Hellbound: The Tally Man (28 page)

Sara nodded to the men at the back of room who quickly moved and flanked Joe, securing his arms behind his back and dragging him back towards the empty trolley. “Get the fuck off me,” he shouted as tried to fight them.

Sara handed the electrolarynx to her sister and moved besides Joe once he had been strapped back down, placing the syringe in his arm and quickly administering its contents.

He glanced over at Vicky, feeling his body begin to tingle and go numb. “I trusted you. How could you do this?”

“I wish I could make you understand.”

“You never could. It’s not the way it should be, Vicky. You know that.”

Joe felt his eyes grow heavy as his head slowly lowered itself to his chest. He turned his head towards Obadiah, feeling the energy and power emanating from him despite his silence as he slipped into unconsciousness. Vicky moved forward and gently stroked his cheek. “I’m so sorry, Joe. I really am.”

Sara signaled the man Obadiah assumed by now was a doctor forward again. He held another syringe that he gently attached to the end of the cannula. He looked at Obadiah briefly, his eyes sad as though bearing a heavy burden before slowly depressing the plunger.

Obadiah felt his eyes grow heavy as his vision began to blur. He felt no sadness at what was about to happen. It was as it was meant to be. A monster like him only ever wanted to live long enough to make a mark on the world. And make a mark he had done. His legacy would never be forgotten.

But in return, it had given him something. Something a man like him should never be allowed to have. Yet he felt gratitude that he had been given the opportunity to discover it for himself. Life through death. Maybe even salvation for his black soul.

Drifting away, he felt a burning sensation on his back. Though too tired to react, it felt similar to an incision working its way down his shoulder blade as though someone were carving a line into his skin.

A line that would sit alongside the previous twenty-seven tally marks.

A line that now represented the loss of twenty-eight souls.

A tally that signified the death of Obadiah Stark; The Tally Man.

‘Man is not what he thinks he is, he is what he hides.’

Andre Malraux

Epilogue

October 9th
09:16

Denny Street, Tralee (Trá Lí)

County Kerry, Ireland

JOE spun idly in his chair, glancing at the clock with every rotation and desperate for a cigarette. His conversation with the Gardaí about the events a week ago had proven fruitless. Not being able to provide them with the location of where he had been held nor willing to explain how a previously dead serial killer had been re-executed had left them with little to act on. Instead he had decided to try and locate Vicky, though that had proven just as useless. Her mobile phone number had been disconnected and the hotel where she had been staying had her as checked out on the 5th October, the day after everything had taken place. A few phone calls had uncovered that Evans had taken extended leave and Stamford had suddenly resigned his position at Absolom. Sabitch had not yet returned Joe’s requests for an interview, with his secretary claiming he was ‘extremely busy and would be for the foreseeable future’.

A visit to Dunwall’s house had been equally unsuccessful, with him finding it forebodingly deserted. Door unlocked, Joe had let himself in to find even the materials from his hording habit gone, with only outlines in the dust on the floor any indication that anyone had ever been there.

As the office thrummed with life behind him, Joe found himself feeling completely isolated, with a deep uneasiness in his heart and a crawling feeling on the nape of his neck. Everything he had discovered about The Brethren, about Obadiah Stark, about Vicky, was being systematically erased or covered up. Ciaran had been unimpressed with the fact that Joe had decided to put his book on hold, especially given all the latitude he had been given. He hadn’t wanted to shelve it, but with Sara’s not-so-veiled threat still fresh in his mind, he didn’t dare pursue his findings regarding The Brethren for fear of the repercussions. For the first time in his professional life, he felt he had no options.

“Penny for them?” Alison said, sitting on the edge of his desk.

“You wouldn’t have enough money, trust me,” Joe replied wearily.

“You look like shit, if you don’t mind me saying.”

“I feel like it. What can I say, rough week.”

“Haven’t seen your little blonde criminologist around recently. Repelled her with your overt sexuality?”

“Let’s just say that I learnt more than I intended to when I procured her services.”

“Ah, the old ‘woman with skeletons’ scenario.”

“More like fossilised dinosaurs,” Joe said with a sigh.

“Seriously, Joe. Are you okay?”

“I’m wondering if this is for me,” he replied following a long pause. “A few things I learned have made me wonder if there’s any point to this. I mean, how can you report what’s happening in the world, about all the horrible shit that goes down, if your hands are being tied?”

“Some people like that kind of thing,” Alison flirted.

“I’m serious,” Joe fired back. “What if you discovered something that would send everything into a tail spin? That would make people question their trust in the powers that be? I got in to this job to report the truth so that I could make a difference in some way. I wanted to let people know that they can trust the media, or some of us anyway. That we’re not all interested in sensationalism. Only recently, the closer I got to something, the more questionable the truth actually became. Some people deserve what happens to them, no doubt about it. But the methods…that’s the thing I’m struggling to understand.”

“You’re not making any sense,” Alison said in a worried tone.

