THE SIX: A Dark, Dazzling Serial Killer Story

by Anni Taylor

  “Shhh,” he crooned. “Sweet Evie, you’ll only upset yourself. I apologise for this change to our schedule. It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. But within a few hours, you won’t be here anymore to feel the pain and sorrow that brought you to the monastery in the first place.”

  My arms sank with the weight of the chains. “Is that why we’re here? Because we’re addicts? You want to put us out of our pain? Or because we disgust you?”

  He took a deep breath, his dark eyes on mine. “No. I know that you’re smart enough to figure that one out. Perhaps your fear is blinding your senses.”

  “Tell me,” I said, all colour drained from my voice. “I need to know why.”

  “Very well. You’ll find the reasons why we choose addicts quite clever, I think. Your addictions do not interest us, but your addictions are helpful to use in a number of ways. They provide us with a compelling reason to get you to come to the island. And of course, your reasoning is blunted by your desperation. You’ll agree to anything to relieve yourselves of the painful situations in which you’ve found yourselves. The money and the treatment program are impossible to refuse. And your addictions provide a very good cover for the fact you’ve gone missing. People with addictions are the ones who are most likely to vanish. The drug addicts and drug-addicted prostitutes. The gamblers with massive debts to their names.”

  My teeth set firmly together, my jaw trembling. “You prey on the desperate. Why even bother with the challenges? Why not just kill us as soon as we step foot on the island?”

  “The challenges are not for you. They are for us,” he said, fixing a chain to my left ankle. “It’s a commemoration of our history. We chose all of you because you have talents.” He smiled briefly. “You are addicts, yes, but each of you are talented in some way. Each year, the four mentors choose their teams. Six people each, cherry picked from the world. The mentor who ends up with the most people out of the final six who have the most points to their names wins.”

  “It’s all just a contest?”

  He shrugged. “Yes. As I said, each one of the people we choose is very adept at something. Good at figuring things out. Quick minds. Mathematical ability or intuition or the ability to stay calm under pressure.” He caressed me beneath the chin. “You’re my prize, Evie. You won the most points of all the participants. And you, of course, were chosen by me to be on my team. You were a whiz at the poker table. When you moved past that to an addiction, Brother Wilson took a keen interest. He told me about you.”

  Unable to brush his fingers away, I turned my face. “Everything was a lie.”

  He touched my hair fondly before he dropped his hand. “Rest now, Evie. Think of your children and kiss them goodnight one last time.”

  Brother Vito left.

  A blinding terror coursed through every nerve in my body, searing me.

  I could trust no one here.

  Who else was pretending to be what they were not?

  I hadn’t even sensed the cold emptiness behind Brother Vito’s words and charm. I hadn’t figured out why Kara had turned so cold when I first spoke to her here. And God, Poppy . . . why hadn’t I guessed what she really was? When Richard and I had witnessed Brother Vito pushing Poppy’s advances away, he must have been worried they’d be seen.

  A door slammed open somewhere behind me, on the other side of the half wall where I couldn’t see. I guessed it was the door that we’d been unable to open.

  My heart fell through my chest as I watched a group of Saviours bring in Hop, Yolanda, Thomas and all the others who had escaped from the cellar.

  Yolanda’s dark eyes raged as she held up her arm to me. “The wristbands. They’ve got trackers in them. We should have cut them off.”

  A Saviour roughly chained Yolanda to the left of me, one space over. He looked over at me and grinned. Harrington. Harrington was one of them, too.

  “Why?” she asked him weakly. “Why did you pretend to be one of us?”

  “It’s a privilege,” Harrington told her. “Each year, four of us are chosen to be part of the challenges. We get to be up close and personal with our victims, right up to challenge five. What could be better?” He kissed her loudly on the forehead.

  She spat at him.

  “Knew it,” slurred Richard. “There were four too many, right from the start. Twenty-eight made no sense. There were really only twenty-four of us. So, Harrington, Kara and sweet, treacherous little Poppy . . . Who else? I know there’s another one of you.”

