Beast

by Matt Wesolowski

  Mr Chambers told me he only employed Solomon as it seemed the young man had a genuine passion for local history.

  —What was he like as an employee?

  —Hmf. Good. He was what I wanted.

  —Which was…?

  —Which was someone who left me alone. Someone who didn’t constantly ask silly questions. Just got on with it. Yes. He just got on with it. Did his job. He did all the house clearances; came out in the van, did all the lifting.

  —House clearances?

  —Yes. When the old folk pass on, we get all their books. Solomon would go and do that. He’d spend the afternoon in some old dear’s attic, loading all the dusty old books into the van and then he’d bring them here. Sort them.

  —Did you ever notice anything troubling about Solomon Meer? Was there anything—?

  —The lad spent his whole time among the books, man! That’s what he was interested in. The books! Spent his whole time reading about Ergarth. Couldn’t get enough of the old stories. It was like he was searching for something. He’d stay late, after I’d gone home. Sometimes I think he slept in the shop. He’d found his place.

  —That’s interesting. Do you know what he was searching for?

  —Anything to do with the bloody Ergarth Vampire. The Beast from the East. I used to tell him it was some tale made up by the Victorians, but he wouldn’t have it. The lad wanted to read anything he could get his hands on about vampires.

  Mr Chambers tells me that Solomon was quiet and hard-working. Yes, his appearance was quite dishevelled but he just got on with it, liked to be left alone. Mr Chambers says he does not know and does not care about Solomon’s vampire obsession. He says he doesn’t want to be drawn into ‘all of this nonsense’ and says that ‘books are hardly evidence of murder’, but he does express his sadness for the Bartons.

  I feel that there’s not much more down this particular path. The link, however, between the legend of the Ergarth Vampire and the circumstances surrounding Elizabeth Barton’s death cannot be ignored. I ask Amirah what she knows about the assertion at the trial that Solomon Meer believed that Elizabeth was a vampire. This is something I can find little about.

  —I don’t know, for sure. I wouldn’t be surprised though. He never shut up about vampires in school; he was obsessed with all that sort of rubbish. I remember feeling so happy when we did Frankenstein instead of Dracula in English!

  —Did you hear him mention Elizabeth in connection with vampires?

  —To be totally honest, no. I didn’t hear anything about that until after they killed Elizabeth, and even then it just sounded like the sort of thing he would have said at school to sound edgy. You see, that’s what it was about: ego.

  —How do you mean?

  —That’s why he did it. That’s what I think, anyway. It was never about vampires. He just couldn’t stand her being more popular than him.

  —Really? Solomon more popular than Elizabeth?

  —Yeah. That Dead in Six Days video he did…

  Solomon Meer’s ‘Shopping Trolley Sledge’ video, which he made and uploaded for the Dead in Six Days challenge, had more views and likes than any of Elizabeth Barton’s early videos, but soon enough her channel dwarfed his in terms of views, likes and subscribers. Was this really motivation enough to kill her?

  —You know what I think? I think that whole bullshit about a ‘prank gone wrong’ was just made up by their lawyers to get them a lighter sentence. Everyone round here knows they did it on purpose. She was way more popular than all three of them and for good reason.

  Amirah is quiet. She sucks the remnants of her iced coffee through her straw and thinks for a while. I feel our time is more or less up here. A member of staff is cleaning the table behind us rather vigorously and has given us a couple of strange looks.

  —Like, I think those three were just jealous, they were the total opposites to Elizabeth – where she was nice and good, they were horrible and evil.

  —I’ve heard that Elizabeth had begun doing some charity work – setting up a foundation for addicts and the homeless in Ergarth.

  Amirah looks around and beckons me forwards to look at something on her phone: older pictures from Elizabeth Barton’s Instagram account.

  —Yeah. She was. It was a bit of a secret project she was going to unveil, but she never got the chance. It would have been amazing too; she was shooting videos for it up at the Vampire Tower.

  Amirah shows me a short clip on Elizabeth’s Instagram. It’s filmed inside Tankerville Tower and is dated August 2018. There are only a few seconds: a panoramic shot before whoever’s operating the phone turns it back to face Elizabeth, who winks; #somethingscoming is captioned below. I suddenly feel a coldness in my fingers. Muscle memory perhaps; that terrible, fluttering shape.

  —She was building up to it, you see. She was so good at this sort of thing. She began with the #givingmondayback appeal. That really took off.

  Amirah shows me a number of photographs of Elizabeth crouched down, usually in the doorways of shops, with smiling homeless people. No spice zombies in sight, though.

  —This was her whole thing. Like, #givingmondayback was funny because Mondays are shit, you know? But she’d always go out and give what she could to people in need – money, food. I took these ones.

  Amirah visibly glows as she shows me more of the photographs: Elizabeth Barton handing over a steaming coffee and a Fellman’s pasty into grateful hands, patting a homeless man’s dog; it wears a red bandanna around its neck.

  —She made a lot of money from YouTube, but she also gave so much back. She was a beautiful soul. People like Solomon Meer and the rest of them would try and bring her down, tell her she loved herself, but they would never have thought of doing something like this.

