Van Helsinki: Mind of Madness
It was late when Van Helsinki and Fay Løren made their way round to the front of the house. It seemed days since they had entered the first time, even though it could only have been hours at most. Van clutched to his drawn Colt as if it was the only thing keeping him from either screaming or sobbing. He looked decidedly unhinged. Fay didn't seem to notice. She seemed fresh, as if her headbutt from Svetlana, followed by her escape from brainwashing, had invigorated her and her hunt for Geoff. She carried the M4 that she had seized from its place in the shed on her back, and with her two thigh pistols loaded and the trusty Beretta Van had placed in her hands at the beginning of the raid, it seemed as if nothing had changed between the break-in and the escape. The shootout, capture, mind control, fights, all seemed to have made no impression on Fay, and she moved with the grace of a dancer as she and Van strode out of the gates of the house. Van, by contrast, looked drained. Of the veritable arsenal of weapons he had brought into the house, only his reliable M1911 and solid stakes by his side remained. Where Fay was almost leaping, Van staggered, barely staying on his feet at times. Where she seemed to lust for the chase, Van looked dog-tired, a bloodhound running his prey to ground, determined and hungering, but also exhausted, a wolfish loper, not a dancer like Fay. But more than that, Van looked off. Not his usual mix of tight-lipped monosyllabic grit and twitchy reflexes, with that undercurrent of barely controlled fury; this Van was one step away from slavering. He would have been nigh unrecognisable to Professor Ford – she would have wondered where the mysteriously charming man, who occasionally could be tempted out of his self-imposed shell had gone. This Van looked crazy. Had you met him in the street, you would have gone out of your way to avoid him, assuming he was drunk or drugged out of his mind. And he was – drunk on fatigue and drugged on revenge.
Fay stopped short just past the gates of the house. She turned to Van.
"Right then, we've had too many ridiculous sidetracks recently. Let's finish this for the last time, and fast." Van seemed to hear her through the fog of his own cracking mind, and turned to her, voice urgent.
"Right, and remember Geoff Vampire is mine." Fay stopped, as if she'd forgotten something. She turned to him again.
"Gotcha", she said, though she didn't mean it. "But he's not here, is he?"
Van, pulling something of his 'play your cards close to the chest' self back from the brink, answered quickly.
"No."
Fay let herself collapse. Suddenly, she was her young self again, chasing the mysterious 'Geoff' that she had heard of, searching across the world for the man who ruled her waking dreams. She had lost her girlhood in the blaze of bullets and blood which had ended her family. There would be no normal life, no sweet summer days of friends and relaxation, no sultry summer nights of booze and boys. She would be looking for this man forever, half-watching ahead for her foe, half-watching behind for her motivation.
"Oh boobies", she cursed.
Suddenly, the two turned suddenly, hearing a sound behind them. A figure came out of the shadows towards them. He carried a tape recorder in his hand.
"Need a hand?" questioned the Creepy Man before them, reedy voice echoing in the gloom.
Van seemed to have regained something close to his normal manner, though one, such as Professor Ford, who knew him well, would have seen the hand squeezing and unclasping the gun and known all was not well. In fact, Ford would have seen the same man who emerged from the basement of the Løren house, blood on his hands and madness in his eyes.
"No, not really pal", was Van's answer.
As before, the Creepy Man took his pen and tallied off the refusal on his arm. He turned to go. Van, suddenly stepped forward. "Wait! Can you tell me where Geoff Vampire is now?", he questioned. The figure turned, and, out of the tape, came his answer.
"Remember the matchbook?", the nasal voice said, and as the Creepy Man retreated to the shadows of Van's mind for the last time, as Fay stood in bewilderment at Van talking to thin air, Van did remember.
"Of course, the Red Herring Church" he said to himself. His quickness of mind, which seemed sensible at the time, would have been a warning sign to those close to him, or at least as close as you could get to a man like Van. It seemed more a relic of his old days in the police than a normal response for the former detective, and thus closer to a symbol of his mental breakdown than a sign of his mental brilliance. Fay, unknowing, only saw a man who knew what to do. She was concerned but relived that at least this former detective seemed to know where he was going, interjected.
"Well I'm coming with you". This seemed to throw a spanner in Van's works. He shook his head vehemently.
"No, this something I must do alone. It's the place where all this began. And now the place where it all will end." It felt right to him. But the woman in front of him didn't seem happy at this arrangement.
"But we had a deal," she said.
Van abruptly realised for the first time, in a split-second, that she was armed, far more heavily than him, and she was as skilled a shooter as he was. And you didn't need to be Jesse James at this distance. She too was carrying a gun in her hands. She was his equal. She could ruin everything. He didn't know what she was planning, he didn't know why or how she would do it, but he knew for certain at that moment that if he didn't stop her, she would stop him killing Geoff. She'd tried to make the vampire suffer before, by talking to the beast, revealing all, and Geoff had fled, and Van himself had been knocked out. She couldn't be allowed to continue. Van turned to Fay, and looked into the bitch's eyes. At that time, beyond any recognition that she was, at heart, a beautiful, innocent girl whose life had been ruined by the escapades of Geoff and himself, that she actually trusted him implicitly, that she meant no harm to him, only to Geoff, Van Helsinki only saw an enemy. And Van knew what to do with enemies of his.
He turned to her, muscles tensing even as he did. Time seemed to slow for Van. "The deal's off," he said, bluntly. Then he shot her, twice quickly in the chest.
