The devil only does business with willing clients.
Lydia cannot remember where she first heard these words, but they swim in the forefront of her mind now as she sits opposite one of the most sadistic men the world has ever known. The Krimson Killer. Jason Devere.
Frozen air from the vent above seeps into her lungs, making each breath feel like an effort, and causing both Lydia and her lethal company to exhale thick clouds of vapour that churn and spiral. Neither has spoken for several minutes. The stark metal table between them contrasts sharply with Jason’s grubby clothes and hair as he hunches over it, studying Lydia’s contract. The chains around his wrists gently clink and scrape as his fingers work the paper, rubbing, creasing, betraying his inner tension. He looks up, locks eyes with Lydia and smiles, licks his thumb and slowly turns the page. No wonder Gretchen called him dangerous, Lydia thinks. He has a feral quality that’s almost visceral. Cunning and powerful, with a jagged, broken aura that scrapes viciously against a reality to which he does not belong. He may be a prisoner, but he is free in ways that most people never will be.
Lydia returns the smile politely. She is frustrated with Jason’s time-wasting, but knows that this is his intent and to show it would give him what he wants. It is imperative that she retain the upper hand. She remembers the warnings of Gretchen, Cecil and Alex. This monster likes to play games. Upon further evaluation, Lydia was beginning to find something strangely inauthentic about him. It felt as if he was playing a role, but who was it for? Her? The question nagged at the back of Lydia’s mind like an ice pick, jabbing away at her.
Jason reaches the end of the final page and makes a performance of carefully returning the document to its original state neatly in front of him, perfectly perpendicular to the edge of the table. Then he flips to the first page and begins reading again. Lydia sighs. Only softly, but the cold air scrapes her throat, amplifying her impatience. Jason does not seem to react, but then a few moments later he begins to hum quietly. A banal tune. Lydia feels her eye twitch.
“What do you think?” she asks finally, unable to contain herself any longer. Jason holds up a hand signalling for her to wait. He reads on for another minute or so before finally granting her his attention.
“I like to be thorough.” He smiles, then glances down at the paper again as his lips curl into a smirk. “Very pointed your notes, aren’t they? Very cold and clinical. There’s no poetry to them, they’re not lyrical, they don’t sing off the page.”
“Is everything to your liking?” asks Lydia, business-like, denying his clumsy attempt to take control of the conversation.
“For the moment.” Jason extends an open hand towards Lydia as far as his shackles will allow, and she flinches at the unexpected motion. He smiles, slowly. “Do you have a pen?”
Lydia reaches down, fishes a slim silver pen from her bag and looks over to the guard watching them through the window for permission. He eyes the pen warily, but jerks his head in agreement.
“Who do you think I am?” Jason asks, accepting the pen with a deliberate, slow movement. “Houdini?”
“Their house,” says Lydia, inclining her head towards the guard, “their rules.”
“Interesting,” says Jason, scratching a jagged, staccato signature on the paper.
“What is?”
“You don’t seem like the type to follow rules,” he says, his cold eyes twinkling as he hands the pen back to her. Lydia shivers involuntarily. Is he flirting with her? Is this part of the game?
“Shall we begin now?” she asks, choosing to ignore the compliment.
“Whatever you like,” Jason replies. “I have no pressing engagements.”
Lydia sets her phone on the table, out of his reach, and taps it to begin a new recording. “Tell me about your childhood,” she says, sitting back to observe her subject.
“Oh, we’re starting from the top, are we?” Jason asks, sounding suddenly bored. “Well alright, but there really isn’t much to tell.”
“Really?” Lydia asks, surprised.
“Yep, pretty ordinary.” Jason sits back as well, mirroring Lydia’s posture. “Why, what were you expecting?”
He’s challenging me, she thinks. He knows that I know something.
“Alright,” Lydia presses on. “What about your family? Parents? Brother?”
Jason shrugs. “What about them?”
“Can you tell me anything about them?” Lydia asks, patiently.
“Not much to tell,” Jason replies.
“I see,” says Lydia. She pauses for a moment, then reaches back into her bag to retrieve something. She keeps the object deliberately hidden in her hand, and notices with satisfaction that Jason cranes his neck to try to see what it is. “Perhaps I can help jog your memory.”
“Brought some toys, did you?” Jason asks, his chains clinking as he shifts, agitated, in his seat. “A taser, is it? Well, you needn’t bother. They’ve already tortured me here more times than I can count.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” says Lydia, sliding the object onto the table, visible but still guarded by those scarlet talons. It’s a bar of chocolate. Jason stares at it for a few seconds, confused, then he laughs and shakes his head.