  Harrington stood, slinging his rifle over his back. “Eugene Bublik. Stupid jerk got himself killed out in the hills by that one over there--Ruth. Smashed his head in with a rock. She should be one of us.”

  “Good. One down. The rest of you to go.” Richard moaned as he leaned his head back. The Saviours had retaliated brutally when he’d tried to stab Brother Sage, throwing him to the ground and kicking him in the head and chest.

  Stepping away, Harrington smirked. “Your odds are a million to one, Mister Vegas High Roller.”

  Richard had guessed right. There had been four pretenders. I didn’t know Eugene at all and hadn’t been in a challenge with him, but I was glad he was dead.

  Louelle hadn’t been brought back. Louelle, with her distant expression, who’d known things were wrong here in the monastery. I clung to the hope that she’d escaped—that she’d gotten away on a boat and could bring help. Mei and Thomas hadn’t returned either. Please, please, if you’ve all escaped on boats, keep going and bring help.

  My rational mind knew that they had no chance. Anyone trying to escape in a rowboat was no match for a Saviour in a fast speed boat.

  I turned to ask Yolanda about Louelle, but her eyes had glazed over. She began singing something in a faltering, trembling voice. A song a parent would sing to a small child.

  Next to Yolanda, Ruth woke, groaning. She rattled out a flurry of slurred, half-incomprehensible swear words at the Saviours.

  On a nearby wall, machetes, chains, knives and other instruments of torture were hanging on hooks.

  I forced my eyes to close. Forced myself to stop looking at the horror and stopped allowing myself thoughts of what was coming next.

  I’d keep my eyes firmly shut until the end.

  65. GRAY

  THE TUNNEL THROUGH THE HILL BROKE into two.

  Straight ahead, a door with a keypad lock had been left propped open.

  Sethi indicated towards the open door. Jennifer nodded. We stepped through and kept walking, not speaking, listening hard for any noise in the tunnels.

  Another door stood in the distance. A small patch of light glowed from a pane of glass about three-quarters of the way up.

  Instinctively, the four of us moved alongside the left wall, walking in single file. If someone burst through that door, we’d be seen, but at least if someone looked out through the pane, they might miss seeing us.

  Keeping low and in the shadows, we ran up alongside the door.

  Jennifer pointed at a small red light beneath a keypad. “Alarm,” she whispered.

  Pulling her hood low over her forehead, she inched towards the pane, just enough to see through it and back away again. She clapped a hand over her mouth, her eyes grown huge.

  Whatever she’d seen was horrific.

  With my breath caught fast in my chest, I waited for Sethi to look, and then I took a quick glance.

  I’d been warned. But seeing it for myself sent my mind scattering.

  Bloodied, dirty men and women—sitting or lying against a half wall of stone, facing me. Chained like animals.

  Some of them seemed dead.

  Bile shot up into my throat.

  My heart stopped cold.

  In desperation I scanned the rest of the room. I needed to see the other side of the cells, but I couldn’t view that from here.

  None of the people in my range of sight were Evie or Kara.

  I could see the bottom end of a spiral staircase.

  Beyond the half wall, peop
le in dark robes were busy with some kind of preparations. They were the ones who’d done all this.

  Bright lights snapped on in the dark recesses of the cavernous space. Wooden scaffolding surrounded an enormous natural pillar of stone—the pillar as wide as a house and shooting upwards farther than I could see.

  Mother of all hell.

  What was that thing?

  66. EVIE

  LIGHTS WERE FLASHING ON IN FRONT of me. My eyes remained shut—the only barrier I had between the Saviours and me.

  But the bright glow disturbed me and wouldn’t let me escape, not even inside my own mind. The Saviours wouldn’t even grant us some quiet moments before our deaths. The choking gasps of Richard and Yolanda on either side of me made me open my eyes to see what they were seeing.

