Colour Series Box Set (59 page)

“Slow the fuck down Callum; it’s not a race to kill them all in a week!” He sounds a little irritated that I am off the plan a little. He is here to keep the program on track and to stop me from going crazy.

“This one wasn’t me. Sahib, my girlfriend killed him by accident it just fit with our plan.” I try to calm the irate man. He is a crucial part of moving things forward and I need him working with me. A wicked smile comes over my face. Yeah I have a fucking girlfriend. Even if I trapped her into it, she is mine.

“Callum any girl who dates you must be the fucking Devil. People are not poisoned accidentally either. Just slow the fuck down. We don’t want attention from cops or other robbers yet. Stick to the damn plan and that means the timeline too. No more bodies for a bit.” He is harsh and short and simply hangs up, Sahib doesn’t do small talk or personal at all he is a criminal that’s the end of his story. We are not friends we are associates, he knows about me because that’s his business not because he cares. We have a very lucrative deal in place and he needs me. Alive. His men will chop Joel’s corpse into small pieces and have it delivered to his mother.

Shannon stays silent through the phone conversation and the ride to the Iona district where we will be choosing from three very overpriced properties to pretend to live in. Houses here baffle me, in Cape Town everything is new, modern polished and cheap. Here things are old historical, manky and fucking expensive. For the price of one of these homes, I could have a mansion on fucking Table Mountain or in Camps Bay ten times the size brand new and get change! I hate this place.

An old lady in her sixties meets as at the first house, she introduces herself as May, my realtor. Who knew I had such a thing? She rambled on about how she found my brothers their homes and was so excited to be showing me homes in such a sought after part of town. Whatever this place is horrendous doesn’t matter where in town I am, it will not feel right so I might as well get the best I can afford. I certainly have no shortage of funds.

Shannon stays silent just nods at the frumpy old lady with her smeared pink lips and follows us around. The first home is a semi-detached that won’t work for me; my neighbours are way too close - they can see and more importantly hear things. I would like to move to a farm in the countryside right now, but that won’t be practical or fit in with my family. Shannon’s heels click on the floor behind me reminding me of her presence as I walk through the old, stale and definitely dated home. We get to the kitchen when I stop the woman rambling in front of us.

“This isn’t the house May, I don’t want a semi, I don’t really want neighbours and it’s ugly.” She snaps her mouth shut in utter shock not quite knowing what to say to me. After a few stutters, she replies. “Shall we move onto the next property then?” Her expression is one of nerves, she is afraid of me, or scared of something.  Is that not what I just said? I have no patience for this shit.

“Yes May, let’s.” I sarcastically reply earning the first reaction all morning from Shannon as a stupid smile toys with her pretty pink lips and she shakes her head at me. She doesn’t hate me for what I did to her last night. She is not afraid of me, but she should be. She seems comfortable which is a terrible lapse in judgement.

As we walk back out the front door of the home that we won’t be buying I snake, my hand into hers, I am drawn to her and I shouldn’t be. I want to be tender and gentle so she won’t kill me and that thought has me confused. Most of all, I want her to be mine and not just for appearances or because her life depends on it. I like what we were together this morning and I rarely like anything or anyone! This is dangerous, the thrill of that danger makes me want her even more.

She doesn’t pull her hand away or even look at me, just accepts it and walks beside me back to the car where I open the door and help her in. I slide in beside her and we follow the realtor’s shitty little hatchback to the next house a few blocks away. This one looks more promising but familiar. I have been here. I feel the ice from my past here. It’s detached and has a yard, it’s a corner stand and no one lives across the road. There is an old park where kids play; where I played.  I see a smile on her face from the corner of my eye, this is the house. Let us see what the inside has to offer. This home has my pulse racing and I know I have been here before. It is very grey here as if the colour has washed out of everything over time. I shudder with a cold shiver of dread but I am pulled into the house because it made her smile. It made her seem human for just a moment.

The fat little lady scurries to the door to open it before we can even get out of the car. The weather is turning shit and the wind blows her grey hair and floral skirt around making her look more ridiculous than she already did. As I help Shannon up the sidewalk, she whispers to me softly “I like this house, I have since I was a little girl. Do you remember who owned this house Callum?”  Her voice is soft, but there is a shiver of something in it. “Your brother will not be happy if you buy this house, I am not sure why she is showing you, it must be a mistake?” Now my interest in the house is even higher, I would love to piss my brother off.

“No, I don’t. Who lived here?” I don’t play with small talk I know I should remember, but I don’t. Shannon’s eyes lock on mine and the green is full of naughty playfulness now. “It was the Spillane house, the bosses house it has been empty for years, Mick should have taken it over but he ran away with the rest of them.” She smiles at me, knowing that I am going to want it more now. My Ma lived in this house. My heart sinks I know why I remember this house, my Ma died here too. I don’t have clear memories. I was too young, but the door, the windows and blood flash back into my mind. This is the ghost house of my childhood, the house where my nightmares were made and my monsters were born. “Why do you like it so much Shannon?”  Her smile turns wicked. This is the place where I became a villain. I need to know why she likes it so much.

“Because it’s beautiful. Beautiful and forbidden.” Her answer describes the house but also her. We step in the door and the empty darkness surrounds us, the utilities are off and there is stagnant mess everywhere. It’s like a museum no one ever visited, the museum of my past where death hangs over the doorway.

