Chapter Seven The Making of a Monster

A Chapter by Neville

Chapter Seven

‘The Making of a Monster’

In the eyes of the law and those paid to uphold it, boundaries, rules and regulations all tied up in a beautiful legislative bow are deemed absolutely necessary to ensure law and order are maintained under the great British judicial system.

Absolutely no one, not under any circumstances whatsoever could be allowed to wander around knocking people off for no apparent reason and even if they had a reason, it would not be permissible for them to do so.

So why was Jack treated differently from any other young offender? After all, until the unfortunate incident occurred at the police station, with Doctor McRae he was believed to be nothing more than a tragic victim himself.

Sir Stanley Paxton, the Shadow Home Secretary summed it up perfectly in just a few words.

“Firstly” he said, “the concept of any child having sufficient motive to kill, plus the physical capacity and means at his disposal and then getting away with it for so long was abhorrent. Not only that, it was totally unthinkable and seemingly impossible for the collective mindset of mainstream society to get their head around such a thing. And therefore, we must never allow it to happen again.”

That however was precisely the kind of unsavoury predicament society struggled to come to terms with, but as sure as God made little green apples, was being forced to live with.

The entire Banks-Barking brigade was not much help either. After all, with most of them claiming to be an expert of one sort or another surely they should have known, only when there were more answers than questions, certain things would become clearer. Until then, it was more generally assumed, absolute uncertainty would prevail. Furthermore, despite them all being so called experts, in Jack’s mind at least, they were far too stupid and naive to accept certain things might be lost to them forever.

Over a period of time, the grossly incomplete jigsaw that was available to those so called experts slowly began to reveal as far as morals, principles and values were concerned, when it suited them, boundaries could be twisted and stretched. However, in Jack’s mind, if something did not fit, then it could be legitimately taken out and destroyed.

In effect, all those things never owned by him in the first place could not by any stretch of the imagination be considered lost, or even momentarily misplaced. And since all things had their rightful space, if he was not aware of them, then they did not exist and he could not justifiably mourn them.

To Jack, the question of whether a tree falling in a forest with no one to hear whether it, makes a sound or not, was not so much a question, but rather a descriptive account of an actual event. As far as he was concerned, whether it made a sound was far less important than the damage it might or might not have caused on the way down, or how much blood was shed along the way?

‘Inevitability’

There is only one inevitability

And that my friend is somewhat precariously balanced

On a heap of highly improbable coincidences…

If only they had left him well alone, but no, they had to prod, to provoke and to disturb that most remote and darkest portion of his psyche. That essential part of him that which, even he was then unfamiliar and has since been described as more unpredictable and dangerous than a circus full of caged wild animals.

Jack eventually drifted off to the sound of an imaginary bell tolling somewhere in the back of his mind. He took a deep breath, swallowed a mouthful of saliva and was gently carried back to more familiar times.

In his dream it was still dark and Jack swung his feet over the side of the bed and into the slippers he had placed there the previous evening. He dragged the tartan dressing gown from the hanger by its belt and put it on. The coal fire barely smouldered beneath a dense layer of ash and would need a jolly good seeing to before it eventually threw out any heat whatsoever. That was the orderly’s job though and Jack knew all too well, the consequences of interfering were far greater than any small comfort a few flames might afford.

He made his way back to bed, snatching at the scribbled sheet of paper from the locker, before screwing it into a small ball between both fists and tossing it in the direction of the fire. There on the hearth, where it lay, the entire symmetry of the room was offset by a tiny misshapen globe of crumpled writing paper. It would undoubtedly have to be retrieved before Elizabeth returned, that is, if he could bear to leave it any longer than absolutely necessary, just to prove a point.

Jack had no need whatsoever to look at the list of instructions left for him. They seldom varied and had long been consigned to memory, even before he had first begun to read.

‘Teeth, face, neck, ears, hands, under-arms, private parts and hair.’ All were written in pencil and in the same hand

What an incredibly sterile and detached mantra that was and one, which even thirty or so years on, he would still find difficult to ignore.

It would be a full hour or even more before one of the junior ward orderlies arrived with his breakfast which usually consisted of porridge, a very hard boiled egg, an occasional sausage and always a mug of sweet milky tea. The sausage, if ever one should be found under the lidded breakfast plate, seemed to reinforce the promise of additional pleasures and surprises might await him just be around the corner. He always made a point of checking, just to make sure.

As usual then, Jack was woken by his mother, or more precisely, by the sound and the scent of her, rigorously engaged in the first of many personal cleansing rituals. Those she religiously subjected her body to each day.

Since the washroom door was ajar, the combined odours of strong bleach, hospital disinfectant and carbolic assaulted Jack’s nostrils simultaneously and as always, caught the back of his throat. Not without some considerable effort, did he manage to stifle the cough and the gag which would almost certainly have interrupted Elizabeth’s routine and set her off again. For that reason, with the deepest but quietest of breaths he could muster, Jack pulled the crisp, starched and familiarly cold top sheet over his head, mindful of leaving both hands exposed by each of his sides, according to Elizabeth’s rules and waited.

