Her Moons Denouement (Fallen Angels Book 2) (23 page)

Chapter 36

The first thing to assail her awakening senses was the smell.  The smell of freshly lain motorways, the tarmac still warm and bubbling, mingled with the odour of burning flesh, acrid and sickeningly pungent.  Her eyes started to open, blurred darkness the only thing visible in the periphery of her vision.  The floor felt cold and wet, some kind of stone, and she was leaning against something ridged, which was digging into her back.  The only sound she heard was a low, quiet whimpering a short distance to her right.

‘Hello, is anybody there?’  Eve asked, her voice groggy and hoarse.

The whimpering stopped, silence filling the darkness with trepidation.  Eve tried to sit upright, but knocked her head on something metallic about a foot above her head.  She raised a hand and felt the air, connecting with a bar.  She felt along its length to an edge, then followed this as another bar descended to the floor.  She shuffled around, stretching her legs and arms, feeling for the extremities of her confines, then ran her hands up and down her body.

‘I’m in a metal cage, about four foot long by four foot wide, only two foot in height.  It is complete darkness.  I mean complete.  No ambient light at all. A few cuts and bruises but no broken bones.  I am naked.  Someone else is nearby.’ Eve whispers as she lies still and listens intently to the silence.

‘Hello, is that Coleen?’  Eve asks, hearing a muted intake of breath on the sounding of the name.

‘Coleen, if it is you, I am not here to hurt you, I promise.’

A sad, desolate, terrified, tear filled giggle broke out in the air, followed by a low murmuring whimper.  ‘Just like they promised?’

‘What did they promise Coleen?’

‘They promised to help me.  And they did, to start with.  They helped me get away from Richard, my boyfriend.  They promised me that he would be out of my life forever.  They promised me I would never be afraid again.  I am more afraid now than I have ever been.  You should be afraid too, very afraid.’ Coleen replied, her tone timorous.

Eve shuffled over to the end of the cage where the voice was coming from and stretched out a hand through the bars.  ‘Perhaps you can help me understand what I need to be afraid of.  I am reaching out my hand towards your voice.  Could you do the same, so we can hold hands, so we can help each other through this?’  Eve asked, moving her arm from side to side through the air, waiting for a reciprocal response.

Instead there was another painfully anguished laugh, followed by shuffling married to agonising whimpers.  ‘She is the worst.  She laughs, smiles and is so, so jolly with you.  She will play with you like you are a doll, being nice, being friendly.  And then she will break you, as though you were no more than a doll.  He just watches and does things to himself.  Apart from when she breaks you, then she does things to him.’ she finished, her voice falling low and sinister.

‘Is that Dessie and Fenny, or Pastor Bentley?’  Eve asks, still reaching out her hand and feeling for Coleen’s.

‘Dessie and Pastor Bentley.  I haven’t seen Fenny down here.  How do you know who they are?  Did they promise to help you as well?’

‘No, but I know who they are and believe me, I am not afraid of them.  I am here to help you. I am here to find out what they are doing and to stop it.  I can help you Coleen, reach out your hand and hold mine and we will get through this together.’ Eve said with conviction, the words filled with strength and optimism.

Another soulless laugh, filled with anguish.  ‘You can’t help me.  You won’t be able to help yourself.  We won’t get through this together.  Together we will slowly be ripped apart, piece by piece, until we die.  And they will smile while they do it.  Can’t you smell the burning flesh?  I can’t reach out my hands to you because they have chopped them off, all the way up to the elbow.’

Silence, utter silence, then:  ‘I know that there is nothing I can say that will give you any hope Coleen.  But I can promise you this, before the day is out, you will fear them no more.’

At the far end of the room, a sliver of orange light seared a line into the absolute darkness, startling Eve’s eyes temporarily. 

‘You need to be afraid, because they are coming.  You are fresh meat.  Just listen.  You will hear her singing.’

