by Alex Bell
‘Get out,’ I said, my voice barely above a whisper.
As if released by an invisible spring, all three of them scrambled for the door and a moment later they were gone.
I am a madman, lock me away. What had I almost just done? God, am I really that unstable? It was simply that he had made me so angry, hurting Casey like that. He was a threat to her so I wanted to get rid of him. But killing him was the first way I had thought to do so and that appalled me.
I think if I’d been by myself I would have run up to my apartment, locked all the doors, turned the lights off and just rocked back and forth for hours with my arms wrapped over my head, alone in the dark. But Casey was there and she needed me, so, with a great effort, I pulled myself together. Stifling the familiar nausea, I wiped the blood off my hands, brushed the hair out of my eyes and walked over to her where she was still sobbing in the corner by the stairs. She screamed when I touched her and lashed out at me instinctively, hardly seeming to know who I was.
‘Hey!’ I cried. ‘Casey, it’s me. It’s Gabriel. It’s okay, they’ve gone. They’ve all gone. They won’t be coming back.’
I wasn’t expecting her to turn and cling to me as she did, crying into my shirt, her body trembling against mine. I was taken aback for a moment but I recovered quickly and put my arms around her, speaking to her softly while the hysteria died down. She hadn’t been badly hurt, although there would be a black eye later. But she had been frightened, of course, for herself and the easily hurt baby she carried. As I held her I instantly began to feel calmer about what had just happened. Casey had been in danger and I had protected her and that was all there was to it. None of those boys had been seriously hurt and, who knew, perhaps they would think twice about attacking anyone else in the future. Perhaps they would stay at home and do their schoolwork instead. Perhaps their lives would be better for what I had done!
The aura around Casey was golden today and, as I held her, it expanded to encompass both of us. I gazed in amazement at it, over the top of Casey’s head, wondering how she could be unaware of such beauty. When she had calmed down at last, I picked up her bag from where the muggers had dropped it and took her back upstairs to her apartment. She had stopped crying but she was still shaking and when I asked if she’d like me to stay with her for a while, she accepted at once.
Casey still looked deathly white so I made her sit down at the small kitchen table. I boiled the kettle and made tea for her. I gave her a frozen bag of vegetables to press to her already swelling eye. I looked after her. She belonged to me and I was going to keep her safe. I put a mug of tea before her and sat down at the other side of the table.
‘Why didn’t you just give them the bag?’ I asked quietly. ‘Why didn’t you just give it to them?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I panicked. I just panicked. Our rent was in there.’
I sighed. ‘Look, Casey, if anything like that ever happens to you again, just give them what they want and then run away as fast as you can. It doesn’t matter if you’re handing over your whole life savings; just give them what they want. It’s not worth your life.’
Casey nodded. ‘I know . . . It’s just that nothing like that’s ever happened to me before. My parents have a lot of money. We always lived in a nice area . . .’ she trailed off.
‘If I give you the money you would get in wages, will you stay here in your apartment at night?’ I asked suddenly.
She winced at the suggestion. ‘Gabriel, I can’t do that,’ she said. ‘I can’t take money from you.’
‘The money doesn’t matter to me,’ I said quickly. ‘I’m very well off, trust me, I won’t miss it. Look, you can’t just think about yourself now, you have to think about your baby too. Please let me help you. I really don’t want anything in return.’
She hesitated for a moment, biting her lip. Then she nodded silently, tears welling in her eyes again, and told me the truth about how her parents had disowned her after finding out she was pregnant, and how she had panicked and fled to the city, taking her younger brother with her.
‘We had all these screaming arguments,’ she said miserably. ‘I’ll never be able to forget some of the things they said to me. My dad called me a liar and a . . . a filthy slut. I mean, I’ve never even kissed a boy, not properly, not on the mouth . . . unless you count what just happened downstairs. I did kiss Harry on the cheek once - you know, the boyfriend I had when I was fourteen - does that count? Does it? I couldn’t even look at my Dad in the end because he didn’t even try to disguise the disgust he felt for me, and I just couldn’t bear to see that expression on his face when he looked at me.
‘They said that me and my boyfriend had to learn some responsibility. They said he would have to support me even though I kept telling them there was no boyfriend. I had nowhere to go so I went to my grandparents and asked if I could stay with them, but they said they couldn’t have me in the house. It wasn’t their place to go against my parents’ wishes, they said. Do you know what it feels like to get to the point where you can’t ask for help any more because you know that if you get told “no” one more time by one more person you’ll lose it?
‘That’s why I wanted Toby with me. He never blamed me and he was the only one who believed me. I never had sex with anyone but even if I had, would it really be so bad that they should all turn on me like that? I can’t think of anything awful enough Toby could do that would make me stop loving him. And what does it matter to my parents if he lives with me? They were never around anyway! I was afraid that they might take him away and I’d never see him again. So I took him with me when I left. We stayed in a shelter for a while before we moved here . . . but I can’t look after him. I have no money - my parents have cut me off from the accounts I had before, so I can’t use my credit cards any more. It’s just that I didn’t want to be completely on my own, with no family at all. Can you understand that?’
