Chapter Summary - Will reflects on the weeks since Harry and Sev left him and his experiences following his discoveries at Culloden.
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Beta by Kristine Thorne
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See 'The Voice Of Alexian' review for reviewers answers.
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Chapter Twenty - The Other Side
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A/N Please note that when Harry and Sev were living with Will they were using alternative names as cover, therefore Alex=Harry and Richard=Severus in this chapter.
Warnings: Erm, angsty and dark, it's not a happy time for Will.
I will be posting early next week due to a focus on Will in this chapter. Concentrating solely on Will kept things from getting confusing as there are flashbacks to contend with too, Harry and Sev will be back next week. Next time we see Will, the Kin will be visiting him.
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Will's POV present time
Will sat at the table in the kitchen holding the piece of paper in his hand, the note that Judith had written and left for him on the kitchen table.
'Gone out for milk, back soon, get yourself a bath. Judith'
The paper was a little rumpled now, it had suffered various forms of abuse in the last few weeks but Will straightened it out now, he was going through a cherishing phase. Beside him lay a book that he had unearthed from among his large collection during one of his more sober afternoons, Happy Like Murderers. Will placed a hand on the book, thinking about opening it, then took a swift gulp of whiskey and let his head impact with the table instead.
Will didn't need to read the book again; he knew every page of it. A hardback book with a dark brown dust jacket, a yellow smiley face grinning up from amongst the brown, if you looked closely you could see that the cover was actually a photograph of a plastic toy lying on freshly dug earth. It was a book that had reminded Will of what the real world was like and that you never knew your neighbours, never knew who you were living with or renting from. The book reminded Will that you never really knew anything about anybody at all.
More than ten bodies found, all mutilated after death, all lying undetected in unmarked graves unnoticed for twenty years. People living and breathing on top of them, going about their business either not knowing or not caring. A couple, murdering and burying people in their home, in their garden and yet going about their business. Happy Like Murderers told of two of the most notorious killers of the twentieth century, yet their known dead numbered less than twenty, although it was suspected that there had been more, nowhere near two hundred though, not even close.
Will dragged his head up from the table and took another swig of whiskey. 1995, Will recalled had been when it all came to light, he could remember it well because the locals had got even more hostile then about Sgoil Dhubh Lodge. What had begun as a joke, using the gaelic for 'black magic' to freak out the locals, was then taken far more seriously than it was intended when it came to light that the West's had an area of the house they called the 'Black Magic Bar' where they entertained guests. Parallels were drawn and no doubt the local gossips also discussed that the Wests also took in hippy lowlife.
Will banged his head on the table, feeling his brain swishing around inside his skull. They all thought it was him, all the strange deaths that occurred around Sgoil Dhubh over the years, but it wasn't, Will knew who it had to be but he didn't want it be them either. Will laughed grimly to himself, it didn't really matter who had killed all those people, he realised, if anybody got into Sgoil Dhubh and found what it was that he had in his freezer, no amount of protesting would make any difference. Maybe, he thought, he should do a little digging and make a patio, or an extension perhaps.
Will and his parents between them had taken in hundreds of wanderers and travellers over the years. They turned up on the doorstep and Will especially had always let them in, no questions asked. He had believed in the old family story that the house would protect them, had naively believed in his own judgement of character and the safety of living so far away from anything else. If they had found Sgoil Dhubh, the reasoning went, then they had to have known it was there by word of mouth from other travellers. They would have had to travel there especially.
They had lived amongst them, Alex and Richard, Will had never bothered to find out why they had come into the garden that winter's day. Two men hiking round Scotland during Christmas week and he had opened his door and put the kettle on for tea. He had done it countless times before, he recalled, who knew how many of them had actually been murderers. He didn't get to read everybody he met.
Even now, when all evidence pointed to the contrary, Will found it hard to think of Alex and Richard as murderers, indeed, back in April, his immediate instinct had been to protect them if he could, despite what he had found at Culloden. Even if the rest was lies, Will couldn't escape the fact that he had seen with his own eyes the boy Alex in the grip of a seizure just like the ones that they had told him he suffered from. What he had found at Culloden challenged everything else he had ever thought he knew about Richard and Alex though and he had brought it home with him.
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flashback Culloden in April
Having found nothing of any note at Culloden, Will had got back into his Land Rover intending to drive straight back to Sgoil Dhubh again. He had only got five miles, however, when he came to an abrupt and surprising stop. He was fortunate that it was so early in the morning and there hadn't been another car behind him and as he tried to recover from the shock he realised that his foot was pressed down hard on the brake pedal. He knew that he hadn't consciously made the decision to do that himself.
Will pulled his foot up off the brake pedal and placed it down on the floor of the vehicle. He had intended to just drive off again, there was only open road in front of him and no obstructions of any kind. He was immediately filled with an urgent need to go back, he suddenly wanted to return to Culloden.
What with prophecies of death and pointless journeys, Will was getting really rather irritated with the so-called gift he seemed to possess. Usually he just got messages, mostly about the death of others and mostly he found out that they had come true. As he had grown from a young boy to a man he had learnt that this didn't help anybody, he couldn't gain any control over the events that he saw and nobody ever wanted to be told. He had learnt to keep quiet and do his very best to ignore it.
That approach had been going very well for him until Richard and Alex showed up at Sgoil Dhubh. He had once intentionally read Richard through curiosity about the two men and ended up wishing that he hadn't. He had then read Alex one day accidentally when he had been drunk and he really wished that he could wipe that one from his memory, it hadn't helped to know about Culloden at all, even with a month or two's notice.
