When Stella arrived at school, Megan and her friends asked where she bought her clothes from. It was a baby pink silk dress with soft frills from Deslungers. Along with the dress, Nick had also provided her with matching short pink heels with silk ribbons.
It was as if the dress and shoes had transformed her. She saw other girls looking at her from afar and was uneasy about the attention a singular dress could attract.
“I can’t wait. The new guy is coming in today!” Felicia gushed as they took their seats in class. Once they were all seated, the teacher entered along with a tall and lean guy, dressed in a leather biker jacket, a white tee shirt and a pair of tight jeans. Megan and her friends started gaping at him and smiling widely in excitement.
“Hi, my name is Michael Owell. I was homeschooled and I came from Lienne (another city). Hope I have a great time here,” he introduced himself. Everyone clapped and the teacher told him he could take a seat anywhere comfortable.
As he walked towards the direction of Stella and her friends, they grew increasingly thrilled. Then, he took a seat next to Stella, to her surprise. “It’s alright that I sit here, right?” he smiled at her.
“Yeah, feel welcome,” she replied nervously. There was something strange in his eyes when he looked at her. It was as if he had known her and yet she did not see him before.
“What’s your name?” he asked suddenly.
“Stella Robbs,” she replied, rather annoyed that he was talking during the lesson.
“I assume you’re popular among guys in this school,” he said and Stella glared at him.
“That’s a lousy pick up line,” she replied briskly.
“How about... You’re the prettiest girl I have ever seen?” he quipped and Stella ignored him.
It was lunch time and he asked if he could join Stella and her friends for lunch. Her friends, of course, were elated that a “hot guy” was going to have lunch with them. During lunch, they spoke of the usual stuff, like how was his hometown like, did he have siblings, which university was he going to, what did he like to do et cetera.
Micheal was very forthcoming with their questions, and told them he was an orphan after both his parents died from a heart attack. His guardian was a rich man who was living in France. Stella felt pity for him because she knew what was like losing one’s parents, and no longer thought badly of him.
“Anyway, Megan, I'm on internship with Smiths Corporation now, and I managed to get an autograph from Nick Smith,” Stella beamed, taking out the piece of paper from her backpack.
Megan took the paper eagerly and squealed so loudly in the cafeteria that some people turned to look at her. “Oh my god. Is this for real? It even has a smiley face!” she said loudly in happiness. Her friends gathered around Megan to scrutinise the piece of paper, although it was a very plain piece of paper.
“How do you know that guy?” Micheal suddenly asked in a rather low tone. “Erm, long story, but basically, I have a contract at Smiths,” she lied.
“Oh I see,” he turned cold and bit on his straw. She wondered why he looked like he had a grudge against Nick Smith.
School finally ended and Stella thought the lack of sleep and drama in the morning was making her faint soon. She was sitting at the bus stop when Micheal came over and said gravely, “You’re friends with Nick Smith.”
She jumped slightly. “No, he is a celebrity. Everyone knows him,” she denied in anger.
“Do you know what he wants from you?” he sat down next to her and she inched away.
“What are you talking about?” she demanded.
“Alright, I’ll tell you what I want from you. I’m not the kind of person who hides his motives. Let’s get on the bus first,” he said and she was surprised he even knew what bus number she was waiting for.
They got on the bus together and she asked where he lived at.
“Above your unit. I didn’t come here for no reason,” he replied casually but his words made her nervous.
“So you know which school I was from and-”
“Let me finish what I want to say. I came here because you have a secret ability that can help me. Maybe not me, but help with my purpose. My parents died because of a heart attack. But it wasn’t any simple heart attack. How was it possible that they died at the same moment, one after another? And there was nobody who had seen them die. Not a single soul.”
The bus jerked and he paused, before continuing, “They were murdered by someone, I was certain. I told the police and the media. You know what they said? They said there was no sign of unnatural death. All signs pointed to a simple heart attack. I did not believe them and I went to research on similar cases. There were many. And some reports were even intentionally undisclosed to the public and classified in several hospitals as heart attack. There was a multitude of people dying on the streets or in their homes. How do you explain that? Then, it turns out that there were some people, some powerful people above, who were clamming down theories that a strange disease was spreading or that there was some biological warfare involved. They clammed down reports that too many heart attacks had occurred in the city and they also reduced the official numbers.”
Stella did not know whether to believe him and she was confused as to how this was anything related to her.
“Someone sent a secret note to me, wanting to meet me. He knew I was researching and asking around for such explanations. He was an old man and he passed me a book. It was a very old book and he said that there were only two copies available in the world. His great grandfather had stolen the book from one of the aristocratic families. He did not get caught because a lot of books were being destroyed at that period and there was a lot of books reported lost or burnt. I did not understand the book then and so I went to find the old man again for explanations. However, when I went to find the old man, I found out he was dead from a heart attack. Someone was trying to kill him. I realised that my book was a handwritten copy and the original copy was with his murderer.”
