Red Lights
Everyone knows of the late Margaret Odessen and her story of success and fame. Everyone knows of her strange and mysterious downfall into delirium and psychosis.
However, let me tell you, the story of Odessen’s life as revealed to the public in her autobiography, Red Lights, is full of lies. You see, I knew her before she changed. I was her best friend. I knew her before the serpent got her…
When she was sixteen years of age Margaret ran away from the horrible drunk that was her father — Frederick Odessen — who beat her every day. He often reminded Margaret that she reminded him of her mother.
Frederick Odessen was a small grotesque — looking man, often seen limping around our town. I recall him now: the sullen grey skin plastered on his face, the dark purple shadows under his eyes, those thick bloodless lips. He never appeared happy, never looked like a man who could look inside of himself either. He was one of those empty soulless people who don’t want to change.
Her mother — Clara Odessen — cheated on her father two years after Margaret’s birth. Clara left them both — never to return — for a crooked millionaire. It turned out later that her big — shot millionaire husband (who shall not be named) was sent to prison for fraud and all sorts of crimes.
In the end, her mother was left penniless, not a single dime was left in her name. So, after a time, she drank herself to death, prowling around the dark streets of Wycomes.
Like her father, Margaret’s mother couldn’t deal with the reality they found themselves thrown into. They — like so many people on Earth — wanted more from their lives — only, they didn’t know how to get it. All they wanted was magic, but all reality gave them was dust, broken dreams and misery.
I don’t expect you to sympathise with her parents. Just know they were lost souls like the rest of us stuck here in this lonesome town.
Margaret Odessen left all that behind — left us behind. All that baggage she carried with her was cut loose.
She decided to start fresh…
She met many lost souls on the road. She sang for them with her twanging voice, so they wouldn’t feel so lost and empty. In the near — empty halls, she sang for the staring ghosts, tired old crones who’d lost everything, young men who were waiting for the answers to their lives, so they’d be set on the right path… In her mind they were her fans — and there were millions of them there for her every night, cheering her on.
After Margaret finished singing for the night, she would run into the arms of young men who said they loved her and would be there forever. In the end, they all turned into her father.
It seemed like her life was stuck on repeat, forever going over the same old patterns she couldn’t recognise, or get out of. She couldn’t get out of the same loop in which her parents had lived.
For several years she tried to get record deals with various record labels, though none of them would have her. Solaris Records, BaaL Tunes — and many others, were polite in rejecting her, sending her sorries, apologies, and good lucks for the future.
At some venues, Margaret was booed off every stage she walked onto… ‘They stare at me like I’m a joke,’ she’d often cry to me over the phone, ‘But I’ll show them… I’ll show them.’
Margaret hit rock bottom and she knew it. Things were getting desperate. She knew she couldn’t go on like this forever. Still, she was more afraid of settling for a life like her mother and having a husband like her father… Was there any escape from the inevitable?
One night, as she was singing on stage, a man walked into the hall and took a seat in the front row. After taking off his top hat as if it were a cowboy’s hat, he leaned back in the chair. What struck Margaret as strange, she told me later, was how silent the hall was after he walked in. A dead silence followed this man everywhere he went, she told me.
She began another song, one of her old favorites: Tell Me, Are You Real? I remember some of the lyrics from that song she wrote:
Tell me, are you real?
Are you really here for me?
Are you really here for me
When I’m a mess, a loser, a silhouette
In a world of cardboard cutouts and faffing fakes?
Tell me, why can’t you be real?
Tell me, why can’t you be real?
Because I can’t play anymore,
Because I can’t play anymore.
After a while, Margaret noticed him staring at her with his piercing black eyes. A chilly frost encircled her, kissing her skin with its icy lips, coiling itself around her body. He didn’t smile or frown, his face remained frozen, like the face of a dead person.
Why’s he looking at me like that? She wondered as she sang her second song for the night: You Can’t Leave Me Now. I remember her singing that song:
You can’t leave me now,
You can’t leave me now
After we got so far,
So far, so
Lost in Eden’s maze of dreams.
