The Hanged Girl – Twelve

Posted on March 9, 2015 by Helen
Image credit: Studio_3321

Image credit: Studio_3321

‘This is the weirdest thing I think I’ve ever come across!’ Susan announced, placing her iPad and her notebook on the cafe table with a flourish.

Lisa was vaguely irritated. She had so little spare time now with work and dealing with Mandy that she needed some ‘time out’ and she’d very much wanted to use this brief moment to talk with her friend about her concerns for her daughter and her crush on Damien.  But Susan had brushed these off with a dismissive comment about teenagers, crushes and the like, because her interests were obviously so otherwise directed.

‘What is?’ Lisa asked, her voice a bit tight, though her friend did not notice this. Or if she did, she wasn’t of a mind to acknowledge it. Susan could be like a steamroller sometimes, unaware of the finer nuances of social interaction. This probably gave her a suit of armour for her job, a kind of lacuna of empathy on occasion that allowed her to trespass on people’s private worlds if required, but it also made her a somewhat oblivious friend.

Still, there would be no dissuading her from her course till she had told her story. When they were young, Susan was fond of being the storyteller, and not above a fair degree of embellishment and exaggeration. Again, this probably aided her in her vocation. But remembering this, Lisa also met all her friend’s ‘stories’ with a degree of discriminating disbelief. What constitutes a cause celebre on the front page of a newspaper one day will often be forgotten the next, but Lisa remembered beyond that and how often in their youth Susan’s stories turned out to be flights of fancy and no more. So when she said something was the weirdest thing ever, Lisa switched on her critical faculties as quickly as she attuned her ears to hear the story about to unfold.

‘This town has a long history of peculiar deaths,’ Susan intoned.

‘I imagine all towns do, if you look hard enough into their history.’ Lisa replied. She idly swirled the pattern of chocolate on the top of her cappuccino froth, as though that might divine for her a speedier retreat from the discussion. For a second a sense memory wafted up to her, of Damien passing her a coffee at the end of the Twin Peaks viewing night, his fingers lingering just a few seconds too long on hers. There was such promise in that single moment, a communion of such shared and agreed desire, that the memory took her out of the present just long enough to miss the beginning of what Susan was saying, and her friend seemed to sense this and said, rather sharply, ‘Are you with me or with him?’

‘What?’ Lisa asked, stunned.

Susan cackled. ‘You know. Our mysterious new neighbour! Your mysterious…handsome.. new neighbour, from what you’ve said!’

Lisa blushed, caught out.

‘When are you going to introduce me to this paragon, by the way?’ Susan asked, ‘I’m dying to see what kind of man captures my fussy friend’s attention!’

‘What? Oh soon I suppose, maybe you could come over to dinner soon and I’ll invite him too’ Lisa muttered, then landed on an idea, ‘It could be good to see what you make of Mandy’s reaction to him too.’

‘Cool, I’ll be your undercover spy!’ Susan chortled, ‘now, back to the mystery, if I may have your undivided attention for just a few moments? Yes? Good. As I said, this town has an interesting history of deaths – some unsolved, some accidental and so forth, but I started to see a pattern, taking into account the hint about tarot cards in your dream. I decided to go backwards and see if anything fit.’

Susan continued that she was sure it did. She outlined her theory about Carlotta’s uncle being lynched, as a sign of the Justice card, then noted that only about eighteen months previously a young girl had been killed in a freak accident at a playground. Running past the spinning playground wheel her clothes had somehow gotten captured to the device and the momentum of this and the other children playing on the wheel meant that she was dragged, then bashed against the wheel itself, cracking her skull as easily as one might break an egg.

Lisa shuddered at the description, and instantly communed with the mother of this poor child, who probably only looked away for a moment, and one moment later her life was shattered, her little girl gone. Every parent’s worst nightmare. Then arising from the reverie she shook her head at her friend and raised her eyebrows, as though to ask ‘So?’

‘The card before the Justice card is the Wheel of Fortune! The Wheel! A children’s playground wheel! Don’t you see?’

‘Susan, that’s a bit of a stretch, and a ghoulish one at that, surely!’

‘Well perhaps if that was all,’ Susan said, slightly pouting, but unswayed, ‘But not long before that there was a suicide of a failed author. Apparently he was a shy person who worked quietly at the town library for many years till something convinced him to try to write himself, then he kind of disappeared into his loneliness and inability to succeed. They said he lived a completely solitary life and no-one would have even known except the council was called out when a neighbour spoke of a strange smell coming from his house.’

‘Susan, these things happen depressingly often. There is a whole underbelly of the lost and disenfranchised in society these days..’

‘He was a hermit!’ Susan said, irritated her friend wasn’t catching on, ‘And the card before the Wheel is the Hermit!

‘Susan, I suspect if you wanted to you could trawl through town deaths and find vague links to anything really.’

‘Before that, a celebrated athlete in the town had a heart attack at a visiting carnival show, trying to prove his strength in a carnival game!’

‘Yes, and..let me guess..that has a card correlation too…’

‘Strength! The card before that is Strength! Then about a year earlier the old local train station was the site of a terrible train accident, with someone falling before a train just as it was coming in to the station. It’s one of the reasons they shut the place down. The card before that is The Chariot.’

‘Ok, now you are really stretching things! “ Lisa said, getting quite irritated with her friend’s bizarre theory and the dark, morbid line of enquiry. Wasn’t it enough that she and her daughter lived next to the house where a poor young girl was murdered? Did Susan really have to look for something occult and bizarre and even more gruesome to add to it? Was she that bored? It seemed it was maybe time for her friend to think about moving to a bigger city. The confines of a quiet country town would soon not contain her appetite for drama.

‘Before that there’s a story of lovers doing a suicide pack, and the card is the Lovers. Then there was a disgraced priest, suiciding of all things in the Church, after being caught out having an affair with a local dignitary’s wife. The card is the Hierophant, which is all about formal structure, religion, and so forth. I’m not sure about the Emperor, but apparently it is about work among other things, and about ten years before that there was a terrible accident at a construction site, where they were re-building the town theatre, so possibly that’s a connection given the victims were at their work at the time.’

‘You must see how this is getting even more tenuous, surely?’

