by Ben Cheetham
“Really? What’s wrong with it?”
“Don’t you read the papers? A girl went missing from around here just the other week.”
“Oh yeah, I heard about that. But I thought she was supposed to have killed herself.”
“Well you thought fucking wrong,” snapped Julian. Seeing the hurt look come back into Nikki’s face, he raised a conciliatory hand. “Sorry, sorry, it’s just that I know the girl. She’s a friend.”
Nikki smiled sympathetically. “Don’t worry about it. No wonder you’re so down.” She reached across the table and gave Julian’s hand a squeeze. “Poor baby.”
At this show of compassion from a stranger, Julian felt tears rising up his throat. He swallowed them back down with the last of his drink. “She’s not the only one who’s gone missing either. There’ve been other girls. Three for sure. Maybe more.”
Nikki leaned closer, intrigued. “So what do you think’s happening? Do you think someone’s abducting them?”
“I don’t know, maybe.” Even drunk as he was, Julian wasn’t about to get into all of that, not there, not with a stranger.
“Well what do the police think?”
Julian’s lips curled into a sneer. “I don’t think they think at all.” He removed his hand from under Nikki’s. “Look, all I know is a girl like you shouldn’t hang around here. You should move on as fast as you can.”
“Well I’m not going to be moving on anywhere tonight. I don’t have a car.”
“I do. I’ll give you a lift anywhere you want to go.”
“Thanks for the offer, but I don’t think you’re in any condition to be driving.” A mischievous glint came into Nikki’s eyes. “Besides, how do I know it’s not you doing the abducting? How do I know you won’t take me out into the woods and have your wicked way with me?”
“Because I was only four or five years old when the first girl went missing. And anyway, you’re not really my type.”
“Oh, so what is your type?” When Julian shrugged, squinting at him as if trying to weigh him up, Nikki added, “I’ll bet you like blondes. Cute little things with dimples and good-girl smiles. I’m right, aren’t I?” Julian made no reply, but his eyes dropped away from hers. “Ah, he’s gone all shy,” she teased.
“You want a lift or what?” Julian asked a touch brusquely.
“Tell you what, let’s have another drink, and I’ll think about it.” Nikki stood. “What you drinking?”
“Coke.”
“Vodka and Coke.”
“Just Coke.”
When Nikki returned with the drinks, she said, “So tell me about yourself.”
“There’s nothing much to tell. I grew up around here, and nothing much happens around here.”
“Except all those girls going missing.”
“Except that.” Julian swallowed half his drink in one, spilling dark trickles out of the corners of his mouth. “What about you?”
“I guess I’m trying to work out what I want to do with my life.”
“Where you from?”
“All over. My parents were travellers, not Gypsies, but Hippy types.”
“You’re lucky. Growing up in a town like this, it makes you small. Small and afraid.”
“Of what?”
Julian jerked his chin at the window. “Of the world out there – the big, bad world.”
“From what you say, sounds like there’s more to be afraid of around here than out there.”
Julian’s mouth turned up in a sour smile. Nikki threw back her drink, and stood. “Where you going?” asked Julian.
“You convinced me, I’m getting the fuck out of this town. Come on, drink up and let’s go.”
Julian finished his drink. As he pushed back his chair, he felt a strange sensation, like his feet were sinking into the floor. He staggered and Nikki hooked her arm through his, steadying him. “I’ll be alright,” he assured her. “I just need some air.”
Nikki guided Julian through the crowded bar. Something occurred to him. “Haven’t you got any bags?” he asked.
“I travel light.”
As they made their way to Julian’s car, he sucked in lungfuls of the evening air, but rather than clearing his head, it made him even groggier. His legs felt loose and wobbly, barely able to support him. There was a bitter taste in the back of his throat. “Fuck,” he slurred, vainly trying to insert his key in the lock. “I must be drunker than I thought.”
Nikki took the key off Julian and opened the door. He collapsed into the driver’s seat. “So whe…where do you wa…wa…” He struggled to shape the words, as if his tongue and brain were out of synch.