I had never seen this man in person. However, I do remember Margaret’s vivid description of him. In addition to this, people around our little town here made hushed comments about him as well, often remarking: ‘He’s surely here for some kinda’ business, and I don’t think that business is of the lighter kind.’ At the time I wondered what they meant.
This strange man looked old, his skin was of a crumpled pale white, as if he hadn’t seen the sunlight for years. ‘He looked like he had just got up and walked out of the town’s morgue…’ Margaret once said to me, shuddering under her breath. He often wore a black top hat that covered up the thin wisps of grey hair attached to the scalp of his head. He also wore a smart — looking three — piece black suit and a black tie.
When she finished her last song for the night, he lifted his glass and smiled at her as she walked off the stage. She forced a smile back.
‘Who’s that man out there?’ Margaret asked of her friend, Charlene.
Charlene, like Margaret, was a singer hoping to become the next Burning Star. She and Charlene had known each other for years now, a closeness had grown between them… Not that you could grow close to anyone while on the road to stardom.
As she was up next to sing, Charlene peeped the stage and turned back, ‘I don’t see any man out there.’
Margaret shook her head, ‘He was starin’ at me the whole time… He was givin’ me the creeps.’
Charlene noticed the fear on Margaret’s face, how shaken she was by that strange man’s presence in the room.
‘What did he look like?’ Charmaine said, tilting her head to one side in interest.
‘Something about him was off,’ Margaret said, speaking more to herself than to Charlene, ‘I felt like — I felt like he was starin’ into me…’
Charlene laughed, ‘Looks like you got an admirer…You should feel lucky.’
Margaret forced a smile again as she watched Charlene waltz onto the stage.
Never in her life had she felt more alone. She told me that and I couldn’t help her. I couldn’t have known what was coming…
For weeks Margaret dreaded the thought of that strange man turning up again to watch her sing, staring at her with his two black moons for eyes. That crumpled pale white skin stuck to his face repulsed her, and made her feel cold inside. She dreaded her walk home alone each night to her cheap apartment, she dreaded going to sleep at night — all because she was terrified of catching him standing there, staring at her, peering into her soul.
She drifted from club to club, bar to bar, singing her songs all over our town of Melbu. No one seemed to notice her anymore, she found. No one saw her. All they did was look through her and wait for her friend Charlene to come on stage.
‘Don’t take it too hard,’ Charlene said, showing off her new set of pearly teeth as she smiled, ‘You’ll be a star one day, everyone will love you… Oh — and I forgot to tell you, I’ve just signed my first record deal. They want me to move out to Pickwood tomorrow.’
Margaret looked speechless for a few moments, saying, after clearing her throat, ‘How? How did that happen? I’m so — so happy for you.’
Charlene’s perpetual affected smile irritated Margaret. She couldn’t stop feeling jealous and a little sad because her only friend was going to leave her. ‘And why her? Why her? Why does she deserve it?’ Flashed through Margaret’s mind with venomous spite surging in her heart.
‘If he thinks you have potential, he’ll come to you…’ Charlene said, taking a trembling gulping sip of her cocktail.
‘Who? Who are you talking about?’ Margaret said, leaning forward and laying her hand on Charlene’s. Her hand felt cold, Margaret told me afterward, as if it had just come out of a freezer.
Charlene shook her head, darting her eyes about the bar, ‘I’ve told you too much already,’ and she grabbed Margaret by the shoulder, pulling her forward to whisper in her ear, ‘If he comes to you, you must run… Promise me you’ll run?’
Speechless, Margaret nodded her head.
‘Good,’ Charlene whispered to herself, wiping away a lonely tear from her soft cheek, ‘But I can’t… Now I’ve put myself in danger… I should have done — ’
Charlene swigged down the last bit of her cocktail and rose from the table, resuming her affected persona. It seemed her whole identity now became this always happy and jovial persona after she had accepted the record deal. The happy, jovial, and carefree persona of Charlene now served as the pretty veneer of something much darker below, something inside of her that was fighting to take back control.
