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 seance — 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.”
