On a Sunday In 1936, the forty year old electrical engineer Victor Kovak of Zagreb Croatia was badly hungover and dragged to church by his long suffering wife. She saw this as her only hope of installing within him at least a little bit of Christian values. He sat there feeling sorry for himself with his head pounding as he stared at the floor. To Victor the pontification seemed endless. A dissipation of waffle, he pondered. Then he laughed to himself at the insignificance of it all. His wife prods him in the ribs with her elbow, making him sit up straight with his graze going high. The arcing sun strikes a curved crack in the ornate stained windows that brightly hits Victor in both eyes like shards of glass, twisting, turning, tapping into his brain and rescinding long forgotten locks to a long lost domain deep inside his mind. He could hear trumpets, thunder, and hundreds of voices speaking in Latin. He hadn’t used the ancient language since his senior year in school. There were so many words spoken by hundreds of different voices speaking simultaneously that at first he barely understood anything at all, but that didn’t matter to the voices, because their resolve was relentless. With their words and phrasing constantly changing, forging a crystallized message from God within the space of twenty minutes, Victor felt assured of his anointment by the Lord to be the builder of the greatest machine in the history of all mankind. It would be he who connects Heaven and Earth allowing all to freely speak to God.

The hangover was gone and Victor felt more invigorated than he could have ever thought possible. He felt the millions of Latin words swirling around him in a rapidly growing vortex extending high beyond the church. With eyes shut he felt it rising him to his feet, and lifting his hands to the heavens, interrupting the sermon. The baffled priest lost his train of thought and looked at Victor with surprise.

“Praise the Lord,” Victor bellowed. The entire congregation stared at him in shock. Victor’s bewildered wife felt numb all over. “I will be the one who brings God’s actual voice to the entire world, scientifically, for every man woman and child by building,” Victor pauses for dramatic effect,” he pauses for dramatic effect, “a resurrection machine.”

The astonished priest finally found his voice. “Resurrection without direction from God is a sin.”

“But I do have permission from God. I’m hearing his words right now.”

“If you’re hearing voices telling you to commit the sin of resurrection, then it’s either a symptom of mental illness, or demonic attachment to your soul.”

Victor steps out into the aisle, clicking his fingers for his wife and children to follow. “I understand why you’re so afraid and so defensive. It’s because this church and every other church on the planet will be empty, and you will be exposed as the frauds you are, because my machine technology will enable every man, woman and child to coexist in both heaven Heaven and Earth, both at the same time.” He limps down the aisle on his old war wound as with his embarrassed wife and three children trail behind. “Because of me, you will all soon enter a new golden age.” Victor oritates in latin, moving his hands all around in powerful gestures as he continues through to the door. Mrs Kovak wondered if this was her punishment for asking God to make Victor more religious. “I will pray for you my son,” said the priest who looked pleased to see him go.

On the horse and cart trip home from church Victor was very deep in thought as he listened to the voices. They were careful and patient. Constantly chipping away at the end result of having Victor make the first machine and using it. On arrival the wife and children were made to line up as he addressed them. They were told all the new rules and immediate changes they will all be making so that he can live and work in a quiet pious environment to think very clearly. No one was to talk to him unless he talked to them first. And never again he vowed would he beat his family out of drunken anger. From now on they’ll be beaten for nothing else except the loving grace of God.

Piety was strictly enforced. Victor thought the wife and his oldest daughter were doing better thanks to his patience, but it was the boy who often took his ire and required two sessions of hard spanking discipline every day. His wife and oldest daughter required discipline just once a day. This he considered complicated though entirely justified. Administration occurred late at night when the two youngest were asleep. The middle child Helen, sixteen years old. She never needs discipline, thought Victor. It was her that he judged as being the epitome of what it is to be a pure christion girl, who moved as quiet as a mouse so that Father could imagine his amazing machine in complete silence which took all of his spare time. He gave up alcohol, women, every vice he had ever had. He was completely in the zone.