  A silent scream ripped through me, the scene before me too shocking to grasp.

  Yolanda began singing again, her words dissolving into a series of unintelligible gasps and stutters.

  Ruth began swearing again, in a shocked, barely audible tone this time.

  I needed escape, escape, escape . . .

  My thoughts sped backwards. All the way back to when I was a child. A desperate, flashing show reel of images, sounds, memories.

  I heard the words my father used to sing to me—when I’d had nightmares and couldn’t sleep. Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song.” Dad would grab his guitar and sing that. I concentrated hard on Dad’s voice.

  But I couldn’t keep hold.

  The memories were already fading to black.

  67. CONSTANCE

  JENNIFER REFUSED TO LET ME LOOK through the glass panel, even though she, Gray and Sethi had. She’d already pulled Gray back—Gray suddenly disoriented and struggling to breathe.

  What was in that room? Gray had rigidly shaken his head when I’d spoken Kara’s name.

  I could do nothing but follow the others as we retraced our steps and took the tunnel to the right.

  My limbs felt cold even though the air wasn’t. The passage ahead seemed desolate, like walking through a place not on the Earth. It was ancient, empty . . . dead.

  I turned sharply then, certain someone was following me. I had Sethi shine his flashlight into the darkness. But there was no one we could see. He went back to check but still nothing.

  I was hearing things that didn’t exist. Shadows and ghosts.

  The passages began bending and twisting in all directions. We were in a maze. I’d lost all sense of which way we were headed. Seconds ticked away like beats of a drum in my head.

  Jennifer stopped, as if she’d tuned into my thoughts. “We’re going around in circles. It’s crazy, but I think the passages are going around each room.”

  “I think Jen’s right,” said Sethi. “You can trust her on things like this. My expertise is out in the water. Jen’s is in orienteering on land. She’s been orienteering for years. Preparing herself for this day.”

  I nodded, the drum beats in my head growing louder. “We need to find our way. We have to find Kara and Evie.”

  We had no time to waste. Gray was still walking stiffly, not looking at any of us. I guessed he still hadn’t processed what he’d witnessed.

  Voices boomed along the tunnel, drowning out the sound of my imaginary drum beats and making my heart jump.

  Get back to the infirmary, came a male voice. We didn’t finish your transfusion.

  I’m fine, said a woman, her voice high and dismissive. I need to find her before the others do. She stabbed me. That goes against the rules, and that means she dies.

  Brother Sage won’t agree, said the man.

  The woman laughed. Why should she get special rules? He won’t know who did it. I’ll be back in the infirmary straight after.

  “This way,” said Sethi under his breath.

  Trying to stay as silent as possible, we moved along the passage in the opposite direction.

  The passage ended in a wide open space that led to a dormitory—the room enormous and hexagonal in shape. A dozen or more double beds were set up among closed-circuit screens—bottles of wine on the bedside tables. Flickering lamps dimly lit the room.

  Placing our backpacks behind a cupboard so that we didn’t knock over any of the bottles of wine, we began searching the room. At least, Jennifer and Sethi were searching. I didn’t know what they were looking for.

  The TV screens flicked from showing the various hallways to scenes of a room. I stared in horror. The screens showed black-and-white images of people hung up on a wall. People being tortured. Just like the pictures in Rico’s book.

  Gasping for air, a series of shivers ran vertically through my body. My limbs started shaking, every muscle caught tight.

  Sethi glanced at me and then tilted his chin at Jennifer. “Gray and I will go see if there is another way out.”

  Jennifer nodded, gently grasping my shoulders and taking me over to sit on a bed. “Be strong for your daughter, Constance. You have to be.”

  I flinched beneath Jennifer’s hands at the sound of voices coming this way. Five or more men. Saviours.

  Sethi and Gray were across the other side of the room. Jennifer inhaled sharply, jumping up to tug me backwards into the dark hallway.

  The men strode straight past us into the dormitory, with only a split second to spare. “Hey, what are you doing here?” one of them called.

