Title: Charlotte's Web (Chapter Two) by Lexikal
Rating: M for graphic violence and language
Fandom: The Mentalist
Summary: Patrick Jane has lived his life obsessed with the capture of Red John ever since finding his beloved wife and daughter slain by the maniac's hand. Now, 10 years to the day after that horrific night, a young woman appears in Patrick's life, someone who threatens to destroy everything his life has become in the interim... if not his sanity, itself.
Author's Note: Author's note is long for this chapter, at the end of the chapter. Please review.
"There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact."- Arthur Conan Doyle, The Boscombe Valley Mystery
"Man is not what he thinks he is, he is what he hides."- André Malraux
"Seldom, very seldom, does complete truth belong to any human disclosure; seldom can it happen that something is not a little disguised or a little mistaken." - Jane Austen, Emma
"The speaker has no value whatsoever, nor what he says. What has value is how you understand yourself in listening to what he says. He is like a mirror, in which you see yourself reflected. Your consciousness, your daily activity, your unconcious demands, pursuits and fears are exposed. When you so listen, then you begin to discover for yourself not the ideas, the conclusions, the assertions of the speaker, but rather you see for yourself what is true and what is false." - Krishnamurti
Wednesday, October 30th, 2013, 1:16 P.M. Pacific Standard Time
Patrick Jane awoke with a gasp, head pounding miserably. He blinked and light pierced his brain like meat-hooks. The taste in his mouth was abysmal. Tasted like something had crawled inside his mouth, something in the rodent family, and taken a forever-nap. He rubbed at his eyes, dimly wondering why his back and neck ached so badly. Sat up.
He was sitting up on a park bench in a park he had never been before- not during his waking hours at any rate. Jane looked around dazedly, eyes bright and curious as a cat's. Last thing he had known he had been on his way home the night before with a bottle of D'arenberg "dead arm" Syrah ("This one has a delightful full body with just a hint of cloves and blueberries coming through on the nose," the gawky, owlish salesman had told Jane proudly, and Jane had been sold) and plans to look over his Red John files for the umpteenth time while drinking the red in honour of his slain loved ones. He couldn't remember actually opening the bottle, let alone taking a drink, and the time in the interim was a complete blank.
"Interesting," Jane drawled. He saw him them, standing near a tree. A young child- boy, no doubt- leaning nonchalantly against the tree. What sort of tree was that? Dutch elm? Looked about right. The child was wearing a mask. A wolf mask. Jane blinked.
"It's not Halloween just yet," he said aloud, mildly comforted by the easy, dulcet tones of his own voice. Jane forced himself to stand up, eased the aches out of his muscles and then, slowly, deliberately, walked towards the small person leaning against the tree. The small person in the blue jeans and lace-up sneakers and black, pull-over sweatshirt with the v-neck stitching. The young person wearing the molded-plastic wolf head with the strangely chatoyant eyes. What were those eyes made out of? Glass? Looked like glass. Strange for glass eyes to be embedded in what looked like a plastic mask, but, upon closer inspection, Jane could tell the mask was no five-and-dime cheap Chinese knock-off product. Even the texture of the wolf's fine guard hairs appeared to be molded into the plastic. Or was it ceramic? This was an undoubtedly an expensive mask being worn by a very small, very alone, very silent kid who was watching him with studious recognition.
"Hey there," Jane said when he was 10 feet away from the boy. The child's masked face turned silently to the side in recognition of being hailed. Jane hadn't exactly worked out what he wanted to say. Indeed, he wasn't quite sure what he wanted to say. The kid didn't say anything back, just went right on watching him. Jane watched him back, silently, was certain that this strange wolf-boy wasn't just a regular, innocent kid gallivanting around in the park.
Finally, Jane decided to just go with the obvious. "You're watching me."
There was a beat and the small head shifted in what could almost be considered a nod of acknowledgment.
"You finally woke up," a gravelly, oddly not-young voice informed the mentalist before him. Whatever friendly smile had been on Patrick Jane's face faded away, like clouds passing over the face of the sun.
