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  ‘Listen up cult fuckers.’ He yelped, Steph blushed, Mary didn’t. She’d lost that feeling you get when you were young and your friend swore for the first time. Those nerves were just dead now.

  ‘I’m looking for someone, one of you. It’s very important, we think, we think he killed one of our friends.’ Cameron’s hand had shot up, keeping their attentions. Something inside of him said that was the thing to do.

  ‘Is it Booker?’ somebody in the small crowd asked, a person Cameron nor Mary knew the name of.

  ‘No, he’s a drunk, even I know that!’ barked Cameron.

  ‘Benji, Benjamin, fuck I don’t remember his name. He’s twenty-three. Let me guess your all twenty-three?’ they all nodded, even though some looked older and some looked in their teens they all had to have something in common other than himself, that was a fitting age.

  ‘From fucking club twenty-seven to club twenty-three. Great.’

  There was confusion on their faces, well half of their faces, obviously, Cameron and Mary knew what they were talking about, Steph made an educated guess, what was the most odd wasn’t the confusion on the other faces but the lack of confusion on the faces of Brian and Chris. Cameron took note of it, put it in the little book in the back of his mind, the book which stored names, although it seemed to be under used at this point.

  There was shuffling, I’d like to say at the back, but it was all the back from where the three stood. A murmur from small clumps of hoods.

  ‘I said my name like fifteen minutes ago! You’re freaking out about two random words I put together.’ Cameron knew they weren’t random to him, but to those in the outer circle they should have meant nothing.

  ‘Club twenty-seven is just a theory. Just coincidence, right?’ the girl with the purple hair stepped forward.

  ‘Shannon it’s not just a theory, if you’re into conspiracies you can’t just look at the one you think’s right and say fuck it to the rest, some of them might be connected.’ Steph spoke up, now in this in place she didn’t seem scared anymore, well not as scared. Cameron wrote the name Shannon down in his head.

  ‘That’s not the point right now.’ Cameron spoke out of the corner of his mouth, he was starting to feel like this was fifty percent of how he spoke at this point.

  ‘I’m trying to get them on our side.’

  ‘You’re trying to get us killed and I seem to be dying pretty well all by myself right now.’ Explained Cameron, which set of Stephanie into a little huff. Steph waved Cameron away, Mary held him by the shoulders, holding him from intervening but not aggressively.

  ‘Children of Bishop, listen here! This man has shown me the light, this is a cult, and cults are essentially bad things.’ The young girl began.

  ‘No surprise.’ A shorter guy said sarcastically.

  ‘Shut up Barry.’ Some kid with crow’s feet the size of dinner forks yelped.

  ‘Yeah shut up Barry.’ Cameron agreed. He did.

  There are two types of people in the world, those who stand up for what they think is right, and there’s other people, the sheep, the bystanders that sit back and allow the world to spin, closing their eyes. Sadly, those people who were in that bunker on that day were cowards, pleased to close their eyes at most things, there were morons, morally bankrupt morons.

  They mumbled, it was a deep thundering mumble that nobody could make sense of. They talked among themselves, Steph just stood in the centre with the grin she’d borrowed from the Cheshire cat. ‘We’ve decided, as a cult, together. No.’ Barry spoke.

  ‘What do you mean, no? When you’re in a cult and you just find out you’re in a cult, you’re meant to say that you don’t want to be in a cult anymore.’ Cameron stood forward.

  ‘You’d think that but.’ Barry shrugged.

  ‘Oh.’ Steph sighed, Chris and Brian looked at each other, nodded at each other, they’d won and they didn’t even mean to.

  Cameron had a choice to make, keep his mouth closed, or as closed as he could master. The easy choice was to speak up, tell everybody he was Cameron Bishop, and allow his own apostles to surround him.

  ‘These people are leading you astray, this is not what Cameron Bishop would have wanted.’ Mary yelled, Stephanie looked shocked but impressed, her cheeks flushed, she had developed a little crush on Mary, a platonic one. There was something about her grace and ability to command a room that Steph would love to have emulated.

