Corpses in The Closet

With his foot convulsing upon the floorboards, Raphael studied the wispy letter in full. Tranced, his eyes surveilled each word, sentence, and paragraph with the uttermost diligence. The writing itself was so corybantic that Raphael wrangled with decoding its hieroglyphical complexity, as if carved by a primordial dunce. A paragraph of particular significance went thus:

“The police were incompetent. Fifteen years now, and still, they have left the case unsolved. How many died by their hand? Twenty? And yet the police decided to defer from perseverance. Pathetic! The mystery was not a deterrent for me. On the contrary. With a beloved being likewise taken from me, I sought to uncover the truth - no matter how horrid. Mourning was not enough; justice has been my sole means of reconciling. My efforts were not in vain, for I now know who the murderer is. If you, too, wish to have such reconciliatory knowledge, then pay me a visit at Dryad’s Mount.” 

Reclining farther back in his armchair, Raphael racked his mind for whom the anonymous letter may have sprung from. How had they found his affinity to the case, after fifteen years? Where had the anonymity unsourced his address from?! Of all the husbands and parents affected, why had he been chosen? The longer Raphael reflected upon these inexplicable quandaries, the more inextricable his adamancy forgrew. After much deliberation, Raphael was incontrovertible on driving to Dryad’s Mount - that very day. It would be no facile or swift adventure, requiring him to voyage for three to four hours; if the throes of traffic, exacerbated by the fact it would be Sunday eve when heading homeward, did not retard him. 

So be it, thought Raphael, with my widowed wound being opened ajar, I shan’t rest till I have heard what this stranger has to say or show. Whether that be true or false, I will not know unless I go. 

Rereading the letter a final time, Raphael observed the endmost addition, where the anonymity urged him to come alone. When recounting all of this to his wife, saving the whereabouts being as far as Dryad’s Hill, he was opposed by duteous reprehension. It was not the curious circumstances behind this all which irritated her, for what irked his wife the most was how he could confide in something that seemed so fictitious to her. 

“Why would you risk rekindling the pain you have already suffered?” posed his wife, with lovesome sincerity. “I can still remember the uneasy man you were, when we first met. You were obsessed with the case. Sometimes, it is best to bury what has passed.” 

As Raphael desponded at the remembrance of this, his wife questioned:

“What gives you such faith in the tenuous?” 

“I cannot,” replied he, “spurn that which might bring me resolution. If I defected from going, then I would never forgive myself.” Raphael, now abutting his wife, and coiling her auburn hair, concluded: 

“It would forever haunt me, do you understand?” 

Sighing, she sympathised with her husband, and refrained from beseeching him. “If need be, I shall be awake the entire night, awaiting your return.” 

Crimsoning from how endearing his wife could be, Raphael kissed her with blest affirmation, and let her embosom him for an indefinite spell. In defiance of his outward affections, Raphael internalised a frolic solace at having some time away from her.

As he strode toward his lacquered vehicle, his wife truckled him with intimate adieux. From her complexion having peroxided, one saw her to be fretting more than Raphael. It was outré how insensate he felt to the ordeal of untombing corpses from his yore. No dolours nettled him, nor did any tears cool down his slender cheeks. Rather, Raphael was neurotic over whom the anonymity might be; moreover, what revelations they had to offer as consolation. For the whole three and a half hours that Raphael drove, his memory was subjected to being cleft asunder by a callous inquisitor, as he sifted through the mausoleum of footling files he had stowed within. Transplanting his windshield was the haze of interminable families, whom he had approached, so as to garner a single clue: to no avail. He reproached himself for having failed to accost someone who might have known. Long had he scoured through every possible suspect, heeded the minutest publication from the press alluding to a leak in the case, nevertheless, all had been infructuous. That is, till this nameless person had claimed to have done so. In brief, his pride had been reduced to impotence. Wizening from his discontent, Raphael stared at the horizon, where viscous honey dissolved; he glunched in contempt for whom he was yet to meet, predetermining that he behave rebarbative and rude towards them. 

