Warnings!
Child sexual abuse, extremely dubious consent, paedophilia, rape/non-consensual, suicidal thoughts, underage sex, victim blaming.

Where Our Demons Hide
Part 6 - The Character Witness

Gilbert opened the door to the cupboard under the stairs and suppressed a dry cough.

It was dark inside the cupboard. He groped for the pull cord switch and tugged, and a single naked bulb clicked on to bathe the room in weak yellow light. The gas and electricity meters jutted out of the wall to his left; and to his right, wedged beneath the flight of stairs, was a stack of half-forgotten belongings stuffed into black bin liners and loose cardboard boxes.

He stretched himself far into the cupboard, grunting with effort as he rummaged around inside the tightly-packed area, and dragging some of the bigger bags out into the hallway to allow himself more space to manoeuvre around inside. In the end, after ten full minutes of searching, he got to the bottom of the pile and found what he had been looking for.

They were a pair of grey hospital-issued crutches he had wedged into the cupboard many years ago, right after completing physiotherapy and was declared fit again at his final doctor's appointment. They lay stacked on top of his old climbing gear, the clips, ropes, spiked boots and heavy winter wear he had stuffed into backpacks, consigning them to be forgotten as well.

He pulled the crutches out of the cupboard, cursing as his elbow bumped into the corner of a precariously stacked box and sending it crashing to the floor. Then slowly, a little awkwardly, he pried the crutches apart and strapped one of them to his right arm.

His grip tightened around the hard plastic handle as he leaned against it, taking the weight off his foot and letting out a sigh as relief flooded instantly to ease the throbbing in his knee.

This is only temporary, he told himself as he hobbled around on the spot.

He kept his eyes firmly averted from the mirror that hung in the hallway.

It was 11:27 on May 22nd 1995.

They were standing at the summit of Mt Aconcagua, and the air was as clean and crisp as freshly-laundered linen. The snow reflected the sun's glare into their squinting eyes and, as the camera panned across a panoramic view of clouds and snow-capped mountain ranges, a stiff breeze rose to howl into the camera's naked microphone.

Slowly, the pan moved to include Gilbert into frame. He had his hood pushed back, and his muffler pulled low and tucked beneath his chin, his cold-chapped lips stretched into a grimace of a grin. A tinge of red – from exertion and the cold – sat high on his cheeks, lending colour to his otherwise pale white face peppered with a grey 5 o'clock shadow.

"Whew!" Gilbert exhaled, shielding his eyes with his hand from the sun's glare, his gaze fixed to the clouds swirling in a misty cascade around their feet. Then, turning around and catching the cameraman's eye, he let out a sudden bark of laughter.

The trial was scheduled to start at half past eleven.

Gilbert was running late. But even so, he limped past the lifts towards the staircase, his crutch clacking out a jerky rhythm as he crossed the marble-tiled floor. When he got to the stairs, he gripped tight to the railing and hauled himself, shuffling up one stair at a time. He winced with every step that caused him to lean on his injured knee.

Two nights ago, he had been sitting outside a pub and lighting up a cigarette he had bumped off a stranger, when it happened. A man about twice his size had stumbled drunkenly out, hooting with laughter and carelessly waving a pint glass around, sloshing almost all of the ale in it onto Gilbert. He didn't know what came over him then. His mind, which had been so full of white noise since Natasha's visit, chose that moment to throw everything into sudden sharp focus.

Feeling indignant, he had yelled after the man, he recalled. The man stopped in his tracks and jeered at him, shoving him out onto the pavement. He stumbled and corrected himself. In all the confusion, his unlit cigarette slipped from his fingers and crushed itself into the gutter.

He had thrown the first punch.

The rest of the evening was now a blur, but he had woken up with a busted hand, a splitting headache, and an agonising pain in the knee he had broken all those years ago.

"Shit!" he hissed.

He burst out from the stairwell onto the second floor of the courthouse and stopped, leaning against the wall for support and doubling over to catch his breath.

A pair of black polished shoes stepped into the periphery of his vision as he stared, panting breathlessly, at the floor. They shuffled to a halt and stood at a small distance away from him. He knew who they belonged to without having to look up.

Slowly, as he regained his breath, he raised his eyes, meeting Ivan Braginski's pale violet stare.

"Weilschmidt," Ivan said simply, with genuine warmth. The name tumbled out of his mouth with some surprise, as if he had not believed that Gilbert would turn up.

Braginski, he wanted to return in curt greeting but a lump had formed in his throat.

"You're here," came a cool, cut-glass voice.

It was Natasha who stood suddenly beside Ivan. The memory of their first encounter all those years ago at the train station came to mind. She was carrying a leather briefcase in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other. Her mouth was set in a hard impatient line, but her eyes softened as she took in the state of Gilbert, still slumped against the wall and gripping tight to his single crutch.

"What happened?" she asked.

"Nothing," Gilbert said quickly. He scowled as he straightened up, not wanting her pity.

Ivan stood staring first at his sister then at Gilbert, his eyes darting from Gilbert's sweaty face, to the crutch he was holding, to the buckled knee that was obviously causing him pain. Gilbert wish he wouldn't bring any further attention to it. Thankfully, Natasha took his cue and cut in.

"Come," she said briskly, turning to her side and indicating that he should follow her. "I need to fill you in."

