His first reaction was one of shock to see the hair. How odd, he thought, for hair to grow in such an unlikely place.
There were other photographs—close-ups. These were even more shocking, the way they revealed the secret contours and surfaces of places Derek had never seen nor imagined.
“Doesn’t that turn you on, man?” Steve whispered. “Look at their faces. Pretend that they’re thinking about you. Thinking about
you
fucking them.”
The use of the profanity shocked Derek; that it came from a grown-up, his
uncle
.
He didn’t seem to take particular notice that his uncle had laid down beside him on the floor.
Derek found it difficult to imagine that these women were thinking about him “fucking” them. To him, they all seemed to be pouting or in some sort of mysterious pain.
“You can borrow these anytime, kid,” Steve offered, pulling himself onto the couch. “Just call me whenever you want to see them, and swear never to tell your mom and dad.”
Derek took a place beside his uncle on the couch. He couldn’t imagine ever wanting to borrow these magazines, and he didn’t know what Steve meant when he said “turned on.” To him, the naked women pictured in their glossy centerfolds looked more like photographs of animals in a biology book. He took in their breasts, huge mounds of flesh, their vaginas, strange and dangerous looking organs, wondering what the big deal was.
He found it all very confusing.
“There’s a lot I could teach you, kid,” Steve said softly, placing his hand on Derek’s thigh. “There’s a lot I could
show
you.”
Even then, Derek didn’t quite get it. He didn’t want to get it . . .
It was more than a horror to him. Much more. It was also painful, embarrassing, humiliating, confusing, Dirty.
When Steve left late that night, he gave his nephew a grateful kiss on the lips, and repeated his warning never to tell his parents:
“We’ll have to do this again sometime, Derek,” he said, winking as he closed the front door.
It never did happen again. Steve moved to a faraway city not long after, and he never once brought it up during his brief visits.
It was like it had never happened at all. After a while, Derek stopped thinking about it, stopped crying himself to sleep at night. It was as if he’d hidden that awful memory,
locked it up
, perhaps in the same secret and dark place where Uncle Steve stashed his nasty magazines.
§
Susan gasped and sighed at Derek’s bedroom. He laid down on the bed and watched her explore every nook and cranny—the closet with his collections of suits and shoes; the art; the mirror on the wall behind the bed; the stunning Cartier clock on the nightstand.
He could tell that she knew it was of silver. She struck him as the type of girl who studied the composition—and value—of articles very closely.
He smiled to himself: It
is
silver, and it probably cost more than she made in a year.
She began to undress, doing an impromptu striptease on the bed. She was wearing black satin underwear, a push-up bra and matching thong.
He smelled her perfume—something heavy and musky—and tried not to yawn.
§
Derek was 16 years old.
He was feeling pretty good about himself. He’d landed a date with Debbie; one of the hottest girls at Central High. It was his first date alone with a girl. He was excited, and a little nervous.
Derek knew she liked him. The grapevine at school had made it very clear that she wanted to, as they put it, “ . . . jump his bones.” He knew what that meant, of course, but he worried over the proper way to get there. When should he first take her hand? Put his arm around her shoulders? Kiss her?
He’d been told by more experienced lovers that the best place to make a first move was in the haunted house ride at King’s Park. They had progressed through the carousel and bumper cars before Derek suggested the “Tunnel of Horrors.”
Debbie didn’t hesitate.
The ride progressed through a predictable phalanx of zombies, mummies, vampires and witches, before entering a long stretch of total blackness. Recognizing his cue, Derek leaned over for a kiss.
He closed his eyes, puckered his lips, and was met with a mass of Prell-scented hair in his mouth. He felt her recoil in surprise and then, with amazing smoothness, gently brushed her hair aside and brought his lips to hers.
The sensation was pleasant at first—soft against soft—but then something happened. Debbie’s hand grabbed the back of Derek’s head and she thrust her tongue deeply into his mouth.
