The Soul Consortium (4 page)

“Wanker!” He spat again and turned to leave.

“At least I don’t have a slut for a sister,” I said.

Graham turned, anger pulsing blood through his cheeks as he drew a fist back to punch me again. But I was already up, energized and exhilarated by the thrill of the fight, rushing at him, arms reaching for the throat. I felt his fist graze the side of my head making my ear ring, but my thumbs had found the target this time.

I expect he thought this was just a fight until my crazed scream and the violent pressure I used against his windpipe made him change his mind very quickly. We rolled against the bank, him paddling against my face and chest, then pinching and scratching in desperation, me pressing harder and harder as if I were trying to thumb a hole into a steel bar, and suddenly we were flailing in the water. I saw a flash of my parents’ killer’s face against the carpet with blood creeping beside his matted hair. I almost let go of Graham’s neck with the shock of that vision, but it was too late anyway—my arms were the only ones moving and his body was limp beneath the water.

I wrenched the face from the water and stared into his glassy eyes for almost two minutes before the burning pain in my muscles forced me to drop him back in.

I screamed.

Not from fear or horror. I screamed because frustration and pleasure swirled inside me like oil and water. Something about the eyes of that corpse moved me, as if I had missed the most important moment of my life, as if I had blinked and missed the Second Coming but seen the rising of the dead in glory. That was my first kill. But I knew I needed more.

M
y escape from the law has always been a source of great intrigue to me. There was enough evidence of my guilt to convict me ten times over for the murder of Graham Adams, but everyone believed my story completely.

I ran from the pond, gushing with euphoria, whooping with joy at what I had done. Killing that boy filled me with such a grand sense of freedom I am scarcely able to describe it—the power of life and death is assigned to gods, yet it had been channeled through my fingertips. Wet and covered with fetid slime with a ridiculous grin on my face, I almost fell through the school gates as I stumbled toward the teachers’ block. I knew I had no chance of escaping my crime, but it would be a travesty if I didn’t at least try. Powerful though Fate is, I owed it to her. But if she still deemed me worthy, a miracle would be required, no matter how convincing my acting skills.

By the time I reached the entrance hall a small crowd of students had gathered around me and my performance was in full swing. None of them offered to open the doors to the foyer as I lay there sobbing my crocodile tears onto the wooden floor; in fact, most of them laughed through pinched noses and stifled coughs. I clawed at the floor, shrieking, “He’s dead, he’s dead, and it’s all my fault.”

Mr. Thurlston found me two minutes later. He barged through the doors, pushed the students aside, and scooped me up without a hint of concern that the action would cover his suit in putrid water. He carried me away without a word as I bleated my remorse, and through my tears, I saw that he was taking me to the first aid room to see the school nurse. The nurse and the RE teacher—the biggest pushovers in the whole school—I couldn’t have asked for a better audience.

It took them a full five minutes to calm me down and get some intelligent words out of me. They thought it was shock, but in reality I needed a little extra time to get my version of events straight. There’d be more holes in my story than a wartime minefield, but I had to give it my best shot.

“Deep breaths, Orson … That’s right now … Tell us what happened.”

“Gr … Gr … Graham … Ad … Adams. He’s … it’s all my fault.” I wept inconsolably again into my hands.

Mrs. Carlisle placed a glass of water on the desk beside me. “What happened? Where is Graham Adams? Is he hurt?”

“He’s …” More weeping.

Thurlston and the nurse were both quiet, and I imagined them exchanging concerned looks as I buried my head in my palms and shook.

“Take another sip of water,” Thurlston said.

“I know that I’m evil—they all think I am—but I didn’t mean anything to happen … I … I—”

“Steady on,” the nurse said, with a hand on my head. “Nobody here thinks you’re evil. You’ve just had a difficult upbringing, and sometimes you can be—”

“What Mrs. Carlisle is trying to say,” said Thurlston, “is that all of the teachers in this school want the best for you. You have a keen mind, and we don’t want you to throw your potential out the window. That’s why we can be tough on you sometimes, but it certainly doesn’t mean that we’re going to make rash judgements about you right now, whatever it is that you confess to us.”