“Where do you want to go, Julian?” Nikki’s voice was different, neither hostile nor friendly, it had a flat, uninterested tone.
Julian rolled his head to look at her. Through the fog of his mind a thought reached him. “Ho…how do you kn…know my na…na…”
Nikki finished Julian’s question for him. “Name.”
He nodded so slightly it was barely perceptible.
“You must’ve told me.”
No I didn’t, thought Julian. But the words wouldn’t form in sound. Something was happening to Nikki, something that caused his mouth to hang open and a guttural sound to tremble in his throat. She was inflating, ballooning to a giant size – either that or the car was shrinking to the proportions of a dollhouse. She leant over him, big enough to crush him. Her lips opened and closed, but all that came through them was a mushy, incomprehensible drawl. Now her facial features were blurring at the edges, losing their shape – or rather, taking on a new shape. And then she was no longer Nikki, she was Mia – Mia as she’d looked the last time he’d seen her. And they were no longer in the car, they were in Mia’s bedroom, lying on her bed. “Kiss me,” she said, moving closer.
“No.” Julian tried to hold her off, but his arms were as weak as a baby’s. Her lips touched his, and, as they did so, the bed floated to the ceiling and began to spin around. The room flashed by, colours blurred towards white. Faster, faster, whirling, faster, faster, faster, like a fairground waltzer. A black blur appeared within the white blur, seeping outward like ink on blotting-paper. And then the last of the light was gone, and Julian was gone too.
Chapter 21
Julian’s eyelids seemed to be glued together. Slowly, painfully, he forced them open, and found himself looking blurrily at his own naked image in a mirrored ceiling. He was lying on a bed – not Mia’s bed, but a vast double bed. His legs were covered by a white sheet patterned with intense red flowers, some small, others large. For an instant he wondered if he was still hallucinating, then he felt the pain in his ankle, and knew he wasn’t. He blinked and his vision cleared. His breath came in a gasp. The flowers weren’t flowers at all, they were stains. And they weren’t only on the sheets, they were on him too, streaking his stomach, chest and face, discolouring his hands. He tried to sit up, but his arms collapsed under him as if they were broken. Panting like a panicked child, he brought his hands up in front of his eyes. Blood! The word screamed in his mind. He ran his hands over his head and body, checking for injuries. There were no new ones, and the bandage was still on his ankle. If the blood wasn’t his, whose was it? A face rose into his mind. A name hissed between his teeth. “Nikki.”
Once more, Julian attempted to sit up, and this time he managed it. He saw his reflection again in a mirror at the end of the bed. It was a big mirror that covered almost the entire wall. Its reflection seemed slightly off, stretching his features a fraction, making him look thinner, older. Head reeling, blood throbbing in his temples, he scanned the room. It was large and windowless with a plush wine-red carpet that wouldn’t show bloodstains. There was no furniture other than the bed. His clothes were nowhere to be seen. “What the fuck’s going on?” he said to himself, his voice shaking so much it was barely audible. The bitter taste was still in his throat, and it occurred to him that maybe Nikki had spiked his drink. Recalling suddenly how she’d known his name alt
hough he hadn’t told her it, his suspicion turned into certainty. But why, he wondered, would she do such a thing? He could think of only one reason – Mr X. Yes, that had to be it. Mr X had had him drugged and brought to…to wherever this place was.
But that still left the question of the blood. Whose was it? Whose could it be? Surely not Nikki’s if she was in on whatever was going on. Like a ghost, another face materialised from the blackness at the back of his skull – a pale, intense face with eyes like blue porcelain. A churning ball of nausea pushed up his throat. He choked on it. Choked out the name, “Mia.” He rocked forward, hugging himself, groaning, “Oh God, oh God...”
Frantically, Julian wracked his brain for some clue as to what’d happened after he passed out. He stared at the blood, visions of rape and murder flooding his mind. He shook his head so hard his whole body trembled. “No fucking way. Nothing could make you do that to her.” As if trying to force himself to believe what he said, his voice grew loud, “You fucking hear me? Nothing!”
