Her Cold Eyes

by Tony Black

  ‘Who are you talking about?’

  ‘Those that set the agenda. Have you looked at the news recently? What kind of mind do you think it takes to wage war on indefensible civilians? To have the blood of millions of innocents on your hands year after year, decade after decade, century after century? We are in the realm of perpetual bloodletting – their realm – our world is run by a death cult and there’s no escaping it. The most wicked people are the ones right at the top – and they’re the ones in a position to cover it all up.’

  Jean wiped her sleeve over her eyes again and gave herself some time to settle down. She seemed convinced of what she was saying, but Valentine knew that little of the information pointed towards a cogent case.

  ‘I need evidence,’ he said.

  ‘There’s never any evidence, chief inspector, it’s just accusations and claims. It’s the words of children against the words of the people who hold all the power. I’ve never known them to leave bodies lying around, they’re too clever for that, it’s only finger pointing.’

  ‘Is that why you’ve given up, Jean?’

  ‘I realised some time ago that we’ve travelled too far from the Holy Spirit. We all have – man is more than flesh and blood; there is the soul too. We’ve lost our connection with our true selves, our inner beings. They all know that, and they know we are lost.’

  ‘Lost?’ The word startled him.

  ‘There’s only one true path, chief inspector.’

  19

  On the way back to the car Valentine tried to take the temperature of McCormack’s mood. He wanted to know how she felt about what they had just witnessed with Jean Clark, but her look was inscrutable. He knew he could just ask her, and receive an honest response, but he was searching for something more, something deeper. He wanted to drill down to the layer of communication below words, where mute understanding was possible. Sometimes, in the interview room, an involuntary sigh or a sideways glance could be worth more than speech to the detective. As he took in the DI now, he searched her features carefully because he knew that his own understanding about the situation might be lurking there too.

  ‘What?’ said McCormack. ‘Why are you looking at me like that?’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like you just caught me doing sixty past a parked school bus.’

  Valentine grinned. ‘Clare calls it my ‘‘walk this way’’ face.’

  ‘That’s quite apt, yes, I’ll give her that.’

  ‘Sorry, I was just trying to pick your view on what we’ve just sat through.’

  ‘You could have just asked.’

  ‘A picture paints a thousand words: your face might have said something you left out.’

  McCormack unlocked the car and walked round to the driver’s side. Neither of them spoke until they were inside with the doors closed.

  ‘She was speaking in tongues most of the time, which went right over my head, but she also seems completely genuine,’ said McCormack. ‘I mean, she’s turned her whole life upside down as a result of her experience, that couldn’t have been easy.’

  ‘Facing up to reality wouldn’t have been easy either. Perhaps running off to the coast was the easier option.’

  ‘She went through a lot, which means she would have had a lot to bury if she’d stayed where she was. And she believes herself to be facing up to reality, I think she’s brought her demons with her.’

  ‘Well, she could be entirely sincere in her actions and still be completely nuts.’

  ‘That would be logical. But didn’t you tell me that slavishly following logic can create its own problems, something about reasoning oneself into jumping off a bridge.’

  ‘Reason and logic have their limitations, especially when applied to human beings, who can have both or neither, sometimes at the same time.’

  ‘Which is why I trust my gut. And I trust Jean Clark’s testimony.’

  Valentine turned back to gaze at the camper van. ‘You’ve reached the same conclusion as me then. But this doesn’t bring us any closer to finding a motive, a means or an opportunity.’

  ‘So what now, sir?’

  ‘Now we go to back to your old home town.’

  ‘Glasgow?’

  ‘The university, to be precise. I want to talk to this occult abuse expert, Dr Stephen Mason.’

  ‘The guy that Davis mentioned in the briefing?’

  ‘That’s the one. Perhaps he can join a few more dots.’

  McCormack turned the key in the ignition. ‘Well, if he can do that, I’m guessing that the picture will emerge in the same stark relief as Jean Clark’s.’

