by John Moralee
Scott was left to keep Melanie company. The ward was deathly silent except for the low hum of electricity powering the monitoring equipment. Melanie’s heart was a steady 78 beats per minute, just above normal, but her brain scans had shown the problem. Her brain had been zapped by the lightning until almost no brain-function registered. The lightning had been a massive electroshock. It was as though she’d been given electroshock therapy over and over. The slang for such therapy was “riding the lightning”.
A man entered the ward, talking loudly to the nurse sitting doing paperwork. He was dressed in a dinner jacket and tie. He pulled at the knot while the nurse pointed at Melanie. Flustered, the man rushed over. He stared suspiciously at Scott.
“God - what happened?”
“You must be ...?”
“David. David Danton. We were supposed to be eating out tonight, but she said she had some business to complete. Then her mother called to say she was here.” He paused. “Say, who are you?”
“I’m her husband.”
“You’re the one?”
Scott resented the way the man said it, like an accusation. Yes, I’m her husband. So what? You’re just the boyfriend. An idea hit him, a revelation. Once the idea was set in his mind, everything clicked in place. Some good could come from this tragedy, he knew. “Melanie was coming back to me, you see. She realised she still loved me, not you.”
“I don’t believe it.” But Scott saw doubt in his eyes. Maybe he did believe it. Scott would play on that insecurity.
“She realised she’d made a mistake. You were just a transition guy, David. Nothing more. You would know that if you knew her better, like I do. We were meant to be together forever.”
“No.”
Scott pressed the advantage to the full - a small part of himself hating the way he was behaving - but for the most, he wanted rid himself of this man, this man who had probably slept with his wife while they were still together. “We’ve been together seven years, David. Do you think a man she’s only known - for what? - ten weeks could replace that? No, she wanted to give our marriage another try. She said so. Then the accident took her away.” He squeezed Melanie’s hand. Genuine tears burned his eyes. “When she recovers she’s coming home with me.”
David fidgeted, taking a step forward, taking a step backward.
“You’re lying.”
“David, don’t be so naive. I bet you don’t even know her middle name.” She didn’t have one, he knew.
“Maybe not. But ... but we’ll see who she really wants when she wakes.”
*
Scott’s bedside vigil lasted five months. Melanie recovered from her physical injuries quickly, so it was hard for him to understand why she did not wake up from that dark place inside her. She stayed comatose, as if frozen in time, his Sleeping Beauty. Alas, no kisses stirred her. She was maintained on drips and EEG equipment. Nurses would come and go, consultants would examine her MRI scans over and over. There was nothing anyone could do. Recovery was up to Melanie. Scott talked to her, played her favourite music, volunteered to exercise her muscles rather than let a strange physiotherapist do it, but nothing seemed to work. Even the boyfriend gave up visiting, which was a small comfort that just served to make Scott feel guilty for lying.
Melanie remained unconscious.
He was most uncomfortable dealing with Melanie’s parents, Carol and Bernard. Neither believed his story, that Melanie had been planning on giving their marriage a second go. But, like a criminal the police knew was guilty, he said nothing to disprove his story. Carol and Bernard could not prove he was lying (evidently, Melanie had not discussed the divorce papers with anyone but her lawyer), so they begrudgingly accepted his version. And the more he repeated it, the more he believed it was true.
“Come back, Melanie. I’ll pay more attention to your needs. I can be a better husband. Just wake up and let me prove it. I love you. Maybe I haven’t said that for a long time, but that doesn’t mean I don’t care for you. You’re the best thing that ever happened to me. We are meant to be together. I knew that the first time we met at university. It was special. There was electricity between us, a spiritual connection.” He could feel her soft breathing on his face. “You must wake up! Please, things can be different. Give me another chance ...”
There was no response.
There was never a response.
As December neared, he began to lose hope. She’d never come out of it, and it was his fault, his fault for being on the damn hill screaming at the sky. She was gone, as far away as any city.
She’d ridden the lightning – but she had lost.
Then, two days before Christmas, she woke.
“Scott?”
Startled, overjoyed, Scott said, “I’m here.”
Melanie opened her eyes. Her voice was weak. “Where’s here?”
“Hospital. You were struck by lightning, and I nearly lost you.” To David, he thought. David, the boyfriend. He pushed that to the back of his mind.
“I’m tired,” she murmured.
“I know.”
“Can we go home?”
“God, yes!” he said. “But first the doctors have to make sure you’re going to be fine.”
“Fine ...” she said sleepily, drifting off.
*
“Your wife has some neurological damage,” the consultant neurologist said.
“What exactly does that mean?”
“She’s lost a significant section of her memory. As far as we can tell, she has total amnesia of the last four years. She still thinks it is 2008.”
“I didn’t know that was possible.”
“Anything’s possible after serious head trauma.”
“Is she well enough to take home?”
“Oh, yes. But I don’t know if her memory is permanently lost or will come back in time. I’ll have to monitor her progress. Regular checkups will be essential, but in my judgement she is physically and mentally well.”
“Except for the memory loss.”
“Except for that, yes. I’m sorry.”