Charlene was about to leave but Margaret grabbed her hand, saying, ‘What’s going on?’
Charlemagne, wiping away more of her tears, said: ‘I — I can’t tell you anymore. He won’t let me… I’ve got to go — goodbye.’
Alone again, Margaret sat at the bar for some time, thinking to herself.
‘If he comes you must run,’ she said, ‘don’t sign it…’
A few weeks later Charlene left town. Margaret, after many lonely nights, met a man named Rex. He treated her respectfully, and fairly — and she got fairly bored of him after a few weeks.
No, he wasn’t like all the other bums she went out with before. Rex hanged onto her, clung to her… And how was she supposed to feel about that? It felt wrong to her. So, what did she do? Margaret pushed him away, of course, she turned into an iceberg around him.
One night she blew up at him for no good reason, ‘I can’t have this,’ she shouted at him, ‘I’m leaving — I’m leaving this place for good.’
Speechless, he let her storm out of their dingy hotel room. Hearing the clicks and clacks of her heels down the path, he thought to himself she’ll come back, she always comes back. Indeed, she often came back, not knowing why.
Margaret strolled for a while down the dark empty streets, with tears streaming down her cheeks. ‘What am I doing with my life?’ She wondered, ‘Where do I go?’
‘You look lost…’
She bolted around on her heel — it was him.
Gasping, holding her hand to her mouth, she backed away as he walked out of the darkness under a flickering red light. The pale skin of his face made her feel nauseous, those jet — black eyes of his petrified her to the bone.
‘I — I remember you,’ she said, her body trembling all over, ‘you… Were watching me.’
The strange man smiled and bowed before her.
‘Yes, I found you. I couldn’t help but admire you up there… Alone. You have the voice of an angel, has anyone told you that? It brings back memories.’
A silence passed between them.
‘What do you want from me?’
The strange man laughed an old smoker’s kind of laugh — it sounded hoarse and sickly. He maintained that creepy grin, his eyes focused on her as some predator would on its prey.
‘There’s nothing I want from you, my dear… It is I who want to give you something.’
Margaret felt the coolness creeping up her spine again, an icy hand grabbing the back of her neck. All her instincts told her — screamed at her — to run away from this man… Yet, she was curious, her interest was piqued by this strange man. ‘He flattered me, no man had ever told me that before,’ Margaret told me, ‘Despite his strange quirks, something in me was drawn to him from the moment he spoke.’
‘Yeah… And what could you give me?’ Margaret said.
The strange man crept closer to her, unsmiling now. She winced when he gently laid his hand upon hers.
‘I can give you the world. I can make all your dreams come true.’ He said, staring into her eyes.
She smiled at the intoxication with which his words erupted in her mind. She imagined of her dreams coming true — no poverty, no suffering, only fame, notoriety — everything she wanted… But —
‘How? Why should I believe anything you say? I don’t even know who you are…’
The strange man released her hands and tilted his head as he continued smiling at her.
‘I’ve been named many things in my time, but you may call me Belphe… As to how — well I’ll just have to show you. Now you know my name, I’ll only make this offer to you one time: take my hand and make all your dreams come true, or stay here and rot in the nothingness of this town… It’s a simple choice. What will it be, Margaret?’
Belphe held out his hand to her and awaited an answer from her. She stood speechless under the flickering lamplight. There must be a catch, she thought to herself, there’s always a catch.
‘What’s the price? There must be a price…’ she said, noticing a twitch flutter through his eyes.
‘Ah yes, for everything this world has to offer fame, money, power, and glory, I only ask for your soul in return.’
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How original, Margaret thought. She thought hard, feeling as though she was standing on the top of a cliff and about to fall into a dark chasm below.
‘All I’ve wanted is to be a success, for people to know my name… To love me for who I am. And you’re saying I must trade my soul for that?’
Belphe chuckled, ‘Dear child, the only way to become a star in this world is to sell your soul to me. I am the one who rules the world. I let my stars — my fallen angels — shine the brightest and best.’