  The group of nine stepped forward, slowly, they moved towards the group in the centre like a flower in reverse. Their faces turned to black smudges as they moved in, the lights behind them now unable to light their faces anymore.

  ‘I’m Cameron Bishop!’ There was a gasp, everybody gasped, except Brian and Chris. They continued to move forward, unaffected by the knowledge that this man was their dead man they thought was their father.

  ‘They know!’ Mary pointed out, Cameron had noticed but replied anyway.

  ‘They know? How do they know?’ Cameron had shrunk to nothing.

  A man like Bishop, and his odd fascination with names gave him one world of understanding. If people don’t know your name, you have power over them. Your name is a key, once somebody has your name they have the ability to belittle you, call you things behind your back. Without your name, you’re just that guy, there’s millions of that guys, it means nothing, but your name,

  For example, that guy was going to die, that has no effect, what does it mean? Who is that guy? But, let’s say a sentence started.

  ‘Cameron Bishop, I will fucking kill you.’ Now that had meaning, more so if your name was Cameron Bishop. The thing is, right now, nobody was yelling that. Not yet at least.

  There was silence for a matter of seconds, finding out a man you idolised was stood in front of you, and most importantly not dead, would be a shock to anyone. Other than Brian and Chris it was a shock to everyone in the container.

  The container rattled from outside, a little movement, an old lady walking a dog watched the whole thing. Then the shaking stopped and a small crack formed at the door of the crate. It closed again for a second and fell open fully.

  ‘Cheese it!’ Cameron yelled, a young short blonde from the crate on the left, followed by a tall leggy raven haired woman then a young man, who looked like a dead celebrity the old woman lusted over when she was fifty.

  He stopped for a second, reached in to the crate and pulled out a short guy by the hoods of his jacket.

  ‘Come on Barry you’re coming with us.’ The man yelled leading the man, who must have been called Barry along. They got in a red sports car the type you see in movies, and drove off.

  The women had seen all of this, the dog, also called Barry, missed it.

  Barry was a bumbling idiot. He worked the standard bumbling idiot job, a string of temp jobs at offices, not only was he an idiot he was a useless idiot, which is to say, he couldn’t even be dumb one hundred percent of the time.

  Barry had a vast knowledge of pub trivia, which in a real world, is a useless skill but when you work in an office, it can be misinterpreted as having a personality.

  ‘Steph what’s going on?’ Barry asked, a note from a person who was kidnapped here, knowing your kidnappers name means you are somewhat safe, safer than if you didn’t know their name. A note from me, I have never been personally kidnapped, not at this point at least. Barry had medium length hair, which he tried to slick back using water. Little white specks of skin dotted through it. When he got stressed the little white skin would powder out leaving dust on his shoulders of his dark blue hoody, even though Chris had said black, looking like a winter wonderland.

  Barry had been forced into the back seat by Cameron, who kind of tossed him using the hood, he’d began chewing on the cord of the hoody but the dye had run loose from his spit and tasted bad, so Barry stopped.

  Steph looked over at him, there was a feeling you get in the pit of your chest when you see a dog being cared for by a homeless person, it was wrong and you could tell but you didn
’t know why. Steph sighed, there wasn’t much else she could do but sigh, it was a sigh worthy man.

  ‘It’s going to be okay. We just have to know a few things.’ Steph tried to relax the situation, which failed. People who got kidnapped didn’t want to feel relaxed, they wanted to feel worried and that they were going to be killed at any second. You went to spars to relax you got kidnapped to feel scared.

  Cameron pulled into the huge mansion which was his home.

  ‘I have a question,’ Barry put his hand up.

  ‘Put your hand down Barry.’ Cameron grunted, Barry did.

  ‘If you owned this huge mansion, and had all this money, why did you still hang out with Gilly?’ Barry asked, there was a second of silence, which was filled with a huff from Cameron who got out the car, Steph also removed herself from the car, she couldn’t wait to, jumping from the back seat over the side of the convertible, like you see in movies, only in movies the people don’t trip as their foot gets stuck.

  Mary unclicked her seat which only slid halfway forward, Barry slid gently out without a word.

