The Beresford

by Will Carver

  It distracted the old lady. She was bored of The Conroys now. There was no sympathy for any of the parents who came plodding to her door, hoping for answers, their faces downturned and melting towards the floor with sorrow and dismay.

  ‘Your wife is right, Mr Conroy, there is nothing for you here. I’m sorry that your daughter did not contact you to say that she was moving on, but she must have had her reasons. I wish you luck in your search.’

  Mrs Conroy was now back in charge. She ushered her husband through the door and pushed his lower back in order to force him in the direction of their car. Before the door closed behind her, Mrs Conroy turned back and looked the owner of The Beresford in the eyes.

  ‘I see you, demon.’

  Then she pulled the door closed and followed her husband.

  Aubrey was dumbfounded by the drama. What was going on? Why had the woman said that to Mrs May? What did she mean? Where had Blair disappeared to? And why did Mrs May seem not to care? It was all very suspicious.

  Mrs May tried to push it all to one side. Hogwash.

  ‘Blair was here to escape the life her parents had set out for her. She was escaping them, dear. It’s no wonder that she didn’t tell them where she was going.’

  Aubrey wasn’t entirely convinced.

  ‘We do attract the occasional drifter. Nothing to concern yourself with. How are you settling?’

  ‘It’s lovely, Mrs May. You really could charge a lot more, you know. It would stop people skipping out on their deposits, I’m sure.’

  ‘Oh, no, dear. I like to keep the rooms filled. I think the pricing helps turn things around quickly when somebody moves on.’

  ‘That’s your prerogative. I only answered the door to those people because I was waiting around for a delivery and was looking at the library.’

  ‘A delivery?’

  ‘Yes. Just some furniture and my new computer. To set up an office.’

  ‘My, you do work fast.’ Mrs May was genuinely impressed.

  ‘No rest for the wicked.’

  At that, Mrs May remembered that she had left Gail in Abe’s apartment.

  TEN

  Gail was confused. She awoke to the sound of a key turning in the lock. It took her a few seconds to realise that she was not in her own apartment. Then she realised that she had fallen asleep in Abe’s place and gone through the entire night.

  Then she panicked.

  She was in Abe’s bed, and the door was being unlocked. He was coming home. He would catch her.

  Then, wait…

  Abe was dead. Abe was in the bathroom in a body-parts pyramid. Wrapped in black bin liners.

  Deep breath.

  Then Mrs May was shuffling down the hallway. Gail could recognise the old woman’s trademark heel scuff.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘You left me here on my own.’

  ‘Yes. But why are you still here? In Abe’s bed?’

  Gail explained that it was hard work sawing a man into pieces. And it was harder to then clear up afterwards on her own. With no help. (She laboured this point.) She had waited and waited, but she was tired. She was pregnant and dealing with the fact that she was now a murderer. She needed to lie down for a second. To take stock. She must have closed her eyes for a moment.

  ‘Where is Abe?’

  ‘In the corner of the bathroom.’

  Mrs May summoned Gail to get up and follow her with a sharp, almost undetectable nod of the head.

  It was sparkling in there. Almost sterile. Abe was exactly where Gail had said, neatly piled up.

  ‘Are you sure this is your first time?’ Mrs May quipped.

  Gail did not know how to respond.

  ‘How many?’ Mrs May pointed at the pyramid.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘How many pieces did you cut your neighbour into?’ It was somehow matter-of-fact and blunt.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. Twelve? Maybe fifteen.’

  ‘Okay. So here is what you are going to do…’

  The old lady had Gail where she needed her. What she was saying was in no way a suggestion, it was instructional. It is what Gail had to do. No questions. No quibbles.

  Gail was told to take three of the packages, it didn’t matter which ones, get in her car and drive. Drive away. One road, one direction. Keep going until it was time to refuel. Then she had to get rid of those packages. She could bury them, burn them, throw them in the trash. They could be disposed of together or separately, they just needed to be as far away from The Beresford as she could get.

  The next day, she would take three more packages and a different road in the opposite direction. It didn’t have to be the exact opposite, just not the same. If she went north on day one, she could go west on day two.

  Repeat until the bathroom was Abe-free.

  ‘Are you sure this isn’t your first time?’ Gail gagged back in her landlady’s direction. Both comments were out of kilter with the situation. Gail was not herself.

  Mrs May joked about her age once more, saying that she was ‘a hundred-and-fifty years old, there’s not much I haven’t done before’.

  They stood in silence for a moment, staring at the pyramid of body parts, then at each other, neither knowing what else to add to the conversation apart from a slight shrug of the shoulders.

  Gail was given a key to Abe’s place and told to keep her comings and goings as discreet as possible. Because Aubrey was new and she seemed different to them.

  Them. Like they were the same kind of person. Killers and conspirators alike.

  ‘It shouldn’t take you more than five days to shift everything. But don’t get cocky. Don’t get careless with haste. If you are left with four pieces, you don’t get rid of them all. You take three pieces one day and then you drive the final piece in another direction on the last day. It will stop you getting caught. Okay?’

