There were no storm clouds bellowing to echo my mood; instead, the Sunday morning blushed pink and red, a ‘shepherd’s delight’, while the sun rose, devouring the colours as it climbed across the sky.
A lovely, soft-spoken nurse came in. Instead of kicking me out for violating sacred visitor hours, she asked if we wanted any tea and then returned with her own personal mug, since the rest of the visitor crockery was in the dishwasher. I promised I’d take good care of it as I lifted it to my eyeline to see why she favoured this particular piece of crockery. The faded but still visible image on the front was one of the Virgin Mary, hands outstretched and immersed in a cloud just outside what I presumed were the gates of heaven with some Italian writing that had been worn away over time.
I noticed at about ten that the TV was still on with the sound muted, and I casually turned my head to see what the headlines of today were. Probably something dire about the economy, I thought, or some middle-aged clot moaning about the colour of bin bags and some numpty marrying a toaster. As I carefully took a sip of tea, I began to process what some half-handsome newsperson was saying.
Oh. No. I read the ticker.
The TellTale Killer Returns: Deadly Serial Killer Resurfaces After Two Years. Police Issue Warning.
Oh no. Oh no. Oh no.
I grabbed the remote and rapidly cranked the volume up, in the moment not caring if I woke Ben, as I stared, slack-jawed and stunned, at the screen. Every muscle in my body felt like it was burning, frying from the inside out with a crackling, electric anxiety of a million volts. Sweat coated every inch of my skin within an instant, and my breath caught, jagged in my throat, as I reread the headline on the screen again and again, trying to make sense of it.
And there it was, front and centre, in glorious, horrifying detail: the note I’d written, sent to the paper the night before.
I will strike again.
The newscasters were already deep into their analysis, speaking in grave, morose tones about the TellTale Killer’s return and what this meant for the UK.
Plastered across the screen, I flicked to the subsequent channels doing their morning updates and it was on, every, single one. Another solemn-looking man, another solemn-looking woman, and then three middle-aged women on a bright red sofa discussing whether the TellTale Killer was ‘a narcissist, an unstable genius, or just a really sassy Gemini’.
It was as though I’d been playing Buckaroo without knowing it, stacking one thing after another, oblivious to the inevitable chaos that was about to commence. I’d thought I had control, I thought it would never explode to this degree. But in that moment, I understood just how spectacularly I’d fucked up. The muscles in my hand went limp and the mug slipped from my hand and shattered on the hospital room floor.
I am so, so sorry, Mary.
NINETEEN
My reflection in the mirror was quite a sorry sight: heavy, darkened eyes sunk into the sockets of a pallid, puffy face, and skin that looked devoid of any kind of life. In a way, I’m glad I looked as terrible as I felt, it would have been strange if a runway model was looking back at me in the mirror after the day I’d had. I spent most of Sunday in the hospital with Ben, doing my best to ignore the continuing headlines from the TV in the room. When I told Bill and Ben I was heading home, they both seemed to assume, judging by the ghastly pallor on my face, that I was still reeling from Ben telling me about his diagnosis. And I certainly still was. But I was also frantically trying to untangle the very messy consequences of my own, frankly idiotic, decisions.
I’d been too reckless the night before, so desperate to shake the police out of their apparent indifference that I’d acted on impulse. Had that somehow worked in my favour? Made me seem more authentic as the TellTale Killer?
But I suppose the combined impact of Chestgate and my note had led the press to pressure the police into releasing a statement, which they did on Sunday evening. The police were likely afraid that if they were wrong – and it was the real TellTale Killer – they’d be in a whole new world of trouble. If it came out they knewabout the notes and didn’t warn the public, it would come back to bite them in the posterior in the most colossal way. They must have decided it had become a matter of public importance to tell people they had received evidence of what they believed to be the TellTale Killer’s return.
DarkCell, naturally, was going wild.
I told you, CerealKillerCornflakes had messaged me privately at least half a dozen times.I told you he’d come back.
No one likes a know it all, especially when they’re technically wrong.
I don’t remember you saying that, I said to him, purposefully just to wind him up.
I did!he messaged back.
Ah must have missed it,I tend to tune you out when you’re being smug.
Meanwhile, the more macabre side of the website had been trying to predict what kind of victim he would target next.
After lying on my bed in the shed for a while, I pulled open the drawer and reached for the ripped piece of emerald-green cloth from Greta’s jacket, gently caressing it in my hand for a moment.
I think some people, at this point, would have paused – wrestled with themselves, asking:Is this what Greta would have wanted me to do?
Greta would have told me to come to my senses, to go to the authorities and hand over everything to them. She was sensible like that.
She would have tried to be the voice of reason, as she so often was, the one telling the bartender to ignore my request for a chocolate milk vodka, or that getting a Justin Bieber tattoo at the height of his popularity fifteen-odd years ago was a terrible idea. But I didn’t have her to stop me from going astray anymore. I was on my own. No one to save me from my horrible, ridiculous stupidity.
I stayed awake most of Sunday night and watched the clock tick over to 7 a.m. Monday morning. I wasn’t entirely sure if I was expected at work or not after Chestgate. But knowing that stayinghome in the shed would likely result in me curling up into a ball of anxious panic for the rest of the day, I decided it was probably best to get out of the house. On my commute, I tried not to dwell on the fact that my imitation of a serial killer had made the homepage of nearly every website I’d checked. I mean, I had got what I wanted, hadn’t I? The police were investigating. But how long – if they hadn’t already – until they discovered it was just little old me? And more disturbingly, how was the real TellTale Killer taking this development? What was he thinking? Was he on TikTok, liking all the various conspiracy theories about himself.
I was lost in the swirling black hole of my thoughts as I walked up the street, a hundred or so metres towards the funeral directors at the very end of the road. I was vaguely hoping to find some semblance of mindfulness in the sound of the flowing water from the small creek running to my left until a voice, vaguely familiar, suddenly yanked me back into reality.
