Her Moons Denouement (Fallen Angels Book 2) (2 page)

Chapter 2

I am in a padded cell, my hands and feet nailed to a chair in the middle of it, naked.  My mind is swirling, trying to comprehend where I am, what is happening.  The walls are pulsing, the stained and ripped individual pads ululating as the material starts to morph, starts to coalesce into faces.  Faces of Sarah, my wife.  Faces of Jacob, my son.  Hundreds of faces staring at me imploringly, their lips screaming in silence.  I cannot hear the words, but they echo in my mind, condemnatory.

‘Why John, why did you choose her?’

‘Why Daddy, why did you forsake me?’

An explosion flashes, startling my gaze from the walls to a point in front of me where the very air itself is torn apart.  In the rip I can see a building engulfed by an inferno and I can feel the searing heat emanating from the explosion blistering my naked skin.  Behind the aberration, the faces of Sarah and Jacob still silently scream at me.

Then through the flames a shadow appears: the dark, charred, stuttering outline of a person, the nauseous stench of their still burning flesh invading my nostrils on the breath of the searing heat.  The outline moves closer, away from the burning house, towards the rip in the air in front of me.  Pieces of darkness start to fall away from the shadow, evaporating into nothingness, revealing the pristine suited form of a man beneath, Dr Ennis.  He sneers toward me as he walks closer to the rip in the air, taking a glove out of his pocket, a Vampire glove, impressed with sharp metal pins.  As he pulls it onto his hand, he speaks in silence, but the words echo around my mind, along with the other words in there.

‘In my world Saul, this type of pain is a precursor to pleasure.’

‘Why John, why did you choose her?’

‘Why Daddy, why did you forsake me?’

The words swirl around in my head, biting, scratching, clawing and gouging at my understanding, awakening my pain.  And I suddenly remember what he does next.  What that malicious gloved hand does to my penis and I start shaking furiously in my bindings, strapped to the seat, screaming ‘No!’ silently at the top of my voice, catching the maniacal image of him climbing through the rip in the air as I try and turn my head away.  I can’t. It is strapped tight to the chair around my forehead.  I try to close my eyes, but they won’t close.  I am forced to watch him approach, forced to watch that hand get closer and closer to me, forced to watch his rictus grin salivate over what he is about to do. 

I see his face.  I see Sarah’s faces.  I see Jacob’s faces.  I see the gloved hand getting closer, and I start to understand my hell.

Then I see the glove start to disintegrate, breaking up into pieces that float away into nothingness.  His clothes, his skin, his hair, his face all do the same.  Slowly revealing the naked form of a woman, her body emaciated, hair ripped from her head, her skin pock marked, scarred and ravaged.  It is Rebecca.  Her gaunt, sunken ghostly countenance smiles beseechingly at me, revealing the withered stump of a tongue as she pleads with me silently, words bursting into my mind, joining the crescendo.

‘You have to believe me John, I am not Madame Evangeline.’

‘In my world Saul, this type of pain is a precursor to pleasure.’

‘Why John, why did you choose her?’

‘Why Daddy, why did you forsake me?’

Her hand, which is still reaching out as she stops in front of me, hovers over the nail rammed through my right hand into the chair.  She gently strokes her fingers over it.  I wince with the pain, eyes angled down to watch what she does.  Skin starts to peel from her fingers as she strokes the head of the nail, then from her hand and from her arm. I watch as the battlefield of harm seems to evaporate from the left side of her body, leaving smooth, lithe skin.  Long red hair sprouts from the riven scalp, framing the left side of a face starting to flush with colour, forming the familiar countenance of my lover, Jessica.  Her eye is a deep emerald, as is the eye on the right, on Rebecca’s side of the face.  They both implore me, half wizened, half voluptuous lips silently pleading, screaming in my mind.

‘I am not Madame Evangeline.  I thought you believed that, I really thought you believed that.’

‘You have to believe me John, I am not Madame Evangeline.’

