Hydra

by Matt Wesolowski

  A fucking hydra. Cut off its head and two more grow in its place.

  Then I’m above it all – you know how dreams are – like I’m a bird or something.

  Oh Jesus, it were horrible. Because it were me, but it weren’t me … I was the crow.

  I can’t … I can’t get the feeling out of me. I can still feel the hammer against them … against their heads … that crunching sound…

  They cry when I try to sleep. There’s thousands of them – thousands more of them now. Heads like a fucking hydra.

  I just can’t do this no more…

  I just can’t…

  I’m sorry. That’s what I want to say. To you for trying to help me; to everyone here who’s been kind to me; just to everyone. I’m sorry…

  But I’m going to let them in again…

  Because if I don’t….

  Extract from the Stanwel Examiner:

  ‘Macleod Killer Dead at 23’

  Arla Macleod, the Stanwel woman who bludgeoned her entire family to death with a hammer has been found dead in the secure hospital where she had been detained since her manslaughter conviction in 2014.

  The twenty-three-year-old committed suicide at Elmtree Manor, the medium-level secure unit where she had been sentenced to spend the rest of her adult life.

  A spokesman for the hospital today spoke only to confirm the death of a patient some time on the night of the 27th or in the early morning of the 28th July 2017.

  Macleod, who was born in Saltcoats, Ayrshire, and moved to Stanwel as a young child, was undergoing pioneering new therapy at Elmtree Manor to treat the complex mental illness deemed by a judge in a court of law to have diminished her responsibility in the killing of her mother, stepfather and younger sister.

  This conviction has not sat well with the general public, especially the residents of Stanwel, many of whom believe that Arla Macleod’s notoriety has brought a degree of shame and unwanted attention to the town.

  However, Arla Macleod’s death has been seen by some in Stanwel as a relief. A resident who lives on the same street as the Macleod family home – the site of the massacre – which has remained unoccupied since the incident in 2014, told the Examiner, ‘It’s finally the end of what’s been a terrible few years, what with the press attention on the town. Most of us think it’s what she deserved.’

  Another recent suicide has added to increasing speculation that Arla Macleod was sexually assaulted as a teenager. Ex-caretaker at Saint Theresa’s Catholic School in Stanwel, Mr Albert Marsh, killed himself after an exposé by a vigilante paedophile hunting group, raising questions about whether or not he was involved in the Macleod case.

  Saint Theresa’s has dismissed these claims and reiterated that it has always conducted rigorous background checks into all members of staff.

  An anonymous associate of Macleod recently told the Examiner that Albert Marsh’s death was a ‘distraction from the truth’ and that ‘people should be looking past what is on the surface’.

  Coroner Alan Peterson heard, during the inquest into the suicide, how Macleod had managed to break off a loose section of the reinforced plastic that covered her window in her private room in Elmtree Manor and use it to cut her wrists.

  Nursing staff at the hospital had apparently not noticed the fault in Arla Macleod’s room. Macleod had shown no suicidal tendencies and was ‘responding’ to therapy and treatment from renowned medical professionals, the inquest heard.

  Patients at Elmtree Manor are not so rigorously monitored as they would be at higher-level secure hospitals such as Broadmoor or Rampton – places where many believe Macleod should have been sent. It has been speculated that this relaxed attitude to the killer may have led to the oversight and, ultimately, to her death.

  The coroner also heard that there was no reason for Ms Macleod to have been placed into the secure isolation room, which is standard practice at Elmtree Manor for those patients who are not responsive to treatment or are showing signs of suicidal or extreme behaviour.

  Macleod’s psychiatrist, Dr Barrington, a senior member of staff at Elmtree Manor, described Macleod’s death as ‘deeply unfortunate and unprecedented’. Barrington would not give any further details of Macleod’s state of mind, due to patient confidentiality.

  The spokesman for Elmtree Manor, speaking after the inquest, described the death of Arla Macleod as ‘deeply regrettable’ and explained that there has been a swift review of inspection standards at the hospital.