Eve listened as the light started to rise up the walls, framing the outline of a door into the darkness, throwing shadow into the room, shadow that revealed shapes.  Eve looked at the shape of the bars coalescing in front of her, then at a large oblong object forming beyond the cage, before her eyes moved to the right, where a shadow moved in the cage next to her.  Then she heard the singing. 

‘Doe, a deer, a female deer, Ray, a drop of golden sun.  Me, a name I call myself.  Far, a long long way to run.’

The door burst open, a bright orange glow from a handheld lamp illuminating the room, dispersing the shadows instantaneously, revealing a large square cavern hewn out of granite, fully ten metres wide by about the same across, the top of it a domed ceiling so far up, it was lost in shadows.  The large object in the centre of the room reflected the lamp light from its shiny, clean stainless steel surface.  It was an autopsy bench, with a tray of accompanying autopsy equipment set out at one end of it.  Steel bindings were soldered onto the bench at intervals where legs, arms, waist, neck and torso would be.  There were steel hooks around the walls, filled with further saws and knives of every size.  At the far end of the room, opposite the entrance, was another long stainless steel bench with a sink in the middle and steel fronted cupboards underneath.  There were three metal cages bolted to the floor, two occupied by Coleen and Eve.  On the opposite wall to them, there was a single wooden chair, facing towards the autopsy table.

Eve looked over to Coleen.  To her naked, bruised and battered bloody body, her face swollen and almost unrecognisable as human.  To her arms.  To the two amputated stumps of her arms, black and still bleeding, that had been sealed with tar. 

Eve looked back up towards the door where Dessie Bentley waltzed in, pirouetting, letting the lamp swing around her in an arc as she did.  ‘Oh today is such a fun day.  Look Coleen, we have a new friend to play with, won’t that be fun.’

Coleen didn’t say a word, just stared in horror through the tiniest of puffy slits which were her eyes.  Dessie span right up in front of Coleen’s cage, her voice changing, becoming infuriated.  ‘I said, won’t that be fun Coleen!’  She grabbed a knife from the wall above the cage and quickly rammed it into Coleen’s shoulder viciously, withdrawing it just as fast.  Coleen screamed, shuffling herself as far back as she could into the corner of the cage, away from Dessie.

‘Oh you wuss, it’s only a little nick, stop the hysterics.  You are such a girlie girl.’ Dessie sang, the infuriation all gone, replaced by joviality once more.  She approached Eve’s cage, crouching down on her haunches, deliberately pulling her long blue dress up to her knees, exposing her naked genitals beneath. 

‘I hope you aren’t as much a wuss as Coleen.  It’s not as much fun when they cry all the time.  Do you like what you see down there Annie?’

‘Now Dessie, stop getting the girls excited, there’s plenty of time for play.’  Pastor Bentley admonished as he slowly walked into the room, pulling a small trolley with a smouldering bowl of tar on top of it.  ‘And we don’t know that she is even called Annie.  Get her out and strap her to the bench.’

Eve was watching her every move silently, not even blinking, her features calm.  Dessie reached above the cage again, Eve’s eyes following where her arm went, and grabbed a cattle prod.  She stuck it through the bars and directly into Eve’s exposed chest.  Eve didn’t flinch as the prod came down, and relaxed her body just as it touched, moving in time with the electrical shock that paralysed her.

Dessie leant over, unlocked the side of the cage and dragged Eve out, scraping her naked body over the rough stone floor, grazing it.  With remarkable strength, she lifted Eve up in one movement, dropping her unceremoniously onto the autopsy bench.  She proceeded to strap her into the bindings.

‘I forgot to say, I really love your tattoo, it is so erotic.  So naughty.  Father thinks it is evil and that you have been sent to tempt us.’ she said out loud, then leaned into Eve’s ear and whispered, ‘But I just couldn’t resist licking it, all the way inside your lovely juicy cunt while you were sleeping.’

