TWENTY-TWO
The man who had once been Harrold Carrick looked down at the crumpled body of the dead policeman at his feet and felt something he hadn’t felt since returning back from the oblivion of death. Weak. It was as if his new found power was draining from him as fast as the blood was fleeing from the prone officer. And what was worse still, he could feel those perfect wounds on his back fading in solidarity also.
“No,” he gasped and reached around to his back as best he could. He let out a cry of anguish as the once deep wounds were now no more than the faintest of scars. He could feel the rain beginning to finally soak him through and realised that he was no longer giving off that wonderful hissing sound. Yes his power was fading moment by moment along with his strength.
He was becoming normal again and it sickened him. He’d had such grand thoughts of the carnage he would reap on the world now he was immortal.
Carrick frantically looked around for the architect of this new found frailty and there it was coming around the side of the building. “You.” He threw an accusatory finger in the direction of the treacherous woman as she cleared the structure and began a slow methodical walk over to where he was standing.
Although she was just a young frail looking woman with nothing about her of that terrible power she had unleashed at the docks, what seemed like a lifetime ago now, Carrick found himself backing away from her. His head was suddenly filled with images of fire, nerve searing pain and that horrific all-enveloping darkness that had accompanied her assault.
With great effort he managed to stop his retreat and forced himself to stand his ground. After all he had survived her attack once before. Indeed it had left him more powerful than he could ever have imagined, not to mention turning him into the living breathing work of art he had always so longed to be. The thought of the loss of his beloved wings nearly made him sob.
Besides, looking at her now, he thought she was nothing but a grey sketch of that creature from the docks. “I’m not afraid of you,” he said, but still grasped the screwdriver in his hand a little tighter.
The woman stopped when she reached the dead policeman. She glanced down at the body in the mud and winced. “I’m sorry,” she said, her voice barely audible above the storm. But she wasn’t addressing the dead man.
“It’s not your fault, Mary.” The voice came from over Carrick’s shoulder and he wheeled around to see a man in his mid-fifties dressed in a sodden suit come walking out of the woods closely followed by a woman wearing a chef’s uniform who was perhaps thirty. Carrick had a strange flash of déjà vu. He knew these two from somewhere way off in the past like characters from a childhood dream.
“You are a bad man, Harrold Carrick,” said a child from behind Carrick.
He turned again. Another familiar face from way off when. A young girl in a bobble hat and thick over coat was standing scowling at him as only a child can from next to the body. She slipped a mittened hand into the young woman’s who looked down at her and smiled affectionately.
“Hey you,” Carrick thought he heard the young woman say to the girl.
“You should have waited for all of us, Mary,” This came from a man in his early thirties, who appeared from behind the boatshed with another two figures, both woman all three were dressed differently, in strangely normal every day clothes which was odd to Carrick since they surely could be anything but that.
“I know,” Mary relented. “It was just he was there, right in front of me. All those memories of what he did, what he did to all of us, I just couldn’t help myself.” She shook her head at her own stupidity.
“It’s okay,” The girl next to her said.
“I’m not so sure,” Mary said. “What if we were wrong, what if he can’t be stopped.”
Carrick watched the discourse in disbelief. Now he recognised them. “You, you’re my angels,” he said in awe.
“You are a sick fuck, Carrick. You know that?” It was another man who came out of the darkness beyond which the sea could be heard crashing violently against the rocks close by. He nodded to the young girl. “Sorry Amy.”
Amy shrugged at the language, it wasn’t the worst thing that had happened to her in her all too short a life.
“Thought we’d lost you Derek,” the chef said.
The man smiled and gave a rueful shake of the head. “Sometimes even angels lose their way,” he replied.
The eight moved slowly to encircle Harrold Carrick. He turned from one to the other in turn his mind reeling. They stopped when they had him completely surrounded each standing a good twenty feet from him, but despite his disorientation, he didn’t feel fear now. If anything he felt pride, he and he alone had created these walking works of art.
The only thing he couldn’t understand was why they had returned. He had given them, quite selflessly, the means to ascend from this mortal coil to the heavens, but for some reason they had come back. And he knew it was not to thank him. Then he got a flash of the power the woman had given him, but more importantly the wings.
“Have you any idea the gift I gave each of you?” Carrick said. “I took you from this ordinary mundane world, from your grey banal lives and made you into works of pure art.” He turned to each in turn as he spoke. “You’re walking talking masterpieces. That is because of me!”
He suddenly came to a sickening realisation. They didn’t deserve such a gift. They couldn’t understand the significance of what he had given them. Only he was truly worthy of it and in that the irony hit him. Only he could create this wonder, but he himself would never be able to wear it. And with that he mourned those fleeting minutes he had felt such power and so proudly worn those wonderful wounds.
Was that why she had attacked him? To give him a glimpse of the one thing he could never be? “You should be thanking me!” He screamed. He jabbed the screwdriver at them to punctuate each word. His knees gave way and he fell weakly into the mud.
Rachel, Suzy and Pete watched all this from the office window. It had all the makings of a surreal execution scene but one that was taking its sweet time to conclude. None of the three spoke they just watched, huddled together at the window. The radio was somehow picking up fragments of what was being said outside so they felt like eavesdropper’s into another world just on the edge of reality, which in a way they were. It was a scene they were not meant to have been touched by, one that should have been played out without the knowledge of the waking world. But for whatever reason they were spectators at the end of a nightmare they could barely comprehend.
In a helicopter no more than two miles away, Pearce and Bell clung to each other. Their gateway to this final scene came purely through their radio. Names so familiar to them through the years plucked from the ether somehow. Each felt like a physical blow as they listened making a nonsense of the belief this was all just some sick hoax.
Mary Cardille, victim number one then another Derek, who could only be Derek Moore, victim number six. Then the one voice that had brought both detectives to tears. Little Amy Peebles, she sounded so alive, so full of mischief. Not the pathetic crumbled bundle that had been found in a ditch in Salford. It was all impossible of course, this bizarre radio play from literally beyond the grave, but they heard it play out all the same.