The coldness crept around her heart again, sending a shiver through her body. She thought about her life: all the misery and toil she had experienced, with no modicum of success, no one even noticing her as she went up on stage to sing… And now this strange man is offering me all I’ve dreamed about since I was a child… Now I can be somebody. What am I to do but sell my soul?
‘It can’t be true… I don’t trust you.’
Belthe opened up his dark coat and took out a slightly rusted knife, ‘I’m offering you all you’ve ever dreamed of since you were seven years old… All you have to do is believe in me. I promise you this isn’t make — believe. Now, do you accept my deal with you: power, money, fame, and glory for your eternal soul?’
Margaret smiled, nodding her head with tears in her eyes, ‘Yes, yes… Take my soul, take it!’
Belthe nodded his pale skeletal head, ‘Very well, the deal is sealed.’
After he said this, he slit his hand and Margaret’s, then he clasped his bloody hand into hers.
Margaret looked up into the sky and saw a shock of lightning strike through the sky, making a loud boom. When she looked down, she noticed Belthe was gone.
As it started raining, she saw the headlights of a car approaching from behind. When she peered behind, she saw a man getting out of the car rushing to meet her.
‘Hell — hello there Margaret, I’ve been looking about everywhere for you… I’m here to offer you a record deal, your friend hmm — Charlene — told me about you. I think this is your time — it’s your time to become a star!’
Margaret almost fainted after she heard this… She couldn’t believe it.
It was too good to be true…
Over the next year, Margaret’s life changed dramatically, she began living the dream. I saw her on TV receiving awards of all kinds, Grammys, and all sorts. She made obscene amounts of money. Everyone loved her, they swooned over her. She was soon proclaimed the most powerful woman in the music industry. It was as though her past life had been erased and now, she was finally starting to live her life.
I wrote many letters to her and tried to call her up, but she never wrote or called back. Indeed, caught up in the dream, I thought she forgot about me… That was until several letters from her popped through my letterbox and floated to the floor.
The first letter, dated 15th August 19 —
‘Dear — , I hope you can forgive me for not writing to you sooner. I’ve been so very busy, as I’m sure you can imagine. The world up here is different, everything moves so much faster… Everyone is asking for me, they want me and whatever I want to be. Sorry D — , all this life does up here is get you to talk about yourself, it gets so solipsistic… Tell me, D — , how are you? Can I help you with anything? As I’ve got more money than I can count and I don’t want any more houses or nice cars, you can have anything you want from me, my dear friend.
Tell me something about yourself, what’s going on in your life, so I can stop obsessing about my life all the time. I’m not joking, I assure you, or being ironic…’
At first, I didn’t know what to think of this odd letter from Margaret. Her handwriting was as beautiful as ever, with its curls and flourishes, the precise dotted eyes, and full stops. Yet, I noticed that some words, even whole sentences had been scribbled out to the point of tearing the piece of paper it was written on.
The other letter she sent was even stranger than the first, dated 16th August 19 —
‘Dear D — , I can’t face them anymore. In all the papers they say I look better than ever, never looked happier, more stylish, or more full of life. Please tell me why I can’t feel any of what they’re saying. Deep down something is festering within me. You’re probably cursing me right now, telling me I should be happy because ‘I’ve got everything I ever wanted…’ and that’s true, and I should be happy, appreciative… But, let me tell you, my dear D — , I’m not happy. There are so many things I want to tell you but I can’t, (they ‘review’ my letters), though I’m going to take the liberty of alluding to certain things… (I’ll try to get this letter sent out in secret.) They have cameras monitoring me in every room… Maybe I’m exaggerating a little, but I told them I wouldn’t sing (live on the radio) one the songs written for me after a certain tragedy in our country. They forced me to do it, D — , it’s like they wanted to make a huge joke about the whole thing… I can’t say anymore, otherwise I’ll pay like I’m paying right now.
I can’t leave my home right now, D — , I can’t them when all their faces look like his face… This is a part of the song I’m writing right now, but they won’t let me sing it without ‘revisions’ Tell me what you think of these lines:
All around me, I see dead souls,
Those lost-looking gazes in their milk — white eyes.
