The Deceit

48

The girl, Zara Parkinson, was weeping again. Rothley resisted the urge to smack her. She still had faint bruises on her face from the last time he had struck her: sad, violet contusions under her eyes, and some bruising on her slim, pale arms. This was not ideal. The Abra-Melin ritual was adamant that the final victim must burn in as pure a state as possible. Virginal, and perfect, and unsullied.

Besides, there was no real need for him to hit her again. He had done much of the hardest work, having successfully transported her across southern England to this old block of apartments in a rundown corner of Plymouth.

All the neighbouring flats were empty: they could not be detected. The flat was anonymous, and utterly context-less; the police in their dutiful slowness would surely be looking for him in some house connected to Crowley and the Dawn. But Rothley was already beyond that — he had soared way beyond that.

‘Mnnggg.’

The girl was whimpering, choking a little on her gag. Rothley leaned close, and assessed her half-naked body. She was quite dirty. He would have to bathe her and feed her tonight. Yes. Then put some ointment on her wrists where the ropes had grazed her skin, and dress her in clean white clothes. He had to get her right for the final ritual, for the great and dramatic denouement, when she could burn correctly in the ‘incandescent fires’.

Staring out of the window, at the grey terraced houses of Plymouth, Rothley rolled the resonant Coptic concepts in his mind.

Burn the virgin in the scorching and incandescent fires of Hell. Before the eyes of many.

How fitting. It was rather magnificent in its own way. He had to burn the girl, and do it all in public. The writers of the Abra-Melin ritual had a gift for poetry, and theatre, as well as pre-Christian sorcery.

‘Mmmggnnn!’

The girl was still mumbling, intruding on his thoughts. What did she want? Perhaps she was thirsty? He couldn’t risk her dehydrating. He wanted her alive so that she could die. Pulling the rag from out of her mouth, he said, ‘Yes? What is it?’

‘Please … please …’ The tears streamed abundantly down her bruised face. ‘Please let me go. Please!’

She was sobbing. It was cruel. He sighed and shook his head. ‘No.’

‘I … I …’ Zara sobbed some more, her lips trembling with fear, her eyelids opening and closing as if she were drugged. Soon she would be drugged. He would have to give her the last incense so that she was entirely bewitched; and of course he would inject some Ampulex compressa. Then she would walk into the incandescent flames virtually of her own volition. Her pure, virginal, eight-year-old’s body would be taken by the sub-princes, and scorched and devoured. Wholly consumed, rolled in the mouth of Hell: a cruel and beautiful death, witnessed by many.

And so the great and noble ritual of Abra-Melin would be consummated, properly and authentically, for maybe the first time in centuries. And Rothley would be inviolable.

He exulted as he stuffed the grey dishrag in the girl’s tender red mouth, silencing her pathetic whimpers. He had done it. He was enacting and completing the great ritual, he had done something Crowley couldn’t, something no one had done for a very long time.

Maybe he should tell the girl why she was going to die? Perhaps she deserved to know her role.

Leaning close to her little white ear, Rothley told her in a gentle whisper how tomorrow morning she was going to be taken to a special public place, and burned alive.

Zara Parkinson wept.