Hydra

by Matt Wesolowski

  The most obvious is the question ‘why?’ Why did Arla Macleod, who had no history of violence, suddenly kill her entire family that night? Was it a psychotic episode or something else?

  Like most of the cases I cover, on the surface it’s clear: a troubled young woman committed a terrible act and was duly punished. So why am I looking any further? Why am I asking questions? Why am I raking over old graves?

  As has been widely documented – in the television documentary and the many newspaper stories about her – Arla Macleod was a troubled young woman, destined to enter the annals of true-crime history, where she would become a wonder, a figure of fascination. She has also come to be seen, particularly by those who glorify such crimes online, as a fist in the face of ‘conformity’. Only recently, a young man from a high school in Swansea was suspended for threatening to ‘do a Macleod’ to his classmates and posting the infamous picture of Arla at fifteen on Facebook.

  But I’m convinced there’s more. You will have noticed in this episode that Arla says the first time she saw the ‘kids’ was on a holiday in Cornwall. Details of this holiday have never, as far as I know, been discussed before.

  Maybe this holiday will prove to be insignificant, maybe not. But I hope to speak to someone who was on that holiday, alongside Arla, in a future episode.

  This has been Six Stories.

  This has been our opening story.

  Until next time…

  TorrentWraith – Audio (Music & Sounds)

  Type Name

  Audio Arla Macleod Rec002 [320KBPS]

  Uploaded 5 weeks ago, Size 52.9 MiB. ULed by JBazzzzz666

  Today were better.

  Better?

  Sorry, ‘better’ is not a word I should really be using, is it? ‘What is better?’ you once asked me. I remember that day; it was when I’d first come here. It was moody outside, the sky stuffed full of cloud like a fat teddy; the air tight and warm. Too warm. I remember cos the air-con were on. I hate that air-con unit, sat up on the ceiling – its shape: two screws like eyes on either side of the vent, making an upside-down face, like a ray. I remember feeling sulky, like I were a teenager again and being put somewhere I didn’t want to be. Pouting.

  We all used to do that – pout. Me and Paulette and Debs. We used to rob expensive lippy from the precinct, proper ruby red. The thing to do were make your lips up nice then blacken your teeth. Mam used to say it made me look like a Victorian street urchin. Alice said it was scary. Both of them said, ‘Don’t show Dad.’ As if.

  I spent a lot of time looking better on the outside, when I was broken on the inside. Paulette and Debs got it. They understood what it all meant.

  Embrace your emptiness.

  We were nothing. All three of us.

  Until three became two.

  And two became one.

  One big fat nothing.

  Like now.

  I’m too cold when the air-con is on and too hot when it isn’t.

  That day – the day I asked when I would get better – seems a long time ago, and the question sounds childish now, something an idiot would ask. I remember your face when I asked it, how you went to laugh, stopped yourself, considered it and then did it anyway.

  ‘What is “better”?’ you said.

  I remember feeling a little bit sad at first, like this were a test and I wasn’t doing very well at it. I looked around the room, at that painting behind where you sit – with the pears falling out of a bowl. I always mean to ask where you got it; why you got it. Maybe you didn’t get it at all. Maybe it’s just, you know, there, like it came with the building or something.

  I said that ‘better’ is when I don’t see things that aren’t there. And as if in reply, I could feel the hairs on the back of my neck begin to rise. It were like something … sorry … someone were watching me. It were like someone was glaring at me.

  There’s no window in your room. I always forget to ask why. So … Can I even ask you questions like this? Will you answer in the next session? If so, then why – why is there no window in your room; in room four?

  Last session you were talking about the idea of ‘better’ again – about how I had to re-frame my idea of ‘better’, and that I can’t always think that what I see is a failure, that it’s me not being ‘better’.

  I was telling you about ‘embrace your emptiness’ and you got mad. You said that with kids today, the idea of being ‘broken’ is much more appealing than the idea of being ‘better’ – you were angry about it, you were angry with how ‘broken’ was an aspiration and ‘better’ was seen as weak.

