Twelve Days Read online

  The sermon droned on. It seemed as if it was for Linda’s benefit. Or it could apply to all. ‘“Be not deceived”,’ the Reverend intoned, still with eyes closed, ‘“neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God.”’

  Emily nudged me in the ribs again. ‘He’s talking about you.’

  I placed my hand over her mouth.

  Reverend James’ point was clear. He was more determined than ever to achieve the goals of the retreat, to help us find our way back to God. And if a gruesome death would help us flee into the arms of Jesus, then praise the Lord, so be it.

  After the sermon, everyone retreated into their own meditative spaces. I stared into the fire where some pieces of paper, now ash, still retained their shape. I tried to make out the words, those dark squiggles against white ash.

  ‘Rafe, I need to have a word with you.’

  I turned to see Stephen’s pallid face. ‘Sure.’

  With a sly glance at the others, Stephen escorted me to the entrance hall, out of earshot of the group sitting in a large circle discussing the sermon. Suzanne followed me with her eyes. Looked anxious. So did Emily.

  Stephen led me upstairs with none of his usual diffidence. He did not hesitate for a moment, even when we passed through a stretch of darkened passageway where the lights had failed altogether. We came to a musty room across from the bedroom wings and next to the torture museum. He flicked the light switch and we stood in a library with heavy wooden shelves from floor to ceiling. I noted the ancient spines of the books tightly packed in rows, most of the titles in Italian or Latin.

  Stephen stood by the window and stared at white mist, grainy flecks of snow and sleet battering the pane like a meteor shower pummelling a spaceship. He said nothing. I waited as he shuffled, shot a glance back at the open door and continued his silence. So I began the conversation. ‘The police are not coming. Reverend James is going to keep us here day after day and subject us to sermons until we all repent. That is the plan. You’re in on it, so please tell me.’

  Stephen pushed his glasses back onto his nose, a nervous gesture from school days. ‘Reverend James feels that we needed to reassure everyone, to calm them, make them feel that everything is under control.’

  I stared at the blizzard. Snow had banked up the road, the walls, the hedges, unrecognisable as the place I had arrived at a day ago. ‘But isn’t it a little strange to do nothing about Glen’s death. Doesn’t that bother you?’

  Stephen was sweating. His metabolism was all wrong. But then he was wearing a huge sweater with the McDonald’s logo emblazoned on the front, a scarf wrapped around his throat and a balaclava on his head that covered his ears. He wiped sweat off his brow. ‘What can we do? The police will be here soon enough. After the blizzard is over, I’m sure…’

  ‘So why did you bring me here?’ I gestured at the furniture shrouded in cloths, wishing to return to the warmth of the lounge.

  He still spoke in a whisper. ‘I made the arrangements for the twelve days. Rafe, I overheard you and Emily talking,’ he nervously checked the doorway to make sure we were truly alone, ‘about Linda and Glen. About whether this was an accident or not.’

  My heart began to pound. Was I finally going to get some answers?

  ‘I think I know what happened. And you’re the only one I can tell.’ Stephen licked his lips. Darted his eyes at me and away. He looked like a reptile at this moment, with his pockmarked skin, his plump jowls, his middle-aged spread – a reptile in winter clothes.

  A floorboard outside the half-open library door gave a loud creak. Stephen turned white. He stood back, eyes wide in terror. ‘I have to go.’

  ‘It’s just the wind,’ I said.

  We listened. My heart beat faster.

  ‘Meet me in the guillotine room at dawn tomorrow morning. I have something I have to show you.’

  He adjusted his scarf and peered into the dark corridor, up at the ceiling. ‘And please, Rafe, don’t tell anyone what I said.’

  ‘You haven’t said anything,’ I hissed. ‘Nothing that makes sense anyway.’

  I chased after him, but Stephen had disappeared down the hallway. Returning to the library, I browsed the collection of books, shaken and puzzled.

  The titles were not reassuring. Medieval Torture. The History of the Inquisition. The Garrotte. French Executions.

