by David Evans
Colonel James Fallon took his retirement and set about creating a critical rehabilitation unit in the countryside outside Chiang Rai. He agreed to multi-million-dollar contracts with the US government to rehabilitate soldiers, and South Vietnamese persons of interest to the US government. The camp was also open to those who had problems and could afford the costs to undertake the treatment.
Kim had no idea what she had signed herself and Sebastian up for. At first, she was bewildered, but she wanted her other half of the $500 bill. Plus, she had promised she would do anything Hank wanted within that month.
Hank handed over the mother and child, explaining she was his wife, and that was all the attending physician required. Besides the thousand dollars for each of their treatments.
Hank flew to Bangkok, and enjoyed the services of several call girls over the next two weeks, as Kim begged and screamed to be released; screeching and begging for heroin. Sebastian cried and cried unmercifully. Although only three years of age, Sebastian would never forget the pain, or the experience, throughout his sordid life.
When Hank returned nearly four weeks later, he was more than pleased to pay a $1,500 bonus for successful completion. Kim was dressed in a blue and silver sarong and looked more like nineteen than thirty years of age, as she had when he had met her. She was clean, and she was calm.
Doctor Charlton was a young ear, nose, and throat consultant from Cambridge, had volunteered twelve months of free service through the World Health Organization to help the clinic. He undertook operations in the camp to rebuild septums in noses, or repair holes in windpipes from inhaled drugs. Doctor Charlton had screened Sebastian and felt sorry for the little Eurasian, drug-addicted boy with the harelip.
Hank was delighted to see Sebastian's harelip was now only a tight scar running from the repaired lip to the nose. While it was apparent Sebastian had undergone surgery—he looked different—he would not stand out so much in a crowd. Hank looked at the boy and saw cold, brown eyes staring back from the little boy's improved face.
Hank was a chemical engineer, a respectable and upright career with excellent remuneration and benefits. He was comfortable, with a healthy bank balance, all of which he explained to Kim. She heard the words 'marriage' and 'moving to England', where Hank worked.
Better to have one obese, sweaty man mounting her than the hundreds if not thousands she would have had to sleep with over the coming years. She would accept Hank's marriage proposal. She was clean, and she deserved to be looked after for once in her life.
Hank took a three-month sabbatical from work; his company were quite helpful over the matter. After all, Hank was an excellent engineer; so what if he needed to get some Thai call girl to marry him? The company thought Hank would be a complete salaryman when he was married. Hank had wanted to ensure that his new possessions, Kim and Sebastian, were clean and presentable before turning them into his new family, which he did in October of 1976.
Chapter Two
Kim was used to paddy fields from her hometown, and the stinking streets of Patpong. It was a significant shock to both her and Sebastian when, a few days after the marriage, they landed at Manchester Airport in the United Kingdom. The taxi sped eastwards along the M62 motorway towards their new home in Southport, on the outskirts of Liverpool. Once a bustling holiday destination, it had now grown quieter and more sedate, abandoned by the tourists who preferred the sun of Spain to the rain of northern England.
It was not the colour of Sebastian's skin that alienated him from his childhood peers and teachers at the infant school. It was his nature. Most children have their tantrums and take it out on other children. Teachers often turned a blind eye to such outbursts. But Sebastian had wild fits of temper which far exceeded the teachers' level of tolerance.
Sebastian's eruptions were met with a stern telling-off, and on occasion, a cane to the bottom. The teachers had no idea what Sebastian had gone through in his formative years. To them, Kim was a respectable mother. They didn't know he was the son of a reformed prostitute and reared on heroin.
While Sebastian's IQ was up and beyond that of his peers, his social skills were not. It was clear to him, even at that age, that the teachers did not seem to have the same affection for him as they did for the other children; not that he cared.
Another legacy of the prenatal addiction he had inherited from his mother was a compulsion to pull out and eat his hair. The doctors had put a name to this compulsive urge; they called it trichotillomania or trichotillosis.