The gift had never tried to influence his own actions before now and it was worrying Will quite a bit. Suddenly it wasn't just a matter of useless information but of a wild goose chase across the other side of the country in the early morning and erratic behaviour in the middle of the road. Even as Will fought with the persistent thought in his head and told himself to just drive home, he knew that he was going back.
When Will arrived back at Culloden he sat in his vehicle for a while ignoring the urges he felt to leave the warmth and go trekking across the countryside looking for he knew not what. For some reason he knew that he was going to get some plastic carrier bags from the back of his Land Rover in preparation for something. Will knew also that if he waited much longer then other people would begin to arrive even though it was only April, hikers and other tourists, he knew that he had to be gone before that.
Will had a sense of foreboding as he climbed out of the Land Rover, the feeling hadn't been there the first time that he had visited that day. He knew he was being led and the only reason he hadn't found much earlier was that he had not really looked that well.
Will stood round the back of the Land Rover and felt in his pocket for the bandana that he had found at Culloden, which he believed to be Alex's. He tried to read from it and received a mental image of the boy pulling it from his head as he strode across the moor, stashing it in his coat pocket only to lose it later it would seem. The cloth did not hold any more residual memory than that so it must have fallen before anything happened.
The bandana was placed in the back of the Land Rover and Will took out a handful of supermarket carrier bags that he had left in the vehicle out of sheer laziness. He then made off across the rough grass and away from the road. He was beginning to give in now, to let the thoughts in his head guide him and giving up on having a will of his own.
"William Fraser," He spoke to himself and the wind with reproach as he walked, slipping into a Scottish accent that was more pronounced than his usual speech and more reminiscent of his childhood. He remembered his friend Alexian and the funny little stories that he used to tell him about a hidden world existing amongst their own, how as a child he had listened with fascination to the stories, taking the place of the brother that Alexian dearly missed, little Sevvie, he had called him. "What are ye doing? If they were bloody wizards they will have magicked it all away. Can't stay hidden from the world if ye leave yer business lying around for all to see. Of course they are probably not wizards at all, in which case ye really don't want to be here to find anything. If ye report it they'll just think it's you who's done the whole thing, wandering around first thing in the morning without even a dog to walk, yer reputation being as it is."
Will came to realise that talking to himself wasn't really going to help either so he started to think quietly in his head instead.
Will was quiet but the thoughts didn't come, he wandered, thinking that it was aimlessly, then stooped to pick something up before placing it in one of the plastic bags. He walked on, oblivious to all around him and a tune started to play in his head, a familiar song that he liked.
Without thinking about how it would look anymore, Will began to sing the words, passing the time as he did the bidding of an unknown other who he knew was getting into his head somehow. He didn't know if they were alive or dead but he didn't feel threatened and he let them have their way.
"Maybe I oughta mention
Was never my intention
To harm you or your kin
Are you so scared to look within
The ghosts are crawling on our skin
We may race and we may run
We'll not undo what has been done
Or change the moment when it's gone," Will sang softly as he walked.
He stooped down to pick up something else then continued, "Meet me on the other side
Meet me on the other side
I'll see you on the other side
I'll see you on the other side."
And so it went on for a good two hours, walking the moors and singing to old familiar tunes, amassing a sizable collection of things in the plastic bags as he went. When the final song ended and there was quiet, when Will didn't feel like he wanted to sing anymore, he returned to the Land Rover, placed his horde in the back and drove off.
When Will returned to Sgoil Dhubh everybody was going about their daily business. Judith was knitting in her room and Will supposed that the others were fulfilling their daily tasks also. Certainly he went unchallenged as he made his way from the Land Rover to the kitchen with all the carrier bags from Culloden. He took them over to the freezer and placed them at the bottom, moving the food items over the top to conceal their presence.
Once Will was sat at the kitchen table and the kettle was on the hob for some tea he felt a presence that he had been vaguely aware of drift away and he felt as if he was suddenly on his own. He looked down at his hands, which were resting on the table and covered in half dried and sticky blood.
Will felt as if his own blood was draining from him as he continued to stare at his hands, he was aware of what he had done, his mind now clear with the memory, but he didn't know how he had come to do it. He didn't know how he had driven from Culloden and not noticed the blood; the Land Rover would be covered with it.
He had wandered the moor at Culloden and had filled supermarket carrier bags up with body parts, very small body parts and he had sang as he worked. He had driven home and stashed them in his freezer.
Will broke out in a cold sweat and stumbled to his feet, even as a person who was very much not a murderer he knew he had to get the blood off his hands. Maybe a murderer would clean himself to avoid discovery, Will would clean himself before he threw up his entire stomach contents.
A mysterious presence in his head had told him to do it, it wasn't much of a defence should it come to it but there was little point in trying to get rid of the bulk of the evidence now, there were traces of it everywhere. Will went from the sink, where he had been furiously trying to scrub his hands, to the cupboard that held the supplies of whiskey. There was only one route to take now, alcoholic oblivion.
end flashback
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Will fingered the piece of paper again, staring at the book that lay on the table still. A week after Culloden Will had scoured it for tips but it had no advice to offer the would-be serial killer on how to deal with the practicalities. Other than perhaps that it was still possible to be caught after twenty years, that it would never be over till you were dead even if you did bury them a good three feet down. He knew that the freezer was a very silly place for the 'things', as he called them, to be. He had thought long and hard about alternatives and had had to rule out many of them because of the other occupants of the house, although their numbers had dwindled with alarming speed. He did not know how Fred West had managed it, Will had tried to bury something in the back garden as a trial run and every time, no matter when he tried, somebody was either looking out of a window or coming out into the garden themselves.