Arriving after noon, he entered the quietest, barest wilds. Looking at the wispy letter anew, Raphael then diverted beyond at Dryads Mount. There was a cottage, plighted to solitude, which had wasted to vegetative decrepitude: vomitous vines, drooping down like damsels dishevelled, entwined aloft its roof; underneath, hid the faint vestiges of birchen logs. The cottage lay atop a mount, nevertheless, its dilapidation misgave the inkling of it having sunken to a nether abysm. 

At the door, which crumbled when knocked upon, frenetic waves festered Raphael. Before he had even been admitted, a miasma of arid wood, contaminated with voracious termites, nauseated Raphael. What was all the more unsettling was the masculine anonymity he had been summoned by. From the sunny rays alighting upon him, Raphael discerned his beard to be boarding lice, his skin impregnated by mucid buboes, and his teeth carious from aural negligence. Nor can one pretermit his grizzled hair, with it travestying the pelt of an albino reynard. In spite of Raphael wearing common jeans and a flannel shirt, he outshine this man so much that one might deem Raphael to be throned in regality. The man’s shirt, trousers, and shoes had been divested of all colour. 

“O’ how blithe am I to see you!”

 Stilted by his scurvy breath, Raphael redoubled his facial insolence. Unabashed by this indecorum, the man resumed: 

“Enter, and be my visitant.” 

Glowering, Raphael did as he was bade by inching through the threshold…slower than a sluggard. 

“I was certain that you would ignore my invitation. It was overbold of me to have veiled myself. For all you know, I could either have been bluffing or deceiving you; or, even, toying with your soul.” 

The man’s sinistrous comment troubled Raphael’s impudence into involuntary assuagement. It had been spoken with malice, not the compassion one’s courtesy would assume. 

In silence, Raphael was conveyed to the midst of a commodious room, where dusty pollen stifled the moistureless air. Endraping the walls were lurid photographs of women that had been butchered: breasts torn from their host, viscera embowelled and knotted in rosy curlicues, visages pulverised unto amorphous. On the farthest right, a lone window, fashioned of azure glass, shafted blue rivulets upon these photographs, canonising them with ignoble grandeur. From having accustomed to these horrors over numerous, sleepless nights, Raphael was impervious, and had hardened to be imperturbable to such grotesquerie. Besides, this man was too piteous to be a murderer. Guilt wreaks, whereas grief wrecks, philosophised Raphael to himself. 

Instead, what evinced in Raphael was a comprehension of their commonalities and disparities. His designs of being rude were expunged, and, out of a morbid infatuation, Raphael employed an unctuous tone as they conversed. 

“I see the case engulfed you also,” said Raphael, motioning to where a faded image displayed slaughter warped as ritual satanism. 

The man fortissimo chortled, and did not once remit in tenor. Confused, Raphael mimicked an inappropriate laughter at what should have been solemn. Rigidifying his lubberly spine, the man composed himself, and deadened their mischievous ambiance. 

“If you look at each and every one of them, they are all different. The chief theme throughout is the hatred for wives, and matrimony. This is the only, recurrent methodology which can attribute victims to a single murderer. That alone, however, was insufficient in aiding the police. Their cunning for homicide was stupendous.” 

A hiatus stole across as the man flitted into an umbrous corner, where he rummaged through an assortment of documents, yellowed from their age. As the man did so, Raphael asked: 

“You are yet to impart your name.” 

“Belial,” answered the man, still enshadowed. 

Raphael rolled the appellation of Belial upon his tongue, frothing it back and forth, for it contained a wistful hint of someone whom he had interviewed erst. Yea, Belial must be the anomaly, where an unbetrothed daughter had been slain, rather than the usual penchant for wives. After this variance in the murderer’s pool of victims, all had soon dwindled out, desiccating the trail to be in irremediable drought. The police had speculated that this variance from wives to have been an error, prompting the murderer to have either forsworn his miscreancy from remorse (if he was at all capable of such emotions), or been discouraged by a fear of apprehension. Raphael realised the bane that had been foisted upon Belial: his daughter was eternised as the murderer’s ultimate victim. He recalled how Belial had written to him of reconciliation, however, was this ever achievable when one’s peace of life has been ravished thus? 

