Dark Father

by Cooper, James

  “You should see this,” he called back into the cottage. “I reckon by morning we’ll be snowed in.”

  Cindy and Jake watched him from the candlelit kitchen. Neither of them moved. It looked cozy in there. Warm and intimate. The perfect setting, Frank thought.

  “It’s cold in here,” Cindy called. “Can you at least build a fire?”

  Frank stepped back into the cottage and shook his head. “Didn’t you pack appropriate clothing? You should always prepare for the worst, Cindy, you know that.”

  Cindy said nothing, unsure whether to scream abuse at him or play along with his sick little game. She was beginning to think that compliance might be better for both her and the boy, but her underlying rage was difficult to suppress; there was no question that Frank was becoming more disconnected with each passing hour.

  Eventually she said, “I didn’t pack anything, Frank. I didn’t have time. Remember?”

  “You should always make time for things like that,” Frank said. “We don’t want Jake here to catch pneumonia, do we?”

  He closed the kitchen door and turned to Jake.

  “What do you reckon, kiddo? Do we need a fire or is Mommy just being grouchy because she forgot to pack the right clothes?”

  He looked back at Cindy and pulled a mock snarl, as though the two of them were sharing some kind of cute disagreement that neither of them really meant. Cindy wanted to grab him by the hair and ram his face into the wall; she could feel the pressure of her anger slowly starting to nullify her fear.

  “A fire might be nice,” the boy said softly, watching Frank smile at him in the candlelight.

  Frank nodded. “Then a fire it is,” he said. “We don’t want the two most precious things in the house getting cold now, do we?”

  Cindy thought she detected a corrosive edge to Frank’s last comment, but the fixed smile and darting eyes made it difficult to confirm anything one way or the other. The Frank she had loved for so long was gone. In his place stood this horrifying simulacrum, a waxwork that looked like Frank but who was behaving as though his personality had been recast.

  He leaned forward over the kitchen table, the flame of the candle illuminating his profile.

  “Tell me, Cindy,” he said. “Are you happy?”

  She watched the flame dance in his eyes and recalled the long afternoons the two of them had spent making love, basking in each other’s frailty, memorizing every little detail. What she saw now disturbed her beyond measure as Frank’s eyes rippled like dark water, making her feel cold and alone.

  “Yes,” she said. “I’m happy, Frank. I’m always happy.”

  “THEN WHY AREN’T YOU FUCKING SMILING!” he screamed, pushing his nose into Cindy’s face. She could feel the sudden heat of his breath and realized as she tried to pull away that he was blowing bubbles of saliva onto her lips. It appalled her to think that, with a single muscle contraction, they would easily be close enough to kiss.

  Frank withdrew, his eyes unblinking, strands of hair tumbling over his brow.

  “If you’re happy,” he said quietly, “you should smile. That way people will know.”

  He flicked back his hair and waited, sweat dripping from his candlelit face. Slowly, like a soldier defusing a bomb, Cindy produced a weak, terrified smile.

  “That’s the stuff,” Frank said, producing a smile of his own. “Look at those lovely choppers. Bright enough to light the room!”

  He turned his attention to the boy and lowered his head. “You too, Jakey. Come on now. No holding back. I want a real whopper. Show me how happy you are.”

  The boy turned his head and looked at the woman trying desperately to hold the counterfeit smile in place. She nodded at him, once, and whispered an encouragement that he couldn’t quite hear. He turned back to Frank and smiled. The man watched him and he kept the expression in place until it hurt.

  “Good enough,” Frank said, finally pushing back the chair and getting to his feet. “It’s like destiny, isn’t it? All this happiness. Like finding something you believe in again.”

  * * *

  Frank left after that to attend to the fire. Cindy guessed he’d explore the outhouse on the eastern side of the cottage where the owner used to keep cords of wood stockpiled against the wall. Last time they were here, Frank had found kindling and old newspapers in the same outhouse and had been able to start a fire in no time at all. This time she hoped it might take him a little longer to gather suitable material; she needed a few minutes to adjust to her new surroundings and wanted to try and refocus her energy on assessing her options. That would be significantly easier with Frank out of the room.