  You were saying all this but I was hardly listening. It’s hard to concentrate, being on the meds; things come slow, like someone’s turned down the speed. I know you see when I’m not listening – you say I’m zoned out. ‘Arla!’ you say. ‘Arla! Are you still with me?’

  I am usually; I’m usually with you, but it’s hard. Especially after lunch, when I’m proper full and tired, and all those tastes are still rattling round my mouth.

  The thing was, in today’s session I was a bit clearer. It were less like I was in a room of clouds, of fuzz, and I were thinking, Does this mean I’m getting better? But I didn’t want to ask in case I spoiled it.

  You were talking, and I was trying, but…

  I stopped you mid-sentence: ‘Can I just…’

  For a second I thought you looked hurt, like you were sad I’d stopped listening to you.

  ‘It’s just…’

  ‘What can you see?’ you said.

  And I remember feeling a little bit bad – bad that I couldn’t see anything, that there was nothing there. But it wasn’t what I could see; it was what I could hear. There was this shuffling noise and it were coming from right outside the door of room four. I wanted you to hear it first – that’s what I wanted. I should have said, and I’m sorry but inside me I were scared, I were praying that it wasn’t them … I…

  I remember my heart sinking as you made notes. For a long time I hoped I could get through a session without you writing one thing on that pad. Why? I have no idea, I have no idea why that was even a thing, but it was.

  You often say to me that sometimes a thing is just a thing.

  I’ve tried to hold that sentence, that prophetic statement, and turn it over, look at its underside, study its details, its parts, try and decipher its sentiment.

  But, like you say, sometimes a thing is just a thing.

  I’m sorry, I’m babbling again, aren’t I? I know you said I could make these recordings as long or as short as I want, but I just can’t help thinking of you, sat at some desk somewhere, watching, sighing. I imagine your study, a great red-velvet room lined with books and stuffed things in bell jars. It’s not like that at all though, is it? I don’t even think you take your work home; you do it all here. Your office here is minimal, I think – just a big table, white walls, maybe another painting: a pineapple in a salad-spinner or something; a framed photo of your family. Or one of those electronic frames that you can upload photos to, cycling through trips to the beach, smiles and sandcastles, all of you guys snuggled up on a rollercoaster. I don’t know, I’ve never even seen your office.

  You’ve told me you have a son, not outright, but you’ve sort of dropped it into our sessions. I wonder if you even notice you’re doing it. You’ve said nothing else though – nothing about a wife or anything. Professional distance I guess. That’s cool.

  Your son will be older than me judging by the lines on your face and those nostril hairs that sometimes I can’t stop staring at, and the way you, like, creak when you lean back in your chair. He’s lucky to have a dad like you.

  I just want you to know that I think I’m getting, not better, but I’m getting … I think that I’m better at handling things.

  So I woke up last night and went to the toilet. It’s never silent here – you can hear everyone’s racket and nonsense. I’ve got my own toilet but I can still hear everyone else. It makes me feel safe, the solidn
ess of my door. It doesn’t feel like I’m being contained; it feels like I’m being kept safe.

  I hate the light in the toilet. It flickers on, making the room seem, for a couple of seconds, like something out of a horror movie. Maybe it’s cos I think that … that I saw something in that flicker last night. I know you said to record everything I see, no matter how small, no matter how frequent. But what if it’s just imagination? What if I was dreaming?

  OK. I’ll say what I saw. I’ll say it anyway.

  That flickering light, like I say, it lasts for a few seconds, and a jolt of fear went through me as it sputtered into life.

  They were all there, dancing, arms in the air, hands waving, hopping from one leg to another, shaking their hair over their eyes. All three of them.

  I could hear music as well – that thud-thud-thud stuff they liked, that I pretended to like too.

  Then the light came on properly and they were gone.

  I’m putting it down to imagination, I promise, because it didn’t have the same feeling as it does when it’s a … thing.