A month later he had filled many notebooks with plans and after many trips to the city library, many technical aspects of the project were coming together in what what he thought of as heavenly perfection, until one afternoon, while studying a scientific manual in the lounge with the family as they quietly continued their favourite activities such as silent needle work, or silent reading, it dawned on him. For anyone using the machine that connects them from Earth to heaven, they’ll die the instant the machines turned off. It only took a moment for him to fully grasp the ramifications. The voices went silent. He knew that church and society would never condone such a machine. He felt devastated. All was lost. The whole family stopped whatever they were doing and stared at him. They had never seen him cry before, let alone sob. After a minute, the voices started whispering again. There was another way. Find a naturally pious person who never sins and secretly put them in the machine. Film it happening and show the world. Bring everyone to see this person who God can talk through. The world’s resources would be at his feet, All the engineers and doctors in the world will help to keep her alive and comfortable. God will ease any pain. The person picked would be loved by the entire world. They will be the voice to and from God. The Pope they tell Victor, will be a nobody. But who to pick? When his crying stopped, it gave the family a little ease until he fixed his eyes on Hellen who instantly felt cold and afraid.

He would now construct the machine in private and do it as fast as possible since people already wanted him stopped without the added aspect of inevitable death for all users of his machine. The voices broke up the development process into three separate sections for him to tackle one at a time. The first concerned an existing machine called the electroencephalogram or EEG. Recent advancements had made possible the recording of electromagnetic signals from the brain. The second was another existing machine invented just six years before an electrical engineer named William Kouwenhoven that could kickstart a heart but so far had only been tested on a dog. These machines he would make himself with custom functions to suit the project. That was something that Victor could sink his teeth into as an electrical engineer, it was the third task that concerned him the most. Victor was to bring something new to this world. A drug that he would create through an alchemy of elements and compounds of which he knew nothing of. His tasks were enormous. There was no spare time and he barely slept. He requested copies of patents, he wrote to experts and inventors requesting so much information that soon the living room was full of journals, schematics and electrical equipment. To keep above water he mortgaged the house and drained his wife’s inheritance. “All for the greater good and the grace of God,” he would say. It took him six months to complete the custom EEG. Two months more for the design and construction of switching augmentation. Three months more to build the heart jump start machine and then he faced the creation of the drug. The voices would talk him through it. At night he dreamt about it. He had to purchase 72 different powders and liquids. The oldest girls room became a chemical plant that polluted the entire house. Everyone rubbed their eyes for an entire twelve months until he had finally produced fifty milliliters and that was just enough. The machine was ready for use. To the families surprise he celebrated by sending them all away for a few days. They were shocked, it felt too good to be true. They would dread coming back.

Inspired by Kouwenhoven, Victor would also test his machine on a dog. He roamed the streets looking for the biggest stray he could find. A large mongrel was selected and Victor got it to follow him home by dropping a dotted stream of morsels. As soon as he had it trapped inside, the dog was fed a sedative. When the poor animal woke, it was bound tight to steel framing. The only parts it could move were its ears, eyes, jaw and tail. It whimpers and cries. Victor feels no empathy for the creature. “The cause is just,’’ he spoke out loud to himself. A net of EEG sensors with a mass of wires were attached to the dogs shaved head. Then Victor ties two electrodes to the dogs shaved chest. Now he’s ready for the test. The voices are hushed. He feels nervous. Victor switches on the EEG machine. It bursts into life scratching a graph onto a moving stream of paper. The capacitators in the jump start device wind up with a loud deep buzz rising in pitch.. Then the electroencephalogram was activated. The dog’s heart beat was being heard by the ding of a small electric bell. Ding ding ding… Now, Victor thinks to himself, is the moment of truth. He draws ten mils of the drug into a syringe, inserts the needle and empties the liquid. Immediately the bell stops ringing. The dog’s heart has stopped as planned. The EEG activity ends with a burst of spikes and then a flat line to follow. Victor waits with his thumb and first finger on a switch, as he watches the paper roll spill out. The doldrums seemed to last forever. Suddenly the EGG bursts into a rapid zig zag all over the paper.

“Yes,” he cried out to himself. Then he waits two seconds to check the consistency of the signal, then he flicks the switch activating an automatic cut off from the EEG to a solenoid, which is the only thing stopping gravity from pulling the trigger of a gun pointed at the dog’s cerebral cortex. A conformational red light bulb brightens, meaning resurrection is available. His heart is racing. He switches on the jump start pads. There’s a loud bang. An electrical charge surges through the dog’s chest. The muscles tightening causes the frame to jolt. The dogs eyes are open wide, it takes a series of massive breaths, then stops for a moment with a look of complete astonishment. Then a wave of elation. His tail wags. His tongue hung out the side of his mouth and Victor watched in amazement as the dog was mentally someplace else. Somewhere that was making it very happy. Victor assumed the dog had to be in heaven. Nothing else could explain it.

