Thaumatology 05 - Disturbia

by Teasdale, Niall

  ‘So did I,’ Lily replied. ‘Maybe it’s someone else, or she has a sister. Or you saw her ghost. Could a ghost be responsible for the murders?’

  ‘A really old one,’ Ceri said, thinking back to her research on Remus. ‘Maybe a really old one, but she’d be a relative baby.’ Ceri looked at the woman on the screen. ‘She looked sad, like that. Mournful.’ She hit play.

  There was a little more of the voyeuristic viewing of Julia moisturising her skin and then a jump cut to a night scene in the park. Julia was walking back to her flat, Ceri guessed. The park was not one Ceri or Lily knew, but there were an insane number of small and large parks in London. She looked nervous, as though she had heard noises, or seen something, and it was not long before her fears turned out to be real. One moment she was walking along a dark path, the next she was being dragged into the bushes by three werewolves.

  The scene cut again, this time to a room with concrete walls and a simple, but solid, table. Ceri knew what was coming before it started and more or less prepared herself. Watching three werewolves repeatedly rape a woman was still not something she wanted to repeat. By the end of it Ceri was gripping the arms of the seat with white knuckles. Her mind kept flashing back to a tent on Salisbury Plain, her own body spread across a table with men in uniform taking turns at her for what had felt like days.

  ‘Are you sure you want to watch this?’ Lily said quietly.

  ‘No,’ Ceri replied, ‘but I’m going to.’

  The narrative suggested that Julia was sold on to a Mistress. Masked and clad in a white, cupless corset, it was still moderately obvious that this was Suzie. At least the action got easier to watch; this was more of a seduction. “Mistress White” had a female slave who tended Julia’s injuries and eventually introduced her to lesbian sex before Julia got to please her new mistress. A big, male slave was brought in as well, Suzie watching as Julia and the man performed for her. Lily did not recognise the man and it was not Walls.

  By now, Julia was far from being the innocent young girl she had been at the start, but her face, when not stretched taut in pleasure, carried that same sadness Ceri had seen on the beach. She had resigned herself to her fate. She was a collared slave, subject to her mistress’ slightest whim.

  Then the tale took a twisted turn. “Mistress White,” it seemed, had been preparing Julia for “Master Black.” Masked and dressed in black robes which made him almost impossible to identify, the only thing Ceri or Lily could determine about this figure was that he was not Walls either. The scene cut to Black’s chamber, a stone built room with a high ceiling and a summoning circle marked out on the floor. With Julia sitting in the circle and Black beginning to mark it out in salt, Ceri was expecting some special effects and Walls turning up in some sort of demon outfit. But the light flare, dull and red, which came from the salt looked real, and the summoning ritual did not sound like a fake. Of course, if the man was not a practitioner…

  ‘Oh Hell no!’ Ceri said as the demon made its appearance, rippling into existence within the circle as though the air was being shredded. Julia screamed, and kept on screaming. Ceri found herself unable to look away from the screen though, by the time the credits rolled she could barely read them and did not know why until she realised she was crying. She pressed the pause button, intending to go over the credits again for anything useful; not that she was expecting much. ‘That was…’ she began.

  ‘That’s why I got out,’ Lily said softly. ‘I’d usually be the Mistress figure. They would bring me girls and I would seduce them. I’d take a girl who barely knew what sex was and I’d twist her into a slut.’ She swallowed. ‘Mine didn’t look sad like that. They would be gagging for it by the time I was finished. I’d addict them. They’d be… be my slaves, toys. Then they brought me a girl… they said she was sixteen, but I think she was younger. They said they’d pay me twenty grand if I’d turn her and then suck her dry… suck her dry on camera.’

  Ceri was not sure what to say. Lily had told her once that someone had offered her a lot of money to kill someone once. She had thought it was some man, an assassination of some kind. ‘Oh, Lil,’ she said softly, her hand touching Lily’s arm lightly.

  Lily’s dark eyes turned to Ceri’s blue ones. ‘That was when I knew I had to get out, Ceri. Not because it was wrong, and murder, and horrible. Not because I was going to seduce a kid and turn her into a sex toy. It was because I actually thought about it. I thought about taking the money and killing her.’