  News of Macleod’s death has been the talk of social media, and the interest after the inquest has shone unwanted light, yet again on Stanwel.

  Another unnamed local resident told the Examiner: ‘It was just disgusting how easily she got off. That hospital she managed to get put in was nothing more than a glorified holiday camp. It’s us who still live in Stanwel that have to cope with the scar she left behind. I don’t feel sorry for her one bit.’

  Episode 6: Troll Hunter

  —It changed my life. You hear most people say that phrase in a positive context don’t you? But yeah, it umm … it totally wiped me out, totally shifted my entire … It … it made me different. It changed me inside. It changed the way I see the world.

  I remember the day. I’ll never forget it. I remember coming home. Of course I still had that big house, the ‘Cursed Manor’. I remember pulling up in the cab, looking out the window at this hokey ruin, this fucking parody – with all the security gates, the barbed wire and the like. Inside, of course, it’s as lavish as you fucking want: thick carpets and dimmer switches; the little studio that looks over the cliff on the far side.

  When we came home that night, I was embarrassed by the place. I handed a wad of notes to the driver, couldn’t even look at him. The press were already there – only one or two, and the fact that I was disappointed there weren’t more made me want to fucking slash my own throat right there and then. I would bleed to death in the flashbulb light. But that would have made it all about me, wouldn’t it?

  When the gates were closed, when we got inside that house that was so full of … shit … just nonsense – all those old sculptures, the taxidermy, the voodoo dolls, the shelves of plastic Halloween junk, I wanted to tear it all down, to burn it. I wanted to sit out in my studio and watch it crumble to ashes. I wanted to watch that empire I’d created, that my ego had fashioned, the fucking palace of narcissism I’d raised – I wanted to see it turn to a mound of blackened ash. Then I wanted to blow it all away, leave a stain on the earth that I could curl up on and die.

  That’s what I wanted when we came home that night.

  Oblivion.

  The voice you’re hearing – the Mersey-American drawl; a Scouser who’s been dragged face first by his hair through the Deep South – is not instantly recognisable. I certainly did not expect such softness to come from such a striking figure. But I am star-struck, yes. The man I’m talking to, despite his almost-whisper, the rasp in his voice, is enigmatic; he wields his personality like a scythe. Maybe that’s in poor taste. But I think Skexxixx would probably be on board with that description of him.

  Welcome to Six Stories.

  I’m Scott King.

  In this, our final episode of this series, there is much to discuss. I am fully aware of the death of Arla Macleod, so it is with great care and precision that I’ve edited this episode.

  I won’t say much more. All I will say is that hackneyed phrase: it’s been a journey – a journey whose end is upon us.

  But there’s still so much to tell.

  I start this episode with a man whose influence has run like a black vein through the story of Arla Macleod. It will not surprise you that when I began to research this case, the artist known as Skexxixx was one of the first people I wanted to talk to. Having been relegated almost to obscurity after his second album, Through the Mocking Glass, was released in 2007, and not appearing in person, or recording any musical follow-ups, in the wake of the Macleod Massacre in 2014, his profile rose slightly. Skexxixx h
as taken a lot of flak from the press, being cited as a ‘reason’ why Arla Macleod killed her family. Of course, more cases of Skexxixx’s supposed influence have subsequently been dredged up – mostly from his halcyon days, or his ‘hell-cyon’, as he calls them with a smile so brief I almost miss it.

  The fundamentalist Christian Joseph Randolf, who attempted to blow up a shopping mall in Canton, Ohio, told police he had been ‘possessed’ by subliminal messages in Skexxixx’s music – a claim so ludicrous it was resoundingly dismissed by the rest of the world. Yet these persistent accusations did not stop, reaching their peak just before the release of Through the Mocking Glass in 2007.

