Dead Men's s Boots

She was staring right through me at the door and I could tell that what she was seeing now was not me but the events of January the twenty-sixth. She was squinting into the middle distance, along a dimension that just wasn’t there for members of my particular species.

‘They walk in together,’ she said slowly. ‘Barnard is the older man, obviously – the one in the suit, his face all red from climbing the stairs. Hunter is the big, well-built one who moves like a fighter.’

‘He used to box when he was younger,’ I said.

‘Yes. He’s aware of where his weight is: he stands solid, four-square, as though someone is going to come at him and try to knock him down. He crosses to the bed, puts down a bag that he’s carrying – a long green canvas holdall that looks as though it’s used to carry tools – and then he turns to say something to Barnard. He grins as he speaks. One of the words is “now”. Barnard is nervous, but it’s the nervousness of arousal. He closes the door, fumbles with the lock for quite some time. He doesn’t want to be disturbed, obviously.

‘Hunter is already taking off his clothes. Barnard crosses to the bed, starts to undress too, but Hunter stops him. He pushes Barnard down onto his knees . . .’

‘I think we can take the next part as read,’ I said.

Juliet nodded. ‘They copulate,’ she confirmed. ‘For a long time. Hunter takes the dominant role; takes it very aggressively, and the violence is part of the sex. Barnard doesn’t mind. Not yet. He’s excited. Enjoying it very much. Then . . .’

Her voice tailed off. She was staring at the bed now, her eyes narrowed.

‘Then?’

‘Then it starts to hurt.’

She walked around the bed, her gaze still fixed on it, trian kd ohengulating on the past with her exquisite, dark-adapted eyes.

‘What Hunter is doing now will leave marks. Barnard doesn’t want that. It makes him afraid, and it makes him indignant. He says something, tries to sit up. Hunter . . . hits him, hard, on the side of the head, and he falls down again. He’s dazed. His mouth is bleeding, not where the blow landed but where he bit his lip because of the force of the impact.

‘He tries again. Hunter straddles him, forces him down with his own weight. He’s hitting Barnard with his closed fists, and at the same time . . . he enters him again. He beats him and rapes him at the same time.’

I opened my mouth to speak; to ask Juliet to skip forward again, maybe, and spare me some of the gory details. But the details were what I needed to hear: there was no point being in this room at all if I didn’t take a good, long look at what had happened here. At the same time, though, Juliet’s words had sharpened my own responses to the place. I couldn’t see its history the way she could, but I could feel the emotional afterwash of the events with a terrible clarity now – and everything she said fell into place with a dull, heavy inevitability, anchoring the emotions and giving them form.

‘He twists Barnard’s right arm behind his back: up and back, as far as it will go. He’s leaning on it, with his full weight. He’s still riding him at this point. And then . . .’

There was a long silence. I didn’t realise I’d been holding my breath until I let it out.

‘. . . And then he gets the hammer out of the bag and smashes Barnard’s skull in,’ I finished. But there was something in Juliet’s expression that I couldn’t read. I waited, resisting the urge to throw another question at her. She was still staring into the past, with minute, almost furious attention.

‘I don’t see that,’ she said at last.

‘You don’t see . . . ?’

‘The end of the torture. The hammer coming down. The moment of death. Something moves across the room. Something very big. It’s been there all the time, but it’s been standing very still. I only see it when it moves.’

‘What sort of something?’ The words sounded banal, but I had to ask because I had no referent for what she was describing. An elephant that had been disguised as a standard lamp? A battleship making an awkward right turn out of the bathroom?

‘I don’t know,’ Juliet admitted reluctantly. ‘Not something solid – not something that’s physically there. A darkness. A darkness without a body of its own. I don’t know whether they brought it in with them or whether it was waiting for them. But it doesn’t seem to do anything to interrupt what’s happening. It hovers for a few minutes, almost filling the room. I can see through it, but it’s a little like seeing through thick fog. The two men are still there. They’re still on the bed, moving together, with Hunter on top. Then they separate, come together again.

‘It gets even darker. Even harder to see. When the shadow passes, Hunter is gone. Barnard is lying there –’ she pointed ‘– on the floor, now, not on the bed.