by Richard Long
“For…Paul?” Bean asked, wiping his clammy brow with his dirty shirtsleeve.
“Of course. He’ll be joining us momentarily, but I need to prepare you.”
Bean gasped as the nearly naked figure walked around the altar, spreading his arms in invitation, the span of his skeletal fingers mirroring the giant winged creature behind him. “Lie down, Mr. Bean. Make yourself comfortable,” Loren said softly, lowering his hands behind the altar and raising them again with a hammer and four nails in his grip.
“Fuck you, man!” Bean shouted, backing up against the far wall. “I have Paul’s complete protection. Don’t even think about touching me!”
“‘Complete protection’?” The Striker mimicked with a deep chuckle. “That’s an odd way of putting it, though I wouldn’t dare to question his phrasing or intent. Considering that I’ve been summoned here for the express purpose of performing this ritual according to his precise instructions…I can’t fathom a guess as to what he might have meant.”
“He meant that you should keep your fucking hands off me!” Michael bellowed, desperately clawing his fingers into the wallpaper. The opening had to be back here someplace. Where the fuck was it?
“No, I’m quite sure you’re mistaken in that regard,” The Striker said, swinging the hammer in a pendulum arc as he stepped around the altar, closing the distance between them by more than a yard with each step. “But perhaps he has a deeper grasp of your ability to withstand discomfort than I can discern from your futile attempt to escape your destiny. Perhaps he meant that you have no real need for his generous offer of protection. Perhaps this won’t hurt you a bit.”
“Get the fuck away from me, man!” Bean yelled, circling the room, trying to keep as much distance as possible between them.
“I have neither the time nor the patience for any more of this nonsense,” The Striker sighed. “So get on the altar without further ado, or I’ll crush your skull with this hammer.”
Michael stopped running. His heart sank like a coin in a wishing well. None of his prayers were going to come true. Not now. Not ever.
“Please,” Bean begged him in a voice barely louder than a whisper. “Please don’t do this.”
“Since you asked so nicely, I’ll spare you the additional flourishes I had in mind,” The Striker purred, gently grasping his hand, leading him to the altar like a groom escorting his bride. “Soon the Master will join us. He has something very special planned for you.”
“He’s going to kill me, isn’t he?” Michael wept, meek as a lamb.
The Striker squeezed the nails in his fist and hissed, “No. Something even better.”
Rose was bathed in golden sunlight from the window. The sky was so blue she began to cry. The combination of the gorgeous day and the fate clearly awaiting her was too much to bear. Her fate clearly awaited her because of the implements Paul was placing on the table between them. He took his time laying them out in front of her. His sickle was joined by a pair of pliers, a hammer and two knitting needles. Paul removed them from a gigantic fifteenth-century French armoire filled to the brim with even more exotic instruments of torture. Some looked so strange she couldn’t imagine what they were used for, which made them all the more terrifying. Even so, they weren’t half as scary as the ones he chose, dirty and rusting like they’d been purchased for fifty cents at a garage sale.
“I think this suits you,” he said, stuffing her mouth with a black, rubber, penis-shaped gag attached to a leather harness. Then he made the universal thumb and pinkie symbol for a telephone call, silently mouthing, “I’ll be back in a minute.”
He went into an adjoining room and closed the door. Rose rocked the chair back and forth violently, trying to break one of the rungs binding her handcuffs. It didn’t even creak. She gulped frantically, trying to swallow the built-up saliva pooling in her mouth without choking on the cock gag. Her mounting terror amplified the struggle.
She looked away from Paul’s torture tools in an attempt to gain some measure of composure, but the sheer splendor of their surroundings was so out of place with Paul’s ratty appearance that she became even more frightened. His suite was like a palace. The ceiling was at least thirteen feet high, with ornate moldings, six-foot-wide mirrors and a number of Renaissance paintings. Most of them featured naked women being killed.
Rose was gone. Martin knew it before he opened the door, even before he knocked the second time. So why were his legs still frozen, staring at the empty room?
