Read a Short Extract
Seven
.
.
Katie said, “Can you give me just a rough idea of how old these skeletons are?”
“From the tests I’ve done so far, which – as I say – are not at all conclusive, I’d say that their bones have been lying under Meagher’s foodstore for about eighty years, and possibly more. Long before John Meagher’s grandfather bought the property, and long before Michael Meagher owned it.”
“What about the dolls?”
“They’re all made out of linen, knotted and wound around like the funeral-windings of a mummy. The screws and nails and hooks are handmade, most of them, and we can probably date them very accurately indeed. Certainly their corrosion is consistent with them having been buried for at least three quarters of a century, and possibly longer.”
Katie said, “Have you ever come across any killings like this, ever before?”
Dr Reidy shook his head. “Never. As I say, there was obviously some ritualistic element in what happened to these women, but precisely what it was I can’t tell you. I never saw bones so methodically stripped off their flesh before. And I’ve never seen anything like these dolls. And that’s in twenty-nine years of medical jurisprudence.”
“So what do we do now?”
“My dear, I really can’t tell you. I’m going off to play golf in Killarney. You presumably, will be trying to find what kind of people could have committed such an idiosyncratic crime, and why.”
Nine
.
.
He came back in less than an hour. He didn’t go straight in to see her. Instead, he went directly to the kitchen and heaped his bag of groceries onto the Formica-topped table. “How are we feeling?” he called, but she didn’t reply. He filled the kettle and put it onto the old fashioned gas-stove, lighting the hob with a newspaper spill. Then he put away his can of baked beans and his packet of biscuits, slamming the cupboard doors. He hadn’t bought much in the way of frozen food: there was a refrigerator in the corner which rattled and coughed like a wardful of emphysema victims but only managed to keep food somewhere just below tepid.
He made himself a mug of instant coffee, and stirred it with an irritating tinkle. He could hear Fiona weeping quietly in the bedroom. On the wall beside the stove hung a yellowed calendar for 1991, with a picture of Jesus on it, entering Jerusalem in triumph. As he sipped his coffee, he leafed through the months. On June 11, somebody called Pat had died. On June 14, Pat had been buried. Requiescat in pace, Pat, he thought.
Eventually, he rinsed his mug and left it upside-down on the draining-board. Then he went back into the bedroom, and switched on a dazzling Anglepoise lamp beside the bed. Fiona flinched and turned her face away from it.
“Well, then! Sorry it’s so bright, but I have to see what I’m doing.”
“Please,” she sobbed. “I can hardly feel my leg at all.”
“Well, that’s good. That’s very good. From your point of view, anyhow.”
“You’re not going to hurt me, are you?”
He looked down at her with a thoughtful expression on his face. “Yes,” he said. “I probably am.”
“Can’t you give me something to deaden the pain? Aspirins, anything.”
“Of course. I’m not a sadist.”
“Then why?” she said, her voice rising in hysteria. “Why are you doing this? If you’re not a sadist, why?”
“There are things I need to know, that’s all.”
“What things? I don’t understand.”
“There are other worlds, apart from this. Other existences. Darker places, inhabited by dark monstrosities. I need to know if they can be summoned. I need to know if any of the rituals really work.”
“Oh dear God, why do you have to do it to me?”
“No special reason, Fiona. You were there, that’s all, standing by the side of the road. Fate. Kismet. Or just plain shitty luck.”
“But you don’t know me. You don’t know anything about me. How can you kill me?”
“If it wasn’t you, it would have to be somebody else.”
“Then let it be somebody else. Please. Not me. I don’t want to die.”
This time he said nothing, but left the room again, and came back a minute later with a mug of water and a brown glass bottle of aspirin tablets. He held the tablets out in front of her in the palm of his hand, as if he were feeding an animal, and she bent her head forward and choked them down, three and four at a time, crunching some of them between her teeth and swallowing some of them whole. All the time she was mewling and sobbing and the tears were streaming down her cheeks.
“Imagine that you’re going on a journey,” he said, and his voice became curiously monotonous, as if he were trying to hypnotize her. “Imagine that you’re going to be traveling not through some undiscovered country, but through the landscape of your own suffering. Instead of forests you will walk through the thorns and brambles of tearing nerves, and instead of snowy mountain-tops, you will see the white peaks of utter agony.”
He held the mug against her lips and she drank as much water as she could, even though most of it ran down her chin.
“I’ll do anything,” she said. “Just let me go, please. I’ll do anything at all.”
“You don’t understand, Fiona. I simply want you to lie back and experience what’s coming to you.”
Maybe it was the effect of the aspirins; or maybe it was shock, but Fiona suddenly stopped sobbing and lowered her head, and stared at the end of the bed with oddly unfocused eyes. Maybe it was despair – the realization that no matter how much she begged, he was going to kill her anyway.
There was a brown leather briefcase standing on the floor next to the cheap walnut-veneered wardrobe. He picked it up, and sat down on the side of the bed-frame, and opened it. Fiona didn’t take her eyes away from the end of the bed, even when he produced a case of surgical instruments, a length of hairy twine, and a small white doll fashioned out of torn linen, pierced all over with fish-hooks and screws and tintacks.
“This is a very ancient ritual,” he said. “Nobody knows exactly how far back it goes. But throughout the ages, its purpose has always been the same. To open the door to the other world, and coax some of its monstrosities to come through. Interesting isn’t it, how men and women have always wanted to play with fire… to risk their lives and their sanity by calling up their worst nightmares? They could let their demons sleep in peace, but they insist on prodding them into wakefulness, like naughty children taunting a mad dog.”
Fiona remained in a trancelike state as he opened up the flat, rectangular case of surgical instruments. It contained two bone-saws, a selection of scalpels, and a shining collection of stainless-steel knives. He took out a long-bladed scalpel, closed the case, and then stood up again.
“I don’t know if you want to pray,” he said.
Copyright © Graham Masterton 2013