  A thing is sometimes just a thing.

  So yeah, that was last night.

  Which I think is ‘better’. I know, I know, but remember when I pulled the emergency cord on one of my first nights here? Remember when I told you they were outside the window, all of them with their tap-tap-tap little fingers on the glass? Remember those little fingers? I bet you’re rolling your eyes right now, thinking, Yeah, the fingers – the little fingers that tapped on the glass but weren’t there when anyone else came and looked. Yeah I remember them, Arla.

  I remember screaming and hiding in my bed, burrowing in like a hamster. And I remember what you told me after – the mantras that you taught me for when I hear them: to just wait them out, to let them do their thing.

  A thing is just a thing.

  Right?

  I know you always ask me to tell you what they say, when they tell me how to make them go away.

  But I can’t.

  Because it’s my fault they’re here. It’s all my fault. I opened the door. I opened the way for them. And if I tell you they’ll come back.

  And if they come back … well, no one wants that.

  Episode 2: Embrace Your Emptiness

  —Mr Whitton, he had this … this sort of wasting disease, I think. It was pretty bad; he was all skin and bones, the poor soul. You would think that would make us a bit nicer to him wouldn’t you?

  Kids are little bastards though – evil. Especially girls. This poor fella, all skinny with these big glasses and a bowl haircut straight out of about 1963 in front of a bunch of fifteen-year-olds. Bad fifteen-year-olds too – year-eleven scumbags, that whole class. We were horrid. I feel bad for any teacher who had to teach our lot: eleven F. Those four syllables struck fear into the heart of any teacher at that school, I swear.

  Except for Mr Whitton.

  Mr Whitton, he thought that God could save us, which was fine I suppose, but he was, like, really angry about it. Like God would save us but only if we behaved in exactly the right way, which was exactly the way Mr Whitton wanted us to behave.

  You know, I don’t remember learning about any other religions in his lessons; it was always stuff about the bloody Bible! I tell you what, drawing a cartoon strip about Jesus feeding the five thousand wasn’t my idea of fun; but it was his. It was him who used to organise the Gideons to come and do their assemblies. They were there every few weeks in their shabby suits and with their bad PowerPoint presentations, giving everyone a little Bible with a plastic cover. They were lethal those covers, if you ripped all the pages out and held the cover in your fist, one corner poking out between your two fingers … I saw a lot of lads get slashed up with those weapons of God.

  The day Mr Whitton lost his shit. I mean, at the time, it was funny but now … hmm … a part of me wants to say it wasn’t – that he was a vulnerable man, clinging on to his religion like a fanatical Rottweiler and dragging us all along for the ride. That he was a man desperate for redemption – for something outside his crappy life working in our crappy school with us bratty kids.

  But if I’m honest, if I search my soul, I’m sad to say it was pretty funny. Yeah. It was pretty funny.

  I remember his face that day – it was so red … his cheeks were beetroot. It was amazing – his glasses all steamed up and his skinny arms waving about. Sweat stains on his shirt.

  I remember the moment we all started laughing as well.

  She started it. She was the first one to start laughing. She was the puppet master – puppet mistress, whatever. It was her.

  All of it.

  When I heard what she did to her family, well, I have to say I wasn’t shocked … No, that’s not true: I was shocked, but I wasn’t surprised, if you see what I mean. I didn’t think she was incapable of it, put it that way.

  Welcome to Six Stories. I’m Scott King.

  In these six weeks, we are looking back at the Macleod Massacre – the killings by twenty-one-year-old Arla Macleod of her stepfather, mother and younger sister. We’re looking back from six different perspectives, seeing the events that unfolded through six pairs of eyes.

  Then, of course, it’s up to you to decide the reasons behind what happened.

  For this episode, I managed to contact Tessa Spurrey (not her real name), whose voice you heard at the beginning. Without Tessa, episode two of this series may not have been possible and the entire series may have faltered.