  She thought back for a moment to the lunacy that had led to them returning to the cottage. She had known Frank was struggling to assimilate the loss of Jake, to adequately grieve over what had happened that day in the garden ten months ago, but she had no idea he was being haunted and consumed by it. Not to this extent; not like this. Whenever he called her on the phone after a night of heavy drinking, declaring how much he missed them both, spitting out his bitterness and pain, she had disregarded it, largely because these were the exact same emotions she was experiencing too. He’d told her time and again that he couldn’t cope, that he was finding it difficult just to get through the day, and Cindy had held the phone away from her ear, not wanting to listen, unable to alleviate her husband’s torment while she was suffering the same agonies, the same heartache, the same rage. Who was supporting her during all this? Who was comforting her when the nights grew cold and Jake’s face slowly developed in the darkness, like a Polaroid, piece by beautiful piece?

  The whole sorry situation made her feel sick. Wasn’t it bad enough that they had lost their son? Was it fair that she now had to witness the unravelling of her husband, too? She shook her head, aware that this kind of self-pity would only add to her sense of personal outrage. This was the dilemma in which they all found themselves; it was what it was. There was no point trying to draw an arrow from the past to the present, no matter how tempting. The one part of this from which she could derive genuine hope was that, deep down, beneath the layers of darkness in which Frank had become submersed, Cindy knew she would eventually have an opportunity to claw him back. The person she felt most sorry for was the poor kid who had somehow become entangled in Frank’s hopeless recreation of the past.

  She turned her head to the left and saw that the boy was watching her, as though waiting for her to assume control of the situation and explain to him their best chance of escape.

  “What’s your name,” she said, keeping her voice low, not wanting to give Frank an excuse to return.

  “Philip,” the boy said. “My name’s Philip Rymer. I’m ten years old.”

  “Okay, Philip. That’s good. My name’s Cindy. The man who brought you here is my husband, Frank. He’s having a tough time right now. A really tough time. I’m afraid you seem to have got caught in the middle of it.”

  “Will he hurt us?” Philip said.

  Cindy paused for a moment, thinking; typical kid, cutting right through the bullshit and asking the only question that really mattered.

  “I don’t think so,” she said. “Not if we play along. We just have to stay calm. Make him think he’s in charge. Can you do that?”

  “I guess so.”

  Cindy peered through the glass panels in the kitchen door and watched the snowfall. It was coming down fast now, covering the shadowy outline of the distant hills.

  “Do you have a family, Philip?”

  The boy nodded. “My mother died when I was small, so it’s just me and my dad. He’ll have sent people to look for me. They won’t take long.”

  Cindy was surprised by the level of confidence in the boy’s tone. “What makes you so sure?”

  “I know how they work,” he said. “They’re the best at what they do. I’ve seen it before.”

  Cindy vaguely wondered who the hell Frank had managed to abduct. The boy sounded convincing, and it occurred to her that
Frank might already have made his first mistake.

  “Well I hope you’re right, Philip,” she said. “For both our sakes.”

  There was a moment of silence before the boy asked: “Why does he keep calling me Jake?”

  Cindy closed her eyes and found the dark silence in which she was cocooned dangerously seductive. It would be easy to stay like this forever, she thought. Isolated from everything. Pefectly lost to the world and every cruel inconvenience in it.

  She breathed heavily and opened her eyes. “Jake was our son,” she said. “He was taken from our home ten months ago. He was five years old. Frank seems to think−” She stalled for a moment, not sure how to go on. “Frank sees something in you, Philip, that reminds him of Jake.”

  “Is he crazy?” the boy asked. His eyes glowed in the candlelight and for the first time Cindy thought he looked genuinely distressed.