“I know” Joe replied. “I might never make sense again. At the end of the day, all my sources for the Stark story have dried up in the most extreme way possible and I’m facing repercussions from a huge corporation if I share what I discovered which makes all my work a waste of time really. Basically, the whole things a fuckin’ mess. And yet…”

“And yet, what?”

“Yet some things are just niggling away at me.”

Alison placed her hand on his shoulder. “Well, in that case don’t give up. You’re one of the best reporters in this place, and a decent guy. Whatever you’ve gone through, don’t let it jade you. You seek out the truth, that’s what you do and you do it well. If you can’t do it by conventional means, go unconventional. You’ll figure something out.”

Joe smiled as Alison moved back towards her desk. She was right, it wasn’t like him to just give up. He felt completely drained by the whole experience and was seriously wondering if he should take a break from journalism, but wasn’t able to shake Dunwall’s suggestion that Obadiah Stark wasn’t the first person The Brethren had carried out their little experiment on. He had mentioned the Monster of Florence and the West Mesa murders amongst others. The Florence murders took place between 1968 and 1985, the West Mesa murders in 2009. Both cases remained unsolved, despite the Florence crimes leading to the conviction of men whose guilt had always been contentious. Sara told him they had been doing it for a long time, but for how long and why?

Joe needed to know before he could let it go, however dangerous it would be for him. And if he was going to pursue it, he needed to be careful. No more book pursuits or publicity. If he was going to try and uncover the extent of The Brethren’s reach, he needed to change his methods and style.

Swinging his chair back round to face the desk, he grabbed his phone book and flicked to the back. He made a quick look around the office, at Alison, at his colleagues going about their oblivious, daily business. If he followed this path, he would potentially have to give all this up.

Well, I’ll know one way or the other after this phone call.

He dialled the number, twirling a pen between his fingers as it rang. A man answered with a firm hello.

“Kev O’Hagan?” Joe asked.

“Who wants to know?”

“Joe O’Connell. I need your help.”

* * *

The room was vast, bathed in shadow that became darkness towards the back. The only light source was the sconces set along the wall. The chambers were equally spaced, each containing the body of either a male or female. Two men were busy securing a man’s body into one of them with straps across his forehead, torso and legs. One of them adjusted a display at the side of the chamber before pulling the door down from above which closed with a soft hiss of air. A mist began to coalesce, crystallising on its occupants face and exposed skin. The second man fixed a metal plate to the side, designating the occupant with a name, number and year.

“Have you finished?” the woman asked as she approached.

“Yes, Miss Morgan,” one of the men replied. “Subject 28 is secured. Cryogenesis has begun and should be completed in thirty minutes.”

“Excellent. That will be all.”

“Of course,” the man replied, indicating to his colleague that they were to leave.

Sara moved closer and touched the glass. “Finally, you’re here. Granted, not our most famous occupant, that privilege belongs to Subject One. But I think you might be my favourite. After all, we have such a history together don’t we, Obadiah.”

She kissed the glass and stared at The Tally Man’s slowly freezing body before turning and making her way towards the door. She stopped at the chamber for Subject One, gazing through the frosted window at its occupant.

“And to think it all started with you, my dark solider. Our gain became Whitechapel’s history.”

Sara caressed the glass and ran her fingers over the designation plate, the curves of its inscription so familiar to her now. Subject One. Jack. 1888.

She turned and made her way up the stairs and through the metal door which slammed shut, the echo reverberating through the room and down into the darkness.

Afterword

HELLBOUND
is a work of fiction, but many of the elements that helped define it are real. The Blasket Islands exist; ADX Absolom does not. I simply chose somewhere in the world that was both beautiful and remote to place an imaginary supermax prison.

The drugs and toxins used to induce Obadiah’s dream-like state are real; the processes used to create elements of his torture are not.

Many of the roads and locations described in Ireland are real, but I have taken some artistic licence with others in order to mould them into suiting my literary requirements. I hope I can be forgiven.

Obadiah’s profile is fictional (or is it???), but for a professional insight into the world of psychological profiling and criminology, I would highly recommend you read anything by Paul Ekman, the BRACE® organization, Robert Ressler, Tom Schachtman, Akira Lippit, R.T Kraus, A. Hoffer, R. M. Holmes, S. T. Holmes, Robert Hare and, for a deeper understanding of how evil, love and redemption exist in our world, seek out anything written by M. Scot Peck.

Any mistakes in
Hellbound
are my own.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

David McCaffrey was born in Middlesbrough, raised in West Sussex and lives in Redcar. He has worked in the NHS for many years and is currently employed as an Assistant Lead Nurse in Infection Prevention and Control at James Cook University Hospital.

He started writing following the birth of his first son and in 2010 was accepted onto the writing coach programme run by Steve Alten, international bestseller author of
Meg and The Mayan Prophecy
.
Hellbound
is the result.

David lives with his wife Kelly and has two sons.