The Annals of Fear

It was getting late when they finished. Mello stood on top of the great, double wardrobe, hammering the last board across the top of the stairwell. Beneath him, Matt was inside the wardrobe. He had taken off the back and cut it to create the boards that he and Mello were using. These he was nailing a frame of them into place against the walls on either side of the staircase. Deontic finished blowing up the airbed and came to inspect their progress. They would have to open the wardrobe door and walk straight through it in order to climb the stairs. It had already been nicknamed Narnia. She bit her lip over a smile. "People are going to find this after we\'ve gone and wonder what on Earth we were doing."



Mello grinned down at her. "All covered, right the way to the ceiling. No more stairs."



"You realise that we just disturbed a crime scene?"



"Fuck that." Mello clambered down the side of the wardrobe and dropped to the floor. "Nearly finished, Matt?"



Matt nodded and emerged from the front of it. He closed the doors behind him, turned the key and then used a piece of string to tie the handles together. "Cigarette break time." He sauntered away to where Deontic had set up their base. Helping slide the wardrobe down the stairs had worsened Century\'s condition. He had sat, dizzy, breathless and shaking, on the stairs until Mello had run for the cannister of oxygen in the supply box. Now Century lay curled up on the settee, the oxygen beside him and a lollipop in his mouth. Matt glanced at him as he passed. "How are you feeling?"



"Wedi blino." Century muttered.



Matt looked back at Mello, who strode across the room. Mello sat down on the edge of the settee, pushing back Century\'s hair to see his face. Century irritably tried to knock his hand away. Mello nodded. "You probably wouldn\'t be any safer from the ghosts and demons in a hospital, but they do have the edge on here in other ways." He waited but Century said nothing. "Why don\'t you let us call an ambulance for you? You really don\'t look good." He leaned back, as Matt came to peer down at Century too. "What do you think?"



Matt shrugged. "No cyanosis and he is breathing ok." He crouched down. "Any chest pains? Pins and needles anywhere?"



"No." Century moaned. "I\'m fine."



"You\'re not." Mello replied. "And as Watari\'s senior representative here..."



"What?" Deontic gasped.



"I\'m both the oldest and the highest ranked." Mello\'s eyes narrowed.



"And Watari is run by committee." Deontic countered.



"Fine." He straightened his back and shook his hair out of his eyes. "All in favour of Century going to hospital, raise your hand." Mello glared at Matt, until Matt\'s hand rose in a cursory vote in the affirmative. Mello raised his too. Neither Deontic or Century concurred. "Dee!"



Deontic sighed. "If he was actually having a heart attack, I\'d say yes. But he\'s exhausted and shouldn\'t have been helping carry the wardrobe. I say that it\'s Century\'s call."



"I\'m staying here." Century mumbled into the cushion.



"Fine. As long as you don\'t become a liability in this case." Mello rose and claimed an armchair. The furniture had been rearranged. The settee was up against the back wall, while both armchairs were adjacent against the connecting wall. "Nice L shape." Mello smirked, but if they shared his humour, no-one smiled. In the newly spacious centre was a section of the dining room table, lined with their laptops and other equipment. Before that were the mattress and airbed, already made up with quilts and cushions.



"L shape?" Deontic frowned. "It\'s more of a horseshoe." She pointed towards the door, leading into the eldest wing of the house, caught now in the corner where the settee met one of the armchairs. "I\'ve locked that, but the key is still in the lock." She picked her way around the table and mattress, then drew the curtains on the window. "It\'s the best I could do."



Mello nodded. "Thank you." He considered it. "I guess that I\'ll finally get to try on the pyjamas that you bought me." He grinned. "So now that we\'ve hunkered down in our trench, can we get on with the case?" He watched Matt cross to sit at the table with the computers. Deontic just nodded and took the other armchair. Mello smiled at her. "Let me tell you my theory."



"From the beginning." Deontic warned. "I want to ensure that we are all approaching this in the same light."



Mello\'s mouth opened and closed, but he agreed, after frowning, "Didn\'t we go through this last night?"



"We\'ve had more information since and Century wasn\'t there for that."



"Ok." He grimaced. "I\'ve left my chocolate on top of the wardrobe." Matt threw him another bar from the table, which Mello caught easily. He unwrapped it, then briskly recapped. "Band comes here after a rumour about a ghost. Nothing much to see, so they do a summoning ritual. This is done in an old priest hole, which has been consecrated by some 17th century priest."



"Is this proven?"



"No." Mello smiled. "Mostly conjecture with some correborating evidence. It all fits in."



Deontic nodded. "Who or what were they trying to summon? I didn\'t find that symbol anywhere."



Mello bit off a strip of chocolate and held it between his teeth. "Jörgen doesn\'t know. He said that the symbol was attached to an e-mail that Jan sent to him. Jörgen was Jan\'s cousin, but also their main computer geek, plus a sort of, maybe manager, one day, if they ever got that big. It was certainly Jörgen who made both symbol and music available on-line."



Century muttered from the settee, "But not the final session."



Mello and Deontic stared at him. Matt just continued to be absorbed in his e-mails. Mello asked, "Why do you say that?"