  Tessa attended Saint Theresa’s Catholic School in Stanwel at the same time as Arla Macleod and was in many of Arla’s classes. As far as I am aware Tessa has not previously spoken about Arla, or about what happened to the Macleods in 2014. Her reasons for speaking to me now will become apparent later.

  First though, it is important we talk a bit about the newspaper and television coverage that emerged at the time of the Macleod Massacre. As soon as we start chatting, Tessa tells me about it straight off the bat. We talk on the phone.

  —Oh ugh, yeah, it was almost immediate. Honestly, it was only hours after it happened, I got a message from some journalist. They were asking about Arla; about what she was like, about how friendly I was with her, everything. And you know the worst thing … the very worst thing? They didn’t even seem to wonder whether this might have been a tad traumatic for me. They didn’t care a jot!

  Tessa is a lecturer at a university she’s asked me not to disclose, and she’s not disclosed what her subject is. I’ll be honest here, Tessa was incredibly guarded and jumpy during our interview. As you will hear, she skips from subject to subject, never settling fully on anything, always careful of what she is saying, and not saying why. This perturbs me.

  —Honestly, they wanted anything, anything at all. I’m sure you saw, didn’t you? We all saw that documentary and the headlines – they were ludicrous, like something out of 1980s America. What was worse was the fact that it didn’t even surprise me that there were people who didn’t even know Arla, but who said they were her friends and were falling over themselves to tell the gutter press whatever they wanted to hear, all for a few pennies. It made me feel sick. Sick to my stomach. Now of course you’ve got everyone online treating her like some kind of anti-establishment hero. It’s just as bad, it really is. None of these people even knew her!

  —But you’ll talk to me?

  —Yes. Yes, because I’ve listened to your podcast so I know you’ll give me a chance to speak – you’ll let me tell my part of the story. And that’s all I’ve ever wanted. You’re not from one of those fucking shitrags, and you’re not some fucking keyboard warrior either. Sorry.

  And you’ll not tell anyone who I am.

  —But surely there were opportunities before now to tell your story anonymously?

  —Maybe. All I know is that when you speak to the papers, or to the television researchers, you tell them one thing and then off they go and turn it into whatever they want to, whatever fits the monster the baying crowds will flock to see.
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  Tessa is doubtless referring to the newspaper reports that were published in the days after Arla was taken into police custody and then to court, and the details of what actually happened to her family came out.

  One particularly gruesome and sensationalist headline on the front of the Daily Express read ‘Satan’s Sister in Stanwel Family Massacre’, accompanied by the now infamous photograph of Arla looking suitably crazed, grinning sideways at the camera, her white teeth Ohaguro-style black, and her eyeliner streaming down her face. This picture was placed beside a stock photo of English shock-rock musician Skexxixx in a ghoulishly similar pose – right down to the running eyeliner and trademark teeth-blackener that had become a craze among his fan base in the early 2000s, including with a fifteen-year-old Arla Macleod.

  She Never Told Us, the documentary I mentioned in episode one, made by Blamenholm, only just stopped short of citing Arla’s brief flirtation with this image as the reason for what happened.

  Tessa’s view is that the music and images that surrounded Arla are only the tip of the iceberg – something simple on which to pin the horror of what she did.

  Extract from She Never Told Us

  (Blamenholm Productions, 2015)

  —Arla Macleod was a devoted fan of rock musician Skexxixx, often dressing in similar attire, adorning her face with crudely applied eyeliner and blackening her teeth. Some may see this simply as teenage rebellion gone a little too far. But was there, in fact, something in Skexxixx’s music that called to a vulnerable young girl? Certainly, there are themes in the songs that speak to the vulnerability and low self-esteem many teenagers in the UK share.

  [The chorus of ‘Blighted Heart’ by Skexxixx plays over a scrolling display of lyrics from the song.]

  ‘Slice me open wide, pull back the bones,

  Find sugar-plum fairies in the mulch of a dying mind.

  For I’m your nothing, I’m your no one,