Enigma II. Fighting the Man - 15. Chapter 15

“Sit down, River,” Sam says softly. “There’s something I need to tell you.”

“Sam, I don’t…”

“Sit down.” There is something in his voice that, while I resent I can’t ignore.

“I really don’t know if you want to hear this River, I haven’t told you before because I thought it would be too much for you. I thought you already knew enough of what you needed to know. But now… I’m thinking that maybe you should hear it, it might put things into perspective for you.” Sam takes a deep breath and a swig of beer and stares at his hands where they lie on the table in front of him.

“I’ve never spoken to you about my son Neil have I? That’s because it is painful for so many reasons. One of those reasons is because I was such a bad father to him. I wanted him to be something he wasn’t and couldn’t accept him the way he was, not until it was too late.

“He came to me when he was 14 and told me he was gay. He was terrified, shaking like a leaf… and with good reason.” Keeping his eyes down, he heaves a huge sigh. “I didn’t hit him but I suppose that’s the only good thing I can say about the way I treated him.

“I ranted and raved like the bigoted, blind fool I was. No son of mine was going to turn into a limp wristed, promiscuous, disease ridden rent boy. Oh yes, all the negative stereotypes come rushing into my mind and out of my mouth.

“I demanded he told me who the other boy was, the one who had perverted him, turned him into a filthy whore.” For the first time he looks up at me but winces at my shocked expression and looks down again at where his hands are twisting themselves together.

“I grounded him and basically locked him in his room for a week with Hester and I going on at him the whole time, for the name of the other boy. In the end he cracked and told me.

“I went straight around to his parents and raised hell. They didn’t know about their son and their reaction was very similar to mine…except that they did hit him. They hurt him so much, mentally and physically he ran away and took Neil with him. He was a couple of months off his fifteenth birthday. He was such a beautiful boy; sweet, gentle, bright… very much like Jake.

“I just about went crazy. I searched everywhere and then some. It took me more than two years to find him. The other boy had long since gone and Neil was alone, living on the streets and turning tricks to survive.

“At first he didn’t want to know me, and who could blame him? But eventually I persuaded him to come home. He was sick, riddled with disease and HIV positive. He was still beautiful but damaged… so damaged. Hester broke down when she saw him and I don’t think she’s ever been quite the same since.

“We took him the best doctors we could find and used our savings to get him private care. He was young, still only seventeen, and he healed quickly. He got better, put on weight, got colour back in his cheeks, light back in his eyes. I thought he’d got better… but it was only on the outside.

“Maybe I was fooling myself. Maybe I was seeing what wasn’t there because I wanted it to be there… or maybe one of the things he had learned was to give people what they wanted, to show them what they want… need to see and keep the rest locked up tight.”

Taking another long pull on the bottle of beer Sam rubs his face with his hands.

“Sam, you don’t have to…”

“Yes I do River, I really do. I haven’t come to the point yet… not nearly but… I wanted you to hear this. I wanted you to see what happens when you turn away from the one you love, just for a little while…

“It was all going so well. He had started to see his old friends again, was talking about going back to school. One night we had a long talk about everything that had happened. I apologized for the way I had acted and the things I had said. He asked me how I felt about being gay now. I looked him in the eyes and said I didn’t know, that I was trying to understand, trying to come to terms with it, but I was still struggling.

“He gave me a strange little smile and asked me when I’d stopped seeing him, when I’d started looking at him and only seeing a gay man and not seeing Neil. He tried to tell me that he was the same person he had always been, with the same likes and dislikes, the same hopes and dreams, the same heart and soul. But I didn’t see it. I told him that I was trying to see it, trying to see past it and that I would get there but it would take time.

“He cried, just quietly, and let me hold him in my arms. I promised him that I would work hard, as hard as I could to get past my issues and get back to being the father I always should have been. He told me that Daniel, the boy he’d left with, had tried to get back in touch with his parents but they didn’t want to know. He had never got over it and Neil had watched his slow decline and held him in his arms when he finally succumbed to pneumonia, in an alley somewhere. He’d had to leave him there and run because if the police had come they would have picked him up.