The red light on his phone was blinking. That got him moving. He ran to the phone and pressed the button to retrieve his message. An instance of heavy breathing, then Rose’s terrified scream, “We’re…” Click.
Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Where the fuck are they?
The porter. He knows. He ran to the door, then stopped and stared at the phone. What if she called again? Or Paul? “The porter,” Martin said aloud. He took another step toward the door…and the phone rang.
“Hello, Martin,” Paul said sweetly.
“Where is she? What did you do to her?”
“I haven’t done anything of consequence…yet. As to where she is, what does your gut tell you, boy? Can you see where she is right now?”
“Tell me!”
“You’re not even trying,” Paul complained. “If you’re so desperate for the little lass, the least you could do is make a decent effort. Perhaps I shouldn’t have bothered calling.”
“Wait. Don’t hang up. Tell me what you want.”
“I want you to answer the question,” Paul said without emotion.
Martin took a deep breath. Clearing his mind as quickly as he could, he started running calculations. Given the length of his absence, the speed of the elevator, the fact that Rose was dressed in her robe when he left and the difficulties in smuggling an unwilling, undressed hostage through a crowded hotel lobby, he came to the most logical conclusion, which in his experience, was usually the correct one.
“She’s still in the hotel. With you.”
“Correct,” Paul said. “But which room? Can you picture what I’m about to do to her?”
“If you hurt her…” Martin shouted, only to have Paul immediately cut him off.
“Yes, I’m surely in for a terrible time if I so much as pull a single ring from her nose, but if you don’t keep your mouth shut and listen, I’ll make it even harder on her, okay?”
Martin bit his lip so hard it bled, but refrained from another outburst.
“Good boy,” Paul continued after hearing Martin’s grunt. “Here’s how we’ll play it: If you discover where we are in the next…hmmm…let’s say thirty minutes, she’s yours.”
“Why are you doing this?” Martin whispered, his voice shaky with rage and the pain of Paul’s betrayal.
“You’re wasting time,” Paul said dryly. “Don’t be feeling so sorry for yourself lad. There’s someone here who’s having a much worse day than you. The sooner you find her, the more pain she’ll be spared…assuming you find her at all. And Martin…”
“Yes?” he asked, praying for any clue that could help him.
“Don’t give away my presents again. That Beretta was very special.”
Click.
“Wait!” Martin yelled at the dial tone, staring at the nightstand where he’d left the pistol and the ticking clock beside the vacant space. “Rose!” he yelled again, slamming the phone down so hard he cracked the plastic. What was Paul doing to her right now?
“Are you ready to begin?” Paul asked, rubbing his hands together like a Boy Scout building a campfire. Rose shook her head violently in protest.
“Good, good,” he said, opening her robe, exposing her pierced and tattooed breasts. “Hmmm,” he murmured thoughtfully, examining her manifold piercings. “You’ve already done so much damage here, I might be gilding the lily.” He paced around in slow circles before plopping down in the chair. “Still, I suppose it’s as good a place as any to begin.”
Rose groaned beneath the gag as Paul
leaned in closer, his nose only a few scant inches from the fresh droplet of blood trickling from the key-shaped scar.
“Hhmmph! Now what have we here?” he mused, sniffing the blood like a hound dog, prodding at the purple welt with his callused fingertip. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say this bruise is shaped like a key! But the odd thing is, even with all these other shiny barbs stickin’ every which way out yer tiny titties…I can’t imagine where a mark like this could come from. Might you have been wearing a certain necklace earlier today? About twenty-eight minutes ago, perhaps?”
“Mmphh,” Rose grunted, trying to avoid his gaze.
“Oh, yes…you’re suffering from a little congestion. Let me give you some air.”
Paul loosened the strap on her gag just enough to extract a few inches of the black rubber cock clogging her gullet.
“I gave it to Martin,” Rose gurgled. She wanted to say more, but Paul strapped the gag back on again…after brutally shoving it in and out a few times.
