Night Shadows Read online

  Not five feet away in the other large shower, in which oddly there was almost no steam at all, but instead, quite clearly, two young men he’d never seen before, who had to be athletes given their musculature, rocking together front to back, wrestling perhaps, making peculiar grunts like horses or… He realized precisely what they were actually engaged in the very second that the larger and redder-haired fellow, who was clutched behind the other, turned, and without for an instant losing his stroke, noticed him watching; noticed and scowled.

  Shamed to the roots of his hair as though it were he, not they, who’d been witnessed in full flagrante, he fled that face and those rocking bodies, fled to his locker, where he changed into his street clothes as quickly as humanly possible, flinging on clothing and footwear any old way, as though it burned his skin, not bothering to properly dry his hair, driving the metal door shut just as he heard their commingled voices rise to a unanimous, not quite human pitch, indicative of shared passion. He thrust the sopping towels onto the floor and raced out of the bottom-level rooms up and out into the clean seamlessness of a chill late morning.

  He didn’t stop rushing until he felt the hot burn of a stitch in his side. Then he stopped, gasped in pain, watched by strangers, gesturing them off—he was okay, okay.

  Later that day, he almost related to his lunch companion, Cregnell again, what he’d witnessed in the club’s changing room, then decided he’d actually derive greater amusement withholding it, since that was exactly the sort of drivel Cregnell craved to hear. Making that decision he ate on, feeling a certain superiority.

  That sensation, alas, didn’t last. Returning to his chamber that night, while standing on a street corner, he couldn’t help but notice the entire side of a passing omnibus, as it waited for a traffic light, was plastered across its lower half with an advert for the local football team. And there, pictured flying into the bright yellow air behind a head-struck soccer ball, was the very fellow he’d seen cohabiting in the shower. “The Derrick’s Going to Do You Right!” the ad read.

  “Isn’t that Derek Stransom the dreamiest ever,” he heard behind him and turned to see two pretty coeds ogling the poster. Turning back to the bus, he was startled to think he saw Stransom’s eyes following him as the vehicle took off.

  In the days that ensued, he encountered The Derrick more often than he could ever desire. He’d been told that no one from the club used the showers during the morning, yet there were young men there all the time now, four mornings in a row. Unable to tell in all the steam who was who, and wanting to avoid the particular pair he’d stumbled upon, he withdrew from the field altogether. Until those around him made it clear that he needed to clean himself.

  He decided to try going during lunch break, even though it meant a bit of a run to and fro. The club was blissfully unoccupied, and he indulged himself in both a shower and steaming. Only when he was all dressed again, exiting the still-fogged-up room, headed up the ramp, did three players descend toward him. Though he slid obliquely to one wall to let them pass, one was Derek Stransom, who recognized him, who threw out a long arm to grip his shoulder hard briefly, intoning darkly, “Got my eyes on you!” Making the other players turn toward him with scowls as he cowered against the wall. They moved on as one, and down at the locker room, he heard Derek say something he couldn’t quite make out and heard them all laugh.

  Derek was there again next lunchtime, alone this time, a towel wrapped low about his hips as he daintily shaved tiny areas on his face in the floor-to-ceiling mirror.

  Before he could turn away, he’d been spotted.

  “Don’t go yet!” Stransom said in an almost inviting tone of voice. Without turning away from his perusal of his face, he added, “We’ve got a little talk, you and me.”

  “Who, me?” he asked.

  “That’s right. Club member, are you?”

  “No. I’m using Professor Blethworthy’s membership.”

  “That’s all right, then.” Stransom seemed conciliated.

  He sidled over to the locker, opened it, and began to cautiously undress, ready to make a dash at any suggestion of trouble. He’d gotten down to his tunic when the player was suddenly before him, towel off his midriff and up around his shoulders. Derek stood erect, large, and it was bobbing up and down all on its own.

  He fell back, consternated, against the locker, wishing he could fit into it entirely.