Children of all types can be caustic and cruel to someone with an affliction, and Sebastian's peers were no different. It had started when he went to kindergarten, soon after he had come to the country, and the torment continued into junior school. They saw the remnants of his harelip, the tight scar running from nose to the top lip. More apparent were the tufts of black hair interspersed with bald patches where Sebastian had, over many months, tugged at his hair till it parted from his scalp, and then he ate the coarse threads. His compulsion had left him with a head full of scars and scabs. It got to the point where his hair would never grow back again in certain areas.
Sebastian was not one of those children who crumpled and ran to Mummy at the first sign of bullying. It was not in his nature to go to the school and seek help from people in authority, those who were supposed to stop this type of behaviour, but seldom did. Sebastian was a shadow child in the school, with neither friends nor confidants. He kept himself to himself. Sebastian was living in a dual world. There were the typical school relationships, and there were his, which were mainly fantasy. It was inevitable that the two worlds would collide someday.
One of the children who liked to belittle Sebastian was Geraldine Mills. She was a beautiful little girl with red hair, who also happened to be a bundle of trouble, a remnant of her Gaelic ancestry. Geraldine said what she thought, regardless of any fallout, be it a teacher or, more often, those classmates who were not in her little clique.
"Tufty, scabby, train-line lip," they would spit out at Sebastian, along with racial abuse.
Sebastian was not angered or perplexed by the taunts, which predominately emanated from Geraldine or one of her many friends. Sebastian was unemotional; he could detach himself and almost watch over the events as if he were an observer. The confused and angry boy did not blame the other children, as he disliked himself intensely, and often wished he had never been born. While immune to the insults, the bullies stuck out as people he notably did not like, and ones he wanted to hurt. Just the thought of it gave him pleasure.
A few short weeks after Sebastian began to give in to his fantasies, he wanted more realism. One day, he put a dead, dissected rat in the school satchel of Mike Mayer, a boy in one of Geraldine's cliques, and put it back in his locker. He waited excitedly to the side of the cabinets at the end of the school day and enjoyed the screams when the boy opened the bag and proceeded to wet himself.
It was time, Sebastian knew, to elevate the game to the next level. Mitzie was a black Labrador puppy that had been brought to school by Gwen Childs, a particular friend of Geraldine's, and one of Sebastian's chief tormentors. The puppy had extracted the oohs and ahs of the gathering schoolchildren. It brought out a universal outpouring of love that Sebastian found strange; in his country, it was a delicacy. He crept into Gwen's garden and had the puppy in his arms and away in a matter of seconds. He returned it that night and laid it out on their lawn. They never did find the puppy's head.
Hank had noticed that Sebastian had some strange oddities about him from an early age, but he also had talent. He could play Hank's small upright piano and pick up tunes just by listening. Hank insisted Sebastian go to music lessons every Saturday.
Hank enlisted Sebastian in a karate class held each Tuesday as well. He was wise enough to know a Eurasian boy with limited social skills may well need to defend himself as he progressed through the schools in the area.
Sebastian took to the piano and astonished his musical tutors with how quick
ly he could pick up tunes from listening, as well as his grasp of reading music. It was not long before he was singing in his local choir.
Sebastian's piano teacher, Miss Jenkins, would generally limit her lessons to the genre of Elton John or John Lennon, with Imagine being her favourite song. She made an exception for Sebastian. After hearing an advert on television, he gave a passable rendition of Bagatelle in A Minor, played at a moderate speed. The piece was not excessively challenging, but there are some slightly tricky runs in the last half. Sebastian played it note-perfect. From that day on, she introduced him to a variety of pieces from classical composers: Bach, Mozart, Schumann, Chopin and Beethoven.
Sebastian's all-time favourite was Wagner, who happened to have been Adolf Hitler's favourite composer as well. He could play the piano section of Das Rheingold, which is the first opera in the cycle of operas of Der Ring des Nibelungen. By the age of nine, he was starting on the second Siegfried.