“You’re a funny girl, Lyd.”
“Why’s that?” asks Lydia, innocently.
“You think you can get inside my head?” says Jason. “With pretty eyes and props?”
“Tell me about your childhood, Jason,” Lydia asks again.
“Alright, alright,” he says, tugging his manacled wrists away from the table in a gesture that Lydia interprets as frustration. “You want to know about my family?” He mimics Lydia’s voice. “My parents? My brother?”
“If you don’t mind.”
“Well, here it is,” says Jason, leaning onto the table and speaking in a low, animated voice as though relating a thrilling tale. “My parents got themselves into a load of debt, so they sold my brother to the mob to pay—”
“I think I’ve heard this one before,” says Lydia, pretending to search her recollection. “Oh yes, didn’t it get three stars in this morning’s newspaper?”
Jason grins and leans back again, his hands raised as far as his restraints allow. “You got me.”
“Look, Jason,” says Lydia in a bored sort of way, “I’ve come a long way to see you, but if you’re not going to cooperate, there are plenty of other lunatics I could write a book about.”
Jason’s grin fades. For one mad moment, Lydia thinks he might make a lunge for her. But then he glances down, as if lowering a small degree of the façade he was previously wearing.
“Why don’t you tell me about your brother?” says Lydia, pressing her advantage.
“What about him?”
“I heard that he died,” says Lydia, forcefully.
“Yeah, so what?” Jason snaps defensively, yanking at his chains again, so hard this time that the iron bolts securing the table to the floor creak.
“So that must have been very upsetting for you,” says Lydia, softening her tone a little.
“It was.” Jason glares at her. Lydia thinks for a moment that his eyes have turned more blue, like ice. It must be the cool lighting in the room.
“How do you feel about it now?” she asks. Jason shrugs. “You don’t feel anything about it?” Lydia persists, clearly dubious.
“People come and go every day,” Jason turns away and replies, matter-of-factly. “My brother drew the short straw, that’s all. It was his turn. That’s life.”
“Some people would call that a very rational response,” Lydia suggests. The uneven grin spreads across Jason’s face again. He’s taken it as a compliment. Lydia purses her lips to suppress her satisfaction.
“Yeah, well,” he says, “maybe I’m the only rational guy left in this mad world.”
“Maybe you are,” says Lydia, offering him a smile. A treat for the good boy. “How did he die?” she asks quickly.
“He fell,” Jason replies, just as quickly. The words are out of his mouth before his grin has had a chance to fade.
“From where?”
“From the bridge.”
“You were there?”
“Of course I was,” says Jason, clearly irritated. “It was right next to our house, we always played there. Our mother told us not to, but we did.”
“How did he fall?” Lydia asks.
“We were fighting,” says Jason, his dirty, shaggy hair falling over his face. “Not for real fighting, just playing, you know. And I guess we got too close to the edge, and the next thing I knew I was falling.”
Lydia hesitates. “You fell?”
“Yeah.”
“You both fell?”
“That’s what I said, isn’t it?” Jason scowls at her. Lydia raises her eyebrows as she puts pen to notepad. “You don’t believe me?” Jason growls. Lydia remembers Alex’s words. He’s an animal.
“I believe you,” she says.
“I got the scar to prove it,” says Jason, twisting in his chair and pulling up his dirty shirt to reveal a nasty scar about five inches long. “Hit a rock on the riverbed,” he says, seemingly pleased by the disconcerted look on Lydia’s face. “Needed ten stitches.” He lets the shirt fall and sits straight in his seat again. “Fin wasn’t so fortunate.”
Lydia looks right at Jason, who moistens his lips with a few flicks of his tongue, and smiles. “Do you blame yourself?” she asks as he clenches his jaw.
“It was an accident.”
“Did your mother blame you?”
Jason’s eyes narrow. Lydia meets them with her best bland expression, as though she had just asked if he would like a cup of tea.
“Yeah,” says Jason. “Yeah, she did. How did you know that?”
“How did that make you feel?” Lydia asks, ignoring his question.
“It didn’t make me feel anything,” says Jason quietly, looking. That’s the truth, Lydia thinks to herself. There was more to explore here, she realised, but which nerve to trigger?
“And was this before or after your father left?” she asks in a casual manner, making a show of taking notes on her pad again.
“What difference does that make?” Jason snaps.