‘But then, the card before that is the Empress, which is the mother, and about three years before that I found reference to a mother killing her own child! Infanticide! Probably post natal depression though this was a long time ago by now – the deaths stretch over many decades overall – so I guess they didn’t know about that type of depression then! Then, even creepier, there was a story of two strange murders on the outskirts of town which looked like they were ritual based – a man and a woman, strangers to the town, not known, they still don’t know who the victims were. Apparently there was talk at the time that the town might have had some sort of satanic group at large, and the cards before the Empress are the High Priestess and the Magician, both which could fit with that type of thing. And frankly, if there was a satanic group here, maybe that’s what’s behind all of it really, and perhaps they are still here!  Then about two years before that, the local mayor of the time was killed in a climbing accident – admittedly on his holidays at the Blue Mountains, but he was a town figure, and if you look at the picture on the very first tarot card – the Fool – then you see someone dancing on the precipice of a cliff!’

‘And you said this spanned over decades?’

‘Yes!’ Susan agreed, excitedly, ‘So whatever this is, it’s been happening for a long time and quite deliberately. I can show you some of my research!’

Lisa reached out and put her hand over the top of her friend’s left hand, stopping her reaching for her iPad.

‘Susan, I really don’t have time for that now, I’ll need to get back to work. And anyway, really, I think this is a bit too much, even for you. I know you love mysteries, but I kind of bet, as I said before, if you went through the history of deaths in any town you could find connections to this type of theory, just by sheer coincidence.’

‘But in that order?’

‘Well, yes, if you extend the search long enough and you were liberal enough in making your interpretations and connections, I think you could. You aren’t saying all these deaths happened over a brief period of time in exactly that order, and without any unrelated deaths between them, now are you?’

Susan shook her head, a bit angry at her friend’s dismissal. ‘Of course there are deaths between them, but some of these are odd and I doubt you would find this pattern just anywhere, no matter how much you tried! I think there’s something else going on here, something much stranger, like a procession of death of sorts, in line with the tarot.’

‘And if that is true, given the randomness of it all, what could possibly be behind it, and why, satanic groups or not withstanding and I must say if they are around they must have a hell of a lot of patience to see this through if you are right.  And in any case, by your reckoning, the next one,  ‘Death’ – could be years away. Or, by your theory, the next person who dies peacefully in their sleep, given they are dead, might qualify!’

Susan looked at her friend in dismay. Lisa obviously saw what was her complete lack of imagination as pragmatism, and her refusal to consider other alternatives was just blindness masquerading in her mind as analytical discrimination. Somehow, deep in her bones, Susan knew she was on to something real here. Call it journalistic instinct if you like, she felt the weave of history as a narrative and she knew something worse was on its way, something riding on the next tarot card, the portentous card of Death.

‘There’s something strange going on here, in this town, I can feel it!’ She argued, knowing it was pointless, but feeling in some way she still had to say this anyway, that in some sense she needed to warn her friend, even if she wasn’t really sure why this would be. ‘You can dismiss my theory all you like, and you are right the next time might be ages away, I admit, though by my reckoning the speed of these is slowly, but surely increasing over time. Still, I hope the next time is way off, because for my part, a simple natural death wouldn’t qualify. I’m not that gullible Lisa, and I’m not just stretching things to fit a theory, no matter what you may think! The next one, if I’m right, will be bad, really bad. Not some gentle passing into that good night. The Death card is like the grim reaper, cutting a swathe through a battleground. So the next time won’t be a single, simple death. I think it’s going to be lots of death, lots of it, all at once. So I hope to God it is years and years away, and none of us are still here to witness it!’

(c) Helen M Valentina 2015, All Rights Reserved

Posted in Serial Horror Stories, The Hanged Girl | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Flavour of Spite – Twelve

Posted on March 5, 2015 by Helen
Image credit: solarseven

Image credit: solarseven

She has been awake for some time now. It seems that she has ‘done well’ with something. Her captor, who insists she calls her host, says she performed well. As a result he has loosened her ties somewhat, or perhaps more accurately given her ‘leash’ a longer rein, so she can sit, and even move around her bed, stretching her legs. So this is what it is to please him.

She is not sure what he means when he congratulates her, there are black spots in her memory, caused by shock or something worse. She can touch some of the time and see strange imagery, like fragments of dreams, and perhaps that is all it is, the memory of dreams. But he seems to think it is something more, so she scavenges those memories, hungry for clues.

He won’t tell her his name. He says , ‘you have your name, and I will give you mine when the time is right, for now I am but your loving host.’

Loving host. One who ties her to a bed and keeps her in a darkened room which seems a cross between a basement, a hotel room and something far , far worse.

She recognises him now, if vaguely. There is nothing that memorable about him, really, and that is probably half of his problem and the reason for his drive. He is an ordinary man, hiding his extraordinary madness. A youngish man but already with the threat of a receding hairline, who needs glasses to read, and has picked ones that don’t match his facial shape, as though he has no friend or family help him choose more wisely. So he is essentially alone in life.

He is thin, but strong it seems, and wears drab clothes – in this room something dark and uniform, but she recalls also colourless shirts and grey slacks, the garb of the drab. So in some essential way he lacks imagination.

She is cataloguing her memories, her impressions, because they may prove useful. She already understands she is in a game of mind control, a sport of wits and knowledge, and anything she can bring to the plate will help her, help her somehow.

And she does have more than just her impressions of him in this place because, of course, he was a patron at her patisserie. He complimented her cooking once, and she thought him sweet. How wrong you can be, how beguiled by a few kind words! No kindness here, none, no matter what he might argue. It is not kindness to loosen a leash, it is only kindness to release the captive entirely. And he obviously had no intention of doing that.

So a compliment is a manipulation. He is not sincere. She must remember that in here too, perhaps even more-so in here. So if she does well by his reckoning and words, it should not give her any happiness. She must not come to need his approval. She must understand his support or censure only as further information to understand him, understand the game. But perhaps she needs to appear to need that approval, to want to do well. She knows it will be best to be under-estimated here, just as it so often if in life. You can do so much more in the shadows if no-one thinks to look.

And there are many, many shadows in this room.

She tries to remember what she thought of him then, in the patisserie that morning, beyond some happiness at his compliment. She tries to remember details about him that might prove useful. But she can’t really recall anything except that familiarity of a regular customer. Nothing further floats to her mind’s eye to tell her anything about who he is, where he might come from, where he might live – apart from obviously in this town. Nothing that might help her understand where she is now.