“Resurrection accomplished” He triumphantly said to no one. He had succeeded. He reached to touch the dog, feel its fur. The soul of this creature is living in heaven, thinks Victor, it is one with God. He felt as though the creature was blessed. Victor wanted to share the dog’s experience. He dropped to his knees in front of the animal and rustled the furry chest. The dog couldn’t see or hear him but it did sense Victor in some way, because it bared its teeth and growled at him viciously. Victor pulled back his hands and retreated. It was not what he expected. Immediately the dog reverted back to being its heavenly self as if nothing had happened. Victor on the other hand felt emotionally hurt. After all that he had done, in getting that dog to heaven, and that’s the thanks he gets, but worse was the worry that if the dog is in heaven because God works through it, then was God speaking to him through the beast? Victor was shaking at the thought of it being possible. He decided to change his attention from the tail wagging mutt to the EEG data stream. The zig zagging line was inscribed on a grid pattern roll of paper. He started deciphering each grid as per instructions from the voices. The answer from the first grid was a white pixel. On a separate grid pattern sheet of paper the top left square is left blank. Analysis of the second grid resulted in white as well. He used the point of a letter opener to make the current square. He feels God moving through him, creating an image. He wonders what it will be. Perhaps he thinks it might be God sitting on his throne. Victor felt happy. The process at the start was fun, but six hours later after he had completed the entire thousand pixels on the sheet and he hadn’t used his black pencil once. There was nothing but white.

“What does it mean?” He asked aloud. The voices were silent. “Is this a depiction of heaven? Of God” The dog continued wagging it tail. “Or is it just because that beast is nothing more than a stupid dog?” Woof barked the dog, to something that wasn’t Victor. “It can only work on a person, and the closest thing to a possible saint is my beautiful daughter Hellen.” He stops to think of it for a moment and truly smiles. Then he’s back to work. First job was getting rid of the dog.

“Goodbye dog,’ he matter of factly said as he switched off the EEG. The current to the solenoid ends, firing the gun, instantly killing the canine.

Victor was excited again. The family would be home in ten hours, there was much to be done. First he buried the dog in the backyard, then cleaned up all the blood in the living room. After that he replaced the dog constraining frame and replaced it with a custom built frame for Hellen. An automatic moving picture camera and all the equipment was ready and double checked. Then the door to the room was locked and he awaited their arrival at the bottom of the stairs. Facing the front door. Never moving. Just like a spider.

She tried to relax and enjoy the time away from Victor with the children. Maybe, she thought, it’s the last taste of liberation for a long time, but the stress wouldn’t stop chewing away at the inside of her stomach like a live rat gnawing its way out. Dreams of escape had peppered her sleep. She had talked to her oldest daughter Mary out of earshot of the two youngest. They discussed the options of running away. They couldn’t think of one. Victor had prepaid the entire trip with meals included, they barely had enough cash for snacks. They quickly concluded that they wouldn’t get far before he tracked them down with a sadistic punishment immediately issued. One more, very big snap, she thinks to herself. The way he likes to do it, as if I’m a long dry thin stick. The kind you can quietly snap the inside of without it damaging the outer layer. Victor has snapped me a thousand times in from top to bottom and remade me the way I am now, a worthless woman he trains like Pavlov’s dog. I live for my children and if it came out in court, the things that he made me do. I would never be seen as a fit mother. They would put me in jail. The family would be split and scattered by the winds. She looked at her children playing together. For them she felt boundless heartbreaking love. For Victor she felt hate. She had never blamed him for being what he was. She knew that he had been very damaged as a child. She ponders it all.

“It took me years before it dawned on me,” she said to Mary. “That it was impossible for him to understand the concept of love, because he never had it as a child. So I had loved him for the man he might have been. What a foolish girl I was.”