I sing for those who’ve risen up from their holes
In graveyards, back for more of life’s sweet lies.
Searching for something they’ve lost, never had.’
It seemed behind the many closed doors of her mostly empty mansions, she was feeling an anxiety swell inside of her. No drugs, alcohol — nothing could cure this horrible sense of foreboding growing inside of her.
Over five months we sent fifty letters to each other. However, after the first two letters, she only wrote about the most mundane things that had been happening in her life. I began suspecting someone — perhaps they had designed some sort of chatbot — to mimic her writing style, all the while failing to imitate her personality on paper.
Either she had completely changed her personality or they, — whoever they were — had stopped her from communicating with me. Why would they do that?
As with most things in life, I never got any answers.
As her letters had been stripped of their soul, I paid no attention to them, gleaned nothing from them. So, all I had to go from then on was the lies about her circulating and curdling in the media.
Her young husband, Mr. Harry Bixby — the first son of some billionaire in the Middle East — couldn’t have lessened Margaret’s anxieties at all. She kept telling him over and over again about a deal she made with a strange — looking man called Belthe.
‘I need to contact him,’ Margaret said, pouring whisky into a tall glass, ‘You must know someone who can contact him.’
Mr. Bixby, trying to wrench the bottle of whisky out of her hand, said, ‘I don’t know of anyone by that name. Let me take this, you have meetings tomorrow and I don’t want you staggering around shrieking about the devil like last time… It’s like I — I’m losing you. Where’s the woman I married? I don’t see her anymore.’
Margaret scowled at her husband, screaming, ‘I hate you… Get out! Get out! Get out!’
Mr. Bixby sighed and leaped up from the coach. Before leaving the room, he turned back and said, ‘You’re going to kill yourself if you keep going like this…’
She laid back on the couch, lighting a cigarette and popping it into her mouth, muttering with a refreshing calmness, ‘Would that be so bad?’
‘Maybe for you, it wouldn’t be so bad… But what about your fans, the people of the world who worship the great Margaret Odessen?’
She made a half smile as she glanced at Mr. Bixby, ‘Close the door on the way out, will you?’
Mr. Bixy didn’t come back for a while. Margaret assumed he was off cheating on her with someone else — and that thought didn’t seem to bother her at all. She didn’t care. She could do what she liked as well because she was a star, and everybody wanted her.
She told all the security of the mansion to leave and told everyone who worked in the mansion to leave her alone.
When she was finally left alone, she picked out a sharp knife from one of her drawers. She played with the knife for a while and then she screamed out Belthe’s name before slitting her hand.
A lightning strike hit the large oak tree in the garden of her mansion, setting it aflame. Out of the hellfire of burning trees in the garden there emerged the outline of a dark figure. It was him…
‘Why have you summoned me?’ Belthe said.
He walked into the kitchen and poured himself a glass of whisky. In the next moment he sat down on a leather couch, staring at her with his black moon eyes.
‘I’ve summoned you because I’m not happy… I thought I’d be happy with this life — it’s — it’s all I dreamed about and now-’
‘And now you want things to go back to the way they were?’
Margaret nodded, ‘I want to feel happy. I want to be satisfied with — with all of this.’
Belthe laughed, revealing a set of black rotting teeth hanging in his mouth, ‘Happiness is an elusive concept, my child, but I never promised you happiness or satisfaction… There is, however, one thing you could do to cut away at the rot making you unhappy.’
Margaret eyes widened to take all this in, noticing Belthe was feeling pleasure at her sense of desperation and unhappiness, ‘Please, tell me what I have to do?’
Belthe grinned, ‘It’s quite simple: you have to murder your old self.’
Margaret laughed, ‘Murder my old self? And how could I do that?’
She noticed he was serious, and that unsmiling grimace of his became unnerving.
He held up one of his hands, ‘Here… This is your old self. You must kill her and bury her somewhere nobody will find.’