Because of course he didn’t matter. He was just a customer. He didn’t matter then..not then.

But now, now she needs to know as much as she can. Her lucidity now turns her mind to strategy. She has never been a ‘lay down and take it’ kind of girl, making her current situation painfully ironic. She rubs her back, feeling the impact of lying down for far too long, and she stretches, trying to relieve tightened muscles.

She remembers parts of the black periods. She remembers looking up at one of the lamps and it flickering and seeming to lift off the wall. She remembers his voice, telling her things, guiding her somewhere. And she remembers the doctor, because it is him, in another guise, a fantastical creature who says odd things, but has his face. His face.

So I will get to know the doctor as well as I can in this shadow world, she thinks, because that is what he wants to be, so that will tell me who he is.

But for now all she has is time so she delves further, searching, searching.

All these odd things matter somehow. He is trying to do something – hypnotise her she guesses – and so manipulate her. So she must try, to the extent possible, to observe rather than participate. Can she do that? And in these moments alone can she divine some meaning to his intent and the strangeness of it all? Is there a way to turn his game upon himself?

She’s always been a strategist at heart. She was this way in a difficult home, and then at school, and even in her climb through her cooking profession. She understands people. She sees them rather like recipes, to be broken down to their constituent parts, understood and re-mixed to be something better, or discarded if that cannot be achieved.

So in a way, she thinks she understands him. He’s like me, she realises, but his methods are different and he isn’t a cook. He consumes rather than creates.

He’s made assumptions about himself and assumptions about her. He thinks he has the tools and methods to be the master, clearly, but he’s had to use force and drugs. And he hasn’t counted on who she is, what she is, what she might do. He has a vision of her and sees only that – this Violet creature – and in that she might be able to hide, to watch to consider and to build a plan. Because he can’t see her coming if he can’t really see her at all.

And somewhere in that, she thinks with a kind of wakening vicious righteousness, somewhere in that is the key. The key to his undoing and her freedom.

(c) Helen M Valentina 2015, All Rights Reserved

Posted in Serial Horror Stories, The Flavour of Spite | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Hanged Girl – Eleven

Posted on March 2, 2015 by Helen

 

Image credit: Lario Tus

Image credit: Lario Tus

Looking back, Lisa might have cause to consider this night – the ‘Twin Peaks’ night – as a kind of turning point, or even harbinger of the future. She might scavenge in her memory of the night, every word spoken, every possible undercurrent or allusion, with a morbid but desperate obsession.

On the night itself, however, the main feeling was enjoyment and for both Lisa and Mandy, an excitement in once again being in the company of their neighbour. The light flirtation that had punctuated Lisa’s interactions with Damien at the first dinner – and in the days since, when he often came in to her bookshop to ‘browse’, which seemed to be code for coming to see her – hung in the night air like a promise unspoken.

Lisa could admit to herself by now that she felt an attraction to Damien, even if she wouldn’t confess to anyone, even Susan, if asked at this stage, lest her reverie dissolved in the light of day and under the scrutiny of another. The thought of this connection both frightened and excited her. The memory of her marriage and its destruction hovered over her, making her nervous of any man, but the link seemed undeniable, and in her quieter moments she flattered herself to believe all the signs were there that it was mutual.

It is fast, but most attractions are, she would tell herself, the only question being what you would do with it and how long it might last.

But that isn’t the only question here, she thought grimly, viewing her daughter’s choice to sit cross-legged on the floor to watch the DVD, placing herself just close enough to Damien that one might view her as sitting at his feet. There was not a lot of space between the dining table and chairs and the easy chairs he had placed before the TV for the viewing, so this felt uncomfortably close and intimate for Lisa’s taste. Mandy, however, was quite content.

The only thing clearer to Lisa than her attraction to Damien and what she hoped was its reciprocation, was her daughter’s attraction to him too. She did not detect him returning the flirtation in Mandy’s direction, but he was kind, and a young girl could mis-interpret so much. Of course, should his interest be drawn in that direction, Lisa’s own attraction might make her unconsciously refuse, quite literally, to see it. In darker moments she could almost contemplate that. Almost.

In lighter, but still anxious moments, she contemplated how to navigate this should she and Damien actually choose to act on their attraction – how would she tell Mandy, and what would Mandy make of this? She knew Mandy was desperately unhappy now, scared in many ways to go to school but too withdrawn to tell her why. Mandy had never had the facility of fitting in easily, but in other schools it had never been quite this bad. It was almost like something in the nature of the town itself was pathologically against Mandy, for her this town was just bad. But there was no money and no way to move on, she would have to fit in, and in any case Lisa thought, looking at Damien, I don’t want to move on anyway.

This left Lisa with a parenting conundrum about options and choices that seemed too harsh to contemplate. Time usually allowed Mandy to find friends with other misfits and to have a shaky but acceptable equilibrium. And she usually discussed that journey with Lisa. But this time, nothing but sorrowful looks and silence. Apart from this, apart from this …happiness…that only emerged, a butterfly from its chrysalis, when Damien was present.

Lisa didn’t want to think about this while they were enjoying the show. Lisa herself had never had such social anxiety, and sometimes she found it difficult to understand and empathise with – particularly times like this where the darkness of her fears for her daughter threatened to cloud some of the few true pleasures of her own life. She had loved Twin Peaks when she first saw it, and nothing over the years had dimmed its appeal. So she tried to push her concerns out of her mind, but as the night progressed the issues raised up and down, waves on a restless sea.

When the pilot episode reached the point where Agent Cooper and Audrey have their first, flirtatious encounter Mandy grabbed the remote, pressed pause, and stretched round like a cat, looking up at Damien.

‘You look like Agent Cooper,’ she purred.

Startled, Lisa looked at Damien and realised there was truth to this. Damien’s features were slightly heavier than Cooper’s, and he was older than the actor was at the time, but otherwise the hair, the facial shape, even the glittering, kind eyes, were very like Cooper. And looking down at the twisting, heavy but still alluring form of her daughter, with her dark raven hair and meticulously made up face, she saw her daughter could have been Audrey in that moment.

A chill ran through Lisa and she actually shuddered slightly though neither noticed. She remembered too well the uneasy but charged dynamic between the two fictional characters. And now, Mandy’s eyes were only for Damien and he was looking at her with a kind indulgence.