  ‘I think you might be right, unfortunately.’

  Valentine clipped in his seat belt and settled in with his elbow balancing on the edge of the window. The rain, stopped now, was still being blown about in the wind from the wet leaves on overhanging branches. As he glanced back to the bleak caravan park that Jean Clark had made her home the detective grimaced. Black clouds were sitting high in the sky, directly over the coastal heath; a threatening presence seemed to be lurking there. Even though he knew it was just his own mental projection, he couldn’t shake the feeling that his thoughts had been disrupted. There was a new anger, one he had never known before, simmering inside him now.

  As the car proceeded on the steep incline of the coast road, Abbie McGarvie’s voice seemed to be whispering to Valentine on the rushing sea-grass breeze. He couldn’t make out the words, or even be sure of hearing anything at all, but it didn’t matter, because he knew exactly what she would say.

  He turned front, and tried to steady his gaze on the wet blackness of the bitumen. There was no point wailing to the heavens for answers. They would find them in good time, of that he had no doubts.

  By Glasgow University the officers had tired themselves of McCormack’s one CD: an early KT Tunstall collection, and bemoaned the downward slide in the quality of both local and national radio broadcasters. Valentine was stretching his legs out in the car park as the DI retrieved her coat from the back seat.

  ‘Well, here’s hoping,’ said McCormack, fitting herself into her coat.

  ‘Davis speaks highly of him.’

  ‘Oh, does he now?’

  ‘Am I supposed to take something from that remark?’

  ‘I’d query Davis’s verdict on the colour of orange juice.’

  Valentine toyed with a response, perhaps a teasing dig at McCormack’s disapproval of Farah trousers and moustaches, but resisted; cultivating division among the team was never a good idea.

  The detectives presented themselves at a sliding window inside the front foyer, where a back-office clerk peered above her oversized glasses and directed them to a stairway and a room number where Dr Stephen Mason might be found. It was a narrow staircase, stuffy and cramped, with a covering of dust that was gathering in clumps in the corners of the steps. When they reached the top, and located the door, Valentine’s thoughts were welling around recent events. He wondered what kind of a man ensconced himself in this world. He understood the drive to further knowledge, but it seemed a singularly unappealing choice of subject matter.

  ‘Hello, can I help you?’ Dr Mason was a short, stout man with a dark beard and a lilting, almost singing accent that may have come from the Western Isles but was beyond the range of the detective’s ear.

  Valentine introduced himself and the DI. ‘I hope we’ve caught you at a good time.’

  ‘Yes, as I said on the phone, I’m happy to help in any way I can.’

  Mason offered the officers coffee and directed them to a well-worn Chesterfield in the corner of his study. The room was cramped, overstuffed with books and manuscripts, and had a musty air that seemed to be mimicking the stairwell.

  ‘You mentioned your research,’ said Valentine. ‘I’m interested in some of the consistencies you’ve noticed in the cases you’ve studied of occultic child abuse.’

  Mason leaned back, lacing his fingers over his chest. He seemed, if not comfortable with
the subject, at least confident of his knowledge. ‘It’s a very consistent pattern that emerges in these cases. All the research, both at an investigative level and the medical analyses, show broad-brush similarities. Would you like me to detail the pattern?’

  ‘As you see it, yes. That would be useful.’

  ‘It’s exactly the same story, over and over again. The child’s induction generally begins between the ages of three and six, sometimes later, but generally speaking there’s psychological imperatives for getting them young.’

  ‘Imperatives?’

  ‘Trauma bonding, essentially, that’s the predominant control mechanism they use on the children.’

  ‘I’ve heard a little about this; it’s about breaking the child’s personality by exposing them to stressful events.’

  ‘That’s part of it, the trauma aspect if you like. The bonding is the truly insidious part – it relies upon the child becoming so removed from the reality they’ve known that they’ll do anything to return to normality.’

  ‘How do they inflict the trauma?’