‘Father has a few questions for you before we start playing.  If you don’t give him the answers he wants, he just might let me play with you early, which will be so much fun!’  Dessie exclaimed as Pastor Bentley walked up to the side of the autopsy trolley.

‘You might not have noticed, but one of your contact lenses came out when you fell down into our pit.  Your false teeth dropped out too and for some reason, you appear to have some latex prosthetics on your face.  So Annie Tait, would you like to tell me who you are?’

‘I think you know the answer to that Pastor Bentley.’ Eve slurred, movement coming back into her body as she stretched against her restraints.

‘Oh father, she is feisty.  Can I play?  Please, please can I play?’  Dessie pleaded, bouncing up and down on the opposite side of the bench.

‘Alright, but just a little, you know how excited you get.’

‘I am already dripping Father, already ready for you.’ Dessie’s voice went deep and sensual as she picked up a small bone saw from the instrument table.  ‘You might want to answer father’s question directly, rather than with another question.  I will stop sawing when you do.’  Dessie finished, looking manically and smiling wildly down at Eve, who just looked back calmly and said nothing.

Dessie’s face filled with fury.  ‘Alright Miss Smarty-pants, see how you like this!’  She thrust the saw into the flesh of Eve’s arm, just above the binding securing her wrist and started to cut fervidly, watching Eve’s face as she did.  Eve’s features didn’t flinch, not even when the rough serrated saw tore through the tendons and started gnawing into the bone, shattered splinters bursting into the muscle.  All she did was perspire and purse her lips.  Dessie became even more furious at the lack of screaming and at the lack of an answer and at the new sensation of not being in control.  She forced the saw through the bone even more vehemently, breaking all the way through, blood spurting all over Eve’s naked body, all over Dessie’s dress, pools of it collecting in the indents around the bench.  The saw screeched on the stainless steel bench, the whole hand flopping away from the arm, amputated.

Pastor Bentley wheeled the bowl of tar around to where Dessie stood and picked up the severed hand as Dessie grabbed Eve’s arm and thrust it into the liquid tar.  Eve groaned, biting her lip until a single drop of blood oozed out.  But she didn’t scream, and after a second, as Dessie placed her tarred stump back on the bench, her face once again wore serene.

Dessie was furious, her features incandescent with rage.  Pastor Bentley passed her the severed hand and spoke to her calmly.  ‘Settle down Desiderata.  This one is special.  She is something different.  Taste her, feast on her, let her body become yours and you will know her.’ he said, looking directly into Eve’s eyes.

Dessie took the hand from her father and lifted it to her lips, sucking the blood off the severed stump, then pulled the raw sinewed flesh off the bone and chewed it heartily as she too looked down upon Eve.

‘Thank you Pastor Bentley for showing me who you are.’  Eve said, her voice measured with a slight edge of intimidation.  ‘You know who I am.  I am Eve.  He will have told you all about me.  And if he has told you who I am, then you will know there is nothing you can do to me that I will ever fear.  But you should fear me.  You should fear me because you have shown me who you are:  and now that I know who you are, I know what you fear.  Before my moons denouement tonight Pastor Bentley, the world will know what you fear.’

Chapter 37

A gentle breeze wafts the salty sea air into my nostrils as we walk along the stony shoreline just around the corner from the North Queensferry Peninsula, underneath the Forth Road Bridge.  Battery Road, where Bentley’s house sits perched on top of the peninsula is visible across the small harbour.  There are still police cars sitting outside, their quietly flashing blue lights still signifying activity in the descending gloom of the evening.  The full moon shines through the ruddy steel of the Forth Rail Bridge with its three huge spans impressively brooding over the calm, lolling waters of the Forth.

