Warm rain lashed down on me in the prison yard as I stood waiting for another guard to unlock the gate and let me out. The rain spattered noisily like a tropical downpour across the tarmac like sheets of glass and made the air smell fresh and clean. I wiped at my wet face. When I got outside to the neatly manicured gardens, I waited for Rick, then he drove me into town to a French bistro called L’Escargot where I ate onion soup and crusty buttered bread, followed by steak and fries, and galettes with chocolate sauce in front of a hot fire that burned in the centre of the restaurant.
Back at the hotel I was still feeling vulnerable. I got off the bed and locked the door before climbing out of the window to sit next to the swimming pool. The pool was lit, so it looked turquoise and glimmered. I sat in a deck chair next to my window and spoke into my tape recorder about the visit. I didn’t want to go back again. I wanted to accept defeat. I could write up something for The Guardian on the visit today alone, but I suddenly realised I had asked him very little about the case.
After making verbal notes on my Olympus, I went back in the window and lay on the bed. I looked at my watch. It showed 3 a.m. I had been working for four hours solid. The American countryside was sleeping. Not even the hooting of owls or scuttling noises disturbed the silence.
I feel asleep. In my dream I saw a man who looked like Bianchi.
He spoke to me. ‘Help me get out of that shithole; I know you care about the sap, but don’t let that distract you.’
‘Who are you?’
‘Steve.’
‘Steve?’
He was a twin of Ken yet with a sheen to him of other-worldly glitter. His eyes were dark and radiated pure power. He was very pale, breathtaking and yet terrifying. My eyes followed him and saw that he had next to him a huge feathered bat like giant feathered angel with a lizards face.
‘I’m form-taker.’
‘What are you?’
‘You know who I am, bitch. You seek us here, you seek us there.’
I woke up in fright and leapt out of bed. I fumbled in my handbag and pulled out the squashed packet of Silk Cut at the very bottom. I took out one of my emergency cigarettes and went into the bathroom, where I opened the window and puffed smoke out into the empty silence of the chilly dark night and felt fear purge through me like an ice-cold chill.
After finishing the cigarette, I got back into bed. I was due to meet Ted that morning in my suite at 7 a.m., so I showered and then slipped on a dress. As it turned out, Ted couldn’t make it to Walla Walla and so we had our interview over the phone. He was in his 60s and sounded crisp, like a lawyer.
‘Well then, what did you think of him?’
‘Interesting,’ I said. ‘He’s just rung me and told me it’s Valentine’s
Day’
‘I wonder what he’s up to?’
‘I don’t know – you tell me.’
Valentine’s Day morning had bought sun first thing but now there were only grey skies and it was pouring with rain. I looked out of the hotel window with a frown as I watched heavy plops of water fall in the swimming pool. Rain lashed from a bruised mauve sky over the jagged, snow capped mountains. I shivered, pulled on a cardigan.
I drove along the highway to a second-hand clothes shop and bought a vintage tea dress.
The heavy rain had cleared and a hot sun came booming out along with a huge rainbow. Traffic was light on the roads and the people were very friendly. I was beginning to feel at home in Walla Walla.
I bought a hamburger and me some fries and sat in the car eating them, sipping on a peanut-butter milkshakes. I listened to the newly returned rain pattering down on the metal windowsill.
Valentine’s Day was nearly over. I looked up at the sky. Across the street was the shop selling second-hand clothes where I had earlier bought my red dress. Next to it was an ice cream shop filled with children. The wide dusty street was full of old-fashioned trucks in beiges and browns, the like of which I had only seen in old movies.
Outside the dress shop underneath a red striped awning were two white-silk tea dresses on mannequins with a long string of pearls around both. In the window I could see a little dog and I wasn’t sure whether he was stuffed or real, but I hadn’t seen him when I had purchased my red dress. I watched the traffic lights change colour and looked at the pink neon sign on Fast Eddie’s roof. The air smelt fresh and clean with the hint of frying onions and hamburger. I thought of Bianchi as I watched the twilight gather over Walla Walla. I knew I had to go back.
