The Blessed Evil

By Ike Williams

This book is about the mysteries of our world, where everyday things are usually not what they seem, and everything is connected regardless of how disparate they may appear.

It is also about the interpretation of good and evil; right and wrong. What determines these, and can one do what is wrong and still be right?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ike Williams
• Release date: Apr 21, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476323541

Book preview

There’s a reason for everything. The trick is to spot the good reason within everything. It is there.

The Blessed Evil

Ike A Williams

Copyright 2012 by Ike Williams

Smashwords Edition

Preface

A young man, in England between the middle nineteen fifties and the late nineteen eighties; whose pastime, it would seem, was the indiscriminate killing of people he encountered, regardless of age, sex, creed or social status. This man came from an unenviable background; from the wrong end of society. He was orphaned from an early age, through the killing of his father at the hands of his mother—an event which he may or may not have witnessed, and his subsequent abandonment by his mother, who also met with an untimely death. The young man’s deficiencies continued to add up, since he was also afflicted by a multitude of psychiatric issues, and spent the best part of his life in and out of correctional facilities. It would be normal to expect this man’s life to amount to anything but positive. Our inherent sense of normalcy may therefore short-circuit and tailspin in confusion at the hint of the possibility of an alternative outcome under the same circumstances. Notwithstanding this, everything about Lewis may well be part of a process towards a transformed and cleansed world.

1

Lewis used a particular killing technique when he had to accomplish his task quickly and decisively. He subverted the predictable rhythm of the heart, and used this against its host to devastating effect. The heart must beat to a certain rhythm, and will skip a beat if the right pressure is applied at a certain point, which causes immense physical discomfort. Lewis learnt that driving his fist directly into the chest at a certain angle will cause the heart to stop beating. There was zero chance of recovery, as the heart was completely destroyed. Lewis called this the hunch. The hunch could be executed in a split second, and in such a way that if the victim was in a quiet room, someone positioned only two feet away would be none the wiser. There might be a slight jolt from the victim, but this was not out of the ordinary. The only give away, if people actually took the time to look at one another in the face, was the expression on the victim’s face that could be described as a frozen wry smile with a hint of pain. It was the sort of expression a severely constipated toilet user may wear. Lewis and Jerome knew what that expression meant. They knew it meant that the victim had expired before his face was able to show the incomprehensible pain his body had just experienced. While death through this technique was certain, there was a slight downside to it because death was not instant. Thus there was the risk that the victim might be able to use his last breath to give away his assailant. This had never happened before, but Lewis and Jerome recognised that it could, and took the necessary precautions all the same.

Lewis had used the hunch on a lot of his victims. He had perfected the technique. He reflected on his recent victim. This was memorable because the victim had turned up at Lewis’ residence.

It was a dark wintry afternoon. He and Jerome were whiling away the time on the veranda of his grandmother’s third floor flat. They were suitably attired for winter, and enjoyed the way the cold, crisp breeze licked the only exposed part of their body from the hooded coats--their faces. They had been out on the veranda for some time, and were preparing to go inside for some warmth, when they spotted a Monomode Agent from the experience Lewis had two nights before—a tall, slightly bulky man in his early sixties. From his appearance of understated quality, he was no stranger to the rich trappings of life. Lewis and Jerome had not seen this man in the area before, and quickly concluded that he was a visitor. Because of the man’s bulk and possible strength, Lewis needed to maintain his policy of avoiding any risk of grappling with his victims; he wanted a fairly quick, clean, and certain extermination.

The man was coming to the same block in which they lived. They knew that he would take the lift, regardless of which floor he was going to, they just knew—maybe the stairwell was dark and dingy, and not that inviting to strangers, or that the man did not look the type to take the stairs, even if it was only one flight and three steps.

There was a challenge in the sense that they did not know what floor the man was going to. So the only option that guaranteed a quick encounter was to make themselves available to him. They called the lift, got in, and allowed the doors to shut, without pushing any buttons at all. They stood in the motionless lift for a minute or so. Lewis started to think of how strange the lift felt when you were inside and it was neither going up nor down. Lifts are after all supposed to move either up or down when you are in them. He was jolted back to reality when the lift started moving downwards, and knew that the time had come. He started preparing. He positioned himself directly in front of the lift doors, facing them and allowing enough space for his forward momentum. He closed his eyes, and focused; letting his energy channel to the right parts of his body. By the time the lift doors started opening Lewis had managed to transfer all his strength to his right arm. The doors opened. Unfortunately for the man, he was standing in the doorway as the lift doors opened. Lewis administered the hunch as fast as lightning. The man expired before he hit the ground, more from shock than the expertly administered blow. The lift doors shut again.

I cannot stand people who block the doorways to lifts like that, as if there’s no way anyone could be in the lift, and wanting to get off, Lewis said, as he and Jerome went back to his grandmother’s flat, leaving the man’s body for someone else to discover.

It was concluded that the man died of a massive cardiac arrest. The deep bruising around his chest was explained away as something he sustained as he fell during the arrest.

Lewis did not like hanging around once he eliminated a Monomode Agent.

The dreams were random and unpredictable. There could be one to three on some days, and none at all on other days. Unfortunately, it took Lewis some time to recover from each Monomode experience. The episodes put a lot of strain on him, especially during the multiple Monomode episodes. He was exhausted with that and the backlog of killing to catch up on. In that year alone, there was a total of about ninety nine unsolved homicides in England and Wales. This number did not take into account the many more that easily passed off as deaths by misadventure; natural or unnatural causes. Lewis was skilled at, and capable of producing all of those results.