  ‘The children are tied up, caged, beaten. Sometimes they’re burned with cigarettes, whipped on the soles of their feet. They can be made to sleep in dark basements or on bare floorboards or even outdoors. Some are forced to eat from dirty dog bowls and only allowed to defecate outside. The means vary, but they are all degraded and forced to confront fears. The degradation can be quite horrific by normal standards.’ Mason stopped talking and glanced over to the officers. ‘Are you sure you want me to go on?’

  ‘We need to hear this. Tell us about the trauma aspect.’

  ‘When the child is fully controlled, they see their life resting in their controller’s hands. The child’s whole life then becomes about one thing, and one thing alone: seeking their controller’s approval. I’ve seen children who could, quite literally, be controlled by the snapping of fingers, or with a whistle. It’s that powerful, these methods have been perfected over generations.’

  Valentine looked at McCormack, who peered back disconsolately. ‘We’re uncovering more of this world than we might want to see, but we don’t have the option to look away,’ she said.

  ‘I’ve spoken to police about this sort of thing in the past, and even the most experienced find the details shocking. I don’t know if you’re aware but an extremely high proportion of police officers who infiltrate these Luciferian paedophile sects become suicides.’

  The DCI shook his head. ‘I didn’t know that, Dr Mason. Though we just spoke to a social worker who, I think it’s fair to say, hasn’t processed her exposure well. She claimed that the object of the abuse was to breed children for flesh and blood sacrifices. Can she be taken seriously?’

  Dr Mason nodded slowly, two or three times in succession, and then stared ahead reflectively. ‘There was a serial killer in America called Jeffrey Dahmer who used to drill holes in his victims’ heads and pour in hydrochloric acid. He was trying to keep the victims alive so he could sodomise their bodies without their objections. Dahmer wanted to create zombies he could abuse freely – he was a psychopath and these people exist everywhere, chief inspector. This kind of abuse is very real. It’s my speciality, and I’m not alone in making a career out of it. Doesn’t that tell you something about the scale of the problem?’

  ‘I’m forming that kind of picture, yes.’

  ‘The victims of these dark occultists are exposed to the worst kind of depravity imaginable. I’ve personally interviewed victims who have detailed being raped nightly in group sex sessions with upwards of ten or twenty people. Some have been involved in ritual ceremonies where they have been raped by thirty people. The numbers vary, and the depravity varies, but one thing that doesn’t change is the purpose: these girls are breeding children for child sacrifice.’

  Valentine watched as Dr Mason retrieved his coffee cup from a side table. He balanced the cup on the flat of his thigh as he sat stiffly, watching the officers for a response. After a moment, when he seemed to have assessed the detectives, he spoke again. ‘I know this must be hard to digest, but I’ve examined hundreds of these cases and the similarities are consistent. These girls are breeders, they’re kept constantly pregnant, some from as early as the age of eleven.’

  ‘You’re right, I am struggling to digest this,’ said Valentine.

  ‘My research has brought me into contact with many of these people. I heard about a high priest at one coven who it was estimated had impregnated more than a hundred such child breeders. None of the children that were produced were ever registered with the authorities, so no one ever knew about any of them. It’s those children, more than a hundred of them, that were sacrificed.’

  ‘That word, sacrificed, it doesn’t do justice to what we’re talking about. This is murder, cold-blooded and brutal murder on a massive scale. I can’t get along with the word sacrifice, I’m afraid.’

  ‘If you think about it rationally,’ Dr Mason said, ‘it shouldn’t be so hard to comprehend. Human sacrifice has been a part of our story since the time of Sumeria, where priests sacrificed children to purify society. The ancient Egyptians, the Aztecs, the pagans were all at it. In your parlance, we’ve got form for it.’

  ‘That didn’t exactly go on in our own back yard though.’

  ‘Really? In the cradle of Western civilisation, Greece, there was no shortage of sacrifice. If you remember, Aeschylus began The Oresteia with Agamemnon sacrificing his daughter to the gods. If you look hard enough at our Pagan and Judeo-Christian heritage, you’ll find blood purification and sacrifice isn’t as uncommon as you might think.’

