Delirium (London Psychic) (11 page)

"What do you mean?" Jamie asked, noting how tense Matthew had become, his muscular frame taut. He paused for a moment, as if he was unsure whether to continue. "Please," she said. "It will help the investigation if you can tell us of Monro's political leanings."

Matthew nodded. "His name came up in a confidential paper distributed by RAIN. Do you know of them?"

Jamie noted it down. "No, but please go on."
 

"RAIN is a government agency associated with the Ministry of Defense, so it's not under my portfolio. It stands for Research into Advanced Intelligence Network, and their work is aimed at high-risk but high-payoff programs that have the potential to provide Britain with an overwhelming intelligence advantage against future adversaries. That's about all I know, despite trying to find out more. I did see a report on psychic ability and its correlation with mental health, and Monro was one of the names on it. But the agency is incredibly secretive and I couldn't find out anymore. Perhaps you can, Detective. Perhaps it's related to his murder."

Jamie remembered the raindrop symbol on some of Monro's files. It could be connected to RAIN somehow, but what exactly was Monro's involvement?
 

"It's ironic that RAIN are studying mental illness," Matthew continued, a dark smile in his voice. "There are studies that show that over half of us would meet the diagnostic criteria for mental disorder in our lifetimes. But we keep our thoughts to ourselves so no one will notice the throes of insanity. We maintain a semblance of normality, but who knows what violence goes on behind the closed curtains of our minds? After all, pills can now make us better than well. Why feel even slightly down if you can pop a pill and make it go away, live in happy la-la land, dulled to sensation? Why be even hurt a little when you can medicate to oblivion?"

Jamie thought of the ephedrine she used as uppers, about the sleeping pills she took to keep the nightmares at bay.
 

"And what do your parents think about your work?" she asked.

Matthew held his arms wide and took a little bow. "I'm their golden boy, Detective." His voice was mocking, bitter. "Their son is an MP, a respected member of the community, on the TV and in the papers. Lyssa was the more spectacular but also the more disappointing. They judged her to be wanting and took her to a psychiatrist in her early teens. She started the medication then. It was only with me that she felt safe enough to come off the drugs." He took another deep breath. "Is it just me, or are you also sick of being conformist? Why can't we all go a little crazy sometimes?"

"But suicide?" Jamie said. "Surely you don't support it."
 

"I support the right of an adult to take their own life if it's a considered decision. Think about it. Some days it's a surprise that we continue to live. It's much harder to keep getting up and living in this world than it is to give up and relax into the darkness. Embracing oblivion is just a choice, Detective."
 

"But the misery of those left behind," Jamie said. "Your own grief at Lyssa's death? Surely that would be better avoided? She could have created more, perhaps found happiness on another day."
 

Matthew ran his fingers along a crack that wound its way up from the fireplace to the ceiling. In any other house, it would have been plastered over, filled in and fixed. But here, it had been made a feature, and Jamie noticed the hands of tiny creatures emerging from the plaster, drawn in black ink. It was hard to tell whether they were imps from a dark place, or fairies coming forth with a blessing.
 

"Lyssa believed in embracing the cracks in our lives," Matthew said, his voice tinged with a sigh. "But her death was not such a simple thing."

"How did she …?"

"We rented a garage in the next street. I've never needed a car in London, but Lyssa loved to drive. It gave her a sense of freedom and escape. Sometimes she would drive to the ocean for the day, just to see the horizon in shades of blue. She loved the mad weather." Matthew laughed a little. "You know what I mean."
 

Jamie nodded, waiting for him to continue.
 

"She had been away the weekend before, some special retreat Monro had got her into, so I didn't see her much that week. The final day, she glammed up in her favorite dress and these brilliant red, Spanish flamenco heels. She loved them. She had a bottle of champagne and one of my crystal glasses with her. Only one, mind you, because she was always going to do it alone. She blocked the garage doors, making sure they were insulated, and then turned the ignition on. She took a couple of sleeping pills with the champagne … I imagine her toasting me." His voice trailed off for a moment.
 