"You've been waiting for me to wake up." It wasn't a question.
The boy took a step forward, then another, and placed a folded piece of paper in his hand.
"This is from him."
"Him?" Jane prodded, but he already knew. His blood felt chilled, as it always did, when "he" was playing games and pulling strings in the shadows of normal mortals' lives.
"He said you'd know who he was," the voice said agreeably, confirming the obvious. Jane gazed down at the paper in his hand, unfolded it.
Written in venous red on expensive off-white rag paper were the words: When two become as One, the fun will have begun.
Jane glanced back up. The boy was walking away from him already, duty done.
"Hey! Wait a second... the...man... who gave you this? Is he still around here?"
The small person stopped, craned his head around.
"He left a long time ago. Paid me fifty dollars to give you that. I have to go, now."
Jane considered running after the kid, pulling that damned wolf mask off his face, demanding more answers. But what good would that do? No doubt the kid knew nothing more than he'd already divulged. Still, the desire (hell, it wasn't a desire, it was a need) to not lose this connection to Red John propelled Jane forward. He caught up to the kid, put a hand on his shoulder. The kid froze in his tracks, turned around. Lifted the mask off his face and let it fall to the grassy floor, discarded and forgotten. A small, perfectly innocent little face gazed up at him. An eight year old with freckles, two missing front teeth, eyes the colour of rootbeer floats. Jane was looking down at Beaver Cleaver.
"Can I help you, mister?" The boy squeaked out in the uncertain, slightly scared tone of a prepubescent child who has just been stopped in his tracks by a weird, shady "stranger" in a park. Jane scanned the kid's face, but there was no recognition in those soda pop eyes. As far as this boy was concerned, the previous interaction mere seconds ago had never existed. Jane stepped back and shook his head, dismayed but not surprised. The kid gave him a slight warning look and turned around. Began to hurry away from Jane in a half-run, half-walk. Jane let him go and picked the mask up off the grass.
It was indeed expensive, hand-made, venetian carnival style. The front was fabric expertly glued to a molded, plastic backing. The eyes were amber carnival glass baubles with an iridescent sheen to them. Oil on water. Jane flipped the mask over.
Written in calligraphy cursive in what appeared to be red indelible ink was the taunting message: Happy 10th Anniversary, Patrick!
Under this message, smiling up at him obscenely in that same, gaudy red ink was a curve-eyed smiley face.
Jane stared at the mask, frozen to his bones. Finally he found his legs and began to march out of the park.
Wednesday, October 30th, 2013 1:28 Pacific Standard Time
Lisbon pulled the car into the crime scene's driveway and got out, Cho and Rigsby hot on her heels. The little house by the water was partitioned off by yellow crime-scene tape. POLICE SCENE- DO NOT CROSS. Lisbon lifted the tape and ducked underneath, flashed her CBI badge at a police officer who was coming towards her with a shut-off, officious seriousness on his face.
She had been told on the phone what the crimes were and who had probably committed them, but nothing could ever prepare someone for coming face to face with the evil that was Red John. She walked up the small, cracking wooden stoop (a glass windchime danced and pealed lazily in the early afternoon breeze, for some reason windchimes would forever remind Lisbon of fairies) and into the home. The smell of febreze air freshener and incense hit her nostrils and caused them to flare. She was directed to a back bedroom and approached it, stiffly.
The door was already open and one of Red John's bastard smiley-faces was grinning mockingly at her already, from way on down the hall. ("Hello, Teresa... we meet again.")
Lisbon forced herself to walk the full length of the hallway and not turn and run. She already, intellectually, knew what she would find but she had never seen a crime scene that objectively mirrored Jane's tragedy so starkly and she felt the blood thrumming in her ears with anticipation, even 10 feet before she hit the threshold of the bedroom's doorway.
