The Last Days of Jack Sparks (31 page)

About halfway down the track, this automatic speech evolves. I say new things, still entirely beyond my control. I find myself saying, ‘I’m great’, ‘You love me’, ‘I fucking rule’, ‘Worship me’ . . . you get the idea.

Admittedly, I’ve said these things before. But now they pour out incessantly without my brain’s conscious participation. It reminds me of the time curiosity led me to try Viagra. Hated it. Despite my cock’s resemblance to a baby’s arm holding an apple, I didn’t actually
feel
turned on.

So I’m in this car that isn’t mine, rolling down treacherous trails towards the City of Angels. I’m telling no one in particular how brilliant I am, non-stop. And I’m crying.

‘I am superb!’ yells my voice, thanks to wind from my lungs that I didn’t want to contribute and a mouth I would dearly love to seal.

Slowly but very surely, I start to believe my own hype.

Whoever coined the idea that if you say something enough you’ll believe it never expected it to be true in this context.

Yes, at some point, my brain flips and fizzes and gives in. It becomes so much easier to go along with this than to remember all that terrible, violent death back up the hill. In fact, I start to enjoy it. Forget cocaine: this is way more powerful, intense and all-consuming. This is downright phenomenal.

All those thoughts about fame reaped from the death of others, which felt so atrocious back at the ranch? They now feel gorgeous.

I have no guilt, no shame, no restrictive feelings whatsoever.

As a dark force gains dominion over my soul, embers of my former dread still glow, but these are dim, out of reach inside myself, irrelevant.

I spy Maria Corvi standing on the roadside, just as she used to in the dream. She points ahead, smiling, wholly surreal in blazing sunlight.

I smile right back. Ecstatic to have wandered straight into her trap.

‘
Every time you go away
,’ sing Hall & Oates on 95.5 KLOS FM, ‘
you take a piece of me with you.
’

I give Maria Corvi the thumbs-up and drive on by, jabbering about how I’m the king of everything.

Alistair Sparks: ‘Brandon Hope is a thirty-two-year-old hotel receptionist from Santa Barbara, California. On the afternoon of 18 November 2014, one hour after the killings at Big Coyote Ranch, Hope was working at West Hollywood’s Sunset Castle Hotel when a guest caused disruption . . .’

ALISTAIR SPARKS: Please summarise what happened in reception that afternoon.

BRANDON HOPE: I feel nauseous even talking about it, considering what happened afterwards. But okay . . . In a nutshell, that deeply sick individual Jack Sparks whipped up a little storm.

ALISTAIR: Were you a hundred per cent positive this man was Jack Sparks?

BRANDON: Oh, you know, I’d rather not get involved in that freaky stuff. All this internet speculation has been such a pain in the ass. I had to leave the Castle because so many crazy people called and emailed and even turned up in the lobby, getting in my face. Listen: far as I’m concerned, unless this guy has an identical twin brother, he was Jack Sparks.

ALISTAIR: And you say you first met this guest when you and the cleaner Arlette Ortiz discovered him in the hotel basement in the early hours of 15 November?

BRANDON: Let me tell you, he didn’t seem so damn sure of himself that night. First time we laid eyes on him, there he was in the boiler room, blinking against my torchlight with this stain on his pants. This big wet map of Italy, running down one of his pant legs.

ALISTAIR: You believe he’d urinated in his trousers?

BRANDON: So I told him he shouldn’t be down here and he looked like he was searching for this great snappy comeback. Then he just said nothing and shrugged. He looked pretty shaken and glad to get out of the basement. But then, three days later in reception, he was suddenly acting like Harvey fucking Weinstein. I don’t know if it was drugs or whatnot, but he marched up to reception with these big hard eyes, determined to have me upgrade him to a deluxe suite. This was right after he refused to tip our valet Pierre and instead proclaimed he’d won an award for writing. Like Pierre could feed his kids with that knowledge.

When I said no to the room bump, Sparks banged his fist on my desk and raised his voice. All the classic spiel came out. All the stuff I already heard a million times. Didn’t I know who he was, he could have me fired, yadda yadda yadda. He had this freaky stutter all of a sudden, but only on certain words. Must’ve said ‘I’ about a thousand times. Then the guy crossed the line, and I’ll admit, it did faze me. He asked how I’d like to be skinned alive and covered in salt. The guy said this smiling and without blinking, like he was inviting me to a dinner party or something. So I assured him the deluxe suites were taken, but offered him a room service meal with our compliments. In my head, I was comparing the dollar value of that meal with the value of getting him away from me. Oh my God, totally worth those eighty-two bucks.