Back from the trip with the children behind her Emily opens the front door. She sees Victor sitting on the bottom stairs. He smiles broadly. Welcome back family,” he says with his arms wide open. They look shocked. “Come in come in.” He ushers them in with a hand gesture. “I want to apologize for the way I’ve been for the last year or so. I know it’s been hard on you all, but the projects finished, it’s been an amazing success. I’ll publish the results soon and we’ll see what happens but from now on, there’s no more need for quiet. You can make all the noise you want.

“Okay,” said Emily politely. Though out of a mixture of fear, shock and habit, they all quietly separated into different parts of the house. Later, Victor spent the rest of the evening smoking his pipe, while the family read or did drawing. That night he didn’t call Mary into the master bedroom for discipline. He forced sex on Emily without Mary being there. Then Emily went to sleep as always without speaking a word.

Four hours later in the near dark, Victor was quietly dressing himself in his best suit. Then he fits a WW1 gas mask and rubber gloves as the others continued their slumber. He took a cotton cloth folded into a pad, then evenly poured a prepared amount of ether onto the cloth, folds it again then pressed it with his fingers to make it more evenly distributed. Then he turns to his wife. He puts the cloth over her mouth and nose then counts to five. He removes the cloth and she’s fully unconscious. He ties her hands and feet. Victor walks quietly to the bedroom that both the girls shared. Ivan wakes to the night terror sound of someone breathing through a gas mask and getting louder. His bedroom door is ajar. He watches his father walk passed wearing a mask and gloves. Ivan quietly gets out of bed and peers down the passageway.

“Ivan,” his mother softly called. He quietly moved to her open door. In the dim moonlight he could see that she was tied on the bed. “Run into the darkness where Victor can’t find you, then run to get help from the police.” He looks behind himself. Victor was coming down the passage for him as fast as he could limp. Ivan flees down the stairs as fast as he can. At the end of the passage he’s fumbling to undo the three door locks. By the time the last one is open Victor is right behind him. The time he had to open the door wasn’t enough. Time was slowing down for Ivan. The door was open just enough. He was taking his first stride out of the house when he felt Victor’s fingertips, on his shoulder, trying to get a grab his bed clothes. Ivan used all his strength but fell, cutting his right cheek through to his mouth. Victor almost has him once again. Ivan didn’t know what would happen to him if he didn’t get to his feet and run, but he knew in his bones it would be worse than death. With all he had he rose to his feet and accelerated with all he had, sprinting off the porch, across the yard and into the woods. Victor tried for one burst out of the door to catch the boy, but the old war wound made it impossible. He stopped and watched Victor disappear, absorbed by the gloom. They lived on the edge of Zagreb. It was one kilometre to the nearest neighbour. Victor knew it would take hours before Ivan could make it back with solid back up. He went back inside the house, locked the doors and tied the girls before they woke. Then he put a sock in Emily’s mouth and held it there tight with a belt forcing her mouth open. Victor threw her over his shoulder with ease and carried her down the stairs to the living room where he put her into a dining chair which he ties her to. Then he brings down Mary. Emiliy is waking into a groggy state. As she gets her barings she realises she’s watching Victor tie Mary to a chair the same as her mother. Being unconscious, Hellens head slumps down like a dehydrated flower. Emily is immediately wide awake and protesting through the sock to Victor who moves to leave the room then pauses. He goes back and puts his ear to her mouth.

“Would you stop that damn noise Emily, I’m trying to hear if she’s breathing or not.” Emily immediately stops making a sound. He puts his ear back to her mouth, listens for half a minute, then walks out the room and up the stairs. Emily erupts into more muffled cries.

Last down the stairs is Hellen who he carries with reverence. He places her into the machine and clamps her firmly. Tears flow from Emily’s eyes. Her sobs barely bother Victor as he clips off all of Helen’s hair and shaves her scalp upon which he fits the net of EEG sensors.

In his mind the voices are all very softly speaking in unison, repeating latin for whore in a slow rhythm, saying SCORTUM SCORTUM SCORTUM

Mary’s head starts moving a little as she slowly wakes the same way her mother did. When she realises that her arms and legs are bound she forces herself alert and tries in vain to break free. She looks up to see Victor busily preparing Hellen.

“What are you doing?” She said with her speech slurred.

“I’m making history.” Hellen hears Emily’s muffled voice. She turns to see her mother tied to a chair the same as herself.

“Oh my God Daddy let us go. Please let us go, let us go.”

