When we got back, we decided that we couldn’t let the headmaster, Farage, get away, so we made a decision. We would take action and provoke a reaction from our headmaster. We pretended to be going to Scarlett and Eugenie’s place but instead stayed in the school. The plan was simple; we wrote an anonymous letter. In the letter, we told him that we knew he was Arnold and the Williams’s killer. We also added that we had evidence to prove it. We asked him to meet us, alone, by the yew tree at seven p.m. on Sunday.
The problem was getting to his office unnoticed and slipping the letter under his office door. We were thinking of bribing the caretaker so he would open the building door where the teachers’ offices were, but instead we found the door unlocked, and the caretaker was nowhere to be seen.
So we went up the stairs, and when we got to his office, we found him kissing one of the teachers. We were shocked because we knew that the headmaster’s wife was one of the art teachers at the school, and even better, I recognised the woman. It was my sister’s teacher, the very married and so-unloved-by-all-her-students Mrs Dujardin. We weren’t sure what to do, and seeing that the others hesitated, I took out my phone, snapped a few pictures, grabbed the note and, after adding a little message saying “My regards to Mrs Dujardin”, put it under the door, and we ran away.
Scarlett and Eugenie lived close to the school, which was why we had chosen their place as the base of the operation, so we went to their house to regroup. It was still a long walk, and we were exhausted when we arrived, but we did not have much choice. In case we had been seen dropping the letter, it was in our best interests to be outside the school when the letter was found.
I had a lot to say about the so-called Mrs Dujardin. Besides being an adulterer and otherwise known as the Wicked Witch of the West, for one thing, Amelia told me that she was a horrible woman and that all the students hated her. The icing on the cake came from William, who told us that she used to have four children, but they had all died mysteriously.
Apparently, she went on holiday one day and came back alone with four death certificates. The police had found it suspicious, and there had been an investigation launched against her and her husband, even though he had not been with his family when the tragedy occurred, but they could not prove anything, so she had never been prosecuted. However, lack of evidence did not mean innocence.
The police had discovered that the children had been poisoned, but they never could find the poison or a motive for the couple to have wanted the children dead.
Mrs Dujardin was not rich, nor was the headmaster, so what possible gain could she get by selling her children’s souls? It made no sense. We had already established that every single death at the school so far was for financial gain, except the last one. In that case, what were we missing?
It was getting a lot more bizarre, so I told Scarlett to go to Draycott Place for the weekend with Amelia and spend every second she had on Mahlam, the Yan equivalent of the internet. We needed to find out what was happening. She agreed and took Eugenie with her.
I told the boys to spend the weekend spying on Mrs Dujardin while I would be spying on Mr Farage, the headmaster. I forged my mother’s signature and used her card to rent a cottage in the village for us in order for our investigation to be smoother, and it was; both Mrs Dujardin and Mr Farage lived in the village with their families. I was proud of myself. Who could have thought that moving into the village would be so convenient for our investigation?
William wasn’t happy with the division of labour. We had decided to leave him in school because we thought that in the case of a fight, him being a Masani might put him in danger. He had not been through FIST long enough as far as I was concerned, but he refused.
Unfortunately, he was a caveman and considered his duty to be by my side in case I needed him. He insisted that he came with me, so I agreed. Actually, I was grateful, but I didn’t want to tell him that. The truth was that I knew it would be so much easier if I had support. The headmaster was a terrifying man, and I didn’t want to face him alone, but Yan women don’t show fear, and I was always so afraid to show weakness, even in front of my closest friends.
In the meantime, our rendezvous with the headmaster was three days away. I knew that secretly none of my friends wanted to have that meeting, except for Pam, who couldn’t wait to catch the headmaster, who she had dubbed “the pig”. The truth was, except for Hassan, I didn’t want to make the boys do something that they didn’t want to do.
Mr Farage, we were convinced, was a cold-hearted killer, and it seemed that he was not playing about. After serious consideration, I was about to call the whole thing off when I had a stroke of genius. I remembered that from the girls’ corridor that led to the bathroom, one could actually see the yew tree, so I asked Delphine to spy on the tree for me. She was to remain at her post for at least thirty minutes and take pictures of anyone who showed up, even if it looked like they were near the tree by accident. The idea was to reconvene with her on Monday to discuss the results. We had decided that until we knew exactly what the situation was, we would not communicate by phone in case they were being tapped.