Bentley stands beside me, taking in the view, his countenance reflective, his demeanour a little lost.  ‘I’ve lived in this bay all my life.  Mrs Perkins at the White House over there, at the end of the harbour, brought me into the world.  She in her eighties now.  She told us about the tunnels when we were kids.  Before they built the rail bridge there was a rail tunnel that ran from here to Rosyth.  It’s long gone now, and unless you know where to look, you’ll never find the entrance.  It’s linked to more tunnels that were hewn when they were taking stone for the bridge.  There’s some natural caverns underground as well.  It’s where Dessie always goes when she is in a mood.  I haven’t been down there for years.  She left me alone once when I was a kid, in the darkness, in the damp, in the silence, all alone.  Didn’t go back in after that.’

Rebecca is standing at the other side of Bentley, dressed in blue jeans, walking boots and a North Face jacket, watching his features, reading his emotions.  She looks over at me and shakes her head gently, looking perturbed.  I know what she is thinking.  Bentley seems so genuine, it is hard to think that he knows anything about what his father and sister might be doing.  But we have to be realistic.  He could know everything about what they are doing and this could very well be a trap.  I know Adam isn’t too far away from us and just hope that he can keep up with us when we go underground, because he won’t be able to track us.

‘Come on, let’s get going before we lose all of the light.’ I suggest.

Bentley sighs heavily, then turns and heads towards a large copse of trees at the edge of the Forth as Rebecca and I follow a pace behind, letting him have space, letting him reflect.

‘Just through here.’ Bentley instructs, ducking under the rotting trunk of a dead oak and falling onto his stomach at the foot of an outcrop of rock covered in foliage.  I look down and see the narrowest of gaps hidden by the overgrowth. 

‘Don’t worry, it’s only this narrow for a few feet, then it opens up to head height.’ he says as he shuffles into the gap, disappearing from view. 

I look at Rebecca and see concern in her eyes.  ‘Just be careful.  Remember this guy could be a killer.  We have to trust what Eve thinks about him.  We have to be strong for Eve.’

‘It’s not that.  I feel for him.  I feel his world is about to be blown apart.  I know how that feels.  We are pawns again John.  I’m still uncomfortable.’

‘I know, and I am too, but we are in this now.  We are in it to find out who we are and why we are here.  Come on, we will either find out, or die trying.’

Rebecca drops down onto her stomach and slithers into the gap.  I follow suit, feeling the damp cold rock wrap itself around me, the shadows rushing to my body, consuming it in darkness as I slide though the narrow space, light visible at the far side, from the torches held by Bentley and Rebecca.  I stand up once through and dust my jacket and jeans down, noting Rebecca doing the same.  Bentley stands and watches us belligerently, leaving the dirt on his already filthy clothes.

‘There is a large cavern about half a mile to the east.  The tunnels veer around the harbour.  Your footing should be fine, but watch out for slippery stones and rats.’ he says, heading off down the narrow, enclosed, roughly hewn tunnel, his torchlight dancing on the walls up ahead, making puppets playing in the shadows, being controlled by the erratic beam.

We walk in silence, the only sound the crunch of feet over stone, intently listening for any noise, Bentley in front, Rebecca in the middle, me at the rear.  Rebecca reaches a hand backward, searching for me as I offer mine, hands clasping and squeezing tightly.  She is shaking slightly.  I would guess she is worried, I know I am.  We don’t really have any idea about what to expect.  One thing’s for sure, they won’t just be sitting down, having a cuppa and partaking in idle banter.  I just hope that Adam is able to keep tabs on us and that there is some backup if we need it. 

Bentley turns a corner up ahead and we lose sight of him for a moment, the way ahead falling dark.  A brief surge of panic overcomes us both, I can feel it in Rebecca’s squeeze, before we have a chance to lift our torches upwards in front of us.  I see the bend and we walk around it.  Bentley is standing dead still in front of us, his torch now off.  I see why and motion for Rebecca to switch hers off as I do the same.

Up ahead there is a door in the wall.  A stainless steel door.  A door with a rim of light emanating from its edges.  A door from which the sound of singing surges.

A song from ‘The Sound Of Music’.