“No, no you don’t understand you and your mother are here to be witnesses.” Mary starts to cry.

“Oh my God no, please let them go.”

“But this is a good thing, for Hellen and everyone else.”

“You don’t have her consent.”

“As her father, directed by the hand of God, I can tell you I already have consent. She just doesn’t know that she’s given it to me.”

“You’re an idiot.”

“You watch it girl.”

“Take that off her.” Said Emily with the voice of someone who has nothing left to lose.

“No.”

“Whatever that beastly machine is going to do to Hellen, if you want us to be witnesses you’ll want to understand what’s happening right?”

Victor thinks for a moment, then says, “yes.” The voices are getting louder.

“Then remove that belt and sock from Mum’s mouth so she can ask questions because she doesn’t understand, do you Mum.” Emily shakes her head.

“But you already know what’s happening, it’s all I’ve been talking about for the last year and a half.”

“We don’t listen to your waffle, it’s like being in church, it just goes on and on and on.” She turns to Emily. “Doesn’t he Mum.” She nods her head. “Do you understand what this is all about?” She shakes her head.

Victor looks up to the ceiling, “Lord give me strength.” He leaves what he’s doing and removes the belt and sock. Emily speaks immediately.

“This is an horrendous sin, you have to let her go.”

“Oh so you do know what’s going on then.” Victor takes the syringe to draw the drug. Emily is thinking fast.

“If you let them both go and I’ll take Hellen’s place in that machine.”

“You see Mary this is the reason I had the sock in your Mother’s mouth in the first place. This woman is too simple minded to understand that she cannot make a physical connection with God, because she can’t ever go to heaven, as can’t you.”

“And why is that?” Asked Emily. SCORTUM Shouted the voices in unison SCORTUM SCORTUM SCORTUM.

“Because you’re both filthy corrupting whores the pair of you.”

“You can’t put the blame of your abuse onto us and call us sinful,” said Mary

“I did what I’ve done to purge the sinful lusting puss that fills you both everyday and to me it’s like lancing a boil. Both of you try to corrupt me like seducing sirens on the rocks and what you get in return is punishment from God that he dispenses through me.”

“You’re truly mad,” cried Mary who was telling him what she thought for the first time.

“Yes, yes he is,” agreed Emily with tears flooding down her face. Victor pulls the curtain back a bit and looks out of the window for any coming lights.

“Save it for God. In a few minutes you’ll be able to tell him directly through our daughter, soon to be saint, and then, world’s most important person.”

“Where’s Ivan?” asked Emily.

“He ran away.” replied Victor.

“Good for him.” She slightly smiles.

Victor activates the equipment with the ECG first. The little bell dings to Hellen’s heartbeat. Then The EEG starts scratching out her brain waves onto the paper stream. He took a crystalized serum on his thumb and finger to Hellen’s nostrils. As he rolls his finger and thumb, the crystals turn to dust that she breaths into her lungs. She awakens with a bolt.

“What’s happening?” She asks, sounding terrorfied. Emily and Mary start to cry. “Oh no, oh no.”

Victor put his palm on Helen’s cheek.

“This machine my dear, is going to take you to Heaven. You’ll be the first person ever since Jesus to exist in Heaven and on Earth at the same time. You will be famous, millions of people will come to see you. The Pope will bow before you.” Victor opens the capacitors for charging. Making a deep winding up sound over several seconds.

“No please don’t,” cries Hellen as Victor takes the syringe. “I’m scared.”

“The faster I do this, the easier it is for you.” All three women are crying and shouting at the same time until he withdraws the needle. The bell stops dinging. Hellen is motionless with eyes wide open. Everything is quiet. Victor rushes to look at the EEG that flatlines before his eyes.

“What’s happening?” asked Emily.

“Shut up and let me concentrate.” Ten seconds passing felt like twenty, twenty felt like fifty, fifty felt like minutes, and then the EEG burst into a flurry of activity. “Yes,” he exclaims. He automates the solenoid gun trigger, then he hits the jump start button. The jolt goes through her heart. The metal frame clunks as all her muscles suddenly tense. She is still flatlining. He hits the recharge button again, it takes thirty seconds to get to full capacity again. There is quiet as everyone waits. He hits the discharge button for the second time giving her a higher shock which goes through her with the same negative result. He hits the recharge button and wonders if he needs even more power. Because Hellen is twice the weight of the dog he would give her twice the charge. He thinks for a moment then turns the capacity dial up thirty percent more.

