Admitted
Sitting in an open psychiatric centre, I stare at the television screen and listen to the muffled TV, ignoring the rowdy nutters surrounding me.
”It is a year ago today that Surrey witnessed a big ordeal. It was frightening to the local population as there was a murderer targeting blonde women.” The reporter said.
“But, it is two years ago today that well-established author, Ryan Milligan was arrested for the secret imprisonment of his ex-wife Tanya Milligan. She was kept locked in the basement below his house on Mulberry Lane in Surrey.” The reporter is catching my attention and I listen closer to the television.
“Ryan Milligan was captured and shot in his arrest. But today we have found out some big news about this story. Here today is Detective Sam Cann, the main investigator on this case. Welcome Sam.”
The camera flicks to Sam and back to the reporter.
“Today you and your team have been able to identify the bodies of the victims in the basement with Tanya Milligan is this correct?”
“Yes it is.”
“Right, so there are media reports suggesting that the two children weren’t actually Ryan and Tanya Milligan’s children.”
I sprint over to the television. Did they just say the two dead children were not mine?
The camera goes onto Sam’s face.
”We did not feel it was right for anyone to publicly release this information, but yes, we did tests on the three bodies in the basement and the two children were not Sammy and Alex Milligan. They were two other children who have been missing for a while and their parents have been informed. The other male body cannot be identified at the moment. We were unable to get any dental records because the body had no teeth.”
I stare at the television screen in disbelief. Tanya lied to me, she said I killed Sammy and Alex but I didn’t. They must be still alive.
I walk across the room and knock on the window to get a nurse in here.
“Oi Oi help.” I shout.
“Sit down Mr Milligan.” I hear a female voice say from behind the window.
“No please, I need to talk to someone. I’m innocent.” I say but there is no response. I pick up a chair and smash it against the glass. The double-chinned and beady eyed woman turns to me, astonished. Her chin wobbles as she’s eating.
“I’m innocent, I didn’t kill anybody; I’m being set up!” I yell.
The door to my left slams open and two bald, stocky men in white robes come in.
“I’ve been set up. I’ve been set up, help me.” I say as the two men grab me and force me up to the wall.
They then pull me out of the room and march me through the corridors.
“I’m fucking innocent, I didn’t kill my kids. I didn’t do it! They’re alive.” I shout.
They launch me into my room, I slide to the floor and I get straight back up. As I run towards them, one of the men punches me in the stomach, knocking me to the floor.
I move myself onto my back and look up at the man who punched me. He kneels down next to me and whispers: “You may not have killed your own kids but you killed someone else’s you sick fuck.”
He slaps me across my face and leaves me alone in the room.
I stand up and go over to my bed. I think back to two years ago when all the suspicious goings on happened on Mulberry Lane and what was written in the book by Liam Graynnil.
There was the writing around the house. I go over to my desk to get my pencil. I go back to my wall and write down all that was spelled out.
I write: ‘Beneath men sit’. I then write below it: ‘Beaten hints me’ and then I write: ‘Sin beaten them’. I write the sentences below each other like a shopping list.
If Liam Graynnil likes puzzles and mind games and the letters from his name makes up my name, then surely these random sentences must make up a word, they must mean something. I write down the letters used in each phrase, across my wall. That achieves nothing, I cannot see what it spells out, it could spell out anything, and even if I did spell it out, it could just be another word to mean something else for me to work out, so I move on.
I think about the foxes I kept seeing around, following me. The dead one in the shed, the one going into Shola’s house and then the one I found dead in his home. They don’t really have anything to do with it but Shola was the main man in this and he was killed. I don’t believe it was me, but then again it could have been Graynnil.
Killing for Your Love, the book itself, everything in there seemed real with Don and the morgue, with the murders, but the group with Mr S, who is Mr S?
I know that the group must be real, they came to Shola’s and burnt it down but who are they?
I go back to finding the documentation of Liam Graynnil and the extension plans. How did nobody know about the extension? Why didn’t Andrew Myers tell anybody? And if his body was in the freezer, then yes they have no dental records because he had no teeth but he didn’t decompose as much as the children so how could they not identify the body?
It hits me. Something is going on, something has happened with some people and they’ve set me up, maybe I’m not mad at all, what if I’m not?
I think of the body in the freezer, the over grown beard and hair, the severely beaten face and body and then the writing of ‘In the basement.’ My mind stops circulating. My thoughts pause.
“In the basement!” I shout out loud. “In the fucking basement!” I shout again. I look over to the sentences I wrote down and the letters next to them. I begin to write on the wall.
I write I and cross out the I on the letters I wrote, I then write N and cross out the N on the letters, I spell out ‘In the basement’ and when it’s spelled out I have no letters left, they are all crossed out.
“So that’s what those sentences meant.”
I stand back from the wall and stare at it.
There is no way I’ll ever to be able to prove that I am innocent, there’s footage from the fox cams of me in the woods and of me killing people. They got that evidence from Sandra’s bin. But in that footage, I did not once see my face, my lawyer pointed that out he said it was my clothing but I am never positively identified in the footage. Maybe I have been set up by the group that is after me, but who are they? And how am I going to prove this?
I lie down in my bed and close my eyes. The same as per usual, every time I close my eyes, Tanya and the kids come into view. It’s like a picture of the three of them that I am staring at.
I could never harm them.