‘In my world Saul, this type of pain is a precursor to pleasure.’

‘Why John, why did you choose her?’

‘Why Daddy, why did you forsake me?’

The walls breathe, the faces seethe in front of me, while inside my mind their voices scream a tornado to my ignominy.  My eyes fall from their faces in shame; to the last vestiges of ravaged flesh flaking away from Jessica’s half of their stomach.  To the forked tongue of the snake tattoo inveigling its way from their vagina. 

To the forked tongue that flicks. 

To the snake head that pulses, then bloats and becomes real. 

Its head turns to me, beady eyes entrancing me in a stare as it starts to meander up the stomach, over Jessica’s arm and onto the chair where my right hand is nailed, more and more of its body coming out of their vagina.  I hear a sibilant hiss in my head, followed by words augmenting my torment.

‘You had a choice John.  It was all down to you.  Jacob or Jessica.  Only you knew the truth.  Only you had the facts.’

‘I am not Madame Evangeline.  I thought you believed that, I really thought you believed that.’

‘You have to believe me John, I am not Madame Evangeline.’

‘In my world Saul, this type of pain is a precursor to pleasure.’

‘Why John, why did you choose her?’

‘Why Daddy, why did you forsake me?’

The snake crawls up my arm and its body circles my neck, coiling around it, the head slowly angling in front of me again as the coils start to constrict.  It hisses silently, eyes piercing me, as do the eyes of Rebecca/Jessica, as do the hundreds of eyes of Sarah and Jacob.  Screaming words start to change in my mind as all of the lips in front of me start to sync.

‘You had a choice John.  It was all down to you…’

The coils start to constrict further, tightening around my throat, crushing my windpipe, slowly choking me.  All of their lips now whisper sibilantly, accusing me.

‘Only you knew the truth, only you had the facts…’

I try to scream, but my throat is too constricted, my tongue fattening and filling my mouth, my eyes bulging in my skull as I am starved of oxygen.  I begin to palpitate and shake in my bindings, unable to move, unable to stop the descent into my hell as with the last whisper of breath in me, gutturally I plead ‘Forgive me!’

My eyes start to roll in my head, the room around me swirling, the images spiralling into a vortex of faces blurring into each other, all mouthing the same damning incantations.  Consciousness starts to leave, everything turning dark, sinking into the distance, my body slumping as the last vestige of my human being escapes.  The voices fade.  Darkness.  Silence.  The emptiness of forever.

Then, crystal clear, a voice, coming through the darkness, through the silence, through the emptiness of forever.

‘John, think on one thing: Even Fallen Angels Have Wings.’

I wake with a start, sitting bolt upright in the leather chair I fell asleep in.  The nightmare is still resonating through my mind so the very first thing I do is raise my hands, just to make sure they aren’t nailed to the chair, just to make sure I am not back in that cell.  The bandages are weeping slightly and are soaked in sweat, as is the rest of my body, and as I lift my left hand, I see the Nagant M1895 revolver still tightly clasped in its palm.

Statistically, you would think the odds of blowing your brains out with a Nagant playing Russian Roulette would be seven to one.  After all, there are seven chambers in the cylinder and only one bullet, right?  Wrong.  What people don’t generally take into account is gravity.  When you spin the cylinder, the chamber with the bullet in is heavier than the ones that are empty, so nearly every time, that chamber will end up near the bottom.  So statistically, the odds of blowing your brains out are very long.  That’s how magicians get away with it.

Slivers of light are seeping in through tiny gaps in the closed blinds, suggesting daylight outside.  They are strobing talons through the semi-darkness, revealing the contents of my studio, revealing the collage of evidence I have pinned to every spare surface in the room.  I put the revolver down on the writing desk in front of me, stand up gingerly and slouch my way to the far wall through the discarded takeaway containers, empty vodka bottles, ripped up notes and photos festooning the floor.  It still hurts to walk.  I take in glimpses of the evidence, of images, of loved ones gone on the wall in front of me.