  Gail agreed.

  Mrs May told the pregnant murderer that when she is finished, she is to drop the key back immediately, though she is more than welcome to take the three-part painting in the hallway as it could be worth some money one day.

  ‘Now, if you don’t mind, I will leave you to it, because I need a drink.’

  It was only partly true, Mrs May was going to have her midday tipple but the truth was that she had to conserve her energy because she had to make an important prayer.

  ELEVEN

  Mr Conroy was the safest driver on the planet. Too safe, in fact. Sometimes he would drive so cautiously, it put him at risk. But, after visiting The Beresford and learning of his daughter’s apparent disappearance, that God-fearing, law-abiding, rearview-mirror-checking man found out what it felt like to push his foot down on the accelerator a little more.

  Back at The Beresford, Mrs May was in the dark, her candle lit, her red wine poured, her focus honed. This was going to be exhausting. She would not be crying for compassion as she did with young Abe Schwartz, nor would she be cathartically spitting vitriol as she had with Sythe, though her anger was ready to overspill.

  This was not about catharsis or compassion. It was something else altogether.

  It was worse.

  A call for destruction.

  She rang her bell.

  ‘What is wrong with you.’ Her knuckles white from gripping the sides of the passenger seat, Mrs Conroy yells over the engine – in the wrong gear – as her husband speeds around another bend. He was driving more erratically than usual but he was still too cautious to take the car on the motorway, preferring to stick to the back roads where traffic was sparse.

  ‘I’m getting us home. We need the community right now. They will help us to find Blair. They know her. They care for her. They won’t stop until she is back home safely.’

  ‘I agree, but we need to get home safely ourselves, first.’

  ‘Oh, behave. I’m not breaking any records here.’

  ‘What did you say? Behave? What has gotten into you since that house?’

  ‘Do you want Blair back
or not?’ This was most unlike Mr Conroy.

  ‘Want her back? I didn’t even want her to leave. You’re the one who said that she needed her independence. You were so sure she’d come back to us.’

  ‘Oh, so it’s my fault she’s missing?’

  He had to hit the brakes harder than expected, having misjudged the severity of the chevrons on the next corner.

  ‘She’s not missing. Nobody said that she was missing.’

  Her husband rolled his eyes as he screeched around another corner.

  Mrs May was sweating and breathing heavily. Working herself into mania.

  Hiss. Spit. Roar.

  She held the image of her enemies clearly in the forefront of her mind. She did more than just spew her hatred. Her soliloquy was direct in its intent. She wanted injury, pain, sickness or even mutilation.

  Mrs May prayed with everything. She was deliberate and calculated in her wording. Her enemies were fools. And she would not stand for it.

  Bile. Wheeze. Crackle.

  The old lady was tired and fading. She was sick of the relentless cycle. One in. One out. Death and secrecy. Nobody able to leave. She was bored of the visits from naive families. She was angered by the disillusioned parents knocking on her door and blaming her. How dare they?

  Mrs May was aggrieved by almost everyone, but it was the parents that enraged her, and that was her focus. They were the ones who would revive her venom and feel her wrath.

  It built into movement. Her arms and legs flailing, her voice a warble with frustration. It developed into uncontrollable shaking until it seemed she was vibrating on the spot, heating up. Everything amplifying into a crescendo of noise and movement and revulsion.

  Building. Always building.

  Mr Conroy misjudged another bend in the desolate back roads. When he skidded, he panicked, and instead of hitting the brake, he pushed down harder on the accelerator. He overcorrected the skid to the left, then the right, then the left again.

  When the Conroys hit the tree, the driver took the worst of it. Mrs Conroy’s legs snapped at the femurs as the seat on the old car flew forward just as the dashboard crumpled back into her lap. She also suffered a heavy concussion from the windscreen.

  Mr Conroy was not so lucky. He wasn’t made of the same material as his wife. He was softer. The impact on his side of the car as it hit the tree, causing a sudden stop, was not strong enough to counteract the effect of physics on his body as his organs continued to move forward into the ribcage that was halted by the seatbelt.

  Luckily for the old man, the whiplash cracked the top of his spine and knocked him out so that he could not experience the pain of his broken ribs, serrated organs and internal bleeding.

  A small mercy.

  Mrs May fell back against her sofa, covered in sweat and panting.

  It was done.

  She finished her drink.

  Mr Conroy stopped breathing.

  TWELVE

  Things are different.

  One day, you are producing television sermons for your father, a pastor in a small Christian town. The message is received beyond the borders of your home and you are content with helping. The next day, your father dies and you take over his position. You have no formal religious training but you have some drive and some ideas.

  Soon, you are performing the sermons yourself. And the message is being broadcast to more than one hundred countries. You have millions of people watching you each week, and you have many more millions in your bank account.

  And a bestselling book about positivity and living life to your full potential.

  And public-speaking engagements to go along with your publication.

  And television talk-show appearances.

  And breakfast meetings with world leaders.

  You praise God for your substantial wealth and do not believe that you should feel guilty about it. You believe that Heaven must be the most amazing place because, if this is what being alive on Earth is like, you are in for a fucking treat when you die.