  My mind stuck on the words Stephen had said. I think I know what happened. …made the arrangements for the twelve days. The question was, what had he been asked to do? And, more to the point, who had asked him? What had frightened Stephen into silence?

  A voice from the doorway called out, ‘Hey, Rafe? That you?’

  Startled, I turned to see Suzanne moving into the light cast by the window. Ghostly flecks of sleet reflected onto her face.

  My heart picked up its pace. I checked the darkened corridor where Stephen had fled. ‘Were you… Did you just overhear my last conversation?’

  Suzanne’s hand fluttered to her cheek. ‘What conversation?’ She closed the door behind her and strolled towards me. Her hair was loose, falling over her shoulders and face. ‘Rafe, you were always the confidante.’ She placed a hand on my sleeve, so icy that I felt it through my clothes.

  ‘You’re cold,’ I said, resisting the urge to rub warmth back into her hands.

  In the light, she looked sly. ‘Cold hands, warm heart.’ Then her expression reverted to eyebrow-knitted fear. She pushed closer to me. ‘Rafe, I’m scared.’

  ‘Of what?’ I said, stepping away from her.

  ‘There is something you should know… about Glen. And me.’

  ‘Glen and you?’

  She nodded. ‘When we arrived here, Glen said he needed to talk to me urgently.’ She bit her lip.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘He left the Church on a bad note. For years he didn’t speak to me. I was sure he hated me.’ She tossed her hair back out of her eyes. ‘But then he… started sending me emails. Love letters. They were obsessive and I told him to stop. So I was pleased that when I arrived here he said we should talk. I came to this retreat partly because this would be a chance to get things sorted out.’

  I had a sense she was lying. She looked uneasy when she said this. It didn’t seem a good enough reason for a Hollywood star with multiple past lovers and global attention to spend time here in this isolated castle with people she obviously did not care for. I was inclined to think that the Hollywood scandal had driven her here into hiding more than any desire to repair old relationships. ‘Glen was wearing your ring. He showed me.’

  She glanced at her wedding ring, looking puzzled.

  So she didn’t even remember the cause of all our teenage heartache. ‘No, that old ring you loaned out to us at school, that you used to hold poor boys in your power.’

  ‘That ring?’ She pouted, as if I had said something cruel about her. ‘No, I didn’t know that. He kept that old thing? I’d forgotten about it completely.’

  Again, I did not quite believe her. ‘He kept it for old time’s sake,’ I said, ‘or at least that’s what he told me.’

  ‘Rafe…’ She looked around, as if she now was wary of anyone hearing her, and drew me into the corner of the room by the end of the bookshelf. She looked fragile. She pushed close against me, so close I could feel her breath and her hair tickling my face. I had the absurd inkling we were about to become secret lovers, and she was going to kiss me. But no. She pulled a folded piece of paper out of her pocket and held it to her chest. ‘Rafe, it’s important that no one sees this.’

  I stared at her quivering lip.

  ‘Glen gave this to me before… he died.’

  My head spun. I took a step back from her. ‘So you’re the one who met him last night.’

  Her eyes were moons of fear. ‘What?’

  ‘Did you go to his room?’

  ‘No.�
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  I scrutinised her carefully in the twilight. How can you ever tell if a good actor is lying? ‘When did he give you this, then?’

  ‘He left it under my door after dinner. Read it.’ She thrust it at me and I held it towards the dim chandelier light.

  Suzanne

  Your life is in danger. In these twelve days of Christmas, I will do all I can to protect you. I will prove my love for you.

  Forever

  Glen

  I folded the piece of paper in half again. My fingers were trembling. I looked into her eyes, which were gleaming with tears. ‘Shit.’

  She hugged herself, a gesture that reminded me of her as a teenager. ‘I was going to talk to him today, but when he died, I was plunged into a spiral of terrible thoughts. I felt so awful. As if it was somehow my fault. I had to tell someone.’

  ‘Suicide? You thought suicide?’

  She wiped away a tear in a practised move I had seen in one of her movies. She was trembling. ‘It was something to do with me. I know that. He was obsessed.’