Ah, yes, I could understand that far better than she knew.
‘You’re not going to turn me in, are you?’ she asked, glancing up at me.
I shook my head. ‘I just want to help you, that’s all. I would never do anything you didn’t want me to, I promise. You don’t have to be scared to ask me for help.’
Casey smiled at me and I saw a mixture of doubt and hope in her face.
‘Where did you learn to fight like that anyway?’ she asked.
I hesitated, hoping she hadn’t seen me almost cut that boy’s throat. Should I tell her the truth? Could I risk undoing the trust I’d manage to build up between us?
‘You have skeletons in your closet too, don’t you?’ she asked, smiling softy. ‘It’s okay, you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.’
And I had to tell her then because the way she’d said it and the kind smile she’d given me made me feel like a bastard for not trusting her enough in the first place when she had openheartedly trusted me with her secrets. And to my surprise and pleasure, she did not denounce me for a raving madman after I’d finished. She didn’t shrink from me in uncertainty and fear.
‘I’m sorry I lied to you . . . I just didn’t want you to think I was crazy or something.’
‘Yes, I understand why you did it.’
‘Do you believe me, then? You don’t think I’m making all this up?’
‘A few days ago I told you that there was no father to my child,’ she said wryly. ‘The idea that you might be suffering from amnesia is not hard for me to believe, even if you don’t trust my story.’
I hesitated, feeling guilty.
‘It’s okay. I know how it sounds,’ she said with a shrug. ‘Foolishly get yourself in trouble and then claim a Virgin Mary . . . But, Gabriel, in this day and age, why on earth would I say such a thing if it wasn’t true? When I know that people will denounce me for a slut and a whore as soon as I start claiming to be a pregnant virgin? I’m not stupid, although people often seem to think otherwise because of the dyed hair and the piercings and the tattoos. But for God
’s sake, if I was going to lie about it, I would have said I’d been raped. People would have believed that and pitied me then instead of scorning me and looking at me with disgust. I wish I’d told my parents I was raped now. Then I’d still be at home, with everyone I love fussing over me. I would never have had to realise how little they cared about me. I would have just gone on thinking they were the people I’d always believed them to be.’
She wasn’t lying to me. I could see it in her face - not only did she think she was telling the truth, she was telling the truth. Perhaps I have known that all along. Perhaps I just didn’t like to think that she was mixed up in all this too. I wanted better for her than that. I wanted her to have normalcy - even if that normalcy was as a struggling single mother with no family, no money and no one to help her.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, trying to keep the weariness out of my voice as I accepted the idea. ‘I do believe you.’
When I saw that she was doubtful, I told her a little about my own recent experiences. Not the whole of it, of course, for I had no wish to scare her. So I didn’t tell her of the burning demon who had almost decapitated Stephomi outside Michael’s church or of the strange notes I had been sent. I didn’t tell her of the black fur and the claw marks and the cracked mirror in Stephomi’s hotel room . . . I knew that Casey was religious, for she had told me before that her whole family were Catholic. But most religious people, even if they do believe in a vague way in angels and their demonic counterparts, do not believe that devils and angels walk the Earth in a more physical manner - brandishing large swords, ripping hotel curtains to shreds, leaving black fur all over the cream suite, freezing wine solid in long stemmed wine glasses . . .
But I did tell her that I had known my share of strangeness since coming to Budapest. That I sometimes seemed to be haunted by strange dreams and waking visions that I couldn’t shake. That something followed me through the days and nights . . . And she believed me. In fact, she seemed incredibly relieved that someone other than her had experienced things they could not explain. Things that haunted them and made them fear they were going mad.
When I at last got up to go, Casey pressed a string of prayer beads into my palm; the smooth feel of them and the soft click of the wood as the beads fell against each other was incredibly soothing and reassuring. I returned to my apartment aware that there were barriers between us that had been swept down beautifully that evening.
If I had ever had a daughter, I would have wished her to be just like Casey. Had I loved Luke like this? Was this what it had felt like? The conviction that you would do anything . . . anything to keep them safe from whatever might try to hurt them. I let Luke down, didn’t I? A parent is supposed to keep their child safe. There should never ever be any need for those tiny little coffins. Not because of illness, not because of negligence, not because of accident . . . Children should not die. Old people die. Adults, sometimes. But not children. I don’t know why God doesn’t forbid it. I won’t let anything happen to Casey. I’d die before I let anything hurt her.
After the incident with Casey and her attackers, life was uneventful for a week, and this lulled me into a false sense of security. The weather continued to cool and Budapest became laced with frosts during the night - frosts that melted away quickly as soon as the sun came up, shining down on the city with all the sharp, clear, freshness of a winter’s day.