“Did he leave because of what happened to Finley?”
“How should I know? I was just a kid.”
“Did he leave because of what you did?”
“I didn’t do anything!” Jason slams his manacles down on the table with a crash, causing Lydia to drop her pen and lean sharply away from him, and the guard in the room next door to get to his feet.
“Did you love your brother?” Lydia asks, tilting her head to peer into Jason’s eyes, half hidden by his matted hair.
“Of course I did,” he replies, metal scraping on metal as his manacled hands slide from the table. “I’m not a monster.”
“And your father?” asks Lydia.
“Yes.”
“Even after he walked out on you?”
“Love is unconditional,” Jason replies, eyes down, hands in his lap. This answer takes Lydia by surprise.
“So you understand love?” she asks, after a moment. Jason slowly raises his head to look at her, his lips widening into a smile. Then he laughs. “What’s so funny?” asks Lydia, shortly.
“You’ve no idea what to make of me, do you?”
“I’m not here to diagnose you, Jason,” Lydia replies, coolly.
“That’s a shame,” says Jason. “I’d quite like a second opinion. Not convinced the docs around here are up to much.”
He’s enjoying himself, Lydia thinks. This wasn’t part of the plan.
“Go on,” says Jason. “Just for fun, tell me what you think.”
“Alright,” says Lydia, hotly. Her temper is getting the better of her. She knows she should pull back but giving in feels so satisfying. “You blame yourself for your brother’s death, and for your father leaving, but you repressed those feelings for so long that they exploded violently when you killed those people.”
“Wrong,” said Jason, forcefully.
“Your mother blames you too,” Lydia continues, “and you know it, and it makes you wonder if she loves you, if she ever really loved you.”
“Nope.” Jason shakes his head.
“You have all these feelings tearing you up inside,” Lydia leans on the table now, pressing her point home, “but you never learned how to deal with them, like a normal person would. You only know one way to express yourself and that’s—”
“You.” Jason interrupts. Lydia stares at him. “You’re talking about yourself.”
“Excuse me?” Lydia looks like she’s been slapped.
“You’re the one with the repressed guilt, Lydia Tune. You’re the one who doesn’t know how to deal with her feelings. It’s plain as day.” He sounds bored, as if he’s had enough of this conversation.
“You don’t know—” Lydia begins.
“I know all about you,” Jason corrects her, impatiently. “Do you think I would have agreed to meet without knowing all about you?”
“That’s not possible,” says Lydia.
“You had your heart broken, am I right?” Jason asks, but doesn’t wait for an answer. “And I’m not talking in the romantic sense. You’re running away from your pain; you’ve been running a long time, searching for answers in people like me.”
“You’re raving,” Lydia snaps.
“You may be this big celebrity, but you’re bitterly disappointed with the way your life has turned out and you don’t know how to fix it, so you keep writing books about people you consider more damaged than you in the hope that it’ll make you feel better, or lead you to some epiphany about how to save yourself. Well it won’t,” Jason bitterly remarks, noting the angry expression on Lydia’s face.
“We’re done for today,” she says flatly, sweeping her phone and notebook into her bag.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” says Jason, “have I hurt your feelings?”
“Not at all,” Lydia replies, rising and sweeping her golden locks back over her shoulder. “You’re obviously tired. We can continue this tomorrow.”
“Oh no, please stay!” says Jason, sarcastically. “I felt like we were really connecting.”
“Yeah?” says Lydia. “What else are you feeling right now?” She slides the chocolate bar across the table. Jason covers it with his hand.
“Pity,” Jason says, seriously.
“For me?” asks Lydia, equal parts amused and outraged.
“Absolutely,” says Jason. “At least I know what I am. You’re still in denial.”
“Even if that were true,” says Lydia, swinging her bag over her shoulder, “and it’s not, I wouldn’t warrant your pity, Jason. After all, I’m the one who gets to walk out this door.”
“Well now,” Jason growls, leaning over the table towards her, “that just shows how wrong you really are.” He fixes her with a smile. “Have you not considered that maybe I’m exactly where I want to be?”
Lydia doesn’t answer. Instead she turns away to hide her face. If Jason sees that she’s confused, he has won. She can’t stop him from playing games, but she mustn’t let him win. She crosses to the exit, the knock of those high heels echoing around the empty room.
“Goodbye, Jason,” she says, pushing the heavy metal door open. The last thing she hears before it closes behind her is laughter. Cruel, cackling, triumphant laughter.