Two weeks ago, my wife and son were killed in an explosion at a country house called Fetherstone Hall.  My son had been kidnapped, incarcerated inside a crate in the Hall and was being used as bait.  Bait to try and ensure that I investigated the murder of a dead body, Michael Angus, which was also in the Hall.  A murder where his mother, Rebecca Angus, had already been committed to a mental institute for the crime.  An ‘Unknown Caller’ set a challenge.  He wanted me to find the real killer of Michael and return to the Hall with that killer, within twenty four hours, before midnight, or the crate would explode.  All the evidence pointed to a woman called Jessica Seymour, my lover, being the real killer of the dead body.  But I knew she couldn’t be.  I knew that at the time Michael was killed she was with me.

I thought the ‘Unknown Caller’ was a man called Gordon Ennis.  He ran a mental facility called the Fielding Institute, where Rebecca Angus was committed.  I had investigated him in the past for suspicious deaths caused by ‘Face Down Restraint’ and thought that he was out to exact some kind of warped revenge against me.  He wasn’t directly involved, but he was a killer and during the course of the investigation, he nailed me to a chair, sexually molested me and would have ripped my heart out if the real ‘Unknown Caller’ hadn’t intervened and saved my life.

I say real ‘Unknown Caller’, but I still don’t know who he was.  He was a trinity.  Father, Son and Holy Ghost.  One in the same.  An older man called ‘Ben Hanlon’ who had spirited Rebecca Angus away from under the nose of Gordon Ennis.  A young paediatric physician called ‘Rob Adams’ who was looking after my son, Jacob.  A nebulous voice of the ‘Unknown Caller’ who no one ever saw.  They were all the same person and he wanted me to choose. 

He wanted me to choose between Jessica and Jacob.  He wanted me to believe that Jessica had an alter ego.  An alter ego called Madame Evangeline who had seduced Rebecca Angus and somehow been involved in Michael’s murder.  But I knew Jessica could not have been Madame Evangeline.  Even though Jessica was in Edinburgh when Michael was killed.  Even though Rebecca and Michael had been seen in a Limousine owned by Jessica.  Even though Jessica owned Featherstone Hall, where Michael was killed.  Even though Jessica had the exact same Snake tattoo on her abdomen, I knew she couldn’t have been Madame Evangeline.

So I chose Jessica: and Sarah and Jacob died at midnight on that fateful evening when the Hall exploded.  Shortly after that, while I was being taken to hospital to have my injuries seen to, Jessica died too, in a car crash.  In the space of an hour, everyone I had ever loved was gone. 

And I still don’t have a clue why.  There was a serpent, there was temptation, there was forbidden fruit and someone wanted me to make a choice.  I chose wrong.  All I do know is that it wasn’t chance.

But I will find out.  If chance lets me, today I will go and see Allie, Sarah’s friend and see if she knows which Private Investigator Sarah used to have Jess and I followed.  I chose wrong, which means Jessica could have been Madame Evangeline.  Nothing in the evidence I have can corroborate that.  This Investigator may have seen something while following us, which could help.

If chance lets me. 

I turn from the wall of frustrated hope and stagger to the other side of the room, picking up the revolver from the desk as I pass.  There is a six foot tall blank canvas leaning against the wall, my signature, John Saul, in the bottom right corner.  It will be called ‘My Last Lament’ when it is finished.  I’m not sure exactly when that will be.  It could be in the next few seconds, it could be in a day, or a week.  Only chance knows that.

While statistically there is very little chance of blowing your brains out during Russian Roulette if you let the barrel come to a natural stop, that’s not true if you stop the barrel mid spin.  I flick the barrel on the revolver out, slip the single bullet into my palm and then quickly slide it back into a different chamber.  When you stop it mid spin, the odds are seven to one.  When you have tried it seven times, statistically, the odds are even.  Every time you try it after that, statistically, you will blow your brains out.