THE DARKNESS WITHIN - PART FIVE

In the end it is not remorse which led me to the inevitability of taking my own life but fear; fear of the future.

I knew for certain sixteen people were already dead. Eleven were slain (or assassinated, call it what you will) by my unknowing hand, the darkness within me distilled into a separate temporary identity by a military scientist, an all too real incarnation of Stevenson’s fictional “Mr Hyde”. Four, including my own dear Caroline, were savagely cut down by a second assassin in a failed attempt to eradicate me. The last of the sixteen, the twelfth chronologically, was Professor James Caleb, my superior in the program to create a band of covert, unidentifiable killers. Unlike the others his death came about with my full knowledge and willing participation; it was not Mr Hyde but Dr Jekyll himself who pulled the trigger.

In making my confession I have held a mirror to my soul, this morning I held a mirror to my face; the face of Jonathan Palmer did not look back. The evil transformation that had first occurred in response to taking Caleb’s drug, when my army masters had set me loose to assassinate the “dissident” journalist Wendy Travis, and latterly under hypnosis had now happened of its own accord. The metamorphosis was mercifully brief and quickly reversed itself but it is the fear of its recurrence that drives me toward my doom.

And what of remorse? While it cannot be argued I was misled & manipulated by my superiors and that if I had not carried out their evil work then some other poor fool would have done so, a lot of the remorse I am burdened with comes from offering myself up as a willing guinea pig in Caleb’s experiments in the first place, from allowing my thirst for vengeance against the “civilians” who had ambushed my comrades to become a hatred of all civilians, the innocent majority as much as the guilty few.

No lesser a sin in my eyes were the deaths of Caroline and Sally. Had I not sought to recover the memories Caleb had stolen from me I would not have asked Sally to hypnotise me, the Hyde within me would not have broken loose and killed her. Had I not sought to challenge Caleb Caroline and her family would still be alive. That is why I will never be able to forgive myself.

Sixteen deaths that I am aware of, doubtless there were others, of a certainty there will be more to come. Now my evil other self is beginning to assert its control I fear it will be my hand upon the knife; Hyde must die!

******

Twice now I have undergone hypnosis to recall the events of the past but neither time did I remember any of what went on during my time with Professor Caleb. No doubt there was conditioning of some sort and trials of the drug but now I will never know; I daren’t risk hypnosis a third time.

My suspicion the conditioning had included murder gave me the ammunition I needed to lead the FBI, and Agent Walter Brown in particular, to the other two members of Caleb’s team of assassins. I told him I had overheard a conversation between Corporal Eric Davies and Staff Sergeant Olly Sanchez while I was stationed with them. I said they were discussing the recent murder of a local woman, a discussion I thought at the time to be purely hypothetical but following the slaughter of Caroline and her family I now believed the murder was for real and they must suspect I’d heard them. Brown seemed, on the face of it, to believe me; as such he was about to unwittingly repay me for my information by tracking down my former comrades. Unable to connect them to the murders the FBI had been forced to release them; now it was my turn.

*****

Caleb was a lousy soldier; I had crept into his bedroom and bound & gagged his wife without him so much as stirring in his sleep. Staff Sergeant Sanchez on the other hand was at his bedroom door a split second after I entered the hall of his apartment.

‘You have a choice, arsehole,’ he advised. ‘Either leave now or leave dead.’

Choosing to keep my gun concealed I tried a different tack.

‘Corporal Jonathan Palmer reporting sir!’ I barked. ‘Apologies for the intrusion sir but the Corporal must speak with you sir!’

‘Palmer?’ he queried, a tic of recognition playing with his face. ‘Do I know you?’

‘Yes indeed sir! You may not remember me sir!’

‘Cut that crap, I ain’t in the service any more, I retired. Call me Olly’

‘Begging your pardon sir… Olly… but no you didn’t. The brass are pulling your strings.’

‘What? Come into the kitchen and let’s talk. Oh, and leave your weapon in the hallway.’

*****

By early evening of the next day I was back at the secluded farmhouse; as I drove up the front door opened and a figure stood framed in the light spilling out into the darkness.

‘Ivan!’ I called out. ‘This is Olly Sanchez. Olly, this is Ivan, or rather Henry Maddox.’

‘Hello Olly!’ Henry returned. ‘Ivan’s my stage name, “Ivan the Indomitable”!’

‘Hi,’ said Olly feebly. It was the first word he’d spoken in several hours.

‘Olly has agreed to being hypnotised Henry. He will be secured throughout but you’re free to leave as soon as he’s under.’

‘I’ll stay,’ replied Henry. ‘How secure is secure?’

The answer was very secure indeed, or so I’d hoped. In a clearing in a wood several miles away yet still far from the nearest habitation Olly sat in an armchair we’d carried from the house. Padlocked to each wrist and ankle were four stout chains; each chain was locked firmly around a tree. “X” marked the spot and Olly was at its centre.

‘When you awake you will remember everything,’ intoned Harry. ‘You will remember…’

Olly’s eyes drooped slowly shut; for a moment all was still. Without warning he started to thrash about violently, the chains pulling and slackening in a weird dance. An expression of horror filled his face, a face that suddenly began to alter. Like melting wax his features softened and blurred; for a second or two his face was as featureless as a slab of butter. From this nothingness a new visage began to take shape and I was reminded at once of the figure caught on CCTV leaving the office of Dr Sally Medway; the face Olly now wore, although different, was certainly cut from the same piece of cloth. The words I had used to describe my secret identity came instantly to mind: “lust burned in his eyes, unsatisfied hunger defined the shape of his jaw, unbridled anger creased his Neanderthal brow.” Knowing that he and I were brothers filled me with renewed horror and disgust.