May is waiting for us with a torch. “It is the most expensive of the listings and needs the most work done but you will be pressed to find such a property available. It has been vacant for many years now.” She mutters again. Her voice is like nails on a chalkboard and it grates on me, what an irritating little lady.

“Who owns this house now May?” I ask purely to toy with her - I already know the answer to my question. “It’s part of a trust, the executors have been trying to sell it for years.” My smile is hard to hide. It never occurred to me to find out such things before. There are aspects of our lives we choose to ignore, to bury, to pass onto others. “Thank you May, this is the house, but I am afraid there will no sale in it for you. It’s already my house and you can tell whichever brother put you up to this I failed the test.” Her face drops with fear, she knows who we are and that I am not a man to be messed with, but she did this anyway. In her defence, I just got a million pound house for free and pissed my whole family off. I may keep her – for now.

Shannon looks confused as I drag her out of the building without looking any further than the hallway. “My Ma was a Spillane, so you can wipe that look off your face I handed the trust to lawyers years ago trying to ignore anything that would upset my father. Now we have a house, a beautiful forbidden ghost house.” She looks almost as happy as I feel about pissing my family off.  May, however, seems defeated as she walks back to her silly little car.

The wind whips Shannon’s silky fiery red hair around her face as we walk slower now to my car. I hold her hand again she doesn’t react at all. She is small next to me, but that does nothing to stop feeling the danger that oozes from her. I should run away or kill this woman not move into a ghost house with a ghost. I am letting the madness win. Living in the ghost house is an awful idea. I will never keep my demons from coming out to play inside that house. But they have a new toy to play with. Just like the beautiful forbidden house she is mine.

I plan to be in Glasnevin for the next eighteen months so we might as well make the most of it. I will have to house renovated, restored and livable as soon as possible. They can have a month to get it ready.

Right now I need to pretend to be sad that my brother and nephew are dead and act like I fear for my own life. I may actually need to if I keep Shannon.

THERE ARE CERTAIN PLACES that are imprinted on your brain, the images will always remain even if you try to forget. As a little girl, the Spillane ghost house held my imagination every time I passed by. I wanted that house, in my little girl mind, it was my mansion, my castle it was beautiful and big and forbidden. It was also dark and eerie and filled with ghosts of mobsters past. I imagine being a princess looking out the upstairs window over my imaginary kingdom. As a young teenager, I saw myself there with a handsome man that loved me, love the illusion that I never found anywhere. Also, this place carried
that
name – Spillane the one that caused all of this so long ago. The name that gave birth to my urges and compulsions. The name my father just couldn’t ignore.

My friends and I tried to sneak into the house once. I remember the trouble we were all in, I had been grounded for a week and lectured on how I was never to go near that place. It only made the house appeal to me even more. Forbidden things always call to our most basic desires. Maybe that’s why I want Callum so badly, he is like the apple on the fucking tree tempting me to sin.

Now my ghost house is Callum’s house, the villain, who has turned my neat, orderly world upside-down in a matter of days, now owns the home I always dreamed of. Callum has made it quite clear that I will not be let out of his sight, even now he hovers close. He is laying his claim to me; a very dangerous thing to do.

I am not a crazed killer who will kill on a whim, I have a cycle just like a true sociopath, seeking out a man to date, luring him in, watching him, planning calculating. I have this grey haze that takes over my brain and only when he pushes the wrong buttons during sex does the mist go black and I need to kill him. Sometimes I keep them around for weeks or months others last only a few days. Then cool off and the grey is gone, but it always returns and I start to cycle again. When I cycle, I cannot think straight, function correctly past my goal.  The rest of the time I blend in, the beautiful doctor with shady connections and no real life beyond her job. The doctor who is owned by the mob, imprisoned by her secrets and too pretty to be single. A serial killers cycle is out of their control, it comes over us and we can’t stop it once it starts, it has a beginning, middle and an end. It only ends when someone dies.

Just after Cassie died, I started to date Neil’s friend he was a man, not a boy and too old for me. I suffocated him in his sleep with my pillow. Neil saw me, he was there, he watched from a dark corner. After I was done he, cleaned up the mess I had made and kept my secret. He owned me from then on. We were already connected in the depravity of that night four years before and now I killed his friend. The night when he held me down and his Pop and five others raped me in front of my laughing father. The men had mocked Neil when he wouldn’t take his turn with me. He knows that night was the trigger of this unstoppable urge, the compulsion to kill. He held me down and looked into my eyes as my soul turned from bright and young to grey and used. Then he waited until I was just a little bit better and raped me, he had to have his turn. That rape shattered me and started what became my kill cycle.

As I sit on the bench in the quiet of the cemetery, I can breathe a little. I feel just okay here. I am not hiding from my father of remembering what happened. My body is slowly healing and it doesn’t hurt to pee today. I fidget with the hem of my school skirt and stare at the antiquated headstones in front of me. The one with a statue of a weeping angel fascinates me. I let a stray tear escape, residual sadness of what I lost is pulled out by the mourning angel. Neil sits down on the bench next to me and I recoil in fear, he is the monster that pinned me to the floor as my innocence was brutally torn from me. He stared into my eyes as it happened over and over again. The bellowing laughter of my father and the others is crushing my dignity and with it my heart. Neil is a monster just like them.