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 although 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 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.”
“By her I assume you mean your sister, Mia.”
Sister. The word echoed in Julian’s mind. Hearing it said, somehow made it more real. His eyes grew hard with hate. “What have you done to her, you ugly fuck?”
“I told you, I don’t do anything to anybody,” Mr X said equably, untouched by the insult. “I’m merely a facilitator. I facilitate whatever it desires.”
“And I told you, it’s not in me. I couldn’t hurt Mia.”
“Maybe you couldn’t, but you’ve definitely got it in you.”
A glimmer of warped hope flickered in Julian’s eyes. He held up his trembling hands. “Are you saying this isn’t Mia’s blood?”
Mr X grinned impishly. “I think I’ll keep you guessing on that for now.”
Hope turned into rage. “You fucker,” spat Julian, his fingers flexing as if itching to wrap themselves around Mr X’s throat. “You twisted, sick little cunt.”
Mr X clapped his free hand against the videotape. “That’s it. That’s what I like to see.”
Julian wrenched his eyes away from Mr X, shading them with his hand as if to conceal some deformity. Mr X tut-tutted. “There’s no need to hide. You don’t need to worry about showing who you really are here.” He made a sweeping gesture at the rows of tapes and discs. “You’re amongst friends.”
“You’re not my fucking friend.”
Mr X screwed up his face in mock hurt. “What am I then?”
“I…I don’t…” A strange, uncertain light came into Julian’s eyes.
“You have the look of someone who doubts the reality of what they see. Believe me, Julian, this isn’t a dream. This is as real as it gets.”
Julian heaved a breath and spoke, dragging the words out one at a time. “What do you want from me?”
“I want you to succeed, of course. This is your time, Julian. The world could be yours. All you have to do is reach out and take it.” As he spoke, Mr X glanced meaningfully at the videotape in his hand.
“You want me to destroy my father?”
“All sons destroy their fathers, one way or another, sooner or later. That’s just the way of things. Besides, if you don’t do it, he’ll destroy himself and the business with it. And I’ve put too much hard work into building that business into what it is today to let that happen.”
Julian’s face twisted into an incredulous scowl. “My father, and my father alone, built that business.”
Mr X gave a placatory wave of his hand. “Don’t get me wrong, Julian. I don’t mean to claim I’ve had a direct hand in the business’s success. But I’ve always been there, in the background, giving a prod in the right direction when it’s needed, pushing your father onto greater efforts. And when you takeover the business, I’ll do the same for you.”
“And what if I don’t take the tape?”
“You will.” Mr X spoke with the absolute confidence of a man used to getting what he wanted.
“Give me one reason why I should.”
“I’ll give you two. For starters, there’s your mother. She deserves to know the truth about the man she loves before she dies. Don’t you think?”
Julian blinked with uncertainty at the mention of his mother. Did she really need to know? Wasn’t the trail of misery, pain and loss left in his father’s wake long enough already? Before Julian could think anymore about that, Mr X continued, “Then there’s this.” He took a disc from his pocket. “I’ll bet you can guess what this is, can’t you?”
“My film.”
“Correct.”
Julian’s gaze flicked between the disc and Mr X’s face. His fingers flexed again.
“You’re thinking about taking this from me,” Mr X said, reading his mind. “Well it’d be pointless. This is just a copy.”
“So what’s the deal? Either I do as you say or you send that to the police?”
“Something like that. But I really hope it doesn’t come to that, Julian. You’re a young man with a brilliant future ahead of you. I’d truly hate to have to have to rob you of that future.”
Julian’s lips drew up into a grim smile. “More like you’d hate to lose out on all the money you’re going to squeeze from me.”
“There’s that as well.”
“And what if I don’t give a fuck about my future?”