“You gave it to Martin, did you?” he chuckled, lowering his face to her harness-strapped head. Rose gagged on the saliva trapped in her mouth as she gazed into Paul’s dead eyes with absolute horror. Then she choked again, almost drowning in spit as Paul slowly rolled his eyes…upward…and upward…and backwards…until only the whites were showing. Paul smiled with those blank eyeballs, laced with a hundred tiny capillaries. Then his irises drifted back down again, locking on to Rose’s pupils like a ratchet wrench.
“No, I don’t think so. I just spoke to the dear lad…worried sick about you he is, though Gawd only knows why. If he had your little trinket, I’m thinking he might have mentioned it, desperate as he is for anything to barter for your worthless hide.
“By the by, it surely was a mistake for you to have taken off that precious bauble, even for a moment, leaving only this sad shadow in its wake. I’m not sure what Johnny told you about it, and frankly, I don’t care, but you might want to know, now that’s it’s far too late, that that innocent little scrap of metal, in addition to its more practical function, is a very powerful amulet. A protective amulet, if you believe such nonsense. I’ve heard stories…aye, legends about that key. Even though it can’t be proved—certainly not now anyway, with you here all helpless in my evil grip—but some say it’s the most powerful amulet that has ever existed. So powerful, in fact, that even a big, strong bully like meself would be hard pressed to injure a teeny hair on your spiky head, were you wise enough to still be wearing it. But sadly, you’re not wearing it, dearie…are you?”
“Mmmmmmph,” Rose gurgled in blind, absolute panic.
Paul slowly stood up, reaching his arms toward the heavens, and shouted with all his might, “Are you watching, Johnny? I know you are! So keep both eyes open. I wouldn’t want you to miss a single second of this! Your little bitch is mine now! All mine!”
Rose stared at Paul’s hate-filled screaming face and shuddered with a terror so complete she almost fell over backwards in her chair.
Paul lowered his arms. He was laughing now. “Oh, I do get carried away sometimes. I surely do. Still, you shouldn’t be so frightened,” he said, stroking her cheek. “Look at all the pain you’ve already endured, at your very own hands. This shouldn’t be much different, d’you think?”
“Mmmpphh!” Rose grunted, her eyes pleading.
“Still, I believe it’s customary within your S&M circles to have some kind of ‘safe’ word—a signal to express your limits regarding the level of pain you’re able to endure. However, since this is strictly a disciplinary action as a result of your foolish disobedience, we should think of a word that has a more direct bearing on these unique circumstances.
“Now what should it be?” he mused, picking up the pliers, holding them to his mustache, plucking out a single white hair while he mulled over the possibilities.
“I’ve got it! It’s not really a word, more of a phrase to be accurate, but if the pain gets to be too much, if I go too far, just gurgle out as best you’re able, ‘Please, Daddy! Save me!’”
I’ve been going to the chapel day after day, equally impelled by my thirst for revenge and my insatiable curiosity about the Clan Kelly mystery. Any knowledge gained, I thought, would be potentially useful in whatever last stand I could muster against the man who had decimated all our lives. Mother. Me. Martin.
Paul never came inside while I was in there. I looked at the pictures stuffed between the candles, the weird inscriptions on the walls, but mostly I read the books. Some sections were easy to read, but a lot of it was written in teensy scribbles, some of it backward, or in Ogham. I knew a little bit about Celtic Genealogy from reading the Annals of the Four Masters, but these notations (almost always in the margins), were so pointed, critical and comical I could almost hear Paul reading them aloud.
There were frequent references to the Milesians: Heremon, Heber and Ir and many of the big guns in their lineage; Tormac Mac Art, Ugaine Mor, Crimthann-Niadh-Nar, Eochaidh Dubhlen, Colla da Crioch, Maine Mor, Ceallach (the first reference to “Kelly” I found)…and my personal favorite: William Boy Kelly. Even more interesting was the fact that Paul’s marginal commentaries were all written like he personally knew them. For example, in the Book of Connor, Paul’s fifth son, he wrote, “Sometimes he reminds me so much of Niall, I wonder if he’s a Kelly at all.” I assume he’s referring to Niall Noígíallach, of the nine hostages. It seemed that they were once allies, but something went wrong and the Kellys and O’Neils had been feuding ever since. Which made me think about Rose. Another O’Neil.
