"Almost six million Hebrews made up the long wide line that wormed out of upper and lower Egypt. All carrying what belongings they possessed; livestock, food, clothing and everything they would need to start afresh, in what Moses called the Promised Land flowing with milk and honey. Flowing with weapon bearing armies more like." She gripped the cigarette and flick her wrist, making it rain ash.
"I"m sure most wouldn"t have left, if they realized they would die in the desert." She scratched an itch on her cheek, the sound of the skin flaking off her finger sounded like sandpaper being rubbed.
"G.o.d walked before them, a grand pillar of cloud by day and a majestic pillar of fire by night. To let them know He was with them." She closed her eyes for a few moments, drawing hard upon the cancer stick.
"Moses followed the pillar by day and night, bringing them to the sh.o.r.es of the Red Sea.
"Pharaoh had now had time to ponder on everything that had happened. Angered and now wanting revenge and his slaves back Pharaoh gathered his army to give chase. They pinned the Hebrews into a vast gorge. There they would be trapped and slaughtered like cattle. They were many, but what were they compared to the well trained fighting force of the most powerful army of the time. One lion is better than five hundred sheep, the saying goes. Moses had almost six million sheep on his hands. That eventually changed.
"But," she gave a long drawn out sigh, "he came to their aid, as they were screaming and clambering over each other, trying to work out what to do, like a bunch of frightened sheep that they were, all p.i.s.sing themselves and trembling with terror.
"Moses was instructed to raise his staff over the waters. He did. It parted. They got away to the safety of the over side. Old famous story. Every child knows it. Interestingly the area they crossed was a thirteen-kilometer path in the Gulf of Akaba, which took them directly into Midian.
"Pharaoh was giving chase across the bed of the ocean, when the walls of held water collapsed, crushing down upon his army and wiped them all away.
"Hooray, they were saved." She coughed once. This was impressive for a body that didn"t really have any lungs or throat with which to do so. Plumes of skin particles rained out of her decayed body in a thick cloud.
A fly landed on her face and started to walk in circles on her cheek. Then quick as a flash in disappeared up her left nostril. She didn"t seem to notice.
"Saved," she said. "Soon they began to murmur and complain about being taken from Egypt. Wanting sweet food, cuc.u.mbers, and melons like they used to have. Not this tasteless gunk of manna. Tasted like chicken actually.
"Funny enough, they complained about the dirty brown food falling from the sky. They said they wanted meat. "Give us flesh, give us flesh, that we may eat," they shouted.
"So He had a wind burst forth, driving quails from the sea, making them fall all about the camp. They were so greedy they collected the dead birds all day, all night, and all the next day. Heaping them up into huge piles. Not one single bird had been consumed in those two days. They were so selfish they were just trying to horde as much as they could.
"So His anger blazed against them, striking down thousands. Nasty temper on Him sometimes. For some reason the place was named Kibrothhattaavah, meaning Graves of l.u.s.t. Their bones are still below the sand. Today you call the area Wady Murrah. In fact an archaeological dig site has found some of their remains in Erweis el-Ebeirig. It"s about thirty miles north-east of Sinai."
She gave a twisted Cheshire cat smile.
"But I will talk further on the subject of the Israelites when I return. About the way they continued to upset Him. In fact, I"m surprised there was any Hebrews left. At one point He said none from the age of twenty years and above would see the Promised Land. They had to wander for thirty-eight years while they died off. Then they complained against Mosses and Aaron. He made the earth swallow thousands, with fire devouring hundreds more. Then He sent a scourge that kills another fourteen thousand and seven hundred. And they still murmured against Him. So He sends poisonous serpents to kill many more.
"The tale of the Israelites is one full of complaining and culling. Those who murmured died. You would think that after the tens of thousands that had been killed they would have leaned their lesson. But no." She went to stand.
"Where are you going?" I asked, confused.
She looked down, because she now stood slightly hunched over in front of me. Dried decomposed mummified body with a fleshly head.
"You are going to stay here tonight. Yes?"
Yes, I was. I had enjoyed doing nothing all day. Even though I remember little of it. I still needed time to recuperate from the fire my chest still ached from the smoke. My ears still had a dull ringing, like tinnitus.
She read my mind, because I never uttered anything aloud.
"I will return upstairs, depositing the body in the same place. I don"t want you to have to drag the body away from where you intend to sleep." With that she turned and slowly headed for the stairs.
"One thing," I said.
She turned slowly, as if on a turntable.