There he would remain, unmoving and corpse like until the muffled sound of his old friend ‘Big Bob,’ eternally caged within the magnificent Victorian hospital clock tower, and clearly visible from three counties, struck the first of his five dawn chimes. Jack would rarely hear the key turn in the lock behind Elizabeth as she left and frequently imagined her disappearing through the wall of the lodge and back again some ten, twelve or even more hours later.

He knew well enough though, by the time Big Bob had ceased resonating in his head, it would be safe to move, that she had left the lodge and would be weaving her way through the many long corridors of St’ Caspian intent on making the first of her impromptu early morning inspections of the many wards she, as matron was responsible for. A responsibility she took more seriously than anything else.

Many hospital staff also genuinely believed, ‘The Dragon’ as she was known locally, had the capacity to enter their ward by some supernatural means and consequently lived in fear of being caught unoccupied, cat napping, or fraternising with any of the medical personnel. Such offences levied an astonishing range of penalty and could easily mean the difference between instant dismissal, or the loss of certain privileges. Throughout the 1950’s a nurse’s right to practice, was without doubt precariously balanced between the clinical regimentation and orderliness of hospital routine and the severe constraints levied by none other than matron.

Matron Weaver all 39 years of her was an extraordinarily good looking woman but as thin as a rake and whom it was frequently whispered, had probably never had an orgasm in all her life, not even one self inflicted so rumour had it. She was certainly not one for tittle-tattle, or idle gossip and would not tolerate insubordinance or loose values. Regrettably though, for many of the young women employed to work beyond the high red brick walls of St’ Caspian, the desire to test such boundaries, proved too much and those who eventually succumbed to the lure of increasingly compelling hormonal drives or curiosity, sealed their own fate and that of many other aspiring nurses.

Jack knew she always returned to Black Lodge exhausted, and probably drained as much by her personal rituals as she was from the demands of being Matron. He often wondered whether she had some private place to check for possible signs of degradation or contamination at intervals throughout the day, but whenever that thought came, he managed to reassure himself she must have several.

‘Suck it and See’

Should this suicide fail to please you?

Remember, it was you who said, the other day

If it feels good, do it…

Jack would never learn what if any, additional tit-bit had been intended for his breakfast on the occasion of his sixth birthday. Instead of the door being unlocked as usual and the tray being set down before him as always, the door flew open, causing several rough splinters of wood from around the mortise to narrowly miss his face and head.

Jack had grown accustomed to the often brusque attitude of the orderly and was certainly used to being eyed with mild disapproval before he eventually commenced cleaning out, re-kindling and lighting the fire. He had most definitely not been anticipating the sudden vicious swipe across the cheek which served as a prelude to the next forty minutes or so of taunting, ridicule and abuse.

On this occasion, the horseplay as far as Dell was concerned culminated in him placing the cold brown Damascus barrels into his own mouth, where he held them firmly with both hands, breathing heavily, stinking of alcohol and sucking obscenely.

“Por Ghrist’s thake, thqueeze boy. Iths jutht a lil game. Marlbe ome thoon thqueeze boy, thqueeze. C’mon Jack, thqueeze, ya lil s**t.”

The six year old struggled to maintain the weight of the stock and the fore-end between his fingers, which by then were wet and slippery with tears, snot and sweat. Had it not been that most of the weight was taken by the bruised and otherwise discoloured fists of the extremely intoxicated Dell, and the centre of their balance being maintained by the low stance of the larger of the two, what happened next would not have been impossible.

Whether Jack eventually squeezed the trigger, or some involuntary tremor or reflex caused his index finger to palsy, may never be known, nor the dreadful mechanics fully understood. What is known for sure though is that young Jack was simultaneously blown backwards and half way across the room which immediately filled with the acrid stench of cordite and sulphur. Not that Jack would have noticed, since it was assumed he struck his head on the brass fender before passing out.

From the litter and the debris that surrounded the mess of Dell’s wretched body, Detective Sergeant George Naseby remarked that it was likely Jack may have roused for a moment or two before slipping back into unconsciousness.

“Hysterical, or as some say, protective unconsciousness” the attending Medical Superintendent explained to the brace of uneasy police officer present.

“Brought on by the shock of seeing the remains of what used to be a human head and surrounding gore, I wouldn’t be surprised” he added.

PC Clive Monger knew exactly what he meant and after emptying his belly there and then, vowed to hand in his resignation later that same day. What happened next remains open to much speculation. There had certainly never before been so many newsworthy events associated with the unusually sleepy village of Old Bowen, at least not since the plague of 1665-6 and the subsequent witch trials a whole decade later.

Old Bowen it seemed had led something of a charmed evolution, the penalty or the blessing perhaps of ignoring the Industrial Revolution almost completely and having survived the ravishes of the ‘Great War’ with so few casualties. Indeed it was said that out of the five brave souls who originally left the village to fight for their king and country, one returned a rather dubious hero, two were shot at dawn and the remaining two had gone missing in action, and were long presumed dead.

All the same, as far as that peculiar little backwater was concerned its insignificance and anonymity would soon be consigned to history and in no time at all, everything would change.