I was just able to get in at the five o’clock opening. To my surprise, when I got in to the visitors’ room, Ken was already sitting at the same table, number 12, waiting for me as I arrived. I took my coat off and hung it up. My new shoes were painfully rubbing and forming a blister as I limped over. Ken stood up and hugged me to his chest as tightly as he had done at our first meeting.
‘Happy Valentine’s Day, Minerva,’ he whispered straight into my ear as he held me in his arms.
‘Happy Valentine’s Day.’ I hated Valentine’s Day and had never celebrated it in my life. It seemed like it was for schmucks. We scraped seats on the floor as we sat down next to each other in the same seats as the previous day.
‘Hey, they let us make a present to give to our visitors; can I give you the one I made for you this morning in the prison library?’ ‘Yes, thank you.’ I didn’t know what he was talking about.
He swaggered over to the guard’s desk and then came back with a
Valentine’s card with a crayon sketch of two roses covered in dew.
‘For Valentine’s Day, for you, Minerva.’
‘Thank you. I’m sorry, I haven’t got anything for you.’
‘Doesn’t matter.’
I looked at it. I pushed it across the table so it sat in the middle, then I tried not to look at it.
The guards came round and offered large polythene bags to everyone. I thought of how the killers had tied one around Karen's head and then filled it with gas. They had also strangled another girl using a plastic bag to quicken her death. I felt it was an insult to both of these victims to touch one with him but Bianchi looked at me as if to say did I want one and I nodded a yes. To my embarrassment, I found they were packs with kits to make
Valentine’s cards for each other. It was too late. He was opening his, tugging out the contents of white card, cut-out hearts and glue, and I had to follow suit.
They keep them busy, I thought to myself. But in fact these kind of activities were probably provided to help the prisoners and their families and friends relate to one another during the visits.
We sat in silence and made our Valentine’s Day cards for each other. I decided that as he was so relaxed it was the time to bring up Steve again.
‘I had a dream about Steve last night.’
I carried on colouring in but I could hear him put his pencil down.
‘Chris, I don’t believe you said that. Here we are, it’s Valentine’s Day and you and I are having a really nice time, then you go ahead and ruin that nice time. You’re making me really very, very angry. You bring him up, time and time again like a dog gnawing on a bone. Sorry you have this sick fascination with Steve but he’s nothing to do with me.’
‘You called him an aberration bought on by hypnosis?’
‘That’s right!’
‘How come he’s such a real aberration? But you know yesterday, when you were so angry with Dee, I kind of felt that you were being Steve.’ He took out his hanky and wiped his brow.
‘I was being Steve?’
‘Yes, you stopped being yourself and you were like Steve.’
‘I don’t know what you fucking mean.’
Ken had a red heart that said ‘You’re It.’ on his card and I had got stuck with a heart with the words ‘Love Chick.’
‘I mean that maybe you go in and out of being Steve and maybe you’ve just got a shattered ego – that way it would explain how you can kill 13 girls and be OK with that.'
He looked up at me, his eyes flashing bright blue.
‘How fucking dare you accuse me of such ugly horrible things? You sit there with me like a friend and accuse me of that shit. You make out you’re my friend then you attack me like that? I’m not your whipping boy, Chris, I’ll react to that.’
‘I’m sorry.’
I thought he was going to cry.
‘You’re my friend, Chris, and you believe me, or the future isn’t good for us, Chris, it really isn’t.’
‘I am your friend.’
‘You try on roles with me all the time, Chris. Know why they don’t fit? It’s because I smell that you’re a journalist with me and being close to me is unethical, Chris, for a professional journalist.’
We put our heads down and silently coloured in around the edges of our love hearts with the tiny pencils in the kit.
Outside it had got dark. I could hear nothing but the sound of pencils swiftly colouring in. He leaned over and placed his finger on the edge of my love heart, so it wouldn’t move as I coloured over the edges of it.
He threw his across the table to me when he finished it.
‘Thanks – here’s yours.’ I passed his back. He looked at it without smiling.
‘I can’t take it back through the door into the prison, you know.
You keep it.’
‘Oh, OK.’
