A Time For Monsters

by Gareth Worthington

  Joe, on the other hand, had fully immersed himself in the fakery of it all. Rey and her mom had encouraged it. Helped him set up a handle, based on the name of a character of a vampire book—that had become a movie—they both liked. They assisted his flirting and would tell him what to say to these women scattered across the planet. Anything to divert the attention away from them. For Joe, the drama of it all had accelerated quickly. One day he’d taken all their savings and disappeared. A quick delve into his emails revealed he’d left for Ireland to meet a woman, one of his chatroom romances. He was to stay there for a few days. Rey had held out hope he would not come back—but he did.

  A few weeks later, the woman contacted Rey by telephone.

  Irene was her name. She was not Irish, but American. In fact, she lived in California and had only traveled to Ireland to meet Joe. They’d had dinners, exchanged devotions of love, and apparently fucked. And then he’d left, never to speak with her again. Irene was distraught, in tears on the phone. Why had he done this? Why didn’t he love her anymore? Why wasn’t he returning her calls?

  Rey was nauseated at the thought of anyone having lain naked under the man, suffering his bad breath and yellowing teeth, but his lies had been so complete and convincing that he had ensnared the poor woman. Rey had listened as Irene explained how he’d told her he was a software engineer who had been in a bad car accident and now lived from the disability payments, resulting from a broken spine.

  Lies. Incredible strings of fantasy.

  Rey had tried to tell Irene, but it seemed the phone was not as convincing as the internet, and her words were met only with tears and sobbing denial. Against Rey’s better judgment—she barely tolerated most other humans—she felt responsible for this wretched woman’s heartache, given Rey herself had helped Joe create his online lie. So, she’d agreed to meet Irene in person.

  It just so happened that Rey had needed to travel to California for a university project. She’d agreed to be picked up at San Francisco Airport by Irene and drive down to Santa Cruz. On the journey, Rey would explain everything.

  Irene was true to her word, waiting patiently in the arrival’s hall of San Francisco’s airport. Her wet, hope-filled eyes beamed out from a crowd of hundreds of people waiting for friends and family. Rey had sighed loudly and put on her best, I care face.

  On the long road trip to Santa Cruz, Rey had popped every rainbow-colored oily bubble of hope that Irene held regarding Joe Blackburn. He was not a software engineer, nor had he ever been such. Once in a while, he fitted vertical blinds in people’s homes for extra cash. When he could be bothered, of course. There was no car accident. There was no broken spine. He only had a car because the council had provided one so that he might ferry around his infirm father to the shops. He did have three kids—that much was true—but they hated him. And he cared little for them, too. Then, of course, there was what he’d done to Rey’s mother—a woman whose soul had once been delicate and beautiful and had been deformed and twisted into something sharp and sour.

  Rey’s words had seemed to drain the life from Irene’s face. By the time she’d dropped Rey at her hotel in Santa Cruz, the sun hanging low in the Californian sky, Irene had been heartbroken, distraught, and lost. Irene had driven away into the orange disc, like some Hollywood movie. To where, Rey did not know, but it was yet another woman ruined by Joe in a way that Rey wouldn’t have thought possible—love.

  Joe’s a multifaceted cunt, Rey thought.

  It seemed, though, his lies had won him yet another woman. This one he had run away with, all the way to Norway. An ex-stripper turned journalist—all blonde hair and huge tits. Another victim, as far as Rey could see. Unlike for Irene, Rey felt no sympathy. Why should she feel anything for these women who had such little self-worth they’d fall for any loser from an internet chatroom? Who the hell was that stupid? Rey just wanted him gone. He was someone else’s problem, now.

  “So, he’s flying there now?” Rey said to her brother, finally. “Norway?”

  Damien shrugged again. “I guess. Who gives a fuck? He’s going there with a black eye, though.”

  Joe, in some strange final battle before he left, had made the mistake of attacking Damien. He’d pinned Rey’s brother to the couch by the throat. Damien had warned him that when Joe let go, he’d better run. Joe hadn’t run. Damien had punched him square in the face, resulting in a shiner and, apparently, a fake heart attack. Rey wished she’d been there to see it. And now he was gone.