‘Which Lodge do you come from then?’ Lisa asked Damien sharply, to bring his attention to her, and in so doing jumping to parts of the show’s mythos that her daughter did not know yet, so could not share.

‘I’m a bit afraid of that answer,’ Damien admitted, laughing, ‘Given the ghost that is reputedly here!’

‘What are you talking about?” Mandy demanded with pique from having her moment stolen so easily by her mother.

Damien looked back to her. ‘That all comes later in the series. A Black Lodge and a White Lodge, the former for evil, the latter for good, spiritual way stations if you will, but I don’t want to say much more or it will spoil it all for you. Tell you what, why don’t you borrow the box set and watch all the way up to just before the final episode of the second series, then we re-group to watch the finale together? That way any discussions we have we can all be party to.’

Lisa didn’t know whether to be happy he’d separated Mandy from hours of viewing with him – albeit with her in company as well – or whether to be concerned by the slight censure she detected under his words – the sense that perhaps he felt that it was not fair to Mandy to talk of concepts she couldn’t understand.

‘That way it will all make sense,’ he continued, still looking at Mandy, who was mollified quite quickly by his kindness and concern.

‘Thank you, I’d like that,’ she said, then shot a very quick, almost angry look to her mother, before turning round to press the pause button again for the pilot episode to continue, ‘But we may as well watch the rest of this episode together.’

Lisa felt so unsettled she quietly excused herself and went to the bathroom. Following that she stopped for long moments in his kitchen, not really taking anything in, but not being ready to go back to the room. Like a magnet, however, he sensed her loss and came in.

And she realised she had been fervently hoping he would.

She didn’t dare say anything about her concerns because they were absurd, and insulting to him also. So instead she said, ‘Do you think this house could be like a spiritual way station?’

‘Who knows?’ Damien replied, more amused it seemed than concerned, ‘Twin Peaks is fiction, of course. And ghosts, I would say are probably fictions too. No point in dwelling on it. I’m not being plagued by things that go bump in the night. Not unless you count a less than stellar water system sometimes! But I do find this place’s history interesting I do admit, just like I find shows like that interesting. I often think it would be fabulous to live in a world so wondrous and strange.’

‘And dangerous!’ Lisa argued.

‘Yes,’ Damien agreed, ‘But you can’t have wonder without a bit of danger, a bit of dread. Still, this is just a house I think, no more than that.’

‘Just as well, given its history!’

‘Yes,’ Damien chuckled, and walked close to her, and for a brief moment touched her hand, lightly, a suggestion, a promise, then withdrawn to keep the moment light, ‘Because it would have to be a Black Lodge, wouldn’t it, given its current ghostly residents?’

(C) Helen M Valentina 2015, All Rights reserved

Posted in Serial Horror Stories, The Hanged Girl | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Flavour of Spite – Eleven

Posted on February 26, 2015 by Helen
Image credit: Feng Yu

Image credit: Feng Yu

She responded so well, I am certain I am right. She dissociates so naturally it proves she is born for this. I struggled so much more than her, even given my relative youth, when Imogen began my trials. But she slipped away, on the river of pain and fear, over the rainbow, and I could tell, watching my monitors for her brain activity, and seeing the punctuated writhing of her sweet body, that she responded to my words and cues.

I shall test it, of course, in a day’s time, once she has had time to recover. If the sight of a brooch with blue feathers and petals triggers dissociation I will know the first point has taken extremely quickly. If it does not- if at best it causes alarm or disorientation or confusion, it is no matter. We are in the earlier days. It may make a few sessions for each trigger to hold.

When she finally awoke she was shaking and crying. I recalled being the same myself, and for moments my love for her and a deeper empathy made me want to turn from my course. But I will be resolute. It is hardest at first. The programming sessions never relent in terms of pain, but I found over time the fear lessened and the dissociation came earlier, and even beyond that I found myself almost happy to be in the twilight world of the soul.

If there is no escape in life then that world is a kind of escape in itself. Over time you come to be able to command part of what you experience there. It is true you do become a warrior. And if your guide and handler can always steer the narrative, and then steer you equally in waking life, you do become more adept at manipulating the reality yourself.

I am teaching her, and it is hard love and hard lessons, but it is all for the good. She will see, so soon, how she is mine and I am hers, and she will be my pearl. My Violet.

I tended to her, ministering to her tears and her pleas. I, of course, was deaf to her imploring, and I could explain so little to her yet without risking the hold of the programming. I told her she had been asleep, and in a bad dream, and when she tried to protest I hushed her and ordered her to rest and calm herself. She looked at me with fear, but also the required obedience, and stifled her emotion as best she could.

I knew what would follow, and of course I was right. As I brought her food to eat and loosened her ties sufficiently that she could sit up to enjoy it, but not so much that she could try to overwhelm me and escape, she started to try to bargain again. She noticed that I brought her pastries from her own shop, cooked by her own hand, and asked if she could be allowed to bake more in my kitchen. I simply said that may occur in time, when she was ready. Of course I would love her to cook in my kitchen, and one day she will, but I am no fool. To set her free to that extent would be to risk her escape. She needs to be handled and want to stay, rather than run, before we can enjoy such liberties and the fine flavours they could afford.

I did such bargaining and pleading with Imogen of course. Violet and I are so alike. Human beings have such capacity for hope and belief in themselves that they can somehow change the incoming tide. But you can’t. I couldn’t, and she can’t do so now.

Still, I felt generous with the success of our first session, so allowed her some time to try to bargain with me. And in the end I struck a deal that if she behaved as asked for the next two days I would allow her to be tied in a different way that let her get up and move around in a limited span in this room. She was instantly, pathetically grateful for that. She complained of pain in her body from lying too still for too long which I found inwardly absurd and amusing given how much she had thrashed in the session – enough to have run a marathon. My Violet will not grow fat and listless from lack of exertion! Still, I understood she could feel stiff and tired for a multitude of reasons, and I made the bargain.

It is important, you understand, that she and I have a different relationship to Imogen and I. For Imogen I was but a subject and she was pitiless. Her aim was not communion with me or love, but to create in her own image, as her parents had done with her, and so on and so on back through the bloodline. But for me, this was so much more with Violet. She would not just be a subject. She would be my partner. So limited and targeted concessions and kindnesses were not just allowed, they were probably required.

And I aim to be the most perfect of hosts for my love.