  Once in the home of Cameron Bishop, idol and God like status to Barry, Barry froze, he stood in the hall way, to his left a huge living room, his right a huge dining area, all of it covered with dust.

  ‘I know a really good cleaning guy, he works in the office I work at, I work in an office, just copying mostly, but sometimes I get to type up stuff, do you need somebody to type up stuff?’

  ‘He’s a rambler?’ Cameron asked Steph when she’d caught up.

  ‘Only when he’s stressed.’ Commented Stephanie. Bishop just looked down at his feet.

  ‘Barry.’ Cameron Cried.

  ‘Barry.’ Joined in Mary, Mary had more control over the situation, no matter what the situation was.

  Barry fell silent, without warning he was grabbed loosely by the shoulders and dragged into the living area. He half fell and half was pushed into the large chair which sat in the middle of the room.

  ‘You should really switch to DVD’s.’ Commented Barry, looking around, wall after wall was covered in small reticular boxes, each the size of a short book. VHS was a dead format, by this point so was DVD but people still clung to them like they tried to cling to records.

  ‘Barry.’ Mary interjected again.

  ‘Barry, we’re looking for my son.’ Cameron spoke down to him.

  ‘Well, you found a lot of them, sons, daughters, right Steph.’ He was looking at Steph for approval.

  ‘No Barry, it was a long con, we don’t know why, we don’t know why do we?’ Steph turned to Mary, who seemed to have most of the answers worked out, she replied with the shake of her head.

  ‘We don’t know why, but Cameron thinks none of them were his children, he thinks he has one son. Benji.’ Steph’s soft voice was the best way to be explained anything, there was hardly no contempt in it and you rarely felt spoken down to.

  ‘Try his house?’ suggested Barry.

  ‘It’s been turned over. Somebody had been there; all I had was this.’ Cameron pulled out a phone, opened it, normally it filled the screen with a blue light, this time it did nothing, the battery was flat.

  ‘That’s Benji’s drug dealer phone, he’s not a drug dealer, it’s just a cheap phone, one you can bin if something goes wrong, Chris and Brian have one too.’

  ‘Yeah, Benji has like a huge thing, this is like a nana phone.’ Steph explained, Cameron slid it back into his pocket, he was sure it would come in handy at one point.

  ‘Did you try his Mums? She’s not well right now, he looks after her a lot.’ Barry explained to a suddenly silent crowd.

  ‘Is that it? Will that be where he’d be?’ Barry was just happy to help.

  ‘Thanks Baz,’ Cameron ruffled his hair a bit, and wiped it on his pants, there was a thick moisture to it which seemed to stick to your hand. He’d never had a nickname before, he just sat there with a grin that Cameron wanted to knock off.

  ‘Do you know where Benji’s mother will be?’ Mary asked, as they headed out the door.

  ‘I shagged her in a toilet in the three-legged lamb, I have no fucking clue.’ Cameron walked on.

  ‘Hey, I clean those toilets.’ Steph was walking behind them.

  ‘You can’t come, somebody has to look after our hostage.’ Cameron turned as if he was stood on a lazy Suzan.

  Barry waved, his grin still not given up. He looked like the idiot he most probably was.

  ‘He’s not much of a hostage, I don’t think he’s going anywhere anyway, where would he go?’ Steph explained.

  ‘Plus, you need me, I know where Benji’s Mam lives.’ She crossed her arms.

  ‘We could just tie him up.’ Mary suggested. Both women had a point, there was no reason for him to leave first and foremost, they did need to be shown where Benji’s Mam, Mum, Mother, which ever lived. Lastly tying up hostages is what hostages expect, you can’t just let them wonder around your million-dollar home, or underground bunker. They weren’t hostages if they weren’t tied up. They were just guests, and guests weren’t what Cameron was planning on having, he barely wanted a hostage, but a guest was the opposite of that.

  Wrecking balls in side his brain made it hard to think.

  ‘Fine we’ll tie him up. You’ll tie him up, we’ll meet you back at the car. Lock the house up too.’ Cameron pulled a key from his pocket.

  ‘There’s rope in the garage I think.’ There wasn’t.