ALISTAIR: Your colleague Ruth Adler, who delivered the meal to this guest’s room, declined to be interviewed. But she has stated that he threatened her too, right?

BRANDON (Sighs): She got out real quick.

ALISTAIR: Why?

BRANDON: Well. She told me . . . she told me Mr Sparks picked up the steak knife and made . . . obscene demands.

ALISTAIR: So given that this guest directly threatened yourself and another employee, did you not consider calling the police?

BRANDON: Oh, thank you so much for asking: I really needed the bonus guilt. Ruth didn’t tell me about her experience straight away – she told Mr Howitz. But what do you want me to say? Did I fail to act on the murderous psychopath in our hotel? Yes, as it turned out, I did. But honey, I meet these people every day. That’s Hollywood.

Thank God, the room service girl flees, deathly pale, before I can force sex on her.

I shrug off the disappointment and sit cross-legged on the bed with the room service tray laid out before me. Stuffing my face with juicy T-bone, eating with my mouth wide open, meat slapping meat, I tell myself how smooth and inconspicuous my return to the hotel has been. And I actually believe it.

The room is swamped with shadow. No lights, because I no longer have any reason to fear the dark. Whatever lurks there will be inferior to me.

As I wash down all that blood-red beef with a flood of fifty-dollar wine, oh my God, that’s when I get a text from Bex.

‘Hey,’ she writes, ‘is my passport there in the room? Think I may have left it behind.’

This pleases me. The woman who rejected Jack Sparks –
Jack Sparks!
– is still here in America. No doubt still in LA. My sly, bright snake eyes conduct a brief search of the room. But to my foul new way of thinking, it doesn’t matter whether the passport’s here or not. I can tell her it’s here, can’t I?

After all, she’ll never use it again.

Bex clearly didn’t realise she only existed for my benefit. But now she’s of no benefit to me at all . . .

Deep inside, Real Me snaps to attention, desperate to snatch back the reins. Real Me wants to call Bex and warn her to stay away. Real Me wants to arrange to have her passport couriered to her. Or better yet, left somewhere for collection, so I can’t possibly know where she’s staying. I can’t trust myself any more.

But Real Me can’t access the steering wheel. Real Me is bound and gagged across the back seats.

I’m paralysed, fighting for air.

Locked inside this enforced caricature of myself.

The steak knife’s blade glints approval as I mentally compose a reply to Bex, telling her to come and get her passport.

Yeah, come and get it . . .

Remember
, whispers Real Me, sneaking the message past Mimi’s defences, syllable by syllable.
Remember
. . .
remember what Sherilyn told you about Aleister Crowley
.
The straight razor?

‘Yeah, I, I, I, I, I remember,’ I say aloud, picking up my phone. ‘Some crap about cutting yourself to control ego. So what?’

So cut yourself.

I pull a face. ‘Why would I, I, I, I, I want to do that?’ I say, while thumbing out the text to Bex.

Purge yourself. Control Mimi. Save Bex.

Still typing, I say, ‘You expect me, me, me, me, me to save that fickle, ungrateful little whore, who chose Lawrence and Astral over me, me, me, me, me? No way.’

Do it now.

‘Nah. That would really hurt. Loads more fun to use the blade on Bex. I’m thinking of really drawing the process out. I, I, I, I, I think I, I, I, I, I would enjoy that.’

The text complete, I’m about to hit ‘Send’.

You know how your body sometimes jerks awake, having pulled back from the journey into sleep? That’s what happens right now. A bolt of pure instinct compels me to drop the phone and grab the steak knife. With the other hand, I pull up my T-shirt, exposing my midriff.

Before Mimi can stop me, I drag the serrated blade across and split the skin.

I shake and hiss and sweat as the blood beads up. My eyes water.

This dribbling stripe of torn flesh is a victory for Real Me, who gains more control and makes me do it again, a notch higher.

The whole world pivots around the pain.

‘Stop this,’ says Mimi through my mouth. ‘I, I, I, I, I am precious.’