Now he was alone and Will thought that they just didn't want to be buried. No matter how much he thought about burying his little secret in the freezer he never could quite manage to do it. He would find something else to do, he would become distracted, a car would drive by. So they remained.
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Flashback Just after Culloden.
Will had come downstairs to make breakfast about a week after Culloden with the mother of all hangovers, again. It was closer to lunchtime and he assumed that everybody else had had theirs already. He proceeded to make himself a cup of coffee, seeing how he did with that before he embarked on anything more adventurous. It was one of his increasingly rare appearances in a non drunk state.
It was as he sat down with his cup of coffee that snatches of the evening before began to come back to him. The events of the whole day started to seep into Will's brain too, his hands began to shake and a deep feeling of anxiety settled again on his heart. He thought about the days that had passed since Culloden and his continuing inability to get rid of the things in the freezer, which now lay behind a locked door. Everything he tried to do to hide them only led to him advertising that they were there.
Will thought that he had behaved quite well under the rather dramatic circumstances. Somehow he had managed to acquire himself a freezer full of human body parts and the disturbing part of it was that he knew somebody else had made him collect them, was stopping him from getting rid of them now. He had kept himself hidden in his room for the first few days but, well meaning as his houseguests were, they kept seeking him out.
He had to wonder if Richard and Alex hadn't been compelled to kill by the same force. He wondered what they had sung as they worked. He had to also consider that they themselves might be the force, making him clear up the remainder of their mess.
Upon reflection, drinking a complete skin full after the events of Culloden had not been a very good idea at all it didn't exactly make anything any better and it was all there waiting for him again now he was sober. However, he didn't know what else would help either so he was going to repeat the exercise till it did make a difference.
Will was vaguely aware that he had ranted incessantly during his drunkenness the previous night, but he was sure that he hadn't told anything of his real troubles. Judith had attempted to calm him, told him that he should go to bed and that she would help him sort things out in the morning. He hoped that she had just assumed that there was something wrong without him having slipped any of the details of the truth. He was vaguely aware of a memory of pushing Judith away, probably in response to her kindness. Will lowered his head to the table and banged it on the wood a few times, purposely making his head hurt more as a punishment to himself. All he had done was make things worse.
It was then that he noticed the paper lying on the table, Will picked it up and read the words written on it in Judith's clear hand. Will breathed a sigh of relief as he read. He had thought that the note meant that Judith had left due to his extreme behaviour but it seemed that it didn't. Judith had merely gone to the shops and still cared for him and was concerned even though Will knew that he didn't deserve her loyalty one bit.
Will did what he had been told; Judith had suggested that he get a bath. Looking down on himself now, observing the clothes that he was still wearing from the previous day and the day before that now he came to think about it.
A combination of excessive drink, a day's sweat and far too many cigarettes would be enough though, Will knew, to repulse even the bravest of noses. And so he poured a deep bath of steamy hot water and added a liberal dollop of bubble bath, ignoring the pounding in his head as he leaned over to swirl his hand around in the water. He climbed in and felt the refreshing warmth envelop his body and for a while, as he lay anticipating Judith's return, his troubles eased away to be nothing more than a nightmare.
By midnight all thoughts about Judith having got distracted while she was out, all ideas about her perhaps having gone into Glasgow shopping were nothing more than wishful dreams. Will had stayed sober all day, wanting to talk to her, wanting to be more like the Will she knew rather than the monster he knew he was becoming.
As he had moved around the house that day he had noticed that the others now regarded him with suspicion, they were wary of his every move. They didn't seem the least bit surprised that Judith wasn't there and that she hadn't returned. Judith had had enough from her violent first husband without sticking around at Sgoil Dhubh to see Will turn into the same kind of man and they all knew it. Will unscrewed the cap on the whiskey bottle and lifted it to his lips; he was beyond the use of a glass. He may have said something unpleasant to them all, he couldn't remember.
Over the following days they all left and didn't come back. Some had listened to Will and had went out looking for Judith as if they were still Will's friend and didn't come back. Some said they were leaving and packed up all their things. The last of them, Will's most sympathetic supporter despite his behaviour, went out for some shopping one day and didn't come back. Within two weeks Will was completely alone.
After a while Will ventured out in the Land Rover to get more supplies and had no trouble returning. It became apparent that, while the contents of his freezer played heavily on his mind, nobody else seemed to care about it. Even the locals hadn't paid him any additional notice, it would seem that there had been no more suspicious deaths in the immediate area, no one they cared about anyway. Will wondered if they would have cared at all if his houseguests had started turning up as bodies. He didn't stop to ask.
Will had known that his so called gift enabled him to read the fate of those that lived and one day he got curious enough to see if he could read the past from those that had already gone.
Will took one bag from the freezer, the frozen smears of blood crumbled from the surface of the plastic as he handled it. He placed the bag on the kitchen table and opened it to reach inside.
Will's hand touched the frozen flesh intending to read it and he was thrown away from it as if he had touched a live electric cable. He was pushed back with such force that he fell from his chair and onto the kitchen floor. Somehow this only made him more determined, there was something to tell and his gift would allow him to see it but something didn't want him to know and that made it worth knowing.
