"We do whatever we enjoy doing. Whether it happens to be judged good or evil is a matter for others to decide."
-Ian Brady
ELEVEN
"DON'T FUCKING MOVE!" He bellowed, slamming the butt off the gun against the dry wall. He was heaving violently and his face was contorted into a forsaken grimace. His anger radiated of him like the flames from an inferno.
He jolted to the side when he twisted his neck, cracking it and then cracking his knuckles. "I've had dreams about this day. When I can drive bullets through every hole in your body."
I shivered, taking an involuntary step back and stumbling on my fear. He looked beastly, teeth that glinted in the dim light. I scanned the claustrophobic room. Where was she?
"I told you not to move, sweetheart." Hugh hissed on a menacing jingle. "Did you think I would let you kill me that easily? I knew you couldn't pull the trigger. I knew you'd let me take the gun. You'd do anything for me."
It was a sadistic thought but deep down, I knew Hugh was right. I couldn't kill him. I wouldn't kill him even if he begged me to. It was the reason why my fingers wouldn't pull the trigger. I couldn't hurt Hugh mentally, physically or arbitrarily in the way he had hurt me because somehow, despite this, I loved Hugh and believed he loved me back. I had tried and failed to engage in behaviors that may assist in my detachment from Hugh.
"God...." I whispered, my voice shaking on the fear I was feeding on. My baby brother was holding a gun to my face and I knew that if I triggered him, he would blast the bullet through my skull and let my soul drift into Hell. "Don't do anything stupid."
"STUPID!" He exploded, craning his head back like I had slapped him. "Don't talk to me about stupid. Not you."
I winced.
I backed away from his grip on the gun and gulped. If I was going to die, I wanted it to be fast and painless. Perhaps then I wouldn't have to be stuck living in constant fear.
"Hugh, please."
And his hand lowered the gun from my vision.
It was as if his name coming from my mouth was a sedative that calmed him down and made him ponder the weight of his actions. Like a ticking bomb, he tapped his fingers against his chin.
He tilted his head to the side and narrowed his eyes. The fact that he had stopped threatening me and was now just staring at me made my heart speed erratically.
I whispered one last time. "Haven't you done enough?"
He stood impassively for a moment, as if weighing my words. And then whispered. "Scream for help, Aria."
My confusion must have been evident in my expression because he elaborated with repressed anger. His eyes were downcast with sadness now, a sadnes waltzing in between anger and desperation.
"I'll kill you. So fucking scream. I'm giving you a chance to save yourself, Aria."
And in that moment, I could tell that killing me was something he thought he physically wanted to do but didn't have the emotional capacity to do without feeling remorse.
My eyes were zeroed in on the barrel of the gun that was now aimed at my heart. One bullet and I would die. I was wheezing, crying, withering, every action associated with hysteria.
And when I finally heard the gun click, I lifted my head and caught eyes with my beloved brother.
His eyes were sapphire in the midst of gold, revealing all the turmoil and struggle within them. He was hurting. He had been hurting for far too long. No one deserved to have that much blackness of grief hidden within their hearts.
Hugh had always been the black sheep of the family. I and Diana were prodigies, we were the stars of our small town, we put our town on the map. We were gifted, and basked in the attention of our parents, friends, and the world around us.
But then there was Hugh.
My baby brother, Hugh, was a child built from the tools of angst, neglect and disappointment. He was special, never learnt how to read or write. My father had once said Hugh was evidence that God was capable of making mistakes. And although Hugh had kept a straight face at the dinner table, I could hear his sobs through my bedroom wall that night.
I had gone to hug him despite the fact that he had given I and Diana a black eye and bruises for being smart asses. I had always loved him more than Diana did.
When my father left, the part of him that was keeping him controlled tore apart like a beast from human skin. He lost it. He blamed us for the wayward way he was. He was a huge kid so it was easy to bully I, Diana and my mother. He beat us into submission and we just cowered away in fear for five years. We were physically, emotionally and mentally trapped.
