However, when I read the text, my stomach clenches fist-like and tears prick my eyes.
From: [Unknown number]
Perhaps I need to make myself clear. Stop. Delete. Leave well alone. This is your final warning. There will be consequences.
This reignites the terrible fear from before and turns it into a whirling sickness. I’m not too proud to admit that my initial reaction is to lie down, curl up, hide, protect myself. You might think I’m overreacting, but those are my feelings.
So what to do? Well … the fact you’re listening to episode two now speaks for itself. My social-media accounts remain open. I will not bow down to threats.
What I will say to whoever is sending me these messages, is that I am open for proper, adult discussion – on or off the record. Rather than hiding behind your anonymity, why not come forward and talk – explain to me in rational terms what I should be leaving alone and why. I am a reasonable person and am willing to listen. To debate, like an adult.
I will not, however, engage with threats or abuse. I will point out as well, that anyone who engages in offensive posts, comments or squabbles on the Six Stories social-media accounts will simply be blocked or banned. I get that this is a recent and, perhaps, difficult subject for discussion, but really, what is at the heart of it all? Discussion is what.
And that’s where I want to keep it.
On that note, this has been Six Stories.
This has been our second.
Until next time…
TorrentWraith – Audio (Music & Sounds)
Type Name
Audio Arla Macleod Rec003 [320KBPS]
Uploaded 4 weeks ago, Size 52.9 MiB. ULed by JBazzzzz666
I’m going to be quick. I’m going to tell you straight away what I saw. I’m not going to mess about talking about other things.
I might start talking about other things.
You said it was OK to do that.
But I’m tired today.
You see, sometimes I just want to say it out loud, say it quick. I can feel the words in my mouth, filling me up, desperate to come out and then … then they just stay there, stuck around my teeth like toffee.
You said that that’s normal too. You said when I saw them that I should treat them like they’re real. The words will come easier then. Talking might change them, it won’t stop them, but they might change a little bit. That’s what you said. You said that I have to keep going.
You said if I did this, we might be able to maybe find a trigger. You said that this is new therapy, pioneering. You’re proud of it. I was proud that you’d chosen me.
But it’s hard.
The Quetiapine kept them away at first, kept them calm, like that film Drop Dead Fred. Have you seen it? Where the girl has an imaginary friend and every time she takes her medication it hurts him, weakens him, makes him fall over, become less strong.
It were like that at first. It were like, I had that feeling when I knew they were coming – that fear, boiling in my belly.
Then nothing.
Sometimes I remember those silly games I used to play. All those daft rules. I try and remember how to do them but I only get about halfway before I get tired and forget. Or I can smell dinner coming from the canteen and my mouth starts watering and that makes me forget.
You know, I mainly think about food these days. That comes first, before everything. Like, look … look at my mouth – it’s watering just saying that! Maybe that’s all the Quetiapine is, like, it’s just a pill that makes you so hungry you can’t think about anything else. Meatballs last night, oh my God those meatballs. Like, every time I ate one, every time it squished between my teeth and I could feel the juices on my tongue, I wanted to shout out, I wanted to cry about how … how beautiful it were…
We had trifle for afters last night. They put this stuff between the layers – I think it’s sponge and it soaks up all the juice from the fruit, and if you get your spoon in just right and you get a layer of custard and jelly and fruit – all different textures and tastes at once – it’s like the magic number, the secret combination, you know?
The size of me … the size of me now. No wonder, eh?
No wonder.
I’m so tired.
So I woke up at about three this morning and needed the toilet. I was half asleep, you know? Like, where the world is all a bit fuzzy on the edges and it’s like you’re here but not really here – you’re an observer in your own reality. It never gets proper dark here, there’s always that soft light that you can’t turn off in your room. You can ask them to turn it off if you want but I quite like it. I were never allowed a night-light when I were a kid, so maybe that’s why? Maybe I want to feel like a kid – grab hold of a bit of childhood I didn’t have? I dunno.
I looked at my clock and it were midnight. One of those silly games from all them years ago was about midnight. You had to get up at midnight and make a phone call or something. I try and remember but there’s something stopping me, like my brain clams up and won’t let me peek in.
Anyway, and I’m sat down in the bog, like, you know, and…
When I came back out, it were sitting on top of the bed. I don’t remember pulling the duvet back over but I must have done, you know, to keep it warm inside. It were sat … not sat but sort of kneeling; horrible it was, like proper there, you know, as if it had been waiting for the Quetiapine to wear off and … Well, we don’t get given it till the morning.
Ugh … it were horrible.
I know, I shouldn’t … you said I shouldn’t personify them, but it’s hard … it’s hard. She … it were, like, kneeling on my bed. It were, like … I couldn’t tell if it were wearing clothes or not cos it were … it were so horrible I couldn’t keep my eyes on her … on it … for too long. It looked wet but it were definitely female – it had breasts and long black hair all plastered to its face, like that one off The Ring, you know? It were pale like her too, but not skinny. It were … all muscly and it had its arms up, like its elbows up and … and I could see all these, like, veins, all knotty, standing out on its arms. Her skin was pale … like she were dead, drowned.