Will lunged at the bag with both hands and gripped it as tightly as he could. He was thrown back again and this time the bag and its contents came with him. As he lay on the floor enduring the shocks that went through his body, his body in a spasm that would look like a seizure to any observer, his thoughts gave way to a vision.
It was a brief vision of only a few second's duration but in it Will saw the boy Alex coming towards him with a large katana like sword. The boy's face was filled with rage and passion and Will had no doubt that he intended to strike, to kill, his face was already splattered with the blood of many others. Will saw that his hair flowed free, he wore no bandana on his head, Will could see the jagged scar that it had been meant to conceal on the boy's forehead, his hair blown back by his advancing speed.
He saw a bolt of lightning coming from the boy's sword as it pointed towards him and as it struck him he felt a bit of his life had drained from his body, that was the only way he could describe it. Alex struck again, this time with the blade and there was a pain so intense that Will heard screaming and saw blackness approach only realising that it had been his own scream when he was once more lying on the stone floor of his kitchen and not amongst the darkness of Culloden at night.
Will lay on the floor for a long time after that, sobbing and clutching his own body tightly into a ball, the pain taking longer than anything else to dissipate. He had never experienced anything like it before. Usually he got a thought in his head when he read people. With Richard he had been surprised to get a voice telling him the message when he tried to read him. Never before had he been taken into anything as vivid and raw and real. He had felt the terror, felt the pain, and for a minute he had been there.
After what seemed like hours, Will dragged himself onto his feet. He felt drained and wobbly with the experience and he leant on the table and then the fireplace as he took the bag back to the freezer before it began to defrost and fill the kitchen with the smell of raw flesh.
Will went through each bag, tentatively touching the surface of each frozen lump only for a fraction of a second. Just enough to determine that each piece came from a different person and that the last thing each one had seen was the boy Alex advancing on them with his sword held high, the passion of the kill in his eyes.
Once all the bags were safely buried at the bottom of the freezer Will returned to the kitchen table and poured himself a glass of his finest. It would seem that he was going through a glass phase again but he was sure that he wouldn't let it slow him down too much.
End of flashback
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Will still sat at the table his hand clenched around Judith's last words to him, his head on the table, his arms wrapped around it.
"Meet me on the other side, meet me on the other side, I'll see you on the other side, I'll see you on the other side," Will began to sing softly before he realised what was happening and shook the song out of his head. He jumped to his feet, feeling the presence within him and not wanting it there.
'You will be safe,' the voice spoke in Will's head, 'I can protect you.'
"No!" Will shouted out, "I won't do what you want, whatever it is."
Will wanted to pick up the loaded shotgun that was propped up against the fireplace but he didn't. He didn't know whether the need to hold it came from some displaced effort to protect himself against something that he couldn't shoot or if the voice in his head wanted him to use it.
He left the kitchen and rushed across the hallway. He had to fill the silence, Will thought, if he could block out the voice and stop it from making him sing a particular thing then he would have beaten it.
"I will sing my own song," Will announced out loud, dashing for the CD player. It was as ever loaded with a selection of discs and will turned the power on and hit play.
'This world is a cruel place
and we´re here only to lose
so before life tears us apart let
death bless me with you
Won´t you die tonight for love
Baby join me in death
Won´t you die
Baby join me in death
Won´t you die tonight for love
Baby join me in death'
The words filled the air and Will was aware that the track had begun halfway through the song, he wanted to sing.
"Won´t you die tonight for love," Will sang and immediately he felt the warmth and peace fill him, but it was not real, "No!" He screamed hitting the stop button on the player.
The track merely changed, another song came through the speakers, again, not beginning at the beginning.
Tension is building inside steadily
Everyone feels so far away from me
Happy thoughts forcing their way out of me
Trying not to break but I'm so tired of this deceit
Every time I try to make myself get back up on my feet
All I ever think about is this
All the tiring time between
And how trying to put my trust in you just takes so much out of me
Will resisted, he was determined that he wasn't going to give in.
"Go away!" He shouted through the noise as the volume increased. The track changed again.
when you cried I'd wipe away all of your tears
when you'd scream I'd fight away all of your fears
I held your hand through all of these years
but you still have
all of me
Will shook his head as he was finding it harder to resist.
'Listen to the words.' The voice insisted, 'I want to help you, it will help.'
"Go away!" Will shouted again.
The track changed again and this time Will knew that the relevant CD wasn't even in the player, he had destroyed it the day after Culloden.
Honey now if I'm honest
I still don't know what love is
Another mirage folds into the haze of time recalled
And now the floodgates cannot hold
All my sorrow all my rage
A tear that falls on every page.
Will ran from the room and out into the garden, "Please will you just leave me alone?" He called out, his voice pleading and his hands over his ears.
Suddenly all was quiet and the presence had gone, all Will could hear was the rustle of the hedge in the gentle wind that blew across the water from the west.
Will returned to the living room and peered inside, all the CDs out of the machine lay strewn across the floor so he went back to the kitchen to attempt to appreciate the silence. He passed by the fireplace and picked up his father's old shotgun as he approached the table. He wasn't sure what he was going to do with it but it felt better to hold it and keep it close anyway.
From that point on, Will lived in silence, no song, nor voice of any kind broke it.
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Songs In Order of Appearance
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The Other Side - David Gray
Join Me - HIM
From The Inside - Linkin Park
My Immortal - Evanescence
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Chapter Summary - The Truth... - Ron hangs out with Harry and Sev and comes closer to figuring out what is going on. Harry discusses a problem with Hermione and she fails to reassure him.