Fay saw her companion looking up at her. She noticed for the first time the madness twinkling in his eyes. She heard his refusal. But, before any word could escape her mouth about the unfairness of his action, or the simple fact that she also knew where Geoff was, and could equally go to this 'Red Herring Church' with or without his permission, Fay heard the explosion from Van's gun hand. She felt the first bullet slam into her gut, just between two ribs. She could feel the blood pouring out the gap in her chest, but knew the wound was not fatal. She could survive this! Before she could even react, before she could move, her 'ally' fired again. The second shot was higher, and to the right. It punctured a lung, knocking her to the ground. Fay tried to gasp, to scream, to stop the relentless murder being carried out, but her throat filled with blood. This was impossible! He was on her side! He hated Geoff as much as she did. Yet as she stared, on her back before him, helpless, into his bloodshot eyes, she knew that there was no mercy, no conscience, no sense in her killer's head at all. Fay saw Van lean in, gun held two handed, pointing it to rest at her head, and she knew there was no way out. In her last moment, before he pulled the trigger, Fay made one last attempt, to move, to dodge, to stop him. But it was no use. Her body was crippled beyond use, it refused to respond to her muscles' pleas. Then, as she struggled and failed, Van's gun spat a third time, and she struggled no more.
Van stood back up. For a tiny moment, not even a second, he contemplated the dead woman before him. It wasn't guilt he felt, wasn't even pity, but something in his head stirred. A relic of the past he had abandoned, another link to Geoff severed. Perhaps it was actually closer to happiness, that his goal to avenge his failure twenty years before was so close to succeeding. And suddenly he was running, running into the distance, and for a moment all that was left was Fay Løren, eyes looking up into the sky, as if to plead with God as to why He had chosen this life, and this death, for her. Then the sound of Van's ringing footfalls receded, and the darkness closed in, and covered Fay's body, a shroud fashioned by the uncaring world around her, to swaddle her into everlasting sleep in her final moments.
Geoff Vampire stood at one end of the Red Herring Church path. He carried a keyboard, on which he played music to add atmosphere to what would be his final triumph, or final victory. He had already exhausted his renditions of light jazz and blues, and was moving onto sweeping classical themes. Van and his companions might have prevented his return to Stevenage, might have disrupted his plans for world domination and his army of slaves, but here he was king. Here, it was purely strength on strength, mind on mind, and Geoff knew well enough that he was Van's equal at least in these two attributes. He knew Van would find him. The human bloodhound had been on his trail for twenty years. Geoff could never stay in one place for too long, never stop moving. Once, he had got complacent, during that Løren case. Which reminded him, that…that girl would probably be after him too. She was a strange one. Geoff wondered what had happened to her to twist her so. After all, he might have killed her father, but he had left her a large inheritance and a caring and competent mother. Pah, thought the Vampire. He could – and should – have been much more evil that day. He might just have killed everybody trying to hunt him now, and been back in Stevenage for teatime. But no, he had to go and run away from the Big Bad Van, and now look at him – alone, in a churchyard, reduced to playing stereotypical themes and waiting for a man who was probably going to do his best to try and kill Geoff. This wasn't what he signed up for. Not at all. The Vampire continued his keyboard paying while he waited for his foes to show up. This was taking far too long. Perhaps he shouldn't have teleported two miles away to escape the damned Not-Fay with the swords. His former 'friend' was taking far too long to arrive. Geoff fumbled the keyboard for a minute, and lost his place. Cursing, he hefted the weighty instrument up again and began another classical piece. Geoff tried Ride of the Valkyries but became bored half-way through. He idly wondered whether Van had met 'Creepy Man' yet again. The first time he'd come to this church, for the Grand Fete, he'd met Van. The man had seemed decent enough, though somewhat distant and prone to temper outbursts. But he'd been, even back then, strange. Not least because he seemed to talk to some kind of invisible person who he occasionally came across and appeared to be asking him if he wanted help. Decidedly a weirdo. 'Ah!' Geoff though, distracting himself from his reveries, as he finally found a tune which his fingers fell into with vigour. 'Good old Bach' thought the Vampire contentedly.
Van sprinted along the road. His breath caught in his lungs, tearing new pains where he wasn't hurting already. His legs kept moving, kept running, forced onwards by a single act of will. I Will Kill Him was all that ran through Van's head as he made headlong progress towards the church. Van thought back to the last time he had stood in its grounds. The fete, the glorious fete. The grandest fair to come to his neck of the woods. Van had gone there, and there he had met Geoff. The two had not exactly been…friends, but they had talked. They had competed. And, painful as it was for Van to admit, Geoff hadn't won all his prizes via cheating. Only the Duck. And that was what burned inside Van, pushing him onwards, and pulling him towards his destination at the same time. He had to finish it. This would be the crowning glory of his work, the pinnacle of his life. Van kept running along the road. He didn't know how far he had gone, he didn't feel the pain like other men would have done, he just ran. Fury drove him, justice, and, in a twisted way, tiredness. For twenty years he had not slept soundly at night, not been able to sit without that sight, that name, that image in his mind. Geoff, in triumph, lifting the Duck aloft, not gloating – no, gloating would have been too easy to deal with – just standing and smiling about him. And him in the corner, humiliated, defeated, with Rachel tugging at his arm, trying to comfort him, crooning sweet words into his ear – but to no avail. Van remembered the aftermath, walking away, trying to flee it all – but you couldn't outrun your own mind. Not then, anyway. So instead, he outran all which reminded him of that memory, he tried to shut it away. It failed, of course, as it always would. But he tried. He left Rachel, and when she tried to see him to understand, he drove her away with blows and curses, telling her she would never understand. He fled the area, never to return as long as he lived. At least, that was the plan. But here he was, not just returning to the scene of his greatest failure, but actually running towards it. He half-laughed, but his voice has lost in the rasp of his lungs and the pounding of his feet. Only Geoff mattered. He would end it. One way or another, he would end it. Van sprinted up the the gate of the Red Herring Church. Before him, behind the wrought black iron gates, lay his destiny, and his peace. Behind him were only corpses and shadows.