The Gemini Effect, page 26
“Of course,” said the woman, still watching her intently. “No worries at all.”
“T-Thanks.”
Miriam dragged her trolley back out, one of the wheels squeaking and setting Deborah’s teeth on edge. She had no idea what time it was, her head was still spinning. It felt like all this was coming to an end, but she was none the wiser about anything. Apart from maybe Glover.
Glover being the key.
The Gemini rising again, coming back. Back through his sons… She thought about Luke Simpson, how he’d looked. He’d looked like Maxwell Craine, like… her former boss. But Glover. He looked nothing like either of them, did he? Had he altered his appearance somehow, plastic surgery?
“I’m pretty much done here anyway.”
Then again, The Gemini was a person of many faces. Could wear two. Could wear the face of a victim if he chose to, someone who’d been a twin and he’d—
No, no. That was too outlandish, even for her. Just tapping into her mistrust of the inspector, but she was beginning to think maybe a DNA test might not go amiss. Beginning to think about all that when she felt the twinge again, the headache she’d experienced in the car with Clark yesterday.
The vision James and Jack had shared with her. What they’d been seeing then, The Gemini coming for them. What they… they were seeing now?
The flash hit her so fast and so hard, she almost cried out, nearly called for the cleaning woman to come back again. But she didn’t, Deborah bit it back – tried to concentrate on what she was looking at. What she was being shown.
A place. Dark. Lit by candles. She was seeing all the jars, the ones with body parts in them, preserved. Bones, polished. A collection, just like last time. Not the same, because that had been damaged, taken away or burned. No, this had been built up again, starting from scratch. But with the same intention.
Was she seeing it from His point of view, though? The Gemini. Were her kids showing her this because they were already—
No, again. Because there He was, busying himself. Getting things ready for the final push. One of her sons would be the last sacrifice to complete this collection, the final twin – she realised that. Which meant Deborah had to find them in time to prevent that from happening.
Which meant she needed to know where they—
It was then that she saw it, the clue telling her where she should go.
Back to the beginning. Jack – whether he’d truly been here or not – had been right. It made perfect sense now.
She had to go back to where this had all started.
Where it would finally end.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
It was the place Vinny Hole had been looking for.
The sacred place, where those sacrifices had occurred so long ago – even before Norchester had been created. Been named. The slaughter that had happened to bring this all about, to create the conditions to bring this day about. To make sure that if you conceived on this land, you stood more chance of giving birth to twins. Not a coincidence, but by design. A method of bringing about the existence of The Gemini – and his brother.
Separated at birth, brought up apart, only coming back together when it was time for the endgame to begin. Pretty obvious when you thought about it, or it had been once Deborah realised where her sons were.
And she had to go alone, she knew that, too. Couldn’t risk dragging Clark into this, she’d done that once before with him and his friend, Peel. She’d had to live with the guilt of that man’s death on her conscience for so long, she wasn’t going to live with Clark’s blood on her hands, as well. That’s if she lived at all.
When she got there, when she confronted him – The Gemini – she had no idea what she’d do. How she’d defeat him. Get close enough to grab that fork, use it the way Jack had done? Didn’t matter if she was killed in the process, as long as her kids were safe.
There was no way she was reporting this to the police, either, or the bloody SCI! If what she suspected about Glover was true, then who knew how far the corruption had spread? Not to mention the fact he’d pulled this off right under their noses, how he’d hidden it all in plain sight.
No, this was something she had to do on her own. It was her business, always had been. It had taken almost a decade for it to come around again, but this would conclude today.
It had to.
She knew the best way to get into the place, as well. Not out the front, because that actually was where some of the press were camped out. A few vans here and there scattered about, but if they caught a glimpse of former Detective Sergeant Deborah Harrison, caused a ruckus, then everything really would be lost.
So she carefully snuck around the back, down the alley to where the fenced-off car park had once been. Now it was just a cracked concrete square, with weeds poking up through the holes in the ground. When she got there, she looked up at the building with its boarded windows, signs plastered all over it; some yellow, some red, all with exclamation marks stating ‘KEEP OUT’ or ‘UNSAFE BUILDING’. It was sad to see. The new had its place in the world, but so did the old. So did history – and this land was steeped in it, whether anyone realised or not.
Deborah thought back to those illustrations in Vinny’s book, how the priests had conducted their rituals by murdering people – right here. The population of this city might think they’d moved on, left all of that behind, but nothing had really changed, had it.
She found the back door, one that had needed a card to access it before but now was just a piece of wood. A piece of wood that had already been pulled away from the frame, she found. If you pulled on it enough, it left a gap to squeeze through, so she did.
It was dark inside, and she reached for her phone… then realised she’d left it behind, switched off in her hotel room. Should have brought a torch, but she knew the layout like the back of her hand anyway. The further up she got, the more light there would be. She’d seen it. The candles, the oil lamps.