  “Now, I know we’re not going to ever say a word of what we oversaw.”

  The thing bobbed and grew as it bobbed. He couldn’t stop looking at it, but dragged his eyes up to the menacing face, the huge arms and shoulders capable of so much harm.

  “I don’t actually know what you’re talking about.” He managed to stutter out what he hoped would be appeasing words.

  “You’re a damned liar. But that’s all right. I just wanted to show you what you’ve got to look forward to,” it bobbed and grew, bobbed and grew, “in case you change your mind. From me and from a half dozen of my closest mates. And that will just be the beginning, understand,” he added, making a fist the size of his head by way of illustration.

  He was able at last to look away, murmuring in the smallest voice, “Never. Not a word. Ever.”

  “That’s the boy!” The rock fist dropped onto his shoulder in an abrupt, sinew-burning grip.

  When at last the hand was gone and Stransom was walking away, his perfectly square buttocks pistoning up and down like a machine of annealed flesh, he mewled, “I needn’t come here anymore! If that’s what you wish. Not ever?”

  Stransom either didn’t hear or didn’t wish, as the athlete vanished silently into the steam billows of the shower.

  He quickly dressed again and dashed out. Periodically during the day at school he would find himself shaking all over. When Cregnell came upon him having a late cup of tea, he wondered how archly the Assistant Prof. would react to the threat of being beaten and gang-raped by a rugger team, but thought it prudent not to reveal an iota of his distress.

  He did return to the club, slowly, every three days, each at differing times, so as to avoid detection, and each time found himself blissfully alone; except one time when there was a boys’ team at the club, none over the age of ten.

  So it was that slowly, he began to be less afraid of the rugby champion and his threat.

  *

  Pauline LaFoyant had said yes. Or as much as had said yes, which was good enough for him. This evening in the garden at the Applewhite Arms American Studies department party they’d found themselves alone, wandering. She’d come closer, they’d kissed, he’d been enveloped in a lacework frisson and their kisses had deepened and continued. He’d “taken liberties” with her soft upper body until the two of them had nearly coalesced into one, with her at last pulling away for breath, which he had to admit, he was in need of too. With none of their compeers anywhere near, they’d once more coalesced for an even longer time, and when they’d been forced to break away by the arrival of others in the lantern-dimmed garden, he whispered, “I must see you again…alone.” And she, thoughtfully, had responded, “Jocelyn won’t be home tonight. You know where we live?”

  Did he ever. But they mustn’t be seen going there together, of course, she said. And Jocelyn might still be home a few minutes before she left, so he’d need to stand out on the street where Pauline would signal him with a window shade, and of course, he needed to make certain to bring with him “protection,” didn’t he? All tiny little travails, silly small obstacles, easily leapt over.

  Which was why, however, he found himself racing up the entrance to his hotel at eleven thirty of a Saturday night, then stopping dead at the sheer population, noise, and depth of some kind of party being thrown at the hotel bar, a completely unprecedented thing, which seemed to even include the mumbling old Asiatic, on his stiff chair just inside the bar, who was decorated with the green and silver colors of whatever team or group it was celebrating.

  He’d been threading with difficulty through the
crowd, being forced to say hello, to “make nice” to this one and that, including the three grotesques who always sat at their table—now newly festooned in some team’s colors—when he realized with a bump why he knew those colors so well. They were from Blethworthy’s football club. A closer glimpse at the festivity-makers made it clear that one or more of them were team members.

  “…off to Madrid! I tell you! A first for our boys! Then on to take those Juventus wogs and the World Cup itself!” Someone instructed him so he understood that the team he showered with had risen to the very top of their nationals and was headed out. Good for them, he felt, with a bit of shared pride, and even downed the dregs of a half pint an overcosmetized brunette offered him to toast them.