There had been no notes or visions or strange dreams. There had been no nocturnal visits from Lilith, even after I stopped taking the sleeping drugs. And life had seemed sweet to me, like nectar. But then, yesterday, I received another note. Like the first one, it had been slipped under the door and spelt out in block capitals but it was written in Italian rather than Latin:
PER ME SI VA NELLA CITTA’DOLENTE.
PER ME SI VANELL’ETERNO DOLORE.
PER ME SI VA TRA LA PERDUTA GENTE...
LASCIATE OGNI SPERANZA VOI CH’ENTRATE!
This quote is from Dante and translated into English it reads:
Through me one goes to the sorrowful city.
Through me one goes to eternal suffering.
Through me one goes among lost people . . .
Abandon all hope, you who enter!
The passage is straight from the Divina Commedia itself, Inferno III, which sees Dante and Virgil passing through the Gates of Hell on which the famous words are engraved. I can’t say that the words did not chill me. But, unlike those passing through Hell’s Gates, I did have some hope left. For now at last I would know who had sent me these notes.
After the initial twinges of foreboding, my first feeling was one of triumph. I had caught the little shit in the act. At last I would have the identity of my anonymous tormenter. I would know who had been sending me these threatening things. And then I would therefore also know who had stitched photos into the backs of antique books and hidden them in crates of wine. I would know who had stood in the hotel room in Paris and photographed Stephomi and me. And I would know who had killed Anna Sovànak. At last I would know what twisted man dropped her body into the sea, contained in a crate, and left her there for months before raising her to the surface, transporting her across Italy and Austria back to Hungary to deposit before the weeping willow memorial in the centre of Budapest for all to see when her ocean-bloated corpse washed out onto the street. This sick bastard had wanted her to be discovered in a public and sensationalist manner. Had he been trying to make the front page, perhaps? The story certainly should have made headlines and its banishment to page six was worrying in itself.
I had already drawn the uncomfortable conclusion that this man, too, was known to me before I lost my memory. He had been there with Stephomi and I in Paris, and he knew that I understood Latin and Italian and he had my address in Budapest. I very much hoped that we had been on bad terms, for I hated the thought that I had kept such vile company. When I took the camera down from the wall to replay the video, I half feared that the man might have seen the camera and somehow disabled it, or that there would be just blank, unexplained snow filling the screen. But the camera had not been tampered with and after watching it I did indeed have the identity of the note sender.
But I couldn’t believe it. I must have watched and re-watched the tape at least a dozen times to be sure that I was not somehow imagining it. Even when I was quite certain what the camera showed, I still thought that there might be a mistake or another explanation somehow. That it couldn’t possibly be what it seemed.
The only thing to be done was to confront him. And it seemed so unlikely and incredible that if he had told me he hadn’t done it then I think I would have believed him over the evidence of my own eyes. But when I went round to Casey’s apartment that evening and told her I needed to speak to Toby, and that it couldn’t wait until the morning, she went and got him up and brought him into the kitchen and I could see by the guilt in his eyes as soon as I held out the note that the camera had not lied and that it had indeed been Toby March who had been putting these threatening things under my door.
I knew that Toby couldn’t possibly have written the notes himself. Not unless he could read and write in ancient Latin. No, the deliverer and the sender must be different people altogether. Toby could be nothing more than an agent. Whoever the perpetrator of this scheme was, he had managed to find out who my neighbours were and had somehow bribed Toby to deliver these notes in secret. I remembered back to when I had received the first note a month ago, and had chased the fleeing footsteps down to the lobby where I had seen Toby loitering by the door before Casey found him and they left the building together. It was clear now why Toby had always seemed so nervous at the sight of me, and had been so uncomfortable in my company. It had never occurred to me that the nine-year-old might somehow be involved in all this - that the one responsible could be wretched enough to involve a child in this sordid mess.
‘Can you understand what these say?’ I asked, holding up the first note as well as the one I had received that evening.
‘Why have you been putting them under my door?’ I asked.
Casey turned sharply to her brother. ‘I most certainly hope you haven’t been putting anything under Gabriel’s door, Toby!’
The boy stood there, hesitating, glancing anxiously at his sister then back at me and then at his feet, shuffling nervously where he stood.
I felt I couldn’t bear the tense agony of waiting for him to tell me what he knew. My thoughts flew around chaotically, accusing everyone in turn: perhaps Stephomi had bribed Toby. Perhaps these things were his doing. Perhaps he was the unseen puppet master. Then again, perhaps there was no human agent at all. Perhaps the references to the dreaded Ninth Circle had come from some other thing’s realm altogether. Perhaps it had been the burning demon himself who had convinced Toby to be the deliveryman of these ominous portents. To my shame, my suspicions even rested briefly on Casey, but I quickly rejected this. I would not . . . could not believe that she had anything to do with this. I couldn’t bear it any longer. The cold and fearful suspicions against all those around me; the distrusting of friends; the total, blind ignorance of the unseen agendas gathering around me. I felt if I didn’t find out the identity of this contemptible, cowardly tormenter . . . this wretched, disgusting excuse for a human being . . . then I would surely go mad right there on the spot.