"Eventually the exhaust fumes seeped out of the garage and someone reported it, but it was hours later. I was out, just another day on the job, campaigning for her rights, and those like her. She died of carbon monoxide poisoning. She just closed her eyes and fell asleep."
 

"I'm so sorry," Jamie said, his loss echoing within her, but there was also a tinge of anger. Lyssa had wasted a life, when Polly would gladly have seized that spark.
 

"She had always talked about suicide. It was one of our frequent discussions and she agreed to the medication in order to modulate her compulsions. But she missed her bolus injection appointment that week, and she didn't tell me." Matthew's head dropped to his hands. "She was my responsibility."

"She was an adult," Jamie said. "It was her choice."

"Oh, I don't begrudge her the choice to die. It's being left behind I resent."
 

Jamie wanted to tell him about Polly, wanted to tell him about the pills she had in her cabinet and the struggle every day not to take them. The faint glimmer of hope that she saw in a possible future even without the glue that held her life together.
 

"My sister was born special," Matthew said. "Her eyes rarely met ours as a baby, but instead, she smiled at beings in another realm. She could see through the veil of this reality, Detective. We are all given a spark of madness, but for her, it fanned into a flame and I helped it grow. We see such a poor version of this life but she could hold the whole world in her mind."

"But she couldn't stand it?"
 

Matthew shook his head. "The world implied she couldn't stand it. If I could have kept her protected, away from those like Monro who treated her as an invalid, she would have been safe. But they drugged her and she said it dulled her world and made her into one of us."
 

"One of us?"

"Those who walk in darkness and call it reality. But our reality wasn't worth living for, she said. If she couldn't fly with the angels, then why bother? In my opinion, it's not the mentally ill who are dangerous, it's those who control, medicate and abuse them."

Jamie sensed the undercurrent of animosity. Had that emotion spilled into violence?
 

"Did you know that Monro had some more – unusual – treatments as part of his practice?" she asked.

Matthew's eyes narrowed. He knew, for sure.
 

"I heard rumors that he had affairs with some of his patients, but Lyssa would never have been up for that. She certainly had no trouble with sex, Detective. When she was manic, she was irresistible." His words made Jamie wonder just how close the siblings had been.

"Did she have any papers or diaries?" Jamie asked.

"She wrote a diary in the months before her death," Matthew said, his voice tired. "I can't bear to read it, but perhaps it might offer some clues about Monro."
 

Jamie nodded. "If you can bear to part with it for a few days, I'll see what it contains."
 

Matthew stood and went to the bookcase. He pulled a red Moleskine notebook from the shelf.
 

"Be gentle with her memory."

In his words, Jamie heard the depths of his grief, and she felt an echo of her own for Polly. The sting of tears threatened and she stood to take the book from him.

"Of course, I'll take great care with it, and return it to you as soon as possible."

As Blake laid his hands on the Galdrabók, a rush of waters overlaid with the howling of wind filled his brain, yet he could see nothing but mist. He grasped for a tendril of emotional resonance in the haze and found only terror. Apprehensive, he followed the feeling with his mind and suddenly he was in a forest clearing at night. Stars were bright overhead and a full moon shone down on a group of men, chanting with arms raised to the skies, their backs marked by the same tattoo he had seen on his father. There was a sense of expectation in the air, a latent violence that compelled Blake to draw more closely to the group. He became aware of the stench of blood and stink of voided bowels, overlaid by the cool night air and forest scent.
 

Movement caught his eye from the trees behind the leader of the circle, a twitch in the shadow. Three bodies hung in the ash grove, and as he focused, Blake saw that their abdomens had been cut open. A rush of nausea gripped him; the men had been hanged with their own entrails and then wound again with rough ropes to hold their weight. One of the victims still jerked in place, his body refusing to give up the last spark of life.

"Great Odin, we call on you tonight. We relive the myth of Ymir and the creation of the world for your glory."
 