  You see Elizabeth used her popularity and her fame for good. Solomon Meer could have done something after his challenge video got big. But did he? No.

  —And you’re saying those three killed her because she was getting the attention they felt they deserved.

  —Something like that. I don’t know. I really don’t. I think you have to look into them to understand that. None of us knew. None of us who loved Elizabeth could understand why they’d do something like that.

  There’s a question I have to ask Amirah before I leave. I feel like I have everything I came for otherwise. According to Amirah’s account of what went on in Ergarth in 2018, Elizabeth Barton was gregarious, popular and selfless – and in Amirah’s view, a local celebrity. Many others share Amirah’s belief that Elizabeth could have found herself in the upper echelons of YouTube fame, had her life not been cut short. This sort of popularity did not go down well with three of the town’s misfits, especially Solomon Meer, according to Amirah. The missing piece to this view is the obvious parallel between Elizabeth Barton’s death and the Ergarth Vampire legend. I want to follow up on this soon. For now, I want to ask Amirah one more question. I write it down on the napkin:

  —Why do people think you had something to do with Elizabeth’s death?

  Amirah slumps in her chair. She looks utterly defeated, and I hope she is not going to burst into tears, as this would attract even more strange looks from the staff and other customers. Amirah seems to hold it together though, and after looking around, swallowing a few times, she finally manages to speak to me, her voice choked.

  —My grandma and granddad came to England from Pakistan. But I was born here, in Ergarth. My family are from Ergarth. But even so, when you’re the only brown face in a sea of white … it’s hard. When Elizabeth let me take some photos of her for Instagram, when I was in her videos, it finally, finally felt like I … I dunno, like I belonged. It’s proper sad that, isn’t it?

  When Solomon Meer came along, finally it wasn’t me who was the outsider, it was him. But now it’s all different again. I just want to get out of here, go to uni, never come back to this stupid little town with its stupid little rumours and stupid vampire story.

  But even though I
was part of that ‘Snowball Fight in Choudhury’s’ challenge, even though I did it with everyone else, the colour of my skin means my friendship with Elizabeth meant nothing. Look.

  Amirah looks around and then shows me another photograph on her phone. It’s the outside of her father’s shop. Both windows are broken and red paint has been sloshed all over the door.

  —They think that because of that challenge, I wanted Elizabeth gone. I guess that’s one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you and be on the podcast. I wanted to show how much I loved her, how much I miss her, how I never wanted any of this. It’s been two years and I’m still in shock over what they did to her. We’ve lived in this shitty little place all our lives.

  See that? We got up at three a.m. and cleaned it off. So no one would see. It appeared the day after Elizabeth’s body was found. That’s how fast people turn around here. Like I say, you’d better watch your back.

  I ask Amirah who she thinks it was that committed this act of vandalism, but she shakes her head and begins packing up to leave. I understand now why she’s no longer active on social media and I wish there was something I could say that would help.

  —Are we done now? Do you have what you need?

  —I think so. Thank you so much for your time.

  Amirah makes a hasty exit.

  It troubles me that we finished the interview on such a downbeat note. I also wish I could have talked more to Amirah about what she saw in Ergarth Dene; although I wonder whether that would have told me more about Elizabeth Barton’s death.

  It feels to me that the vampire story has morphed into something else entirely.

  School uniforms appear as dribs and drabs of students amble past the fountain in the town square, some on scooters, some scrolling through their phones, some shoving and laughing with friends. I wonder how much the idea of online popularity means to each one of these students. Certainly, everything is online these days and the young have a huge added pressure to curate their lives to an almost impossible ideal. As Amirah says, you never know who is watching.

  ‘Who locked Lizzie in the tower?’ I feel the question should really be ‘why?’

  We know that Elizabeth was hugely popular. From the way Amirah spoke of her, it seemed that Elizabeth Barton was someone to aspire to. She was the perfection that everyone craved. We’ve also learned about the three convicted killers. George Meldby and Martin Flynn seemed like wayward souls ensnared by Solomon Meer. From the trial and Amirah’s interview it certainly seems that Meer was the brains behind the whole operation, which makes me wonder what interest, if any, the others had in killing Elizabeth. Was it about power? Were George and Martin simply ‘orbiters’, their adoration of Elizabeth Barton manipulated or indeed ‘weaponised’ by Solomon Meer?

  Solomon Meer’s motive, though, has never been fully explained. I feels like there has to have been more than jealousy behind it.

  What has this graffiti calling card asked of the world? ‘Who locked Lizzie in the tower?’

  Like Ergarth Dene, there are paths, bridges and impasses throughout this complex case. We may be wandering towards a dead end, a dark corner or a ruined mausoleum.

  I have been Scott King,

  This has been our second,

  Until next time.

  DISD CHALLENGE: Day 3 | Lizzie B

  478,452 views. Feb 28, 2018

  * * *

  Lizzie B

  3476 subscribers

  * * *

  In four days, I’m going to die.

  A vampire’s going to kill me.

  I’ll be dead in four days’ time.