Stella wanted to say something when he said, “Please let me finish my story. No matter how unbelievable it may be, I need your help. There are people different from our kind living in this world. They are cold-blooded murderers. I will show you the book later. I have seen videos that are inexplainable. I did not manage to save a copy but I believe they were not faked. I realised most of the CCTV footage in Lienne that had possibly depicted the murder scene were deleted. The police could not produce anything even though there was clearly a CCTV located where my parents died. I asked who had deleted them and got into a fight with a police officer, who revealed to me that someone from above had them deleted almost immediately. He said that he had accidentally played parts of the video and it was strange. If you played it at normal speed, there was nobody at the scene. All the victims would be standing upright with fear in their eyes. But if you played it eight times the speed, you could see someone in front of the victims. He thought it must be a ghost or the video must have been edited in some way. I managed to see one of the videos when he offered to help me the next time there was a similar case. And he was right. Within a week, he was murdered the same way.”
He spoke so earnestly that Stella thought that she should believe him. His story seemed real and his state of mind seemed genuine.
“I spent almost a year trying to figure out what was in the video. Who the hell was that and why was he going around killing people? I googled things like “ghosts”, “demons”, “supernatural beings”, and I came across something strange. There was a similar picture in the book. It was on one of the first few pages. It was a picture of someone who looked like a grim reaper or something. The first chapter of the book describes a certain group of elites of a tribe that had sold their souls to this “grim reaper” and they lived by sucking the souls out of others. In exchange, they were to become forever physically strong, brimming with the vitality of youth, develop strange powers and be blessed with immense power and prosperity for all their generations to come. I initially thought this book was merely a book of stupid stories. Even on the Internet, there are stories of vampires, dark angels, ghosts and other strange things. However, there was a report of a few women being found dead, one after another, and the media had labelled this as the “Curse of Bently Aswald”. They had died of heart attacks while with Bently Aswald. Some deaths occurred in hotel rooms and some in his house. Some said the women did drugs, which were found to be true but Bently Aswald was not found guilty because there were no drugs found in his possession. Most of the women were then revealed to be on either drugs, alcohol overdose, or on fake slimming pills or viagra that sort of things. I found this strange because it was too much of a coincidence. There were ten women in total in three months. Of course, some said it was hardly unusual because Bently Aswald was known for having multiple women around him. He could have sex with different women everyday or have almost ten in his house at one time. Ten women were only a fraction of those he had sexual relations with.”
Stella hoped the bus would reach her house soon but there was a traffic jam and she was forced to continue listening to his story. She felt some empathy for him because he seemed desperate to find out why his parents had died. She, too, had searched for answers but to no avail.
“I told you I have a guardian in France, am I right? Well, actually he only became my guardian after I went to France to try to meet that Bently Aswald. He saw me being dragged away by security guards at Bently Aswald’s hotel. He asked why I was looking for Bently Aswald and I told him that I thought he might know something about why the women died of heart attacks. He took me in and told me there were secrets that one should not try to find out. He said he would support me and in his life, he had lacked the courage to destroy those people. He strove hard to become rich and powerful but he found out that these powerful people had strong connections and the ability to make or break the country. I asked him who those people were. He said one must not contend the devil. I asked what he meant by that. He said they were in charge of the police, the army, the government, the law, the financial systems, the entire economy. He said you cannot kill them, even if you take a gun and shoot it in one of their heads or take a nuclear bomb and throw it into their homes. They would survive and you would not.”
Stella did not want to hear his story any longer. She did not like hearing things like the devil, demons and that sort of rubbish. She did not believe in such things and even if they existed, she did not wish to be involved with any of these things.
“Sorry to interrupt you. I have to tell you that I do not completely believe your story. I hope you can understand that I don’t believe in the supernatural,” she said as diplomatically as she could.
“You don’t have to believe me straightaway. I still have questions unanswered as well. I asked him how he knew their secrets. He told me he had once also found his sister’s death questionable and went to investigate. He tried to threaten the murderer to own up but the murderer had told him that even if he was sentenced to the death penalty, he would have killed everyone who tried to kill him and nothing would work on him. He claims the murderer was a mad man and told him about who he was. When I showed my guardian the book, he said the stories in the book are true and had collaborated with the murderer’s words. I asked him if there was any way to bring these murderers to justice and I found you.”
At this moment, the bus stopped. Stella did not want to listen to him anymore but she could not help thinking of what he had said.