Sebastian's talent enraptured Miss Jenkins, and very soon she was giving extra sessions, for which she did not charge her normal feet. She saw past his inept social skills and felt he expressed himself through his music.
Sebastian played in front of his school and won the school's talent show. Geraldine amended her taunts to, "Sissy, Chink, and scabby dog." She had no intention of relenting from her harassment.
Hank McKenzie decided to return to the United States. It was not an easy decision, but one he thought necessary, after a young girl from Sebastian's school went missing.
There was the intense activity of the police investigation; the questions and suspicion not only fell on the classmates of Geraldine Mills, but her parents, grandparents, and neighbours. This unfortunate episode changed the balance of the community, and trust between each other had turned toxic.
The year was 1981. The McKenzies had been in the country since 1976. Sebastian was ten years old, and by this time, completely bald.
Geraldine had failed to arrive home after school. Six hours later, the men of the area had been willingly pressed by the police to search streets, common land, and agricultural land; anywhere the child might be.
Several days later, and with Geraldine still missing, the interviews began. The first interviews were held in the school, with the children from Geraldine's class. Shortly afterwards, the known paedophiles, child killers, and drug dealers in the area were targeted. The police then interviewed parents of her classmates, followed by a further week of re-interviews with anyone who may have had a problem with her.
Following initial inquiries, it did not take long for the local constabulary to work out that Geraldine's peers had mixed feelings for her. She was popular amongst her small, close clique of friends. To others, she was an out-and-out bully. The list of interviews with children with possible grudges was a long one.
Sebastian was interviewed twice, along with his parents, as he fell within the group considered to have been bullied.
A month after Geraldine's disappearance, the police were no closer to solving the case or finding the body than they were on day one. She had just disappeared. One of the main problems for the police was the area. Surrounding Southport was arable farmland, so, in essence, there were thousands upon thousands of acres to search.
Hank had decided enough was enough. England was on the slide. He had thought this a safer haven than the USA, but where America went, Great Britain soon followed. Hank applied for the post of senior biochemist in the San Diego operation and was quickly accepted. It was not up for discussion. Kim and Sebastian would have to follow Hank's wishes. At first, Kim was frightened of the move. Sebastian was nonplussed, not at all interested in where he lived. He was pretty sure a different country, a different culture, would not make him any more responsive to people or their feelings.
They arrived at the southernmost city on the west coast of America, San Diego. Hank had taken out a three-year lease on a detached wooden house not far from the city's famous zoo, and the peripheral Balboa Park. The park was full of museums and natural gardens. In no time at all, Hank and Kim settled down very nicely into the area.
Hank had ensured that Sebastian enrolled with a new music teacher and signed up to one of the many self-defence classes springing up all over the city, thanks to the actor and martial artist Bruce Lee.
Sebastian joined a new school, but the same old problems trailed him. It did not matter that the school was full of Hispanics and Mexicans who had immigrated the few miles from the border to San Diego. He was some kid from Vietnam. He was the enemy, Viet Cong; it did not matter to the children that it was a different country, a different culture.
His trichotillomania had been a matter of concern to doctors and psychiatrists over two continents. None could modify the compulsive addiction that had control over Sebastian. As he was entering puberty, he found new tufts of hair to remove and devour. Sebastian would never have pubic or body hair in his life, for as it came through, he plucked it out, and after time, it never grew back.
Sebastian was twelve years old and was walking on the Cabrillo Bridge in Balboa Park near the San Diego Zoo when Hank decided to treat him to a McDonald's meal. This decision from Hank, apart from either a chicken or hamburger, would be his last on this earth.
Ed Huberty, from across the bridge, had decided that this day would change his life forever. He needed to express himself, and for that, he needed to ensure that there would be plenty of people there. Just before taking the bus to the zoo area with a haversack full of weapons, his wife asked him where he was going.