Don’t be, Scott thought guilty, it’s a miracle. It means we can start again. The lightning worked!
He went home and dismantled the lightning conductor.
*
Melanie’s return was like one never-ending honeymoon, the rekindling of passions he’d almost forgotten existed. Not since the early days of their relationship had things been so good between them. Melanie was always laughing, giddy with pleasure. She loved the farm, relishing its beauty, spending time exploring each acre with the wonder of a child. She named the sheep and could recognise individuals far better than he could. She treated them like children, picking them up and playing with them.
Finally, she could see what he saw, hear what he heard, and experience nature how it was meant to be, not through the jaded perceptions of a city-dweller. There were shades of colour you never saw in the city, the yellow of sunflowers, the gold of buttercups ... Scott marvelled at the changes in Melanie. Melanie, the farmer, driving a plough, turning up the rich black loam. Walking along the furrows dropping seeds in the soil. Melanie driving a harvester through golden wheat fields.
Life on the farm was no free ride, but together they more than managed. Scott also changed. He made an effort to socialise. The local village was an ideal venue for meeting people; its inn was quaint and rustic. There were commuter couples living in the cottages, young people they could relate to. Melanie had always been more outgoing than he’d appreciated: she made friends easily, and Scott could see why he’d failed before to satisfy her social needs. Dinner parties were arranged, telephone numbers exchanged. Scott invited their new found friends to their home. It was good to meet people. He liked having other men to talk to about cricket and politics. They could have the best of both worlds. And it was all because of the lightning.
His only reservation was that her memory would return, that she would overcome the amnesia and remember she did not love him.
&
nbsp; That summer was hot and dry.
*
After the heat, came the storm. Thunder woke him in the night. The bedroom was dark, but a stroboscopic series of lightning flashes revealed Melanie wasn’t in the bed. He sat up, puzzled. The bedroom door was open. Scott swung his legs onto the cold carpet. Wind rattled the windows. He hurried downstairs, turning on the lights, looking in each room. Melanie wasn’t there. He was worried now.
She wasn’t outside in the storm, was she?
He could see nothing through the windows. The darkness was a solid wall. Between rumbles of thunder he could hear crying - no, not crying - the frightened cries of sheep. A pencil of light flickered at the bottom of the valley. A torch. It had to be Melanie. She was outside trying to save the flock from the storm.
He dressed quickly and, taking the remaining torch, plunged outside into the angry rain. The rain was so heavy he had to blow it out his nostrils and mouth to breathe. Running, slipping, he crossed the field. His torch beam exposed a circle of silver raindrops in the darkness, the wavering grass, and at the periphery of its range the grey smears of sheep. Melanie was there directing the dogs, trying to herd the sheep towards the lane and the barn, where they would be safe from the lightning and drowning. But the sheep were scared and wandered all over. The dogs could not handle them. Each thunderclap merely set the sheep off in another direction. Melanie’s dark hair swirled in the wind, cascading water, like something alive. She saw him. She was breathless. “Can’t. Leave. Outside.”
Lightning spider-webbed from the dark clouds.
Scott closed the distance.
“Go inside,” he shouted. “I’ll do this.”
“No! It’s not safe for us both to be out here!”
“I know that!”
“What?”
There was a violet aura around her head. She seemed to glow like an angel.
Instinctively, knowing she would be struck unless he acted NOW, Scott dived forward - just as the sky opened up with the worst strike yet. The lightning seemed to be all around him - a pure white iridescent glow saturating everything. He couldn’t see Melanie - but he could feel her hand. And he was falling, falling. Darkness replaced light. He’d landed on top of Melanie. She grunted under him. Her head had hit a rock. Her eyes lost focus, becoming glazed.
The storm moved on as the rain lessened. The dogs barked and whimpered. The sheep scuffled off into the field apparently recovered from their fear.
“Melanie?”
She did not respond.
He lifted her and carried her to the house. Inside, she mumbled incoherently. Something wet and black dribbled from her hairline. Mud and blood. She had a possible skull fracture. Mustn’t let her fall asleep. Don’t die. Don’t leave me. He shook her to keep her awake. Her head rocked loosely. Got to get her to hospital. He was in no condition to drive. He was so tired. He phoned for an ambulance. Someone told him to keep her conscious and warm. He wrapped her in blankets.
She was saying something.
“What?” he said.
She said it again.
“Honey, say it louder?”
“David?”
Scott said nothing.
“David?”
“Yes,” he lied.
She grinned drunkenly. “I love you, David. I love … you. My head feels all …”
Scott knew he had lost her again, but he did not want her to die. She deserved happiness. Even if it was with David. The lightning had struck her again for a reason. He shook her until her eyes opened. “The ambulance is coming. The ambulance is coming.”
His face was soaking wet, water dripping down his cheeks. He pretended it was rain.
Outside, the lightning had moved on.
Bloodways
The child-murderer carried the steel bucket of warm blood from the makeshift altar to the concrete wall opposite the stairs. He stopped, panting, as he put down the bucket and slid the knife in the back pocket of his jeans. He walked back to the altar, taking the two Duracell torches off the top. The altar was a large crate set in the middle of the basement, where the dead girl lay naked and slashed open. Her throat had a savage hole. He carried the torches to the wall and arranged them on the ground so their light was shining on it.