  ‘It was an accident. Don’t take that upon yourself.’ I didn’t believe for a moment that it was an accident, but I had to hide my suspicions. If she was involved, accusing her would only drive her deeper into her acting self. But I was not sure this was her acting self. Her eyes were wide and moist. Her lips quivering. She took the note back but held my hand. Her fingers were ice cold and trembling. ‘What did he mean? He said my life is in danger.’

  I squeezed her fingers and looked into her moist eyes. Glen had told me the same thing last night. But I didn’t want to tell Suzanne that. Not yet. It was cruel, maybe, but I did not trust anything she said. ‘I might snoop around, see what I can find in his room. See if I can find any clues as to what happened and why.’

  ‘Thanks, Rafe.’ Suzanne took a deep breath and pulled away. She walked to the window and stared out. The pane was opaque with condensation. ‘Is it just me,’ she said, ‘or does Reverend James seem just too comfortable with the fact that we hang around here, listening to sermons without doing anything about Glen?’ She drew a line on the window, and then rubbed a small porthole to peer out. But there was nothing to see, only whiteness outside. ‘I should have kept my goddamn cell phone.’

  She was right. I should have smuggled it into my pocket. But I was not to know how badly I would need it. I stood next to her and wiped another patch of window. ‘Well, if we’re to believe Danny, there’s no reception. But even so, there’s always the possibility of making an international emergency call. The fact that they all went down the mountainside with Glen, along with all his stuff, is suspiciously ridiculous. I looked outside for the phones but didn’t find any. Not one.’

  ‘Stephen said the wind took them all down the mountain. But I think that he did it.’

  I gave her a sharp look. ‘Stephen?’

  She pushed against me for warmth. Or consolation. ‘No, Glen. If he… committed suicide, then maybe he took the phones with him. Maybe he wanted to take the whole world down with him.’

  I put my arm around her and drew her close. She was shivering violently now. ‘That’s insane.’

  She hugged me tighter. ‘If I was still a believer, in their mindset, I’d also believe it was fate, or God. Or Satan.’

  ‘But you’re not a believer.’

  ‘I always was a sceptic. Always doubted.’ She stuffed the note back in her pocket. ‘We’d better go back. Rafe, you have to make sure Reverend James doesn’t do some mad thing.’

  ‘Believe me, I’m trying. But there’s much that doesn’t add up here.’

  She linked her arm through mine and we walked across the room, into the dim corridor and along to the women’s wing. When we reached her door, she pulled away and disappeared into her room, closing the door, leaving me with my pulse elevated and a thin layer of sweat forming above my lip despite the cold. I made my way down the stairs and back into the living room.

  After evening prayers, we made our way back to our individual cells, much like the monks and nuns of a bygone era.

  As the men walked upstairs, I realised one of us was missing. ‘Where’s Stephen?’

  Reverend James pointed to his closed door. ‘He wasn’t feeling too good and he went to bed early.’

  ‘Suzanne’s disappeared too,’ said Mike.

  I stilled the truth on my lips. ‘I imagine, like everyone, she’s gone to bed.’

  I lay awake listening to the storm besieging the castle. The fluorescent reflection of the snow gleamed bright through the window. The darkness of the castle was shadowed with demons and fear. It must have felt like this in medieval times, grim and austere.

  This fear, though, was real. A dead body lay crushed in the snow, left to freeze. Someone had written a note to Suzanne: Your life is in danger. Stephen had a confession to make. We were isolated with a mad preacher, coincidentally, or for more sinister unknown reasons. And his wife had had an affair with the man who’d just died.

  I tossed and turned. Eventually, I walked to the window and squiggled in the condensation on the pane. I debated whether to tell Emily I was meeting Stephen in the torture museum at dawn. But no. Whatever Stephen had to say was best kept between us, for now.

  Phrases replayed themselves in my head from the day before.

  Your life is in danger.

  Lock your doors.

  Made the arrangements for the twelve days.