  But he had other matters to attend to now. Pauline LaFoyant, to be precise. He was trying to remember where he’d hidden the condoms he’d packed so many months ago. He’d have to crack at least one out of its packet to see they were still lubricated. Maybe even give himself a fast sponge bath, highlighting areas soon to be exposed.

  At last he got through the crush and onto the back stairway. More partygoers loitering there and on the first landing, he had to sidle around several, until he could get free to the next floor.

  Just as he did, a hand shot out and grabbed his foot from below.

  “Hey there!” He turned to a young face he didn’t recall. “Aren’t you him? That toff of Derek’s?”

  “Who? What?” Fear shot up the back of his head, as he pretended not to understand. Then he faked cheer. “Congratulations, fellows. You’re the best! Knew you could take the nationals.” He managed to shake off the hand by reaching down to shake it. “Sorry to leave. Nature calls.”

  He sprinted up the stairs, thinking is he following, is he following me? Stopping, to try to hear, above the renewed noise from downstairs as the door opened into the bar whether he could hear anyone following. Yes. No. Who knew? And now nature did call.

  No revelers this high up or this far away from the bar. No one in the hallways. So he dashed to his door and struggled with the key. Inside, it was, as always, Baffin Island, and he threw off his jacket and kicked off his shoes on the icy floor and rushed into the lav with its Moons of Uranus frigidity, where he relieved himself and began to run what he hoped, dreamed, would be the merest speck of non-frozen water to bathe his face and genitals in—who knew what she’d think to touch, being French—and heavens be, he managed it, got water to come out of the H which if not really hot then at least was more than tepidly warm.

  Of course it all got very damp and cold immediately after, given the milieu. Him more or less clean, he felt dankish. Must change his undershorts.

  He was back in his room in the midst of that, humming to himself, when there was a rapping at the door.

  No one had ever once in the months he’d been here rapped on the door. He looked through the peephole provided, but it was almost frosted over with age and wear: All he could make out was a rather distorted face. The rapping resumed with more force.

  “I know you’re in there.” The sound came through clearly. And the voice now seemed familiar. He peered again through the frosted porthole, trying to see if was at all possible if—

  “We know where you live now,” the voice repeated, and even though it was somewhat slurred, he knew now it was indeed, and the porthole confirmed it distortedly, Derek Stransom.

  “We know you’re in there. Robbie saw you go in just now. Didn’t you, Rob?”

  Words of assent followed, joined by the sound of yet another, then another person. There were at least four of them. Maybe five.

  “What do you want?” he began to ask. Just then a body slammed against the door. “What is it you want?” he repeated in a more strained voice. Another body slammed against the door, which took it poorly.

  “What do we want?” was yelled into the crack between the door and the molding. “Don’t you read the adverts all over town, you bad little toff? What do they read, boys?” There was an inarticulate shouting. Then “That’s right! The Derrick’s Going to Do You Right!—And his boyboys too!” This was illustrated with another slam against the door, then another.

  Fear filled his head. He leapt to the bed to the window. It opened, barely enough for him to squeeze his body through. But there was no landing, not even a shelf for a foot. At least not for another forty feet down. And what he’d land on would be the concrete lip of a side roof of the car park. No.

  Two more slams against the door shook the timbers of the room. He could see the door frame splitting. If there were five of them out there, drunk and enraged, they’d have the door down in a few minutes. Gathering up all of his strength, he managed to pry the bed away from the side wall and semi-wedge it against the door, which was now being slammed into so regularly and with such shouting and cheers from the other side that it would clearly go in a minute. He threw suitcases upon the bed against the door, just as a section of door frame ripped loose on one side and a shoulder smashed through the wood of the door.

  “The Derrick’s Going to Do You Right Good!” two of them shouted, and arms reached in, tossing the suitcases aside, ripping down the door to unwedge the bed.

  He retreated into the frozen bathroom. Locked the door, had the sense to wedge one last piece of luggage under the door handle. But they’d gotten into the room now and were shouting, headed here, and this flimsy door was already under barrage.

