Daniel

Although it is a picturesque vision of tranquillity, my town has a staggeringly high suicide rate. It used to be the case that we could blame the anomaly on the Frieda Reagan Memorial. You know; another violent sociopath decided to end it all rather than adapt to his life within the Hexagon, that sort of thing. Since the facility is now closed we really have no excuse.

Perhaps it is the loneliness and isolation that drives people over the edge. Perhaps it is the constant onslaught of rowdy, ignorant tourists. Perhaps it is the drugs in the water. Who can say? Regardless of why, the fact remains that a great many people would rather kill themselves than live here any longer than necessary.

For the most part we, as a community, are content to acknowledge the fact but to never speak of it, much like the family secrets your parents will never tell you. In the early 1980’s, however, something happened that nearly made the entire world aware of our situation.

In 1983 we were visited by a young man purporting to be from the psychology department at Oxford University. The gentleman, one Daniel Willis, said he had heard of the town’s suicide rate and that he could not let it go unexamined. Willis said he had resolved to study our problem and implement a solution should one present itself.

The amateur psychiatrist spent a little over a month in town, speaking to as many people as he could, particularly families who had recently experienced a loss. The precise nature of the study varies depending on who you ask, but one thing is constant: Willis would always ask to take a copy of the deceased’s suicide note wherever such an eventuality was possible. Daniel left town as soon as his research was complete, assuring us that he would contact us when his project was finished.

Almost a year passed and the townsfolk had all but forgotten about the psychologist. We all assumed he had lost interest in us or found a more lucrative project to pursue. We were proven wrong on the day an unassuming parcel arrived at the mayor’s office.

Inside the parcel was the proof for a book entitled ‘Goodbye, cruel world’, an anthology of 176 suicide notes, printed exactly as they had been found – viscera and all. Each note was prefixed with the deceased’s name, the date, time and method of their suicide, and, in a display of particularly poor taste, explicit descriptions of the state the bodies were found in.

There was no moral or political force driving the book. It did not contain anything of psychological or sociological benefit. It was simply a book made by a lazy, greedy tourist in order to make money off other people’s misfortune. The book was immediately disowned by the town and the proof was condemned to the furthest reaches of the Hexagon’s library, where not even the town’s most depraved minds would find it.

Since its induction into the Hexagon’s literary canon, ‘Goodbye, cruel world’ has been read by precisely two people. The first, Patient 209495-D, was a paranoid schizophrenic who was convinced that he had died and nobody had told him. He read the book hoping to find his farewell note.

The second, Gregory Hulme, was a warden in the facility’s north-easterly wing. He read the book to see if it contained any clues as to why Patient 209495-D hung himself as soon as he had finished reading it.

It is not known whether Hulme found any clues as to why Patient 209495-D committed suicide. Before he could begin writing up his report, Hulme stabbed himself in the neck with his pen until he bled to death.

Given that the book was now accountable for two deaths, the Hexagon’s director advised it be removed from the library. Curiously, the tome was not destroyed. Rather, it was placed in a safe in the Hexagon’s administrative block, hidden from prying eyes.

It is a shame that nobody of any import has seen the book since it was locked away, because it makes for a truly fascinating read; especially since it continues to update itself to this day. Every time someone in town commits suicide you can be sure that they will receive an entry in the book chronicling their name as well as the date, time and method of their death. Continuing the tradition started by Daniel Willis each entry contains a brief description of the body and a facsimile of the suicide note.

Of the newer entries, my favourite has to be the very earliest, simply because it is so very different from all the others. While the main body of the book contains trashy, hackneyed writing straight out of some tacky pulp fiction novella, the first additional entry is uncharacteristically pure.

There is no information regarding Entry 177. There is no name attached to it, no date or time indicating when the author died, nor any suggestion of how they died. There is only a single line of text; a short and sweet entry that reads “My apologies.” It is signed, simply, “D.”

Lucian

The image of the tortured artist collapsing under the weight of their own genius is an enduring stereotype that has a strong basis in reality. Everybody knows how Van Gogh cut off his ear, how Hemingway shot himself or how Janis Joplin overdosed on drugs. Certainly less well known is the fate of one of our local artisans; Patient 249126-E.

In a previous life he was known as Lucian Van Der Geiste and, like many who come to live in the Hexagon, he was a thoroughly abhorrent man. Unlike many who come to live in the Hexagon, Lucian’s loathsome nature stemmed, not from his psychoses, but the detestable aura of smugness that permeated his every action.

Lucian was an artist, you see, and he was so proud of his abilities that he was very quick to correct anyone who would suggest otherwise. “Any buffoon can push paint around a board,” he would say, “but it takes a genius like moi to create art.”

You may think that Lucian’s arrogance was an unwarranted front, nothing but a means of distracting people from his work or generating notoriety. You would be wrong. For all his bravado Lucian was a very talented painter and he made a living selling his works to tourists who enjoyed the quaint, rustic charm of the little artist from port nowhere.

While Lucian’s talent was without question, his range left a lot to be desired. In fact, every one of the hundred and twenty-five paintings he produced was a variation on a single theme; the view from one of the many windows of the Van Der Geiste house, punctuated by a cat sitting on the windowsill and surveying the scene.

The vigilant cat was Lucian’s pet; a small, muddy-red tabby named Sol. The name was derived from King Solomon, the Israeli monarch from the Bible. A biblical name was a curious choice since Lucian was an atheist, claiming he was far too intelligent to put stock in such childish fairy stories. Regardless, the cats name was Solomon and he could always be found in Lucian’s house, keeping watch over any potential misdeeds.