(c) Helen M Valentina 2015, All Rights Reserved

Posted in Serial Horror Stories, The Flavour of Spite | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Hanged Girl – Ten

Posted on February 23, 2015 by Helen

 

Image credit: Damien Palus

Image credit: Damien Palus

Susan found she couldn’t let the mystery go. As a journalist she was successful here, a big fish in a small pond who often yearned for bigger seas and to take her career further. But this battled with her love of the smaller town’s lifestyle and its people. She was part ambitious and part domestic, and the two sides of her battled often within, though the town-loving side had won for the moment.

But now she had the scent of something. It was probably nothing – a friend’s dream, her proximity to the reputedly haunted house with its dark, shrouded history, and the excitement of a new man in her friend’s life, writ large against a nightmare with oddly occult accuracy. Still, she felt something, deep in her bones, and that there was more here than her more pragmatic side would tell her.

It was the connection of the cards, and then the connection to the house of the Hanged Girl that made her think. She’d come to the town many years after the tragedy and only heard the overview most new townsfolk shared. She’d never looked into the past history because her focus was on the here and now, her reporting concentrating on what was modern and of import in the moment. She wouldn’t have a job for long if she just dwelled on the past, and particularly on aspects of the town most people eschewed. But in any case she had been personally future focussed, so she’d just never paid all that ghost talk, and the story behind it, much attention.

Now, with her friend so close to what might be a deeper mystery, she wondered why she’d never looked backwards, to the past, to this case. Because really the Hanged Girl was the most interesting feature of the town’s history she knew of, and nothing more interesting – or more dark – had happened since.

So she took her rare spare time over the next few days and devoted it to research. Google is your friend, she thought, and used that for some background though little on the topic had made it far enough up the google search engine to give much joy. So she resiled to more old-fashioned methods and went to the local library to look up old newspapers- now luckily digitally restored and available rather than on microfiche.

And as she researched she started to realise that the story of the Hanged Girl was more complex than she realised.

The girl in question was named Carlotta Manors, and she lived with her uncle from her father’s side, Jeffrey Manors, after her parents died in a rather horrendous train accident in Sydney. She became remarkable in death, because nothing about her apart from the tragic loss of her parents – a multiple death tragedy that affected many other families and lives at the time – distinguished her in any way that might have been deemed newsworthy.

But prior to her mysterious and unsolved death and the disappearance of her uncle, there was a scandal close to her of another kind. It seemed that Jeffrey was a financial advisor of some sort and that he had either ineptly lost, or possibly swindled, many townsfolk out of their life-savings with flawed – or bogus – investments. Which it was – incompetence or malevolence, was not clear. But the result was. And for a brief period the police considered that perhaps Carlotta was not the only murder victim, but one of two, and that somewhere they might find the uncle’s body also.

It seemed the theory of the time was that some aggrieved customers of his less than successful advice might have banded together like vigilantes of a sort and taken to retribution based murder. But his body was never found, and no connections could be made to anyone conclusively in relation to the Hanged Girl’s death, and over time the urban legend overtook the actual investigation and the ghost story was born.

Retribution, Susan thought to herself, an interesting motive.

She closed the window on the library computer with this information and opened another for Google, following a hunch. What was the card before the Hanged Man in the pack?

And then she saw the answer and something in her journalist soul truly woke up, purred and stretched. She was sure, she was sure, there was something here.

The card before The Hanged Man is Justice. Justice is rough perhaps, it can be retribution. There’s a deeper mystery here, and a body of a man buried somewhere also, I have no doubt, she thought, but if so, what could it possibly mean?

And Justice is the 11th card in the tarot pack, she continued, fevered, so how far back might this actually go? Could the theory ever, ever possibly hold?

(c) Helen M Valentina 2015, All Rights Reserved

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The Flavour of Spite – Ten

Posted on February 19, 2015 by Helen
Image credit: udra11

Image credit: udra11

The yellow brick road is too bright too bright. The sky has a strange, doubled yellow glow, hurting the eyes. The rainbow is there, like she thought she heard someone say, and that’s calmer to look at. If she could reach that, just get over that, she could rest her eyes.

She could rest.

She found she could fly. It seemed something horrible propelled her. A sense of electricity biting at her from within, waking her wings, an angel of despair, lifting from the ground, a sense of blood flowing from her, making her lighter, brighter but more terrified still.

Just get over the rainbow, somewhere over the rainbow. Someone was singing that, she thought, like in an old movie.

She’s over the rainbow now, she’s somewhere else. It’s like a doctor’s visiting rooms, but everything is odd here, just askew. The clock on the wall doesn’t have the right numbers, and all the furniture looks like it’s made of clouds rather than wood and fabric, like you might sink through it all if you weren’t careful. She thinks for a moment she’s somehow stumbled into a real life Dr Seuss story and any moment she will see strange blue men or cats in hats wandering past. So she was careful, and sat very still, but it was hard because her fingers and toes were tingling unpleasantly, and every once in a while a part of her body felt like it exploded, sheer pain then it settled.

Just stay very still, she told herself, and don’t fall through. Don’t fall through. You don’t know how far up you are, how far up in the sky.

This must be a dream, it’s just like a dream. Or a nightmare. But she wasn’t sure. She didn’t really trust the difference between reality and dreams here. She thought they might just be the same thing.

And perhaps this was real, and it was all a problem with her.

The doctor is there and he’s tapping on her head, at her forehead, telling her she is very ill there.

‘Your thoughts are scrambled eggs,’ he says, or at least she thinks that is what he says.

She is finding it hard to look at him. His face is wavering before her and sometimes it was frighteningly too familiar, too recognisable, and it reminds her of fear, so at other times she tries not to see him properly and his own strange ephemeral nature seems to help with that. He is dressed all in green, and he says ‘Call me Dr Green’ and then he laughs like it is a private joke she can’t understand.

‘You’re very sick here too,’ he says, poking at her chest near her heart, ‘And here you are disorder and chaos’ he continues, pressing her between her legs at the top of her pubic bone.

‘You must be brave,’ he continues, ‘We shall rectify you but there will be trials. You will be tested.’

And suddenly she’s not there anymore, she’s on what looks like a battlefield. The sky is a combination of black, blood-red and purple. It’s completely unnatural, but natural here, like the sky reflects the ground as a mirror. There are bodies strewn before her,the fallen in battle. She’s in armour, but it’s heavy and it’s failing, and somewhere along her arms she feels great pain and looks to see blood seeping from her chain mail and the steel. She is wounded, but cannot fathom why.