  Good afternoon and happy … whoa there, someone’s got a loud car engine … There it goes … byeee! Yeah so happy hump day on this Arctic sort of snow-covered, freezing, Christmas-card day in blooming February! I mean, why couldn’t this have happened at Christmas, right? It’s not a lot to ask for. I mean, Christmas Day was just sort of weirdly warm and a bit grey. Right now, it’s like Siberia out there.

  I’m wearing all the snuggly cardigans today. I was going to wear this hat; isn’t it so adorable? I found it on the sale rail in the kids’ section of H&M and I just had to.

  I’m staying in the rest of the day now. I went into town for a bit, and I’m still thawing out – my toes are still cold! I was going to buy a load of Christmas decorations in the sale, just, like, to keep this whole Christmas theme going if the weather’s decided it’s Christmas in February, but it was just too cold and too sad. Everyone’s just miserable out there. I texted a few people and they’re at work and hating it, so I just thought, like, no.

  That’s why I’m going to extend #givingmondayback, because we all hate Mondays but those who don’t have anything hate it even more, so let’s make sure we’re giving back on a Monday. If you get a coffee, get an extra one and give it to someone who has nothing!

  Oh yeah, I didn’t say – the queue in Starbucks today was just like, totally ugh, so I went in this little local place instead. The guy behind the counter totally knew who I was, and he gave me an extra coffee for free for #givingmondayback. So you see, it’s working. You can do it too. Have a look at my Insta for the pic!

  So thanks for all the love and comments about the last ‘Dead in Six Days Challenge’ video! So much love, you guys!

  ‘Snowball Fight in Choudhury’s’ has had the most views and likes I’ve ever had! Thanks so much guys. It was so much fun! Total chaos, total laugh, lots of smiling, happy faces, and sometimes it’s just so nice to do something random like that. My poor hands are still cold. I’m glad you liked the music and it took aaaaages to edit with all the speeding up and stuff, but it was totally worth it, right?

  Not gonna lie, ickle bit of the old controversy in one or two comments. Come on, guys, don’t bicker. Anyone who’s anyone knows I’ve known the Choudhurys, like, since I was little, and they were all totally cool with it. They loved it, in fact. They’ve always been nice to me, so you be nice to each other, OK? No one’s got this far in the challenge yet.

  So that was day two of the Dead in Six Days challenge. Now we’re moving on to day three. If you still don’t know what the Dead in Six Days thing is, well, I did a whole explanation video, which you can find in the links below, so give it a tinkle and I’ll see you in a mo!

  I have decided. This snow is not going to stop the challenge. No way. The challenges are going to get harder now; harder and harder, until I meet Vladlena the Vampire on day six. But you’ll all be with me, won’t you? I’m hoping to do, like, a Facebook live or something on day six, but it all depends; we’ll see.

  Let’s get to the bit you’re all waiting for shall we? Did Vladlena get in touch? Did she send me a new task? Let’s find out…

  Just looking through my phone here; I need to delete some pictures and stuff cos there’s, like, no space at all. OK, here we go…

  Oh my God, so I get a sort-of compliment from Vladlena! Wow, thanks, babe, you’re so kind! ‘Well done’, it says, ‘but if you really want to die in six days, you’ll do something better with the next one … “Liberate the Meat”.’

  Okaaaay, I think you’re getting a little saucy, Vladlena! Still, she’s stepped up her game, so I need to step up mine too. This is where I need you too, guys; I need you to like and subscribe, cos this next one is going to need more likes than the other two.

  I’ve already got an idea of what I’m going to do for this next challenge; it’s going to be daring, it’s going to be something that no one’s ever seen before! The stakes are getting higher every time.

  ‘Stakes’; see what I did there? Sorry Vladlena!

  So, you know what to do – smash that thumbs-up, subscribe, jangle the bell icon, do it all! Tell your friends, tell your mam, tell your nan. In fact, get your nan to subscribe, and she’ll get a notification when ‘Liberate the Meat’ goes up – and you will too! I don’t think I can invite participation for the next one as I need a specialist – in fact, I’ve got someone in mind…

  I’ve got four
days left to live!

  See you next time!

  Episode 3: Statues and Snowmen

  —They were on a conveyor belt. I never thought it would be like that. I saw loads of stuff in there that I’ll never forget. Living creatures wriggling and struggling as a fucking rubber-sided conveyor belt moves them forwards like in a factory or something. It’s like they’re nothing but meat. Honestly, it was like something from a dystopia movie or a Phillip K. Dick book. There was just this fucking brutal juxtaposition of animal and machine. It was a proper powerful image; such a fucking hideous indicator of our species’ contempt for the world and the creatures in it.

  There were sheep and lambs on that conveyor belt. Mams and kids. They were supposed to be stunned. They had this little pen, a little metal room called a ‘stun box’. Ha! That’s a joke as well. ‘Stunned’. Legally, you have to stun them, unless you’re Halal – and don’t get me started on that level of cruelty. Here, they stunned one in twenty, if they could be bothered. Their stunning pen was one guy with these giant metal tweezer things chasing around a terrified sheep. Then they’d shove them into a ‘restrainer’, which was a conveyor belt that squeezes them in so they can’t move. Just their little heads sticking out the top.