Title: And Hell Followed After Her
Author: MissMarvel
Date: Dec 30, 2004
Rating: PG-13
Feedback: MissMarvel13yahoo.ca
Archive: Sure you can! Just drop me a note telling me where!
Disclaimer: I don't own Tarot…that was easy!
The halls echoed loudly as her high heels connected with the cold linoleum floor. Her name was Dr. Joyce MacIntyre, Therapist to the criminally insane for the last twenty- three years and counting. Normally, she would never have even considered taking on a case such as this, that is, a young murderer as eccentric as this. However, for this case they'd summoned for her by name. The case was of one Marie-Ange Colbert, a fourteen- year old girl the local mental institutions had dubbed 'The Tarot Card Girl'. From what the file she'd received told her, Marie-Ange had been born in America, the daughter of two wealthy French immigrants. The girl's life had seemed normal up until two years ago. She was a straight A student, no lack of friends, an accomplished equestrian horseback rider and pianist. That was an unusual element in the young girl's case. Most murderers, or suspected murderers, had some history of violence, some fundamental warning sign. The girl had shown none until suddenly, people around her started to die of mysterious causes. She was always in or around the area of the murder, but no evidence could directly link her. All the girl did in her own defense was blame the deaths on her mysterious deck of tarot cards. Her parents had no choice but to ship her off to the mental health facility, or at least, that was the nice way to put it. Even the dimmest of minds could tell it was nothing less than a maximum-security insane asylum.
Though she'd never set foot in this facility before, Dr. MacIntyre easily found room 78; most mental health facilities these days had similar layouts. She casually opened the door with her free hand, letting the white painted wood swing freely. The inside of the room was equally bland; white painted walls, off-white linoleum floors. The only splash of colour the room provided was the blue-hued table and chairs and the silvery bars placed upon the small window. The girl, her newest case she reminded herself, sat across from the empty chair, blankly staring out the window. The doctor studied her for a long moment through the fluorescent lighting. Dark, dark red hair framed the girl's pale, fragile face. Her green eyes were dull, listless, as she stared out to nothingness. The loose fitting clothes did little to hide the girl's thin, porcelain frame as she hunched over, as if trying to withdraw into herself, in the blue plastic chair. The doctor had seen cases like this a million times before, and cured just as many. Marie-Ange Colbert would soon be another one of those cured under her professional expertise.
Dr. MacIntyre claimed the empty chair for herself and sat down comfortably. The young girl across from her did not seem to take any notice. The doctor nodded to herself. Typical case. The girl was emotionally fragile, probably reclusive. Could be the parent's fault, or that of her friends and peers. Whether the red haired girl was even responsive, she did not know. Most of the psychiatrists who'd attempted to treat her in the past mysteriously quit. Or turned up dead. Their findings were more often then not lost and therefore, her own information was limited. No matter. She was one of the best in her field. If anyone could crack this case, it would be her.
"Hello, Marie-Ange. My name is Dr. Joyce MacIntyre. I'd like to talk with you for a little while, is that alright?" The doctor said soothingly. The girl's dull eyes flickered to the doctors weathered face.
"It's Tarot," She said simply in her small, lackluster voice.
"Excuse me?" Dr. MacIntyre asked. The girl turned her full attention to the woman, letting her tangled mass of hair fall behind her shoulders.
"My name. It's Tarot," She clarified. The Doctor's brow knitted together for a moment as she took notes in her book.
"My file says your name is Marie-Ange Colbert," The doctor informed her as she hastily wrote. The girl shook her head spiritlessly, a mix of sorrows filling her cold eyes.
"Not anymore," She said solemnly. The doctor nodded only once before continuing her inquiry.
"Why do you think your Tarot now, Marie-Ange?" Dr. MacIntyre asked her, assuming the girl would give her a common, run of the mill answer. Marie-Ange's eyes met her own clear blue ones for only a moment before she once again looked down to the off-white floor.
"The cards picked it for me," She answered matter-of-factly, though her hollow expression never changed. The doctor nodded once more, recognizing the lie from the file she'd read. The girl had a strange fascination with tarot cards that seems to have started shortly before the mysterious murders, and had continued long after.
"And why did the cards pick that name?" MacIntyre asked the girl, using years of professional training to keep the skepticism out of her patronizing voice. The girl appeared to withdraw into herself for a moment, rocking slightly in the uncomfortable chair, before clearing her thoughts enough to speak.
