Notorious by John Jones (novel books to read txt) 📕

‘sleep’ at the practised low tone, click my fingers in front of their face, and they’re mine.

They fall into a deep sleep, and I can suggest anything. I can then talk to them in my normal voice, and set their clocks. They cannot be manipulated by anybody other than me, the person that put them under. They become receptive only to my voice, nobody else’s. I can do what I like with them. They always obey”.

“Can’t you just make me forget? I’ll never know you existed”.

“That’s a possibility. I’m sure I could do that, but my healthy paranoia says no. What if you do remember? With my profile as it is, as it’s going to become, I cannot risk keeping you alive after I have hypnotised you. I have given the scientists differing times to commit suicide, after my press conference. How will that link to me? They commited suicide. It happens”.

“Yet, they’re connected to you,” said Malcolm. “Scientists all commit suicide after being with you. Isn’t that suspicious?”

“Two of them are to organise flights to foreign locations, and kill themselves there. All of them commit suicide at differing times. The first, two weeks after the conference finishes. Another four months away. It’s the biggest risk I’ve taken, keeping them alive for so long after induction. Yet, it’s the price I pay for notoriety”.

“So what happens in their mind to make them do it?” Malcolm asked.

“A timer, counting down to zero. The mind has sense of time, inborn, and learned in childhood. It is subconscious, and the person is unaware that it is counting down. When it hits zero, they perform the action I have given them. They have to. It becomes their only goal, their sole purpose. They must perform that action and see it through. Their drive is to complete the task, which is why when I give the order for them to kill, they make sure that they are dead. When their minds decide that that person is dead, they revert back to ‘normal’, I suppose.

What they have done becomes something they believe they had decided to do. I suppose I have spared them the reality of what they had done. When they know that that person is dead, a timer activates that counts down to their suicide. It becomes their sole purpose, as it will be yours”.

“I’ve done nothing to you, though Curio. Look, I’m giving you five hundred pounds”. “For which I am grateful, but you are in my way, as were all the others. They were potential threats to me, because they were linked to you. Now it’s only you. I am showing people the reality of the paranormal, and you are hindering me”.

“Where’s your proof, Curio? Prove the spirit world, prove ghosts. You’re just a talentless psychic who can prove nothing”.

“When I snap my fingers, slap yourself across the face,” said Curio. He snapped his fingers. Malcolm’s right hand slapped his face.

“Fuck!” said Malcolm, “Alright, alright. The paranormal is real, anything you say”. He said it quite sarcastically, but never meant to. Curio simply stood, staring at him for a few seconds.

“Your student friends were linked to you, so they had to die”.

“She had to die. That’s what my father said, and that goth,” said Malcolm.

“Is it?” asked Curio. “Well, I hypnotised one of the tutors into finding where they were and getting all of the addresses in case he failed to kill them all. Maybe it was too much of me to suggest for him to kill all of them, so the addresses were my back-up, should he fail, which he did. He killed one, I know, so I needed to send people to those addresses to kill the others. One person, one kill.

One of them I hypnotised was a fucking gangster. I only realised afterwards. There he was fixing a car engine in his garage. He was alone. I went across and put him under. Only on the back seat there was a shotgun and a load of pirate DVDs. See what you were making me do Malcolm? You’ll never make me do that again”.

“What about Tom? What did he do?”

“He was linked to you. He knew you, so he had to die. Who knows what you’ve told him? Well, you do, I suppose. I couldn’t take that risk. When you walked out after I told you the price of another reading, I had precious few seconds with Tom to give him the suggestion to take himself to that, Ryvak, was it? to burn it down. I agreed with him over the animal experiments. I ‘encouraged’ two reporters to write good articles on me. They’ll be dead now. Also, I am taking a big risk in having people killed, because I was genuinely reluctant to get in touch with your father. He has more right to be angry with me than you. Angry spirits I do not want to deal with, so calling upon him was something I did not want. I was already possessed once, as you saw on that video”.

“You weren’t possessed. You’re dealing with untapped areas of the mind. You should understand how susceptible people are to belief. Then again, maybe you can’t see the woods for the trees. You’re altering people’s brainwaves and thoughts. Don’t you think it will affect you?” The look on Curio’s face told him it didn’t.

“I know what I’m doing, Malcolm. I know the truth when I see it”.

“You can’t prove it. Nobody can”.

“I can!” Curio shouted, his face reddening. He pointed an accusing finger at Malcolm.

“And I am. I’m showing people that I have psychic ability to prove what is real”.

“Using hypnosis to help you”.

“It’s an aid in the path to showing people what is true”.

“You’re fucking mental”. Malcolm then wished he had not said that, but Curio knew that by the look on his face, so did nothing.