Then the man is behind her, holding her around the shoulders, whispering in her ear.

‘You must be a warrior, you must be brave. I will give you information, keys and triggers, and you will carry them with you, and they will help you refine, like a pearl within the oyster, till your quest is done. Here, here is the first. Whenever you see this, you will return to here, and this moment, and know the imminence of death. And in that knowledge you will be truly alive.’

He presses something in her hand and she opens her palm to see the gift of damnation. It is a brooch made of blue feathers and the petals of a blue rose.

‘Blue rose,’ he says, ‘The symbol of impossible love. That is your quest my beloved, and the only way home. The only way home.’

And then there is a blistering sensation of complete pain and terror and only blackness, blackness, into the screaming night.

(c) Helen M Valentina 2015, All Rights Reserved

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The Hanged Girl – Nine

Posted on February 16, 2015 by Helen
Image credit: Nic Neish

Image credit: Nic Neish

‘I can’t remember all the dream,’ Lisa told Susan over a mid-week lunch break, ‘Or nightmare, because I think it was that. So strange. I think it was a nightmare but I also think most of the bad parts I’ve blocked out.’

‘Apart from the hanged girl,’ Susan commented dryly, lifting her café latte to her lips and blowing softly as though she thought it would be too hot and scald her tongue.

‘Yes, though even that, I get the sense there was something worse about that than just what my fevered mind could imagine it was like, but I can’t quite get to it . Just like when a word is on the tip of your tongue. It’s exasperating.’

‘But most of the dream, or nightmare, was weird stuff about our neighbour,’ Susan countered, smiling slightly, ‘And I get the sense that wasn’t entirely unwelcome?’

Lisa blushed slightly, feeling like a teenage girl. And for a second that awkwardness reminded her of her concerns in that regard about Mandy.

‘He is…charming,’ she conceded, and looked away from her friend’s keen gaze for a moment, remembering exactly how charming. At the end of their dinner he’d ushered Lisa and Mandy to the door and as she turned to go he’d taken her hand for a brief moment and lightly squeezed it, saying he hoped to see her again soon. It had been a very intimate, personal moment, and not lost on her daughter who Lisa was sure brooded more than usual in the following days in the wake of what seemed like his choice. His active choice. Though of course that was absurd. She was a teenager, a and Lisa shouldn’t even need to think like that at all.

‘But I’m a bit concerned he’s too charming,’ she continued, deciding to voice this corrosive internal reverie. She looked out the window to the throng of people on their lunch break passing by. ‘I think Mandy may have a crush.’

‘Ah!’ said Susan, ‘Hence perhaps the anxiety that brought about the nightmare! Teenage crushes are so intense. I remember all that, if dimly!’

The pair of women laughed for a moment at the thought that their teenage years were but a distant memory.

‘I think there was part of the dream where we were all together and that sense of Mandy being drawn in was part of it,’ Lisa agreed, ‘Though something did happen in the middle of that too which I can’t really remember. Just fragments. Something about a tree, which led to the Hanged Girl. Then..I don’t know. I just get the feeling I saw horrible things and in between there were the scenes I remember..Damien and the tarot cards.’

‘Well, the Hanged Girl motif would trigger that association I would think. And you said that card came up and also Death?’

‘I think it was Death, and that related to other things I can’t remember either that followed it. I guess that makes sense. Death is not a happy thing.’

‘In the tarot it’s about change and choice I think,’ Susan commented, ‘I’m sure a friend of mine who dabbled in all that told me something like that once when she did a reading for me and the card came up. I was quite alarmed to see it at first.’

‘Yes, I had a reading once. All I remember is that the woman who did it was wrong about anything that mattered.’ Lisa’s voice had the gentle bitterness of the dying embers of autumn, just before the descent into bleak winter. The reader had given hope just when it was most needed, but it was false hope, so all the more devastating when it failed.

‘Psychics usually are!’ Susan laughed, ‘They and weather forecasters – the other people who keep getting paid for getting it wrong all the time. I guess maybe that’s true of anything requiring prediction. I find that comforting though. I’d prefer we couldn’t predict things really. If we can I wonder if we really have choice in anything, or if that is just an illusion.’

‘How so?’

‘Well, all the little things that go up to make things happen, the little choices that narrow the later bigger choices, you see what I mean? If anything is able to be predicted, if it’s pre-destined, then it follows pretty much everything else is. Otherwise it might not happen. So if that’s the case there’s no choice, and if there’s no choice there’s no good or evil and what does that do to morality?’

‘I can see your point. Well, it would be comforting if that were the case given the dark feeling around the cards in the dream.’

‘It’s interesting, though, what you said he said it the dream. That death follows a sacrifice, because it makes me wonder what card follows what in the pack. From what my friend told me the Major Arcana – which are the cards like Death and so forth, follow the story of the soul’s journey to enlightenment. Hang on, let’s check!’

And with that, carried away on an emergent theory, Susan pulled her phone out of her bag and starting tapping the keys, searching Google. Susan loved theories, she loved to ferret into the world and see its hidden connections and meanings. She loved a mystery, but loved even more how it was unravelled and resolved. It was probably why she’d chosen her vocation and a few moments later her journalistic instincts bore fruit and she shook her head and laughed.

‘Well, that’s interesting!’ she said, ‘Death as a card follows the Hanged Man in the pack! Are you sure you only ever had one reading? That’s remarkably accurate of your dreaming mind!”

Lisa shook her head. ‘Only one reading, though I might have read something about this at some stage I suppose, and forgotten about I, just to have it emerge in dreams. I’ve always read a lot, and I did go through a stage of reading new age type self-help books. After the first days of the divorce…’

Her voice trailed off and Susan instinctively reached out and clasped her hand, re-assuring. For a brief second it revived a sense memory of Damien a few nights earlier, as she was leaving, and the feeling was a bit overwhelming. Lisa found equilibrium by letting her friend help in this way, but not looking at her, determinedly looking back out the window as though the streets held the key to some greater mystery.

But there were only other people out there, living their other lives, in their other worlds. No answers to great mysteries were in sight.