I pointed to the smouldering cigarette that was hanging from her wet lips.
"Ah. Good point," she muttered while taking one more heavy drag upon it, before giving it up. She used a dried hand to toss it into the flames.
Then turning she headed towards the rickety stairs. Her head from behind started to convert back to its decayed state. Tufts of lank hair fell to the floor, instantly disappearing as if consumed by time. The skin on the skull dried and pulled hard, clinging tight to the bone, turning back to its leathery brown colour. Suddenly, thinking of something else, she turned. Her face had changed back to its former dead self. Only her lips remained, so she should depart the message.
"Tomorrow when you wake, leave. Do not be in this house at dinnertime tomorrow." With that she turned and disappeared around the corner of the stairs. I could hear the slow, surefooted steps leading to the only bedroom.
Then a loud thud, to announce the body was once again lying on the floor. Lifeless.
I pondered on why he would tell me to leave. He obviously knew something, but was unwilling to divulge that information. I shrugged it off.
Besides, I was going to leave first light anyway.
Strange how things turn out.
It was the last time I heard any of the biblical story from him. And how I found out the truth about everything. And how I had been played like a fool. Everything he had told me had been a lie, misdirection.
Things are not always what they seem.
The truth can be a lot more daunting.
24.
Mirror Image I awoke with a headache, eyes glued together; tongue feeling like it had been carpeted while I slept. I remembered nothing from my dreams, no fading images nada.
I pulled hard on the blanket, tossing over my shoulder onto the back of the chair. No blood. I gave a long sigh of relief. Fingernails as clean as I had left them yesterday.
Grainy diffused light crept through the pulled curtains, making the light look like it had already pa.s.sed through a cloth before it even reach the tatty, dusty old brown curtains.
Slowly, clambering to my feet, I wandered upstairs, ignoring the bedroom and its pulled tight door, and used the dirty toilet.
Now clean and refreshed I stood before the front door. Backpack full of money. Still wearing the gaudy black tracksuit, with the black baseball cap pulled down tight over my dyed hair. I twisted the door handle and stepped into the narrow wet cobblestone street.
It had rained hard during the night. I seemed to remember drifting in and out of sleep and noticed the rain hammering on the greasy windowpanes.
Now it was simply a misty light rain that soaks you within minutes. The sky above was dark pewter, clouds boiling between the gaps in the house roofs above. The houses looked like they were leaning over, inspecting me.
Broken tiles littered the street. Beside doorposts bushes sat in terracotta pots, almost stripped of leaves. Milk bottles lying on there sides, some broken making pools of white liquid, looking oddly out of place. Small birds fluttering in the gaps between buildings, trying to find better hiding places under the eaves.
Head down, hands in pockets, I set out, heading back the way I had come.
I knew of no other roads apart from the one I used to get here. Other roads headed in all directions, but I didn"t know where they ended. I needed to get back to the main motorway and find another car.
The village was deserted, it could"ve been a ghost town for all I knew, or cared. But around the next corner I could hear activity. Banging and loud rattling, accompanied by the droning noise of machinery.
As I turned the corner I could see the dustbin lorry, slowly crawling along the narrow main street. Dustmen, who were wrapped up tight against the rain and early morning chill, were pushing the large green plastic bins onto the hooks at the back of the truck, the truck then swallowing the contents, along with its rumbling sound; sounding like a large overfed beast.
I remembered the bins and large bulging black bags from the day before last. Obviously because of the fire the road had been closed.
No one paid any attention to me as I pa.s.sed, hunched against the drizzling rain, on the opposite side of the narrow street.
NatWest bank had a clock hanging from its grey wall. Just past six. A few shops had their lights on, preparing for another day. A collection of homes had lights on downstairs. The old people who awoke at the crack of dawn, trying to use up every last minute they have left before going off into the unknown.
The rain started to fall a little heavier. Head down I pushed on. Tracksuit soaked through to my skin already. I soon left the cramped streets behind.
I cleared the village and headed along down the narrow lane. Eventually I reached the service station entrance. Not one vehicle past me on the way. Not one other living person.
It had been a day since the fire in the hotel, even though the images would never leave me in peace. The smoke was still churning from some section that I couldn"t see from my location.
Head down, once again, I headed toward the service station.
I was hungry, and also didn"t quite know how I was going to get anywhere, deciding hitchhiking was a little too risky because my face had been plastered all over the television.