"Going hunting. Humans," was Huberty's chilly retort.
Sebastian had opted for the cheeseburger and French fries, and Hank went with the chicken burger. The first sign of trouble was when the door flung open, and the girl behind the counter seemed to explode in a mist of blood and guts. Huberty had begun his killing spree.
There was only one way out, and that was past Huberty.
"Slide along the floor and get to the toilets and stay there," Hank ordered Sebastian.
Sebastian crept into the bathroom and then locked himself inside the cubicle, sitting with his feet off the floor, hugging them to his chin as he sat on the toilet pan.
Sebastian stayed within the cubicle of the bathroom in McDonald's as the massacre continued. The semi-automatic weapon pumped out its deadly cargo. Once the ammunition was spent, the definite boom of a Winchester pump-action 12-gauge shotgun drowned out the screams.
Sebastian wondered with no fear or alarm if he would die that day. Would this be his last day on earth? If it were, it might well save lives in the future.
Sebastian had the Walkman portable cassette player that Hank had given him for his birthday. He loved the idea of listening to music on the move, in any situation, and as the shots rang out in the McDonald's, he put his headphones on and listened to Gotterdammerung, the fourth opera in the cycle.
The carnage on the other side of the toilet awakened something in him. Sebastian blocked out all the current, horrific events and placed the earphones of the Walkman on. He went back to that day six months prior in England; to that day that would shape the rest of his life, should he survive today.
He had listened to the same rendition of Gotterdammerung those six months prior. It was when his child-sized frame and limbs had strained to slide the heavy cover from the septic tank. And where he placed Geraldine Mills in her final resting place.
He remembered the same potent section of the tape, the smell of methane gas before finally easing the bag which contained Geraldine's body through the maintenance hole.
***
Sebastian had enticed Geraldine Mills to the woods behind the school by sending her a letter from Chris Coleman; everyone knew she had her eye on the school football captain. The note simply said: "Have been watching you for some time, would you like to be my girlfriend? If the answer is yes, meet me at Langton Woods near the pond at 4:30 pm after school. Come alone. Chris C."
So, it was her fault she was dead. She had not been
dragged here screaming; she came of her own free will. Geraldine was like his mother, a little bitch. This was fate, thought Sebastian.
The lake was more of a pond than a lake. It was small, no more than fifty metres by twenty metres across. The lake was covered on three sides with thick foliage, and the western side had a clearing with a small bank to the water's edge, made up of mud and stone. It was a popular meeting place for children by day, and lovers at night.
Geraldine was dead three seconds after she got there. Sebastian had seen her arrive and waited in the foliage until she was no more than a body length from him. He sprang out of the foliage, and she began to turn instinctively to see what had caused the noise. It was already too late for her; she didn't see the hammer hurtling down towards her head.
Geraldine slumped to the ground; the claw of the hammer wedged between in the top of her skull. The blood loss was minimal, as he left the implement in situ.
As she lay there, Sebastian thought that it had been too quick, too easy. He would have enjoyed it more if she had suffered like the puppy he had beheaded. He had wanted to see her eyes as life departed.
Sebastian did not think insults had driven him to kill her; he was going to kill someone, somewhere, sometime anyhow. She was on his radar because she had a big mouth and was female.
He had not expected the release, the intense rush as the dopamine and adrenaline fuelled a high that swept over him from the moment he killed her. His hands shook as he felt her lifeless body, as the elation increased.
He would have liked to open her up, experiment on her, but time was a problem; he would have to account for his whereabouts, he was sure, when this all blew up. He also knew they would drag the pond in the woods for her body. He had seen enough murder movies to know waterways were always searched for bodies.
He had stolen a large canvas bag from the school the previous week. A group had come back after doing their Duke of Edinburgh Bronze outdoor award, and it had been easy to lift one from the passageway as they had a debriefing in the hall.