The smiley face was eyeing her coyly, clearly visible from the open doorway, but one had to actually enter the bedroom and look to the right to see the master bed and the "surprise" that had been left there for the doting husband and father and somewhat-successful Palm Springs psychic to the stars. Lying on the bed, eyes open and disturbingly accusing, was the man's wife. Cause of death was not immediately apparent, but what was immediately apparent was the fact that she was dead. Her skin was ashen, pallid. Somehow she had died with an unnatural smile on her lips, and this smile was frozen for all the world to see on her cold, doll-like face. But the eyes... the eyes were haunted and accusing, angry. In her arms was her three-year old cherub of a son, looking so much like a pale Italian putto breathed into physical reality on the bed. The mother's hands were wrapped around the naked body of her boy, her fingers long and graceful as a pianist's on his baby-fat arms. If one ignored the fact that the mother and child on the bed were dead- and that the boy's lungs were serving as his "wings"- the scene could almost have been called classically beautiful. Lisbon couldn't see the kid's face and so she couldn't be certain if he was "smiling" or not, and for that fact, she was profoundly grateful to whatever powers may have been guiding her life.
The little boy's lungs had been pulled out of two evil slits cut in his back, created with what appeared to be a very, very sharp surgical scalpel. The words "hobby knife" suddenly came to Lisbon in a flash like angry lightening, and she grimaced. Hobby knife, indeed. Lisbon forced herself to move a bit further towards the chaos, and she stopped breathing altogether. The monstrosity that called himself Red John had tied clear fishing line around the tiny, baby lungs and suspended them from three hooks in the stucco ceiling so that they seemed to float above the small, still body like... like fucking angel wings.
Teresa Lisbon had thought she knew all the facts and details surrounding the deaths of Jane's wife and daughter, but she had never actually read the files. Jane- when he relaxed and grew to trust her enough to share such matters with her- had filled her in and what he had told her about the murders had been dreadful enough. She had had no conscious reason to think he might be keeping details from her, but- if this crime scene was anything like the crime scene that had awaited Jane ten years-to-the-day ago (and probability dictated that it was a veritable recreation of Jane's tragedy, given the date and the auteur responsible)- then he had censored himself during the retelling of facts. Jane had conveniently left out the lungs-turned-wings and... somehow, even worse, was the music. Playing on low, on a CD player in the corner of the room.
"We didn't turn it off. We thought you guys would want to see everything as it was found," one of the crime techs told Lisbon from what sounded like miles away. Lisbon nodded tightly. She found herself at a loss for words. The piece of music that was playing so elegantly in this hellish little room was Bach's Prelude number 1 in C major. It came to a graceful end and then, after a span of two merciless silent seconds, started up again at the beginning.
Lisbon found her voice and forced herself to take a breath. The room felt very, very bright and too hot and she felt prickly, a little swoon-y and like she might faint.
"Yes, thank you." Was what she finally said to the crime techie, and it seemed odd and more than a little strange even to her own ears. She walked over to the CD player, bent down, and none-to-gently jabbed the CD player's off button to shut up that mockingly beautiful music. The piece cut off instantly and she could hear the spinning of the CD in the machine as it spun itself still. The sound of the CD spinning itself to a stop sounded very much like the insistent spinning of blood through her own ears, a far-away steady hiiiiisssssss.
Lisbon forced herself to take a deep breath and the world seemed to jump into focus again. Oxygen was funny that way. She stood back up and sought out Rigsby's eyes. He looked shocked beyond all measure, a little green around the gills, mouth part-way open. Lisbon left him gawking at the violence and reentered the hallway and walked herself back out the front door of the murder site. On the stoop she pulled out her cell phone and dialed Jane for what had to be the thirteenth time since their workday had begun at nine that morning.
After the first ring, Lisbon felt bile crawling around in the back of her throat.
"Come on Jane, answer the god damned phone," Lisbon hissed at the phone in a strangled whisper. Two rings. On the third ring, she heard the call connect.
"Lisbon?" Jane said over the line. He sounded uneasy, a little out of breath and not very much like himself.
"Jane!" His name burst out of her mouth like a gunshot. She stopped herself and forced herself to speak slowly, to be calm, to not give him a piece of her mind for scaring the life out of her.
"Where have you been? I've been trying you all day!"
"I seem to have been a little preoccupied, Lisbon..." Jane drawled cryptically. Lisbon blinked.
