‘I have to say, Dr Stanton, you may be a proverbial pain in the arse, but I must commend you on your ingenuity,’ Jacob Winters declared in a congratulatory tone. ‘I would very much like to know how you managed to escape from your room.’
Chloe Stanton stood defiantly in front of Winters’s desk, with Albert holding her firmly by one arm while a second suited man grasped the other. ‘You mean my cell?’
Her reply appeared to offend the old man. ‘We have no cells, Dr Stanton. You’re my guest here.’
‘Really? Because I thought guests were allowed to come and go as they pleased.’
‘And you are: you came and you will leave. Of course, whether you leave alive or dead is another matter entirely,’ Winters replied with a smug, wrinkled grin. ‘So, and I won’t ask again, how did you escape your room?’
Chloe squirmed against Albert’s grip, more in frustration than anything else. Then with an annoyed grunt, she nodded. ‘It was simple. I watched your food-delivery man tap in the code.’
‘Pffh,’ Winters snorted in disgust, and directed his attention towards Albert. ‘Sloppy, Albert, very sloppy. Would you see to it that the man answers for such shoddiness immediately, please?’
Albert left Chloe in the hands of the other guard and made his way over to the door. The crimson light made his plain white shirt look as if it were drenched in blood.
‘Oh, and I would like to hear the tunes if I may,’ Winters called out after him. Albert nodded respectfully and left, leaving the door half open.
‘Well, Dr Stanton…or should I call you Chloe?’ Winters continued, clasping his feeble hands together.
‘No, you should not,’ came her answer, whereupon Winters continued to smile, clearly pleased by her agitation.
He lightly tapped his desktop. ‘Well, Chloe, you’ve been a busy little thing, haven’t you? Breaking into my office and nosing about amongst my things.’
Winters motioned towards the velvet drape that had since been pulled back in place, hiding the capsule behind it. ‘You’ve observed my prize, then?’
‘Yes, but I’m not sure what I saw,’ she replied, genuinely not knowing exactly what it might have been.
‘Well, then,’ he said jovially, wheeling himself away from the desk to within reach of the drape. ‘Allow me to show you’ – the old man then pursed his lips together as if in a kissing motion – ‘you pretty little thing.’
Chloe shrugged off the demeaning gesture as the suited man, still gripping her arm tightly, walked her over to the drape and pulled it back to reveal the shadowy outline of the capsule she had discovered earlier.
‘I know it’s difficult to see, Chloe, but my eyes are not good in natural light,’ Winters explained, pointing up to the crimson bulb.
‘A bit like Dracula, then,’ she replied sarcastically, and the suited man gripped her arm tighter.
‘Very good,’ Winters replied, clearly somewhat irritated by the comparison. ‘But let me dispel that myth. Would you turn on the lights, please?’ He quickly retrieved a pair of jet-black Julbo sunglasses with protective sides and put them on before the suited man reached over and pressed a protruding wall switch to his left.
A series of wall lights now lit up around the capsule, and for the first time Chloe was able to get a good look at the object inside. The container was about two metres in length, constructed from thick white plastic, and apart from the various tubes linking it to the wall there were others connecting the sides to an assortment of tanks, including one labelled ‘oxygen’. The pod sat on a white stone trestle which was bolted to its underside with thick steel screws, and next to it a glass tube respirator whirred away as a grey, plastic, ribbed pump rose and fell rhythmically.
‘What is it?’ Chloe asked, less taken aback this time around.
‘Not what’ – Winters leant over and lovingly rubbed his hand against the shiny surface of the pod – ‘but who.’
There was a long silence as the old man continued to indulge his fascination with the concealed object, and finally Chloe realized that he was waiting for her to answer his last question.
‘So who is it?’
‘He has many names, but I prefer the Dark Lord,’ Winters replied as he pulled his hand away and chuckled. ‘It has a nice ring to it, don’t you think? Ominous yet memorable.’
An uncomfortable chill ran through her body and she gulped at his preposterous suggestion. ‘What?’
He was already nodding his head tremulously. ‘I know, I know, it is difficult to get one’s head around something so evil, so parasitic, so legendary being right here, snugly contained within this pure white pod. There have been many stories about this one’ – Winters was chewing at his lips as he stared over towards Chloe, his black-lensed sunglasses glinting in the light – ‘and they are all true, believe me.’
She found herself staring into the face of either a true believer or a complete madman and, given what they seemed to be talking about, both assumptions seemed apt. ‘Mr Winters, are you trying to tell me that you have none other than the Devil stored in there?’
Winters once again smiled through cracked lips and he let out a hoarse laugh. ‘You can call him whatever you wish, but be under no illusions that our sleeping resident here is everything you’ve ever been taught about or even dared to believe in your worst nightmares…and he belongs to me.’
The way Winters said the words made Chloe cringe, not because she believed that the actual Devil could be there inside the pod, but rather at the insanity of such a claim, and her disbelieving expression was immediately noticed by the old man.
‘Dr Stanton, you work at Blackwater asylum for the criminally insane, do you not?’
‘I do.’
‘You are surrounded by some of the most evil men and woman to walk the surface of the earth in our lifetime, and you expect me to believe that you don’t believe in pure evil?’
It was a question that Chloe had been asked by friends many times given her job as a psychiatrist for the criminally insane but it was the first time anyone had insinuated a link between their sick deeds and a supernatural entity acting as a puppet master. ‘My patients have committed some of the worst acts imaginable, and they are mentally sick people. But they are just that…people, not some dark religious icon that has so long been held as a symbol of the very worst man has to offer. They are real and their acts are real, but the Devil is simply an idea, a warning…he’s not real.’
‘Oh, you are in for such a surprise, dear Chloe, you really are, because when this pod opens you will see that everything I have told you is the truth and nothing less.’
From the half-open doorway there now came the squealing of a man in utter agony and those piercing sounds drew a wide-eyed, excited look from Winters as he slumped back into his wheelchair.
‘Ahh, good work, Albert, I have so been waiting to hear those tunes,’ the old man muttered softly, and he raised one arthritic finger in the air and began to wave it back and forth, while Chloe winced at the pained cries echoing around the room. ‘I do so love a good melody, don’t you?’