  ‘Come on,’ Cameron had made it out with few questions, Steph had gone to get rope, this gave them some time to talk, talking to Mary made it easy to work out what the stage of the plan was going to be.

  ‘If you think I have a plan you’re sadly mistaken. I’m confused, my mind is hazy and I can’t really focus, the human body isn’t meant to last three days without sleeping. I can’t.’ She petered out and fell to a sit down, on one of the steps that lead up to Cameron’s home, all great mansions had.

  ‘It’s the sleep debt, how much sleep we’ve missed is affecting us.’ Mary tried to explain.

  ‘I can guess what sleep debt is.’ Cameron came and sat next to Mary, leaving enough of a gap that neither of them felt to closed off.

  ‘We’re just creating a cycle, we sleep twenty years, then we don’t sleep for days, we can’t keep this cycle up like this, unless we can normalise our sleep patterns.’ She stopped, it felt like the end of a sentence till you saw her face, there were words circling her head, calculations on what the next steps would be.

  ‘We need to see Mikey again, he was trying to tell us, trying to tell me something. I’m important to the project, why they didn’t shut us off. Why they didn’t just shoot me.’ Mary’s face lit up.

  ‘We need to find Benji first, find out why he shot at us.’ Explained Cameron,

  ‘Make sure he doesn’t do it again, you have a point, Benji first then we go back to Somnus, try and fix the cycle.’

  A door shut behind them, there was complete silence, like when you get home and you partner is mad at you for leaving the dishes in a pile in the sink.

  Mary and Cameron turned, not because the person stood behind them, but because they felt like they should. Steph stood there with a face like a grave stone.

  ‘I don’t know how to say this.’ Steph said with a deep over tone to her voice. Mary pulled at Cameron’s hand, almost pulling it from its joint, she looked at Cameron’s watch, it had wound up now to full speed and would probably keep time longer then Cameron would live, with was a little sad on Cameron’s part.

  ‘Is this time correct?’ Mary insisted that he answer.

  ‘Like I think so, it should be.’ Replied Cameron.

  ‘Simon has died.’ Steph burst out Mary through away Cameron’s watch, arm still attached.

  ‘What?’ Cameron said.

  ‘Gilly’s just been on the phone, he said he needed to sleep, Gilly left him to rest, when he came back up, Simon wasn’t breathing.’ Steph explained.

  ‘I had kind of forgot about hi
m.’ He sunk between his knees, the lump that was his back looked like a large bolder to Steph, Cameron didn’t move for seconds, then he pulled himself up.

  ‘We have to find Benji then we go see Mikey, that’s two deaths on our hands and I’d very much like to pass the guilt on to the actual killers.’

  Chapter 17

  If you’d of seen these three twenty somethings driving around in their fancy car, hair blowing in the wind. You’d have presumed they were going to a party, maybe on a yacht or a fancy house, they hadn’t just kidnapped a cultist, tied him to a deck chair you’d found in a fifty-year olds garage, the fifty-year-old, who is really twenty-seven and a rock star. All these things seem silly when explained one after another, but let’s face it, the world is an odd place and you never really want it all explained at once to you.

  On the other side of town, this town being small that other side meant a fifteen-minute drive, two men had chased people from their container, a large grey container, welded together down the centre to create a spacey but undetectable area. One man being tall, skinny, and possibly balding, although he shaved his head, you were never sure if that was by choice. The other was also a tall man, but instead had grown out his hair to a stubble, although it was all regimental in length, possibly, shave to a one. They both wore hoodies, the larger of the two, in frame and in height sported a beard. We’ve met these men before. They are Chris and Brian, but now something inside them as seeped out through their paws, making them look somewhat darker, even though the lighting inside the shipping container was a vibrant orange glow.

  ‘You got the guns?’ Brian asked, his face made of concrete, his beard, the moss.

  ‘Where would I keep them? Bishop brought me here.’ He had taken off his hooded jacket, underneath a green tee-shirt, the type all marines wear even when they weren’t signed on.

  ‘So, we have no guns?’ the bearded one asked, he held a stern upper lip as long as he could, and failed as began to chucking to himself.