Seen it along with the clue as to where her boys were being held. What was left of the desks in the bullpen, the papers and posters still pinned to walls. A cup that she’d always used during her time here, chipped and cracked now, dirty but with the logo ‘coppers like it blue’ on the side still clearly visible.
Obvious when you thought about it, because The Gemini had been drawn to this place before. Back then it had been underground, in the cells under Yardley Street nick, a dungeon before it had been a police station. As below, so above. A reversal of the norm. Because this time he’d chosen the abandoned building itself to perform this final act.
Oh, it had been searched – from top to bottom, so Glover had said. But afterwards, she was willing to bet nobody had really bothered. Either that or they’d been ordered to steer clear. The perfect opportunity to move that grotesque ‘collection’ of his in here, probably under cover of darkness one night.
Up she went, not as far as you needed to go in the new station, and certainly not by lift – because she wouldn’t trust those now, wasn’t even sure she trusted the stairs – but far enough. High enough you wouldn’t be disturbed by anyone, even if they did choose to ignore the warning signs and venture in.
Deborah reached the floor she was looking for, poking her head out and peering down the corridor. She still had the element of surprise here, thanks to her sons. If she played this right, she could grab them and get out, alert the press, the authorities. Get the bloody army in if need be!
Slowly she made her way along that corridor, wincing every time the floor creaked. Wondering if it would give way before she even reached her destination; they wouldn’t have put those signs up outside for nothing. Already she could see the flickering of those flames, though. The only light inside, because wood was covering every smashed window.
Deborah reached the doorway, risked a quick glance inside to confirm where the kids might be: towards the back of the room. She froze when she saw them, two small forms curled up on the ground. They looked—
“Your children are already dead.”
No, no, they couldn’t be. They were the ones who’d brought her here – unless something had happened in the time it took to get here? She would have felt that too, surely? Seen it, even?
Her instinct was to rush across to them, gather them up in her arms and just run. But not without trying to find out where The Gemini was first. That meant leaning in further, craning her head – and catching sight of the collection. As horrendous as the last one, memories of that nightmare flashing back to her more clearly now: limbs; organs; bones. So many, each representing a twin that had been killed, culminating in the parts he’d taken from Felicity, Geoffrey, Vinny…
Of the person she was looking for, though, there was no sign. She might actually get away with this, snatching her kids – try not to think about the fact they’re not moving – and getting the fuck out of there.
Deborah made her move, dashing over to where they lay. She hadn’t been planning on spending too much time bending, checking on them, but when she got there she couldn’t help it. She was their mother.
They were still breathing, their chests going up and down. She let out a breath of her own, then immediately sucked it back in. The shock of hearing someone speak behind her.
“They’re sleeping. Wore themselves out… screaming. Or maybe it was the drugs I gave them a little while ago.” She whirled, standing at the same time; responding to that strange, echoing voice. “A mild sedative, nothing more.”
There he was, standing right there. Where he’d come from, she had no idea; how could you hide anywhere when you were that big? Behind the door? No, she thought she’d checked that: the first place you were taught to look when clearing a room. Then again, she had been in such a hurry to get to the kids, to make sure they—
“Your children are already dead.”
Wrong, you fucker! But they would be soon if she didn’t do something about it. Yet it was also like he’d known, had been waiting for her to enter. Had he heard her after all and got out of sight? So much for the element of surprise.
“I’m… I’m not scared of you,” she replied, her pitch and the fact she was shaking saying otherwise.
“Oh?” he said, moving more out of the shadows – this creature of the shadows with his two faces, both male, neither of them familiar to her. “You should be.”
“N-Not my first rodeo.”
“I suppose not.” He clasped his hands behind his back as he walked, not in any hurry himself, it seemed. “A little different this time, however, no?”
She shrugged. “All I see is another psycho, pretending to be a god.”
He laughed. “Pretending? Soon I will be a god, woman. Just one more to go. You can help me decide if you like.”
“Decide?”
“Which one of your children to gut.”
A chill ran down her spine, but he’d already turned away – was wandering over towards that hideous jumble of jars; of flesh, blood and bone. The Gemini stooped to pick one particular container up, turning it this way and that so it glinted in the light from a nearby candle.
It was an eye.
“I need a matching pair, you see.” He chuckled at his own bad joke, looking over at Deborah with two sets of eyes himself. One half of his ‘face’ was female now, and this one she did recognise: it was Felicity Bailey. “We learnt, though. This time kill the other twin when you take the first eye. Wait and take the second one last.” He nodded over towards the boys behind her. “No chance of anyone spying then.”
“Except they did!” she barked at him. “Someone did see what you were doing, you bastard. My kids. Jack’s kids.”
Another laugh. “They saw only what I wanted them to see, woman. What I allowed them to see, and from a distance, off to one side – my interpretation. In a way they could understand, like watching a TV show. Like cartoons! The final phase.” The last few killings, when it was too late to do anything about it. Not even her coming to Norchester had made a difference. Or had that been the point? The intention all along? Getting her here, the kids here?