  There was no explanation for why he suddenly turned and opened the shower bath door, a door he’d not opened in months. In his mind the place had been so disgusting that he couldn’t even think of it. There was no real reason why he opened it, except that in his extreme panic, it beckoned him, glowing cleanly, healthily, pink and wholesome for the very first time.

  He peeked in, curious, as the assault continued on the bathroom door, which couldn’t last even as long as the room door. They still chanted with glee: “The Derrick’s Going to Do You Right Good! And We Are Too!” and he looked at himself in the shower glass’s sea wave reflection, thin, wearing only one little under-brief, utterly set for the taking. As the party raged on, as the revels in the street outside continued for Their Boys, he would be assaulted, raped again and again, harder and harder, beaten and pummeled all the while, with no one to hear his screams, until there would be no life left in him. He didn’t understand how this should come to be, only that it had. He had no choice.

  He stepped into the shower bath and it wasn’t gross and splotchy, loathsome and awful. Instead, it was rather sparkling. To block out the noise and chanting, the fearful sounds he could no longer hear, he reached up and turned on the faucet’s H. And it came out warm. Not tepid. But warm. He held himself against one side of the shower, waiting for it to turn cold. But it didn’t. It got warmer, and a steam even developed around his feet. That was when he thought, well, might as well, and removed his undershorts and stepped under the showerhead.

  It was warm. Luxuriously warm. And the soap was soft, so he tossed his underwear out the shower door, and settled into the shower box, indulging himself in the first warm shower he’d ever had in the wretched little frozen rooms.

  They must have crashed through the bathroom door just in the nick to have his shorts flung at them. Because they came at the shower stall enraged.

  And the most curious thing happened. The shower seemed to simply seal up. It was like fresh warm putty rushing out of the walls and sealing off the door, from the sides, then top, then bottom of the door, as they pounded on it. It began doing cross stripes of sealer all across the door, on the frosted glass ceiling, each stall side, as their shadows dimmed the outside light, and he no longer felt in any away afraid that they would get in, but instead, safe, utterly safe. After a while they seemed to give up, to go away, and he showered until he was happy, and warm, if utterly exhausted, so he sank down slowly into the caressing waters of the shower bath, which received him tenderly and rocked him like a blanket-lined bassinet into the supplest, gentlest slumber he’d ever imagin
ed. All safe now. Free from harm.

  *

  Detective Sergeant Gryce hated this sort of thing. Hated the poorly or badly explained crime. The criminal not there. The victim plain as day and wrong, off, daft in some way as this one was, fetal, smiling, holding the curled-up face cloth to his face like a baby with a blankie, drowned in his own shower bath in mere inches of water, and who was to say how or why it even had collected there when it should have flowed out, while the football party went mad outside and downstairs, and room doors were torn off and luggage strewn about by perpetrators unknown. It wouldn’t do. Looked bad in reports, Looked worse in his mind and memory. Hated it. Simply hated it.

  “That police tape is up there for a reason!” he lectured the kohl-eyed Wog Ponce behind the desk. “You understand. Once we’re done here, all that shower must be torn out and replaced. It won’t do to have shower baths that can’t drain properly. And when repaired it shall be inspected.”

  The dark-skinned Nancy pouted his understanding.

  Detective Sergeant Gryce looked about one last time at this dump of a hotel and just then noticed the wizened old brown creature on his chair, vibrating like a mechanical top, trying to get his attention.

  “Yes, old-timer!” Going up to him. “What is it you want to tell the police?”

  He got nearer and heard the thin old voice pronounce, “There’s something not quite right.”

  “Something not quite right?” Detective Sergeant Gryce asked. “Something not quite right about what?”

  “Something not quite right about Room Nine,” the voice barely whispered.

  Detective Sergeant Gryce stood up. “Thanks, old fellow. I’ll heed that advice. Jermell! Douad! Take over! I’m done with this scene!”

  The Price