Emily and Mary start to sob. “You’ve killed her, you’ve killed her,” says Mary barely audible over the crying as the sound of the overloaded capacitor winds up like a high pitched squeal. Victor holds his breath and hits the discharge button for the third time. The metal frame gives a bigger clunk as a massive electrical current surges through Hellen. The bell rings out at a fast pace.

Hellen’s lungs take deep breaths. Ding. Ding. Ding...

SCORTUM SCORTUM SCORTUM Intensify the voices.

“I’ve done it Lord.” Said Victor joyously proclaiming with hands reaching up towards the heavens. “I’ve done what you asked and your conduit’s complete.” There is suddenly hope in the room. Emily and Mary stop crying and wide-eyed watch Hellen’s reincarnated eyes dart around the room at things that aren’t there.

“Hellen it’s your mother can you hear me?” Hellen looks terrified. To Emily the sounds coming out of Hellen’s mouth sounds like backwards talking gibberish. “Hellen it’s your mother,”

“Mum?” she cries out sounding surprised. “Mum…” She trails off with reverse talking that blends into sobbing.”

“Honey I can’t understand.” Hellen consciously attempts to say the words correctly.

“Where.... am…. I?”

“You’re in Heaven daughter,“ said Victor.

“Ohhh…. Noooo…. It’s not..,” then more backwards gibberish.

“Go to the Lord’s arms,” he continues.

“What did she say?” Asked Emily.

“I think she said it’s not Heaven,” replied Mary sounding very worried.

“Victor..,” said Emily as she watched terror growing in Hellen’s face. “Get her out of there.”

“I can’t,” he replied.

“Then turn it off,” said Mary.

“I can’t....”

Emily interrupts. “Do as she said and turn off that evil wicked machine right now.”

“I can’t because if it’s turned off she will die.”

“You built it, fix it.”

“The design of the system can’t be changed, there was no other way of making it work.”

You put my daughter into that monstrosity, knowing it will kill her.

“She’s going to be famous. She’s going to be the next pope, and spend her eternity in Heaven. She will soon be called Saint Hellen.”

“She isn’t in Heaven you moronic fool,” screamed Mary.

“He knows that,” said her mother. “He sent her to Hell on purpose.”

“No, no, she’s in Heaven.” he rages. Immediately Hellen’s eyes go wide with terror, focused on something invisible right in front of her. Her full throat screams of fear and pain horrify the three observers. Every part of her body is tensed with cramp. The fat on her body’s dissolving and feeding muscles like rocket fuel. The rapid bell strikes have become a constant din. Her beating heart is revving like an engine. The empathy of Emily and Mary for Hellen pains them with torment like cuts to the bone as Victor watches stunned. Why has Hellen been sent to Hell, he wonders to himself, what have I missed?”

SCORTUM ad nauseam.

When Ivan made it into the gloom provided by the thicket of trees, he hid and looked back at Victor who was only just visible on the other side of the field. Ivan felt relieved when his father turned and walked back into the house. Ivan moved through the trees as fast as he could go in the dim light without falling over. When he made it to a field on the other side, he could faintly see an outline of the Horvat homestead. He ran across fields as fast he could and banged on the front door. Ivan regained his breath as Mr Horvat slowly made it through the house.

“Who is it?” Asked the sleepy old man suspiciously through the wooden structure..

“I’m Ivan Kovack. I live on the farm next to yours.”

“You’re that lunatic’s son?”

“Yes.”

“Well what do you want? It’s the middle of the night.”

“The lunatic has finished building a machine that he said sends people to heaven. I ran away when he tied my mum and sisters. He wants to put us in the machine.” The door swings open. Wiry old Mr. Horvat stands in his underwear with one hand on the door and the other holding a shotgun.

“Come inside child.”

Horvat wrapped himself in a blanket and listened to a summary of Ivan’s story in front of the burning embers on his open fire. He couldn’t help but feel for the plight of the child. Horvat explained how his two war veteran sons would be both arriving home soon after working a night shift and with all three of them will be armed. They’ll be more than happy to pay the lunatic a visit. An hour later true to his word Horvat and his two sons are led by Ivan to the edge of the farm as dawn breaks in the valley. They devise a plan then started walking up the half kilometer drive.