I sat down and didn’t know what to say or do now the cards had been exchanged. I picked up a pencil and out of embarrassment decided to sketch him so I could really study him. He noticed what I was doing and leaned back in his seat, arms folded to pose for me.
‘Do you often do this?’ he asked, lifting his head up and showing me his profile.
‘Nope, never.’ I was busy filling in his thick eyelashes with curly strokes of a HB pencil.
He looked exactly like he had in footage I had seen of him in court listening to the evidence being given against him. I drew the austere straight nose and the bump on it at the bridge and his long dark eye lashes and his dimpled chin. The almond-shaped intense eyes and his slightly flared nostrils.
‘There’s a tiny hole in your ear lobe!’
‘I used to have an ear ring in that ear, Chris.’
I leaned over and pinched his ear lobe with my fingers.
‘Oh gosh, there’s the little hole. I can feel it!’ I exclaimed excitedly as I dug my thumbnail hard into his ear lobe.
‘Ouch!’
Ken leaned over to look at my artwork.
‘It looks nothing like me, Chris. You’re no artist.’
‘I don’t remember ever saying that I was.’ I took a dark grey pencil and made a cross through it. I felt annoyed he was a big ego.
He looked upset. ‘Chris, come on, cheer up. Please can you let them take a photo of both of us together?’
I didn’t want to – it seemed fake happy, like a donkey ride on a beach on a wet rainy day. ‘No, I don’t look my best.’
‘Please. You have to give them a dollar off the card. The machine has a photo voucher. Please go and get it, I can’t. You can send it to me as a beautiful reminder of my day of normality with you,
Minerva. I get no normal. You don’t know what this day has meant to me. I feel so much lighter.’
He seemed to need it so much and seemed so sad about not having it that I relented and went to get the voucher. The guard went off and came back with a large heavy camera. Apparently there was an area where we had to be photographed, so we went over and stood under some white balloons. He put his arm around my waist to pose for the picture. I put my arm around his waist and tucked my thumb into the waistband of his trousers. He looked down, smiled at me and held me tighter. One of the guards took our photo with a flash as his hipbone crushed ever so tightly up against mine. I felt as if I was completely insane.
We went back to the table and waited for the photo to be given to us. When we got it, he flicked it across the table to me.
‘You have it. I look too pale.’ He was upset he looked less than lovely in the photo.
‘Hey, will I ever see you again?’ I asked.
‘Do you want me to come back in the summer?’
‘OK, I’ll get a tan ready for you. I won’t look so pale.’
‘OK.’ I wondered would I return or would sanity save me from the embarrassing scenario.
‘Did you enjoy the poetry I’ve been writing?’
I wanted to ask him if it were Steve who was the poet but knew he’d get too angry.
‘I’m going to count the days until my cell gets warmer. I’ll go outside, get that tan and get myself looking better ready for your return.’ He rubbed his pale arms as he stood up. ‘Are you OK?’ ‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Sure? OK?’
He hugged me and then looked at me carefully.
‘Come back then, Minerva.’
‘OK.’
‘Will you write to me?’
‘Sure, I’ll post a letter before I leave town.’
‘You know, I felt you soon as your plane landed in my country.’
He let go of me. It was six o’clock. Visiting hours ended at eight. It was chaos; visiting children were running around playing tag and some of the wives were saying goodbye to their husbands.
I turned to try to see if Bianchi had gone back to his cell. He was standing near the table looking lost. I gave in to an impulse and went back over to him. I gave him a hug, watching over his shoulder at the guard who had told me not to touch him. He draped himself over my shoulders gratefully.
‘Is there a problem? Are you OK?’ He squeezed my waist tightly.
I realized that I had gone back to say goodbye to him.
‘Chris, I want you to know something. I’m not the same man.’
‘The same man as what?’ I said irritated .
‘I’m not the same man as the demon infested young punk who walked in here all those years ago.’
Our eyes met and we let each other go.
‘Thanks for telling me that,’ I said flatly.
Suddenly I felt as if my whole body and mind had instant pins and needles. My black eyed child side had come out to feel his Lord of The Flies boy.