Something else occurred to him. Another horrifying possibility. Even if he was right, that didn’t mean the blood wasn’t Mia’s. Maybe someone else had hurt her and made it look like it was him. Maybe this whole thing was a set up job. As this thought flashed through his brain, his ears caught a sound. For a long moment, he sat anchored to the end of the bed, paralysed by fear. Then, hardly breathing, he approached the mirror and pressed his ear to it. The sound was faint, but it was there. Someone in the next room was crying – a girl.
Strangely, the heart-wrenching sound lent Julian new strength and hope. There was one door to the room. It wasn’t locked. He poked his head into a gloomy hallway. To his right was a curtained window. The crying came from away to his left, louder now, somehow familiar. Feeling utterly vulnerable in his nakedness, he followed the sound to a door, the thick carpet making his footfalls soundless. Struggling to keep his emotions and his breathing under control, he balled one hand into a fist and reached for the door handle with the other. The sound jumped out at him as he opened the door.
The first thing Julian saw was the two-way mirror, overlooking the room he’d just left. Light filtered through it washed-out of colour. A video-camera on a tripod pointed at it. The only other light in the room came from a television against the far wall. Like a magnet, its flickering screen drew his gaze. It showed the same scene that could be seen through the mirror, except there were two figures sat on the bed. One of them was a girl, maybe fifteen-years old, slim, blonde, pretty, wearing just a hint of makeup and a knee-length dress. Her thin shoulders were scrunched forward, her hands were clasped between her knees. She rocked ever so slightly. Tears fell from her face, staining her dress. The other figure was a man, early thirties, white, dark-haired, medium build, dressed in a shirt and suit trousers. He had one arm around the girl, like a father trying to comfort his daughter. But there was nothing fatherly about the way he stroked his hand up and down her arm. He spoke into her ear, his voice too low to be heard. But Julian didn’t need to hear to know what was being uttered, the sickeningly sensuous look in the man’s eyes said it all. The girl shuddered as he kissed her cheek, but didn’t try to move out of his embrace. She allowed him to lay her back onto the bed, allowed him to kiss her neck. At first his kisses were gentle and measured, but gradually they became harder and faster. In a sudden explosion of movement, he was all over her, tearing at her dress and underwear, yanking her thighs apart to make room for himself between them, grunting apishly as he ground his hips against her. The girl closed her eyes and lay limp as a new corpse. Julian wanted to close his eyes too, but couldn’t. They were riveted to the picture as if by force. The man let out a moan that seemed to tremble between pleasure and pain, before collapsing twitching onto the girl. At the same instant, Julian bent and vomited violently.
He recognised both the figures on the screen – the girl was Mia’s mother, the man was his father. And with recognition came understanding. He understood the insistent subconscious whisper that’d warned him against giving in to Mia’s advances, he understood the nameless, profound connection they’d felt. They shared a bond that nothing could break, except death. She was his sister. Now that he thought about it, it was as obvious as black clouds in a blue sky, or blood on a white sheet. She had the same eyes and nose as her mum, but her mouth and jaw-line belonged to her father. He understood the dreams too. As he’d suspected, they weren’t a product of the séance – that’d just been the catalyst, the key that opened the door to the darkest recesses of his soul – they’d been handed down through the gene pool, a twisted biological keepsake. He’d been right about another thing too – although he wished to God he hadn’t been – in coming to understand his dad, he’d come to understand himself. And, like a fuse to an explosive, that terrible understanding burned through his veins, burned its way to his brain, his heart. Finally, he knew why his dad had kept him at a distance. It was the same reason Julian had been reluctant to let Eleanor get too close – he was afraid he might see inside him, see him for what he truly was. He wasn’t just a liar. He was a lie himself. He was the worst thing in the world.
