Solomon Iron.
Part IV - Julian Estrada.
This is Part IV, the final chapter of the limited series Solomon Iron. In Part III, we followed Solomon Iron as he prepared to commit murder.
Read Part I, here.
Read Part II, here.
Read Part III, here.
The funeral song spreads before Solomon as he moves through the house. He makes his way to the front door, back to the staircase. He pauses. With one foot on the bottom step, he stares up at the light falling from the top of the landing. He waits for any signs of movement. There is nothing but silence. The song of death thickens, and he can feel the crest of anxiety dwarf his horizons.
He ascends the stairs, following the thin shafts of light creeping along the walls. He enters the faint glow and it bathes him in a sinister umbra. Each step brings him closer to the culmination of his task. A distant voice snickers in anticipation for what is to come.
Another one, it whispers hungrily.One more for the record books, it teases.
His feet grow heavy with the climb. The effervescence of excitement bubbles along the lining of his stomach and the nausea returns. A sour taste oozes through the spaces between the crust of his teeth. What is to come will be sweet. But repulsive.
The top of the landing is circular and rounded off with a bay window that looks out onto the street. He sees his the strange reflection in the windowpane. The ghostly figure leers at him with a sickening grin, but he doesn’t feel the expression touch his lips. A chill slithers through the passage of bone running down his back. It will be sweet, the voice whispers. He resists. It will be repulsive.
A lamp stands upon a table and its light casts a shallow puddle. Solomon looks at the few trinkets scattered across the table. Some cash and a crushed receipt lie alongside a gold ring. A line of pictures on the wall draw his attention. The frames are suspended above the dim light and the photos incased within shimmer with an ethereal glow, like souls captured in fragile receptacles.
In each photo, Estrada floats in his black suit. In the first, the songwriter’s face is smooth and sheltered by his youth. The deep furrows of time that now scar his face are absent, and there is a vibrant flicker in his eyes. This is a different man to whom Solomon has stalked these last few weeks. Estrada stands before a theatre in London, his name captioned in great black letter across the marquee. Next to him, stands a little girl. She holds his hand and stares up at the camera with a crumpled nose, her eyes darkened by the indifferent gaze of a child.
Solomon moves onto the next picture. It is a moment within a restaurant, captured forever in that precise composition. Estrada sits marooned at a table, surrounded by a great whirlpool of people. The blurring mass of strangers swirl in tides of black and grey, a toneless current washing through the aged film. Estrada seems different. The flicker in his eyes are gone. They seem dark and faded. Solomon can almost hear the din of the crowd captured behind the songwriter. Somewhere in the bowels of the restaurant there is the clatter of plates, the cry of waiters, punctuating laughter and the celebration of clinking glass. He can smell the smoke of the eternal cigarette burning between Estrada’s fingers. Despite the loss of innocence in his eyes, there is a smile. It reveals a set of broad, discoloured pellets lodged within the face of someone who has exhausted the will of their soul. A young girl, crossing the threshold of womanhood, sits in the hook of his arm. She stares through the camera lens at Solomon. He can feel her gaze upon him, as if she knows what he is about to do. The fragile grin carved from porcelain curls her lips, but it falls short of touching the shadow in her eyes. She sits uncomfortably next to Estrada, her body tense, her shoulders pulled in on herself, like a leaf caught in a vacuous pool. There is something unsettling in the way she is caught adrift in an adult ocean, misplaced and struggling to keep her head in a world that isn’t hers.
The last photo is larger than the others. Estrada is absent from the frame. There is only the girl. But, she is a young woman now. Death’s dirge stutters. Long hair hangs over her shoulders. He notices her eyes, speckled with depth, gems of wilderness. He follows the lines of her face, tracing the contours of her neck to the crest of her shoulder.
He cannot take his eyes from the photo. Something begins to emerge from his heart. He has felt it before. It fell upon him as he looked on the broken body of David Robert. Pity. Yet, this time, the realisation has come sooner. Why now? He can’t understand. He cannot comprehend. Deep within, the dark, twisted half of his soul writhes with irritation. It mocks his foolishness. Its anger turns petulant. It urges him to move on, to turn from the photo. And so he does.
Solomon makes his way into the darkness of the hall, leaving the pictures behind. The murderous wretch within him is satisfied, but the strange feeling follows him. It poisons him against the thudding thrill of the coming act.