“Shall I enlighten you?” queried Belial, as he scuttled into a luminous beam, as of a crab along a bright strand, buttressing the assortment of documents. 

Entertained by how whimsical Belial was, Raphael nodded in enthusiasm. He decreed that Raphael follow him to the kitchen, where smothered a sterility that was irrespirable to the lungs. A murk, from the absence of a window, thickened throughout the kitchen. To countervail this, Belial torched a rusted candelabra, which wielded seven fiery tentacles that frisked emblazing phantoms around Raphael. 

Choking on the stale virulence, Raphael staggered over to a destitute table, where Belial was already seated. 

“Would you care for some water?” asked Belial. 

Sceptical of how sanitary this would be, but too parched and suffocating to object, Raphael intimated how behoveful a glass would be to his thirst. Drinking the opaque water in a matter of seconds, and tasting a granular quality to it, Raphael knew he ought to have declined. 

Emplacing the documents on the table, Belial leafed through them, retrograding back to the primal murder. 

“Catherine De Vaudline, 30 years old, ” orated Belial. “On May 13th, 1985, her kidney was impaled, causing it to rupture thereupon. Catherine had been wedded two weeks prior, to an amateurish director.” 

Belial handed Raphael the barbarous pornography, examining each infinitesimal detail, wince, and all of Raphael’s general reactions. 

Looking at pictorial Catherine, he saw a Styx of blood encompass her mangled body. Inane eviscerations, which were so unaccountable when comparing the murderer’s future masterdom, littered Catherine. In retrospect, Raphael jested at how she had been a mere expedient. One which plucked the cherry from the murderer’s chastity, deflorating him of his propriety. 

“Monstrous,” declared Raphael, “how one can harm another like this.” As a histrionic accentuation of his disgust, he lanced it across the table. Recuperating the document, and reinstating it into its orderly folder, Belial protracted a disdainful exhalation. Omitting a response, Belial brisked them onwards. Soaring through all twenty victims, they both had their own, discrepant preoccupations: Belial was steadfast on Raphael, who seemed witched by an unnatural restraint - an inner masquerade of what he desired to betray. When his wife of old appeared, however, Belial was obstinate that he saw the twinkle of turpitude in Raphael. Believing him to be uncompassionate, Belial tested Raphael: 

“Do you remember where you were, when your wife was killed?” 

This was a trifling description of her anguish. After the mutilation of Raphael’s wife, her heart had been shoved into her mouth, with a recondite riddle that none had managed to decrypt. 

“Yes,” said Raphael, with despondence, “I was in the city. At that time, I worked till late into the night, often lingering after hours so as to not drown.” 

“If I may - what was your profession?” 

“I was a photographic developer.”

“Did you not specialise in those taken at marriages?” inquired Belial, with inquisitive temerity. 

Flustered by his foreknowledge, Raphael commenced twiddling his thumbs. “You have done your research.”

“I have done more than research. My curiosity for the case was personal.” 

A speechless interlude, where each analysed the other, trampled by. 

“How the police were so remiss as to look into your background, when your wife was brutalised, is beyond me. You were once very fortunate.”

Feeling cornered, Raphael started for Belial, but was impromptu poisoned by a charnel delirium when arising. Vincible against what assailed him, his sweat slimed across his forehead, oozing all the way down, where it plummeted and bedewed the dry floor. With his rigidifying arm, Raphael wiped himself, as a gush of vomitus fevered him to retch virid liquid. A drowsy debility smarted at his cognition, endarking him aswoon to a deep vortex. Meanwhile, Belial had been mute, still anatomising Raphael. 

“How incautious you were to have accepted that glass of water.” 

Straitened, Raphael could do nothing besides submit. 

“Being disempowered - stripped of one’s vitality - is unpleasant. I know why my daughter - Margarita - died. It was neither an anomaly, nor a freak in the murderer’s methodology. They were on the verge of being discovered; or I ought to say ‘you’. Yes, you.” 

Tranquillised by what overmastered him, Raphael heard Belial’s voice be mystified to that of a vengeful archangel, as if he had been mythicised as Raguel. 

