn’t be sure that he hadn’t said anything to Michelle though. That’s when it all fell apart. Now, you all have to go. You all know too much. I have to protect myself.”
I could hear sadness in his voice, but I didn’t believe it. I moved my head, so I coul
d see him again. He was six feet away, his face in shadow as the candlelight burned around me. “You said you wanted to go to the police. We can still do that. I can help you.”
He chuckled, but there was no humor to it. A sad sound in the silence. “If only it were that simple. I wanted you to go to the police. I would have disappeared. Now, I have to do something I never wanted.”
I tried to move again, but it was no use. I was stuck there, and I knew this was it. I had no option left if he wouldn’t listen to me.
“You were my friend, Matt,” he said, coming closer now, and I could see the knife in his hand. It glistened as the low light caught it here and there. “I want you to know that. You were always my friend. I…I just have to do this.”
I could see a tear forming in his eye, rolling down his cheek as I opened my mouth to speak and he shoved something down my throat. I mumbled a scream from behind it as he raised the blade above me.
“I’m sorry,” he said, his breath hitching and breaking. “It has to be this way.”
I screamed as the knife came closer. Felt the blade across my neck. Then, I screwed my eyes tight, tensed my body, and waited for the darkness to descend.
Forty-Three
I remembered being in that place before. The house where I’d found Chris burying Michelle. Where he had already buried Nicola, I imagined. And countless others probably. Twenty-five years earlier. A summer holiday with Chris and his family. We would go up the nearby hill and watch the sun go down together.
Throw rocks and pebbles into the abyss below.
We had called it a cliff, but it wasn’t that, of course. We were in the middle of nowhere, so there was no coastline. It was simply a long drop down, as the hill came to a point, rather than a gradual drop on the other side. A strange feature of this countryside.
We would sit there and imagine jumping off. Laughing together about it. Working out how we would survive. What we could do.
He told me he would like to watch someone try to do it. Maybe push someone off just to see what it was like. I remembered laughing, thinking he was joking.
That memory was the one I had now.
I almost felt the knife enter my body, I was so ready for it to happen. I braced and tensed and hoped that it would be quick and as painless as possible. Screwed my eyes tightly shut and wished for it to be over.
I couldn’t take it anymore.
The only fear I had was the after. The silence I would hear and live in for eternity.
Only, there was no pain.
There was no after.
I opened my eyes slowly and heard Chris’s cries of anguish. I tried to move, but I was still groggy and my body took an age to respond. My hands were tied. Literally.
“I can’t do it,” Chris whispered, talking to himself. “Why can’t I do it?”
I wanted to feel relief, but I knew I had only bought myself a little time. Eventually, he would pull himself together and be able to finish what he started. He was a killer, after all.
I tried not to laugh at my situation.
“Chris, we can stop this,” I said, trying and failing to move myself closer to him. “I’ve known you most of your life. I know this isn’t you…”
“That’s just it,” Chris sniffed, shaking his head and stopping me from continuing. “It is me. This is what keeps me going. If I didn’t do the things I do, I wouldn’t be here. I just never thought I would have to hurt people like you. People who have always been there for me.”
“Where’s Nicola?”
Chris shook his head again, more forcefully this time. “I can’t talk about that. I won’t talk—”
“Okay, okay,” I said quickly, wondering where her body was. Whether she was dead already, like I feared, or whether I still had time. The way he spoke whenever he mentioned her name made me think I was too late for that. “We don’t have to talk about her.”
“I thought you would be easier,” Chris began, but then stopped himself. He stood and picked something up from a shelf above me. “She’s been calling you for the past hour. Alex. Or Alexandra as you always called her. I’ve always wondered why that was. Why you had to refer to her as something different from everyone else? It never made sense.”
“This can end now, Chris. Mate. Just listen—”
“I think it’s a control thing,” Chris continued as if he hadn’t heard any interruption. “Like, if you have just that one single thing that you own—a name for someone—then it’s enough for you. No matter that you can’t control anything else in your life now. You still have that one thing. I don’t know. Maybe I’m overthinking things. It just…it never made sense to me why you wanted to be my friend when no one else did. Why all of you wanted to be my friend. I was so scared you’d wake up and realize one day that it was a mistake that I never brought it up.”
“You’re a good man,” I said, wishing I still believed that. Surrounded by the smell of death and red candles. There was no good there. “This is just a mistake. You can get help and stop this…this part of you. I know you can.”