More thoughts rushed over Julian, flowing like blood from a gaping wound. Not only had his dad committed statutory rape, he’d done so while his wife was at home looking after their young son. Even worse than that, he’d forsaken the offspring of his crime, driving Deborah Bradshaw to suicide – if suicide it was. Words sprang into Julian’s brain and seared themselves there – words like blackmail and murder. Oh God, his mind groaned. “Oh God,” he groaned aloud, trying to stem the thoughts that were draining him to the point of collapse. He pounded his fist into his forehead, seeking to blot out one pain with another, but they kept coming. He thought about his mum. Did she know? “No.” The word came out in a savage rush of breath. If she knew, she wouldn’t be with his dad. More than that, she’d have gone to the police. She’d have destroyed him. If he knew one thing, he knew that.
Julian braced his hands against his skull as though trying to keep it from splitting apart. A sound – the most pathetic sound he’d ever heard – drew his eyes reluctantly but inexorably back to the screen. His dad was sat on the end of the bed once more, elbows on knees, hands over his mouth, sobbing so hard his shoulders shook and his breath came in gasps. Behind him, Deborah Bradshaw lay staring at herself in the ceiling mirror, and her reflection looked back at her with an expression of numb loathing.
A great, choking wave of anger surged up inside Julian. He clenched his fists to smash the sickening images, but at that moment the screen went blank. He stood trembling, dazed and dumbfounded, like someone emerging from sleep to find themselves in a different world. Gradually, he became aware that the room wasn’t totally silent. There was a noise – a small, repetitive noise that raised the hairs on his neck. Click, click, click, it came at one or two second intervals. He jerked his gaze towards it, peering goggle-eyed into the gloom at the back of the room. As his vision adjusted, he made out rows of shelves from ceiling to floor, running the width of the room. They were crammed with hundreds, maybe thousands of videotapes and DVDs. In front of the shelves was a black-leather armchair. And sat in the armchair was a jowly, thick-featured little goblin of a man with a snoutish nose. His eyebrows formed a single line above close-set eyes. His swollen-looking lips curved up into a smile, which exuded a repulsive leering cynicism.
“Mr Ugly.” Julian breathed the name hoarsely.
“Mr X,” corrected the man, standing. As Julian took a flinching step backward, he continued, “Relax, I’m not going to hurt you. I just want to give you this.” He held out a videotape.
“What is it?”
“It’s the original of your father’s film. Think of it as a coming-of-age gift.” As Mr X moved into the light from the mirror, Julian saw that he was even uglier than he’d first appeared. There were deep pockmarks in his cheeks and he had an overbite so pronounced he couldn’t close his mouth fully. But it wasn’t his physical characteristics that made him
truly repulsive, it was the rotten soul and polluted heart that moulded their expression.
“Why are you giving this to me?” asked Julian, hesitating to take the tape.
“I’ve got no more use for it. Your father’s all used up. I’ve squeezed as much as there is to squeeze out of him.”
“You’re blackmailing him.”
“I have been for the last fifteen or so years. But not anymore. Now I’m looking to the future, the next generation.”
“You mean me?”
“Who else?”
Julian’s mind returned to the room nextdoor, the blood. His mouth filled with metallic-tasting saliva. With difficulty, he swallowed and said in a thick voice, “What did you make me do?”
“I never make anybody do anything, Julian. I just help them to open up.” Mr X added with a touch of pride, “I suppose you could say that’s my talent, getting people to open up and let it out.”
Julian’s throat seemed to be closing. “What’s it?”
“It’s whatever’s inside here and here.” Mr X touched his chest and head. “Dreams, fantasies. Things people can barely admit to themselves, let alone their spouses and partners. For your father it was what you saw on the screen. For you…” His lips pulled up to show more of his crooked teeth. “Well, let’s just say it gave us quite a performance. The intensity of it surprised even me. You put your dad to shame.”
Julian shook his head as if trying to dislodge Mr X’s words. “There’s nothing like that inside me.”
“Really? Then what’s that about?” Mr X pointed at Julian’s blood-stained hands.
“I…I…” Julian scoured his brain again, frantically trying to remember, but still nothing came. “I couldn’t hurt her,” he cried, feeling hysteria close to engulfing him. “I couldn’t fucking do it.”
“By her I assume you mean your sister, Mia.”