  ‘But you didn’t, Lil,’ Ceri said. ‘You refused and you got out of it.’

  ‘I’ve done horrible things, Ceri.’

  ‘You saved the world, that’s got to balance things a little.’

  Lily managed a bleak smile. ‘You did that.’

  The light touch of Ceri’s arm became a firm grip. ‘Lily, if it wasn’t for you I’d still be a recluse living in High Towers and barely ever going out. I’d still have my tattoos. Remus would’ve walked into the country unopposed and we’d be in the middle of a yearlong winter with werewolves tearing the place apart. You set me free, Lil, and you’ve done so much good for others too. Don’t tear yourself up over this.’

  The bleak smile became a little warmer. ‘I love you so much,’ Lily said, her voice barely above a whisper.

  ‘I know, Lil. I love you too.’ Ceri took in a deep breath and turned back to the screen. ‘Let’s go through these credits and get this finished. If they’ll let me, I want to burn this thing myself.’

  B4265, East of Wick

  They had got next to nothing from the credits. The werewolves were uncredited, as were the slaves. “Mistress White” was played by “herself.” The one interesting fact was that Master Black was both the man who had summoned the demon and the director.

  Croft had watched as Ceri placed the DVD in its case, taken it to the car park at the back of the station, and blasted the thing with thaumic energy until the dust had been reduced to its component atoms. Then they had all signed the document saying it had been destroyed.

  ‘It was really that bad?’ Croft had asked.

  ‘No,’ Ceri had replied, ‘it was worse, but I can’t do anything bigger to it without demolishing buildings.’

  With distance between them and the film viewing, they were getting their rationality back, and their sense of humour, though the later was just surfacing in Ceri being happier at feeling like she wanted to jump out of the car to get out of the thing.

  ‘So, we established that Walls was not in the film?’ Michael asked.

  ‘No, he wasn’t,’ Ceri said. Concentrating on the case might stop her thinking about the car. ‘Which means the killer’s MO has changed. So why? Why kill someone with no relation to Julia’s… death?’ Ceri swallowed, unbidden images of how Julia had died rising to the surface.

  ‘Old school werewolf blood feuds,’ Michael said, ‘you wouldn’t just kill the person you were going after. You’d first destroy their life. Kill their relatives, their children, their mate. Probably start out with some humiliation… gang rape the mate and let her live to see her kids die.’ He glanced back at Ceri, seeing her eyes wide. ‘It hasn’t been done like that in years, long before my time or even my Dad’s time.’ Amidst the shock at the description, the thought intruded that Michael’s accent was drifting back toward English.

  ‘So they might be attacking the next victim indirectly?’ Lily said. ‘You know who the most likely target is, right?’

  ‘Terry,’ Ceri said. ‘He’s pacted so he could have summoned the demon. He could have been the director. We never saw his face and that robe hid his body pretty well, but the height would be about right.’

  ‘So we question him again?’ Lily suggested.

  ‘Oh we’re gonna question his arse off,’ Ceri replied.

  But as they turned into the courtyard of the farm they knew something was wrong. There were too few cars there for starters. Two were missing, though Ceri was unsure which ones. There was also no sign of anything covering the kit
chen window and Ceri had half expected them to still be shooting. Instead they found Tawni and Lia in the kitchen. Lia was busy making coffee and comforting noises.

  ‘What happened?’ Ceri asked, a combination of concern and alarm rising.

  ‘I’m finished,’ Tawni said, breaking into a fit of sobbing.

  ‘Chrissy was gone when we got up this morning,’ Lia told them. ‘Cruise said he heard her car spinning out of here about six am, but didn’t think anything about it at the time, klootzak. When Terry found out about her going he said something about going to his room and the next thing we heard was him racing off too.’

  ‘I can’t finish shooting,’ Tawni said, ‘a second one of my stars and my director are probably dead in a ditch. My savings are tied up in this film, I’m screwed. And I feel crap that that’s all I can think about when three people are dead.’

  Lily was behind her, her eyes showing a faint glow. ‘It’s okay,’ the half-demon said, her voice soothing, ‘we often focus on the relatively little things when we don’t want to face the big ones.’ Ceri watched Tawni’s face relax as Lily’s aura did its work.