The first part of the plan was to follow Mr Farage around Gateway Hill over the weekend, but he surprised us. He went from his house to J.C., but we lost him as soon as he entered the school. Not knowing when he was going to leave meant that we had to wait for him to show his nose. It was incredibly boring, draining and difficult. To start with, just to make sure we were not discovered, we hid behind the trees opposite the north entrance. Then we realised that we had made a big mistake: we were using our bicycles, but he was motorised.
It did not take too long for us to realise that the only time a car could be followed by a bicycle was in the movies. By the time we counted to ten, he was gone, and we had no way of knowing where he had gone. We tried our luck in the village, and fortunately, we found him at the pub. We were so hungry that we ordered food at the same pub. Thank goodness I had had the sense to bring money. While we were eating, he got up and left. All we could do was watch him drive off.
We were too tired, so we decided to finish our meals and then cycle back to the school to check if he was there, and we found his car parked in the school car park. We were exhausted and furious at our own stupidity. For the first time, our young age and lack of experience had put us at a serious disadvantage and demonstrated to us the reason why MI6 did not have fifteen-year-old agents.
What a fiasco! We had lost him so many times that he could have killed the queen herself and we wouldn’t have known anything about it. We went home tired, disappointed and definitely defeated by our enemy, and decided to keep our little misadventure to ourselves. We just told the others when we met them that he had gone to the pub and back, but omitted the other more embarrassing details.
The girls were back by Sunday, and this time they had discovered plenty. Scarlett confirmed what Hogan’s uncle had told his sister – that there seemed to be a secret society with the ability to buy souls – but unlike what Giovanni Barth Croise thought, they were not making deals with demons and the devil.
Mahlam referenced a very powerful and dark race from a parallel universe who were being served by certain humans. They had been given an artefact that they used to simulate the death of some chosen people by the unknown entities in order for their spirits to be used as slaves on Earth or in their own universe. The so-called dead were dug up from their graves three days after burial and awoken. The family members that had “sold” their loved ones were to make sure that the “dead” were buried and not cremated.
The humans serving them were part of a sect called the Famla. According to a book written by one former member of the Famla, the followers and practitioners of the Famla were divided into two groups. The ones who joined the sect for materialistic reasons, and the ones who sought supernatural powers.
The most frightening part of the sect activities was that human sacrifices were not strictly just meant to enrich and benefit people in this world. They also benefitted the people in the parallel world. The seekers of wealth or supernatural powers were asked to regularly offer human sacrifices. On the plus side, the sacrifice offerer had free range when it came to the method of killing. The Famla was an equal-opportunities killing-method group.
The most common method of killing used by the seekers of fortune was a poison that mimicked the appearance of death, only for the victim to be unburied and taken to work as a slave for the sect and its masters until the end of their natural life. Some people had testified that they had seen dead loved ones in other countries, only for the person to run away from them. They were apparently being put to work in factories, fields, even offices of businesses owned by members of the sect.
The seekers of supernatural powers, however, had a different way of handing over sacrifices. The sacrificed were offered to the entities alive, who in turn extracted their souls, which in turn would serve as slaves in the parallel world.
The aliens needed those souls because they were in desperate need of manpower in their own world in order to help them build machines powerful enough to be able to invade our world and escape from theirs, which was dying. They entered as souls because in this world, they couldn’t enter in their human form.
Mahlam explained that the sect chose the location of their churches very carefully. The area where the church was planted usually meant that one member had a number of victims they had targeted in the area who they were planning to give as an offering to the sect. It was said that before an action made in the best interests of the sect took place, the members of the sect targeted one or more neighbourhoods.
When their studies were conclusive, they proceeded to the grid and the mystical encirclement of an area of about seven and a half miles. Once the members of the Famla had studied and mystically surrounded the area and detected their prey, they made a list of the names of their future victims and the order in which they would be executed. The list was called the red list, and it was written with a pen made of the canine tooth of the Famla’s human founder. After a go-ahead from the Famla’s secret headquarters, the attacks were launched.
The attacks by poison for the earthly slaves were said to be of vegetable origin and administered by a member of the victim’s direct entourage seeking to join the sect by offering the victim as a symbol of a cooked dish. They would then proceed to unbury the body and wake it up by using an unnamed serum from their future masters.