I suddenly felt sick - his kind, humane, boring Ken side had popped out and reached my dark side - and was shining warmth and it was making me feel odd. His sickeningly sweet blue eyes were like Mother’s Milk piercing into me and crackling the ice.
He was melting the lower frequency ICE was stuck inside by reaching the part that had come out to see his dark side. Now he was melting it with his healthy side.
‘You need love right? You don’t need bad stuff. Bad stuff hurts.
Get the nice things for the woman who needs someone good and kind.’
Ken went on. ‘You like nice things. You deserve good things, Chris.
I felt as if someone was walking over my grave.
Someone had picked out all my private diaries and was reading them all aloud, all at once…screaming them – the dark lines and dark hate. A hundred mirrors shattered. I saw a hooded man at an altar saying mass when I was a child, but he wasn’t a man he had a green lizard face and he drank real blood he got from an orphan hunt in the woods. I had been a fast runner and the others had got taken on the yachts with the politicians ..we were orphans that no one cared about used as sex slaves.
Satanic Ritual Abuse. How could I have forgotten…… everything?
I had seen him as a child – I had known the Devil - they had conjured him up in the Vatican run halls in the basements below us.
I had been offered to the Lord of Death in his Underground World ..as virgins – like brides - no human man was ever going to free me out of the ice and soul prison - rabbit hole - part of me owned by the elite - a sex slave bitch – stuck in the ice – his dimension in a deeper underground vault forever.
Ken was just a sad, lonely old prisoner. I wanted to go… he was bringing up sad thoughts. I was feeling really ill. He leaned in with his kind scabby lips to kiss me and I felt revolted and then he touched down on my lips. Serial killer number two for Clarice, a mocking voice said inside my head.
I walked towards the door that led to the cells. I turned and was escorted through the three sets of locked iron gates. Outside it was dark and pouring with rain again. I fell down the steps and then ran to the car, fumbled with the key, got in and slammed the door. As I turned on the ignition, I glanced back through the wet window at the prison. My whole body was shaking uncontrollably.
All of a sudden I saw that I was utterly and incredibly alone.
I got hit by the realization like a speeding freight train hitting me full on. The pain shot through me like a burning white light that seared into every pore. I saw that I had been alone all of my life and trapped in somewhere inside me. The feel of how cold it had been all around me was killing me. I began to sob uncontrollably.
I cried. I howled. Years and years of being stuck under ice water while my life had been lived by some kind of programmed dead fool slave cardboard cut out that wasn’t me. I had been triggered over this and that but always gone back into a box at the end of it. I had kissed serial killers. I had destroyed newspapers – I had slept with greaseballs who had used me. I had made love to the leader of the Real IRA.
I was so dirty.
‘Ice’ – my magical powerful child part – my CORE – had been under a Black Magick spell by the Black Magick rituals of my Children’s home – the Vatican – who had placed me with a runt family while they kept me as theirs. The parties – the check ups—all to program.
I was a frozen slave.
It had taken another slave – one programmed to kill .....a so called domestic terrorist – who usually kill themselves afterwards, meeting with one who was tampered with in the same way to finally bust me free.
When I stopped crying I felt weak. I was getting old and I had no money, no home and no career. I had let them bite chunks out of me. Steal from me – until I was destitute. Capture the head of the Real IRA – shut down the powers of the press – destroy the Mafia of the UDA.
There had been many more operations I had carried out on politicians and powerful men I had destroyed for the MI6 front companies that had paid me a wage and for Rupert Murdoch who had paid my spy wages.
The Vatican orphanage home I grew up in was run by the Jesuits – the Jesuits were formed by Adam Weishaupt who began the Illuminati. He and his group still control the world from the higher realms. The Jesuit Illuminati and their MK Ultra and Monarch Mind Control – their aim is to smash the heart of man, so they own us all and we become easy to control.
There is but one cure for humanity.
They say that when Jesus comes into a cold heart, he melts away all the splits and the soul re unites into one – they say that when Jesus comes to the broken and the betrayed and the needy that he casts out demons and he calls his lost Children back home.
….to all those who read this.....come home.