The narrative was similar in every volume: the training period, the killings and thefts of ritual objects in “raids” as he calls them—and in most cases, their deaths—at the hands of rival clans, their brothers, another clan member and occasionally Paul himself. The raids are launched to plunder ancient artifacts, like St. Grellan’s Crosier—good story there. Even more bizarrely, Paul and his sons (Martin, usually) sojourn on lengthy quests to obtain what they call “the four elementals” which are the four treasures of the Celtic Gods, the Tuatha Dé Danann: The Dagda’s Cauldron, The Spear of Lugh, The Stone of Fal and the Sword of Nuada. From what I’ve read, he claims to have nabbed two of them.
I kept reading and making notes, hoping the books might contain the answer to the question that nagged me most of all: What were they really trying to do? If this was a competition, someone had to win something more valuable than all the loot they were taking, even the elementals. A grand prize? Yet I couldn’t find a single reference to any reward other than the gold and artifacts they found, stole and hoarded. Everything else I learned raised even more questions. There were never any explanations, as if everything was written for someone who already knew the story. Every time I asked Paul a direct question, he wouldn’t say a word. He’d just smile and point back to the chapel. Yeah, yeah, I know. Look and learn.
It made for great reading. But the more I read, the more frightened I became—not from the content as much as what it implied. The incredible notion that they had somehow maintained an underground Celtic feudal society after God knows how many centuries—complete with kings, lords, nobles and a druid sect—put me right back to square one with my belief that Paul was, in fact, an extremely dangerous paranoid schizophrenic with delusions of grandeur. Correction: with delusions of everything. He had invented his own terrifying little world, I thought. It was as if he and his clan were trapped in a Renaissance Faire that never ended. They had even convinced some Irish genealogy nuts from other families to join the game. Did they get all dressed up too?
I wonder if the first person to discover Henry Darger’s hidden collection of several hundred watercolor paintings felt the same way I was feeling. I’m guessing he did, especially if he spent any time reading his 15,145 page, single-spaced manuscript (The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinnian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion) featuring prepubescent girls with penises fighting of
f an army of soldiers who routinely hung, strangled and eviscerated them. But I’m sure the person who discovered Darger’s stash didn’t find a blood-caked altar and a crucified angel in the room, or a website filled with snuff videos.
Still, that didn’t mean all the “clansmen” weren’t sharing a delusional worldview. Plenty of cults accept ridiculous mythical stories as the gospel truth, some of them so wacky they make Paul’s adventures seem downright plausible. Hell, all the big religions do the same thing and there’s always more money piling up in the collection plates. Virgin births. Water into wine. Resurrection. Paul and his clansmen were all crazy cultists, tilting at windmills, questing for grails—and murdering each other with apparent immunity. There was no rhyme or reason, no occult or Hermetic references and nothing at all that described the all-important line of succession Paul kept harping on. I was thinking just that when he stomped into the chapel and asked, “Are you beginning to get the big picture?”
“I haven’t been able to get through everything,” I said, pointing at all the volumes in the cabinet below, “but I think I get the gist of it.”
“And the gist of it is?” Paul asked with a dubious expression.
That you’re totally fucking crazy, I wanted to say, but I answered, “Well, you rape these women, abandon us as babies, but you keep stalking us, writing these books. Then at some point you show up in our lives and train us to be killers. Well, you train most of us; you haven’t done anything with Michael as far as I can tell, and I guess my training’s just begun, right?”
“I’ve taken a different tack with you and Michael. Call it an accelerated learning curve. His training will commence shortly. By the way, you need to pick up the pace, lad. You’re falling far below my expectations. Now, what else have you learned?”
“I don’t know…some of this other stuff…it just doesn’t seem possible.”
“Such as…”
