TWENTY-THREE
“This isn’t right!” Carrick exclaimed and made his free hand into a fist and slammed it repeatedly into the mud. Steeling himself he looked up at one of the eight, one of the women, the chef, with murderous intent and she flinched. Yes! He saw that old familiar look flash in her eyes and it made him grin. Despite his current situation he still had the power to inflict fear in her. Even though she was just some lost remnant of the woman she had once been she still recognised him for what he was and what he had done to her. And Harrold Carrick wondered if he could kill her twice.
“Becky, he can’t hurt you anymore,” Mary said but there was no conviction in her voice which gave her killer yet more hope.
Carrick got to his feet, he was still weak but would be damned if he would show it, especially to her. “You couldn’t stop me before. What makes you think you can stop me now?” He got a perverse sense of satisfaction seeing Mary move to speak but then she shook her head. “A little lost soul, lost for words.” He added with delight.
Again he looked at each one in turn. He could see little signs of nagging doubt in each of their sallow dead faces. They were as much as at a loss as to why he was still alive as he was. Whatever grand revenge fantasy they had concocted together from whatever limbo they had been drifting in was falling apart second by second.
Perhaps it was the power he had taken from the first attack, perhaps they were indeed fearful of what would happen if they were to assault him in unison. Yes, they were glancing amongst themselves now, each looking for a leader in the one next to them but turning away finding none.
“It, It wasn’t supposed to be this way...” The man in the suit said.
“How was it supposed to be?” Carrick asked and none of them replied. It seemed impossible to him but the power had shifted to his favour. He was the one common denominator here. The one catalyst that had ended all of their meaningless lives. The woman, Mary hadn’t feared him at the docks, she had hated him and that had been the spark that had ignited the onslaught.
Now he suddenly despised them all, they had obviously been expecting something miraculous to happen once they were all together. For some divine intervention to send their tormentor kicking and screaming to hell. Instead? Nothing but indecision.
They were looking to Mary now for inspiration as she at least had been able to harness the rage and pain she had felt into an attack. But even she didn’t know how it had started. Then of course there was the fact that the attack had in the end an unexpected side effect, it had infused him with such power, fleeting perhaps, but enough for him to realise his heart’s desire. Carrick inadvertently let his free hand move to his back. He winced the wounds had now completely gone. If he was honest he didn’t miss the power so much as the exquisite scarring she had transferred to him.
He lamented that lost as he imagined they mourned their pitiful lives. Christ how he hated them. “You have no idea how special you are!” He said in disgust, the venom in his voice surprising even himself. “Such beauty...” He choked with genuine emotion. “You ungrateful bastards! I made you magnificent, unique. Christ, you should have been skinned and exhibited in the Tate modern. I’m an artist, a creator. And what do you care about? Your worthless insignificant lives.” Carrick spat on the floor.
“You murdered us!” The one called Derek said and his eyes flashed with anger.
“Huh, a side effect, you were nothing but canvas’.” Carrick told him.
Instantly Carrick regretted the remark, there was an instantaneous shift in the mood around him like the flicking of a switch. The air between him and the dead began to crackle with electricity. Carrick spun around at the sound of childish laughter. The child Amy was looking at her gloved hands and her arms. They were beginning to steam ever so slightly as the rain hit them.
“You forget one thing, Carrick,” Mary said from next to Amy, the girl’s hair was now beginning to steam through her hat. “You left us with so much more than those hideous mutilations.”
Mutilations? “You bitch,” Carrick spat, that was bordering on sacrilege to him.
“Rage,” she continued and Carrick could see that look in her eye from the docks. “Growing rage at the years you have stolen from us. Building up. How could we let go? How could we move on when we are filled with such pain?”
“Rage that needs to go somewhere Carrick,” one of the other women said. She too was beginning to fair glow with a pulsing power.
It was like some unseen electrical spark was passing from one of the eight to the other. Each in turn began to emanate such terrible power that Carrick felt it pressing hard against his chest like a physical pressure. His head began to pound and he felt fear growing in his guts with each pulsating beat.
This was the horrific power he had first felt at the docks, moments before Mary had unleashed her attack on him. But magnified eight fold. He tried to bite back a sob of terror but it came out all the same. And it took all his dwindling will power not to fall to his knees in fright.
The all too familiar sound of hissing followed as the rain vaporized feet above them all. The steam enveloped the group and came in waves at Carrick from all sides until the figures around him were just radiant points of light, ready to go supernova at any moment. He felt the sweat on his already tender skin evaporate off the flesh as the temperature rose and every fitful breath he took felt like breathing fire.
Rachel Patton watched from the relative safety of the office window in quiet disbelief as one by one the eight became incandescent light. She placed her palm on the Perspex glass and immediately pulled it away as it was warm to the touch. She remembered that terrible power that had erupted from Mary and what it had done to the surrounding area at the docks. She had been little more than an observer then, a witness to the awesome destructive power of rage and as such had been immune to the full force.
But this was the real world, or as real as such a fantastical situation could be. Mary had been alone at the docks, now she had seven others to go nuclear with her.
The three all had to shield their eyes as the light became impossibly bright. “What the hell is happening?” She heard Pete utter from next to her.
“Get down!” She shouted and pulled Suzy and Pete away from the window and down on to the floor with her. She didn’t know if it would do any good but there was no were else to go. They pulled each other close for protection and comfort and waited for the detonation as light brighter than any day streamed through the window above.
“Bollocks,” Pete said somewhat obliquely. “They’d just finished that bloody boathouse as well.”
Rachel couldn’t help but laugh at the insanity of it all.
Harrold Carrick hit the ground before he realised he was even falling. It was bone dry like it had been through a thousand years of drought. He couldn’t see anything as the blinding light had quite literally burnt through his over loaded retinas. He screamed blindly but the roar of energy around him stole the sound even before it had left his cracked lips. It was like standing in front of eight jet engines going full blast.
So much rage he thought and all for me, a narcissist to the very end.
The pain, which was all encompassing, began to intensify on his back now and Carrick’s addled brain vaguely registered what this meant. Yes, despite the excruciating pain, he could feel the wings burning deep into his back once more. Again his sociopathic ego couldn’t accept this was an execution, far from it they were granting him the ultimate gift. Perhaps, his dwindling synapses mused, they were worthy after all.
The eight around him sensed this supposition as their collective wrath reached its cataclysmic crescendo. He was wrong, that hideous scarring their mortal body’s had been subjected to would never be his. It was just the beginning of his end, the focal point of their fury. The fact he thought it was a reprieve made his end all the sweeter.
They would be at peace now that much was clear to their fading united consciousness. He would not.
“No more angels for you Harrold Carrick.” Eight voices told him and it was the last thing he ever heard.