Twenty minutes later the process began again only this time in reverse; once more it was the sergeant who sat chained before us.

‘Wake him,’ I rasped as I released him, my mouth almost too dry to speak.

With a massive intake of breath Olly awoke; a bone chilling cry forcing its way between his clenched teeth.

‘Oh my sweet Jesus,’ he sobbed, tears streaming down his battle-hardened face. ‘So much blood, so much blood. There was a photo on the bedside table, you and her. I seemed to recognise you; I knew I’d seen you before. I had to kill her, I had to… but as God is my witness I did not rape her, I couldn’t defile her like that. I killed her quick, I swear I did Jon, the cuts were after she was dead. Oh sweet Jesus what have I done!’

As with my attack on Sally, a measure of human mercy had been injected into the world of evil our alter egos inhabited.

‘Please Jon,’ he said at last. ‘Please kill me, I can’t bear it.’

‘Would you not rather you do it yourself?’ I asked, never questioning for a second that he should die.

‘I can’t Jon, I’m a Catholic. I know I’ve got a deal to explain to him upstairs but suicide is a mortal sin.'

As he spoke of "him upstairs" a feint smile touched his lips but now he spoke in deadly earnest.

'Do it for my mother Jon, the truth of this will devastate her as it is, don’t let killing myself make it worse.’

‘Okay Olly.’ I said. ‘For your mother.’ It was also for a brave man who could allow a glimmer of humour to shine through, no matter the situation. With that we embraced, two broken down old soldiers weeping together.

‘It’s time Olly.’

*****

For the record it seems unlikely Mrs Sanchez will learn anything of her son’s sins. I had it from Agent Brown himself that the FBI believed Olly was an innocent man killed to ensure his silence, either by me if I was the serial killer or by Corporal Eric Davies if I was not.

That was a week ago; this afternoon that same Corporal Davies also died at the end of my pistol. Unlike Staff Sergeant Olivero Sanchez I shot him not out of mercy but in the same way one might destroy a rabid dog.

Davies needed no hypnosis; even before I’d finished explaining why I’d broken into his home his entire memory came flooding back. So forceful was his reengagement with those deleted memories he fell writhing to the floor where he lay, as if comatose, for several minutes.

‘We gotta get back to Caleb!’ he exclaimed, scant moments after regaining his composure. ‘I gotta tell him I remember, tell him I gotta do me another one. Gonna do me some more killing Palmer! So much blood, so much blood! Oh man, the way that bitch squealed as I poked her, with my knife and my big old friend downstairs! I never had an ass as tight as that one brother!’

I don’t know what murder he was revelling in, whether part of our training or some new assignment, but it was obvious he enjoyed it and was eager for more.

‘Killing and cutting and raping all on Uncle Sam’s dime? I gotta get me some more of that. Come on Palmer, let’s go find Caleb!’

‘Oh you’re about to find him,’ I said quietly. ‘Sooner than you think.’

‘What the fu…’ Davies began, eyes widening at the sight of my pistol pointed at his chest; he never did finish the question.

*****

So my confession is almost done. In his own fictional confession Dr Jekyll hypothesised that had he “approached…[his] discovery in a more noble spirit, had…[he]…risked the experiment while under the empire of generous spirit…[he]…had come forth an angel instead of a fiend”. As the clock of my life ticked inexorably toward its bitter end I asked myself why my masters, imbued as they were with the ability to distil the dual nature of man into a separate entity, had chosen to create a devil? Who knows what power for good may have been unleashed had Professor Caleb and his ilk likewise brought forth “an angel instead of a fiend.”

For a second or two the resolve to end my life had wavered; could it be possible, even now, for Caleb’s work to be reversed and the angel in me be released instead? The hand I had stretched towards the gun upon my desk stopped in mid reach; was there still a chance of redemption?

As I looked at that hand I gasped in horror; it was not my own. It was gnarled and ugly, stubby fingered and brutish, more akin to a bestial claw than a human extremity. Turning it over I noticed a series of savage scars, stark lines carved deep into the flesh as if that accursed appendage had once clutched a jagged piece of glass. A terrible image came crashing into mind; my final sight of Sally, naked upon her desk with a dagger of broken glass jutting from her throat. Any miniscule hope I yet had that some other person may have murdered her as I sat hypnotised and unaware was banished at that moment, along with any fanciful thoughts that any other path lay now before me.

Earlier I wrote “I, like the fictional Dr Henry Jekyll before me, will exorcise my inner demon by the taking of one final life… my own.” In truth Jekyll did not exorcise any demon; he instead committed suicide of the soul, allowing the good part of his nature to be completely subsumed by Hyde. It was Hyde, finally in unfettered control yet fearful of the inescapable punishment of his foul deeds, who, in the final act of a “self-destroyer”, swallowed one final potion: cyanide.

Thus it was Jekyll and Hyde each destroyed a self, one in spirit, the other in fact. For my part it is I and I alone who will take responsibility for my destruction, both sides of my nature, the true me and the darkness within, slain by a single bullet.

Now as I let go the pen from my hand...his hand...and replace it with my loaded gun a smile comes to my face. My dying vision sees not the barrel pressed to my mouth or my finger tight against the trigger, but the gentle, welcoming eyes of Caroline. I’m coming darling……..