Lucian’s downfall came at the hands of a local gang of toughs. The youths had grown tired of Van Der Geiste’s bragging and conspired to ruin his latest work by kidnapping Solomon and holding him for a hefty ransom.

The plan was executed flawlessly. One youth interrupted Lucian’s evening constitutional and held him up with mindless flattery while two accomplices broke into the Van Der Geiste house and stole Solomon away in a hessian sack. It was the perfect crime.

There was, however, one small hitch; Van Der Geiste did not mourn the loss of his cat. He did not call the police, he did not read the ransom note and he made no attempt to contact the kidnappers to negotiate Sol’s return. Rather, Lucian entered his workshop, stood at his easel and drank a half measure of absinthe before proceeding to gouge his eyes out with a size six flat brush.

Having successfully blinded himself Lucian turned his attentions back to his one true love: painting. He cast his current, half-finished canvas aside and began anew, working with a steely determination the likes of which he had never felt before. In fact, Van Der Geiste’s new found resolve was so great that he did not stop painting until he was discovered by his sister almost a week later.

Upon making the gruesome discovery, Ms. Van Der Geiste pried her brother away from the canvas and had him rushed to the hospital for treatment. It was not long before the doctors decided the artist was beyond help and shipped their latest problem off to the Hexagon.

Patient 249126-E’s psychosis was particularly interesting, because it appears to have come from absolutely nowhere. Losing a pet can be upsetting, yes, but not to the point of self enucleation. Further, an examination of the Van Der Geiste family history revealed no other instances of mental instability. This lack of clues, coupled with an unprecedented level of apathy, meant that the prodigious artist’s plight was never adequately explained. To that end, it is a shame that nobody took the time to examine Lucian’s final picture.

Although the handiwork is quite shaky and messy, understandable given the artists newfound handicap, the painting is another variation on the standard Van Der Geiste theme. In this instance, “Untitled #126” depicts the view through the windows of Lucian’s workshop. However, where there should be cat sitting on the windowsill and intently staring out, the painting shows the demon that had been sitting on the window ledge, intently staring in.

252216-E

I have a confession to make, dear reader; I have not been entirely forthcoming with you. Let there be no misunderstanding, I have not lied to you. I have not invented my tales or embellished the details, merely recounted events as they happened. I have, however, withheld certain truths from you. One such truth, and one my family will strenuously deny, is the fact that I have a sister.

The reason my family do not acknowledge her existence is likely because she is not the kind of person you want to admit to knowing, let alone being related to. I imagine you would do the same if she were part of your family.

I have met my sister precisely three times. Each meeting lasted a few, brief minutes, so I cannot say I know a great deal about her. Even then, the things that I do know about her are largely inconsequential – hair and eye colour, height, weight and so on. The only important or relevant thing I know about her is her name – Patient 252216-E.

In order to learn how she came to live in The Hexagon we must first learn of another member of my family; my grandfather, Walter. Walter was a very strict man, but he was also a very kind man. He was the sort of person who would push you to breaking point, but only because he wanted to see you succeed.

Walter was also a very ill man. He had several minor health issues, which were only exacerbated by the fact he was a chain smoker, and had been for most of his life.

Walter’s health and habits eventually caught up with him and, some days after my sisters twelfth birthday, he had a stroke. Although it was only a mild stroke, the doctor was not very optimistic about Walter’s future. He told us in no uncertain terms that my grandfather was on his last legs and that it would be for the best if the old man settled his debts, made his peace and revised his will – That way his earthly business would be concluded and we would have less to worry about when he passed on.

As soon as the doctor made mention of the word ‘will’, the wheels in my sisters’ head began to turn. She devised a stratagem that, while lacking in moral fibre, would yield enormous financial gain.

She reasoned thus: Walter would be revising his will and, since he had lost some of his mental facilities, he would distribute his wealth based on the here and now, rather than things past. Therefore, if my sister spent time with Walter, he would recognise this and give her an exceptionally large pay-off when he eventually passed away.

Initially my sister was content to simply visit Walter before or after school, just to check on how he was doing, but after a while she began to spend whole days with him. These days turned into weeks and, once her truancy had gotten her expelled from school, she devoted all her time to being with Walter, only returning home to pick up new clothes.

The most tragic part of my sister’s reprehensible scheme was not that she was robbing a lonely old man, but that Walter genuinely believed that my sister loved him, cared for him and wanted to spend time with him. If he did know then he certainly did not show it, since he doted on her every bit as much as she doted on him.

Something that brought my grandfather no end of joy was putting my sister to bed. Every night that she spent with him, he would tuck her in, kiss her forehead and sit by her bed, singing to her until she fell asleep. I will grant you this is a fairly unorthodox practice since very few twelve year olds need lullabies to help them sleep, but Walter simply did not care. After all, my sister was doing something for him; she deserved something in return.

Walter’s lullaby of choice was a song called “I’ll get by (as long as I have you).” Rather than try to explain the songs meanings or give my own interpretation of the prose, allow me to recite some of the songs lyrics:

This old world was just as sad a place for me as could be.

I was lonely and blue.

This whole world then changed to paradise for me, suddenly.

Why? Because I met you.

The lyrics continue in the same vein for several verses. I am sure you get the idea what kind of a song it is.

“I’ll get by” held great sentimental value for my grandfather since it had been with him for his entire life. It was the song that inspired him to learn to play the cornet as a child, it was the song that he sang with his company when fighting in the trenches and it was the song he sang to his girlfriend when his girlfriend became his wife. He was more than happy to give the song even more emotional significance by singing it to his precious granddaughter.

But things change, as they do, and Walter’s health eventually got the best of him. He passed away a few months after his stroke. Fairly uncharacteristically for my town, it was not gruesome or prolonged, unwarranted or vengeful. In fact, father always joked that since Walter had lived in this town all his life, served in World War 2 AND spent fifty-seven years married to my grandmother he would probably consider it an insult to die in his sleep.

The funeral came and went without issue and some days later it was time for the will reading. You would be surprised by how many people crawled out of the woodwork to see what they would receive. To give you an idea of just how many people turned up, my grandfather was the third of twelve children and all of his siblings were there, as were their children, their grandchildren and so on.

Even more amazing than the number of people who turned up was the fact that everybody present received something. Even I inherited something and I was barely a few months old at the time.

As the reading went on my sisters’ hope began to fade. She was visibly disgusted with every aunt, uncle, niece, nephew, cousin or sibling that got mentioned, since they were taking money and possessions that she thought, no, that she knew she deserved.

In spite of her self-righteous outrage my sister was the last person to get mentioned in the will. An amendment to the will, made just days before Walter passed away, bequeathed unto my sister, “Everything she deserves”.

My sister was furious. Walter had given her a beautiful, heartfelt sentiment and a Zen moment of peace, and everyone else in the room agreed. But heartfelt sentiments have no monetary value and Zen moments of peace cannot be exchanged for shoes or clothes or make-up. She was incensed that, having spent all that time around Walter, he had not given her some huge cash pay-off.

That night, as she lay in bed, my sister was attacked by one of the most cruel and spiteful monsters of all: perspective. She was angry that she had spent all that time with my grandfather and had nothing to show for it, but she also felt ungovernably sad for precisely the same reason.

For all the time she had spent with Walter the only things she knew about him were the most basic, cursory details. She could not remember any of his stories, jokes, games or anything along those lines. The only thing she knew for sure was that Walter’s favourite song was a scratchy gramophone recording of some woman singing, “I’ll get by”.

Given the mixture of anger and remorse that was plaguing her, it is hardly surprising that my sister had trouble getting to sleep that night. As the hours rolled by she realised there was nothing else for it – she began to sing to herself. Her lullaby of choice was, of course, the delightful tune, “I’ll get by (As long as I have you).”

It worked. By the time she was halfway through the first verse she was back in the guest bedroom at Walter’s house. She was warm, comfy and safe in the knowledge that he was sat beside her bed, keeping a watchful eye on he.

My sister was so wrapped up in her own little world of self-denial that she failed to realise she was not the only person who was singing. In fact, it was only when she paused to take a breath that she heard Walter’s voice, singing a beautiful, harmonious accompaniment to her rendition of the song.

The ghostly singing refused to stop; when Walter reached the final line of the last verse, he simply began the song again. And again. And again.

Perhaps understandably, my sister did not take too well to being haunted. Very few people do, really. My sister did better than most, however, since she realised she could dismiss the spectral voice by drowning it out with her own voice.

Thus, from that point on, my sister devoted every waking moment of her life to making as much noise as she possibly could. Of course, my sisters’ melodious malady was cute to begin with, but it quickly became intolerable. Attempts to send her back to school failed when she was termed a disruptive influence, guidance counsellors refused to see her when their methods failed and, eventually, even my parents wanted nothing more to do with her; all because she would not shut up out of fear that she would begin to hear Walter once again.

When conventional methods failed to fix my sister, my parents did the only thing they could and committed her to The Hexagon. I would like to say they had her institutionalised as a means of getting her some help or trying to fix her, but, really, they simply wanted some peace and quiet. Come to think of it, this is probably why I am so softly spoken; I would much rather remain quiet than spend the rest of my life here. But I digress.

My sister remained in The Hexagon until it closed, at which point she was relocated to a facility elsewhere in the country. As far as I know she is still alive and is still singing in order to drown out the musical spirit following her around. Of course, I could be wrong and she may have died some years ago without my knowledge. Frankly, I am not in any particular hurry to find out.

Do not think I am alone in feeling a total lack of interest regarding my sisters’ fate; nobody else in my family cares. In fact, you can ask any other member of my family and they will all tell you the same thing: I am an only child and I always have been. In fact, mother has gone so far as to destroy my sisters’ birth certificates, baby pictures, anything that would give any hint that she ever existed.

But I know better. I know she’s real. I know I’ve seen her. And I know the selfish little wretch got everything she deserved, just like Walter said.

Some of you may wish to hear the song that led to Patient 252216-E’s breakdown. I shall oblige:

Jeremy

The philosopher Nietzsche once said, “A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything”. Clearly the staff in charge of The Hexagon had never heard this quote, since a large portion of the North-North-Easterly wing was used as a magnificent chapel.

For many years the gentleman who ran the chapel was a man named Father Jeremy. Jeremy was a man who could not look more like a priest if he tried; he always wore a wide brimmed hat and a long clerical robe. His eyes were always hidden behind thick, bottle-bottom glasses, and his pale, bony face looked like it had been chiselled into a permanent frown.

Father Jeremy acted like a man of the cloth, too. Specifically, he acted like the stereotypical ‘Angry preacher man’ that you might see on TV. Whenever he preached it was always about hellfire and brimstone, and if you enjoyed something that he thought was wrong then by god he had no qualms with letting you know.

Perhaps the most infuriating aspect of Jeremy’s personality was that he did not have the common courtesy to keep his pious lunacy confined within The Hexagon’s walls. No, he convinced himself that he could do a much better job of spreading the good word if he took his preaching into the church in the middle of town. And onto our streets. And into our homes.

I did not put much stock in the old man’s ramblings. In fact, I think that is how I have managed to stay comparatively sane while surrounded by lunatics. Mother, however, was behind the father’s teachings one hundred percent, and regularly invited him over for religious guidance.

Given the frequency with which el padre visited our house I was forced to listen to more of his incessant droning than any one person reasonably should. Every time he visited he would remind me over and over again that I was filled with sin and succumbing to terrible vices, and that I had best change my ways lest I end up in the lake of fire.

Jeremy spent most of his time telling the townsfolk just how wicked and sinful they were, both during his sermons and during home visits. Occasionally, though, he would stop trying to run our lives and speak of other religious matters. One of the topics he visited the most was that of angels.

He talked about guardian angels; ethereal beings that watch over certain people or places to make sure good people are kept safe. He also talked about another rank in the celestial army – Assailing angels.

Father Jeremy told us that both kinds of angel exist to keep the world a better place; they merely had a different modus operandi to one another. That is, while guardian angels assisted the good, assailing angels did just the opposite and sought out the wicked, punishing them for their misdeeds. He made it clear that assailing angels were not bad or malicious entities, not at all. You see, while their behaviour would be considered barbaric by human standards, they are angels who only punish people who truly deserve it.

According to the minister, the way it works is like this: Everybody has an angelic counterpart somewhere in the world and every time a person does something bad their angel takes a step closer. Whether you commit a minor sin like taking the last cookie or a major crime like murder, each wrongdoing will bring your enforcer one step closer. Tim would always end his story here and finish with, “And when they catch up to you? Boy, I tell you what!”

I was, and indeed still am, convinced that the “I tell you what” angle was merely the old man’s way of ending a fairy tale without actually ending it. To me it was a religious version of, “But it was all a dream.” I was so convinced that the reverend was spouting nonsense that I attempted to trip him up by asking him to continue his story. Specifically, I asked him what would happen if my assailing angel ever caught up with me.

He told me that my angel would kill me. If I continued staying out past curfew or kept neglecting to tidy my room, my angel would find me and end my life as punishment for my vile, wicked misdeeds.

It would be nice if he had finished his story with my unjust demise and left it at that. But, like many preachers, Jeremy was as much a showman as he was a clergyman and he continued his tale.

He told me that, when my angel caught up with me, she would wrap her hands around my throat and push her thumbs up under my chin. The grip would be gentle at first, so soft I would barely notice it, but with every additional sin I committed the grip would get tighter. If I continued to commit heinous misdeeds then the grip would get so tight that it would crush my throat and I would asphyxiate. And it would serve me right for being such a wicked, sinful little child.

As if things were not bad enough, Jeremy capped the whole story off by saying there was no way to undo the strangling. I could stop doing bad things, of course, but there was nothing I could do to stop my heavenly stalker from putting her hands around my throat and choking the life out of me. I would be a marked sinner the rest of my days and everyone who met me would know it.

Over the years Father Jeremy told this story time and time again. With each retelling, however, my punishment became steadily more severe. The basic principle remained the same, of course, but the way in which it would be executed became more prolonged and more brutal.

I think Tim was trying to scare me, and indeed everyone else, into believing him. Really, though, the scariest part of Tim’s stories was the voice he used to deliver them. He was a smoker, you see. At least, I used to think he was, given that he had a smokers voice; a deep, scratchy voice that was a mere semblance of what he used to sound like.

As the years went on and his stories became more and more farfetched his voice became worse and worse. His once scratchy voice became more strained and painful as he got older. Eventually it sounded like he had to painfully force each word out as it came.

Mercifully, both for his voice and my sanity, Father Jeremy died some years ago when he choked on a fish bone. Ordinarily this would be the end of my tale, but this time we have one additional point of note. When the surgeons came to harvest Father Jeremy’s organs, his lungs were undamaged. In fact, they were in such pristine condition they went to a young man a few states over as soon as they were ready for transportation.

Apparently I was wrong when I said Father Jeremy had a smokers voice; the man had never lit up in his entire life. So if it was not his lungs making his voice rasp I wonder what was. But what do I care? He was nothing but a crazy old man who tried to control people with crippling fear, so I tend not to think about him too much. And neither should you.

Nathaniel

Inscribed on my fathers’ tombstone are the words, “I lived a good life, and I love you”. My family would like you to believe these were his final words. My family would like you to believe that he gasped them with his dying breath before ascending to Heaven in a death fitting the most noble king or valiant general. My family is lying.

The deceit is not due to some deep-seated shame or loathing, far from it. My father was an ex serviceman turned teacher, one of the best in town. He was admired, respected, even loved by many of the people who knew him. No, the reason for the phantom epitaph is the fact that nobody heard my fathers’ final words; he was found dead in his study having been shot in the left temple.

Myself, I cannot say for sure what his final words were, but I believe I have a fairly good idea. I believe he said, “All for you”.

I was nine years old when it happened. My parents had decided to uproot and start a new life somewhere else. My family is not known for doing things in half measures, and this time was no different. We relocated to the other side of the country, as far away as they could get from the quiet little seaside town I call my home.

Our new house was big. Really big. It was almost palatial. To a nine year old it was a dream come true; I was given free run of the house and I could play in any room I wanted. There was one exception to the rule – I was not allowed in my fathers study. The study was my father’s sanctum sanctorum, his fortress of solitude – a place where he could go to be alone with his thoughts (and, more often than not, a decanter of sherry).

Did I listen to the rule? Of course not. I used to sneak in there every few days to borrow a medical textbook or architectural journal; something to flip through in the hopes of becoming more knowledgeable, just like my father.

One morning I woke up particularly early. I needed to return the book I had borrowed and get a new one; doing so while my parents were asleep seemed like the perfect crime.

Apparently my father was already awake; as I perused the rows and rows of books he had in there, I realised I could hear him talking. He was not talking in the way that you and I would talk to one another – he was talking very quickly and very quietly. I feel bad saying as much, but it sounded like the kind of rambling you would hear from the man who spends his days standing on street corners, yelling at traffic.

I could not understand what he was saying; his words were unintelligible, almost like he was speaking another language. I figured he was reading a book to himself and saying the words aloud, or reading while ruminating on what his text meant. Now that I come to write that down I realise how ridiculous and clichéd it sounds, but that was the kind of scholarly thing I liked to imagine my father doing when I was that age.

Abruptly, he ceased. For a few moments I thought he had found me, but then I heard him talk again. He said three words, very slowly and very deliberately, “All for you.” Up until that point I had not been able to make out a single word that he had said, but these last three words were as clear as a bell. It was obvious, even to me, that father had meant for someone to hear those three words.

What followed next was a distinct sequence of sounds, identifiable by very few people. I heard someone prepare a revolver for firing. I heard them pull the trigger and I heard the loud click as the hammer fell on an empty chamber. There was an uncomfortable silence for a few seconds before my father sighed and spoke again, “One more day.”

I heard him take a seat and pour a glass of sherry. After a few seconds he began talking once again. This time, however, he was reading aloud from his book and I could understand every word.

Following the sequence of events I had heard, I had no desire to remain in the study any longer than was absolutely necessary. I hurried back to my bedroom and stowed the book before heading downstairs so I could go about my daily business. You might be wondering why I did not tell anyone about what I saw. I know I am.

There are two reasons why I remained silent. Firstly, I could not find my mother anywhere; she was missing from her usual haunts, so I can only assume she had stepped outside for a short while. Secondly, I was absolutely incapable of recapping what I had heard. As you will remember from some of my other tales, I am incapable of producing sound when I am scared, and this time was no different.

Thinking back, I had no reason to be scared. After all, there was no part of me that could fully comprehend what I had just heard. I was nine, I thought that people lived forever and nobody would ever kill themselves. Not really. Not my father.

Mother came out of hiding just as I was finishing breakfast. She told me that father had summoned me. I was to meet him in the study.

As I went to see him I was filled with a sense of dread. I was convinced had done something wrong and, while I could not remember what it was, he would be sure to punish me for it. Imagine my surprise when I arrived in his inner sanctum and he greeted me with a smile. He sat me in his favourite leather chair and paced back and forth as he spoke to me.

Father told me that somebody important needed to see him, and soon. He told me that he had the day free and that he wanted to spend time with me before he went to see the very important person who was waiting for him. He told me he had called my school and arranged for me to take the day off and that we were to leave as soon as I had changed out of my uniform.

I jumped at the chance. I think every nine year old would jump at the chance to play hooky, especially if their parents were in on it. I was ready and waiting by the front door in record time.

We left the house at eight o’clock in the morning, or thereabouts, and returned home at eleven o’clock at night. While we were together we did all kinds of things. He took me to the park, we had ice cream, we went to the cinema, we went exploring, he showed me how to spot various constellations and how to find my way home if ever I got lost. It was a truly amazing day, certainly one I will never forget. Most amazing of all was that, given the way we behaved, you would almost think that nothing was wrong. It got to the point that I thought I had dreamt the morning’s events and accidentally regarded them as truth.

The next day I learned that no, no I had not. Mother woke me up just after half past six in the morning and told me what had happened to my father. Or, rather, what my father had done to himself. Apparently father had shot himself with his service revolver while alone in his study. Mother had found him almost immediately after.

The police concluded that father had been planning his suicide for around a week before going through with it. He had circled the date on his calendar and crossed off the five days leading up to it. I imagine the fact he knew what was coming would be why he looked so calm and peaceful. Or at least as peaceful as a man can look when surrounded by his own blood.

Father’s body was turned over to the mortician on June the 9th, the same day he killed himself. The mortician was told to fabricate an epitaph and bury the body in the first available plot. Mother insisted that, due to grief, she would have nothing to do with the process.

Mother was so detached from things that she did not attend my father’s funeral. Nobody in my family did. Three people were there to witness the burial of the bravest, most intelligent man I have ever known. The first was the minister performing the ceremony. The second was a homeless drunk who spent time in the funeral home because it allowed him to stay out of the rain. The third was an unidentified young lady whose features were completely concealed by a black veil.

Rather than grieving, my mother insisted we spent our time at home, packing our belongings. We moved house again a few days later. This time we moved in the right direction: we went right back to our quiet, isolated, lonely, beautiful little nowhere town on the coast. To this day I am in the dark regarding why my parents chose to move, nor do I know why we returned so quickly. I asked my parents before, and after the fact, but the only answer I got was when we moved back here. Mother told me, “There was a complication. But we got over it”.

Levi

My town is a fairly quiet, boring place. It is one of those quaint, schmaltzy little tourist towns on the coast. I think that must be what sent us all mad.

Anyhow, because we thrive on outsiders and their business we have a lot of small, family owned restaurants and café’s. For a long while the most popular coffee shop was a small building near the harbour, a place called “Rose’s Garden”.

Like many places in town the building is now disused and has fallen into a state of almost insurmountable disrepair. All the tables, chairs and so on have been taken away and burnt and the hollow shell of a building is now home to nothing but one cat and sixty nine thousand, one hundred and five assorted bones.

In order to understand how a popular café turned into a derelict wreck we must start with its owner: a Japanese-English girl named Rose Jayne Elizabeth Gainsborough.

For the longest time Rose had wanted to open a café. She felt that, while it did not compare to being a police officer or a surgeon, she would be helping the community by bringing some modicum of comfort into peoples lives. She was granted her wish on her 25th birthday when her parents announced they had saved enough money to allow her to purchase a small building and start her business venture.

You may think it strange that Rose decided to open her coffee shop in a backwards little nowhere town like mine, but it was actually a very clever move. Around here even the bad tearooms can make enough money to get by and good ones can make an absolute fortune. While Rose did not make enough money to retire early or live a millionaire’s lifestyle, she did very well for herself, since it was not long before her little café became a popular haven for locals and tourists alike.

Rose’s Garden had a mascot – a small, muddy-red cat named Levi. Rose had always maintained that the name was not derived from Mr. Strauss, but was a contracted form of Leviticus, the third book of the bible. This was a fairly interesting choice of name, since Miss Gainsborough was not a religious girl in the slightest. Regardless, the cats name was Levi and he could always be found frequenting Rose’s café.

The seeds of the café’s downfall were sewn about a year after it had opened. One particular evening, after the shop had closed, Levi turned up by the shop’s back door, standing over a dead mouse. Levi’s behaviour was nothing out of the ordinary (after all, everyone understands the relationship between cats and mice) so Rose did what you, or I, or anyone else would do, and threw the mouse away with the rest of the days refuse.

The following morning, local news outlets were buzzing. At some point during the night a local man had been murdered. This murder was particularly troublesome since the police could not work out how it had been committed. The cause of death was easy enough to determine, the victim had been shot, but the problem came in figuring out how the procedure had been executed. All of the usual forensic tells were missing and it was almost as if the killer had appeared out of thin air, silently killed his victim, then vanished as quickly an mysteriously as he had appeared.

In spite of numerous protests from her parents, Rose opted to stay in town, rather than returning home. After all, a steady supply of caffeine is the first step towards successful crisis management.

A few days later the sequence of events repeated itself. Levi presented Rose with a dead mouse, Rose threw it away and someone was murdered overnight.

The second murder shared many traits with the first. While the cause of death was different (the victim had been stabbed, rather than shot) the circumstances surrounding the crime were virtually the same: there were no clues to indicate how the murder had been committed and no way of telling where the murderer had come from or gone to.

A few days later the sequence of events began again when Levi presented Rose with a dead mouse. Initially Rose was set to throw the mouse away, but something in the back of her mind told her not to.

Rose was an intelligent girl. She had a firm command of logic, reasoning and basic common sense. She knew there was nothing that could possibly link her cat to the murders and that it would be ridiculous to suggest anything else. But something in the back of her mind was screaming at her, telling her that if she threw away Levi’s latest gift, someone else would die. Her instinct was so strong that Rose decided to keep the animal in the back yard of the shop, just to see what happened.

Nobody in town died that night. To most people this would be due to the fact that murder is a fairly uncommon occurrence, especially in coastal towns like ours. Rose, however, believed that the lack of homicide was due to her accepting Levi’s gift. So strong was her belief that she kept the next mouse she was given. And the next. And the next. And the next.

As time went on and Rose amassed more and more corpses the crime rate plummeted. I will grant you that, in a community as small as ours, there is not a great deal of crime to begin with, but what little was happening ceased. Even petty crimes like vandalism, truancy and littering stopped as Rose’s collection grew larger.

Of course, Rose’s business suffered as a result. For one thing, the smell was ghastly and drove people away. The few customers that could stomach the foul odour found that Rose was now more concerned with where the next rat or bird would be coming from than she was with serving coffee. But Rose did not care what people thought. She was helping people; more people than she could possibly help by serving coffee in a harbourside tearoom. They just did not know it yet.

The point beyond which Rose’s worrying hobby turned into a dangerous obsession came about a month and a half after she had began hoarding the animals. Returning to her café from a shopping trip, she found that there was no new animal corpse waiting her return.

It did not take long for Ms. Gainsborough to find the culprit. One of her neighbours, one Mr. Barker, had taken Levi’s gift and thrown it in his fireplace. Mr. Barker’s actions were not malicious, of course; in fact it was just the reverse. He felt that dealing with the dead animal would be the right thing to do, rather than being ungentlemanly and making the lady sort it herself.

Understandably, Rose did not share Mr. Barker’s sentiments. Upon learning what happened to the day’s offering she had everyone leave her shop. She then bolted the doors, shuttered the windows, and sat by her radio, waiting for the news.

Nine hours passed. Then Rose heard the sirens wailing past her café. She heard the anchorman interrupt the scheduled broadcast to announce the fire downtown. She heard that the fire had consumed her boyfriend’s house. She heard the reports of the body, charred beyond recognition.

As Rose sat, trying to comprehend what had happened, Levi nuzzled against her ankle, purring contently. She picked up the cat and glared into his eyes. She wanted to kill the wretched animal. She knew that if she could shoot him or drown him or bury him, all her problems would be over and she would never have to look at an animal carcass ever again.

Before Rose could act, however, she heard a voice in the back of her mind. The voice was telling her that it was not the cat’s fault the situation had come to pass, and even if it were he could do more good if he was alive than if he was dead.

Suddenly, everything felt like a veil had been lifted. Rose knew what she had to do, and just how she could do it. She set the cat down and gave him a simple command, “All of them.”

From that point on Rose devoted all of her time to the animals Levi was bringing her. The pile of carcasses that was originally outside was moved indoors, and once inside the pile continued to grow at an astonishing rate. Initially Levi kept to the schedule of one animal per day, but with Rose’s encouragement, his gifts became more and more frequent. It got to the point that Levi was providing his keeper with one body every hour or so.

Rose’s dementia eventually took its told on her body. Given that she had stayed awake for six days straight it is no surprise to learn that she eventually succumbed to fatigue and collapsed.

When nobody had seen or heard from Rose for a number of days, people became worried and alerted the authorities. The police broke into the shop and found Ms. Gainsborough passed in front of her morbid collection. She was quickly transferred to the intensive care unit of our local hospital and kept under observation.

She awoke some days later and was met with the sight of her boyfriend waiting beside her bed. He explained everything: His apartment had burnt down because of faulty wiring, and the body they found inside was likely an unlucky burglar who could not get out in time. The two people who had been murdered on consecutive nights were killed by a local man, whom the police had caught and imprisoned. Everything that had happened had a sensible, logical explanation, and to suggest it was due to Rose and her dead animals was every bit as nonsensical as she, herself, admitted it was.

Rose was delighted to see her friend and relieved that things had returned to normal. When she was well enough to leave the hospital, however, she had herself committed to the Frieda Regan Memorial building. Ms. Gainsborough reasoned that she needed some degree of professional help for believing what she did about the animals she had been hoarding. Not only that, but she knew it would be a few months before her shop was in a fit enough state to reopen, so taking a short time out would probably help her.

The shop never re-opened. Rose found that she quite enjoyed living in The Hexagon and decided to remain there. While there she tended the facilities gardens, enjoyed visitation from her boyfriend, and led a quiet, peaceful life until the facility closed and she re-joined our little town.

As for the shop itself, the local council did all it could to try and make the shop reusable. The building was gutted, washed and refurbished, while the collection of animals was carted away and destroyed in various ways. It took a great deal of work, but the shop was ready in time for the tourist season, albeit with a new owner.

The work was futile, however, since tourism was absolutely dismal that year. In fact, it was about the only year in living memory when we didn’t really have a single tourist. I wonder what happened to them all.

Charlotte

As you can imagine, my town has two major exports. The first is tacky plastic souvenirs, sold to tourists who do not know any better. The second is certifiable lunatics. As with many things, this was not always the case.

In the 1950’s a local company calling itself Tooth&Nail Productions made and distributed 98 films. The movies were your standard grindhouse fare; bad scripts delivered by bad actors, caught by bad cameras on bad film. They were mostly an excuse for gratuitous nudity, foul language and violence.

Given that our town is fairly small and isolated from nearby communities every film made by Tooth&Nail Productions used the same stable of six or seven local actors. Each of these actors was convinced that they had enough talent to make it in Hollywood and that starring in classics such as “VIOLENCE is golden” or “Gold, Frankincense and MURDER” was merely some kind of thespian purgatory that would allow them to move on to bigger and better features.

Of course, none of the actors were good enough to break into Hollywood and they all returned to their old jobs when Tooth&Nail Productions stopped making films. The studio executives said that they stopped making movies due to budgetary reasons and a decline in public interest, but this is not entirely true. The real reason for the company’s demise was the murder of their most popular female lead (a young lady named Charlotte Hughes) and the studio’s inability to find a suitable replacement.

Whatever the reason, the company went bust and their catalogue of tasteless smut was very quickly forgotten by the majority of the townsfolk. The movies have festered in relative obscurity ever since, though they have maintained a cult following among collectors of old, esoteric film. Such is the dedication of said collectors that they have confirmed the whereabouts of 98 of the 99 movies created by Tooth&Nail Productions.

The 99th movie is somewhat puzzling. The people who ran Tooth&Nail Productions admit that the film was made, but have refused to discuss its content. Similarly, the movie catalogue for Tooth&Nail Productions includes 99 entries, though the final entry in the list is nothing more than the films working title, “Masterpiece XCIX”.

There are many theories as to why the executives are simultaneously open and secretive regarding their magnum opus. Some people have suggested it is an experimental film or a comedy, something so far removed from the usual Tooth&Nail fare that releasing it would destroy their reputation. Some people have suggested that the movie is too bad, even by Tooth&Nail standards, to be unleashed on an unsuspecting public. Some people have pointed out that Charlotte died around the time the movie was supposedly being made and have suggested that Masterpiece XCIX is a snuff film, capturing Miss Hughes’ final moments for some twisted purpose.

You may think that the studio blackout would whip the fanbase into a violent frenzy and make them determined to find the elusive footage. You would be wrong. While Tooth&Nail fans freely admit that a 99th film exists, and routinely speculate as to what it is about, very few of them are in any hurry to find it. In fact, with the exception of the people who worked on the movie, it has thus far been seen by precisely one person: Patient 812001-E AKA James Gardner.

The whole affair began when James received a parcel containing an unmarked tin of film. The film was not the only thing that was unlabelled; the parcel carried no means of identifying who had sent it, nor where it had come from. Gardner, a fan of old, underground movies, was intrigued by the anonymity and quickly loaded the film into his projector before sitting back to watch his mystery footage.

As soon as the film began, James sat open-mouthed at what he saw; a grainy, art deco style title card, which proudly declared, “Tooth&Nail Productions presents: Tombstones, Coffins and Tranquillisers”

Gardner knew all there was to know about Tooth&Nail Productions, including an encyclopaedic knowledge of their back catalogue, and since the films title was not one he was familiar with he figured the movie was made by a copycat company trying to make a fast buck from someone else’s popularity. His cynicism quickly vanished, however, when he began to watch the film proper.

Gardner recognised the soundstage immediately; it was a re-used manor house set from several Tooth&Nail films. Not only that, but the movie included Tooth&Nail’s standard group of actors, each wearing costumes that had been seen in other Tooth&Nail movies. With all of these factors combined it was not long before James realised that he had come into possession of the only known copy of a film that had been missing for decades.

As rare as the film was to begin with, it became even more precious when the movie introduced its female lead: none other than Charlotte Hughes. Gardner had seen every Tooth&Nail film multiple times before, so he was familiar with Miss Hughes’ work, but this time he was transfixed. He knew she was beautiful, but this film was something else. She looked more radiant and stunning than she had ever done before, and her voice sounded like a chorus of angels, singing out with every word she spoke.

Before long, the movie ended and it was only when the credits began to roll that James realised he had spent the whole of the film staring at Charlotte, rather than paying attention to the plot. While this was probably what the producers at Tooth&Nail had intended, James felt that he owed it to the people in the fandom to provide a summary and evaluation of the movie. Thus, he reloaded the film and watched it again.

The movie was a slow paced train wreck that could not make up its mind whether it wanted to be a period drama or a murder mystery. It also included a large amount of surrealism: images that appeared for a single frame or hard cuts to pieces of bizarre, irrelevant footage. The film is as hard to describe as it is to watch and the best visual I can give you is to imagine a film written by Agatha Christie and Jane Austen, but edited by David Lynch.

Perhaps the most jarring element of the movie is the fact that the big reveal is missing. Part way through the final scene the audio and video distorted before abruptly cutting to footage taken from the middle of “Bride and DOOM”; an earlier, entirely unrelated Tooth&Nail film.

Of course, James found this ending totally unacceptable. He had waited for years to see this film and now that he had, he was not going to let the experience get ruined by terrible editing. He decided to watch the film a third time only this time he would take notes to try and work out what the ending was supposed to be. He reloaded the film and, with pen and paper in hand, sat down and started the movie again.

As he watched the film again James began to see several things that he had not noticed before. For example, he noticed Charlotte glancing towards the camera a lot more often than he remembered. By itself this would be nothing out of the ordinary, since Miss Hughes was known for looking at the camera, but she was doing it a lot more frequently than she ever did in her other movies.

James also noticed that Miss Hughes looked different the third time round. In the previous airings she had been a radiant vision of beauty with skin that looked like it was as smooth as silk, but this time she looked older and perhaps a little withered. As well as looking older, Charlotte’s skin started to look like it had been cut. It was barely noticeable to begin with but as the film progressed it became more and more apparent: in the final few scenes Charlotte’s face, neck, chest and arms were all covered with hundreds of long, shallow cuts, and it was not showing any signs of stopping. It got to the point where, if James watched closely, he could see more and more cuts appearing along her skin, almost like he was watching some invisible force trace a knife along her body.

It seems strange to have to say this since I am talking about a piece of celluloid, but, with the exception of Charlotte’s appearance and behaviour, nothing else in the film had changed. All of the actors delivered the same lines and followed the same marks as before and you would almost think that Charlotte’s appearance was intentional given the nonchalant way the other actors ignored it.

As the movie progressed James noticed more and more changes that he had not seen before, getting distinctly less subtle over time. Eventually the dastardly murder of Dame Barbara Carthorse was a distant memory in James’ mind as he tried to work out just what was happening to his film.

When the movie reached the climactic final scene Charlotte was an absolute mess. In addition to looking like she had been cut all over, she now had a large bruise around her throat and had lost her right eye. Her character looked blurred and out of focus, and her voice had decayed to the point that her lines sounded like radio static.

Thankfully the movie was almost over. All that was left was for the ‘Lord of the house’ character to deliver one more line and get cut off halfway through. The actor delivered his line, as he should. He stopped halfway through, as he should. But rather than cutting to footage taken from another Tooth&Nail movie, the film kept rolling. All of the actors in the scene remained frozen in place with the exception of Miss Hughes.

Charlotte turned and looked straight into James’ eyes. She was trembling somewhat, clearly very upset. She spoke as she wiped a tear from the one eye she had left, “I am so sorry, James. But this is your fault too.”

As soon as Charlotte had finished speaking the projector turned itself off, leaving James sitting in the quiet darkness of his little screening room. He sat for what seemed like hours trying to figure out what he had just seen, but before he could figure anything out he felt an icy cold hand run up the back of his neck then wrap around his throat.

James was found by the fire department later that evening; some unidentifiable force had started a fire in his house, razing it to the ground. The police were called to the scene, too, since Gardner was found lying in his driveway, covered from head to toe with long, shallow cuts. While the police suspected an attempted murder, they had Gardner transferred to the Hexagon for a psychiatric evaluation. It was not long before the alienists at the Frieda Reagan Memorial decided Garner was insane: James had convinced himself that a long dead actress was punishing him for some untold crime. He was labelled as paranoid schizophrenic and his temporary incarceration was made permanent.

Initially Gardner was categorised as a Class E patient. That is, he was insane, but seen as more of a nuisance than a threat. He was recategorised as a Class A patient when he attacked an orderly some weeks after his incarceration.

According to the orderly, one Alexandria Hughes, Gardner had mistaken her for the phantom that had supposedly attacked him. It seemed that Gardner’s outburst was not motivated by revenge, but by curiosity: he had promised to cease his assault once Alexandria told him the way that Masterpiece XCIX was supposed to end.

Needless to say he never got his wish. He was sedated in order to stop him attacking Alexandria and, since it made it easier to deal with him, remained sedated for the rest of his time in the Hexagon.

While the psychiatric staff at the Hexagon did not believe Gardner’s story about a haunted film, the fans of Tooth&Nail Productions did. The fact that the film was never recovered or identified from what was left of James’ possessions only heightened their interest. At the same time, though, none of the Tooth&Nail fans wish to discuss the film in any great detail, lest the mysterious film turn up on their doorstep.