It felt like a writhing slug; wet and slimy. He lurched back, striking his head against the metal side of the car, and coughed loudly.
“What’s wrong?” she whispered, the hurt evident in her voice.
“Nothing,” he replied lamely. “It’s just that I . . . that I’ve never done this before.”
Debbie didn’t buy it. She never spoke to him again.
§
Susan was very aggressive, and surprisingly skilled. She took full command of the situation, bringing him to full arousal with her hand and tongue. He liked the way she purred as she worked him.
He laid on his back, watching in the mirror as she performed, admiring the smooth, perfectly-tanned curves of her body, the way her long red hair encircled his groin, the fullness of her lips, the tautness of her nipples.
She’d make a perfect model for a sculptor or an artist . . . pretty and passionate.
Derek brought his mind back to the task at hand. Susan was slowing down, sending him a subtle but unmistakable message that it was his turn. He resigned himself to the obligation.
“What would you like?” She told him, assuming the appropriate position.
Derek positioned himself behind her, inwardly groaning at the cold and mechanical labor to come.
It was not so for Susan, her moans escalating to screams. Derek struggled to keep up with her.
Her screams grew to such a crescendo that they drowned out all other sounds in the flat. Neither of the lovers noticed that the handsome Cartier clock by the side of the bed had momentarily stopped ticking.
As they continued, Derek watched himself in the mirror above his head board. He admired his own body—the lean firmness of his chest, the way the muscles in his hips moved with their gyrations . . .
Something was happening.
Derek felt it first in the heightened sensitivity in his loins, then
everywhere
. His heart raced, his breath grew rapid, his skin and hair acutely sensitive to every motion.
He didn’t believe it, but he was actually making love. He didn’t think of it at the moment, nor did he yet understand its source, but knew it subconsciously: It was the first time he had ever done this.
His partner clearly felt the change as well, responding with even more fervent movement; louder, more animalistic exclamations.
As the pressure in his loins approached bursting point, he arched his back and opened his eyes. There he was—handsome, lithe, strong—in the reflected image of the mirror.
And there was his lover who cherished each thrust; who cried with every movement that Derek made.
David.
Instead of Susan, he saw David Dunn, the man who had expressed interest earlier that evening. Handsome, attractive, beautiful David. He was all his now.
Derek was no longer just making love. He was
fucking,
with the ferocity and sincerity of someone who had abstained since eternity. He savored the hard feel of his lover’s body, the deep sound he made with each assault.
He could no longer hold himself. Derek exploded deep inside David and their bodies shuddered with each violent spasm. And then they came again.
The screams became pants, which eventually became measured breathing. Derek’s lover parted from him and lay spent upon the bed, facing him.
Derek reached over to caress his face, but the touch beneath his fingers was not what he expected. It was soft and delicate. A woman’s face. Susan. She looked into his eyes and smiled.
In that moment, Derek Taylor came face to face with truth.
The time for denial, the time for hiding, was over. He knew now what he had longed for all these years; understood the lie he’d been living.
But Derek couldn’t live with it.
No!
This couldn’t be him, and yet it was. The person he had believed himself to be was an illusion, and he would refuse to live as the person he had discovered.
He trembled, but did not shed a tear. His action was swift and sure, an epiphany. Without saying another word to Susan, without giving her a parting kiss, he reached to the nightstand, opened the drawer and removed the weapon.
Before her unbelieving eyes, he placed the pistol into his mouth, pulled the trigger and blew his brains all over the once spotless mirror in which he’d liked to gaze at himself.
It was very late, and the Exeter was silent as the grave until Susan ran naked, shrieking hysterically, down the hallway. Beside the remains of its former owner, the unnoticed Cartier—its once gleaming silver now streaked with scarlet—resumed its ticking.
11
Cantrell stood in the foyer and racked his mind.
What was wrong with it? Why doesn’t it
look right
?
