American Devil

by Oliver Stark

  Harper levelled the shotgun. ‘Nicholas Dresden, you’re under arrest. Now put your hands where I can see them and come out front. One wrong move and you’re dead.’

  Sebastian moved out to the side of the tank, pointing a gun. ‘Don’t shoot. He’s gone,’ he said.

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘He’s gone,’ he shouted. Suddenly, he had changed. His whole frame seemed to have shrunk a few inches. His voice wasn’t so deep. His tears started. ‘I’m Nick. Don’t shoot me. Tell him, Denise. I don’t know what he’s done.’ Nick looked down at the gun. ‘Don’t shoot me.’

  ‘Put the gun on the floor,’ Harper shouted.

  ‘What have I done?’

  ‘Put the gun down!’

  Nick turned the gun on himself and jammed the muzzle into his ear. ‘I gotta stop him, Denise. I really got to stop him.’

  He walked towards them, the gun against his head. He looked shocked and confused. Harper released a shot into the ceiling. ‘Last chance, whoever you are.’

  Nick was shaking now. He knew he had to kill himself. He had to shoot the glass cage in his head.

  That was all.

  Alone in his own mind, surrounded by darkness, Nick watched the girl banging and hitting the glass. He wanted to let her free. Bethany. His sister. She was screaming something. He was up close to the glass. So close his mouth was against the glass.

  Harper watched. Nick was concentrating intensely, alternately pointing the gun at Harper and turning it back to his own head. ‘Put the gun down,’ Tom shouted.

  ‘Don’t come near me. I’m going to kill myself,’ Nick shouted back.

  Six ounces of pressure was all he needed. The rest was pure physics, like the rest of the universe, a moral vacuum in a world of physical laws. Then the endless darkness.

  Harper moved in close. ‘Are you going to set yourself free, Nick?’

  Nick closed his eyes. Denise watched him. She couldn’t tell if he meant it or not.

  ‘The sculpture!’ she said suddenly. ‘Sebastian loves his sculpture.’

  Harper understood. He turned the shotgun on to the large glass vitrine and pulled the trigger. The tank burst and shattered in front of them, the formaldehyde flooding out and spraying body parts across the ground. Then he turned to Nick, who wasn’t Nick at all.

  ‘No!’ screamed Sebastian. ‘My life’s work!’ He aimed his gun at Harper.

  Harper got his shot off first. The shotgun boomed in the high brick room and Sebastian’s body was flung into the altar to Chloe Mestella. Harper moved across. Sebastian’s stomach was ripped to shreds. Blood was pouring from his mouth.

  Harper leaned forward.

  ‘She loved me,’ said Sebastian.

  Denise moved over and stared into the face of her captor. ‘I just want to see his face. The pathetic look they all have.’ Sebastian turned his head away. ‘Look at me!’ she shouted. She had been his victim for too long. She wanted to tear out his eyes, but she stopped herself.

  ‘I was never afraid of you,’ she said. ‘Not for a moment. You understand? You never had me. Not for one second.’ Her father would’ve done the same thing. It was a little thing, but she knew it would help in the days to come, when the nightmares would drift back to haunt her.

  ‘I was hurt,’ she shouted as Sebastian’s life ebbed away, ‘but I was never afraid.’

  Harper followed Denise’s stretcher up into the light. The old lift strained under the weight of the paramedics and the gurney. They got out into the cold winter breeze. Denise breathed fresh New York air into her lungs and grabbed hard on to Tom’s hand.

  The grey sky was lit up with blue, white and red lights, flashing across the whole compound. It was all about clearing up now, and crowds of slow-moving cops sauntered around retelling the story of the last few weeks. Sebastian was dead in a cavern underground. Denise was alive. Harper was exhausted, but elated at the end result.

  Onlookers, unaware of the horror or the danger, stared with grotesque interest from the wire fences surrounding the plant. They knew something big was going down. Harper was feeling the aftershock of receiving a year’s load of adrenalin in half an hour. Post-traumatic stress, Denise would call it. He’d go with that. But it was something else entirely he was feeling. What was it? Yeah, there it was, big and central. Faith and hope. Without it, you’re just a misguided boy with a devil’s mask.

  A paramedic was tending to Harper’s wounds as they walked across the ground. Harper wouldn’t leave Denise’s side. She was conscious but drifting off, her eyes picking out clouds above and loving every one of them. She and Harper hadn’t even had the chance to speak properly but perhaps they didn’t need to say the words. He’d come through. She knew he would.

  Harper looked down at Denise. He didn’t know what the future held. He’d survived everything that life had thrown at him in the last year but he knew that the events of the last two weeks would strain Denise’s belief in the world. Her mind and body had been punished. Harper wondered how she would cope and what deep indelible scars would be left on her heart in the future. Harper insisted on getting in the ambulance with her. He held her hand and watched the paramedics tend to her.

  Daniel appeared in his car and pushed his way through the police towards the ambulance. He saw Denise and stopped, unable to take in her survival, his face full of pain. Harper moved himself out of the way. He put his arm out and pulled Daniel into the ambulance.

  ‘She’s okay, but she’s going to need a lot of time and patience. You okay?’

  Daniel nodded. He couldn’t get a word out. He climbed into the ambulance. His hand touched Denise’s cheek and she smiled.

  Harper stared across at Denise. He saw her smile against the flashing lights, her skin darkened with bruises, her eyes unfathomable. He had nothing to add. She was the hero. Beauty constant under torture.

  Acknowledgements

  An enormous debt of gratitude must go to my endlessly encouraging literary agent, Andrew Gordon at David Higham Associates. I could not have had a better guide and advisor in getting my manuscript to the point at which it would be of interest to publishers. I can only apologise to Andrew for the number of times he has had to read the book during its many redrafts. My thanks also go to the whole team at David Higham Associates who have helped to give this book a future.

  I also want to thank my fantastic editor at Headline, Vicki Mellor. There can’t be many people around with her breadth and depth of knowledge in the genre and her advice, guidance and good humour have been invaluable in shaping this book. Thank you also to everyone at Headline who has helped to make the book as good as possible.

  Thanks, finally, to my family for all their encouragement and support. To my mother for keeping the faith. To my wife who has given me the time and determination, evening after evening, weekend after weekend, to get this written. And to my children who played around my feet as I wrote. I’m happy to say I’ve finished the book, I can play now!