  I froze. They’d seen either Sethi or Gray or both of them.

  “There’s too many of them for us to take on,” Jennifer whispered.

  Swallowing, I pressed my back against the wall. “What do we do?”

  “Continue.” Her answer was quick, sharp.

  “Without them?”

  “We have no choice.” She prodded me, forcing me to move.

  We made our way along in the complete darkness. We had nothing with us now. No night-vision goggles. And almost none of the ammunition and weapons, only what we carried in our pockets.

  In a panic, my vision blurred.

  Specks of fuzzy light pinpricked the darkness.

  I let my eyes focus. Farther down the tunnel, tiny spots of light glinted through the wall. Without thinking, I ran to the nearest yellowish spot and pressed my eye to it. Old statues and paintings came into view. Jennifer was behind me as I turned to her. “I can see a corridor.”

  She took a turn to look through. “Let’s follow it along.”

  The specks of light persisted as we walked on. At times, we had to climb up and down ladders to continue, sweat trickling down my back. This place was insane—I sensed the madness of it as if it were a living thing.

  The passage swung sharply to the right.

  We climbed another ladder and crawled into a passage that didn’t allow us to stand upright. I twisted around, again sensing that someone was behind me.

  “What’s wrong?” Ahead of me, Jennifer stopped.

  “I don’t know. I think someone’s in here with us.”

  “You heard someone?”

  “No.”

  “Then?”

  “It’s nothing,” I conceded. “I thought I saw movement, but it’s so dark . . .”

  “Let’s go quicker, just in case.”

  We climbed down the ladder, now on the opposite side of the corridor.

  “Whoever built these passageways wanted to spy on people.” I frowned as I peered through another peephole. The area outside was much wider than a corridor, a large sculpture of a bird hanging from a chain. “I think it’s the entry.”

  Jennifer touched my back, and I moved to let her see. “Just where we don’t want to be. We need to get back to the centre of this place. Let’s head towards it.”

  I followed Jennifer’s swift footsteps. She didn’t say it, but we were on borrowed time. The Saviours had Gray and Sethi, and they were sure to have found our backpacks, too. They’d know there were two more. This whole thing had already fallen apart. Had the Saviours killed them? That must be weighing on Jennifer’s mind. The man she loved was in the hands of people that
strung people up on walls and carried out unimaginable cruelty.

  My top soaked through with sweat, and my face itched under the balaclava. It seemed that we’d been travelling through this black maze for days.

  Ahead, noises echoed through the air. Then voices and footsteps. Men and women.

  “Where the hell could she have gone?” one of them complained. “She has to be out there somewhere on the island.”

  “Brother Sage just sent a dozen of us to look outside the gates. If she’s there, they’ll find her.”

  Jennifer grabbed my arm and pulled me on. We headed straight up a set of stairs.

  I drew a tight breath and held it fast as the people went running past below the stairs. I was at least grateful that we’d made it inside the monastery before the Saviours had gone to find that woman. Whoever she was, I hated to think what kind of desperate state she was in, running from these people. And whoever Brother Sage was, this was the second time I’d heard his name. He must have some measure of control here. Maybe he was even the one who led the entire order of Yeqon’s Saviours.

  We continued upward.

  The stair landing led into a space much larger than the dormitory room had been. Lamps dimly illuminated settings of plush leather armchairs and viewing screens, the screens all dark and not showing the terrible images of the dormitory. Persian rugs partly covered the wooden floorboards. There were peepholes here too—but nothing like the tiny holes that had been drilled into the hidden passages. These were made of dark glass, about the size of a coffee table, with expensive-looking cameras pointed at them. I suspected they were two-way mirrors.

  Whatever happened in the rooms below had to be of major interest. Why were these people so obsessed with watching others?

  While Jennifer examined things in the room, I peered down through a mirror into a hexagonal room that had nothing in it except for a stand of the same shape in the centre of the room. What on earth did they watch in this room?