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

eyes once more following the undulations of the mist. “She didn’t seem surprised at all. She said, ‘I knew you weren’t dead, little Eve.’ She even…” Genevieve lifted her fingers to the side of her face. “She saw the hammer in my hand and she just turned her back, as if she’d accepted what was coming.”

Even hearing this part of her confession, I didn’t feel angry. Dr Gillespie had been right, Genevieve had suffered a form of abuse—the warping of her identity to the extent that, when the trick played on her had finally been revealed, her mind had utterly shattered.

“I didn’t blame Tilda,” she said. “Not in the same way I blamed Evangeline for starting it all. But still, she’d played her part.”

“And you mocked her,” I said. “Just like you mocked Thorn and Everwood.”

“The tarot card? That wasn’t a comment on Tilda alone. All believers are fools. Deep down, some of them even know it. That’s what they’re terrified of—that one day someone like Gillespie will come along and show them just how ridiculous their hopes and dreams really are.”

It was a suggestion I might once have privately agreed with. Now I baulked at it. “What was done to you was terrible, Eve, but that doesn’t mean belief itself should be despised as foolish.”

She shrugged. “Everwood was certainly a fool.”

“Evangeline started the deception,” I said. “Tilda played her part in establishing it. Thorn then came along and reinforced it, spreading your fame.”

“My lies.”

“And Everwood was your legacy.”

“When I heard about how he’d been inspired by my story? I felt this suffocating sense of responsibility. It had to end. Had to be torn up, root and branch.”

“Before killing Eva, you got Darrel’s personal number off Thorn,” I said. “Despite what you told me, you’d always stayed in touch with your old manager. I should have known. You were so precise over details, yet you misnamed the man who’d made you a star. Rose instead of Thorn. Just to keep him out of the limelight long enough for you to get to him.”

“I said that I’d been flattered by Darrel’s comments and wanted to speak to him personally,” she said. “But for Thorn not to say anything. I wanted it to be a surprise.”

“And it was. When you finally placed the call, he thought it was a prank.”

I remembered what Nick had said about Darrel’s reaction, “That’s some sick shit you’re talking. How dare you even pretend to be…”

“Thorn had told me weeks ago that Darrel was becoming increasingly unstable,” Genevieve said. “Losing his grip on reality. It wasn’t hard to play on that sense of paranoia and persecution. He wanted to feel vindicated, justified in his self-belief, armoured against his enemies. In his delusions, I saw an echo of my own. He’d passed beyond the conscious trickster and into a state of wilful self-deception.

“I convinced him that I was physically returning to the world. That the guiding light of his psychic gift had reached me on the other side. At the same time, I fed his fears that shadowy figures were working to undermine not just his own work, but the truth of all psychic phenomena. He ate it up. I told Darrel I’d visit him two hours before the broadcast, and if he summoned me, I would make an appearance on live television.”

“The media event of the century,” I said.

“He dismissed his security staff and waited for me inside his trailer.” She laughed. “He sat there, amazed as I walked through the door. A corporeal manifestation! I understand that it might sound ridiculous, but there is a rich history of mediums apparently summoning solid spirits. He even had to leave the room for a moment to gather himself.”

“And that was when you administered the strychnine into the water tank of his coffee machine?”

“Thorn had told me he was a caffeine addict, drinking cup after cup in quick succession. The strong flavour would disguise the bitter taste of the poison to perfection.”

“You intended him to die live on-air,” I said. “To show the world how human and fallible these so-called psychics are. Because if he was the real deal, surely Darrel would have foreseen his murder.”

“As you’ve probably guessed, I also suggested a costume change and for the fire in the sitting room to be lit,” she said. “He would be my last victim. There was no more need for the red herring of the ritual, but I knew you’d be watching, Mr Jericho. I thought the neatness of the idea might appeal to you.”

“The burned witch.”

“Perhaps.” She smiled.

Genevieve moved back, off the revolve, and onto the walkway. There she faced me, resting her shoulder against one of the posts that held up the ride’s canopy.

“So what now?”

I sighed and took my phone out of my pocket.

“I once thought that the only real justice is the kind we make for ourselves,” I said. “But I don’t hate you, Genevieve. What you did to Tilda was cruel beyond imagining. What was done to you was almost equally inhuman. Not just in your childhood, but how you were forced to confront that truth. Everything that followed grew out of that trauma. And so this is the justice I choose.”

I held up the phone.

“Did you get all that, Inspector?”

A solid form emerging out of the mist, DCI Tallis replied, “I did. Thank you for finally returning my call, Scott.” He pulled the phone away from his ear and moved towards the Waltzer.

Genevieve Bell pressed her back to the wooden post. She smiled, and reaching inside her coat, brought out a small silver object. She played it between her fingers, thumbing the wheel. It was then I realised it wasn’t only the touch of the mist that had dampened hair and clothes. Powered by engines and generators, the air of fairgrounds is always laced with diesel and so I had missed the smell.

“Eve,” I said. “Please. Don’t.”

Her smile broadened. “You’re a good man, Scott Jericho. But I reject your justice.”

Hair slick, coat saturated,