“Graham’s dead,” I said, meeting Thurlston’s eyes. I studied his look, watched the subtle flinch in his eyelids as I said the
D
word, enjoying the fraction of terror in his waxy expression. He was thinking of his career, what the papers would say, what the other teachers would say, what they’d have to say to that little shit’s parents.

The nurse gasped.

I looked down at my feet, pushing back the laugh in my throat as I forced another river of tears.

Thurlston placed one hand gently on my shoulder. “Are you sure? Quite sure? He could be—”

“He’s … drowned. At the bottom of … of the p-pond.”

There was more silence as I stared at the floor, but Thurlston must have gestured to Mrs. Carlisle because I heard her hurry out of the room. No doubt she was going to call the police or an ambulance.

“Can you tell me what happened?”

“I was on the swing by the pond. Graham came. He’s Rebecca’s brother …”

“I know. What happened?”

“He was pissed off that I’d had a go at her, so he … we … we got into a fight,” I said, looking up and contorting my face into a mask of fear. “We fell into the pond and then …”

“Yes?”

“He must have got himself caught on something because he couldn’t get back up. He was trying but … he … he just couldn’t get up and then I tried to pull him out by his neck and he just kept sinking deeper and deeper and then he pulled me under too and I tried to pull him up but—”

“Shhh, okay, okay, you don’t have to say any more. Not yet.”

I studied his face again and cursed my poor choice of words. Tried to pull him out by his neck? By his
neck?
If ever there was an admission of guilt handed on a plate, there it was. Even a soft touch like Thurlston couldn’t help but be suspicious after an image of my hands around Graham’s throat had been put in his mind. And sure enough I saw the flicker in his eye. The flicker that said something didn’t add up. Inside I kept my cool, though, placed my trust in Fate.

Thurlston laid me on the couch with a blanket over me as I shivered, staring into space. With any luck I’d have my story perfected by the time the police arrived.

Thurlston waited with me for the next hour, and not a word was spoken. Every few minutes I’d sneak a look at him. His gaze was blank, but a light sheen of sweat moistened his top lip, and I was certain his brain was almost at the point of seizure trying to work out what should be done. With the headmaster on holiday and the deputy out sick, Thurlston was in charge. No wonder he was soiling his pants.

When the nurse came back I was surprised to see that she was not accompanied by the police. It was two weeks later, after I had received a particularly ruthless torrent of abuse from some of the other pupils’ parents, when I found out why I hadn’t been arrested.

Thurlston took me aside in his office and offered a sympathetic smile as he spoke very quietly. “The abuse will pass. Graham’s death was a tragedy … and we know you two were fighting, but there was really nothing you could have done. Some of us know that now.”

I looked into the man’s eyes, unable to hide the surprise in my own. I regretted the moment of vulnerability, but he must have read the question in my face because then he said, “I shouldn’t be telling you this before they do. I have contacts in the police, and I’ve been shown the press reports they drafted, and I know the evidence corroborates your story.

“Graham’s foot was caught between the bars of a shopping trolley at the bottom of the pond. He couldn’t possibly have escaped, no matter how hard you pulled, so you see, all this persecution will fade in time. You just have to hold on for now … okay?”

And then I really did go into shock. I knew exactly what happened at the pond. I remembered Graham’s legs thrashing in the water as my hands clamped around his trachea; there was no way his foot was trapped. Somebody must have done that afterwards—for me. Fate had revealed herself again in one of those rare moments of passion, but to me only this time, and somehow I knew it would not be the last time. She gave me license to continue, and I was grateful because Graham Adams robbed me of the pleasure I sought since birth. I wanted—needed—to see the boy’s eyes as his life slipped away. I needed to see that mystical moment of transition when the sum of all his experiences snapped into oblivion. But it was denied me.

I decided I would give no more place to chance. I planned the next death in meticulous detail and the next with even greater care, and so on until I realized my skill was an art that grew more and more refined with each killing. And with each new indulgence, Fate played her part too, but it wasn’t until kill number thirty-two, when I met my mysterious sentinel, that things changed.