"Where are you?"
"I'm at a little bakery called Murray's in Beverly Hills." Jane said conversationally and if Lisbon hadn't been so pumped on adrenaline herself she would have heard the sick, fatigued undercurrent to his voice. . Lisbon nodded to herself. Jane was at a bakery. Why wasn't she surprised?
"You're at a bakery called Murray's?" Lisbon repeated incredulously. Even the name "Murray" suddenly seemed ridiculous to her. "Do you have any idea how worried I've been about you? Wait... you're at a bakery?!"
"A place that produces buns, breads, pastries and other baked goods," Jane said in the same annoyingly conversational tone.
"I know what a bakery is!" Lisbon almost shouted. Jane didn't say anything but she thought she heard him chew. Yup. He was chewing. She heard him swallow. Heard him take a sip of something to chase whatever bread product he'd just swallowed. Probably tea.
"I've been trying you all day. Why didn't you answer?!"
"I seem to have been indisposed," Jane said. He took another bite of something. Chewed again.
Lisbon shut her eyes and shook her head miserably. All the adrenaline in her system and her worry over Jane- not to mention the horror show she had just taken in- made her want to scream. She'd have to tread carefully.
"What do you mean, indisposed? Jane?"
"Last thing I remember I was heading home with a bottle of red. Next thing, I am waking up on a park bench in a suburb of Beverly Hills with what feels like the worst hangover of my life, even though I am pretty sure I didn't imbibe last night. Thought I'd stop and top up my blood sugar before coming in. You know how cranky I can get when I haven't eaten."
Lisbon ran his words through her head, filtering out the general playful banter that was indelibly Jane and only ceased to exist when he was terrified or very, very sick. His words suddenly hit her on a profoundly emotional level. Jane can't remember last night. He can't remember anything from last night. He didn't drink... but he still can't remember. Which means...
Lisbon wasn't sure exactly what it meant, but she knew in her gut that it wasn't good and it was connected to Red John and this latest atrocity.
"Lisbon, you there?" Jane said when he was done chewing and swallowing that bite.
"I'm here," Lisbon said. Considered her words very carefully. Decided to go with a truncated version of the truth that would no doubt be hitting Jane squarely in the solar plexus all too soon.
"Jane, I'm at a crime scene. A woman and her young son- three years old- were killed some time last night. Coroner puts the time of death at approximately three thirty in the morning. On the bedroom wall, above the bed..." Lisbon trailed. She didn't want to tell him, didn't want to reopen old wounds. Knew she had no choice. Also knew he had gone silent on the phone, that he already knew the rest of this story.
"Jane, I'm at a Red John crime scene."
Jane was silent for a moment longer. No chewing.
"What's the address?" He said after a moment. Lisbon blinked heavily.
"No. No, Jane, you hear me? You tell me where you are and I will come and pick you up and bring you back here. But stay where you are." She knew she had her typical Listen-to-me-Jane-I'm-the-Boss tone going full strength, and didn't care one iota. It spoke leagues to Jane's "indisposition" that he didn't try to argue with her, just gave her the address. Lisbon nodded, realized Jane couldn't see her.
"Okay, I'll be there in about 20 minutes, give or take five. Stay there, Jane. I mean it." The barely tempered anxiety in her voice seemed to bring out Jane's protective urges.
"Wouldn't dream of leaving, Lisbon. Best bear claws in town."
But his voice wasn't as bright or playful as usual. It was a for-show voice. Lisbon disconnected. Felt, more than saw, Rigsby and Cho beyond her. They both shot her questioning looks when she turned to meet their eyes.
"That was Jane. He's at a bakery downtown... don't ask. I am going to pick him up. You two. Stay here!" This said gruffly, as if they were small children and she was used to them disobeying orders. Which, Lisbon thought darkly, wasn't often that far from the truth. Cho said nothing, just stared at her with his dark, impassive eyes. Rigsby nodded, but he was still a little too pale. Momentarily satisfied, Lisbon walked to the car, opened the driver's seat, got in.