  ‘Did Terry look scared?’ Ceri asked Lia.

  ‘Hij keek bezorgd… Sorry, he looked worried.’

  ‘You are too?’

  Lia nodded. ‘I think Chrissy saw what Monty did, the woman, and that’s why she ran.’

  Ceri narrowed her eyes. ‘But that’s not why Terry went.’

  ‘No.’ She shook her head for emphasis. ‘He did it… oh, berekend… calculated! He sneaked out hoping we would not notice.’ She frowned a little. ‘He was distracted after you talked to him yesterday, like he was thinking about something.’

  ‘Because he knew it was after him,’ Michael rumbled.

  ‘If it wanted him, then why kill Monty and Chrissy?’ Tawni said, sounding much calmer. She was relaxing into Lily as the half-succubus gently massaged her shoulders.

  ‘We think it was trying to pull his life apart first,’ Ceri said. ‘And Chrissy may not be dead.’ She pulled her phone out and dialled quickly.

  ‘Well, it’s pulled mine apart too,’ Tawni said, not sounding terribly upset about it now.

  ‘I need to speak to Detective Hughes,’ Ceri said into her phone. ‘Croft then!’ There was a pause while she was reconnected. ‘Mark? It’s Ceri. We’ve had two people go missing from the shoot. I need you to put out their pictures and have them watched for. They could be dead.’

  ‘Shit!’ She heard from the other end. ‘What are the names?’

  ‘Christine la Roy, Chrissy, and Terence John Newton. I think he used Terry N as a directorial non de plume. You should be able to pull pictures off the web.’

  ‘I’ll get right on it.’

  ‘Where’s Hughes? Not still at church?’

  ‘No. They’re picking up that Oblivion dealer.’