To the world outside, the Black family lived the perfect happy life, but on the inside, we were irrevocably shattered.
And now, here he was, standing before me, with years of pain stacked up against him like a house of burnt cards.
I swallowed, wetting my dry parched mouth. "Drop the gun, Hugh, you don't want to kill me."
His eyes widened and then he scoffed. He chuckled, shaking his head in disappointment. He snarled, bringing the gun back up. "You're not gonna save yourself? I'll kill you, then your sister, like I killed the thing you call a mother."
I hissed in pain.
Hearing those words and envisioning the images made me feel sickened. A fresh wave of tears flooded my eyes. A sordid gasp escaped my lips. "You didn't."
"I really wish you could've been there." He chuckled, poking at some grievously dark humour. "The bullet blew her brains out like confetti."
My heart sped up so fast I felt ill. He killed my mother. His mother. Our mother. The love and light of my darkened life. I felt my eyes spot and the familiar grip of sadness twist my heart. Before I could topple to the ground into unconsciousness, I felt a cold press of metal on my chest. I hadn't realised he had stepped closer.
"See you in hell, Aria."
And the slide of hands pulled a trigger.
___
My hands shook as I gulped down my third cup of water. I was pacing my bedroom now and all I wanted to do was leave the room that had caused me to have another nightmare.
It was all Diana's fault. And after she had told me her worrying news, I had cussed her out so severely that I was sure she was never going to speak to me again.
I threw the plastic cup dramatically against the front door and hollered. "Why won't you just open?!"
There had been another lockdown last night because Kaufman hadn't been found yet. However, this morning, I got a green light email that he had been caught and it was safe. Yet, my room was still sealed.
"I'm gonna die in this stupid room, aren't I?" I muttered to a potted plant, sliding down against the door. "The freak writing letters to my sister is gonna come here and kill me. I can feel it."
I wrapped my robe tighter around my body and shivered. Diana's information and the Nightmare had shaken me up very seriously. I had no more tears left in my eyes and now I just felt hollow. I had barely slept last night, tossed and turned every few minutes.
I hated feeling paranoid.
Looking down, I smacked the plant and kicked the vase far away. "You're not supposed to agree with me! What kind of friend are you? Jesus."
I let my head rest on the door and I sighed deeply. "God, I'm running mad."
I stood up and moved to the window. Through the bars, I could see how sunny it was outside. I could hear distant chirps of birds and the soft billow of wind. No one cared that I was stuck in my room, that there was a creep writing letters to my sister, that I had been through so much. The world still revolved. I was too small, too insignificant, for the world to stop and pay attention to me. Not even for a second.
The universe didn't care about me.
I pondered on who could be the man behind Diana. It was borderline paranoia that I was thinking this person was from SSCD. Perhaps Diana had told him I worked there in one of her ridiculously long letters. Perhaps she had forgotten. But then again, the person was egging her to tell him (or her) her deepest secrets about her past. And they had known I was working in SSCD with Banshee.
I smacked myself on the head hard. If only I had known where Diana had met Dante from then it would be easier for me to decipher who he or she was. However, Diana wasn't taking any of my calls or texts because I had cussed her out.
That was childish and irresponsible since this was serious.
I drummed my fingers against the bars of my window. I knew Diana had started writing letters to Dante only a few weeks before I had took up the job. The thought sent a chill running down my spine. Had they done this because they knew I was taking the job? Or was it a mere coincidence that her pen pal had met her around the same time I was taking the job?
I shook my head. Or was he really just a stranger and had just let it slip? If he was, I could lose my job and the money because I had signed an NDA.
I turned to the toppled over potted plant and sighed. "I honestly can't believe she told him about Hugh. It breaks my heart. That's something we we were supposed to take to the grave."
I walked over to the plant and ran ran a finger over an intricately designed leaf. "I had a nightmare about Hugh, you know. I'm not quite sure what trigg-"
Oh.