  They were having an affair.

  Night in this castle, in this blizzard, was an eerie fluorescence from the snow reflecting through the window. Eventually I fell into a fitful slumber. But around midnight, a thump shook the room and startled me awake. My heart drummed in my chest and I lay there contemplating my meeting with Stephen until I dozed off again. When I woke a second time, the dim glow of light on the horizon told me a new day had dawned.

  Stephen had locked the door to the torture museum on the first day, but when I tried the handle, I found it open. The room was dark and cold and silent. A pungent, thick taste in the air mixed with a sick, sweet smell. Eight ghostly mannequins hung from the ceiling, the guillotine was silhouetted against the wall, and I could identify the various torture instruments by their shapes. Brazen bull. Catherine wheel. I shivered. It seemed a tad melodramatic of Stephen to want to meet here. Unless his intention was to frighten me.

  ‘Stephen?’ I called, my words echoing in the empty chamber.

  Liquid sunlight trickled over the horizon, too feeble to much improve visibility in this room of dire consequences. I fumbled for the light switch, scraping my knuckle against the rough wall, and found it. No light turned on.

  ‘Stephen?’ I could hear in my voice annoyance tinged with a sense of foreboding.

  In the pale dawn light, horror hit me like a freight train. There, in the shadows of the guillotine, lay a body. The head had rolled a metre or so away, leaving behind it a stream of congealed blood. Its glassy eyes were wide open, its mouth gaping as if in surprise. The guillotine blade was in its dock, having travelled the swift, deadly distance from the top.

  Instinct sent me sliding back into the shadows. I listened to the thumping of my heart as I scanned the room for signs of life, for sight of the murderer.

  The stench of blood made me want to retch.

  I felt a black presence behind me about to envelop and smother me. The inky shadows were alive, advancing on me. Footsteps, the clink of a knife against a railing. But as soon as I faced the shadows, they raced away, revealing the dancing, mocking demons of my imagination. I sucked in a lungful of air to calm my nerves, and with it, a thick perfume of rose and musk assaulted my senses. And I knew.

  A killer was in this castle.

  All our lives were in danger.

  I ran for the door, the dancing demons chasing me down the corridor.

  When I reached the living room, breathless with fear, I saw Mike and Danny huddled around the table, their Bibles open. Quiet Time was a time of prayer, meditation and Bible reading that had been insti
lled in every Twelve member since childhood. Sensing my presence, they lifted their heads.

  I clutched the door frame. ‘Where’s Reverend James?’

  Mike frowned. ‘He’s in his room praying.’

  ‘Rafe, you look w-white,’ said Danny. ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘Fetch him now,’ I demanded, ignoring his question. ‘And Danny, bring your flashlight.’

  The look on their faces declared their confusion, their innocence. But I trusted neither man. ‘The museum room! And someone get Reverend James. Now.’

  Under the twirling beam of the flashlight, the museum revealed demons fleeing into the walls, growing into giants as they escaped into the ceiling vents and out of the windows.

  ‘Rafe, tell us what you saw.’

  I shuddered and pointed to the guillotine. The combined beams from the flashlights held by Reverend James, Mike and Danny zeroed in and alighted upon Stephen’s severed head.

  ‘My God.’

  ‘Jesus.’

  I studied their faces in turn, trying to read their expressions, searching for guilt, shock. But they looked bewildered, afraid, horrified. Reverend James gripped his chest, took shallow breaths. ‘Lord Jesus,’ he kept repeating. Mike was silent. Danny’s mouth hung open.

  ‘Look! Shine your flashlight on his left hand.’ The body lay belly down and its outstretched hand clutched a card. Mike shone his flashlight on it and, though revolted, I stepped forward to study it in the light.

  The third day of Christmas.

  With a start, I realised that the thump I had heard last night had not been a slamming door; it had been the guillotine hitting the block of wood, severing the spinal cord, cutting through bone, in one clean movement. No screams. No struggles.

  Reverend James shuffled from the corpse. ‘Horrible. Hideous.’