“Deciphering the neglected links between you and the women, Margarita imputed the crimes to you. She was so close, before you killed her! I read it all in what she diarised. My daughter and I are of a similar belief: villains, such as yourself, are desertless of being imprisoned. This punishment is but meritless mercy. No, justice for you is reaped by likewise damning you with what you sowed.” Raphael had no chance to be aghast, for the heavens were riven apart, and that vortex submerged him to blindness. 

When rousing, a petroliferous fetor wafted into Raphael’s nostrils. Eyes aflutter, and still sedated, he surveyed his surroundings, where he saw a sable bile sheen aglow the surface of the floor. By the door, stood Belial with an invidious smirk and the candelabra abreast. Endeavouring to uprear himself, Raphael was foiled by what manacles toyed with him, like when Zeus maledicted Tantalus. Muffling incoherent words, Raphael was petrified by what inevitability wantoned in the wings. 

“I orchestrated everything, from the mysterious invitation to opting for Dryad’s Mount.” Belial jangled the keys to Raphael’s vehicle. “I knew you would come, for your proud paranoia fooled you into doing so. It compelled you to see whether you were, indeed, at risk.” 

Foaming with fear, Raphael relinquished all his strength, laming across the inflammable liquid. 

“This solitary cottage,” continued Belial, “has been abandoned for years unreckonable . No one will hear your screams and pleas.” 

Recollecting how he had savoured his whereabouts from his wife, Raphael rued having been so thoughtless. He would be sepulchred on his lonesome in these outlands, where he would dissipate into but a nugatory ghost. 

“Take me to the police,” implored Raphael, as his final attempt at persuasion, “prison is where I belong.” 

“I shall excuse you for making me reiterate - such mercy should be reserved for the redeemable. Why should a murderous letch be licensed to live? Sometimes, the cleanest way of rinsing one’s hands of the Devil is by eclipsing him.” 

“But why did you wait fifteen years?!” 

“To trick you into trusting that you had escaped. I wished for you to falsify a new life of comfort, one which I wrench you out of.” So saying, Belial unclenched the candelabra, where it ruined on the floor, enkindling a glutinous puddle of petrol. Quailing and paling, Raphael howled in vain for Belial to reverse what he had meted out as fair retribution; all the while, Belial had quitted the cottage, and peeked at the carnage through the door he had left gaping. 

Upon landing on the petrol, an Edenic incandescent serpent, which thrived off the moistureless air, was bestialised. Intent on slithering toward Raphael, the torso of the serpent swelled yet bigger, and crept nigher to its edible prey. Languishing, with tears of superficial penitence soaking his face, Raphael convulsed as the first caress from the serpent licked his feet. In a trice, its flexuosity snaked along his person, ravening off his flesh as he threshed for freedom. Belial cackled in perverse gaiety at Raphael. The serpent’s libido was insatiate: like lewdsters wenching harlots, it carnalised this apostate man. An admixture of copper, iron, sulphur, and meat enriched the atmosphere as Raphael was debauched by the serpent’s enveloping tongue. His cacophonies distorted to fit those of being violated by incubi, in the thick of gloaming. At Raphael’s midst blued a cerulean heat, which, farther out, was then substituted for a nitid white, whereafter yellow jaundiced at the rims of his body. 

“O’ what a beautiful nightmare!” rejoiced Belial. 

Enheartened enough at the surety of Raphael’s deracination, Belial strolled away from what impious dirges screeched. At haphazard, a loud cleft would creak and groan from the crackling hunger of the fervent serpent. 

Unlocking the vehicle, Belial gazed from afar at Dryad’s Mount, with an irradiant smile at how the serpent tumesced. The river of Phlegethon had now been invoked to consume Raphael and the cottage, as if molten tuberculosis; spuming, poppling, and decimating everything. Gladsome was Belial at whom he had forsaken to be taken netherward by Hades. In his state of rapt illusionment, Belial swore that he could hark merriment from the women whom Raphael had defiled; in especial that of his daughter. As the cottage cremated, Belial snuck off into the blackening horizon, reprieved of his misery at last. 

Raphael had been correct when philosophising guilt to wreak - for it had wreaked him till he had been whelmed deathwards.