I felt my hand slip from the leaf and fall limply to my side. Jesus.
I had dreamt about Hugh for a reason. I froze on my breath and became so silent that anyone could hear the blood rushing in my body if they listened closely. My ears were blocked from the pounds of my heart against my rib cage.
Dirty, blackened fear creeped into me and planted itself in the seat next to my subconscious. The reason i had dreamt about Hugh was for the same reason I had dreamt about him the first time. My conversations with Banshee.
They always hit too close to home.
God. Could Banshee be the one writing letters to Diana?
"Letter writing can be therapeutic, you know. Many of the prisoners at SCCTD have a anonymoupen pals."
Planting a hand against my mouth, I shoved the plant aside and rushed to the toilet to heave last nights dinner into it. The thought alone that my sister was vulnerable to a lying, psyopathic, violent serial killer made me sickened.
All the conversations I had had with him seemed to resonate with some of what Diana had told me she wrote to him. It seemed like it was planned. I rested my head against the wall.
It frightened me more that it could be Banshee because of what I had said to the recorder. When he had asked me if I was going to tell them and I said no, I lied. I told Rose what we had talked about. But how I told her was what I regretted.
I had told Mirabel about the terrible childhood he had had. And due to my sentimentality from talking about my mother, I had tried to make him seem victimised by his childhood. I had thrown in a bit extra details because I had pitied him so much. I had believed we shared a bond on the grounds of our mothers.
I had made Banshee look like a victim even as he had brutally killed fourty innocent people, threatened to break my fucking neck and cussed me out. There was something seriously wrong with me.
Had he manipulated me into pitying him? Probably.
Heaven knows that I didn't know what the experts who were receiving the recording would decipher from it. Hopefully, they wouldn't take my word for it.
Pressing down the flush button on he toilet, I groaned, a real pained groan. I wanted to bawl, weep, sob and cry my eyes out for ever feeling a connection with someone like Banshee. How had he clouded my moral judgement so easily?
I had told him so much too. I had told him so much about my mother. If he were Dante, why did he want to know so much? If he were Dante, I could tell Frank or someone who'd do something about it quickly.
But the jdea that he is Dante seemed too easy. Too simple. At least for a man like Banshee. There were too many plot holes.
I raked a hand through my stubborn hair and leaned up from the toilet. "But....but there's little to no correlation with what I know and what I'm thinking. I've spoken to Banshee enough to know that he's a cunning bastard. He wasn't reckless and wouldn't just let it slip that he knew about my job in a letter! He definitely wouldn't call himself a psycho!"
I paused. "Unless he had a reason for doing so."
I had also read one of Diana's letters. The letters seemed clean and decent. I had even called him cute! Jesus. Clean and decent was everything Banshee juxtaposed. Yet, he always sounded so cultured and educated when I spoke to him.
My subconscious was reading between the lines because I also knew that there was a possibility that he was just pretending. After all, psychopaths were pathological liars and facades, and Rose had said: Our records state that Nicholas dropped out of school at the age of 15. He's barely educated.
"For fuck sake!" I yelled in my spacious apartment, utterly terrified and irrevocably frustrated. "Agh!"
There was one thing I didn't understand. The biggest plot hole. One very miniscule but important information.
Whether or not Banshee was writing the letters to Diana, what was the telos? the goal?
Why would he begin the letters in the first place?
Jolting me out of my thoughts, my phone beeped twice.
Normally, the sound came out too small for me to even notice it but today it sounded like a scream. It pierced the silence like a blazing metal rod through the night. It was a limb that stuck out of my phone and tripped me.
You don't interview Banshee on the weekends so what do you say to brunch today? X
- Frank T.F
T.F? I vaguely wondered what the F stood for. I texted back, faster than I had ever, because I was high on adrenaline.
Will love to. I have some questions.
- Aria. B
If Banshee was Dante, I believed I could trust Frank.
But what if he wasn't?
____
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