  “I’ve no idea, Philip. But if he is, that’s all the more reason to play along, isn’t it?”

  They both went quiet, each one considering the declension down which Frank had slipped. Neither of them wanted to dwell on it for long.

  Cindy flexed her hands and began a cursory inspection of the cable ties with which she had been bound.

  “Are you able to move your hands?” she asked the boy.

  He imitated Cindy’s inventory and then shook his head. “They’re fastened too tight. So are my feet.”

  “If I struggle,” Cindy said, “I think I could unhook my arms from this damn chair. I might be able to find a knife in one of the drawers.”

  “What if you don’t find anything sharp enough and he comes back? It’ll make him mad.”

  The kid raised a good point; they needed to bide their time. Wait for their moment. Not try to force the issue simply because they were afraid.

  Cindy listened hard and heard Frank outside shuffling through the carpet of snow.

  “Keep your wits about you,” she whispered to the boy. “And stay calm. If I think of something, I’ll find a way of letting you know.”

  Frank reappeared at the kitchen door, dropped something on the ground by his feet, and waved at them through the glass.

  “How are my little tadpoles?” he said. “Not turned into toads, I hope!”

  Cindy sighed; it was a one-liner he’d used when Jake was a toddler, signalling the cue for both of them to start hopping round the room making an irritating croaking noise until Cindy begged them to stop.

  On this occasion, neither she nor the boy responded, and Frank opened the door and blustered in with an accompanying swirl of snow. In one hand he carried a coal scuttle, filled to the brim with logs and kindling. In the other he carried a small, dented tin.

  “You’re in luck,” he said to Cindy, placing the coal scuttle on the kitchen worktop. “Enough wood to last us till the end of the month, if we use it wisely.” He picked up the dented tin and held it aloft. “I also found this,” he said.

  Cindy looked guardedly at the container. “What is it?”

  “This, my curious little monkey, is a world of happiness.”

  He placed the tin on the kitchen table and took from his trouser pocket a small penknife that was attached to his key ring. He pulled open the blade and inserted it beneath the rim of the tin’s lid. As soon as Frank forced it off, Cindy could smell the heady resin of unused paint.

  Cindy fidgeted in her chair, starting to feel nervous. “What’s it for, Frank?” she said. “You redecorating already?” She attempted to laugh, but the sound emerged more like a whimper and she regretted ever having taken the joke on; it had floundered badly, and only served to make her seem anxious, as though she were living on impulse rather than reason, struggling to control her own mind.

  “I got the idea,” Frank said, staring directly at Cindy, “when I saw the color. It’s red. The exact same shade as your lips.”

  He removed a stiff brush from his coat pocket and dipped it into the tin. He began to slowly stir the paint. His eyes were locked onto Cindy’s. She saw nothing in them she recognized. Not even when the candlelight danced across his face.

  He leaned closer; withdrew the loaded brush.

  “You might want to zip up your mouth for this part,” he said.

  He swiped the brush across Cindy’s lips, creating the perfect smile, and then stood back to admire his work. He frowned; the effect hadn’t been adequately captured. He primed the brush with a fresh slug of paint, and then slapped it across her mouth again, even as Cindy was moaning, trying desperately to compress her lips.

  Frank took another step back and smiled, satisfied with his work. He repeated the whole procedure on the boy, taking more care this time, almost dabbing on the paint for fear of unnerving his darling Jakey, which would be inexcusable. He applied the emulsion with a kind of detached wonder, granting them both cosmetic smiles that stretched halfway around their face; not a disfiguring scar, but an extension of their elation. Unequivocal proof of their love.

  Frank sat back and sighed, filtering out Cindy’s string of invective as the paint slowly dried around her face.

  He held up his hand, calling for calm, and waited until his wife had worn herself out.

  “This way you’ll be happy forever,” he explained. “We all will.”

  He dipped the brush into the tin and drew an irregular line of red paint across his own mouth. “God, I love you,” he said.