With a great effort, Century sat up. "Because we\'ve hypothesised that they were interupted during that and ended up fleeing for their lives. Yet no-one has mentioned a song that is half finished and no-one has mentioned an audio version of the interuption."



Even Matt turned around to ponder that one. Mello surveyed his chocolate. "Ok, you\'re not a liability." He stood to retrieve his jacket and fished the \'phone out of the pocket. "No calls or texts yet. I wonder if \'Banshee\' is a complete song." He narrowed his eyes, contemplating this new angle.



Deontic shared her conclusion first. "They weren\'t recording. If they had, then the tapes would have still been here and they would have shown up in the police report."



"Unless one of them took them."



"They were fleeing for their lives. They didn\'t stop to pick up stuff." Deontic countered.



"Adda did." Mello responded. "Unless he tended to drum with his car keys in his pocket." He looked up, as Matt raised his own car keys, on the length of chain, into the air. "Or they were otherwise attached to him. Fair enough. But we can conclude that they either didn\'t record or else Adda or Lindgren took them with them. They were the ones who seem to have had more time to leave. The other three seem to have fled instantly." He nodded. "Ok, I need to ask Jörgen if he received any tapes directly from Lindgren. It would be very interesting to hear that particular session."



Century reached into his rucksack and rummaged around until he found his copy of the casefile. He sat quietly re-reading it. Deontic had picked up a pad and was making her own notes. She spoke her thoughts aloud, "If \'Banshee\' wasn\'t the final session, then they must have continued after that. Yet that is purportedly the killer song."



Mello nodded. "Yes, that\'s where I\'m at as well. If it\'s potent enough to kill others, why didn\'t it kill them there and then? But if it wasn\'t the final track, then they must have survived it and stayed here. If it is the final track then does it end with their actual interuption? Do we get the clues from that about what actually happened and why they fled?" He stared at his \'phone, willing it to ring. He didn\'t even look up to say, "Matt, don\'t you dare listen to it."



Matt paused in the process of slotting in his ear-piece. "I\'m not."



"Good."



Century commented, "There were personal belongings here, including things belonging to Michael Adda and Rasmus Lindgren."



"Ok, thanks. So they did pretty much flee with the others." Mello sucked on his chocolate. "I also need to see if I can access those personal effects that were left here. There might be clues in them as to what this symbol is and what they actually did. Maybe one set of parents somewhere has the tapes."



"No mention of them in the report."



"I know." Mello scowled. "I would have clocked it."



"Mello." Deontic spoke, exhaling, as if she\'d quietly taken a deep breath before speaking. "Did you really hand this song over to the Mafia earlier?"



Mello stared fixedly at her. "What makes you think that I called the Mafia?"



"You did." She continued steadily, committed to air this now. "You called them and asked them to use people as guinea pigs, listening to it."



He didn\'t look away. "Yes, I did."



She coloured and bowed her head, whispering, "That\'s murder. Accessory to murder."



"L would have used prisoners on Death Row. But I have no faith in the judicial services to always get it right. There is bias and corruption there and sometimes police drag anyone in, just to get a result." Mello bit viciously through his chocolate. "On the other hand, the kind of people whom I called earlier aren\'t going to target the innocent. They are going to target known gangsters. People who\'d sell their own granny for a dollar. People who are usually a long way from the arm of the law. It is justice, indirectly administered."



Deontic did not look up. Matt returned to his laptop. It was left to Century to mutter, "No right of appeal. No judge. No jury. No legal representation and right of reply. Just summary execution because they pissed off the wrong gangland boss."



"They will not be civilians, Century." Mello repeated. "Do not think for one moment that there is, or ever has been, a saint in the Mafia. No-one joins by accident."



"Nevertheless, it\'s stretching it to call it justice."



"Vengeance then." Mello snapped, then fell silent, brooding over his chocolate. The unspoken words were deafening. "Ok! Get it over with. Yes! I placed both the Death Note and \'Banshee\' in the hands of the Mafia. I did both for a greater cause!" He peered up from beneath his fringe. "Matt?"



"Si?"



Mello waited until Matt turned around to face him. "Was I wrong?"



Matt shrugged. "You\'re the theologist and she\'s the philosopher. I\'m just the geek. Ask me about the morality of hacking, cracking and phreaking and I\'ll debate it all day. But this is the morality of quick results or adequate resources in a detective case. Sod all to do with me." He turned back to his screen, adding as an afterthought. "L would have gone for the slow option under a veneer of the judicial system, as you said."



"Yes, and Beyond Birthday would have just done it himself on whoever caught his eye at the time!" Mello was shrill. "It doesn\'t matter how you dress it up, someone dies. It doesn\'t make it any more right to have that death by jury." He stared at each of them in turn. "But nobody agrees with me. Am I right?"



Deontic spoke to her pad. "How can you be sure that the Mafia won\'t carry on using it after your little experiment is over?"



"Because their only access is a link on a secure server, with the actual track encrypted. As soon as I get the result, the track will be deleted from that server. I did not choose a computer savvy don."