“Don’t kid yourself, Julian. You know the value of the future. People like you — privileged people — always do. Besides, there’s not just you to consider. Spare a thought for your poor mother. If finding out about your father doesn’t finish her off, finding out about her son almost certainly will.” Julian grimaced at the threat. Mr X sighed as if the thought of carrying it out pained him too. “And then there’s your brother, Jake. What future has he got to look forward to? A short, miserable life of addiction and prison, that’s what. You could change that, give him the future he deserves. It’s all in your hands, Julian. So what’s it going to be?”
A long speechless moment passed, disturbed only by the gentle click of Mr X’s breathing. Click, click, like a lock falling in place, the sound of entrapment. Locked in a nightmare, Julian thought despairingly. No way out, no way out…
Slowly, as if afraid it might burn him, Julian reached to take the videotape. His arm dropped straight, as if the tape weighed a hundred pounds.
“Good lad,” said Mr X. “I knew you’d see sense. This calls for a celebration.”
“A celebration?” Julian repeated, as if unsure he’d heard right.
“Yes, a celebration.” Mr X looked past him. “Champagne.”
Glancing around, Julian saw a man stood on the threshold of the room, his bulk almost filling the doorway. He recognised him as the driver of the Mercedes. Hands like bunches of bananas dangled from the sleeves of the chauffeur’s jacket. Julian swallowed at the thought of what those hands could do to him. The man nodded and moved away. As they awaited his return, Julian’s gaze moved over the shelves of videotapes and DVDs. “Who are they?”
“They’re everybody and nobody. Businessmen, politicians, judges, solicitors, accountants, priests, doctors, teachers, policemen, and the like. Decent, honest people.”
Julian’s breath came in a sharp hiss. “They’re sickos, perverts.”
Mr X tutted. “You know something, Julian, you really must learn to stop seeing things in black and white. It’s not healthy. People are more complex than that. We all have God and the Devil in us. And we need to understand and love both sides, if we want to understand and love ourselves.”
“Who says I want to love myself?”
“Of course you do, Julian. You want to love yourself above all. That’s your nature, that’s everyone’s nature.”
You’re wrong, Julian wanted to yell, but the words would’ve rung hollow. Most of his life he’d clung to a reality that was in conflict with his dark side. He was tired of fighting with himself. He took a deep, sighing breath. So very, very tired…
The chauffeur reappeared with two flutes of Champagne. Julian looked dubiously at the glass proffered him. “Don’t worry, it’s not spiked,” Mr X assured him, raising his glass in a toast. “To you, Julian. To the great things you’re going to do.”
“What makes you so sure I’m going to do great things?”
“Don’t be so down on yourself. I can see the potential in you, even if you can’t. The way you found me was remarkable. But what really impressed me, what convinced me you were ready to take this step, was the way you bargained for Mia’s life. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such single-mindedness in one so young before. If you can apply that to the business, well, there’s no limit to what it could become.
Julian scrutinised Mr X’s face for signs of disingenuousness, but found none. He might’ve been a father lavishing encouragement on his son. Mr X quaffed his champagne, making a queer gurgling in his throat. Julian raised his drink to his lips, but didn’t swallow any. “So what happens now?”
“Now it’s time for you to leave.” Mr X extended his hand. “Goodbye, Julian, and good luck.”
“Don’t we need to talk about money and stuff like that?”
Mr X shook his head. “Don’t worry, when you’ve got something I want, someone will be in touch.”
“What about my clothes?”
Mr X gestured with his chin at the chauffeur. “My friend here will take care of that.”
With a nervous glance at the hulking figure, Julian reluctantly shook Mr X’s hand. His handshake was warm, damp, repulsively tender. His gaze flicked down to the videotape. “Just to make sure we understand each other, Julian. That’s for you and your parents’ eyes only. If it was to find its way into anyone else’s hands, the consequences would be, well, very possibly fatal.” Shuddering, Julian pulled his hand away. As he turned to leave, Mr X piped up, “Oh, I almost forgot to say, welcome to The Society of Dirty Hearts.” His lips curled into a horribly triumphant smile. “We’re proud to have you as a member.”