There were something, I dunno, spidery about her … about it. It were like I knew she’d just sort of fallen off the ceiling and sat up on my bed. I knew that if I looked up at the ceiling I’d see a patch of wet, like she’d been in a cocoon or something … I dunno…
It were its face, though, that were the most scary thing. It was sort of old and young at the same time. It’s hard to describe. You could only see a bit through the hair. Like, one moment its skin was wrinkly, like an old woman, and then it were smooth like a doll; and there was this one eye glaring out, all smooth and black like a shark’s, you know? Like there were nothing behind it. And it were sort of … glowing. I know, right? How does black glow? But it was, like … like a sort of black-blue light, like something out of a rave. Like a strobe light or something. And I knew … oh, I knew that that were its only eye, that if you tucked back the hair you’d see just…
She was staring at me with that one eye, her arms up and her fingers spread, all her muscles tight. She were making no sound at all, like she were a TV programme turned down. I couldn’t stop looking at her, she were so horrible. I just couldn’t stop staring. Her lips were moving – she had these thick lips that were sort of black, like slugs, and I could see her teeth … they were … there were too many of them, all mashed together, all brown and yellow, like, not like fangs but all, like, squashed and sharp and crowded, you know?
She were saying something. She were talking. And every time she said it those teeth would catch her lips; they would catch those two black-slug lips, and it were, like, I could feel it too … I could feel the edges of those teeth on my lips. And she kept saying it over and over and over again, until those lips, until they burst and this … this stuff started dribbling down her chin. It were horrible.
I tried to make out the words.
‘Dar-oo-maa-san, dar-oo-ma-san’, or something like that.
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It sent shivers through me and made my brain clench even harder.
When she … it went away, I got back into bed. I had to keep telling myself that I couldn’t feel a warm patch on top – you know, like where it had been?
I were brave – I felt like I were brave not pressing the call button or owt, you know? Like, I knew she weren’t real. But she was, she was there.
You know?
But, like I say, I’m tired today. Proper knackered.
It were like, when I tried to go to sleep, all those things that she were saying, all those silent words that she were mouthing, they all came back when I were trying to go to sleep – like an echo, you know? Like when you see something happen but you hear the sound a second later. Like that. As if her voice was coming from thousands and millions of light years away or something.
I’m the ghost that follows.
That’s what she were saying. She were saying it over and over again. I knew it was her cos she had a sort of lisp cos of her teeth, cos she had too many. She kept saying it when I were trying to sleep. I recognised her voice.
I’m the ghost that follows.
And all I could think about were school – those times in school when Mrs Morris had a bull’s heart up on her desk and we all had to watch her cut it open, and there were that horrible meaty smell like you get when you walk past the butcher’s in the market. I remember a voice saying, ‘Miss, I don’t want to do it!’ And Mrs Morris getting all exasperated and saying, ‘For God’s sake, Deborah, it’s only a bit of meat – you eat burgers, don’t you?’
That smell.
Deborah wasn’t scared of meat anymore.
She was the queen of flesh, of muscle and organs and blood.
Dar-oo-ma-san.
She kept telling me, over and over and over.
She would never stop following me. She would never forgive me.
And that’s why I’m tired.
Episode 3: The Ghost That Follows
—I remember once seeing this mam there one day with her little girl, must have only been three or summit. She was wearing one of them burkas and she’s unwinding the swing; the lads used to wind the swings up, right to the top, spin them round till they were all looped up over the crossbar and it looked like barbed wire – God knows why. This mam, right, she spends about ten minutes, dead patient, unravelling the swing. The little lass is shouting ‘Mammy, swing! Swing!’ and the mam never shouts at her once; she never gets cross. That’s maybe why I stopped and watched. Not proper staring, just kind of walking past slowly, but watching, pretending to look at my phone. This woman, right, she gets one of the swings down and she puts her little girl up on it and starts pushing. It’s, like … it’s weird cos it’s someone with their kid using the park as a park, but still I get this sort of proper sad feeling in my belly.
Anyways, after a couple of minutes all these little lads go by on scooters and I can just hear them shouting ‘Paki this’ and ‘Paki that’, ‘dirty Muslim’, all that. One of them chucks a can of energy drink, half full, and it spins across the floor shooting it everywhere like a firework. That little girl, she looks all confused then she starts crying and the mam picks her up, dead calm and that, not even looking round, and the lads all scoot off, laughing. And, well, me mind did this sort of snapshot, this woman stood there in her burka, holding this crying kid, graffiti all over the swings, fag ends all over the floor. I was only fourteen and I thought what a shithole this place was. What a dump.
One thing’s for sure – I’d never go back. Never. Not now.
I mean, I have to sometimes cos my parents live there, but I’m never there for long. One night at most. If I can drive back the same night I will.
It’s a shit-hole. Just full of chavs and smackheads. Horrible.
The thing about growing up in a town like Stanwel is that you get used to wanting to get away. There’s a few ways you can get out: you can work hard, do well in school, keep your head down and make your own road out – you know, get to uni, get a good job somewhere else. Or you can just let Stanwel take you, get you mad and bitter, get on smack or booze and the dole. That’s the way a lot of kids go.