(c) Helen M Valentina 2015, All Rights Reserved

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The Flavour of Spite – Nine

Posted on February 12, 2015 by Helen

 

Image credit: Zoltan Major

Image credit: Zoltan Major

I placed the electrodes on either side of her perfectly skinned temples. I could see she was starting to realise what I mean by the journey, though she could not know it all yet, not really. Perhaps she has seen pathetic horror movies where electric shock therapy wakens monsters. I will not wake the monster, but the true flower within, my Violet. If she thinks this is the journey, she knows nothing.

There was so much I could teach her, so much she can be shown. I was almost dizzy with the anticipation and promise of the moment.

She still tried to bargain with me, to cajole. I could hear the fear in her voice and I ignored her, just as Imogen ignored me. She was right to do so, as am I. We were about to embark on a journey that cannot be denied, and no deviation could be tolerated. The process is precise, demanding and total. To flinch early and show some empathy or mercy was in fact its exact opposite. The only true mercy was in firm resolution, holding to the path.

There are dangers indeed in disturbing the process. She is a child, innocent to what is required, and as a child she must be led, firm despite her protestations and fears. Otherwise she might go mad with this. She might even die.

I think I came close to death once, in the early days. In the midst of the dissociation I felt my own heart beating in my chest, too fast and too fluttery to be normal. It was like some other, alien thing in there, its rhythms insistent and crying out some message. Dimly I realised that it beats, every day, every hour, every minute, in so steady a pattern that I do not notice it at all. It is like a low-grade hum from traffic you hear at night from your bedroom window, so repetitive and ubiquitous you quickly cease to hear it at all. Hearts are like that, and when they wake to fear, they are something else entirely.

But Imogen showed no mercy. She was steel. And she was right. My heart eventually ceased its demands and settled, a chastened child within the child, yielding to the wiser, stronger force.

I did not die that day, and neither would Violet now.

I placed clamps on her hands and feet. They are designed to almost pierce the skin, eliciting pain and discipline, should she struggle too hard as the electricity stalks through her. They must ground through pain but also release. The precision of the art is impeccable. It’s been refined and designed for so many years, first brought into perfect realisation by Dr Green all those years ago. I like to flatter myself, however, that I have perfected it even more. Building on Imogen’s teachings and my own experience, I think I can fast track my beloved’s journey, and if it is no less terrifying, it may be briefer and more complete.

I had years of these sessions with Imogen, from when I first met her to only a few years ago. I was refined over time like steel under the fire. It went on too long and bred hate. I must be quicker and more efficient to breed love.

I tuned the machine controls to relay the first electric shock. I watched as my dear Violet convulsed, her dear cries dampened by the cloth I had put in her mouth to stop her biting or swallowing her tongue. Her eyes widened incredibly and tears streamed from the corners. She looked at me in complete, disoriented horror, and I began to speak, and as I spoke, she obeyed.

A perfect princess, preparing herself for the ball.

‘Close your eyes, it’s better if you close your eyes. Feel the energy as pain, but as more than that. It’s a road, a road. Do you see the road? The yellow brick road? Follow the yellow brick road. Follow. And do you see the rainbow, the lovely rainbow overhead?’

Her restrained head nodded slightly. She saw the images! How quickly she responded! She was a natural!

Or was she tricking me, trying to make it cease by pretending to see, pretending to journey? Well, it would make it no quicker. There was no quicker way for a session, only the hope of the need for less of them to meet rebirth. If she was beguiling it would soon flee before the tidal wave of terror and pain and the need to disconnect to cope, to survive, this onslaught being so much more than humankind could normally bear.

‘Go over the rainbow,’ I intoned, ‘Go to a wonderful place, a safe place, and meet me there dear Violet. I have so much to show you, so much for you to see!’

(c) Helen M Valentina 2015, All Rights Reserved

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The Hanged Girl – Eight

Posted on February 9, 2015 by Helen

 

Image credit: djgis

Image credit: djgis

‘We have another artist in our midst!’

The voice was sneering, not complimentary, and Mandy knew the voice. It was a voice she had quickly learned to dread, coming from a person she did her level best to avoid as much as possible.

But school is a prison yard, and the other students your fellow prisoners. There are so few places to run, so few places to hide and so many communal areas with collective rituals and expectations. You cannot avoid your classmates forever.

Mandy had tried, unsuccessfully, to do so by retreating in the lunch break to the art studio at the back-end of the main school building. It was near the gym, which was always crowded, but which brought painful memories to anyone as uncoordinated and un-sporty as she. A couple of days before she’d been deliberately slammed against its dull ochre walls by a friend of the ‘voice’ and probably at her instruction. She still felt the bruises along her hip and at her elbow, bright purple painful memories of her social isolation and fear.

The art room was like the gym’s polar opposite, a place of refuge and quiet. Where it was yellow and loud, the art room was blue and silent for the most part, the only sound the sussuration of artists at work. Sometimes she found there were other students there, but they were mainly obsessed artist types who wanted to spend every free moment creating, and they left her in peace.

But today there was no such reprieve. What she hadn’t known – couldn’t have known because she wasn’t in any inner circle for any ‘it’ crowd – was that Jasmine’s current crush of the moment was one of the artist types – a lanky, rather pretty blonde boy called David. Jasmine was intent on snaring him so she could be the muse for in his sculpting endeavours.

There was no predicting Jasmine’s crushes apparently. They came and went like the wind, bestowing on the chosen one some moment of brief school celebrity, and even after she moved on they had been elevated through some mysterious magic to a higher social echelon. So few questioned whether they actually returned the crush. Schoolyards make politicians of us all in brief time.

She hadn’t seen Jasmine come in a sidle up to her latest quarry. He’d heard soft murmurings but hadn’t recognised the voice at so low a tone. And she’d felt quite comfortable in the artist’s company. David was friendly but a bit withdrawn, and he’d read some of her poetry and appreciated it.

Today she was drawing pictures. She wasn’t even sure where the imagery arose from, she just let I flow out of her, as all her best creativity did. They were pictures of trees mainly, but also of a man without a face. But inside, deep in her young heart, she saw the face of the man. She knew who it was. She just didn’t dare to draw in the features lest her brazen openness stole away any hope..any hope…

Hope of another sort fled from her the instant she heard the voice, and she was not quick enough to stop Jasmine grabbing her notebook and waving the drawings behind her for David to see.

‘Trees’ she laughed, ‘Well, being a witch and living near that tree, it figures!’