“Less of that, thank-you,” he said. “If this is the path I must take to show people that the supernatural exists, then that is fine with me”.

“Have you ever hypnotised yourself?” Malcolm asked. Curio shook his head.

“No, never. It’s the most powerful form of hypnosis I know. So there’s no way I would ever put myself under. I knew I had the gift at that point in my studies. I knew I had the ability to become psychic”.

“Is that when you started hearing voices inside your head?” Malcolm said, sarcastically, this time meant.

“Go on then,” said Curio, “Choose the manner of your demise”.

“What? I certainly will not”.

“Then I’ll have to do it for you?” Curio thought for a few moments, then clicked his fingers and said:

“Sleep,” in his normal voice. He only needed to say it once in the practised tone. Malcolm slept. Curio walked into the kitchen, and crossed to the fridge. He opened it, then opened the freezer compartment. There were two bundles wrapped in sugar paper.

Carefully, he took out one, and carried it through to the coffee table, in front of the sofa.

He laid it carefully down, and collected the other. Soon, he was sat staring at the bundles. He hadn’t seen them in a long time, and wondered what state they would be in. They had to go, he thought. With his kudos raising in public profile, to have these in the flat would subject him to serious questioning if discovered, and his stature would no doubt fade, his fame converting to that which he would not want.

He reached forward and opened the left bundle. The paper cracked open and he stared at its contents. He then did the same with the other, and looked at each in turn. The two chopped up human brains had a layer of ice over them. They seemed identical, but he had hoped for that not to be the case when he had acquired them, for it was a potential difference that caused him to see for himself, but he couldn’t see any at all, so had stored them away in-case he ever wanted to study them again. One of them had belonged to a fellow student when Curio was studying, the other, the man’s friend.

He had hypnotised the student into killing his friend, then had him commit suicide. Curio had wanted the brains because one had been hypnotised, and the other was normal. He had wanted to see if there was any dissimilarity by chopping them up and looking inside. When he did this, he had thought there might be a factor that could distinguish a normal brain from one that had been hypnotised, but there had been nothing. After one night, he had returned home from a hospital placement, his mind at the time concerned with learning more about the hypnosis, and his coursework, as he had not yet dropped out of university, so when he had opened the cupboard beneath the sink to bring them out for study, he could not tell them apart. He had concluded that hypnotism is purely psychological. Suggestion made no physical mark.

It was only by the reactions made by the person, that they could be deemed hypnotised. The suggestions made were accepted, and therefore, to the person, that reaction was normal, so no physical change was present. He had stored them in his freezer. His paranoia would not let him dispose of them in case they were found and somehow linked back to him. He did not know how, but just in case there was something that brought the police to his door.

He stood up and walked into his bedroom. At the bottom of his cupboard there was an old rucksack that he hardly used. Walking back into the living room, he said: “Wake”, as he passed Malcolm. He sat on the sofa. Malcolm awoke, only to find that he still could not move.

“What have you done to me? What have you been telling me to do?”

“Nothing,” said Curio, looking at the brains. Malcolm saw them.

“What the fuck are they? Are they…are they..human brains?”, Curio simply nodded.

“See? You’re a fucking lunatic, you just can’t see it”.

“Have your insults, Malcolm, if they make you feel any better. You’re still going to die”. Curio stood up and carefully gathered each bundle and put them in the rucksack. He zipped it up and put it beside him, then simply looked at Malcolm.

“I’ve chosen your method of execution,” he said, “and you’re taking these with you. It’s night-time. Now is the best time to do it”.

“There’s got to be a way,” said Malcolm. “Please Curio, just let me go”. Curio shook his head.

“If there was a way to break it, and as far as I know, there isn’t, do you really think I would tell you? Sorry, Malcolm, you’ve got to go”. Curio stood up and walked back into his bedroom, returning moments later with his A-Z. He stood beside Malcolm and leaned towards him, pointing to an area on one of the pages.

“From here, it will take about twenty minutes to half an hour to walk here, west bank dock estate. Just beyond that, is where the river Mersey meets the Runcorn gap. This is where I want you to go. Around that area, there are a lot of marshes and quicksand.

That’s what Abe said my arguments were based on, so I thought it would be good for getting rid of evidence and threats. I want you to walk into it, and make sure you sink. No-one will ever find you. I doubt if anybody will call me to find you. If they did, then I won’t get six in a row. You’ll have ended my run, and because you were a hurdle in my way, and because you’ve insulted me, I’m going to make you very aware of what you’re doing. In the others, I make them ‘want’ to do it. I make it their sole desire, their drive. Not with you. Your mind will stay the same, but your body will take you there.

Rather like falling from a great height. You