  When I got in touch with Skexxixx’s representatives in my research for this series, I was told firmly – and rather stroppily – that he would neither discuss nor comment on ‘an individual case, which bears no personal relevance to Skexxixx whatsoever’. However, his agent then contacted me again and told me Skexxixx was going to be in the UK for a short time and would be willing to discuss things ‘on his terms’. I didn’t reply to this in the end, feeling that I would not be able to get the answers I wanted if I had to compromise my questions, so I simply left the invitation hanging.

  I was therefore fully prepared to be ignored or told where to go when I approached Skexxixx’s representatives again. I already knew Skexxixx had made no attempts to resurrect his career – he parted company with his record label long ago and paid them off in a brief legal wrangle about undelivered albums. I was also aware he had no interest in any other kind of publicity. So I spelled out in detail what I wanted to discuss and, to my great surprise, I was granted an interview, which we conducted in a day-room suite at a London hotel.

  Before the interview, Skexxixx’s UK publicist told me in no uncertain terms that any mention of Arla Macleod had been vetoed – that Skexxixx would walk if I even went near that subject. And so it was with a degree of trepidation that I sat down opposite the Lord of Nothing himself.

  Skexxixx’s real name is Leonard Myers. He’s originally from Aigburth in Merseyside and now a long-term resident of LA. He’s in his forties but looks much older – something I was not expecting. Skexxixx is a far cry from the insectile, painted dervish from the early noughties. There’s a hint of smudged eyeliner on his lower lids and his gait is a shuffle; an ill-fitting jacket fails to hide the paunch that presses at the waistband of his jeans. His teeth bear no trace of the trademark blackener that his fans used to emulate – made infamous by Arla Macleod. All of these features point to an eccentric, washed-up rock star – a figure far removed from Skexxixx’s earlier incarnation as the scourge of the Christian West.

  Oddly enough, how everything went wrong for Skexxixx is little documented – mainly because the attempted press coverage at the time of the Macleod Massacre was threatened with lawsuit after lawsuit. Ultimately, Skexxixx won a huge, undisclosed sum from an unnamed tabloid, thus allowing him to vanish into a more-than-comfortable obscurity.

  Why is any of this relevant, though, if I’m not allowed to discuss with him the late Arla Macleod?

  That will become clear.

  —His name was Olli. He never even opened his eyes. They let us hold him, let us say goodbye. I can’t ever rid myself of those fleeting moments – those last hours when my life ended…

  Have you seen the press lately? Jumping all over everything. Those fucking news websites – shit rags putting up ‘instant-reaction’ photos of celebrities who’ve just suffered a bereavement. Scum, all of them. If that had happened to us, I don’t know what I would have done. I’d have been locked up for it, I know that.

  Skexxixx leaves that threat hanging and stares straight ahead, past me, into the middle distance. As I’ve mentioned, the coverage of the stillbirth of Skexxixx’s child with then partner, actress Sonia Dawlish, was fortunately kept to a minimum. It probably helped that Skexxixx the musician was falling into obscurity. His second album had not done well and the man was already refusing interviews; he even walked offstage after two songs when he received a hostile reception at the Reading Festival in 2007.

  Now the man directs his cold stare at his publicist, who scuttles out of the room and comes back with a carafe of water, twists of cucumber floating inside like snake specimens in formaldehyde.

  There is something that Skexxixx wants to talk to me about. He says that no one has ‘bothered’ asking his opinion on the subject before. He was made aware of Six Stories before our meeting and says he has listened to some of the series so far. He describes it as ‘a hard listen’.

  —Imagine me having feelings?

  He says this with a rattling laugh. His eyes are blank.

  —I can’t tell you when it all started. I don’t even know for sure. I have someone taking care of all the Facebook and whatever. I was against all of that at first. Then I just thought of it as a little place for fans to go and chat or whatever. I was made aware of it but I didn’t really give a fuck about it. It never felt like any of that – the messages and posts and stuff – was really coming at me. I spent most of my time in my studio.

  It was only when I set up the Twitter account back in 2010 that it all began to get to me. I had some new songs. I had been through some shit, had some therapy, and I felt like it was time to start giving something back. I had no idea of the reaction – the furore – this would create.