God help Jane if he set one foot outside that bakery.
As Lisbon drove, the growing concern she had felt for Jane all morning didn't exactly disappear, but rather, seemed to shape-shift into something else which was not altogether more desirable. Jane couldn't remember any of the night before. Nothing. That didn't sound good, and not just because Jane wasn't prone to alcoholic blackouts.
Lisbon tapped her fingers on the top of the steering wheel as she drove, wincing each time she caught a red light instead of a green. She was certain (well, fairly certain, at least) that Jane would stay true to his word and "stay put" at that damned bakery, but every minute that passed seemed to increase her overall unease that he might change his mind or see something "interesting" out the window and forget his promise... and that would be that. She would arrive, and find him gone.
But more than the annoying idea that Jane might go AWOL on her and wander off was the nagging truth that if Jane did keep to his agreement and she found him where he said he'd be and she got him in the car, well... she would then be obligated to deliver him to that hellish crime scene.
Lisbon knew she would have to take Jane back to that horror show that had been so viciously crafted to resemble his most intimate of personal tragedies. There was no way around that fact, and the idea that Jane would see what she had seen and be reminded of a past that was even more bloody and cruel than she had initially been led to believe made Lisbon uneasy and protective on a profound and very basic level.
She knew Jane often sought to protect her. Despite his playful, irreverant attitude and what some thought of as cocky disregard for the emotions of others, Lisbon knew better. Jane could pretend all he wanted, but strip off all the showmanship and cute comments and dazzling smiles and showy, almost-brazen disregard for rules and protocol... and eventually you were left with a very private, very protective and very kind human being who knew things deeply not only because he was bright and intuitive, but because he had gone through Hell to learn them.
Plainly put, Lisbon didn't want to be responsible for escorting Jane to this particular Hell, this newest in a long line of Red John "originals".
What Patrick Jane "knew" in a deep, profound, eerily accurate way was a skill that had come at a great personal cost, and for every detail Jane gleaned (seemingly from the ether) there were a dozen details he sensed and never shared with another living soul. Lisbon also knew that- for all his smiles and pesky comments- he was an exceptionally compassionate human being. When others hurt, some part of him empathized deeply. And for all his jokes and dry humour and dazzling smiles (most of them worthy of being photographed and used as toothpaste commercial props) there was an equally deep, profound sadness in the man. A compassion that few ever saw because they bought into Jane's mentalism act so completely. But Lisbon knew that sadness was there, and that it beat constantly within him. A second, quantum heart of beating melancholy.
Sometimes Lisbon wondered if Jane didn't act like a dick because if he really opened himself up to his overtly compassionate nature, he would consciously identify with the victims of the crimes they investigated much too deeply and be useless. Lisbon waited for a red light to blink back to green, and pressed down on the gas.
She knew Jane sought to protect her from the ugly realities of life, as much as he could given that she was a CBI agent. Lisbon wasn't sure, but she hoped Jane knew the sentiments were mutual. She desired, strongly, to protect him from any and all demons lying in the wings, waiting to pounce. Most of these demons shared one creator: Red John. Lisbon felt even more fiercely protective of Jane whenever Red John came into the picture.
Right now her usual protective instincts were amplified a thousand fold. She wanted to protect him from what was coming, and knew that she couldn't, and that fact was making her jumpy. Making her angry. She hit another red traffic light and swore at it loudly. She checked her watch, ran the directions Jane had given her through the 3 pound GPS system between her ears and estimated another ten minutes on the road. Fifteen if the damn lights kept turning red just as she apprached the intersection.
"Calm down, Teresa," she told herself forcefully, and turned the radio on. Classic rock filled the car, Led Zepellin's "Black Dog". Lisbon listened for a moment, then snapped the radio off with a scowl. Something about the song sounded obscene, and she wasn't sure why. Like a soundtrack to madness.
She found the bakery with no hiccups, no problems. She could see Jane even before the car fully stopped, sitting alone at a table with a coffee cup and something on a paper plate. Lisbon let herself exhale, schooled her features into something she hoped looked both supportive and professional and opened the driver's side door.