But there’s another more common way and that’s how most of us did it.
You start fighting it. You start fighting back against it young. But it don’t really get you anywhere, not when you’re young, but it starts that fire, it ignites that flame and then you’ll stay fighting. You’ll stay fighting all your life to get out.
The first drink I ever had was down Sage Park. We was young, like twelve or thirteen or something. Sage Park was where I met her.
There was this lad, everyone called him ‘Goose’, I dunno why. He were big, older than us and he could get served in the corner shop for voddy and cider and packets of fags. We all chipped in and passed them round. Goose were probably only about sixteen at the time, but to us back then he were like a proper man. We – us girls I mean – we used to sit at the top of the slide. I feel proper bad now cos when I take my little ’uns to the park round here and it’s all fag ends and broken glass, I’m proper raging. I’m, like, ‘Why do these kids have no respect?’ Then I have to catch myself cos that were me not long ago, back in Stanwel. I hope I never hurt a kid – threw one of those bottles off the slide, left glass lying about. It would proper break my heart, that. It would proper kill me.
Goose would get us a bottle, a quarter bottle of Russian Supreme; it tasted like fuckin’ paint thinner, I tell you. That and ten Mayfair and we were away. My mam and dad didn’t give a shit, they was too busy fighting or drinking. Same with most of us who hung round down Sage Park. I hear they’ve done it up nice now, all new stuff and that for the kids. Back then it were grim – that cheap asphalt stuff and half the rides was broken. Our fault, mainly.
I would sit there with Chelsea and them, just shouting, winding up the lads who were always messing on, fighting and that, showing off. It were shite but it was summit to do; it was what we all did. It’s what you did if you weren’t a boring little saddo. If you grew up in Stanwel, you went down Sage Park and drank until you couldn’t feel it no more.
Arla Macleod never came down till she were like, in year eleven. I never thought we’d be friends; I never thought I’d be mates with someone like her.
I never thought … any of it. Amazing what life chucks at you, eh?
This is the voice of Paulette English. If you haven’t listened to episode two yet, I would advise you to do so. Paulette was one of Arla Macleod’s ‘gang’ at school. She also knew Arla in the years after school, when they both attended Stanwel Community College.
Paulette no longer lives in Stanwel. She ‘escaped’ with her three young children and three excitable Labradors. Mr English is also a Stanwel ex-pat and works as a tiler for a large bathroom firm. He’s out at work and Paulette’s mother shepherds the children round the lawn outside while we chat over Skype.
—Arla and me, we only really became close after school, you know? Like, when we were older. Maybe we was just too immature back in school, so we only really started having serious conversations when we was in college, when it was just the two of us, when we were supposed to grow up, like.
I say close, but I suppose it wasn’t really like that. We’d chat about lads and that, but, I dunno, you could never really get proper tight with Arla. She was so used to talking online, I think real people confused her.
She had her moments like we all do … but for most of the time she was just normal. Just an everyday lass.
That’s how she was.
Mad isn’t it?
Sorry.
Welcome to Six Stories. I’m Scott King.
Over these six weeks we’re looking back at the Macleod Massacre of 2014, the tragic killing of her mother, sister and stepfather by the then twenty-one-year-old Arla Macleod.
Arla Macleod has never denied her part in the killing of her family with a hammer on that fateful November night in 2014. Found guilty but for reasons of diminished
responsibility, Arla remains ensconced in Elmtree Manor, a medium-security hospital for those who are deemed to be a danger to themselves or others. Court-appointed psychologists confirmed that Arla was suffering from psychosis at the time of the killings, that the acts were not premeditated and that Arla was not in control of her behaviour at the time.
Debate about whether this sentence was just abounds.
Six Stories has never and will never push an agenda; what I do is present the facts and talk to those involved – people whose voices perhaps haven’t been heard before. I am not here to crack a case or solve a crime. I’m simply here to help us all understand.
In episode one, I talked to Arla herself on a monitored phone line from Elmtree Manor. In episode two I spoke to someone who was aware of and had interaction with, but was not close to Arla at school. So far, though, I feel there remains some significant distance between myself and this case.
An unexpected element to this series has arisen, however. I have been receiving text messages to my personal mobile asking me to desist from any more interviews or podcasts concerning Arla Macleod. I have been informed there will be ‘consequences’ to my actions. There have also been a flurry of tweets and posts to the Six Stories Twitter and Facebook pages, which have been duly blocked and deleted. The content of these posts are not something I want to share; suffice to say that they were attacks against me personally. I notice, however, that there were no ‘real’ threats – nothing direct; nothing that could get the perpetrator into trouble. Someone knows what they are doing.
I will not engage with abuse or online trolling. However, I am willing to have an adult discussion with anyone who wants to air their grievances, either in private or on the podcast itself. So if that’s you, send a direct message to the Six Stories Twitter handle or on the Facebook page, and I’ll ask you a few questions to verify that it’s the same person who’s been texting me and we’ll talk.
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