Page 19 of Now Comes the Dark

Roman got wearily out of bed. He showered, feeling the full weight of the news, together with a thick hangover, and dressed in jeans and a comfortable, oversized sweater. After a couple of painkillers and a glass of juice, he started to feel more human. He made a pot of tea and searched the fridge and cupboard for something he could have for lunch. What he really would have liked was a slice of last night’s pizza, all cold and stiff, but they had finished the lot in one sitting.

He opted for a tin of chicken soup, perfect comfort food for a grim day like this one. He emptied the can into a jug and put it in the microwave. Ashley rushed through from the living room, still in his bed wear, clutching his phone.

“You are not going to believe this,” he said, pacing the kitchen.

Roman slumped against the counter. He didn’t have the appetite for more bad news. Ashley was enjoying the drama.

“Just tell me.

“The guy who got killed last night. They’re saying it’s Cameron Taylor.”

“Cameron Taylor?”

“Cameron. ‘Fuck Me Cameron’. The guy you said almost nixed your plans with the French guy in The Viaduct.”

Roman heard what he was saying, but it took his mind a few seconds to compute and make sense of the words.Cameron. “Shit. Are you sure?”

Ashley brandished the phone. “They have never been wrong yet. That’s his flat that the police are crawling all over.”

Roman took a deep breath. He heard his blood pounding in his head. “But…I saw him last night. He was in The New Inn when we were there, out on the back terrace.”

“Did you talk to him?”

“No. I doubt I’ve ever said more than a few words to him.” Though Roman and Cameron had frequented all the same places for years, they had always maintained a distance, rivals whodidn’t dare get too close to each other. “He was with a group of other people.”

“I didn’t see him, though I didn’t go out the back. I almost slept with him once, but neither of us were that into each other. Poor kid. I can’t believe he is dead.”

“Nor can I.” Roman stared at his feet for several minutes. Though he could hardly say he had been close to Cameron, he was the first of the six victims he knew in a personal way. It brought the crisis closer to home than any of the others. “And his death is connected to the others? It’s not some unrelated tragedy?”

“Too early to say, but it looks that way.”

The facts of the previous murders were chillingly similar. Each of the victims had been found at home, naked in bed, with their bodies positioned in a grotesque parody of welcome, with arms and legs open. All five of the men had been strangled and sexually assaulted, though no trace of the killers DNA had been recovered. Many speculated that the sexual assaults had been carried out with a sex toy rather than a penis, leading to much speculation about the killer’s motives. Some said he was a sexual oddball, destroying the men he desired and was unable to have for himself. Others insisted the murderer had to be a homophobe, using a dildo to violate the victims and make the killings look like the work of another gay guy. Everyone had a hypothesis for the murders, but no one had an answer.

And while everyone had been guessing, the killer had struck again.

* * * *

“How many more men have to die before anyone but us gives a damn?”

Phil’s face was red with fury as he stubbed out a cigarette and immediately lit another.

The beer garden of Julie’s was full. The news of Cameron’s murder had brought the community out to mourn, and soon an informal meeting had begun as residents expressed their sadness for the young man’s death and anger that it had happened again.

Roman and Ashley had been among the first to arrive around five o’clock. Neither of them were regulars on Sunday, but they had felt so restless at home, following the WhatsApp feed as more details were shared, that they had both felt an overwhelming need to get out and be part of the community. Roman had needed to receive support, and he wanted to give it back.

There was no doubt now that Cameron had become the sixth victim of what people in the pub were now calling ‘The Blyham Strangler’. Cameron had lived alone in a small flat on a six-storey block. He’d been due to meet a friend for brunch that morning. When his friend couldn’t get in touch with him, he had gone to the flat, let himself in and found Cameron laid out on the bed like the all the previous victims.

The police had still to release details to the press, but the news had already spread far.

As he sat at a crowded table, Roman couldn’t stop thinking about Mallon and feeling guilty for it. Mallon wouldn’t know what had happened to the boy he had almost spent the night with instead of Roman—the boy who had sucked his cock, regardless. Would he want to know? Would he care? He couldn’t stop turning the questions over in his mind, and he hated himself for it. Mallon wasn’t here. Mallon wasn’t dead. He had to get over him.

“We’ve got to make them give a damn,” a voice hollered from somewhere behind and was met with a wall of approval.

“But how?” Someone else asked.

“They don’t want to know.”

Anjoa, a beautiful Black trans woman who DJ’d at The New Inn, got to her feet and waved at the crowd to be quiet. Anjoa was a member of the Blyham Pride committee, and when she spoke, people listened. “We are all angry tonight and with good fucking reason. We’ll decide in the next few days the best course of action we can take to raise awareness—marches, demonstrations, fundraisers. We’ll do everything we can to make the voices of these victims heard and force the police to get justice for them.”

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