Small bells tinkled and rang as Lisbon entered and a middle aged hispanic man (Murray?) behind the counter looked up and smiled at her. She smiled back as much as she could, which wasn't much, and jerked her head in Jane's direction. He smiled at her, too, a subdued smile, and got up from the table. Reached down, lifted the coffee cup to his lips and drained the last of whatever had been in it. Someone who didn't know him well wouldn't have noticed anything off about him, but Lisbon caught the slight disorientation and the fine lines around his eyes seemed a little deeper than usual. He offered a brown paper bag to her as she approached him.
"Bear claw, Lisbon?" He said in that same irritatingly conversational tone of voice he'd used on the phone. Lisbon knew it was silly to be annoyed by a tone of voice- afterall, how was Jane supposed to sound right now? Anxious? Full of morose sadness? Still, the tone niggled her, especially after the visuals she'd recently... "experienced".
Finally, a second late, she decided to accept his offer of a pastry. Lisbon nodded and accepted the bag, pulled a bear claw from the bag and handed the others back to Jane. She didn't know how to say what needed to be said. Every possible combination of words she ran through her head sounded just plain wrong. She decided to start with easy questions.
"Where's your car?" She asked as they reached the door of the bakery and stepped out onto the asphalt.
Jane shrugged. "I have no idea."
Lisbon blinked, got into the car and leaned over to unlock his side.
"Wait... you don't remember where you left your car?"
"Like I told you, Lisbon, last thing I remember is driving back home with a bottle of red. Then... nada."
Lisbon wasn't sure why it scared her worse that Jane's memory had cut out while he was driving, but it did. Before she could say anything else, Jane piped up.
"I have no doubt we will find my car, if that helps your anxiety level any. Probably at home, waiting for me, like a good little Citroën."
Lisbon nodded- she didn't want to grill Jane about how he knew that right now- she felt strangely exhaused despite the recent adrenaline flood. She put the keys in the ignition, thought of thanking Jane for staying at the bakery and not running off, and thought better of it. Jane wasn't five years old. Most people would expect a grown man to be where he'd promised to be.
"He left this for me," Jane said simply, before she could pull out of the parking lot, and handed her a mask. Lisbon stared at it for a second. A garish wolf face was staring up at her with glittering amber eyes. Just the sight of the thing gave her the bone-deep creeps.
"Turn it over," Jane prodded and Lisbon flipped it over, read the comment. Grimaced.
"Son of a bitch," She said to no one in particular. Jane cocked his head to the side, no levity in the expression.
"The kid who was wearing that- long story- handed this to me first. Also from Red John."
And he handed her the paper. Lisbon carefully unfolded it, read the rhyme outloud.
"When two become as One, the fun will have begun. What the hell is that supposed to mean?" Lisbon scowled at the paper, folded it back up, handed it back to Jane. He took it and tucked it into his suit vest, some hidden pocket somewhere, a magician with his wand.
"He's playing with me. This is a milestone for us. A whole decade since..." Jane trailed, and whatever playful tone had been left in his words dried up completely. There was no need for him to finish his sentence.
"Jane... the crime scene..." Lisbon huffed out a weary sigh. "You never told me..." She couldn't finish it. Couldn't even say the words. Jane was staring at her with hauntedly bright eyes, lit up from the inside of his soul like a jack-o-lantern come to life. The flames behind his eyes, lambent behind the corneas, burning brightly and hot, full of pain and anger.
"There were some details that didn't need to be repeated," Jane said simply, darkly. Lisbon watched his face for a moment, nodded. Decided to let it rest. The car was still purring, ready to drive them to wherever they wanted to go.
"Maybe your car? Maybe we should look for it first? At least check to see if it has been reported or-"
"You're stalling, Lisbon," Jane said, and this time, a bit of the playful gentleness was back. Just a little bit. Lisbon stared at him, hard. Had the sudden. intense urge to reach over and hug him, but knew she would never bring herself to do it. Jane was watching her back with his bright, impossibly perceptive eyes. Sadness and anger were in those eyes, and bone-deep dread, but also tolerance. Love, even.
