Chapter 34
Diana woke with a splitting headache. For a sweet, groggy millisecond, she had no idea where she was. There was a buzz around her and movement. She kept hearing voices. Her attention sharpened into focus.
"The funicular marks on her neck suggest she was strangled by some kind of rope. She has scratches in her neck from struggling while being strangled." An older man said. "Her jaw is starting to stiffen. It's been two or three hours since she died."
"Thank you for your report Sergeant."
Footsteps echoed until disappeared out the door.
The dim ceiling lights flickered wearily, like an exhausted child trying to keep their eyes open. The realization came to her slowly, as if through a thick haze, and she could feel someone squeezing her shoulder, hard. It was Detective Inspector Croix and she was in a hospital bed.
"Diana, what's wrong? You had a bloody nose." She hadn't let go ever since she'd pulled Diana away from the dead body and carried her to a seat. The Italian woman's fingers were grasping hers so tightly she might have been trying to siphon the pulsing pain out of Diana's body and store it in hers.
She blinked and instinctively touched her face. It was wiped clean except for the tracks of tears on her pale cheeks.
"W-what happened? What time is it?" Diana tried to stay focused on the warmth of the hand around hers. She concentrated on the strength of the grip, how her mentor showed no signs of loosening her hold even when literal hell sprung on one of Luna Nova's classrooms.
"Damn, I was hoping you'd tell me what happened yourself. So does that mean you don't know who killed Amanda?"
"S-she's dead?" her chest constricted for a second and all she could hear was the sound of her lungs screaming for air. She waited for words, a facial expression, even disgust would have provoked relief in her. She hated the waiting part most.
"You're a witness, Diana... to a locked room murder case. The killer had no explainable escape route for now. On the scene, investigators found no traces of breaking and entering. Apart from signs of the struggle that had taken place. Please remember something."
Not more than a few hours ago, Diana had been with Amanda, ready to face the world together, but now Amanda was dead. Diana squeezed her eyes shut, trying to remember the scene from playing out again in her mind to recall who the murderer was. Watching the life fade from her, watching Amanda's face go slack, just after hearing her final words.
Diana had always been weighed down by grief, but now, hearing about Amanda's dead body, Diana felt different—carved out, hollow, as if all the emotion had been scraped out of her.
After the bliss of complete mental shutdown, the world suddenly came rushing back too fast. The air was choking her, the silence deafened her, and the thought of Amanda's corpse hurt her head.
"That could be due to strangulation or from a concussion." Detective Inspector Croix said. "The block in venous drainage causes capillary hemorrhage. And the increase in blood pressure. Can bring on a bloody nose as well. Whoever killed Amanda O'Neill tried to do it to you as well. Needless to say, they were unsuccessful as a group of students approached the room after hearing a commotion. So they fled the crime scene."
Diana wrapped herself into a ball when she winced cause of sudden pain. She stared at her arms. There were angry red lines embedded on her skin—scratch marks.
"Any idea how you got them?"
"None, whatsoever," Diana said, her daze slowly fading. She winced from a sharp pain from her head. Feeling her scalp, indeed there was a small bump. "Where is Sucy? She was with us before this ordeal occurred."
The Detective Inspector's brow furrowed. "She was with you? She was nowhere near the crime scene. A group of girls found you, and told us they haven't seen anyone else apart from you and the late O'Neill."
"I believe I found your killer then," Diana said.
"You think Manbavaran doctored the port?"
"Possibly. Tried to murder two people and then disappeared like Houdini from a room with a locked window and a tiny chimney. From what I know of Luna Nova's blueprints, there's not even a secret entrance to that particular classroom. It is someone either an expert lock pick or someone who has access to the key."
"Listen, Diana, this might come out as a shock, but it's pretty reasonable. You are not to pursue that line of investigation. It's a conflict of interest, Diana. Even I shouldn't be because I am biased to your innocence."
"Whatever are you chattering about?"
"You are the lead suspect of Amanda O'Neill's murder."
The moment the idea was presented to her. A quick flashback fluttered through her vision. Amanda being straddled on the ground. Amanda struggling to breathe. Amanda trying to push Diana off of her. Diana's fingers digging themselves through Amanda's soft and delicate neck.
Her heart banged at the memory. She hadn't known if her brain conjured up a fake memory or it was a repressed memory trying to be noticed.