  ‘But surely we’ve progressed since then.’

  ‘Progressed, really? Do you think because we can summon the knowledge of the world on a smartphone that we’ve actually progressed? I doubt it. My experience tells me that technology is really masking our true decay as a people. We haven’t progressed at all. You must know as well as anyone, chief inspector, that evil is a living, breathing entity that has always been with us and always will be.’

  Valentine cleared his throat, coughing into his fist. It seemed like a stalling motion, a diversion from what had just been said that allowed him to file away the academic’s statement and move beyond it. ‘Why? That’s the part I struggle with,’ he said.

  ‘You might call it a sect, or a cult belief. They call it their religion. They believe themselves to be the sons and daughters, not of God, but of Lucifer.’

  ‘They openly worship evil?’

  ‘They don’t see it that way. They believe God imprisoned Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden and Lucifer, through the Forbidden Fruit, gave them intellect which set them free. This intellect, they believe, will give them the power to conquer nature and ascend to the power of gods themselves. I’m paraphrasing their beliefs, but essentially they’re on a power trip.’

  ‘You seem to be confirming my worst fears, Dr Mason.’

  ‘You have entered the battlefield of the soul, detective. I advise you put on all the armour you can get.’

  2016

  He says he’s my Keeper and that we have a blood covenant, but I don’t know what that is.

  ‘It’s the power to rule you, Abbie,’ he says.

  ‘Why me?’

  ‘Because you’re mine and I know all the works of darkness.’

  He tells me that the Master himself is his keeper and there is no power he cannot summon. I don’t know what he means. I really don’t know what any of this is about. It scares me so I try to think of Mummy and wish I was far away, at home or in another place completely, but he sees me looking away and I think he knows.

  ‘No one can save you.’

  ‘No one?’

  ‘Not even your mother. You know I can summon her death in an instant. I want you to think about that, Abbie.’

  ‘I don’t want to.’

  ‘Do it. Now, see your mother’s death. See her blood running. I can do that, I can kill her.’

  ‘No, don’t say that.’
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  ‘But I can kill her, in any number of ways.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘See your mother, imagine her engulfed in flames. Her hair evaporating in the heat, her flesh peeling and liquefying before your very eyes. See her, Abbie, I can do that at any time I want. I can kill your mother.’

  ‘No, I won’t do it.’

  ‘You will, Abbie. Maybe not right now but later tonight when you’re alone, in bed, curled up with only the tick, tick, tick of the clock for company. Then you’ll remember, then you’ll see that image of your mother with her throat cut . . . or burning on a stake.’

  ‘I won’t.’

  ‘Oh, but you will.’ He laughs as he leaves and I watch to see where he goes, just in case he really has any special powers like he says. I don’t want to believe him because I want to believe that Mummy can still come and save me. I want to know she can stop everything, at any moment, but I don’t want to test my Keeper.

  What if he’s right?

  What if he really can do these things?

  I start to think about Mummy and my little brother, and I wonder what might happen to them. I want them to be safe and I don’t want to be the one that brings any harm to them.

  The next day my Keeper brings me some pictures of children.

  One photo is of a little girl, she has no clothes on and she’s covered in thick, dark blood from her head to her toes. Her hair is so long but I can’t tell what colour it is because it’s been flattened to her head by all the thick, wet blood.

  ‘Do you see her eyes?’

  Her eyes are wide, staring out like they are too big for her head. I think they’re going to pop. ‘Why are they like that?’

  ‘She has taken the Master inside her, her soul is more powerful because she has pleased the darkest power of them all.’

  My Keeper takes me by the hand and we walk to the grove. The altar is the same one I saw inside the school when they took away Paige’s baby. I see the same people in gowns and they have the silver cups that they filled with Paige’s baby’s blood. I know it’s the same people and I know some of their names and their faces, but there are others too and I don’t know who they are.