Inside the house Victor was having an epiphany as Emily and Mary both screamed at him. The voices in his head had finished their case, and Victor was in total agreement. The feelings of failure were gone and replaced by anger, hate and resentment. It wasn’t my fault. I was sabotaged by the women. Just as Emily and Mary had tried to corrupt my pure Christian devotion every single night, they had done the same to Hellen. It probably happened on the trip they just took. Like vampires spreading their unholyness and damning her to Hell by turning her into a whore. All of this he thinks as he watches her skin turn bright shiny red, blisters appear on her face, as every molecule in her body, thrashes itself to bits. Victor swiftly turns to Mary and Emily. His face consumed with anger. “Both of you did this to me and her. You made her this way. You made her burn in Hell. You made her a filthy disgusting whore that God despises against all that is good.” He points at Helen. “And where she is, that’s where you are going.” The machine denies power to the solenoid. The trigger is pulled. A bullet drives straight through the middle of Hellen’s cerebral cortex.

Halfway up the drive, Ivan and the Horvat’s stop in their tracks as they listen to the gunshot echo through the valley. They split up around the house to approach from different vantage points. Ivan follows the old man.

Hellen’s body is still and silent. Her burnt out eyes stare straight ahead. “You’ are truly an evil man,” said Emily as if it all fully made sense for the first time. “You’re everything that is wrong in this world.”

“I disagree.” said Victor as he removes the rifle from the machine.

“I hate you with every part of my being,” said Mary. “I want to pull you apart bone by bone.” Victor puts the muzzle of his gun against Mary’s forehead.

“Burn in Hell whore.” He pulls the trigger. Mary’s brains spatter on the wall behind her.

Outside a small bird startled by the bang flies out of the grass almost hitting Ivan who only just dodges its flightpath. Ivan’s fear for his family was knotting in his stomach. He had told the Horvats about a spare key to the back door hidden under a rock behind the rear porch. The oldest son was opening the door when he heard the second shot. With his gun cocked, he softly moved up the passageway to the open living room door.

Emily spits in Victor’s eye. He puts the gun to her head. “Do it,” she requests. The oldest Horvat son is almost at the doorway. The bullet that goes through Emily’s head carries on through the wall just missing Horvat. He stops moving, and takes a big breath, then steps into the doorway with his rifle pointed at Victor. It takes him a moment to take in the sight of bound bodies and blood. Victor is reloading the chamber of his gun as the oldest son fires his weapon, missing Victor’s head by millimetres. As Horvat starts reloading his rifle, Victor aims at the heart. Horvat the eldest son is slammed against the wall and drops dead to the floor. Ivan runs through the back door as a living room window is smashed by the remaining Horvat son’s gun. As he pulls the curtain open with the barrel, Victor leans out through the jagged opening and shoots him point blank. Horvat the elder smashes the wall adjacent window as Victor recocks his gun. The old man is dispatched by Victor with the same method. Then there’s silence. Victor turns to see Ivan holding the rifle pointed at Victor’s chest.

“Son, this is God’s work. It had to be carried out the way that he demanded. There was no other way. He wants you to join me. To use the machine with a pure soul for the first time. He wants us to change the world.” Victor drops his discharged weapon and walks towards his son. “Give me the gun.” Victor reaches out. The moment he touches the end of the barrel, the voices spoke for the last time. TIME TO COME HOME. Ivan pulls the trigger shooting his father dead.

Publicly the whole affair was tidied up with an assessment of criminal insanity as a secret parallel investigation continued behind the scenes with help from the church. Everything was studied with the best standards of detective work and following Victor’s detailed instructions Helen’s EEG sheet was analyzed, deciphered and slowly built pixel by pixel until a grainy black and white image was built. It showed a large black convertible of type then unknown. Crawling back over the rear of the car appears to be a woman wearing a cake shaped hat. Coming up to reach her is a man in a black suit and hat who appears to be climbing aboard the car with one foot on the chrome bumper and his hands are on the trunk. Examination of the picture revealed nothing of any relevance. The report once completed was filed with the evidence. Years later it was forgotten by everyone except for Ivan, who will never forget.

Next Chapter: 13