Diana merely controlled her expressions so as not to give the information away. "You were deliberately fed a false lead to cast suspicion on me. Clearly, I was framed by someone. That is what I get from ruffling feathers—an affront to my reputation, an offense which I cannot abide."
"Why are you so hell-bent on finding the killer, Diana?" Detective Inspector Croix asked. "You could have stuck to simpler mysteries if it's as simple as a hobby. This isn't part of the duties of being the Student Council President. Are you trying to immerse yourself in another horror as you escape your own horrors?"
"What if I say I do? Are you trying to get rid of me as all adults do?"
"I'm merely trying to calculate you, Diana. Three people close to you had died, and one is at the hospital. Before you got themselves harmed, what was it for you? Was it a puzzle game?"
"It became personal, the moment Frank died."
"I know. That's why I'm asking. Before his death, what was this case... this mystery for you?"
"A salvation for the House of Cavendish." Diana's eyes became cloudy with tears and messy eyeliner. "When my mother died, nobody batted an eye for she refused to distinguish friend and foe. She healed the Human Regurgitator's injuries as she fled the cops despite everyone's disapproval. Everyone loathed her and lost respect for our family name. Is that reason enough for you?"
"The Human Regurgitator..." The Detective Inspector regarded her as for the moment. "Would you want to know, my reason?"
"You were assigned to it?" Diana attempted a sarcastic remark.
"No," Professor Croix asked. "It's because I've dealt with these kinds of serial killers before."
"What do you mean?"
"Many impressionable young minds fall under the devil's spell and look to him to fulfill their hopes and desires. They forget that this monster only knows how to take, never to give. The first crime these fragile young people commit is the first step of a long descent into hell, human justice and loss of innocence. And you're right. It can happen that primitive compulsions take hold of a person, and if an aggressive compulsion takes a person over, to the point where that person loses their humaneness that person turns into a mindless robot, simply carrying out the aggression. So yes, I do believe the one who killed Thomas Kinsley and his friends was to protect someone and the one who killed Frank, Andrew and Amanda are out of spite for you."
"So," Diana nibbled her lower lip. "How did you end up as where you are now?"
"To protect someone I love. She was being chased by the serial killer that rampaged the country before the Blytonbury Killer."
"The Human Regurgitator?" Diana gasped in awe. "But that killer plagued the country 20 years ago, how did you come in contact with her?"
"My girlfriend and I were victims. We became friends with what seemed to be a normal girl, we didn't realize it sooner that she was the killer the world feared. After everything, I ended up as part of the cops."
"Oh I'm sorry... is she—"
"Dead? Oh, good riddance no. The serial killer disappeared, I believe she may have died too, but I fear her legacy lives on."
"You mean someone is a fanatic?"
"More likely inherited it," Detective Inspector Croix said, squeezing Diana's hand. "It has come to my attention that I never considered trusting you with all the information I had Diana."
"I know for a fact that you do," Diana said. "Are you only telling me now because I am in the danger of being framed as the Blytonbury Killer?"
"I anticipated that the killer would come after me, but I never knew they would hate you more."
"Listen, Diana. You are forbidden to ever deal with the case files from the Blytonbury Killer, now that everyone in my department is suspicious of you. The forensics took samples of anything they could find in you, hair in clothes, dirt under your nails, all that stuff—" She noticed that Diana was about to protest, but she raised her voice. "I believe you are innocent but those are precautions to clear your name!"
"Please proceed."
"Other than that, we'll also have to do some tests, Diana with psychiatrists who work for Scotland Yard. They will be the standard psychopathology tests."
"I am not insane," Diana muttered weakly, "...yet."
"But what you can do, Diana... after your get dispatched is to be a fresh set of eyes. Revisit the case of the Human Regurgitator. Their methods of killing are different in every way, but if you found the connection between both killers, then we can find the murder weapon."
"What can you tell me about the girls named Chloe, Sarah, and Elfriede?" Sucy asked through a burner phone with her spell-controlled spy. The mentioned girls almost caught her using her witchcraft, so she had to make sure she would know their dirt if ever she needed to dispose of them because of her hasty retreat.