“I cried too and held him close and said sorry over and over and over. He got up and walked away and I never saw him alive again. That night I woke up hearing a noise. I’ve been in the force too long not to recognise it even in my sleep. It was a gunshot. I found him in my study with my own gun in his hand, and the back of his head splashed all over the wall.”

“Oh God Sam I...”

“Don’t River. There’s nothing you can say to make it better, there’s nothing anyone can say to make it better. I was a fool, the biggest fool in creation and I drove my son away because I couldn’t accept him for what he was, the beautiful person he was inside.”

“Okay... I get the message.”

“No River, you don’t. Not yet.” He looks at me and his eyes are so dark, so sad. “When I was looking for Neil I had myself assigned to every operation that involved prostitution, homeless kids, drugs and the sex industry... anything that might lead to information about him.In the end it did. In the end that’s how I found him but that’s not what I want to talk to you about today.

“There was one operation I was sent on… CID had been investigating and setting up the operation for months and we were the last push. We were raiding a ‘training centre’. We had no idea what that was. All we were told was that there were innocent civilians inside that we were to release and rescue so that deadly force was to be used only if and when strictly necessary.

“We weren’t warned and we weren’t briefed on what we would find. I don’t think our Sergeant knew what we were going into himself. None of us had the first clue what kind of ‘training’ they were doing.”

“Sam… please…” I know where this is going. I know what he is going to say and I don’t want him to say it.”

“River… you need to hear this. You need to understand.”

“I do understand.”

“No River, you don’t. You think you do but you have no idea. The things I saw in there will haunt me until the day I die.” His voice goes flat and hard, as if he is trying to disassociate himself from what he is saying.

“When we went in through the door, there was a long room, with doors on either side. Behind the doors were rooms. Not all of them were occupied but each of them had a cage, about four foot square with chains inside. Apart from the cage the only thing in there were treatment couches and most of them had blood soaked into the leather.

“In some of the cages were boys, I didn’t get a close enough look to assess ages but they were young. They were chained in the cages so they could barely move. The stink was revolting. There were dishes of dog food inside the cages and the boys snarled and spat at us when we tried to release them. They were like wild animals.”

I shiver as I remember something that Silver said to me once… about fighting and being disobedient and treated like an animal.

“That wasn’t the worst though River, not by a long shot. In one of those rooms the boy wasn’t in his cage. Have you ever wondered why Nikki and Silver have no hair on their bodies? They do it with acid. The acid burns through the top layers of the skin and kills the hair follicles. They keep the boys strapped to the couch so they can’t touch the wounds. They’re drugged but not enough they can’t feel the pain. I was told afterwards that sometimes the treatment scars, or gets too badly infected. Those boys don’t make it.”

I feel sick and I really, really don’t want him to go on. But I acknowledge that probably I do need it, I do need to hear this. Already I am disassociating myself. I am hearing what he says and feeling revulsion but I am not acknowledging, not accepting that this is what happened to Silver, that seven years ago he was one of the boys that Sam is now describing.

“In other rooms the boys were drugged, hooked up to electrodes that were shooting electric pulses through their bodies and genitals. Or strapped down and fed hallucinogens until they were almost insane. Or chained to the wall with weights hanging from nipple rings and cock rings. Or tripping out in sensory depravation tanks with drips in their arms, subjected to flashing lights, extremes of temperature and continual loops of voices stripping away their personality, their sense of self, layer by layer, day after day.

“We found record books; logs of the ‘treatments’ with notes on each of the subjects… how they react to various drugs, their tolerance to pain, their psychological condition and the ‘keys’ to cracking it and breaking it down. Some of the boys are designated as ‘fighters’ and they were picked out for special treatment. Some of them didn’t survive. Some of the ones we saved, didn’t survive.