Chris chuckled softly to himself. “Don’t you think I’ve tried to stop? I haven’t killed as many as they say I have online, but there’s enough of them. I can’t go back. There’s no help for me.”
“Wait…”
“I can’t kill you, Matt. Not like the others. But you’re not leaving here. You can stay and keep Michelle company. I’m sorry.”
I tried to say something more, but Chris moved quicker than I could react and then there was an explosion of pain across my chest. The knife in Chris’s hand came back into view and it was slicked red with my blood.
“Just something to get the ball rolling,” he said quietly. He had something else in his hand. “I hope it doesn’t hurt and that you’re asleep when it happens. I remember that place in Blackpool well. You wouldn’t stop talking about it for days after you came back. I’ll make sure she doesn’t suffer.”
“No,” I managed to get out, but my mouth wasn’t working properly. My body wasn’t either. The pain began to dull to a screech, but it was still there. Pounding. Pounding. Alexandra. Chris. Stuart.
All of them. Pictures in my mind.
“Goodbye,” I heard a voice say—Chris? Michelle, back from dead? Alexandra come to help me? I wasn’t sure.
Then, there was only silence.
And my blood. Dripping to the floor, like wax from a candle.
I came around in stages. I was lying on my front, and for a moment, I thought I was lying in bed. Listening to classical music, or TalkSport, or an ASMR video, or some boring podcast about American politics.
None of those things.
I was on hard ground. Not soft mattress. I was in hell, rather than safe at home.
I had to free my hands.
My mind had decided to wake up first. My body, on the other hand, was less willing. It didn’t want to move. It wanted to stay where it was and let more blood escape. Let it all go. Just lie down and wait for it to be over.
No. We’re not doing that. We’re getting up and going after him.
I grunted with the effort, but I managed to move my unwilling body around until I was sitting up. Every movement was agony. I needed to stop the bleeding from the slash across my chest, but first I had to free my hands. I could feel the cable ties digging into my wrists. My legs tied together at the ankles were the same. My shoes had disappeared at some point—probably removed when I was tied up, I imagined. I wasn’t sure.
My head was still pounding. Concussion, I assumed. The world spun with every movement, my stomach churning along with it. I tried to take a few deep breaths, think of Alexandra, and ignore the fact that, only yards away, Michelle was buried in a freshly dug hole.
Somewhere in my muddled mind, that last thought broke into an idea.
I shuffled slowly across the dirt floor, glancing over my
shoulder and seeing the glint of metal in the candlelight. Kept going, as my nausea subsided and the jackhammer in my head diminished a little. Reached the shovel Chris had used to bury Michelle and tried not to collapse at the weight of that image.
I had to keep going. I had to keep going.
I had to…
It took me at least five minutes to make my way to the shovel leaning against the wall. Then at least double that to hack my way through the cable tie with the edge of it. Finally, my hands came free, and I instantly put them to my chest. Put my hand up my T-shirt and carefully felt along the wound, wincing at every touch.
It wasn’t deep, but blood was thick on my fingertips when I withdrew my hand. I picked up the shovel and had my legs free after a little more effort.
I allowed myself a minute’s rest—my head resting against the cold brick. Tried to keep my eyes from falling shut again and, when that became too difficult, cut the rest short with an image of Alexandra in my head.
I was probably already too late.
I placed a hand against the wall and rose to my feet. I wobbled a little, and gravity tried to take me down to the ground again, but I managed to keep myself upright.
The car may as well have been in another country. It didn’t matter. With each step, my mind cleared an iota more. Adrenaline kicking in and helping me for once.
I wanted to be back at home.
It was safe there.
I made it to the car somehow. I barely remembered any of the short journey to it, but I could see darkness in the sky above and realized I was still holding the shovel in my hand.
My keys.
He’d taken them.
I almost fell to the ground then. Screamed at the sky and wondered if I had the energy to reach the top of the cliff behind me and throw myself off it.
I was too late. It was over. I was at least thirty minutes behind Chris, and I had no way of getting to him in time. Of getting to Alexandra in time.
It was over.
I thought back to a year ago. The week before the music festival, when everything was perfect. Alexandra and I, moving into the house, so happy, planning for a future we’d always wanted. A future that would be filled with contentment and pleasure. Children and companionship. Love and laughter.