"I don't know," She answered in a spiritless whisper, before staring out the window once more.
"Hhmm," the woman responded absently as she made more notes. The girl still blamed the cards for her own actions; that issue would have to be brought up next session. She let her pen fall neatly back onto the book. "So, Marie-Ange, why do you like tarot cards so much?"
"It's them who like me," Tarot answered cryptically. The doctor nodded with interest. Perhaps she'd found part of the problem.
"Your parents, did they not like you?" The doctor asked pryingly, with a smug air of satisfaction. Tarot looked up innocently.
"My parents liked me," She said in her own absent defense, "Just…not like the cards do…" She added letting her voice drift hauntingly to the doctors ears. The doctor nodded. She'd look back into the parents later.
"Your friends? Did they not like you?" The doctor rephrased, her smugness slowly fading at the girls constant need for lies.
"I don't have friends, the cards don't like them," She replied regretfully.
"And how did they come to that conclusion?" Dr. MacIntyre inquired, readying her pen.
"They told me so," Tarot answered matter–of-factly. The doctor's interest perked.
"What else do 'the cards' tell you?" The woman asked excitedly. Tarot let her head fall as she spoke once more.
"They told me you were coming," she offered.
"They did?" The doctor asked, faking her surprise. Marie-Ange nodded weakly. "Are they telling you things right now?" MacIntyre asked eagerly. The young girl shook her head.
"Their close, though," She explained to the woman, who only nodded before jotting down more notes. Possible schizophrenia, she thought, coupled with a borderline personality, the cause of which still unknown, but seemingly focused upon these tarot cards.
"Marie-Ange, there's something I'd like you to do for me," The doctor said, placing a deck of tarot cards on the center of the plastic covered table. To her amazement, Marie-Ange's dull green eyes grew wide and fearful. She stood bolt upright, the most she'd moved the entire session, and took a step away cautiously from the deck, tripping over the chair's leg and falling onto the cold linoleum below her. It didn't deter her in the least as she continued on, frantically crawling away until she reached a wall and could crawl no more. It was there that she huddled, hiding her teary, fearful eyes from the on looking glare of the seemingly harmless cards. "Marie-Ange?!" The doctor called, tying to re-catch the girl's attention.
The girl looked up sharply with a new, desperate madness written all over her frail face. She could have taken the role of the caged bird, or the prey relentlessly chased by a predator, but there was something deeper, a wisdom that a girl her age could not posses. She spoke with a feverent, wavering passion and it was the first time in the entire half hour that the doctor had picked up any real emotion from her. "This can't be happening," The girl whispered to herself. "I saw them burn, I saw them!" she ended in a shriek. She stood, back to the wall, roughly wiping a stray tear from her cheek. She would address the doctor next in a display of unrelenting fear and passion. "They won't leave me alone, they won't stop!" she tried to plead with the woman.
"Marie-Ange why are you so upset?" Dr. MacIntyre asked her calmly, unmoving from her own plastic seat. The girl let her head fall back against the wall as the words came from the doctors mouth.
"You don't understand! You can't!" Tarot screamed at the woman, letting her fist bang violently against the stark white wall.
"Can you explain it to me?" MacIntyre asked, un-phased by the outburst. The girl's face broke into a mask of fury and she staked up to the table, angrily grabbing the side and leaning over to face the renowned doctor.
"They do bad things! I can't stop them! Look!" She shouted once again, desperately holding out her exposed, slashed arms for the woman to see. Self-inflicted violence, once again blamed on the tarot cards, the doctor noted.
"Come, sit with me Marie-Ange. Their just cards, they can't hurt anyone," Dr. MacIntyre attempted to reason as Tarot once more took steps away.
"They can and they do," She explained to the doctor as convincingly as she could. "And they'll never stop," She concluded in a bone-chilling whisper.
"Nothing bad will happen, I promise you that," The doctor reasoned. The girl shook her head feverently, sending a spray of dark red hair in front of her pale face. Dr. MacIntyre sighed, but remained calm. She'd cracked harder cases than this one; much harder cases. "What are the cards saying right now, Marie-Ange?"
The girl stopped for a moment, seemingly listening. "Their not saying anything right now," She concluded, once again calm and reserved.
"Then come back and sit with me," The psychiatrist compelled her. She nodded once, and silently took her former stance hunched over in the plastic chair; her green eyes once again dull.