  The relief Rey expected to feel was not there. Instead, an emptiness lingered. Rationalization swam in her head. Was it because she had not been the one to see him on his way? Kick him out? Was she guilty of going to university, getting her degree, and spending increasingly more time away from home? Perhaps it was the fact she knew Joe had just dumped thousands of pounds of debt on her mom’s credit cards and loans he would never pay off. His infirm father who needed care would now be her mom’s responsibility.

  Why wasn’t she happy? Or sad? Or anything?

  “You okay, D?” Rey managed in the end.

  Damien didn’t reply for a while, then evaded the question altogether. “At least you can go now.”

  “Go?” Rey said.

  “To Manchester, to get your PhD.”

  Rey considered it. He was right. She’d applied for a PhD in Manchester. To say she didn’t expect to succeed would have been a lie. Rey was more than clever enough. She knew as much. Even without a master’s degree, getting on a PhD program was possible, if you could convince the university board you were good enough. Some months earlier, the six-person panel had been convinced within twenty minutes of meeting Rey. They’d never stood a chance. The issue had been whether she’d actually take the position, leave home properly, and be three hundred miles away. Now he was gone. For good. She could leave.

  “Where’s Mum and Riley?”

  Damien shrugged. “Dunno. Celebrating maybe.”

  That was likely true. In the last months, with Joe distancing himself in favor of his foreign stripper, Rey’s mom had reverted to a juvenile state—as if she’d reset to the time before she’d met her abusive husband. Of course, that meant she was now sixteen-years old again, and like all teenagers who went out on the booze, she often had to be carried home or pushed ass-first into the back of a taxi.

  At first, it had been fun to see her mother in a nightclub, dancing and drinking and laughing. Chatting with Rey’s female friends and even flirting with the male ones. Rey figured she deserved the levity. But soon, holding back her mother’s hair from Pernot-vomit had become tiresome. Why should she be the adult, again?

  Rey felt she should be celebrating, too. On this longed-for day, however, her heart might as well have been made of stone. She ached to feel something but didn’t. Her future lay ahead, her past now firmly behind. Her mother was free, and so were Damien and Riley. Yet, like strangers who band together to defend against a common evil, in the cold light of liberation, Rey could almost see the tenuous bonds between her little family strain under the weight of their own pain, with different coping strategies. Without Joe, who were they but fractured tortured souls, angry and vicious.

  There was no song for Rey now, no voice to tell her how to feel. So, Rey sat on her mother’s couch in silence and tried to quiet the voices in her head, screaming that she’d been screwed. There would be no justice.

  Oslo, Norway, 2016

  Rey trudged away from the last house, the final piece in her puzzle. The lingering piano note of the song to which she’d been listening faded away, leaving her with only the metallic stench of Leif’s blood filling her nose and throat. The stench could—maybe even should—have been the detective’s blood, but the old fucker had keeled over. Perhaps she should have finished him, made him the final piece in her gory masterpiece, but in the end, she knew that would screw the plan. Being hit by the car and adding the two youths to the tally in Tøyen had already veered her far from the path.

  Besides, she’d see
n the detective’s life. Unlike her other victims who either plodded happily along beating their wives or had moved on to a new life and suffered no consequences for their actions, Arne Huakaas’s life was quite pitiful—alone and detached from people who once loved him, living in a shit-filled rabbit hole. Rey escaping, getting away with her plan, would be a death blow for Arne that would last much longer. Drawn out and painful, for as long as his crappy heart kept beating. If he hadn’t already died on the apartment floor.

  With the song that had been playing in her ears now finished, Rey’s mind fell quiet. In the ensuing silence, her thoughts turned to the day Joe had left and her subsequent move to Manchester. Maybe it was because here and now she was completing her plan and could start her life over. Deliverance had come far too late, really. Joe’s leaving, nearly twenty years ago—that was supposed to have been the turning point for her. A new life in a new city, fresh dreams, and new friends. Instead, looking back, it had signified the slow descent into becoming the monster she was now.