Silence hung heavily again. Deontic whispered something so quietly that Mello had to ask her to repeat it. She did. "Where you using me as a canary last night? When we were in the barracks, you purposefully left me alone. Was that to see if I\'d die?"



Mello shook his head. "If something had happened, you\'d have screamed and I would have been out of our room and into yours as soon as I heard it. Also, I knew that Hal was around. You\'d whinge to her and she\'d stay the night with you."



Deontic\'s mouth tightened into a line, but she seemed satisfied. She nodded. "Ok. Try not to get any more wound up about this. It will cause negative emotion and may be used against you."



Mello stared darkly at the mattress. "I\'m not doing this out of some abject evil. I\'m doing it because we need to know. If it has no effect on the Aethists, then that narrows things down. It\'s a clue. It may ultimately save lives." He brooded over it. "L would have killed people for the same experiment. Death Row prisoners probably, as you said. Near would do the same, but..." Mello stopped. His eyes suddenly widened until it seeemed that they would bulge from their sockets. "No! Near would ensure that it fell into my hands! He would arrange matters so that I did the killing and he could condemn the methodology, even as he benefitted from the resultant knowledge. That\'s what he did with the Death Note and that\'s precisely what he\'s doing now!"



"Mello, you\'re being paranoid."



"No! It is logical to assume that Near saw this case and deduced from the offset that this would become necessary." Mello glared across at Matt. "You said this! When we first saw the file! You said that you bet that Near had turned it down for a million, so they\'d offered two million."



Matt lit another cigarette. "Yeah, but I meant that he\'d seen it and assumed a prank."



"No. He saw it." Mello\'s fist clenched. "He saw it and determined that you could not test the song without someone getting killed. So he thought he\'d leave it to me, then probably come in at the end and take all of the credit."



Deontic shook her head. "Mello, you are being paranoid. Trust me. Hal said that Near did turn it down, but that\'s because he\'s already got a full plate. He hasn\'t time to do the cases that he\'s committed to, let alone taking on another."



Century stood with his empty bottle of water. He shuffled away into the kitchen without a word. Mello and Deontic watched him go. Mello growled, "Matt, go with him."



"I\'m..." Matt began, but got up anyway and stood in the kitchen doorway.



Mello cast a sidewards look in Deontic\'s direction. He hissed, "What precisely did Hal say?"



"She..."



Deontic didn\'t get any further before the banging started. It was loud and metallic, as if something inside and outside the house was systematically hitting every car, boiler, cooker, washing machine and every other sheet of metal in between. It encircled them. It came from above and below. It was constant. Deontic shrieked. Mello froze. Century dropped his plastic bottle into the kitchen sink. Matt covered his ears with his hands, the cigarette falling from his mouth. Century\'s voice was apologetic, "I\'m sorry. Startled me, it did, and..." He turned to watch Matt stumble forward, into the room. "Matt?"



Mello sprang out of his seat, leaping over the mattress to land on the carpet at the far side. He sprinted around the table and hurtled into the kitchen. The clanging went on. Matt had scittered across the kitchen, his back against the worktop, horror stark on his features. As Century stared in interest, Mello reached his husband and pulled him into his arms. "Fuck \'em! Mail! Fuck \'em! They\'re trying to get to you." He turned his head, hunting for a source. "Baby, I\'ve got you."



Century leaned over the sink to look out of the kitchen window. "There\'s no-one by the cars."



Deontic was in the doorway, she stopped dead, her arms out to the side, as if she needed steadying too. "It\'s coming from everywhere at once. All around us."



"Shut up!" Mello yelled. "He\'s freaking the fuck out! Mail. Guapo, look at me. Look into my eyes. Look." Mello\'s fingers curled around the collar again. "I\'ve got you. There is no-one coming to hurt you. Let it go. Let it go." Matt did not look up. His head was bowed so much that he was practically bent double. The crown of his head was against Mello\'s chest. It was difficult to adequately hold him.



Deontic watched the scene, then nodded. She raced back into the sitting room and unplugged Matt\'s main laptop. She clicked rapidly through folders until she found music, then slotted in the bluetooth adaptor. She opened his iTunes and found the most played music, then selected one at random. She ran through with the earpiece and rushed to Matt\'s side. "It\'s not \'Banshee\'!" She gushed out, to Mello\'s glaring, unspoken question. Mello pried Matt\'s hand away and pushed the earpiece in. Rob Dougan\'s \'Furious Angels\' filled Matt\'s ear, already part way through. The scream that he had been holding in got released and Mello just held him. "They haven\'t targeted Matt before." Deontic was gabbling. "It went after the rest of us, but it didn\'t touch Matt. He didn\'t have it in that little room up there."



"He did!" Mello yelled. "He\'s just Matt and wouldn\'t show it unless he couldn\'t help himself."



"It was so quiet! While we did the wardrobe, it was so quiet!"



"Yes, but now it\'s not." Mello kissed Matt\'s head, then roared out to the house, its ghosts and all the entities within. "You fucking bastards! I\'ll take you down! I\'ll take you the fuck down! You do not touch him! You do not harm a hair on his fucking head! You hear me? I\'ll take you down!"