"You're not gonna like what they say," Tarot warned the woman as she stared down at the deck in front of them.
"That's alright," MacIntyre assured her. Tarot reached out carefully, hesitantly, curling her fingers around the cardboard casing as her hand connected with it. She took the cards out cautiously, lovingly, and held them in her frail hand for a long while, just observing, before laying them down softly on the bluish table and drawing the first card: The Page of Wands.
"He wants to leave this place," She explained to the doctor limply.
"Why?" Dr. MacIntyre urged.
"He doesn't like it here; it's too confined," She elaborated as she placed the single card face up on the table a few centimeters away from the large stack. She drew a second card. The nine of cups, however this card lay up side down in her small hand.
"The cups are mad at me," She said showing interest in the situation for only a moment before falling back into her disassociated stupor. "Their mad cause I tried to leave so many times," She explained for the sake of the woman across from her. The therapist nodded once, and the card was placed on top of the other. As she picked up the deck to draw again, a third card fell onto the table. Her expression grew apprehensive as she set down the deck with the same loving care she had earlier. She was overly cautious, letting her hand hover over the third card for a long moment before hurriedly picking it up and looking at it.
"Death reversed," She said, with a hint of fear creeping back into her voice.
"What does he say?" The doctor asked, finishing her notes once more. The girl looked up apologetically, her dull green eyes piercing into the doctor's vibrant soul like a pair of twin spears. For the first time in her long career, Joyce MacIntyre felt uncomfortable under one of her patients gaze.
"He says he doesn't like you," The girl said just as apologetically, her eyes not leaving the psychiatrist as Death was laid down with the two other cards. Joyce was about to question the girl when she noticed a third figure had appeared.
He was made of only bones. Pristine white bones that blended into the white walls mystically. The figure was tall, but it looked strong and threatening holding it's large scythe. He wore no black robe and therefore it was not the most traditional Death she'd ever seen, nor was it the most untraditional, but tradition played no part in the menacing skeleton before her. It did not move for a long time, and neither did she. Was she really seeing what she was seeing? She quickly turned to Marie-Ange expecting answers, but the girl's answer was only more confusing than the situation itself.
"I told you they do bad things. You wouldn't listen," She pleaded with the fated woman. Joyce stood from her chair and instantly the skeletons featureless head snapped in her direction. Watching her, with it's teeth forever positioned into its sickening skeletal grin. The doctor could no longer find her words, nor move her muscles. She's spent a lifetime learning to read emotions from afar and all that she could pick up from the apparition was a cold, determined malice. He raised his scythe, as he moved closer, his bones rattling with every step.
"Marie, can you stop this?!" Joyce yelled out frantically to the reclusive girl.
"No one can," Tarot replied listlessly as she withdrew back into herself. Joyce refused to give into her oncoming fear as she saw the signs that the girl had become unresponsive once more. She was on her own now. She turned swiftly, only to come face to face with the mythical being. He smiled joyously at her as he raised his scythe high in the air. Before her next thought could be formed, Death's scythe had been swung.
The attendants were the ones to discover the body and the reclusive Tarot. The girl had been brought back to her room, the doctors body had been taken to the morgue. The police had also entered and left, once again not concluding anything solid. No evidence as to a murder weapon and no record of the events leading to the attack, the doctors notebook ruined and unreadable, stained by her own blood. Only two attendants remained, assigned the grotesque job of cleaning the blood stained room.
"So Tarot girl got another one, did she?" The large brunette man asked his co-worker. The smaller blonde man working beside him nodded once and he pushed the mop against the red floor.
"I guess so. Though how a small girl like her could decapitate someone in here…" He trailed off, letting an exaggerated shudder wrack his frame. "Well, that's why she was brought here in the first place, I suppose," he concluded. The brunette silently agreed with him as he laid his wash bucket on the pale blue and brilliant red table. He let out a small noise of surprise, alerting the other man of his finding.
"What is it?" The blonde asked him. The larger man smiled thoughtfully.
"She left her cards…and look which one is on top," He said amusingly staring down at the Death card. The blonde's mop ceased moving for a split second as he too regarded the card.
"Creepy," he commented. "Are they still in good condition?" The brunette looked the stack of cards over carefully.
"Yeah, not a drop of blood on them," He replied.
"Good, then we can bring them back to her tomorrow. I know she'd hate to lose them." He commented as the mop passed over the red floor once more.