He hadn’t slept all night. At three a.m., tired of tossing and turning, he gave up trying. He dressed, left his apartment and wandered downstairs to the main floor into the foyer; the heart of his creation.
The main lights had been turned off, but the foyer was illuminated in the eerie glow of a full moon whose rays peeked through the skylights above.
Something was off kilter.
His tired eyes could have been playing tricks on him, or it might have been the misty moonlight, but he swore that what he saw wasn’t what he’d designed. He’d worked for months on the plans of this central room; its graceful wrought-iron staircase, the towering linden tree that provided the primary focus. He knew every curve, every plumb line; every angle and elevation of the space. But tonight it was different.
There was a skewed quality to the way the shadow of the stairs fell on the mosaic tile floor—an expressionistic perversion of what he’d originally created.
His gaze went upwards, toward the skylights and the moonbeams that were pouring through. The walls seemed to incline inward, the vertical space
constricted
, lending the spiral stairs a squeezed, sinister aspect.
Cantrell reached for the light switch and turned it on. He re-examined every angle. The illusion of distortion—if illusion it was—was not affected. He turned the light back off.
Troubled, he looked at the moonbeams; the way the panes above had split them into finger-like extensions; the way they illuminated some parts of the room to a state of bluish-yellow daylight, yet left others in total blackness.
Looking up, he saw something near the apex of the space, far above. At first, he thought it was an effect caused by the imperceptible motion of the moon—a subtle flicker, like the dying flash of a light bulb.
But the phenomenon began to assume a vague shape, an amorphous mass of swirling pastel color and wispy substance, not unlike a cloud or puff of smoke. The thing began to slowly descend towards where Cantrell stood.
Whatever the hell it was, it was no trick of the light.
Slowly and methodically, the thing lowered itself to the ground floor. At last, spinning lazily, it came face-to-face with Cantrell, suspended weightlessly a few feet from him. He sensed its energy, but saw nothing definitive in its gauzy substance.
Mustering his courage, he extended his hand toward it. It recoiled, spinning more quickly, its wispy qualities taking on a reddish hue. It darted away from him, flitting horizontally down the hallway. Cantrell followed. Halfway down the tunnel-like expanse, the object tilted and reversed direction, rushing past his head with incredible speed. Cantrell ducked and pursued.
When it reached the foot of the stairs, it began a vertical ascent, picking up speed as it went. Cantrell rushed behind it, forced to take the cumbersome staircase. He reached the second floor, his breath now labored as the strange cat and mouse game continued.
Past the third floor and up to the fourth, the object paused momentarily, as if considering its next move, then began to move vertically again, back down to the second floor and past the doors of the sleeping flats.
The object halted directly before the door of Su Ling’s apartment. In stunned disbelief, he watched as the spinning mass lowered itself to the floor, flattening out and seeping through the space beneath the door.
His head throbbing, Cantrell reached into his pocket for the master key. It wasn’t there. He tried the doorknob. Locked. In desperation, he pounded on the door, calling out Su Ling’s name.
It seemed like an eternity before it opened. Su Ling stood in her nightgown, hair in disarray, half asleep.
“All you all right?” he demanded, looking past her into the flat. He saw nothing unusual.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, fear already rising through her sleepiness.
“Is everything okay? Is there . . ?” Cantrell suddenly realized he had no idea how to explain himself.
“Yes, yes, everything’s fine. What’s the matter?”
“Anna . . . where’s Anna?”
“In her room . . . ”
She followed him as he rushed through the living room and yanked open the door to the child’s bedroom.
She was not asleep.
Anna perched on her bed in a pink nightgown decorated with little pictures of teddy bears. In one hand she clenched a pencil; in the other, a broad-lined writing tablet. She was scribbling frantically, the pencil ripping holes in the flimsy paper. As soon as she’d covered a page with her scrawling, she ripped it from the pad, starting again on the page beneath. The floor was already littered with her discarded scrawls.