28/09/2024
Bloodlines, The Evil Inside 4
Prologue
“You bitch. You selfish bitch, why couldn’t you just be straight with me, why didn’t you tell me the truth?”
Loud bangs demanding attention and a cacophony of raised voices were emanating from outside the locked front door of the terraced house in a rundown area of St Mara, silhouettes of figures came and went against the closed drapes of the lounge window, their darkened shadows accentuated by the brightness of the Summer sun. These voices were stern and authoritarian, and through the mesh of those thin curtains, there were swirling circles of police-car flashing lights, the sirens that had signalled an emergency call-out now silent, replaced by the demands of the officers themselves. The call for help had come, not from the house itself, rather from concerned neighbours, the residents closest to that property on Loomis Avenue were accustomed to disturbances, especially recently. And though this was an area well known by the authorities to house a wide variety of drug dealers and violent thugs, even said criminals were cautious when it came to messing with the guy who lived at the end of the long terrace, Seth Lynch was one mean so**********ch.
From on the pavement outside, the uniformed officers were getting desperate, they themselves had heard female screams coming from the interior of the house and it was obvious now that their calls for the door to be answered were being ignored. The lead officer on scene demanded that a young colleague retrieve the force’s secret weapon from the boot of a squad-car. Affectionately known as the big-red-key, it was little more than a hefty missile of steel, heavy enough to be used as a battering-ram, capable of smashing down any door. The hope now was that they weren’t already too late, because moments earlier, those female screams had ceased.
Inside the property’s lounge, 35-year-old Seth Lynch was knelt over the prone body of his aging mother, her lifeless frame prostate on a rug by the disused fireplace, his gnarled fingers still wrapped tightly around her throat. The woman’s thick-rimmed glasses were crooked across her face, one now-sightless eye still covered, the other lens tilted down over the wrinkled dead flesh of her left cheek, a broken part of the frame lying on the mat beside her. Her thin greying hair was dishevelled, due more to a lack of interest than the altercation itself, because Mary Lynch had stopped caring about her appearance, there’d seemed little point when the only ones seeing her were her son and the nurse that visited twice daily. Across the way, the dead lady’s wheelchair was on its side, falling to the floor as Seth’s attack was launched, her left leg entangled around the foot-rest, her ankle grotesquely twisted and obviously broken. Not that it mattered anymore for this lady would never feel pain again, her suffering had ended now, strangely, her killer had actually done her a favour.
Because 3 months earlier, she’d been diagnosed with terminal cancer, the infiltration of her bones ensuring that the time leading to her eventual demise would be excruciating to the extreme, the administered morphine designed to ease her agony was barely scraping the surface. And that’s why she’d chosen this morning to make her shocking revelation, the one that had made her son spiral into a murderous rage. In her heart she knew he deserved to know the truth and this might be the last chance she’d ever get to tell him. If the prognosis was accurate, soon she’d be moved to a hospice that dealt in palliative care and it wasn’t fair that the truth as to the identity of Seth’s father would die with her. She’d always resisted the urge to reveal the hellish facts of his conception, now there seemed little to lose. Her only concern was his mental fragility, for his whole life her son had never been what society saw as “right,” his battles with mental illness had started way back in his teens and had continued on into adult life. She’d lost count as to the amount of times he’d been sectioned over the years, sometimes it was because he was deemed a danger to himself, on countless occasions he’d stood on the precipice of su***de and it was only medical intervention that stopped him making that leap. But other times, it wasn’t the jeopardy he presented to himself, instead it was the danger Seth posed to the rest of society.
Had it not been for his extenuating psychological issues, Seth Lynch would have been imprisoned several times over the years. Like the occasion when he’d attacked one of his psychiatrists during a routine checkup, beating the man into unconsciousness but thankfully stopping before any permanent damage was done. Or the time during his school days when he’d abducted a girl who he’d become infatuated with. When she’d spurned his conventional advances, he’d clandestinely waited for her as she’d walked a lonely shortcut home before dragging her to a disused barn on farmlands that bordered the St Mara/Carpenter moors perimeter. The hysterical teen was discovered 3 days later by police who’d widened their search for the missing girl, her bound hands and ankles were tied to a wooden post, her mouth gagged with gauze, her eyes blindfolded with an oily rag. Mercifully there was no sign of s*xual assault; even in the aftermath under intense questioning, Seth never revealed what his true intentions had been towards this object of his affection.
Normally, the then-16-year-old would have been sentenced to a lengthy spell of incarceration but because his clinicians testified that the boy struggled to differentiate right-from-wrong, he was spared prison, his punishment reduced to an indefinite period in Smith’s Grove sanatorium so his condition could be treated more thoroughly. This was the first time he’d be detained inside what was basically a hospital for the criminally insane; unfortunately it wouldn’t be the last. These indeterminate spells always carried a similar path; after being admitted under duress, he’d be treated with a new cocktail of designer drugs that were seemingly a miracle breakthrough in the management of chronic psychosis, before being released into the care of his overwhelmed mother. Each time his behaviour would seemingly be under control, the anti-psychotic medicine sometimes left him in an almost zombified state, (which in truth was their true requirements) but sooner or later the drugs would cease to work and eventually, another violent episode would loom dangerously on the horizon.
Questions as to the cause of his mental-health problems were never really answered; there’d been no trauma in his childhood, no abusive stepfathers or paedophilic uncles, eventually it was decided that his issues may have come from a genetic defect. His mother had never suffered with any form of psychosis nor had any of her relatives, but as for the man who’d fathered him…
Outside on the pavement, rampaging fists continued to pound on the front door, becoming more urgent with every bang, and above the ocean of voices, a man who was obviously the lead officer could be heard saying, “Right lad, swing it on three; one, two… A huge crash struck as the number three was screamed, its target between the door and its stencil, aimed squarely at the lock. The wood cracked and splintered but the big red key failed to open the barrier on its first shot, but it was just delaying the inevitable, the uniformed policeman, with his hands grasped firmly around the steel battering-ram’s handles, swung his shoulders back and with all his mite, he aimed his missile once more at the impediment, and this time, the door crashed open.
A team of officers burst into the property at speed, their footsteps echoing against the hallway’s uncarpeted floor, their voices merging into one, indistinguishable from each other as they ran the length of the corridor towards the lounge entrance. The internal door was closed but it offered no protection for the inhabitant inside, and when it cracked open, what the policemen saw chilled them to the bone.
The initial vision was of death, the old lady, who was laid on a filthy coal-stained rug by the fireplace was obviously deceased, of that there was little doubt, her hollow chest that was covered only by a thin nightdress, showed no evidence of movement, her deflated lungs perfectly still, lifeless, redundant. Had there been hope, then she’d have been screaming in agony, the grotesque twisting of her mangled leg would have been virtually debilitating, but there was no sign of pain on her pale sterile face, the barren nature of an extinct life instantly evident to the watching men. But the true horror of the situation didn’t come from the co**se on the floor, that emotion was reserved for the man resting in an armchair just feet away from the heinous architecture he’d created.
Seth Lynch was sporting a grin, a wide smile reserved only for those condemned to madness, with demonic eyes that offered a distorted view of the world around him. That final step into insanity hadn’t been taken freely, instead it was a stride forced by an abnormal brain that could no longer cope with the rigors of regular life. He’d been on the brink of insanity for years but it had taken his mother’s revelation just before her death to finally push him into that abyss. As the officers rushed him, he offered no resistance as for now he’d accepted his fate. When asked why he’d done this horrible thing, the only response he offered was,
“She should have told me sooner; I should have known the truth about my father, and my family…”