“They weren’t the only ones who saw,” she told him. “I saw too, through them.”
“And I allowed that to happen as well, when I wanted it to.”
Her visions, the one of the apartment, of this place? The Gemini had let her see what Jack and James were seeing, but only on his terms. No wonder he’d known she was on her way, he’d set it up.
“What’s that phrase, controlling the narrative?”
That phrase? Glover’s phrase about the press… His bad jokes…
“I’d have thought someone like you would be able to understand that, a writer?” The Gemini cocked his head. “You think you know me, I can tell. You don’t know me.”
“I know enough,” she told him. “Inspector. You’ve been controlling everything from the start, haven’t you?” The narrative, events. Just like those priests in the past, and all the other Geminites. His little helpers. Steering everything to this day, this moment. The Gemini reborn in his own son. “Too bad about your brother Luke, though. No head for heights.”
“My brother—” A belly laugh, this time. “You show your ignorance, woman.” She really wished he’d stop calling her that. Of all the things to be pissed off about in this scenario, it was rapidly reaching the top of the list.
“Yeah?”
He nodded, placing the eye down and stepping closer. “I know something you don’t know,” The Gemini chanted. “A secret. Something not even your little friend Vinny knew. Isn’t that right, Vinny?” And as he called him, The Gemini’s face changed again, Vinny Hole’s countenance appearing on the left-hand side: trapped, helpless. Being worn as a Halloween mask.
“No,” Deborah whispered. She had to free him. Had to free them all somehow, just like Jack had done before. All those prisoners inside this monster, the spirits empowering him.
“You see, my brother is still alive. You know him. You’ll meet him again soon enough.”
Deborah paused, her brow furrowing. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“Not the man you call Maxwell Craine. Not his twin sons – they’re both dead. Well, now they are anyway. You made sure of that, we saw to the other one a long time ago. He’s in here with me, safe and sound. My cousin.”
“Wha—”
“Mason. We’re his sons, you see.
“Inspector Roy Mason’s sons.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
Deborah wasn’t sure what had thrown her the most.
The fact that this wasn’t the child of The Gemini, the son becoming his father, but instead… Or was it the mention of that man’s name?
“Mason.” He said it again, as if knowing it caused her pain; but then he would. “Of course, the family resemblance isn’t quite there. Not like it was with Luke or his brother. But sometimes it goes that way, right? We take more after our mother. Look more like her.”
“Your… Holy shit.”
“It’s a sad tale. I won’t bore you with it.”
“No,” she said, “I want to know. I want to know everything.”
All four of this Gemini’s eyebrows shot up. “It won’t change anything, stalling for time won’t alter a thing.”
“I genuinely want to know,” said Deborah. It wasn’t a lie. She wanted to know what the hell was going on, how they could have got it so, so wrong.
“A drunken fumble, that’s all. Mason and an older woman he picked up and screwed, back when he was only a DC. One night, that’s all it took. But then I don’t have to tell you about that, do I?”
“No.” It was such a surreal situation, this monstrosity in black with its two faces – so much like the first Gemini, yet not – chatting away to her like he was telling a therapist his problems.
“I think on some level our mother even loved him, but all Roy wanted was the sex. To scratch an itch. Couldn’t stand to even look at her afterwards, said if she kept following him around he’d fit her up for something. Make sure she never saw the light of day again. Yeah, he was a prince, our father.”
She thought about saying something like ‘takes one to know one’ or ‘the apple didn’t fall far from the tree’, but quite apart from the fact he could put her through a wall she really did want to know where all this was going.
“Then she fell pregnant. Didn’t tell him because she was frightened of what he’d do, so she went through it all alone. Didn’t even have any family to help her out, had never really had much money – so no fancy doctors or hospitals for her.” He sighed, the first sign of real emotion he’d shown since she got here, and she almost – almost – felt sorry for him. Couldn’t help comparing it to her situation, except she’d had her mum on the scene in both instances. “She had a terrible time, almost died having us. Dangerous you see, in your forties. As it was it left her with serious health issues, ones that would get her in the end.
“But not before she told us the truth. Told us who our father was.”
“And so you went out and found him? Discovered what he was doing with his own brother, what that man could do?”
He nodded. “But I always knew I was different, destined for something beyond all this. Special, like Mother always said. That I could… sense them. Twins. I only had to be near to one to know. That apparently did run in the family. Dear old Uncle…”
“So what, when we killed him, you wanted revenge?”
“Revenge? Hardly! We’d already started our own quest by then, my brother had joined the police force to help facilitate things. Grease the wheels. Although I hadn’t quite perfected— The fork makes it much easier, definitely. It was the missing piece of the puzzle.” He gestured with his hand like he was a character doing a monologue in a Shakespeare play. “What you did actually helped, you and that interfering idiot of a boyfriend. We’d thought about doing it ourselves, eliminating Uncle. But weren’t anywhere near strong enough; he had a head start on us, you see. But you… you cleared the way for us to take over, finish the job properly. Take the crown.”