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Beta by Kristine Thorne
.
See 'The Voice Of Alexian' review for reviewers answers.
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Chapter Twenty - The Other Side
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A/N Please note that when Harry and Sev were living with Will they were using alternative names as cover, therefore Alex=Harry and Richard=Severus in this chapter.
Warnings: Erm, angsty and dark, it's not a happy time for Will.
I will be posting early next week due to a focus on Will in this chapter. Concentrating solely on Will kept things from getting confusing as there are flashbacks to contend with too, Harry and Sev will be back next week. Next time we see Will, the Kin will be visiting him.
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Will's POV present time
Will sat at the table in the kitchen holding the piece of paper in his hand, the note that Judith had written and left for him on the kitchen table.
'Gone out for milk, back soon, get yourself a bath. Judith'
The paper was a little rumpled now, it had suffered various forms of abuse in the last few weeks but Will straightened it out now, he was going through a cherishing phase. Beside him lay a book that he had unearthed from among his large collection during one of his more sober afternoons, Happy Like Murderers. Will placed a hand on the book, thinking about opening it, then took a swift gulp of whiskey and let his head impact with the table instead.
Will didn't need to read the book again; he knew every page of it. A hardback book with a dark brown dust jacket, a yellow smiley face grinning up from amongst the brown, if you looked closely you could see that the cover was actually a photograph of a plastic toy lying on freshly dug earth. It was a book that had reminded Will of what the real world was like and that you never knew your neighbours, never knew who you were living with or renting from. The book reminded Will that you never really knew anything about anybody at all.
More than ten bodies found, all mutilated after death, all lying undetected in unmarked graves unnoticed for twenty years. People living and breathing on top of them, going about their business either not knowing or not caring. A couple, murdering and burying people in their home, in their garden and yet going about their business. Happy Like Murderers told of two of the most notorious killers of the twentieth century, yet their known dead numbered less than twenty, although it was suspected that there had been more, nowhere near two hundred though, not even close.
Will dragged his head up from the table and took another swig of whiskey. 1995, Will recalled had been when it all came to light, he could remember it well because the locals had got even more hostile then about Sgoil Dhubh Lodge. What had begun as a joke, using the gaelic for 'black magic' to freak out the locals, was then taken far more seriously than it was intended when it came to light that the West's had an area of the house they called the 'Black Magic Bar' where they entertained guests. Parallels were drawn and no doubt the local gossips also discussed that the Wests also took in hippy lowlife.
Will banged his head on the table, feeling his brain swishing around inside his skull. They all thought it was him, all the strange deaths that occurred around Sgoil Dhubh over the years, but it wasn't, Will knew who it had to be but he didn't want it be them either. Will laughed grimly to himself, it didn't really matter who had killed all those people, he realised, if anybody got into Sgoil Dhubh and found what it was that he had in his freezer, no amount of protesting would make any difference. Maybe, he thought, he should do a little digging and make a patio, or an extension perhaps.
Will and his parents between them had taken in hundreds of wanderers and travellers over the years. They turned up on the doorstep and Will especially had always let them in, no questions asked. He had believed in the old family story that the house would protect them, had naively believed in his own judgement of character and the safety of living so far away from anything else. If they had found Sgoil Dhubh, the reasoning went, then they had to have known it was there by word of mouth from other travellers. They would have had to travel there especially.
They had lived amongst them, Alex and Richard, Will had never bothered to find out why they had come into the garden that winter's day. Two men hiking round Scotland during Christmas week and he had opened his door and put the kettle on for tea. He had done it countless times before, he recalled, who knew how many of them had actually been murderers. He didn't get to read everybody he met.
Even now, when all evidence pointed to the contrary, Will found it hard to think of Alex and Richard as murderers, indeed, back in April, his immediate instinct had been to protect them if he could, despite what he had found at Culloden. Even if the rest was lies, Will couldn't escape the fact that he had seen with his own eyes the boy Alex in the grip of a seizure just like the ones that they had told him he suffered from. What he had found at Culloden challenged everything else he had ever thought he knew about Richard and Alex though and he had brought it home with him.
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flashback Culloden in April
Having found nothing of any note at Culloden, Will had got back into his Land Rover intending to drive straight back to Sgoil Dhubh again. He had only got five miles, however, when he came to an abrupt and surprising stop. He was fortunate that it was so early in the morning and there hadn't been another car behind him and as he tried to recover from the shock he realised that his foot was pressed down hard on the brake pedal. He knew that he hadn't consciously made the decision to do that himself.
Will pulled his foot up off the brake pedal and placed it down on the floor of the vehicle. He had intended to just drive off again, there was only open road in front of him and no obstructions of any kind. He was immediately filled with an urgent need to go back, he suddenly wanted to return to Culloden.
What with prophecies of death and pointless journeys, Will was getting really rather irritated with the so-called gift he seemed to possess. Usually he just got messages, mostly about the death of others and mostly he found out that they had come true. As he had grown from a young boy to a man he had learnt that this didn't help anybody, he couldn't gain any control over the events that he saw and nobody ever wanted to be told. He had learnt to keep quiet and do his very best to ignore it.
That approach had been going very well for him until Richard and Alex showed up at Sgoil Dhubh. He had once intentionally read Richard through curiosity about the two men and ended up wishing that he hadn't. He had then read Alex one day accidentally when he had been drunk and he really wished that he could wipe that one from his memory, it hadn't helped to know about Culloden at all, even with a month or two's notice.