  Then there’s the other angle.

  You get out of bed at three in the morning. Twenty-three minutes later, your wife finds you down the hallway, screaming, ‘Pray for me, pray for me, the Lord is taking me to Hell.’ You decide to take this story around the globe. Share your experience with other Christians.

  Before you know it, you are flying to a country you have never been to, and there are a thousand people waiting to hear you speak. You tell them that it was an out-of-body experience, not a near-death experience. You come up with lines like, ‘You cannot live in this body with memories of Hell.’ And it doesn’t really mean anything, but it gets the crowd onside. You can follow it up with something like, ‘The Lord took away the fear from my mind but left me with the memory so that I could share the story.’

  You are very clear that it was a vision, because only in a vision can a true Christian see Hell.

  Tell the crowd that there is a lack of fear of the Lord today. People are no longer God-fearing. They push the boundaries, they play with the rules. Remind them that God hates sin. That there is punishment for sin.

  Back this up with an encyclopaedic knowledge of the Bible. Quote scripture by chapter and verse. Keep throwing out names and numbers.

  You’ve drawn them in.

  Now scare them.

  You were pulled from your body and ended up in a cage in Hell. This is not metaphorical or allegorical, you were there, fully awake. The walls were filthy and there were bars. The Bible mentions the bars. There is a tremendous heat. You should be dead. You can’t move. You are face down.

  You are not alone in that cell. There are two demons. Twelve feet tall and reptilian in appearance. They pace around you, cursing God. One of them picks you up like you weigh nothing and throws you into a wall. The pain should have been excruciating but God blocked it. Though he let you feel some so that you could return and tell your story.

  They cut you with their claws but there was no blood because there is no life in Hell.

  Keep saying Hell. And Demons.

  Say Mark or Ezekiel or Revelations, then add some numbers. This backs it all up.

  Two more demons walk in. One crushes your head flat but you can’t die.

  God was there. He was a light in the darkest of all darknesses. A place that is totally evil. A place with no love. They try to rip off your arms and legs, but God pulls you out and sets you down next to a pit of fire one mile wide. Brimstone rains from above. There are screams. Millions of deafening screams from within the pit. The sound penetrates your very soul.

  Remind the audience that it is real fire. You were there in Hell. The real Hell. Not the metaphor. And people can believe you because you describe it the way it is described in the Bible. Forty-nine verses talk of Hell and nineteen of those mention fire. So there must be fire.

  So it must have been real.

  Pad things out with the horrendous smells of sulphur, because that is what everyone thinks. Say that maggots fed on you.

  Get your book deal. It is not a self-help book, but it brings everyone around to the same message.

  You get wealthy, too. And like the televangelist, you should not feel guilty about that. If your words are true, you should feel no self-reproach.

  Only if the truth of that night was that you got up at three, drunk out of your mind, went to go to the toilet, collapsed in the hallway and shit yourself, only to be discovered twenty-three minutes later by your wife, only then should you feel guilty.

  Perhaps then, if you believe in Heaven, you will understand where you are going.

  The problem is, Hell is not fire and brimstone. Hell is not south of Heaven. It is not demons and cages and scalding and whipping. Not for everyone.

  Hell is loss and isolation and the inability to talk.

  Hell is repetition and indolence.

  Hell is war and intolerance and disease.

  Hell is here.

  Hell is now.

  It does not have to be a pi
t of fire filled with thousands of people, it can be another person or a bad decision or a building.

  This person. This decision. This building.

  THIRTEEN

  Mrs May’s music was driving Aubrey insane. She was playing a list of songs she had put together and named, ‘Jazz and Reading’, because it was so inoffensive to the ears that she could work while it played in the background, and even read a book if she wanted. But there was a tinny noise coming up from the landlady’s place that took the jazz to an avant-garde place that was detrimental to progress.

  Aubrey smoked when she was stressed. She was cerebral and scientific and God-fearing, but nobody is without vice and Aubrey’s was the cancer sticks. Her father’s had been junk food and expensive red wine. Her mother’s was the pills she popped to regulate her mood and appetite and irritable bowel. Her brother took a little bit from each pile.

  She didn’t know that the best place to smoke undetected was out the back by the burn can. If Abe had won the battle with Gail, he’d be out there right now, setting fire to some metatarsals while numbing himself with weed. That’s how his events had panned out.

  Kill someone.

  Burn them in the garden.

  Meet your next victim while you’re disposing of the last one.

  But Abe lost. His story was over. He was now in the lobby. Part of him, at least. His left arm, right shin and entire pelvis had been stuffed into one of the local supermarket’s bags for life and some blankets had been laid across the top. Gail was carrying them out to her car, ready to take the long drive north as had been suggested.

  Aubrey came back inside, calm but smelling of cigarettes.

  ‘Hi Gail.’ Gail was startled, she had hoped to get out with nobody noticing. She stopped. ‘Where’d you put the rest of the body?’

  ‘What?’

  Panic. Sweat. Stutter.