2

Lewis had always known that his life could not be described as normal. He could not tell exactly how, but he had concluded that there must be a reason why so many people were interested in killing him.

His childhood had passed with him having fallen through one crack of the social services infrastructure after another. He had encountered so many social workers, probation officers, and other intervention groups in between, that they often felt to him like the extended family he never knew.

To the authorities however, Lewis did not raise any flags, he seemed to be one of tens of thousands of names on the delinquent youth database, who stood no chance of amounting to anything, but who still needed to be managed to their eventual demise, whether it came naturally or otherwise. These youths got into trouble for different reasons. For some, for managing to find themselves around crime scenes with no convincing alibi, while some others were caught red-handed. Lewis fell into the former category.

In turn, Lewis did not enjoy the company of other children, so the fact that they did not line up to befriend him suited him just fine. He did not trust anyone. He usually avoided any activity that threatened to have him interact or socialise with other children. He was not picked on, as no one dared, for Lewis was big and muscular for his age. He did not pick on anyone that did not deserve it in his eyes. So it was no wonder that he did not have any friends. Well, except Jerome, and Eucharia.

3

Lewis usually avoided serious trouble by either escaping in the nick of time without a trace to link him back to the scene of the event, or by being let go when he was caught due to insufficient evidence. In general he spent his fair share of time detained in one establishment or another, depending on the nature and gravity of the incident, while the authorities decided his fate.

Lewis was detained in a mixed sex borstal somewhere in the south of England, when he met Eucharia. The first thing that struck him on sighting the young lady with abundant natural beauty, elegance, and poise, was that she did not belong there. Everyone made fun of her because she continually protested her innocence and desperately craved someone, anyone, to believe her. She did not realise that the phrase, I’m innocent, was the one thing you did not say in those places, even if you were. In such an environment, everyone readily declared their innocence. No one, even the guilty—especially the guilty, except the insane often admitted they were guilty of the crime for which they had been detained—a complex theory maybe, but understandable all the same.

On the day Lewis arrived at the borstal, and as soon as his processing was complete, he headed straight for the library. He had developed a keen interest in photography. He was fascinated by the way a camera represented a time trap that could train on a particular point in time; capture it, and freeze it, without interfering with, or disrupting time’s constant forward motion.

He was a believer in the theory that everything in life was somehow connected, and that every action had a reaction. The slightest disruption in the natural order of things would cause nature to readjust and rebalance, and there was usually no telling the real effect of that rebalancing event on life. Taking a drop of water from the ocean made the ocean one drop less, and the ocean would flow that much faster to compensate for the missing drop. Taking a grain of sand from the ground made the earth one grain less, and the ground would take the necessary action to redress the imbalance. However the camera made it possible for a lot to be taken from time with zero impact.

Lewis needed to get some good books on photography to feed his appetite for the subject for however long they decided to keep him on this occasion. He had spent time in this particular establishment before, on an unrelated matter, so he knew his way around.

It was in the library that Lewis met Eucharia. She was of Irish origin, and had the classic Irish looks of red flowing locks, with an acceptable distribution of freckles on her enchanting face. She could have easily become a fashion model, if only some would not find her on the big side. She was around fifteen years of age and a size ten. She ended up in the borstal because she was accused of leading a gang of girl thugs on a school trip to the countryside, who had cornered a posh girl, beaten her to a pulp, and robbed her for good measure.

The gang had pushed the girl off her bike, but probably did not anticipate that she would fall off her bike and onto a spike which pierced through her right cheek and into her mouth. Despite this, the gang robbed the girl of all she had, including an unusual brooch. They left her by the farm road writhing in agony. The gang may have dropped the brooch, either accidentally, or wittingly to avoid the incident being traced back to them just like a seasoned thief would steer clear of any item that would cause his crime to be linked to him. Eucharia apparently came across the brooch as it lay on the ground, picked it up, and wore it all the way back from the trip. The authorities traced the crime to her, because she was wearing the brooch. No one believed that she found it on the ground during the school outing, and no one spoke up on her behalf. Lewis believed Eucharia, and suspected she was only there because the authorities needed to demonstrate performance in a high profile case; the victim being the daughter of someone important. It was important to catch someone quickly and solve the case. Lewis and Eucharia were kindred spirits.

The two hit it off instantly. Eucharia was comfortable with Lewis. Lewis found this curious at first because people rarely sought his friendship but he too quickly got comfortable. They talked and joked like they had known each other for ever. The library became their meeting place because most of the other youths at the facility preferred being out in the court yard playing sports, or loafing in the games room, or attending workshops or brooding in their own rooms. So the library belonged to the two new friends. Every day, Lewis completed his usual routine at the gym, freshened up, and headed to the library to meet Eucharia. He so looked forward to meeting with his new friend that even his gym sessions were affected, as the time he spent there got shorter and shorter. On day seven of his stay in the borstal, Lewis decided to skip gym completely so that he could maximise his time with Eucharia. He had just finished breakfast, and was preparing to head to the library, when he was called to the office, processed out, and was gone. In less than twenty five minutes after his breakfast Lewis was outside the institution before he realised what was happening. He had been released due to lack of evidence.

Lewis was held because of an incident at his school. A student was found dead, stuffed inside a narrow flow-controls cabinet, housing the valves of the network of hot water pipes in the school boiler room. The boy had consequently died of heat stroke or suffocation, which ever struck first. The cabinet was secured from the