***
Lado became aware of his feet. They’re walking the asphalt. His head is dizzy. Disorientated. There’s a gun under his shirt. Where is this? The street is empty. Desolate. He can’t remember how he got here. Nausea. He sat down on the curb. Remember… Remember… He let Alice hypnotize him. Did it work? He can’t remember. Did she make him awake in the middle of nowhere? Or he woke up on his own? Where was he going with this gun? He got up and started walking. He never saw this part of Detroit. Not a single soul in it. It’s St. Cyril’s. He threw the gun in the first trash can he saw.
It took him an hour to get home from there. ‘Alice!’, he screamed as he opened the door. ‘Alice!’ He searched every room in the house. No one’s there. Nor any trace that Alice ever was there. Lado sat in the couch of his frantic thoughts. What could have happened? ‘Is all of this my doing? Or hers? How well did you know Alice, Lado? You’re just a scared little girl and there’s nothing your colors can do about that. Or not? That’s what you saw. Did she take what she wanted from you and left? No. She placed a gun in your hand. Why? What did she want you to do?’
He got up and ran towards St. Cyril’s, now obscured in nightfall, street lights are shut off in this part of the city. Somehow he found the place where he awoke from the hypnotic trance. What now? He wondered around through empty streets, not knowing what he’s looking for. He heard a gunshot somewhere, and went towards the source of it, and as he got closer, he heard more of them. He entered the house. Walls of it were covered in pentagrams, upside down crosses, and similar satanic writings. Jerry Goldsmith’s ‘Ave Satani’ started playing in Lado’s head. ‘Ave! Ave Versus Christus!’ He climbed the stairs to the upper floor. There, several bodies lied in bloody puddles, and a kid with a gun in his hand stood above them. He paid no attention to Lado. Lado approached him and ripped the gun out of his hands. Kid’s eyes were closed. He wasn’t aware of anything. ‘This was supposed to be me.’
Gun popped again and the kid fell down. Lado winced and turned around to see Alice, with a gun pointed at him. ‘Good god, Alice, what did you do?!’ She answered him by firing a bullet to his stomach. Lado’s arms jerked and he squeezed the trigger of the gun that he held, accidently shooting Alice’s forearm. She screamed, causing the walls of the house to crack. She dropped the gun and grabbled down the stairs.
Lado’s shirt and his underwear soaked the thick warm scarlet liquid that leaked from his stomach. He felt like he pissed his pants, just the colors were all wrong. Before shock ceded its place to pain, Lado got on his feet and went after Alice. ‘Alice! Alice, you little whore! Turn around! What the fuck did you do?! What the fuck did you do?!’ He crawled after her in the street, pressing his stomach with one hand, and pushing the floor away with the other. She disappeared in the night and Lado didn’t hear her footsteps anymore. He bumped out into electric lights galore, amidst the witches and monsters and other festive beings. He was taken into a hospital.
Then, he was arrested. Eight children were murdered that night, during a satanic ritual, police concluded, and the blood of two more persons was found, one was Lado’s, and of unknown person. Lado rambled a lot about Alice, but police couldn’t find any such person. No one remembered her at school. No one remembered her at all. Forensics acquitted Lado of involvement in murder, but he was illegally in United States and after keeping him closed for some more, they sent him home. Those air fresheners certainly didn’t help him.
Last night he spent in Detroit, in a cell, he saw a person looking at him behind the bars. He saw Alice. She was there and then she wasn’t anymore. The priestess of Hekate. He kept rewinding the film in his head and wondered how it could be so simple for her to sacrifice eight lives. Like she doesn’t have any feelings at all. Like those lives don’t matter. Like it was fuckin’ paintball. Or, the prize she received for it, outdoes all, all the horror and all feelings she had for Lado, if she ever had any, or she just pretended she does, until she got what she wanted.
As soon as he got home he got plastered. He puked his guts out, but nothing supernatural occurred. The Cluster is gone.
***
Some time after media interest in Detroit murders waned, a book appeared on the bookshelves. ‘Devil’s greatest trick’, by Max Norman. Norman spoke of time he spent being the leader of a cult, to which all the murdered highschoolers belonged once. He claimed that the identity of mysterious Alice is in fact Alice Chandler, a girl he once allowed in the cult, and she spent some brief time with them.
Preface to the book was written by Aaron Berkovic. He commended the book, but expressed serious doubt that ‘Alice’ ever existed. He said that Alice is a mere fantasy of those who spoke of her, a fantasy of evil.
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