  ‘Okay, good luck with that.’ She hung up the phone without saying goodbye; well, people did it to her all the time.

  ~~~

  The fire was burning in the lounge despite the warmth of the evening. Having a living fire in the room seemed like a good idea. The only occupants of the farm left were sitting around it. Everyone else had essentially been evacuated during the afternoon, taking the equipment with them. Tawni and Lia remained; Lia because she had nowhere to go for a couple of days and Tawni because she did not want to go home yet. Ceri, Lily, and Michael were there too because there was no point in them searching for Terry and Ceri was still a little worried that the killer would return.

  The news had come in of the discovery of Chrissy’s body mid-afternoon. She had been found in a field about ten miles from the farm and a hundred yards from her car which had broken through a fence and broken its axle. Her neck had been snapped. Ceri had not mentioned that to Tawni; she was stressed enough.

  In the heat from the fire, Lily had stripped entirely, Michael had lost his shirt, Tawni and Lia were in bra and knickers, and Ceri had given up and stripped down to the teddy she had put on that morning. Still, Ceri preferred having the fire; some sort of primal need for that flame to keep the darkness away. It seemed silly, but there was no way she was giving it up.

  ‘So what was Ceri like when she was a kid?’ Lily said into the silence which had descended with the darkness outside. No one wanted to get up to turn on the lights.

  Tawni smiled. ‘She was cute. A bit shy. Really bright. I mean, even when she was small she was incredible intelligent. I always thought that was what kept the boys away.’

  ‘No,’ Ceri said, ‘it was my tattoos.’

  ‘Huh?’ Tawni gave her a questioning frown. ‘I thought they were protective.’

  ‘They were, but Dad went a little… overboard with the protectiveness.’

  ‘It made her hard to notice,’ Lily said. ‘When the enchantment was destroyed people suddenly started seeing her for what she was, absolutely gorgeous.’

  ‘I thought you were beautiful back then,’ Tawni countered.

  Ceri shrugged, trying to make it look casual despite the fact that she still felt a little uncomfortable at that thought. ‘Maybe Dad never thought about a girl wanting me. When a father thinks of someone despoiling their little girl, they generally think of boys.’

  Tawni giggled. ‘And there he was, happily sending you off to bed with someone who wanted to despoil you good.’ She narrowed one eye, looking at Ceri with a twisted grin. ‘What would you have done if I had?’

  ‘God, I don’t know… I’d have… I’d have probably let you.’ She pursed her lips. ‘Were you any good?’

  ‘Then? No idea. You were the first girl I ever fancied.’ She slapped her palm against the carpet. ‘Well damn. I knew I should have gone for it.’

  Ceri was about to say something when she heard Lia gasp. Turning quickly, she looked toward the corner of the room Lia was staring at. Julia stood there, watching them with the same forlorn look on her face that Ceri had seen on the beach. She said nothing and did not move; she just stood there, watching them. Ceri’s sight showed the energy burning to keep her visible. The ghost’s structure seemed odd. Remus had been an ancient ghost and, deprived of his demon-wolf body, he had been a relatively consistent metaphysical structure. Julia seemed to be marbled, as though something else was mixed in with her normal pattern.

  ‘Hello, Julia,’ Ceri said.

  The voice which replied echoed slightly as if coming from a distance. ‘You know me?’

  ‘I know what happened to you. I’d have liked to have known you.’

  ‘If you know what happened to me, then you know what I must do.’

  ‘He’s gone, Julia,’ Ceri said. ‘The one you want is gone. Hurting these people won’t get you your revenge and I can’t let you do it.’

  ‘Hurting them hurts him,’ Julia said flatly.

  ‘Not anymore. You’ve done all the damage you can here…’ Ceri saw the power build as Julia’s arms raised toward them, but Ceri was faster; a sphere of shimmering, magical energy sprang up around the little group of people and the fire. There was a flare as the shield blocked Julia’s attack. Then another, and another. The ghost vanished from normal sight, but the attacks continued, battering at the shield.

  Ceri sat down. ‘Don’t worry, you couldn’t get through that with a nuclear bomb.’

  ‘How long can you keep it up?’ Tawni asked, flinching as another flare of light burst across the wall.

  ‘She’s going to get tired before I do, but still…’ Ceri raised her voice. ‘Julia? I know you can hear me. This is futile. Terry isn’t here and you can’t gain anything from hurting us. I’ve got the police looking for him. He’ll be taken into custody, locked in a cell you can’t get into. Then you’ll never get him.’ Slowly, Ceri began to gather energy into her palm. ‘You’ll never be able to rest. Leave these people be, or I’ll be forced to take action.’

  Julia’s body reappeared, but this time it was a little different. Shadowy wings spread out behind her shoulders and her eyes shone with a fierce, crimson lig
ht. ‘You cannot stop me. I have been given the power to seek revenge for what was done to me.’

  ‘These people didn’t do it,’ Ceri yelled. ‘Go and seek your revenge on the one who deserves it.’

  ‘No,’ Julia said, ‘they worked with him, they’ll die.’

  Ceri sighed. ‘I’m sorry you said that.’ The bubble of energy around them fell with a shudder and Ceri brought her hand forward, throwing the ball of energy she had collected. The crimson eyes widened, and Julia tried to turn aside, but the bolt hit her in the chest, burst, and flared across her stomach and face. A scream rang out, shattering the air like glass and leaving everyone covering their ears.

  But the ghost was gone.

  ‘Is she dead?’ Lia asked quietly.

  ‘I doubt it,’ Ceri replied, ‘even with that kind of energy output.’ She headed for the door and was out before anyone could ask what she was doing. She found a cardboard tube of salt in one of the cupboards and returned with it. Centring herself on magical north, she began marking a circle out around the group of people.

  Lily frowned at her. ‘You’ll be awake all night if you do that.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Ceri said, ‘but I’d rather be safe than sorry and maybe this way I’ll sleep the whole way back to London.’

  ‘I don’t want to go back…’ Tawni began.

  ‘You’re staying at High Towers. So are you, Lia. There’s nowhere safer.’

  ‘Oh I can’t impose…’ Lia said.

  ‘Why the Hell not?’ Ceri snapped as she raised a circle around them. ‘Everyone else does.’

  Part Five: Underbelly

  Kennington, London, August 29th, 2011

  ‘Honey? I’m ho-ome,’ Ceri sing-songed as she pulled her case in through the doors.

  ‘Of course you are,’ Twill said from just to her right and Ceri jumped in response.

  ‘I so wish you wouldn’t do that, Twill.’ She grinned brightly. ‘I missed you.’