"I'll be fine, Lisbon." This he said softly. Lisbon gave him the anemic shadow of a smile. Nodded.
God, she wished she could believe that.
-End of chapter- please review-
End of chapter note: Okay, so my sister likes this. Good to know. I still feel the deep-rooted need to watch more episodes of the show now, just to get the team dynamics and more subtle personality traits of each character "down". Jane circa 2013 lives on the roof of the CBI building, in what amounts to a shed, yes? Looks like a pretty crummy place to be, but I see it as his form of atonement. He doesn't want to enjoy life in the midst of his family's murder. I realize that RJ on the show wasn't supposed to have pulled "Charlotte's" lungs out (or rather, the exact details are unknown). What the fans do know is that neither his wife or child "suffered", but nobody really knows what RJ did with the bodies (the general consensus is he did nothing beyond killing them and painting Angela's toenails with blood). I like to think a genius sociopath like Red John would view the bodies as "canvasses" to send Jane a message, but perhaps I am a bit twisted. By the way, the act of pulling someone's lungs out while they are *still alive* is an ancient Nordic torture ritual and the name of the ritual is the "Blood Eagle". Historically (for those that believe it was historically committed and not just a detail added to the Nordic saga legends) the victim's ribs were cut (while still alive) along the spine, then the ribs were broken and finally the lungs were forcibly pulled out of the back through these slits and positioned above the head so that they resembled bloody angel wings. Salt was then rubbed into the wounds (remember the old saying about salt being added to wounds?) to increase the pain in the final moments of life. Some people assume that this barbaric practice is only a myth, but I believe it was actually done to people. Those that believe it is historical fact believe it spoke to the degree of the Pagan's hatred of Christianity (maybe the angel wings are a symbolic spitting on their beliefs?) but so much has been lost with time. At any rate, if you think about what a victim must have experienced as they endured this torture, it probably makes you feel a little faint and short of breath. I know I feel a little faint contemplating it for any length of time.
Regarding the moniker "Red John"- to me this has always sounded Nordic, like a Viking's name (ie: "Eric the Red"). In "Eric the Red"'s case, the appellation "red" referred to his hair colour but I believe RJ is referring quite literally to blood with the "red", as well as danger (what colour are warning lights?). John is a well known substitute for the name "Jack", and so I also think there is a possibility RJ is paying homage to the great, never-identified Jack the Ripper (and all the mythology associated with slasher Jack). Perhaps RJ is even saying that the same powerful evil that animated Jack the Ripper gives him his power, or rather, that they are two different forms of the same beast? For those that study both religion and philosophy, there is on-going debate about the nature of evil and whether evil can take physical, material form and, if this is so, might these evil spirits/souls take vaguely human forms and stalk and hunt the innocent but never slip up and "get caught" like mere, "sick" mortals? (Jack the Ripper and The Zodiac killer being two examples of prolific serial killers who taunted the police but were never caught, despite the sheer magnitude of their taunting). At any rate, RJ is highly educated and intelligent and I'd like to think he put more than a little bit of thought into his name.
One aspect of fan fiction submission that has bothered me in the past is that readers want to know if such-and-such a character or interaction or experience is "real", or if it is a dream, hallucination, trick of the light, etc... I think reality is nothing but shadows and our personal interpretations and that "real" is relative, so please don't ask me what in my stories is real- you will scramble my brain and you are likely to get back a philosophical inquiry such as "how are you defining 'real'?" I like to write in such a way as to enable readers to draw their own conclusions, and I also think the state of not-knowing everything with absolute confidence builds the richness of a tale. In this canon we are dealing with theatrical, tricky, slippery characters (both Red John and Patrick Jane, himself) who use hypnosis, sleights-of-hand and mental manipulation to make their presence felt. In the "Mentalist" universe, more than any other I have yet entered, the lines don't seem to be clearly drawn, and I like the dreamy, unhinged moments in stories, where the audience just "never knows". Short answer? If you want something to be real, it is real.
Please review. Reviews give me the confidence to go forward.