  There had been little in the way of a goodbye when Rey had left Plymouth. She hadn’t even attended her own graduation. There had been no point, because in her mind, the bachelor’s was only a milestone to where she was headed, and she saw no need to celebrate one step on a long road. Besides, her mom had left the city some months earlier and moved to a town near London to be with her new boyfriend—a man she’d met in one of the chatrooms. Rey would have liked to say she’d protested, but she hadn’t.

  The three-hour journey to Manchester had felt more like six, ambling along with the countryside a permanent blur in the train window. For Rey, it hadn’t gone fast enough. She was going to be away from the violence, the crime, the insular people and moronic locals. Away from the memories and the pain. The smells and sounds. The air thick with trepidation. None of those things were supposed to haunt her life again.

  Rey glanced across the street for a car, and then briskly crossed over before finding the song in her playlist she wanted.

  Once bitten, she thought.

  The song she was looking for was “It’s Been a While” by Staind. It was the song she’d listened to on repeat all those years ago on the train to Manchester. Even now, she loved Aaron Lewis’s voice, his view of the world. For many people, the song was about a girl. Someone he’d left or abused and to whom he was apologizing. They were wrong. For Rey, he was singing to himself—a story of losing and then finding themselves again. Rey had spent so long fighting for her family, sacrificing her full potential—not leaving home for her first degree—to protect them. In the process, she’d lost herself.

  Rey shook her head, her heart now heavier than ever.

  Jiji had been on that train with her because she’d chosen the same university. Jiji hadn’t gotten a PhD, but she had wangled herself a masters. At the time, it had irritated Rey to no end. In the back of Rey’s mind, some empathetic notion had itched, a splinter of kindness reminding her that this girl was lost in her own way and that Rey was somewhat of a role model.

  “It’s gonna be fun,” Jiji had said. “Maybe we can get a shared house or somfin?”

  Rey had rolled her eyes, the itch scratched, and her irritation now in full force. “Thought you’d get a place with your boyfriend. Isn’t he following you up?”

  Jiji had looked sheepish. “Dunno. Don’t think so now. Had an argument, yano?”

  “Can’t be that bad,” Rey had said. Jiji was always arguing with whatever loser she was fucking.

  Jiji had given another embarrassed glance and then stared at her hands.

  Rey remembered grabbing Jiji’s sleeve and pulling it up to reveal a brown-purple ring around her wrist.

  “He didn’t mean to,” Jiji had protested.

  “They always mean to,” Rey’d said, then jerked her hand away. “Get your head out of your ass.”

  “Not everyone’s like you, Rey.”

  “Why don’t your parents do something?”

  Jiji had shrugged. “I dunno if they know. Or maybe they do, an’ just ignore it. Dad just rolls his eyes when he sees me come home cryin’. Mum just makes breakfast and offers me pancakes.” There had been a long pause. Jiji had sniffed, and said, “I do like pancakes.”

  They’d made the rest of the journey in silence.

  Manchester Piccadilly train station had felt huge.

  Rey’s neck had constantly been craned to the sky as she studied the high-rise buildings, many made in red brick. So different from the miserable breeze block of her neighborhood. Even Plymouth’s city center was no more than five-stories high. The buildings in Manchester were actual skyscrapers. Adult buildings.

  The university main building for registration was much the same—large and red brick with fluted columns and a feeling of adulthood. Rey had nearly raced along, Jiji tottering behind. They’d made the journey in ten minutes, perhaps a little out of breath. The registration hall had been chock-full of students. Minds like hers. Beyond higher education. Any Muppet could do a degree, but there were masters and PhD students—the top minds in the country. Future lawyers and doctors and engineers.

  Rey smiled, remembering how she’d thought she wouldn’t be beaten up for being intelligent. How nobody would tell her something wasn’t possible. Her less than lower-class status had evaporated the moment she stepped off the train.