"Sarah and Elfriede are normal kids from normal families," Avery replied, her voice echoed as she was hiding in her room's bathroom. "Chloe, however, is a student who came from a famous family from France. As a hardworking student, she constantly sees Diana as a rival who always managed to beat her in grades and primarily, the Student Council President Election. There's also one thing that everyone who would observe her closely that would notice. And it is the fact that she has a crush on Diana. She usually won't be honest about it and usually would argue or to compete just so she can have a conversation with her crush."
"Were you able to get anything else about Diana's situation over there?"
"She appears to have no recollection of anything from the past few hours. Moreover, the Detective Inspector told her to review the case files of the Human Regurgitator."
"The Human what?"
"The serial killer that caused a nationwide panic 20 years ago that kills by tearing off some of their internal organs, makes the victim consume their own flesh then expulses the undigested meat. It is said that the Human Regurgitator is somehow related to Jack the Ripper as they both mysteriously disappeared from public eye."
"I see... thank you, Avery. You've been nothing but helpful. Maybe after all this, I'll spare your life." Sucy said before turning the call off and breaking the phone in half and dumping it down the river where she first met Akko.
"So... are you going to kill them?" Loa asked.
"No," Sucy whispered, looking at the distance. Classes have been canceled today and the next few days until the investigation wrapped up.
Luna Nova's deemed cursed with more than 20 students dead, Sucy's quite certain there would be fewer enrollees or if there would be even people coming back.
"Diana doesn't seem to care about them at all. Too much work to kill insignificant things. But I must say, pulling her into a false sense of security has been a pleasure."
Sucy's inner musings subsided, her heart leaped to her throat as she saw a familiar figure approach her from the distance. Akko arrived, she appeared to be walking something on a leash.
"Hey, Sucy."
"Hey," her throat was dry and her head grew quiet.
"Meow," the weird black cat on a leash purred alongside Akko's feet.
"Reminiscing much?" Akko leaned against the railing of the bridge.
"Yeah, I would always go here to find my peace of mind. It's nice to finally have another real discussion with you. We don't cross paths very often as much as the last four years now, do we? Rather odd, isn't it, given that we're in the same year and have been at school together for, what, six going on seven years? Well, for me, at least."
"Extenuating circumstances and all that as Professor Ursula might put it," Akko said.
Sucy's mouth twitched. Truth be told, Sucy missed her. Badly. But she'd felt Akko's absence even more keenly after Diana had decided to sweep Akko up out of nowhere.
"Why did you kill Amanda?" she asked, an odd note to her voice that Sucy couldn't quite decipher.
Sucy chuckled. "You won't get any straight answers from a straight question anymore, Akko."
"When had you become so evil and unredeemable, Sucy?"
Sucy laughed; it was a sad, wry sound. "You're one to talk."
"I'm not the product of anything. I've given up good and evil for behaviorism."
"Then you can't say that I'm evil."
"You're destructive. It's kind of like the same thing."
"Evil is destructive? Storms and fires are evil if it's that simple. Mosquitoes, snakes and other creatures that harm people are evil."
"Don't blame the animals for killing. They are killing for food. Humans are the only ones who kill to kill."
"Nevertheless," Sucy pondered, ignoring Akko's futile explanations. "Underwriters lump it all under Acts of God."
"But people deserve to live. There's the whole debacle about human rights!"
"You're Japanese, Akko. Surely you believe in capital punishment. Are we not created in God's image? And doesn't God kill all the time? Why shouldn't we do the same?"
"I don't..." she started, hesitating a little. "I don't agree to everything shitty my country did in all our history."
It seemed like Akko wasn't only referring to her country.
"I know you still have feelings for me, Akko. If you don't then why are you here with me when you could have been trying to comfort your new girlfriend?"
"We aren't together, Sucy. How many times must I say that? It was just one date."
"You're not even doing anything to help her, though. Soon she'll be removed from the picture and you did nothing."
"When a tree falls down in the forest and no one was there to witness it. Did it really happen?"
Sucy gulped. Akko had never been the person who likes poetry. Or better yet, had she used poetry to help her better convey her thoughts and feelings.
"When did she even get a cat?" Loa interrupted her thoughts.
"Well I guess, I should head back." Akko spun on her heels when she stayed for a while. "I might not show it, Sucy, but I care about you... and Diana. Diana's too pale and worn around the edges, even her usually perfect hair was ragged from where she was continually running nervous fingers through it. And you? You're just the same."