Another lightning crack revealed, in the corner of the room, what appeared to be a doppelgänger of Margaret’s. Her so — called old self was cowering on the floor, whimpering away like some innocent child.
Belthe stood up from the couch and bowed, ‘Make sure you do it before your lovely husband comes back from his stay at Chazerins villa.’
A bolt of lightning struck the skies again and Belthe was gone.
The fires of the oak tree died out as it began to rain.
She clenched the knife in her hands, that knife still dripping with her blood. A surge of anger swelled inside of her as she saw her old self sobbing there on the floor. My old self was weak and stupid — it should be murdered and buried.
Margaret ran over to her old self and grabbed her by the hair. With the knife in her hands, she drew it to her old self’s neck and hesitated for a moment.
‘Please, please don’t kill me,’ her old self cried, ‘Please spare me, please I’ll do anything. Let me live!’
An unspeakable rage swelled within Margaret at hearing her old self’s cries for mercy, to be spared.
‘DO IT!’ a deep voice shouted inside her head, ‘DO IT!’
She slit her old self’s throat and stood there watching her old self gargle and choke on her blood on the floor.
A deep sense of relief came over Margaret after she had murdered her old self. A catharsis came over me, she thought to herself. She put on some music and smiled as she danced around the room. I can finally get back to living my life, she thought to herself.
She cleaned up the house and buried the body of her old self in the mansion’s garden, not too far from the burned-down oak tree.
For several years her life went back to normal.
Then Mr. Bixby divorced her. Then all sorts of rumors spread online about her participating in all sorts of dark occult matters, which ruined her reputation and status. No one wanted her anymore, no one bought her records or invited her to any events. Her biggest fears were staring right at her in the face again: not being noticed, not being lovable, successful, rich, and powerful — she was beginning to fade away into nothingness.
She drew blood from her hand again and summoned Belthe back again. He appeared before her.
‘You promised me the world and now I’ve got nothing.’ She said.
He laughed in a way that irritated Margaret, ‘I told you that you would have the world yes, but I never promised that you’d have it forever for as long as you live. .’
‘But I don’t want to let it go, I’m not ready to fade away yet.’ She cried.
‘No one is ever ready to give it away, but you must. That’s the natural order of things. For the new stars to rise, the old ones must die — that’s the natural order of things.’
The self — satisfied expression on his face angered her to the point of rage. She felt humiliated and cheated by this demon.
‘I understand…’ Margaret said, taking out a gun from her purse and pointing it at Belthe, ‘I should have said no to you.’
She shot Belthe in the head and he slumped to the floor. After dropping the gun, she ran out of her mansion and drove off in one of her fast cars.
Margaret raced around on the highway in the dead of night in her car. As she had been drinking heavily before going out to drive, she crashed and tipped her car over near the edge of a cliff.
Awakening upside down, all cut and bruised, she crawled out of the wrecked car. She limped around for some time along the highways and found a hotel called the Elysian Hotel.
‘Are you Magaret Odessen?’ the hotel receptionist said, looking Margaret up and down in disbelief.
‘Yes… Now please give me a room to stay in.’
The receptionist slid the key card across the desk to Margaret, saying, ‘What happened to you?’
Margaret shook her head, wiping back her messed up hair and wiping dry her smudged makeup, ‘I made the wrong choice and now I’m paying for it.’
When she opened the door to her room, she noticed that someone had already let themselves in. Creeping along the hall, she could hear sounds coming from the bedroom.
‘Who’s there?’ she said, opening the door into the bedroom.
Margaret gasped and fell to the floor, staring at them in horror. The look of utter hopelessness swept over her face.
Under the red lights, the three of them stared at her, unsmiling. Two strange — looking women with black eyes, had their arms wrapped around Belthe. He sat there silent, smiling away and licking his lips.
‘You thought you could kill me?’ Belthe said and the strange — looking women at his sides burst out laughing. Belthe convulsed with laughter, and as he did so, he displayed his rotten black teeth.
Margaret screamed for help but nobody came to help her, nobody could help her now…
