Silencing the Dead by Will Harker (ereader ebook .txt) 📕

I had of myself, adapting my personality so that, slowly, gradually, I came to accept my new identity. I wasn’t playing a part anymore. I was the child who spoke to ghosts. She’d whisper to me at night, going over the ordinary incidents of the day, infusing them with a sense of wonder, always ensuring that I was at the centre of each rewritten event. For a lonely child, shunned at school due to her increasingly odd reputation, it was an irresistible fantasy. I was special. That’s why I was bullied, called names, set apart.

“Genevieve,” I murmured. “I’m so sorry.”

“I’m not entirely sure whether our mother knew what Eva was doing,” she went on as if she hadn’t heard. “On some level, I suppose she did. In any case, after months of my sister’s manipulation, the reality of my world had been set for the next thirty years. And of course, she happily accepted all the benefits. First, the little luxuries showered on us by Miss Grice, then the generous annual allowance I gave her out of the estate I’d inherited from our cousin. I even gave her a percentage of my earnings from the private readings I performed after I’d withdrawn from the public spotlight. Eva never had to work a day in her life.

“And what a life! She left us at twenty, travelled abroad, had adventures, love affairs, saw the world. Meanwhile, I remained at home with our mother. I might get the odd phone call when she needed money, but otherwise, she became a stranger. She never regretted what she’d done. Never tried to dissuade me from the fantasy she had invented. Eva created a person that was never supposed to exist and then abandoned her creation to live out its make-believe life. A life in which I was utterly invested, convinced I was helping grieving people, that I was making a difference.”

“And then you were invited onto the podcast with Dr Gillespie,” I said.

“The offer came through Seb Thorn.” she nodded. “Another lie, I’m afraid, Mr Jericho. We did remain in contact after I stepped away from the limelight. I didn’t need the money, but I was intrigued by the idea of proving my abilities to such a renowned sceptic as Dr Gillespie. You know the result.”

She reached out that blemished hand, as if clutching at the drifting mist.

“What I told you about the effect it had on me was true. Imagine if for thirty years—pretty much your entire life—you’d believed in an identity that was suddenly torn away from you. Systemically, ruthlessly, brilliantly stripped away within ten minutes. Decades of self-deception crashing down until you’re forced to peer through the wreckage of your personality, only to find a stranger staring back at you. It was like waking from a beautiful dream to a howling, indifferent wasteland.

“And so, no, Mr Jericho, I didn’t just bear a grudge against my sister. I wanted her dead. Erased from existence. Unmade, like I had been unmade.”

“And unwittingly, Dr Gillespie provided inspiration for how you might do it,” I said. “He told you that what you’d suffered had been a form of abuse. That if there really was a God of the Old Testament, then this was deserving of all His fury and vengeance.”

“It made me think of that line from the Bible,” she confirmed. “‘Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.’ That was the beginning of the smokescreen, as you call it. I did a little research into the old witchfinders, the poppet dolls, all the paraphernalia that might mislead the police. Christopher Cloade played his part, too. After his visit, I saw that such a fanatic could easily make a viable suspect. I had to give myself time, you see? To keep everyone guessing long enough so that I could finish the thing.”

“To eradicate your legacy.”

“I thought I’d been helping people,” she said. “Instead, I’d been lying to them. There are no ghosts. Nothing beyond death except the empty scream of the universe. When I looked back at my life, all I could hear was that scream and all I could see were the people responsible.

“I invited my sister down for a visit, as you said. Not an easy thing to arrange, Eva had barely set foot in the house for years. She planned to stay just a single night to discuss our mother’s failing health. Her solution? Put the old woman in a home and forget about her. I knew that would be Eva’s response and I made sure Mother overheard it. Despite her confusion, the old self-interest was still there, and, later, it made her more amenable to my plans—discovering the body, playing along as best she could with the names.

“Eva’s is the one death where I feel no remorse. I even enjoyed it. The obliteration of the person who started it all, the taking away of her identity. By the way, we had both turned grey in our late thirties, but after the murder, I dyed my hair to resemble her old copper tint so that I could further distinguish myself from ‘Genevieve.’ As I told you, Eva was divorced and estranged from her daughter, so she could easily disappear for a couple of weeks without being missed. And I never intended this thing to go on forever.”

“Just until your four victims were accounted for?” I said. “The first three, you knew. That was why they were comfortable turning their back to you. Thorn must have been shocked to see his old client had returned from the dead, but at that moment there would have been nothing to alert him to any danger. Like with Eva and Tilda, you caved in his skull with a hammer before attending to the ritual elements of the scene.”

“I turned up at the house in the early hours, saying I could explain everything.” Genevieve nodded. “He was shocked, as you say, but he’d only taken a few steps across the hall when I struck him.”

“And Tilda?”

She hesitated, her