The gift had never tried to influence his own actions before now and it was worrying Will quite a bit. Suddenly it wasn't just a matter of useless information but of a wild goose chase across the other side of the country in the early morning and erratic behaviour in the middle of the road. Even as Will fought with the persistent thought in his head and told himself to just drive home, he knew that he was going back.
When Will arrived back at Culloden he sat in his vehicle for a while ignoring the urges he felt to leave the warmth and go trekking across the countryside looking for he knew not what. For some reason he knew that he was going to get some plastic carrier bags from the back of his Land Rover in preparation for something. Will knew also that if he waited much longer then other people would begin to arrive even though it was only April, hikers and other tourists, he knew that he had to be gone before that.
Will had a sense of foreboding as he climbed out of the Land Rover, the feeling hadn't been there the first time that he had visited that day. He knew he was being led and the only reason he hadn't found much earlier was that he had not really looked that well.
Will stood round the back of the Land Rover and felt in his pocket for the bandana that he had found at Culloden, which he believed to be Alex's. He tried to read from it and received a mental image of the boy pulling it from his head as he strode across the moor, stashing it in his coat pocket only to lose it later it would seem. The cloth did not hold any more residual memory than that so it must have fallen before anything happened.
The bandana was placed in the back of the Land Rover and Will took out a handful of supermarket carrier bags that he had left in the vehicle out of sheer laziness. He then made off across the rough grass and away from the road. He was beginning to give in now, to let the thoughts in his head guide him and giving up on having a will of his own.
"William Fraser," He spoke to himself and the wind with reproach as he walked, slipping into a Scottish accent that was more pronounced than his usual speech and more reminiscent of his childhood. He remembered his friend Alexian and the funny little stories that he used to tell him about a hidden world existing amongst their own, how as a child he had listened with fascination to the stories, taking the place of the brother that Alexian dearly missed, little Sevvie, he had called him. "What are ye doing? If they were bloody wizards they will have magicked it all away. Can't stay hidden from the world if ye leave yer business lying around for all to see. Of course they are probably not wizards at all, in which case ye really don't want to be here to find anything. If ye report it they'll just think it's you who's done the whole thing, wandering around first thing in the morning without even a dog to walk, yer reputation being as it is."
Will came to realise that talking to himself wasn't really going to help either so he started to think quietly in his head instead.
Will was quiet but the thoughts didn't come, he wandered, thinking that it was aimlessly, then stooped to pick something up before placing it in one of the plastic bags. He walked on, oblivious to all around him and a tune started to play in his head, a familiar song that he liked.
Without thinking about how it would look anymore, Will began to sing the words, passing the time as he did the bidding of an unknown other who he knew was getting into his head somehow. He didn't know if they were alive or dead but he didn't feel threatened and he let them have their way.
"Maybe I oughta mention
Was never my intention
To harm you or your kin
Are you so scared to look within
The ghosts are crawling on our skin
We may race and we may run
We'll not undo what has been done
Or change the moment when it's gone," Will sang softly as he walked.
He stooped down to pick up something else then continued, "Meet me on the other side
Meet me on the other side
I'll see you on the other side
I'll see you on the other side."
And so it went on for a good two hours, walking the moors and singing to old familiar tunes, amassing a sizable collection of things in the plastic bags as he went. When the final song ended and there was quiet, when Will didn't feel like he wanted to sing anymore, he returned to the Land Rover, placed his horde in the back and drove off.
When Will returned to Sgoil Dhubh everybody was going about their daily business. Judith was knitting in her room and Will supposed that the others were fulfilling their daily tasks also. Certainly he went unchallenged as he made his way from the Land Rover to the kitchen with all the carrier bags from Culloden. He took them over to the freezer and placed them at the bottom, moving the food items over the top to conceal their presence.
Once Will was sat at the kitchen table and the kettle was on the hob for some tea he felt a presence that he had been vaguely aware of drift away and he felt as if he was suddenly on his own. He looked down at his hands, which were resting on the table and covered in half dried and sticky blood.
Will felt as if his own blood was draining from him as he continued to stare at his hands, he was aware of what he had done, his mind now clear with the memory, but he didn't know how he had come to do it. He didn't know how he had driven from Culloden and not noticed the blood; the Land Rover would be covered with it.
He had wandered the moor at Culloden and had filled supermarket carrier bags up with body parts, very small body parts and he had sang as he worked. He had driven home and stashed them in his freezer.
Will broke out in a cold sweat and stumbled to his feet, even as a person who was very much not a murderer he knew he had to get the blood off his hands. Maybe a murderer would clean himself to avoid discovery, Will would clean himself before he threw up his entire stomach contents.
A mysterious presence in his head had told him to do it, it wasn't much of a defence should it come to it but there was little point in trying to get rid of the bulk of the evidence now, there were traces of it everywhere. Will went from the sink, where he had been furiously trying to scrub his hands, to the cupboard that held the supplies of whiskey. There was only one route to take now, alcoholic oblivion.
end flashback
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Will fingered the piece of paper again, staring at the book that lay on the table still. A week after Culloden Will had scoured it for tips but it had no advice to offer the would-be serial killer on how to deal with the practicalities. Other than perhaps that it was still possible to be caught after twenty years, that it would never be over till you were dead even if you did bury them a good three feet down. He knew that the freezer was a very silly place for the 'things', as he called them, to be. He had thought long and hard about alternatives and had had to rule out many of them because of the other occupants of the house, although their numbers had dwindled with alarming speed. He did not know how Fred West had managed it, Will had tried to bury something in the back garden as a trial run and every time, no matter when he tried, somebody was either looking out of a window or coming out into the garden themselves.