The sect divided their human victims into three categories: first class, second class and third class. The first two were the most valuable.
The first group were people who shone by their high intelligence or their supernatural powers, such as Christians with the ability to speak in tongues, people with premonition powers, people with the gift of healing using the supernatural, like prayers, or people with charismatic gifts so strong that they could attract large groups to follow them, like cult leaders.
The second class consisted of people considered intelligent, but not geniuses. However, they were hardworking people who had come from nothing and ended up with hugely successful businesses, or people with average intelligence who, through hard work, had ended up top of their class.
The last group, called the third class, were just regular people with average intelligence.
Only the first two categories were of interest to the highest members of the sect. They were presented as special abilities that were of great necessity to the buyer. For example, politicians might want a highly intelligent person with the ability to spy on their opponents, or a highly trained assassin to dispose of a threat to their career.
Mahlam didn’t give too much detail on how to trap a first-class human – we already knew how poison was used for numbers two and three – but he did give an example of how someone could join the sect or be tricked into giving someone as a human sacrifice after they had been offered a spot in the sect.
In the first case, the applicant himself sought ways and means to perform the sacrifice on his chosen victim. In the second case, the sect chose someone who had piqued their interest. It was said that these individuals were usually traders whose businesses had had difficulty taking off but had a lot of potential, potential that could be very beneficial to the sect. That person was befriended by a member of the sect who was in the same line of work and invited them to attend a business seminar where they might meet some investors willing to invest in their business. On arrival, the person was the object of all attention and a friendly welcome.
In order not to frighten the victims, they were introduced to investors who assured them of their interest, and they were granted a loan to boost their business. The strategy aimed to better integrate them into the sect without arousing their suspicions.
At a promised date, they were asked to specify their needs and granted their loan, but as soon as they really started to get a foot up the ladder of success, a chain of events made it impossible for the person to repay the loan on time. Generally, the person was granted an extension in cash and repayment duration, which allowed them to buy more goods.
Success was finally granted, and they were allowed to rise to a good level and integrate thoroughly into the organisation. However, since they had not been able to repay the loan on the agreed time, membership to the organisation was now required for the loan to be forgiven. At each meeting, organised at a specific time to symbolise the mysticism of the night, a member had to offer an animal for sacrifice. Even if the attendees found it distasteful, they were now in no position to venture an opinion and accepted it as an eccentricity of their new club.
Eventually, the chosen was asked to bring a sacrifice with them at the next meeting. When they did, it was then that they found out the true meaning of the words animal sacrifice. It was then revealed to them that an animal referred to a brother, a sister, a child, a wife, a husband, a father or a mother – in short, a loved one. Then it was already too late to retreat. The person discovered that the money they had received was money for their loved one’s soul.
Scarlett added that they had read about some places resisting the arrival and influence of the Famla. In some targeted areas, when a person was suspected to have been killed by a member of the sect, their loved ones had the body buried after nine days so that the body could not be used. This made it possible to unmask the sect members, who demanded that the body be buried as soon as possible.
In the past, believing that the body was being resuscitated by the devil, the family of the targeted, to be sure that the body would not be used by the sect, buried it with the eyelids closed with needles and tears drawn on them, accompanied by a psalm from the Bible or any other religious text in the palm of their hands. It was believed that in doing so, it would fend off the devil and allow angels to accompany the soul to heaven.
We also found out about a most sinister practice of the sect, called the feast of wizards. This particular ceremony was reserved for a victim considered first class. The person making the offering had to mean a lot to that person, who usually was a member of their family or an ex-member of the sect for whom they shared strong feelings.
They bestowed on new members the obligation, when their turn came, to provide prey from their own family to other members. The book also added that the occult value of the member was much more important than their social position.
There were no demon deals; there was no pact with the devil either. My mother would be happy to know that we had identified the group connected to the aliens. I was also right about Mrs Williams and her husband; the display of the body in the forest was meant to mislead the authorities away from the guilty party’s true intentions.
It was a lot to take in, but we did, and we now understood what Mrs Dujardin got out of her deal with the Famla; she probably received supernatural powers as well as Mr Farage. What their significant others knew about their affair, who knew? But one thing was now certain: Mrs Dujardin was part of the Famla, and she was very much a threat, and if we believed the stories written about the sect, she might have been a serial killer as well.