Initially, in the eyes of the Authorities, young Jack was little more than the victim of a somewhat bizarre and otherwise tragic series of unfortunate events and miss-timings. In the first place, it was assumed that Dell, a well known local deviant, had broken into Black Lodge with the sole intention of taking anything of value, presumably first to pawn and then to tip down his neck. It didn’t take long to establish the cause of so much carnage had once been a decent Thomas Wilde of Birmingham double barrelled shotgun. A true gentleman’s gun that which, along with several other items of value had been taken from another property earlier in the day. Surprisingly, the gun had not been reported to the police as missing until late that same evening.

The important forensic examination of the weapon consisted of photographing it from every conceivable angle, the taking of finger prints, labelling and then wrapping it up in an oily rag before slinging it in the back of a police car. It could never be returned to its former owner on the grounds of the extensive damage it sustained and the prohibitive cost of repair. He or she or whoever the owner was would have to be content with an eventual insurance pay out, if it was insured that is.

“No bugger would want it now anyway” one of the officers remarked.

It was under these precise circumstances and because of his very tender years that Jack was speedily bundled off in a separate police vehicle away from the scene and with Big Bob still ringing in his ears. He was subsequently required to undergo an obligatory medical examination at the station but without a single question ever being asked of him on the way or whilst he was there. Almost immediately, he was told to strip down to his underpants and line up between two other boys in the corridor where they were to wait for the doctor. They would all be seen shortly. Each of the older lads obeyed the command to remove his clothing without so much as a word and stood either side of Jack shivering. The larger and more awkward of the two was obliged to cover his genitals with his hands out of enforced modesty and in the absence of any under-garments.

“Give us your pants kid.” The side mouthed demand aimed at Jack’s left ear was obviously meant as a threat and to promote an immediate response. Jack refused to acknowledge either the first or second command and was prepared to suffer the consequences, but he would not under any circumstances behave in such an indecent and vulgar manner.

“Elizabeth would have had his guts for garters” as Dell might once have said.

The larger of the two other boys was obviously not used to being ignored and his face reddened with anger.

“Did you hear me short-arse? Give us yur pants” The tone was now meant to be even more menacing and the other kid with freckles who until then had felt relatively safe, squirmed uncomfortably. Jack though did not budge and neither was he going to. The elbow caught him sharply in the ribs and took some of his breath away. Jack straightened up almost immediately and turned to eye his adversary square on. He was about to mouth something when his name was called from within the office opposite.

“What has been going on out there boy, and why have you not removed your outer kit like you were told, eh? How can ye be examined with your kit on, uhm?”

“I don’t wish to be examined sir” Jack responded.

“Now come on son, I might be prepared to give you a second chance here, so don’t waste it eh? You may well be the lad from the looney bin, but you don’t have to act like one of them now. So drop your pants and let’s have a good look at you”.

Jack again refused to oblige, politely at first since he was prepared to play the waiting game and somewhat naively believed he had nothing else to loose.

The medical officer on the other hand grew impatient and made several attempts to seize and pull Jack forward by the arm, shoulder and collar. Jack in turn lashed out with either a foot or a fist when any attempt was made to grab or remove his shorts. Such unprecedented behaviour necessitated an officer being summoned to restrain him from behind whilst his shorts and his underpants were eventually and under much protest, pulled down to his ankles.

“Now cough, ye wee b*****d damn ye,” the grey haired police surgeon barked.

As was customary, he was about to repeat the demand but was interrupted when the full force of the restraining constables’ handcuffs smashed into the side of his head. The preceding but otherwise indiscernible silver arc sent a fine crimson spray in several directions at once, and at the precise moment of impact, Jack dropped to his knees, breaking PC Clayson’s grip. He then immediately rose again to his full height, forcing the startled officer to loose balance and to end up in a heap behind him. Jack was still clutching the unorthodox weapon he somehow managed to release from the officer’s belt and had used so effectively against the now twitching and haemorrhaging police surgeon Dr. McRae. .

Jack rearranged his clothing and momentarily stood with his back to the far wall, absentmindedly fingering the clasp mechanism of the bloodied cuffs and occasionally scowling at PC Clayson who was desperately trying to summon assistance, more for himself it seemed to Jack than for his now unconscious senior colleague. Unfortunately for him though, dry lips and tongue failed to connect with brain or vocal chords and the yell for help remained internalised and unforthcoming.

Jack clearly sensed the grown mans fear but chose not to take advantage. Instead, he calmly opened the door and crossed the hall passing the two boys he had left only minutes earlier and approached the sergeant at his desk.

“Someone” he said “has been hurt.” At the same time Jack half turned and pointed a finger beyond the boys and into the dimly illuminated interview room.

“You might want to ask a few questions” he said.

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© 2019 Neville

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barleygirl

After a little intermission (last chapter) concerning psychological theory, here we return to the action with good timing, to keep your story compelling. This is some of your best action writing of the entire book. I was visualizing everything clearly & I love your stilted, understated delivery style, a nice contrast to the usual purple drama that's often used in such a gory scene (((NUBS))) Fondly, Margie