Now he was alone and Will thought that they just didn't want to be buried. No matter how much he thought about burying his little secret in the freezer he never could quite manage to do it. He would find something else to do, he would become distracted, a car would drive by. So they remained.
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Flashback Just after Culloden.
Will had come downstairs to make breakfast about a week after Culloden with the mother of all hangovers, again. It was closer to lunchtime and he assumed that everybody else had had theirs already. He proceeded to make himself a cup of coffee, seeing how he did with that before he embarked on anything more adventurous. It was one of his increasingly rare appearances in a non drunk state.
It was as he sat down with his cup of coffee that snatches of the evening before began to come back to him. The events of the whole day started to seep into Will's brain too, his hands began to shake and a deep feeling of anxiety settled again on his heart. He thought about the days that had passed since Culloden and his continuing inability to get rid of the things in the freezer, which now lay behind a locked door. Everything he tried to do to hide them only led to him advertising that they were there.
Will thought that he had behaved quite well under the rather dramatic circumstances. Somehow he had managed to acquire himself a freezer full of human body parts and the disturbing part of it was that he knew somebody else had made him collect them, was stopping him from getting rid of them now. He had kept himself hidden in his room for the first few days but, well meaning as his houseguests were, they kept seeking him out.
He had to wonder if Richard and Alex hadn't been compelled to kill by the same force. He wondered what they had sung as they worked. He had to also consider that they themselves might be the force, making him clear up the remainder of their mess.
Upon reflection, drinking a complete skin full after the events of Culloden had not been a very good idea at all it didn't exactly make anything any better and it was all there waiting for him again now he was sober. However, he didn't know what else would help either so he was going to repeat the exercise till it did make a difference.
Will was vaguely aware that he had ranted incessantly during his drunkenness the previous night, but he was sure that he hadn't told anything of his real troubles. Judith had attempted to calm him, told him that he should go to bed and that she would help him sort things out in the morning. He hoped that she had just assumed that there was something wrong without him having slipped any of the details of the truth. He was vaguely aware of a memory of pushing Judith away, probably in response to her kindness. Will lowered his head to the table and banged it on the wood a few times, purposely making his head hurt more as a punishment to himself. All he had done was make things worse.
It was then that he noticed the paper lying on the table, Will picked it up and read the words written on it in Judith's clear hand. Will breathed a sigh of relief as he read. He had thought that the note meant that Judith had left due to his extreme behaviour but it seemed that it didn't. Judith had merely gone to the shops and still cared for him and was concerned even though Will knew that he didn't deserve her loyalty one bit.
Will did what he had been told; Judith had suggested that he get a bath. Looking down on himself now, observing the clothes that he was still wearing from the previous day and the day before that now he came to think about it.
A combination of excessive drink, a day's sweat and far too many cigarettes would be enough though, Will knew, to repulse even the bravest of noses. And so he poured a deep bath of steamy hot water and added a liberal dollop of bubble bath, ignoring the pounding in his head as he leaned over to swirl his hand around in the water. He climbed in and felt the refreshing warmth envelop his body and for a while, as he lay anticipating Judith's return, his troubles eased away to be nothing more than a nightmare.
By midnight all thoughts about Judith having got distracted while she was out, all ideas about her perhaps having gone into Glasgow shopping were nothing more than wishful dreams. Will had stayed sober all day, wanting to talk to her, wanting to be more like the Will she knew rather than the monster he knew he was becoming.
As he had moved around the house that day he had noticed that the others now regarded him with suspicion, they were wary of his every move. They didn't seem the least bit surprised that Judith wasn't there and that she hadn't returned. Judith had had enough from her violent first husband without sticking around at Sgoil Dhubh to see Will turn into the same kind of man and they all knew it. Will unscrewed the cap on the whiskey bottle and lifted it to his lips; he was beyond the use of a glass. He may have said something unpleasant to them all, he couldn't remember.
Over the following days they all left and didn't come back. Some had listened to Will and had went out looking for Judith as if they were still Will's friend and didn't come back. Some said they were leaving and packed up all their things. The last of them, Will's most sympathetic supporter despite his behaviour, went out for some shopping one day and didn't come back. Within two weeks Will was completely alone.
After a while Will ventured out in the Land Rover to get more supplies and had no trouble returning. It became apparent that, while the contents of his freezer played heavily on his mind, nobody else seemed to care about it. Even the locals hadn't paid him any additional notice, it would seem that there had been no more suspicious deaths in the immediate area, no one they cared about anyway. Will wondered if they would have cared at all if his houseguests had started turning up as bodies. He didn't stop to ask.
Will had known that his so called gift enabled him to read the fate of those that lived and one day he got curious enough to see if he could read the past from those that had already gone.
Will took one bag from the freezer, the frozen smears of blood crumbled from the surface of the plastic as he handled it. He placed the bag on the kitchen table and opened it to reach inside.
Will's hand touched the frozen flesh intending to read it and he was thrown away from it as if he had touched a live electric cable. He was pushed back with such force that he fell from his chair and onto the kitchen floor. Somehow this only made him more determined, there was something to tell and his gift would allow him to see it but something didn't want him to know and that made it worth knowing.