Sucy was always helpless whenever she watched Akko walk away from her. She could be the most powerful witch in the world, yet she couldn't bring herself to use her magic to make Akko stay. All the psychiatrists in the world are mistaken about her psychopathy.
She jerked a little as she forced herself to snap out of it.
The truth was that Sucy didn't know what the hell to make of Akko anymore. One minute Akko wanted nothing to do with her, then the next, Akko wanted everything to do with her. Showing her care, showing a pinch of love throughout her cold demeanor, but at the same time, Akko used Diana to get to her nerves. Akko was a mess of contradictions that somehow gelled perfectly and it was infuriating and fascinating to Sucy.
"If you think any harder, steam's going to start pouring out of your ears," Loa murmured.
"So what?" Detective Inspector Croix's superior asked her. "The murderer just vanished into thin air? No one could get in or out. The answer has been in front of our eyes the whole time! The Blytonbury Killer has been right beside us all along!"
"I believe Diana when he says that they vanished into thin air. I also believed where they might have materialized." Detective Croix said.
"It's all just belief, Meridies. The evidence against the child is overwhelming. Look, if I were you, do your job now. Don't wait until she turns legal."
That was all Diana managed to hear when she eavesdropped on them.
Ever since that conversation, Diana had been brooding, filled with a longing for the faded comfort and a hot beverage. Since she finished all her physical and mental exams, her feet mindlessly wandered through the street. She found herself in the High Street, which was unusually almost deserted, even the carts that fed useless rubbish to the tourists were gone and felt like one of the survivors after a nuclear holocaust.
She spotted a cozy cafe that also sells English brewed tea, and gulped. She missed her beloved beverage and wondered if she can go back into drinking it without being reminded of blood. Stopping by the door, she opened it.
And of course, there she was.
Sucy seemed to have been waiting for her; her eyes met hers with an air of expectancy. Diana shuddered at the arrogance, that Sucy thought that she knew her well enough to anticipate her appearance.
"Why thank you, Jana. You're such a gentleman." Sucy swooped from inside to outside.
Diana yelped. She literally jumped like a cat who saw a cucumber beside her.
"Whoa there, are you alright?" Sucy's smiled disappeared in favor of false empathy. "What a stupid question, of course, you're not. Your new best friend was killed."
"You don't get to talk about her, Sucy."
"What's wrong with you? You're crankier than an old sailor, show the world that women can be trusted to hold positions of power."
"I know what I said." Diana rasped. "I'm a great believer in the power of the feminine to wield influence in the civilized world. But whatever happened to Amanda wasn't very civilized."
Sucy lifted an eyebrow. "I don't know how our conversation led to that since you specifically told me not to talk about her."
"This was all an elaborate ruse." Diana interrupted. "There was no end to the lies you manufactured for me."
Sucy squinted her eye, simply observing her like Diana was like a ticking time bomb. "Are you done?"
"Whatever horrors you visited on her, I have imagined tenfold. And given the chance, I would do the same to you without smearing my lip-gloss."
"Are you insinuating that I killed Amanda O'Neill?"
"Oh trust me, I am doing more than insinuating. I know you want me dead, Manbavaran."
Sucy scowled reproachfully at Diana but, having learned from her previous faux pas, let that last comment slide. Diana's greater implication; however, did not remain similarly untouched.
"I will admit, it's more out of the spur of the moment. But can you blame me? I just saw you on a date with my ex. And if you still have lingering doubts, here's how you can be certain I'm not the one who tried to kill you. You're alive."
"Diana Cavendish!" A girl's voice yelled from a black car's backseat window with a charming debonair.
"Ugh," she grimaced. She knew exactly who it was, even as she avoid looking as the lady stepped down from the car.
"I didn't know you're out of the hospital this fast." The French girl with a bronze colored hair in a perm said when she finally reached talking distance. "I was going to visit to wish you well."
Then all of a sudden her cheeks burned. "Actually, not alone. Sarah and Elfriede were going to meet me at the hospital lobby."
"Then you should tell them there is no need, Chloe," Diana replied. In the corner of her eye, Sucy was clearly amused. Diana noticed the source of amusement late.
Chloe was holding a bouquet of flowers and Diana flinched at the sight of the fact that the flowers reminded her of companion's death. There seemed to be countless triggers for Diana, waiting to be discovered.
"Wow, so you do have a crush on Diana Cavendish?" Sucy voiced out her thoughts.
