Other formats

    Adobe Portable Document Format file (facsimile images)   TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

Salient: An Organ of Student Opinion At Victoria University College, Wellington, N. Z. Vol. 24, No. 4. 1961

Murder Shall be Done — The Easterfield Incident

page 13

Murder Shall be Done

The Easterfield Incident

Ever since I was a kid. I had always felt an urge to kill. Killing was pleasurable. To arrest life, to put an end to any form of life, always gave me a strange, exciting pleasure. I guess a psychologist would call it a sublimation of the sexual impulses or something. Anyway, there had always been this irresistible urge to destroy life. The only occasion, perhaps, when I had felt any remorse about seeing anything killed was the day when I was celebrating my sixth birthday—when I saw a soldier put a bullet through the head of my dog. Even then, I had felt a vague, uneasy sense of pleasure. Then there was the time they brought my father home—brutally mutilated. almost beyond recognition. He was a Jew, and therefore had no right to live. Another thing was the mass-burials . . . the stench from the rotting bodies. Human bodies. All this now is merely a vague picture; a picture which those early experiences had imprinted on my memory—as the white hot blast of an atomic bomb would burn the flower-patterns of women's clothing on to the victims skin, so did the right of destruction make an indelible mark on my soul.

This nightmare, this man-made hell, is now forty years back. But I tell you this because otherwise you would never understand why I wanted to Kill, why I had committed that gory murder at Easterfield.

I met Clara when I was doing my science degree. We were both university students, then. Clara was also doing science. And so it had to be Easterfield. We were both strangers and at that time I still considered myself to be a newcomer. (Clara had arrived in New Zealand two months before me). Anyway, we were both lonely. And so it all started. Since then, my philosophy of romantic love has changed somewhat. My private definition for love is "that state of delusion in life when you let your imagination run wild, so that you believe in a thing called 'perfection' ..." This has nothing to do with the murder, however. We were married five years ago. It was the usual story—the kind of story you read in newspapers only I discovered that she had been unfaithful. Then I had my revenge by being unfaithful in my turn. Worse, she was a Jew-hater. And so the sordid affair was perpetuated. My one attempt at humanity had failed. That was how I felt a return of this frightening urge to Kill.

It was the sight of the Easterfield lift which gave me the idea. At first, I had thought of simply pushing a knife in between her ribs—blade horizontal, a gentle upward thrust, as they say in the books. But that plan was abandoned. Too bloody. She might scream. For Clara had such a shrill voice. But the final version of my Plan gradually took shape. Kill her while the lift was going Up . . . no . . . Down ... for that would give me more time. Then I discovered that the lift was not really sound-proof. It would have to be Down, I thought, for the elevator might not be powerful enough to do the job when going Up. I took on a cleaner's job. So that gave me better access to the elevator controls. Stage One was all wired-up. I spent several more months rehearsing ... I rode the lift many times, checking and rechecking. I rode it in a crowd. I rode it empty—as empty as my heart which now knew neither love nor hate. I acknowledged only one emotion—the urge to Kill.

I studied my graph carefully. No one is ever around at 6.20 p.m., I mused. A frequency-distribution curve had been plotted—and 6.20 p.m. seemed to be the time when the chances of people wanting to ride the lift were minimal. Yes, 6.20 p.m. would be the time. I shivered. Kill! Kill! Kill!

Clara stood by my side, silent.. Then she spoke: "Airotciv, who is it you want me to meet?" Kept silent. What was there to say? She must have sensed that something was wrong, for she shivered nervously.

"Are you cold, dear?" Dear! Fool. That was a slip. It was a long time since I had spoken to her so gently. Dear! I myself was trembling now. It was cold, waiting. Cold. Cold as the stillness in my heart; as cold as death; a coldness which made the blood in my head pulsate hotter. A blood hot with excitement. The blood of an animal ready to Kill. No. The red arrow glowered in the dark shadows. I had removed the bulb next to the elevator. It was dark. Dark! Dark as death. For tonight was Friday the 13th, January, 1961! The red glow of the arrow seemed to scream a warning at us. Stop! Stop! Nerves taut. Waiting. My feet were cold, now—a dead man's feet; the feet of a man who, if his act were revealed, would be sentenced to be hanged by the neck until he was dead. But was I not dead? I had questioned myself. I had died that day they took my mother and sisters away to the gas chambers. My feet. I looked downwards. Remembered the lift-well. It was really surprising just how much hollow space there is down there. Four feet deep. The silence became almost intolerable. Now, the steel doors opened. Cold steel. A deathly coldness. I hoped fervently that the time-switches would work. 6.19 p.m.! A black hole now awaited us. A hungry hole. Oblivion, another world.

"The light's not working." Those were Clara's last words. Now! I pushed her in roughly, and pressed the Up button. The Up button really meant Down! I had rewired the electrical system, so that the steel doors opened when the cage was not there. Clara's muffled struggles in the lift-well below could just be heard. Down! Down to hell. The doors began closing. The woman's fate was sealed. My lover's screams were drowned by the crash of steel-doors and rumbling machinery. I could hear the cage descending faster and faster. Twenty-four tons of it. The time-switch should now be working. The lift must descend "Non-Stop." From six floors above, twenty-tons of steel, gathering speed as each second passed by, crashed downwards. And She was inside the well, underneath the cage! An anguished howl. A crucified scream savagely shattered the stillness of the night. A Trickle of Blood Seeped out from Underneath the Steel-Doors. Plan had succeeded. Small globules of cold perspiration stood on my forehead. Filled with disgust for myself. Poor Clara. Poor Clara! I had recovered humanity—at a price. Now, I will surrender myself to the police. . . .