  Rey had shuffled in line, fishing around in her handbag for the prospectus and registration info. The bag had been deep and had far too many pockets. Digging through the purse, she’d come across the KitKat bar, can of Fanta, lipstick, mirror, and a brush, before she had finally found the paperwork crumpled at the bottom.

  “Fuck’s sake,” she’d said through gritted teeth, attempting to smooth out the creases.

  She’d glanced up to see if her cursing had been a little too loud when her gaze had met that of a young man standing in another queue. The same queue Jiji was in. He had wavy brown hair and strong blue eyes. Rey loved blue eyes, a contrast to her own deep brown eyes that seemed to her dark and soulless. His had been bright and full of life. He’d smiled.

  Rey had quickly glanced around the hall. He had been, in fact, smiling at her.

  He’d bowled over, a broad smile on his smooth face.

  “Hiya,” he’d said, his voice a gentle tenor, thick with a Northern accent. Not Mancunian, not nasal. Something else. Something homely and safe.

  “Hi,” Rey had replied.

  “I’m Michael,” he’d offered.

  Are all Northerners so friendly? Rey had thought.

  “Rey.”

  “Nice to meet you, Rey.” His smile had broadened. “I’m here to do my masters, you?”

  “PhD.” And for the first time in a long time—perhaps ever—Rey had felt something in her chest. A flutter. A pain. A stab. There had been no music. Nothing to help her feign an emotion. The feeling swelling in her chest had been created by her alone.

  A small smile broke across Rey’s face, then quickly faded.

  Michael.

  The beginning of the end. Her shift from possibilities and light, to darkness. Her biggest regret. If she hadn’t chosen that path, maybe everything else would have been different.

  No point thinking on that now.

  Rey shook her head and trudged on, her mind now fixed on her exit package: new clothes, passport, and bag. She could have used it earlier rather than stay on the street. And now, in retrospect, perhaps she should have. Still, using it too early might have been a mistake. She needed to use the fake passport with another fictitious name at the last minute to ensure the police couldn’t trace her too quickly.

  Rey checked her watch. The flight left in three hours. She needed to collect the package, then get to the airport. That meant going back to the hostel. Hopefully, with the detective now a corpse lying on a bed of rabbit shit, she could make it back there without too much trouble and get the hell out of Oslo, never to return. Still, there was one more thing she could do to keep the cops busy. Rey pulled up a search engine on he
r phone and began looking for the webpage she’d seen in Arne’s apartment. Whoever that interested party was, they deserved a tip off.

  Oslo, Norway, 2016

  Arne woke with a start, ribs thrumming, heart barely ticking—but ticking all the same. He was alive. Bright light burned its way through his eyelids, painting everything a brilliant white. Blinded, he raised a hand to his head to feel for a dent in his skull, a mortal wound. There was none. Why hadn’t she killed him? Had she assumed he’d died from a heart attack?

  For a long while, Huakaas laid there, eyes closed. If he opened them, reality would come streaming in. Maybe he’d find out he was actually dead, and this was the afterlife. Maybe he’d find himself in the pit of hell, his soul to be tortured for all eternity. Did he even believe in that? God, the devil? An ultimate power to which he’d have to answer? If there was something like that, how would he be judged? A life-long pursuit of justice and apprehending monsters weighed against his own indiscretions—against what he’d done to Aslaug.

  “Ah, you’re awake?”

  “Huus?” Arne said, his voice cracked and was barely audible.

  “Here, partner,” Bjorn replied. “You’re damn lucky I came back to get my car.”

  Arne hacked out a cough.

  “Told you, you should stop smoking already.”

  Arne’s eyes began to adjust. Huus’s form slowly morphed into the semblance of a man. Wearing his raincoat and usual blue jeans and white shirt, the young detective seemed more chipper than normal.

  “A heart attack, old man. Fuck.”

  A quick glance at himself and the room revealed he was in a cubical lying on a cot. Rather than feel grateful that he was breathing, Arne’s mind decided to focus on the almost humorous fact he’d spent more time in hospitals in the last few days than he had in a decade. The last visits being because of her.

  “Can’t die on me now, we may crack this case yet.”