  Around 2010, Skexxixx began emerging from his grief. It was a tentative thing – a far cry from the king of controversy he’d previously been. He was not so much embracing nothing; perhaps he was making a small attempt to become something instead? He began tweeting snippets of lyrics and a few promo pictures. Gone was the sneering defiance of before; instead these showed a new seriousness, a focus.

  —At first, the overall reaction was pretty good, man. I mean there’s always people who send you weird shit, send you abuse. But it wasn’t bad. I could ignore it, let it go.

  But then … Look, this is an exclusive, man. I’ve never spoken properly about this before; no one’s even been interested. Aren’t you the lucky boy? So, anyway, there’s a few organisations out there for people in a similar situation to mine. They help out, provide counselling and care for those who’ve been bereaved. I figured I wanted to help. I’d been personally affected. It felt right. Not for me, but for Olli.

  Contrary to what was claimed online by the vast majority of both Skexxixx and non-Skexxixx fans, none of this was for publicity. Skexxixx made that very clear. Using his name would be the decision of the organisations themselves.

  —They all got back to me, those organisations. I’ll not name them – I’ll not name any of them. I feel bad even saying this to you, as I kind of get what they meant – I understand where they were coming from. And I’m not looking for revenge. But it shocked me. Because you know what they said, every single one of them? Something along the lines of, ‘It would not be appropriate at this time for an artist with such a controversial image to become a patron of our organisation. It would send out a confused message.’

  I remember just feeling numb, all the life drained out of me. It was like I’d been stabbed. I would know, because I have been stabbed. It was unexpected. It was shocking and – ironically, I suppose – more controversial than anything I’d ever done onstage.

  I could have shamed all of them, exposed their hypocrisy. But I didn’t. I thought that was a good decision.

  Then things got bad.

  —Can you tell me the first time you remember it happening? Or, a better way of putting it, the first time you remember it getting to you?

  —That’s a good fucking way of putting it, yeah. So I was prepared for the onslaught as soon as I hit Twitter with my new stuff, man. I had the usual right-wing Christians who seem to spend most of their time arguing online with atheists, using very un-Christian language towards me. It always makes me think, if their God is so powerful, so omnipotent, so divine, why do they feel the need to defend him over a dude sending out a few tweets? I mean, surely God doesn’t give a s
hit, right?

  But it wasn’t them, though. I mean, they did keep telling me I’m going to hell and I’m just, like, ‘Prove it.’ But then some of them they started talking shit about Olli, telling me it was my fault. Man, how can you call yourself Christian and talk shit about someone’s dead kid?

  I take a deep breath before asking my next question. I have to ask it but I know he’s not going to be happy.

  —Do you think you might have provoked some of that at all?

  —Are you fucking serious? Provoked people into telling me that it was my fault my kid was dead? Provoked people into telling me that their fucking God struck him down to punish me because I wrote a fucking song? Bullshit. Did you know that that very famous and very controversial church group – more controversial than I’ve ever been, by the way – made a parody of one of my songs? It’s called ‘The Folly of Hell’ and they called their version ‘Olli in Hell’. They made a fucking video with a baby dancing in some flames. And they call themselves Christians!

  —My God! No, I didn’t know that.

  —And you know why you’ve not heard about it? Because if it goes online again I’ll fucking bankrupt them and they know it. I’m now a bigger threat to them than Satan. But it wasn’t even them. It wasn’t the fundamentalists that got to me in the end. It was…

  Skexxixx gives an almost whispered command and his publicist scurries over with a folder. Skexxixx opens the plastic wallet and holds out the pages to show me, his long fingers still tattooed with occult symbols. He wears only one ring – a single silver band on the middle finger of his left hand. Olli’s name is engraved on its surface.

  The folder is filled with printouts – newspaper articles that document Skexxixx’s disappearance, and the trolling he received. Their tone is faintly accusatory. As if he almost deserved what happened to him.