“Some of them were there for weeks, some of them for months. Can you imagine that River? Every day for months, nothing to look forward to but pain, degradation, drugs, humiliation, fear… Every day until you break, until your mind cracks and there’s nothing left, just a blank page to be written on in any way they want. And that’s no picnic. The breaking down is horrific but the building up again…”

Sam looks up at me and shakes his head. “I’ve seen it River. I’ve seen what happens. I’ve held those boys in my arms and carried them out of there. I’ve seen the empty eyes and emaciated bodies. I’ve heard the screams and the sobs. It made me sick River, physically sick.”

“Sam, I can’t… please I can’t…”

“You have to River. I’m sorry to put you through this but you have to understand. The things that Silver has gone through… You keep asking why can’t he be more normal, when what you should be asking how the hell he’s managed to be as normal as he is? Silver is a special person, more than that he’s a miracle. There is no way, after what was done to him that he should be able to function in the way he does. Those boys were so broken, I could never have imagined them being strong and independent ever again… and they hadn’t gone through the whole thing.

“I don’t know… maybe with therapy and counseling and a whole lot of care and attention they recovered and went on to lead ‘normal’ lives but when I was there… when I was in that place and I looked around and saw what was happening… and then when I met Silver… I couldn’t put the two together. I couldn’t see that strong, beautiful person cowering on the floor of a cage, eating dog food, screaming as the spread acid on his balls, sobbing with fear as they locked him in a tank and made him hallucinate for days at a time.

“I couldn’t see Silver going through that because he came out of it so strong and proud. He kept hold of his spark, his light, his beauty. But he did River. He did go through that. They did do that to him, and more. It suits us to push it to one side and not to think about it but that doesn’t make it any less real. It doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.

“I have nothing but deep admiration for Silver. To be as strong and… whole as he is after what he went through. It’s amazing; he’s amazing. Yes he has problems, he has issues that are not going to be overcome easily but he’s come so far, he’s so brave and beautiful. You expect too much of him. You want things he can’t give and you don’t appreciate what he can give.”

I feel sick. I feel ashamed. I feel deeply sad. I feel empty. But I also feel angry and bitter and frustrated. Sam doesn’t understand. He looks back at his own experiences and tries to transfer them on to me but he doesn’t understand. He has no idea what it’s like to live with Silver, to have to constantly be alert for things that can hurt him or upset him or confuse him. Almost anything can spark off a reaction that ends in tears or tantrums and it’s wearing me down. Okay I can understand why better now but it doesn’t make it easier, not really.

I have enough to cope with right now, with Ben and everything that’s going on with Social Services. I have had to organise my parents’ funeral, which I didn’t even go to, and deal with solicitors and financial advisors and… and it’s had to be all on my own. Silver can offer me a smile and an embrace but he can’t offer me advice, he can’t offer me support, he can’t understand what’s going on let alone help me understand and cope with it.

I need someone who can take care of me sometimes, someone who I can lean on, who can share my experiences and not have to be shielded from them. I need a partner, an equal. I need someone… someone who isn’t Silver.

I am totally shocked by the avenue my self pitying musings have taken me down. What the hell am I thinking? Silver is my heart, my soul, my world. I would no more hurt him than tear off my leg and to lose him would be worse than losing a limb. So maybe… maybe Sam’s right after all. I’m so busy thinking about what he isn’t I’m getting blind to what he is. And maybe… maybe I have also been too busy thinking about myself, about what I want and what I need.

“Thanks Sam. You’re right. I did need to hear that. I’ve been stupid haven’t I? I’ve been blind and more than that I’ve been cruel.” Unbidden images flash through my mind of times when I’ve caught Silver looking at me with that confused, hurt expression when I’ve been angry and frustrated with him… and couldn’t even say why. “I’ll make it right Sam. I’ll work it out in my head and then I’ll talk to him.”

“Don’t take too long, River. He’s not doing well right now. He needs you.”

“I know. I… I know.”