David laughed uneasily. Mandy could tell he didn’t really want to join in her harassment, but finer questions hung in the balance. Even the quiet arty types yearned for some social recognition. Everyone needs to fit in. Everyone.

Though Mandy felt she would never fit in, no here, not with them. And this obsession with the death at No 6 Mercy Lane was like a millstone round her neck.

So why did I draw trees, of all things, she castigated herself. It was like offering herself up for the slaughter.

Just like the girl, she thought and then didn’t understand the thought at all. Then another thought, it has something to do with a dream I had last night, but what was the dream?

She couldn’t remember anything, anything except trees.

‘I think you’re a better witch than an artist though’ Jasmine spat dismissively, throwing the book down on the table before Mandy. ‘But why don’t you show some finer feeling, like a good little artist, and get lost so David and I can have some quality time alone?’

Mandy looked up into the pinched, vicious face above her and felt a wave of complete rage wash over her. Jasmine didn’t look at all pretty. She seemed like a small, vicious rat. Why was she popular? Why was she adored? There seemed nothing of merit about her at all.

It was her expression, her expression on her horrid little face. In repose she might be pretty. She might look good as a corpse.

But Mandy said nothing, and held her anger in check. She rose and fled, looking only for a moment at David who shot her a brief, apologetic glance, followed equally quickly by a look of slight fear towards Jasmine in case she had seen his little kindness. But as Mandy reached the door and looked back one more time she saw that Jasmine had not, for she was grinning broadly at David, moving towards him, her hips swinging slowly, undulating like a snake.

(c) Helen M Valentina 2015, All Rights Reserved

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Flavour of Spite – Eight

Posted on February 5, 2015 by Helen
Image credit: aradaphotography

Image credit: aradaphotography

Violet was frightened it seemed, and that was not my intention. I had wanted our first real encounter, in her new home, to be one of explanation, but slowly growing appreciation, even the first brief buds of joy. I had wanted her to understand, but then perhaps I was racing ahead of myself and expecting too much. While in time I had come to value the wisdom of Aunt Imogen’s techniques and aims – nevertheless never able to connect with the old cow as her capacity for love is so much smaller than my own – it did take time to understand fully what a gift she gave me in her cruelty and her grace.

The thing is, there are those of us in the cavalcade of humanity that are born for so much more: for a mastery, a knowledge, an illumination that baser humankind cannot be expected to appreciate or achieve. It is just in the natural order of things. Just as the lion is king in the forest, those of us marked for this ascension can no more elevate the lesser than the lion can truly lay down with the lamb. The thought it could happen is absurd, a fairy tale to appease the jealous dreams of smaller mortals.

And how could they endure, in any case, the violent, rhapsodic terrors and agonies of enlightenment? Their vessels and their souls are too weak. They would break, rather than rise, through the process.

In this Aunt Imogen was completely right. The blood is strong. The flavour of the elite is for finer sensibilities, a refined palate. It cannot be replicated or appreciated by those beneath. Off cuts will never be as flavoursome, tender or sweet as the finest steak.

Violet is one of us, I am sure. Her pedigree is revealed by her works. She could not cook with the artistry she does without that sensibility and that lineage. I do not know her background, but she will eventually reveal this to me, and I am certain I will find deeper connections in our bloodlines that verify the accuracy and perfection of my choice. For the moment though she is a wonderful mystery to be discovered.

But she is afraid. I perhaps should not be surprised, though I will admit to a small measure of disappointment.

Her first response when I came in to see her this morning was to be angry, to demand to know where she was, and what was happening.

‘You are home dear Violet, I have brought you home.’

‘My name isn’t Violet you have the wrong person! My name is..’

‘Violet,’ I repeated, firm, and she sensed not to argue the point. Instead she tried bargaining.

‘I’m not who you think I am, really, you can call me Violet if you like, if you need, but I’m not her. You want her, right? Maybe I look like her? But I’m not, so it won’t work So let me go, I promise I won’t tell anyone. I understand, you just want your Violet.’

‘You are Violet,’ I repeated, ‘In time you will come to know that as I do. Here, in this room of love you will be reborn and you will be her. For there isn’t any other Violet. There is only you.’

I knelt beside her and attended to her ties and bindings. I could see bruising and red rashes from the ropes and I shook my head, apologising to her wordlessly.

‘When you know you are Violet, I can loosen these, even untie them altogether,’ I said, ‘Your first reward for embracing your rebirth.’

The thought of it almost made me giddy. I raced ahead to where her programming had taken, to that point when I wouldn’t even need to lock the door, when escape would be the farthest thing from her mind. When she was mine and I was hers, and all was perfect: cooking in our kitchen, enjoying the deeper, richer flavours of life, as one. But that was a long way off, and I shook myself from the reverie to attend to the needs of the moment.

‘I can be her, yes,’ she said, bargaining again, and I knew the lie in her eyes. Her conditioning had not yet commenced. She could no truly know, not yet. She would need to be shown.

‘Yes, you can, and you will,’ agreed, amiable. I smiled at her, feeling a depth of emotion that was unfamiliar to me. Something I had never felt with Imogen. There would have been no moment in this room where Imogen looked at me with the complete love and faith with which I now regarded dear Violet.

‘I can help you,” I continued, ‘And the path may be difficult but I will be here with you, every step of the way.’

I took her hand and gripped it, pressing deep to reassure, noting the sweat of fear on her delicate skin.

‘I’ve walked this path myself, this terrible, glorious path. It is difficult but it is so, so rewarding. You must be worthy for it, dear Violet, and you are.’

Her lovely eyes stared back at me, half in dread and half in hope. I could see her calculating. Could I speak this way of pain, or torture or would that be impossible? Was she safe from that? Was she safe, in some sense, with me?

I recalled for a moment feeling similarly as a child with Aunt Imogen, in this very bed, in a moment of wonder and fear just like this. I did empathise with her, I did know. I’d been here. And I’d survived and thrived as she would.

She was safe, but not in the way she might think. She was as safe as I had been with Aunt Imogen. No, she was safer, for I would walk the road with her with love. We would travel as far as she could go, each time, and no further. We had all the time in the world, after all.

‘Let us begin.’

(c) Helen M Valentina 2015, All Rights Reserved

Posted in Serial Horror Stories, The Flavour of Spite | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment