Once in the garage she flicked on an overhead light, wincing against the harsh burn. The radio had become an ominous presence all its own. It loomed, dark and daunting on the shabby card table, beckoning her to come to it. Once her sanctuary, now desecrated.
She tuned the radio to low static and waited for something to find her.
It started as a mumble. A distinct and even sound with the cadence and monotone of a newscaster. A distant hollow voice came through the radio:
Act One. Margaret of Antioch spurns the advances of Olybrius.
Act Two. Margaret of Antioch is tortured.
Act Three. Margaret of Antioch is swallowed by a dragon.
Act Four. Saint Margaret of Antioch is disgorged by the dragon.
Act Five. Saint Margaret of Antioch is beheaded.
The transmission began again, the same words like a recording on an eternal loop.
Act Three. Margaret of Antioch is swallowed by a dragon.
Act Four. Saint Margaret of Antioch is disgorged by the dragon.
Bess opened her notebook to a clean sheet and jotted down the five high points of Margaret’s life. She was tortured and killed by Olybrius, but it was the Dragon who wanted revenge. Olybrius had his victory, he saw her decapitated. But the Dragon was made a fool of that day.
Act Six. The Dragon will have vengeance.
She blinked at the variation in the message. “But who’s the Dragon?” she asked aloud.
Act One. Margaret of Antioch spurns the advances of Olybrius.
A frustrated sigh escaped her lips. She stood up and stretched her arms above her head, closing her eyes. The transmission hummed.
Act Five. We have reached Act Five. Saint Margaret SAINT NOW SHE IS A SAINT is beheaded.
ACT SIX. The Dragon will have vengeance. The Dragon was not beheaded. The Dragon lives.
SEVEN DEAD WOMEN. SEVEN. We now have SEVEN.
“So does that mean Amy’s already dead?” Bess asked the room. She now assumed she could be heard. She assumed that if she turned off the radio the voice would still drone on in the room, coming straight from the walls. She did not assume she could trust the voice. “Who is the Dragon? If it’s not Tam Gillis, if he swallowed a saint once, then who the fuck is he?” she yelled into the empty space around her.
The radio went silent.
Then softly, the voice of a woman, tinged with that metallic ring of fear and exhaustion. Amy Eckhart.
He’s the Devil.
Cold washed over Bess and she shuddered. The radio was still on, but there was no longer any sound. Bess reached forward and turned it off, yanking her hand back as if it shocked her, or for fear that it would.
Her mouth was dry and she had a sudden intense need for water. She backed out of the garage, not wanting to turn away from the radio even for a second. Once the garage door was closed she turned and immediately saw something on the front window, besides the lingering smears of mud. A white piece of paper was plastered to the glass and Bess could see ink bleeding through from the other side.
Her neighbor, Rebecca, was also out in the yard squinting at the paper. Bess slipped on a pair of black flats and rushed out.
“Hey,” she called to her neighbor.
“Hey, Bess,” Rebecca replied. Her voice was far away and distracted. Her eyes never left the paper. “What’s this about?”
The note read: Tam Gillis is innocent. Ask him yourself.
“I don’t know. I just… saw it. Did you see who left it?”
“No. Isn’t Tam Gillis the Impaler killer?”
“Uh, you know, I’m not sure. I don’t really—”
“It is,” Rebecca answered her own question with a frank surety that was startling. “It definitely fucking is. What’s going on here?”
“Jesus, I don’t know.”
“Well, let me tell you something, Bess Jackson. I don’t know what you’re into with all this, but I’ve got kids next door. I don’t need any weird-ass occult bullshit showing up around here. No way. We moved here because it was a nice quiet area.”
Bess was stunned. She’d always considered Rebecca to be… not quite a friend, but something like that. Always friendly and warm. “Becky, I would never in a million years do anything to put your kids in danger. I promise you.”
Rebecca sighed. “I know. I’m sorry. But I gotta look out for mine, you know what I mean?”
“I do.”
“Are you into all this demon stuff? Like the Impaler killer?”
“No. I swear I’m not. I don’t know any more about this than you do.”
“Well, you know a little more than me. Because there aren’t any crazy notes stuck to my window telling me to talk to murderers.” Rebecca crossed her arms at Bess.
Bess shrugged and pulled down the paper. It was wet and left little bits of torn white paper stuck to the glass and Bess had to pinch at them to get them off. By the time she’d gotten it all cleaned up, Rebecca had gone back to her own house.
“Okay,” Bess said. “I hear you. I’ll go ask him myself.”
Somewhere in the distance she heard a low rumble of thunder.
The jail in Antioch was comically small. A little larger than Bess remembered the one-room sheriff’s office on The Andy Griffith Show being, but not by a lot. News vans circled the building, forcing Bess to park a full three blocks away and walk over. Every fifteen feet she encountered another reporter looking into a camera and delivering almost identical statements:
“Tam Gillis, age nineteen, is the first suspect to be charged in the murders of six women here in Antioch.”
“The so-called Vlad the Impaler murders have kept the sleepy town of Antioch awake for nearly two years.”
“Gillis, believed to have ties to the occult, worked in a local coffee shop here in town.”
For the first time, it occurred to Bess that it might be difficult to get in to see Tam Gillis. Anyone coming in or out of the jail would be questioned by the reporters. This seemed like exactly the sort of attention Wayne had warned her against.
There was a news crew setup at the steps of the jail and once Bess began climbing them she had their attention.
“Excuse me, ma’am?” A slim woman in a red blouse and black slacks rushed toward her with a microphone in hand. “Are you here to see Tam Gillis?”
“No, thank you,” Bess called, not looking at the woman. She was inside before the woman in red could ask her any other questions.
When she asked to meet and speak with Tam Gillis, the officers didn’t seem to know what to do, or where to put her. He’d had no visitors and even his lawyer only called on the phone. They waved a handheld metal detecting wand over her body, pausing at her belt and again at the underwire of her bra. A small but sturdy woman was called in to do a brief over-the-clothes pat down.
Bess had seen plenty of television shows depicting people visiting inmates through glass, or in large common rooms containing metal furniture and barred windows. The light outside those windows was always a bleak sepia color that denoted a world devoid of sunlight and joy.
Eventually, Bess found herself in a little gray room with a small square wooden table and two metal folding chairs with sunflower cushions on the seats. It looked like the same room she’d seen on Lucy’s iPad, the one where Tam had been interrogated and confessed.
A guard brought in Tam. He was a small man, fitting in nicely with the room itself, as if it were sized for him specifically. His wrists and ankles were cuffed, forcing him to shuffle as he walked. He had clear, ice blue eyes that stayed on Bess as he was helped into the chair furthest from the door. Bess checked the ceiling for the camera that had recorded the confession and found it immediately. It was large and tan, with a constant red light glowing from the front.