Instead of denying it as always, Chloe said something completely out of character. "What's it to you if I do? Got any problem with gay people?"
Sucy seemed as if she wanted to roll her eyes at the French girl who had been inside the closet for so long she hadn't realized she is literally surrounded by lesbians.
"Alright," Chloe frowned, her fingers from one hand magically managed to type despite the absurd size of her phone case. "I'll send the girls a quick text that the school's most popular girl is fine."
"Quite the contrary," Diana said. "I am far from being fine. Now, if you are done in making sure of that, mademoiselle, I suggest you should walk back home."
"Take the flowers at least."
"Not to be a killjoy here," Sucy chimed in. "But I think Diana's fed up with flowers."
"Oh," Chloe's shoulders sagged for a second before she removed the get well card and approached a nearby group of girls from another school. She handed it to the prettiest girl and said, with a thick French accent. "Bouquet for the lovely chatelaine from your secret admirer."
With a smile, she left the screaming girls at the fake possible Romeo for Juliet.
"So uh, Cavendish." Chloe approached them once more. "Why do you seem to be walking home? Want me to give you a ride?"
"Oh, she would love that," Sucy said swiftly before Diana could shoot her a steely gaze of hatred.
Sucy was definitely trying to get rid of her.
Diana decided that at least, she needed the ride, but not towards home where she knew her aunt will be waiting for her to give her an earful.
"Chloe, I hope it would not be troublesome if I agree."
Walking towards her destination was the only exercise Sucy could get in her everyday life. It could either be to school, to work and walking to get groceries has saved her the money for the fare. It even served her better in her mental efforts as well, almost better than showering.
So as she walked home after a satisfying taunt to her rival, Sucy found herself with a few minutes left to spare before she reached her flat's building. "She has completely forgotten about your existence, Loa," Sucy whispered.
"That's the beauty of magic, isn't it? You can erase your mistakes in others' memories."
"Soon, all she would remember is her suffocating her own friend herself."
"I couldn't be more proud of how devious you've become, Sucy."
"Loa," she sighed, focusing her thoughts elsewhere. "This has been plaguing my mind for a while since Avery mentioned it."
"I had been waiting for you to speak your mind, Sucy."
"I'm certain that in about an hour or so, Diana would be doing her homework about the Human Regurgitator. And I wonder how's that related to my case? Also, why does this killer's murder design sound like voodoo magic?"
"It has been a while since you asked about your birth mother."
"Oh," resentment laced her throat. "That woman, of course. And all these months, I have blotted it on my mind."
"You are the eldest child of Sinag, she bequeathed her powers to you as you will on your future daughter."
"What does the Detective Inspector know of her? Is there damning evidence that she left that could point to me? How can I learn who my mother was?"
"You have to reacquaint yourself with the town you so dearly despise."
"Where the orphanage is?"
"No, here. In Blytonbury."
"I think it's high time for you to tell me who my mother really was before she had me."
"She was the sole Manbavaran heir unless biology provides another." Loa began reminiscing, like the old sentient being it was.
"What are you saying? That she decided to be promiscuous then had me?"
"I was aware of Sinag's goal of having a child. I was not aware of the means to achieving it."
"So you don't know who my father is?" Sucy inquired. "Why did she suddenly decide to have me?"
"Remember what I told you before, Sucy? That whoever possesses me bears the curse of being unloved? Sinag was a formidable woman with fortitude. She wanted to pass the burden over. She wanted no part of the curse. She wanted to be loved by the woman she had eyes for."
"Meaning, she had me so she can run away with her lover." Sucy seethed, she despised her mother's selfishness, but then again, she was her mother's child, she inherited the same trait. "That didn't go well for her, did it?"
"Love and death are the great hinges on which all human sympathies turn. What you do for yourselves, dies with you. What you do for others… that's beyond you." Loa stated, from its observation.
"Did you kill my mother's beloved?"
Loa cackled, almost too much. "There were no other suitable punishments for a doctor who will die from an incurable disease. Why did you stop walking, Sucy?"
Sucy's heartbeat increased. The familiar vehicle stood out from the scene like a mocking child destroying the painting from an art gallery. The French girl's car was there, parked near her flat building.
"What business would she have near here?" Sucy gritted her teeth. She had a lot of reasons swimming through her mind, but only one came rushing in stronger than the others.