  His family sat across from him, unmoving, wearing smiles as wet and wide as a slashed throat.

  * * *

  Once Frank had the fire blazing in the lounge, he awkwardly moved Cindy and the boy along the hallway and into the front room. He seated them both on a ratty sofa opposite the fire and squatted down on the aging carpet alongside them.

  “This is nice,” he said. “I think we did something like this before, didn’t we, Cind? A late-night fireside vigil. You were fast asleep on the sofa, Jake. Your mom and I spent the night gazing at the stars above the lake.”

  He rose and pulled back the curtains from the window.

  “There. I don’t expect there’ll be too many out on the lake at this hour.”

  He stood for a moment and watched the snow silently ambush the lake. It made little difference; the invasion of white flakes that had captured most of the surrounding landscape settled on the dark water and melted on impact. The lake looked deep and black, and Frank considered how easily he could lose himself in the fathoms below.

  “Take a look,” he said, angling the sofa towards the window. “Beautiful, isn’t it?”

  Cindy kept her eyes on Frank, fighting the impulse she felt to look away. The painted smile smeared across his face was obscene. He was beginning to look like a pantomime villain: hot, sweaty and deranged. The Frank she knew was being driven further and further away.

  “We’re hungry, Frank,” she said. “We’ve hardly eaten all day. Perhaps you could fix us something.”

  A light went out in Frank’s eyes, as though Cindy had deliberately spoiled a precious family moment.

  “But I built the fire,” he said flatly. “And showed you the lake.”

  Cindy had no idea what point, if any, he was trying to make. “But we’re still hungry,” she said. “Jake needs to keep his strength up now that we’ve got him back. You do want to provide for your family, don’t you, Frank?”

  There was a moment of silence. No one moved. Frank watched Cindy in the glow of the fire, his face unreadable. Behind his head Cindy could see tiny icicles forming outside on the eaves overhanging the bay.

  “Course I do,” Frank said. He ran down the hallway to the kitchen and returned almost immediately with the box of provisions. He removed half a loaf of bread and a pack of ham and proceeded to make a batch of rather crude sandwiches.

  “This good enough?” he said, flinging the bread onto Cindy’s lap. There was an iciness to his voice that Cindy didn’t care for. The red smile on his face was fooling no one; it was beginning to make her feel exhausted.

  “How am I supposed to ea
t it?” she said.

  Frank looked disinterested. “Bend over and use your teeth.”

  “I can’t bend like that, Frank. It’s too painful. And these damn ties are starting to hurt.”

  Cindy moved restlessly on the sofa to reinforce her point and let the sound of the crackling fire fill the room. She could smell mildew and the meaty aroma of cured ham. She thought it was starting to turn.

  “Are you really going to let your family eat like dogs?” she said.

  For the first time Frank looked uncertain of himself, as though this particular situation was slipping away from him, the strangeness of it testing his resolve.

  “I could feed you,” he suggested.

  Cindy shook her head. “Wouldn’t it be easier if you just removed the ties while we ate? You know, like a proper family. Like we used to, Frank?”

  He looked undecided. “I don’t know… I can’t think straight with all this noise.”

  Other than the crackling logs in the fireplace, the room was silent.

  Cindy pressed home her advantage. “To eat together for the first time in ten months, Frank. Imagine that. It’s what you’ve dreamed of; what we’ve both dreamed of.” No lie there, Cindy thought; she had lain awake at nights crying over everything that had been lost, including the simple things. The domestic moments that had characterized their perfect life.

  “It’s just sandwiches,” Frank said. “Nothing special. It’s all I had left.”

  “That’s fine, Frank. Jake and I are very grateful. Aren’t we, sweetheart?”

  She looked at the boy and gave him a brief nod. His insane smile widened, a grotesque exaggeration of the real thing.

  “I like sandwiches,” he said, keeping his contribution short and sweet, as he sensed appropriate to the volatile mood.