A "Titanic" Conspiracy

7 Harold and Kyle

Harold had spent the last hour or more, while the sun finally nested behind the horizon, observing the curious stack of documents. His senses were pulled fragmentarily, this way and that beyond his control, compounding from the mess of information that made up the whole of his mind. Evidently, Titanic's conspiracy had been perfectly discreet, and hence the plotter would have had experience covering up their crimes. It was that, or nothing at all, given an almost completely nonexistent trail of evidence.

All of his thought was torn one recollection and then another. Memories enveloped him from his countless history studies. Memory of a specific king Cnut raced to the forefront of his mind. The king had commanded the incoming tide in Southampton to stop and not wet his robes. The tide was not a willing listener. This was a pure and simple message to his courtiers to worship God rather than himself. He was named king of England in 1016. He boasted a peaceful reign, though he himself was an invader to the land.

Harold's thoughts seemed to sway toward remembrance of Southampton. That was where the Mayflower had departed from, bringing the first pilgrims to America in 1620. There had been a civil war in 1642 there in England; When a garrison of royalist advanced on Southampton, but we're prevented from taking the town. He also recalled king Henry the fifths famous warship HMS Grace Dieu having been built there.

He looked at an aged pocket watch in his right coat pocket. The hour was reading six thirty, and the sun had fully set. London had now become quaint, with only small traces that society had existed at all mere hours before.

Somewhere a prostitute had been beaten down by her pimp resulting from his gambling debt, a child abducted from a home just houses away from where Harold now dwelt in deep contemplation. And then, more frightening than the rest, was Kyle.
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Kyle had circled a street near the Big Ben Clocktower. He had spent the last ten to fifteen minutes looking for escape routes for either himself, or poor Benjamin whom he would soon be meeting.

Perhaps had Kyle not been drinking the job would have gone as usual. After a couple glasses of cheap booze Kyle's mind was not in a normal state to say the least. All the same, when the lights to Ben's room on the second floor apartment went out, Kyle put his game face on as best he could.

He parked his car a block away and shambled out of it. The booze had hit him hard. Harder than he thought, he considered. Seizing a small steel pipe and a small bottle, both of which he hid away in his deep pockets; He made his way towards Benjamin's place.

He couldn't walk straight. Had a cop been present, Kyle would find himself having to answer for the pipe, and the small bottle marked chloroform. It turned out that there was no cops immediately nearby. Had there been, Benjamin might still be alive, and the nightmare that was about to ensue would not have unfurled.

He climbed the stone steps to a red door, too red. It wasn't locked. He entered into the dark hall, too dark. His footfalls were heavier than he would have liked upon the wooden uncarpeted floor. They sounded like a monster stalking the darkened lonely hallways, and that's exactly what it was.

It seemed to Kyle that time elapsed. Had he blacked out? He didn't know how he had gotten inside Benjamin's room. The event was completely gone from his mind. His heart was racing and his head hurt.

That's right, he thought; memories of the event flooding him. Benjamin had struggled, he clocked Kyle good with a pot off the stove. The chloroform didn't get its chance to take effect before he got free of Kyle's grasp.

The pipe however, did work. Kyle couldn't recall how many times he hit Ben. He only knew that his victim was semi-conscious when he lost his mind. Maybe it was the blow from the pan, or that Kyle had somehow cut himself during the struggle; but Kyle lost every sense of himself.

He gasped at the state of poor old Ben flopped on his side on the floor near his dresser. How could he have done that to the man, someone he didn't even know? His stomach turned, almost ejecting the booze.

He remembered the way Ben couldn't call out very loud with his destroyed face, and heavily fractured jaw. He remembered the way his eyes fluttered when Kyle took a kitchen knife and started to cut. He remembered the process took about an hour, most of which time Ben had been lucid in the most remote way; helpless, broken, bleeding out, but lucid.

What was left of him was hardly a person. His face was so destroyed that he looked more like a raisin. His chest was opened up wide like a turkey that had been picked clean. His hands and one foot were cut off and thrown in the sink. Ben had to listen to Kyle illustrate the process, as he went to work cutting off parts of him.

Kyle did throw up. He couldn't stop hurling until all of the contents of food and booze was in a puddle on the floor, and he had spent a good minute dry heaving. It caused his head to hurt more.

He realized he was leaning on the dresser which was covered by several pictures. He looked them over. They consisted of a harbor in Belfast. There was one of the construction process of the Titanic. In fact, they all were pictures of Titanic during some point of its being built, and Ben was in each one.

What a coincidence, he thought. Titanic, that was what that investigator was looking... wait. Was it possible that the investigator was looking into Kyle's activity. Kyle had even confessed to killing people. Kyle panicked.

Harold had now become a possible loose end. Kyle would have to visit him tonight, and he knew just where to find him.