Scared of Mimi regaining leverage, I cut myself again and again until my torso presents a column of horizontal slit mouths. A ladder of red rungs from navel to neck. My crotch and the sheets beneath are slick with blood.

Hoping it’s safe to stop, I gasp and roll on to my back, relieved to recover my true personality. Even though instinct tells me Mimi is a grotesque amplification of my darkest impulses. Yeah, Mimi embodies the Jack who destroyed Bex’s relationship and anticipated my career boost as the Paranormals were murdered one by one. Mimi is that foul ego, cranked up. The thing inside Maria Corvi hijacked our experiment in order to twist that dial to eleven.

I know I’ve won the battle, not the war. This is only remission. I know this because Mimi whispers from a crawlspace at the back of my mind.

Mimi whispers, ‘me’, ‘myself’ and ‘I’.

Mimi whispers, ‘You know you want me, me, me, me, me back.’

Tinnitus from hell.

It takes all my self-control not to burst into tears when Alistair answers his phone. If I can’t call Mum, then he’ll have to do.

‘It’s me,’ I say. ‘Jack. I really need help.’

‘How dare you,’ he fires back. ‘How
dare
you.’

His contempt leaves me stunned as the line dies. I call back three times, no reply. Badly needing someone who cares about me and can help, while realising how few people fit that bill, my thoughts go to Bex . . . only to recoil for her own safety. While Mimi skulks in my head, I need to give Bex a very wide berth. Just can’t trust myself.

When I call my agent, at first he says nothing at all. There’s only background office chatter and phones ringing.

‘Hello?’ I say again. ‘Murray, I really need help.’

Before he hangs up, his voice is cool and clipped in a way I’ve never heard before, even when I’ve pissed him off royally. ‘Do not call here again.’

Sitting with the phone warm against my ear, my thoughts race. Am I already a fugitive: a mugshot on the wall behind a newsreader? Have the bodies been found at Big Coyote Ranch? Surely not this soon. And I’d hardly be difficult to trace. Why hasn’t a SWAT team crashed through the windows? Nope, there’s no way Alistair and Murray know about Big Coyote. Alistair has resented me since Dad left, then hated me for the last year or so. Murray has finally decided I’m more trouble than I’m worth. I’ve torched through any goodwill I once merited.

Should I call Dr Santoro? No, he’s strictly an appointment-only guy. Doesn’t give a shit.

Then Sherilyn Chastain springs to mind. She probably loathes me as much as Alistair does, but it dawns on me that only she can help. She understands my situation. She even tried to warn me before it all happened.

When Sherilyn answers her phone, I’m curled up on the floor. Sweat oozes out of me, despite the rattling air con. Down here on the scratchy carpet, hugging a blood-spotted white towel to my mutilated chest, I am a child running to mama. A child limping home after falling from a tree.

The golf ball wedged in my throat makes it hard to speak. ‘Everything’s gone wrong. Everything.’

A deep breath at the other end. ‘Okay. Stay as calm as you can, take a moment, then define “everything”.’

I tell her about Big Coyote. I tell her I’ll give her all my money if she cures my head and makes sure Mimi never comes back, but she doesn’t seem to listen. Just says she’ll take the next flight out of Auckland.

With my breath far from calm or deep, I ask how long I’ll need to hold out before she arrives.

‘Try not to think about that, Jack. Depends on flights, but at least twenty-four hours.’

‘Don’t know if I can wait that long. Don’t know if I can cut myself any more.’

‘Just focus. Have you written about what happened? That might help keep Mimi at bay. Email me what you already wrote so far. And only cut yourself again if you really feel Mimi coming back, okay? Avoid arteries.’

‘Sherilyn,’ I say, gripping the phone so tight the casing creaks. ‘I know Maria made this happen. The thing inside her, is it the—’

‘Jack, I need to book flights. Just keep yourself together.’

I don’t even have time to thank her before she ends the call.

I stay on the floor until Mimi starts whispering again.

‘You know I’m coming back,’ it says. ‘Just a matter of time. And you know it’ll feel
good
.’

I heave myself up and over to the laptop. Yes, I’ll follow Sherilyn’s recommendation and write. Surely that’s twenty-four hours of work right there. Then she’ll arrive to help me and everything will be
fine
. Once I’m back on an even psychological keel, I’ll approach the LAPD and try to explain what went down at Big Coyote Ranch.