There are four doors along the hallway, two to the left, one to the right and one directly ahead. They all stand shut to him. Something pinches along the fringe of his mind, and he tries to ignore it. Even though he loathes himself for what he is to do, he must focus. There can be no error. His soul has ventured too far to return. He checks the first two bedrooms. He finds nothing. He checks the third. It is empty.
He turns to the final door at the end of the hall. He tries to swallow but there is nothing in his mouth. Nausea stirs. The thick carpet swallows his footfalls. With care, he eases the handle down and pushes the door open. His ears are alert to any protest from the hinges, but they are young and smooth in their arc. He makes no sound as he glides into the room.
Deeper than the shadow, Solomon looms in the darkness. Across from him there stands a bed, and Solomon can make out the shape of a man huddled beneath the covers. The final notes of the dirge come together. He tries to resist the wretch within, but this is more than wish to be different. It is more than a need to change. There is no hope against instinct, and he slips into the skin of murder.
The oily epidermis clings to him, and Solomon approaches like a bird of doom.
Estrada lays motionless, his hands tucked beneath his chin, clenching the covers over his shoulders, like a helpless child. His breathing is like autumn leaves.
Solomon slips his hand into his jacket and pulls out a thin paper sleeve. He splits the sleeve open, revealing a transparent tab. The square is smaller than the nail of his little finger. From the same pocket, Solomon pulls out a surgical bud and with it, he scoops up the tab. His hand trembles slightly as he balances the small tab upon the apparatus. For a moment, he watches the slight tremor unsettle his hand. He takes a few deep breaths and steadies himself.
Solomon pauses and considers his sleeping victim. He watches Estrada’s chest rise and fall for the last time. In a matter of seconds, the universe of Estrada would cease to be. All that would remain is the empty husk of flesh and bone. The drug which he is about to slip into the singer’s system will move quickly through old body. The remnants of alcohol in his blood would aid in accelerating the process. Solomon’s hand trembles again at the thought of the chemical chaos that will soon wreak havoc. A part of the shaking is borne from the urgency to witness the affair, to observe the annihilation of another existence. The other, he still cannot truly account for. Solomon places the bud before the musician’s nostrils, and waits for the tab to be caught in the vacuum of inhalation.
The tab is there. And then it isn’t.
The tab hits the walls of highly vascularised tissue and dissolves into oblivion, delivering its fatal payload through the network of veins lining Estrada’s nostril. The concentrated amphetamine makes short work of the old songwriter. The onslaught is quick. A vile cocktail of components catalyses in the blood and unleashes a blitzkrieg that eviscerates synapses and scorches proteins. Estrada rattles in the grips of the apocalyptic seizure. His body lurches and shudders. The fit lasts but a minute before Estrada’s system collapses.
Solomon’s eyes glow in the darkness as he watches the songwriter’s body flinch and shiver through the last electrical currents of life. Life flickers from existence and Estrada falls still, forever. There is no grand exclamation, no final toll of the bells. There is only the formidable presence of death as it fills the void where life once was.
The satisfaction is slight. Solomon looks over the body and waits for the thick breath of death’s consumption to dissipate. The blanket, tossed in the final throes, leaves the old man exposed. The skin is already ghostly. The lifeless carriage is sunken and boney. What human aspect there once was, has left. Twisted in the sheets, the songwriter is nothing but a husk. Driftwood in the shape of a man.
Before he is aware of it, Solomon’s feet are carrying him from the room, past the pictures on the landing and down the stairs. The stealth of infiltration is gone. In its place, there is ragged breathing between the ears and heavy footfalls against the floor. Solomon slips out the front door, and then he runs across the garden path and through the iron gate and onto the street.
The night is less suffocating. It is hollow and aloof. It takes him some time to slow his breathing. From the end of the street, a wind blows through the night, carrying a chill on its back that kisses the sweat across his brow. From above, a weeping rain begins to fall. Large, heavy drops hit the street, popping against the tar, like the orchestra of a distant artillery barrage. The rain echoes amongst the leaves. The air is cool and Solomon breathes it in. He draws the collar of his coat over his neck and turns to walk into the night. In his pocket, he can feel the tangle chords of his earphones.