They had settled on descending down the north side of the mountain from the summit, believing that it would be straightforward enough and that it would get them to the bottom before the day was over. But as storm clouds gathered and swept in from the east, the two men blundered into a whiteout of mist and wind, and found themselves lost within the hour.

Gilbert trudged ahead of Ivan, leaning into the wind that was whipping viciously around him. He had glimpsed at the ridge ahead of him, and had the idea of going back to it and to their path of descent. But as his snow boots crunched over the soft blanket of snow, what he did not realise was that he was walking into danger.

Specifically, he was walking over a cornice – an overhanging mass of ice and hardened snow – clinging to the side of the ridge, which was liable to break underfoot.

It happened suddenly. One minute he was crunching his way over snow, the clips on his belt clinking lightly together; the next minute, there was a muffled bursting sound as the cornice split and broke away from the ridge.

The ground beneath him opened up.

Gilbert let out a yell, more in surprise than in terror, as he slid helplessly down the side of the cliff. The rope that had been slack between him and Ivan went suddenly taut, sweeping Ivan off his feet too. He was falling for what felt like an inordinately long time, an infinite moment of vulnerability in the face of the mountain's towering height. Then there was a jerk on his harness, and he was dangling precariously over the edge of the cliff, watching as all the ice and snow fell away from him in a roaring sheet of white.

Ivan worked quickly to anchor himself on the other side of the ridge as Gilbert clambered back up to the safety of solid rock. When their eyes met, Ivan squinting questioningly up at him from his hasty anchor, Gilbert broke into a devilish grin and yelled, "I found the ridge!"

"The court is back in session for the trial of Mr Ivan Braginski."

The judge peered over her wire-rimmed glasses, first at the prosecution – the prosecutor looking confident even with his client sitting a little crumpled beside him – then over to the defence. Her eyes fixed to Natasha's as she slowly appraised the young determined-looking attorney who insisted on defending her own brother.

"Natasha Arlovskaya," Natasha said by way of introduction and for the benefit of the court. "The defence is ready, Your Honour."

"The prosecution is ready, Your Honour," the prosecutor echoed after her.

"Very well, Mr Desai. Your opening statement, please."

The prosecutor stood up from his chair and considered the jury sat to his right before launching into his statement.

"In last week's session, the defence put forward the abhorrent accusation that the plaintiff had 'seduced' Mr Braginski in the evidence captured on camera. May I remind the jury that the plaintiff was many years under the legal age of consent at the time. The prosecution condemned the accusation then as malicious, defamatory and categorically untrue, and maintains that position today. Furthermore, the prosecution maintains that the footage shown in last week's session – which was one amongst many currently held in police custody – is clear and decisive evidence of Mr Braginski's guilt."

Gilbert gaped at the prosecutor from where he was sitting in the back of the courtroom. He had not realised the extent of the evidence against Braginski. But if there were actual video evidence of the assaults… He was beginning to doubt Natasha's line of defence, as determined as she was during her preparation of him.

After a few more formal exchanges in which Natasha skilfully rescinded the previous defence attorney's statement without uttering a single word of apology, the judge gave the floor over to the defence.

"The defence may call its first witness."

Gilbert felt it before he heard it, a strange hollow sensation as he drove his pickaxe much too easily into the wall. He didn't like the sound of it either, so he pulled out the axe with the intention of driving it in further for a more secure anchor.

He was hanging his entire upper body weight on one pickaxe when the ice gave suddenly way, dropping him.

The fall was sheer and terrifying, and was broken by a ledge jutting out the side of the mountain. There was a crack! and a sharp excruciating pain began flooding down his thigh, his knee, seizing the full length of his leg in debilitating agony. He screamed.

The wind tore the sound from his lips and flung it out to drown in the howling storm.

At Natasha's introduction, Gilbert rose laboriously from his seat and started the slow shuffle down the length of the courtroom to the witness stand. He could only imagine the picture he made; small, frail, and pitiful, really, as he clacked along on his crutch.

He gritted his teeth and kept his head bowed, feeling himself burn with bitter humiliation.

He didn't know how long he clung to the ledge, trembling and gasping and desperately willing the pain to subside. But after a while, he swallowed down the worst of his panic, pulled off his glove, and patted down his leg in search of broken bones. He couldn't feel anything out of the ordinary and there was no blood when he checked his hand; but when he tried to stand, all the pain came pouring back, and he collapsed again in a bitter tirade of shouts and curses.

The rope went slack, making him aware of Ivan's descent. He looked up to find Ivan peering down at him with a pale expressionless face, his lips raw and split from the cold.

As their gaze locked, red into violet, Gilbert convinced himself that there was anger in Ivan's eyes, or at least disappointment.

When he got the front, he clambered into the witness stand with as little fuss as he could manage, setting the crutch clumsily aside. Then he turned to face the court at last. His eyes flitted down to the front, glancing first at Ivan in the dock flanked with two security guards, before turning over to the prosecution's table.

Alfred Jones, the young blond victim Natasha had pointed out to him earlier that morning, met his eyes with a bright unwavering gaze of his own.

Disclaimer!
All incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons or actual events is purely coincidental. The author does not condone any immoral or illegal sexual conduct with minors in real life.