Run & Catch (Chapter 4)

Written by The Curator
Based on an idea by Juliet Landau & Christos Gage
Artwork and Covers by Steve Morris

“Because you listen.”
Drusilla

It began with the Asylum tapes. The ones from LA.

A corrupted frame. A voice like a broken music box. And her dress – white silk, dragging through corridors, stitched with symbols that bled through the footage. They called the patient “Jane Doe,” but I knew her as Drusilla.

Two hours later, the Asylum burned.

A club burned to the ground in London last night.

I watched the flames from a pub car park off the M25. Didn’t film. Couldn’t. Not with her eyes still in my lens.

She’d escaped the church hours before. Lit five candles mid-mass, sang a lullaby, broke six pews with her wail.

She was spiralling again.

I changed.

Stopped chasing myth.

Started chronicling her madness.

I read everything.

Articles. Case studies. Lore.

Built a database.

Colour-coded it by theme – blood, flame, velvet, song. Created timelines. Threaded maps with red string. My flat became a shrine to madness.

Here’s what I found:

The Whirlwind – Spike. Darla. Angelus. Her. She was the last. The purest. The echo.

Wolfram and Hart Massacre (2001) – twenty-three dead. Two survivors. The scorched corridor bore her name in lipstick.

Archaeus – called his sired. She refused. “My song doesn’t follow your score,” she allegedly said.

Order of Aurelius – Drusilla’s theological root: visions framed as worship, madness as scripture.

I added her quotes.

Her movement patterns.

Her victims.

Her performances.

Then I added me.

Because she saw me now.

It started with glances.

Into cameras. Into windows.

Once, I found a rose beneath a Tesco CCTV camera.

It smelled like wine and rust.

The petals whispered my name when I touched them.

She began performing.

Not for crowds.

For me.

Bath.

Hastings.

Cardiff.

Graveyards. Parking lots. Underground platforms.

She’d sing and twirl, leave symbols behind. She bit into a mannequin in a butcher’s shop and arranged ham to resemble my initials.

She wrote “F.M.” on a chapel wall in syrup.

She waited outside a hotel I once stayed in, then disappeared into the woods behind it.

In York, she followed a choir procession, humming a melody out of sync. Later, three choir girls went missing. One was found with a spiral etched into her back.

I filmed it all.

She let me.

Her madness crescendoed.

She danced on a rooftop in Manchester, barefoot in hail.

She bled into a fountain in Bristol and drank her non-reflection.

She traced her name into the fogged glass of my train window without boarding.

I asked once: “Why me?”

She whispered: “Because you listen.”

Then came Croydon.

A warehouse. A silence thicker than prayer.

Slayers arrived.

I didn’t know their names then – but I recognized their posture. Grief. Action. Atonement.

They carried Marianne’s body in a makeshift cot – pallet wood, white sheets. Her neck was bruised. Her hands were folded. Her face was covered.

They took her to Faith.

That’s all I know.

That’s all anyone knows.

I followed.

I didn’t film.

Some stories deserve silence.