From my hiding place, I saw brown stains on the concrete: dried blood.
It was like something out of a Hammer horror movie, but it was real. Peter Cushing wasn’t going to rush in with a stake and a crucifix. Anything that happened next was up to me, but I was too scared to move. I was a journalist; I wasn’t prepared for this. Jesus! Now what was he doing with the bucket?
He gripped the bucket with both hands and hurled the contents at the wall. The girl’s blood splashed on the wall and ran down it, pooling at the bottom in a red river. He muttered vile words, talking to the wall and the darkness. Shaking, I scribbled the words in short-hand. I stayed in the jet blackness near the stairs, too frightened to act. I felt sick. I’d crept down the stairs too late to save the girl; she must have been killed a few minutes before I parked my car outside the tower-block.
I’d been lucky enough to miss him filling the bucket from her throat, though I could imagine it.
I’d known as soon as I drove past the tower-block that it was where the serial killer the media were calling “Mack the Knife” had been taking his victims. Call it luck if you like, but I’d really felt it in my guts: I’d known with a hundred per cent certainty. I should have called the police, but I had to look first because that was my business, to report the horrific.
The tower-block had been derelict for two years, and before that it had been lived in by people the world had forgotten: the poor families dispossessed by the 1960s demand for urban housing in smaller and smaller spaces, by building ever upwards, whatever the social cost. Slowly, the tower-block had become twenty-four storeys of squalor and crime. It would have stayed that way if a good part of the twentieth floor had not collapsed, injuring six residents and killing an old man. And so the ruined families had been moved out, hopefully to start a new life in proper housing. (But I doubted it, somehow.) The entire building was due to be destroyed in six weeks; explosive charges set in the foundations would drop the concrete monolith in a cloud of bricks and scrunched metal. And so the serial killer had moved in, seizing an opportunity for a nice quiet place. Nobody could hear screams through the thick basement walls. It was the perfect place for him - the council would do the hard work for Mack by hiding the bodies.
Mack set down the bucket. He took out his knife again, holding it above his head, making an animal howl.
I wished I could risk taking a photograph using my Nikon digital camera. Just one photograph would assure my fame and Mack’s conviction. But the button click would be heard.
His knife glistened with the girl’s blood. It was a strange knife: its mirror-bright edges were curved and jagged and razor-sharp. It was a tool for cutting and ripping and wrenching; different parts of the blade could do different atrocities. It was something a sadistic Boy Scout would carry around for gutting rabbits. Queerly, the cabalistic symbols on the handle seemed darker than the darkness above him, like the darkness was draining light out of the air. Mack the Knife had used the knife to murder six schoolgirls in six months. He’d mailed a body part to the police after each kill. No one knew why - maybe it was to show off. There had been much speculation about what he did with the rest of their bodies. Did Mack eat them? Did he mutilate them while they were alive? Grim questions for a public thirsty for blood, anyone’s blood. And I was about to find out!
As a journalist I’d been naturally interested. My book True Crimes of a 1001 Serial Killers had been a best-seller in Britain and the US. Mack the Knife was a potential sequel. To catch him myself would be an achievement beyond imagination. But watching him doing his thing was deeply disturbing, I was beginning to have serious doubts about my own sanity. If I made one sound, he could come at me with that demented Swiss Army knife. I was unarmed. I was stupid. I was a glory-see
king low life. The sensible thing to do was to escape while he was performing his ritual. Sneak back up the stairs. Call the cops on my mobile phone.
Now he was kissing the knife.
Jesus, I wanted to throw up.
What was he doing that for?
The brightness of the blood on the wall was changing.
I saw it, and could not believe it.
Yes, it was definitely changing.
The blood was glowing. It looked like a circle of hot lava, pushing its way through a hole in the wall. (But there was no hole, I knew. I had seen the wall whole.) Ruddy light shone through the blood splash, increasing in brightness as the child-murderer got down on one knee. Suddenly cold, crimson light cut the gloom like a thousand lasers, shafts of red light bursting from the splatter pattern. The lasers criss-crossed the walls, painted his body with a red spider web. The thin shafts of light grew wider until they formed one powerful, continuous beam streaming out of the hole. I could hardly see Mack for the light. He was in the shadow of the blood haze. He was yelling. He loved this. I felt as though I were staring into the headlights of a speeding truck.
The air around the bloodied wall shimmered and warped.
Mack the Knife stood up and waded towards the wall. He waded because a hurricane wind was blowing through the newly formed hole. It was like being behind a jet fighter taking off. I held on to the staircase rail and ducked as things took off.
I squinted at the red light. It looked like an entrance to hell.
The man had gone.
Mack the Knife’s satanic ritual had worked.
I urinated in my jeans, the hot liquid jetting down my legs. I couldn’t help it. Any shame I would have felt in normal circumstances didn’t mean a single thing. A doorway into another world was opening up. I was allowed to panic.