Will lunged at the bag with both hands and gripped it as tightly as he could. He was thrown back again and this time the bag and its contents came with him. As he lay on the floor enduring the shocks that went through his body, his body in a spasm that would look like a seizure to any observer, his thoughts gave way to a vision.
It was a brief vision of only a few second's duration but in it Will saw the boy Alex coming towards him with a large katana like sword. The boy's face was filled with rage and passion and Will had no doubt that he intended to strike, to kill, his face was already splattered with the blood of many others. Will saw that his hair flowed free, he wore no bandana on his head, Will could see the jagged scar that it had been meant to conceal on the boy's forehead, his hair blown back by his advancing speed.
He saw a bolt of lightning coming from the boy's sword as it pointed towards him and as it struck him he felt a bit of his life had drained from his body, that was the only way he could describe it. Alex struck again, this time with the blade and there was a pain so intense that Will heard screaming and saw blackness approach only realising that it had been his own scream when he was once more lying on the stone floor of his kitchen and not amongst the darkness of Culloden at night.
Will lay on the floor for a long time after that, sobbing and clutching his own body tightly into a ball, the pain taking longer than anything else to dissipate. He had never experienced anything like it before. Usually he got a thought in his head when he read people. With Richard he had been surprised to get a voice telling him the message when he tried to read him. Never before had he been taken into anything as vivid and raw and real. He had felt the terror, felt the pain, and for a minute he had been there.
After what seemed like hours, Will dragged himself onto his feet. He felt drained and wobbly with the experience and he leant on the table and then the fireplace as he took the bag back to the freezer before it began to defrost and fill the kitchen with the smell of raw flesh.
Will went through each bag, tentatively touching the surface of each frozen lump only for a fraction of a second. Just enough to determine that each piece came from a different person and that the last thing each one had seen was the boy Alex advancing on them with his sword held high, the passion of the kill in his eyes.
Once all the bags were safely buried at the bottom of the freezer Will returned to the kitchen table and poured himself a glass of his finest. It would seem that he was going through a glass phase again but he was sure that he wouldn't let it slow him down too much.
End of flashback
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Will still sat at the table his hand clenched around Judith's last words to him, his head on the table, his arms wrapped around it.
"Meet me on the other side, meet me on the other side, I'll see you on the other side, I'll see you on the other side," Will began to sing softly before he realised what was happening and shook the song out of his head. He jumped to his feet, feeling the presence within him and not wanting it there.
'You will be safe,' the voice spoke in Will's head, 'I can protect you.'
"No!" Will shouted out, "I won't do what you want, whatever it is."
Will wanted to pick up the loaded shotgun that was propped up against the fireplace but he didn't. He didn't know whether the need to hold it came from some displaced effort to protect himself against something that he couldn't shoot or if the voice in his head wanted him to use it.
He left the kitchen and rushed across the hallway. He had to fill the silence, Will thought, if he could block out the voice and stop it from making him sing a particular thing then he would have beaten it.
"I will sing my own song," Will announced out loud, dashing for the CD player. It was as ever loaded with a selection of discs and will turned the power on and hit play.
'This world is a cruel place
and we´re here only to lose
so before life tears us apart let
death bless me with you
Won´t you die tonight for love
Baby join me in death
Won´t you die
Baby join me in death
Won´t you die tonight for love
Baby join me in death'
The words filled the air and Will was aware that the track had begun halfway through the song, he wanted to sing.
"Won´t you die tonight for love," Will sang and immediately he felt the warmth and peace fill him, but it was not real, "No!" He screamed hitting the stop button on the player.
The track merely changed, another song came through the speakers, again, not beginning at the beginning.
Tension is building inside steadily
Everyone feels so far away from me
Happy thoughts forcing their way out of me
Trying not to break but I'm so tired of this deceit
Every time I try to make myself get back up on my feet
All I ever think about is this
All the tiring time between
And how trying to put my trust in you just takes so much out of me
Will resisted, he was determined that he wasn't going to give in.
"Go away!" He shouted through the noise as the volume increased. The track changed again.
when you cried I'd wipe away all of your tears
when you'd scream I'd fight away all of your fears
I held your hand through all of these years
but you still have
all of me
Will shook his head as he was finding it harder to resist.
'Listen to the words.' The voice insisted, 'I want to help you, it will help.'
"Go away!" Will shouted again.
The track changed again and this time Will knew that the relevant CD wasn't even in the player, he had destroyed it the day after Culloden.
Honey now if I'm honest
I still don't know what love is
Another mirage folds into the haze of time recalled
And now the floodgates cannot hold
All my sorrow all my rage
A tear that falls on every page.
Will ran from the room and out into the garden, "Please will you just leave me alone?" He called out, his voice pleading and his hands over his ears.
Suddenly all was quiet and the presence had gone, all Will could hear was the rustle of the hedge in the gentle wind that blew across the water from the west.
Will returned to the living room and peered inside, all the CDs out of the machine lay strewn across the floor so he went back to the kitchen to attempt to appreciate the silence. He passed by the fireplace and picked up his father's old shotgun as he approached the table. He wasn't sure what he was going to do with it but it felt better to hold it and keep it close anyway.
From that point on, Will lived in silence, no song, nor voice of any kind broke it.
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Songs In Order of Appearance
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The Other Side - David Gray
Join Me - HIM
From The Inside - Linkin Park
My Immortal - Evanescence
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Chapter Summary - The Truth... - Ron hangs out with Harry and Sev and comes closer to figuring out what is going on. Harry discusses a problem with Hermione and she fails to reassure him.