I walked quickly across the mammoth car park; pointedly refusing to look in the direction the hotel had once sat. But I couldn"t help giving it a quick glance. I noticed bundles of brightly coloured objects leant against the melted remains of a car park bin. Petals had been strewn across the car park by the high winds. Relatives and friends having left their flower tributes to loved ones. I looked away, ashamed.
I felt naked and exposed in the middle of the open car park. I felt like someone was going to latch their hand onto my shoulder any minute and say, "Hold on one f.u.c.king minute, aren"t you the b.a.s.t.a.r.d who caused the fire? Isn"t it all your fault?"
I was being paranoid. Knowing people didn"t give a s.h.i.t who I was, or where I was heading. I could lie down on the wet concrete car park, and the likelihood that anyone would even ask that I was okay was very slim. It wasn"t that people didn"t care; it was because they were so caught up in their own lives problems and miseries that another problem was something they didn"t want. Let someone else check the person was okay.
This reminded me of another crime. As I have already said, my mind holds an a.s.sortment of junk information, and this situation reminded me of something I had read not so long ago. I am an avid reader of true-life crime stories.
It was about a twenty-eight-year-old woman called, Catherine Genovese, or otherwise known as Kitty Genovese. The murder was the talk of New York City. Why? Because she was stabbed seventeen times by a man who came back twice to finish her off. But that wasn"t what was so exceptional about this murder. The fact that thirty-seven people witnessed the murder and not one of them reported it while it was happening.
When Winston Moseley stabbed her from behind, Kitty screamed to high heaven, expecting someone to come to her aid, because she was right outside the apartment where she lived. The man ran off, leaving Kitty bleeding, but alive. But when no one came to Kitty"s aid, Moseley ran back and started stabbing her again. She screamed, just barely alive. He ran again. Then when no one came to her aid the second time people were actually watching from the windows above Moseley ran back and finished her off. It wasn"t until she lay dead in a pool of her own congealing blood that someone eventually phoned the police. Over half an hour after the attack started! If just one person wanted to, they could"ve saved her life. And that was in 1964, forty-eight years ago, the world is even more atrocious today.
Considering there had been a major fire only the day before last, the station was as busy as ever, even at this early hour. Everyone trying to beat the morning traffic. People stopping to refill their vehicles and empty their bladders. Grab junk food to munch on as they drove, or simply to stretch their legs. All the cars were parked close to the main entrance, to avoid getting soaked in the relentless rain.
I strolled through the large automatic gla.s.s doors. The small arcade was filled with young children dropping their parent"s money into the machines as if their lives depended on it. McDonald"s was at busting point selling their breakfast specials. Even the service stations own food area was crowded. Luckily it was early, so the food hadn"t had time to stew and simmer in its own juices until no juices were left.
I decided not to sit and eat with dozens of eyes boring into me. I walked the small rows in the sweetshop. I picked up a bottle of Dr. Pepper and a triple breakfast sandwich, cheese and onion crisp and a collection of chocolate bars and mints for after. As well as a travel toothbrush and paste. I hadn"t brushed my teeth in days, they felt almost furry.
I stood for what seemed like hours in the long line, with children crying because they wanted to eat the sweets now, their parents trying to explain they needed paying for first. And people recognizing friends or family members that had beating them out of the toilet, and were now joining them, making the line longer from the middle out.
Eventually I paid and wandered out to the huge lobby, looking out the large gla.s.s doors, seeing the rain pelting down. I picked a quiet corner with a picnic table behind a selection of tall plastic plants and old broken coin fed children"s ride, and consumed my sausage, bacon and egg sandwich, while popping crisps in my mouth at the same time. I downed the bubbly drink, feeling the headache slowly start to recede now sugar was surging through my veins.
I watched through the fake foliage at people bustling past heading out the door, running to their cars, getting soaked in the process.
I still sat in the same place even after the rain had settled down a little, retuning back to its lazy mist. My clothes were even starting to dry out, the rain water steaming off my body. It reminded me of the cigarette smoke trailing out the splits in the old woman"s skin.
I needed the toilet, not knowing when my next chance might be.
I sat on the same toilet as a few days ago, still as dirty, and still as smelly. Also noticing more writing had been added to the Cottaging message board. A small sign sat under the old one, saying, I waz ere where wer u? With another directly beneath saying, f.u.c.king your mum.
I pulled more money from my bag, shoving it into my wallet. Thankful that the small cheap rucksack was still keeping the water out. I sat listening to the hustle "n" bustle of the children using the toilet as a playground. Fathers telling them to calm down, but not really caring if they did or not, simply reciting the same old threats that the children had grown to ignore.