The leader's voice was rough yet powerful, rolling through the clearing so that every man could hear him clearly. Blake understood the words as his father had heard them all those years ago, for it was Magnus' terror he could feel, Magnus' eyes he saw through. He must have had the book with him at this occult ceremony performed on the edge of civilization years ago.
 

A man lay tied in the middle of the ring of followers, blood from his wounds dripping onto the grass. His eyes were closed but his chest rose and fell rapidly at the words intoned around him. The leader began a new chant, the words a repetitive phrase that rumbled from his chest. He stamped his feet slowly and the other men in the circle joined the incantation. The stamping grew faster and the repetition of the words spun through Blake's head like another voice taking over his brain. The thump of their feet resonated through the ground and his heart began to thud in time. The men drew hand axes from their belts as the chant reached a crescendo, and then they fell silent, staring at the victim in their midst.
 

Stepping forward, the leader grabbed the hair of the prone man.

"For you, Odin," he called to the sky, lifting his axe. Blake could almost feel the panicked state of the victim as he struggled and moaned. The leader brought down the weapon into the meaty part of the man's neck, pushing him to the floor as he hacked at the bony spine, blood spattering a dark wetness over his clothes. It took several blows to sever the head, then the leader lifted it to the sky with a primal roar as the men around him began to chant again.
 

Blake felt horror morph into shame, and then it struck him. His father had known the leader. This was his family; the leader was Magnus' own father. How many more sacrifices had he been involved in before he had fled this life for that of a preacher in London?

The leader gestured to two of the men, and they stepped forward with axes raised as the others continued to chant. Together the men began to butcher the body, blood soaking the earth. One of them smashed the skull so the brains ran out and made sure to separate the teeth from the jaw. It only took ten minutes to reduce a living man to body parts and gore. Blake retched, stomach heaving as he fell to his knees, unable to tear his gaze from the terrible sight. The eyes of the chanting men fell upon him as he coughed and spat, and then he saw the leader walking towards him with a determined stride, eyes wild with anger. Panicking, Blake pulled himself back out of the trance, dropping the book.
 

Retching and coughing, he found himself back in the bedroom, sweat dripping from his brow. He knelt on the floor, trying to anchor himself to this dimension, to this physical place. The visions had always been passive before, the very definition of remote viewing, but he had felt the eyes of the leader upon him and he had seen the intent to harm. Did that mean he could be physically hurt or even killed during a vision? Blake's mind reeled with the implications, even as the doubts about his own sanity flooded in, as they always did after a vision. Was it just some kind of hallucination, something he made up, even some kind of brain damage?

As he returned consciously to the bedroom, Blake could hear his mother praying in the room below, a singsong invocation to the God she had always trusted. In Magnus she had found a prophet, but even the great preacher must eventually stand before his God, and now it seemed, Precious had found her own voice. Blake couldn't fathom how she believed as she did, but hadn't he also seen things that proved there was more than a physical realm?

Still lightheaded, Blake reached for his smartphone and googled Odin. During the attack of the Neo-Vikings on the British Museum a while back, he had learned a few things about the Norse god, but most of his knowledge came from Hollywood, rather than the original myths. Pages of articles came up, but one in particular caught his eye. The Norse peoples had believed that the universe originally emerged from an ancient being called Ymir. When Odin and the other deities had decided to create Earth, they murdered Ymir and made the world from his body, the sky from his skull and formed the clouds from his brains. His blood ran out to form the sea and his bones and teeth were seeds for the mountains. The men in the woods had been enacting this ancient myth in order to call on the power inherent in this primeval being. Odin was the god of frenzy and violent death, and bestowed wisdom and divine inspiration on his worshippers.
   

Reading on, Blake found that Odin had hung from an ash tree for nine days and nights to gain knowledge of the runes that could command great power. Human sacrifices to Odin were killed in a similar fashion to honor the god and also to represent Yggdrasil, the great ash tree that spanned the heavens, Earth and the underworld. This had been his father's past, some kind of cult that still worshipped the ancient gods in a modern world.