K
riefan Mack was a nice guy, a popular guy. At least, that’s the impression I had when I went through his personal effects. His wallet contained a list of phone numbers as long as the DHS council house waiting list, a faded photo of him at the center of a group of smiling Africans on a missionary visit, a donor card, membership cards to the Samaritans, Round Table, and at least two other charitable organizations I had not heard of before. Pity he met me. Especially under such fateful circumstances.

I slipped the wallet back into his jacket pocket and cupped his chin in my hand, gave his head a shake. The rivulet of blood snaking across his forehead took a new direction and entered his ear.

His eyes flickered open, the pupils dilated with panic and bewilderment. Obviously he had no idea who I was, and my bald head and heavy build silhouetted against a bright sun were enough to startle him back deeper into his torn seat. “Who? … Oh, God! Is anyone … ? Am I—?”

“You’re fine; you’re fine,” I reassured him with a smile and a large hand on his shoulder. “No serious injury as far as I can tell.”

“What about the other car, the other driver? How is he?”

“Let’s leave him to the police and paramedics, shall we? Here, let me help you out.” I reached through the wreckage, grabbed him under the armpits, and hauled him onto the grass verge next to the impossibly twisted monster that used to be his car.

He threw up when he saw it, or perhaps it was the old woman’s hand poking out from under the roof like a broken claw. His car had rolled down the bank at least four times as it crushed bollards and roadside debris in its wake.

Kriefan Mack had done nothing wrong. But being good or right or true does nothing for you in this world. His nemesis, the seventeen-year-young speedster, lay on the other side of the road. And on the crumpled bonnet of his Subaru. And all over his dead girlfriend’s body. There was very little for the emergency services to scoop up and scrape out. He’d performed his final act trying to overtake a gritting lorry on a blind bend and met the unsuspecting Kriefan Mack head-on.

I saw the collision in all its gory glory whilst waiting to turn out of the junction on my way to the office. Although it is fair to say that one could not have expected there to have been any survivors when two cars kiss bumpers at a combined speed of 150 mph, my experience tells me that the perpetrator often escapes his idiocy with little more than a scratch to his forehead. Not so this time. The speeding youth’s life had been smeared from existence along with his partner and an unfortunate dog-walking pedestrian, but Mr. Mack left the carnage suffering only from mild shock, a small cut by his ear, and the doom of impending insurance claim forms. He should not have survived that accident. Fate had been cheated.

And that’s where I came in. She would not be cheated so easily, and my presence at the scene was obviously no accident. I tried to move quickly, looking for an opportunity to reach the overturned car unseen by the public. But police cars and ambulances screeched into view within minutes, announcing their arrival with the lurid splash of red and blue and the wail of sirens—a parody of the slaughter.

I laughed as I walked through it, seeing the metaphor so much like human nature. People pretend to care. They throw themselves into moments of ugliness like this in a theatrical display of valiant altruism, but people like me see through every reluctant glance and declaration of horror into their thirsty hearts. They’re looking for the next thrill, the next juicy story to tell their friends, the next chance to demonstrate their heroism as they run into the fire to help. I have a different agenda. And so does Fate.

I
entered Kriefan Mack’s home two days later at ten minutes to midnight with everything planned to perfection. It’s a nice four-bedroom detached house with a postcard-perfect garden, pastel walls, and immaculate modern furniture, minding its own quiet business at the end of a tidy cul-de-sac.

The lights had been out twenty minutes, time enough for Kriefan, his wife, and two children to drift into sleep. Smiling at the neighborhood-watch stickers on the windows, I slid Mr. Mack’s stolen door key into the lock. He’d probably assumed his keys had been lost in the accident, and with so much happening since then he hadn’t had the opportunity to get the locks changed.

I moved quickly. Wasting time with precaution is worthless when one enters an occupied house so easily. Experience has taught me that it’s better to strike your prey when it’s off guard. I climbed the stairs with my medical briefcase in hand, eased along the landing, and opened the first door. It was a child’s room. A low light in the corner revealed a young girl in bed, mouth open, the sigh of deep slumber passing her lips. I closed the door and opened the one next to it. That was the right one. Again, the low amber light, but this time it was shining on Kriefan Mack and his wife spooned together under the bedcovers.