I gave myself a check over in the tall grubby mirror, I was wet and bedraggled. But it added to my disguise, which I didn"t mind, but I would rather have been a little warmer. I wish I was as home in my warm four-poster bed. With that in mind, I wondered what else had happened at my house. I decided to purchase a newspaper from the shop, wondering why I didn"t think about doing that earlier. Also a can of deodorant; the smell of smoke still lingered on my clothing.
In the shop I had a large selection of papers to choice from. My personal preference was the Daily Mail, but the picture on the front of the Daily Express caught my attention my house.
I found myself wandering back to the eating hall to spread the paper out on a table. But there on the back of a chair was a coat, with no one around it, with people ignoring it as it hung there. I stood for a few minutes to see if anyone would claim the coat, no one did. Slowly, I inched my way forward, taking the seat next to the one the coat rested on.
I unfolded the paper and spread it out. The front cover wasn"t the fire or train disaster, all old news. The headline announced Another West House? With a downward birds-eye view of my farmhouse plastered below. The photo was grainy, showing police milling around, with large white tents scattered about. There where police trucks and white vans everywhere, with portacabins set up to one side.
The headline was referring to the West family, serial killers whose home had bodies everywhere, in the walls, under floorboards and many in the bas.e.m.e.nt and under the back patio and garden. Even members of their own family. I remembered the case well, most people do. It shocked the nation, and the world.
Fred and Rosemary West was a husband and wife team. He was a builder, incorporating all the bodies into the structure of the house. I remember one newspaper at the time saying he used to put: body and soul into his work. A tacky joke, but it hit the nail right on the head.
Fred was convicted of twelve counts of murder on December 13th, 1994. On New Year"s Day he was found hanging inside his cell, having tied strips of his bed sheets together.
His wife Rosemary had been sentenced to twenty-five years on account of aiding ten of the murders. She"s now living out the remainder of her days ordering things from catalogues while sat in a prison cell.
Under the headline it read: Another house, which has become the tomb to many victims. So far twenty-three bodies have been uncovered, most in the grounds around the old converted farmhouse. More have been uncovered, but as of yet the number of the bodies in these joint graves hasn"t been determined.
Joint graves? What the f.u.c.k? I felt an almost out of body experience, as I disconnected from reality.
All the bodies that have so far been recovered have shown signs of mutilation and cannibalism.
Cannibalism? My stomach turned, I fought back vomiting. My vision clouded over. Don"t faint, I screamed at myself inside the privacy of my head. I wiped my hand over my sweating brow. My body had started to shake, head pounding. I was having difficulty focusing my eyes on the words. I forced myself to read on.
Dr. Emily Parkson, the forensic anthropologist for the west on England, said: "I have never seen anything on this scale before. The task of recovering and identifying all the bodies is a major joint venture."
Dr. Parkson is leading a team of doctors, pathologists, anthropologists, dentists, finger print specialists and X-ray technicians who are working their way through identifying the victims. They are using missing persons, dental, fingerprints, medical records, tattoos and DNA, to put a name to each body, to bring some sort of closure to families that have been in limbo for far too long.
I scanned through paragraph after paragraph.
Writer, and figurative, Jacob Thomas Cain is still on the run, and is at the top of the most wanted list with British authorities. Also number nine on the FBI"s most wanted. Who are aiding in the investigation.
I looked down at a picture of myself, like looking into a mirror, only now I hope I looked slightly different.
The story continued, going over what had already been said over the last few days. Finishing by stating there is a large reward concerning my capture. And once again stating I was armed and extremely dangerous, and not to be approached.
I had read enough. I left the paper where it was. Then as if the coat that had been left on the seat was mine, I lifted it and put it on. No one cared what I was doing; everyone ignored me.
Suddenly I felt a strong hand clamp over my arm. I turned and looked into the milky eyes of a middle-aged man. My fight or flight was kicking in. Or the technical term: fright, fight or flight response. Luckily my subconscious body opted to freeze, and didn"t scream like a ten year old girl and run or punch him in the face.
What did he want? Did he recognize me? Or was I now wearing his coat, and he was about to cause a scene?
"Excuse me," he said in a strong accent I didn"t recognize. "Have you finished with the paper?"
I almost wept with joy. He must have felt my body relax under his iron grip, as the adrenaline washed away.
"Sure, all yours, mate," I simply said, my voice a little shaky.