Dark Father

by Cooper, James

  He blew on his hands and gave the heater another encouraging whack. The thing protested with a loud vibration and then grudgingly kicked out a little extra heat. Haft smiled; everything responded to a little persuasion, given time.

  He guided the car past the village of Bolventor and within another mile was looking out across the snowed-in northern tip of the lake. It looked spectacular; the moon was low, sending a wash of light across the dark water. The landscape looked frail and luminous in the snow.

  He pulled the car over and flicked on the interior light. He’d forgotten how vast Colliford Lake actually was, which was why it had been such an ideal spot to dump the body of his first partner all those years ago. What he needed was some kind of geographical marker, just to steer him in the right direction. He pulled the photograph from the dashboard and held it beneath the light. There was the perfect family, standing dutifully in front of a small white cottage, smiling out at him. He stared hard at the picture. The people in it were of no particular significance just yet; he was looking for something in the background, or in the cottage itself, that stood out, an identifying mark that was distinctive enough to work in his favor. As far as he could tell from the picture the cottage was framed by large pine trees, but behind it he could see the access trail that led directly to a much wider stretch of road, presumably the one that Haft was already on. This was worth knowing; if there were lights on in the cottage, he might be able to spot them from the road.

  He held the photograph closer to the light. The man was standing in the foreground with his arm around his wife and son, but there was something behind him, a gray plinth or garden statue in the background, planted at the end of the drive. It was partially blocked by the man’s body, but as Haft peered at the image, he realized exactly what he was looking at: a stone birdbath, mottled and bleached by the sun.

  He gently touched the photograph with his hand and turned off the cabin light. So: a white cottage framed by pines; a black Volvo; and a birdbath at the end of the drive. Haft smiled. The snow might confuse things a little, he thought, but sometimes the complications you imagine lie ahead simply take care of themselves. It might take a while to locate the cottage he was after, but he was in no rush. The man and his family, whoever they were, and whatever they were planning to do with Philip Rymer, had likely become a hostage to the snow. After all, who but a loon or an assassin would be foolish enough to travel in weather like this?

  He laughed and rolled the car back on to the road. He drove slowly, looking for a cottage in the trees. He breathed steadily. This was what Haft lived for: the moment when the cold and the wet no longer mattered; when the dark element at his core grew hot.

  * * *

  They played Frustration three times, and each time Frank manipulated the game so that Jake won. Cindy and Philip both had their hands bound behind their backs with cable ties. They took no part in the game. Frank depressed the popper and moved each of their pieces. He laughed when one of them was forced home.

  Cindy spent most of the time watching Frank. He talked constantly and laughed hysterically at the silence. She suspected he was responding to dialogue between a completely different Cindy and Jake, one rooted in an idealized past. There were a dozen lit candles in the room and they made the painted smiles Frank had smeared everywhere seem even more distressing, as though their grins were broadening in agreement with Frank’s demented laughter.

  She turned to look at Philip and realized that the boy was trembling. The limit of what his innocent mind was able to comprehend had been breached some time ago, and now he just sat at the table, staring blindly at Frank, a lost child expecting the worst.

  “I think we should stop playing now, Frank,” Cindy said. “I think Jake here’s just too good for us.”

  “What do you think, Jake? Want to quit while you’re ahead?”

  Philip remained motionless. His eyes blinked rapidly three times, then froze. He stayed that way until Frank turned his attention back to his wife.

  “Remember how we used to read to Jake every night before he went to bed, Cind?”

  She felt a genuine stab of heartache as she pictured Jake’s face, illuminated as she or Frank read to him in bed.

  “Of course. He used to adore it. We all did.”

  “Sometimes you’d beg us to continue the story, Jakey, even after we’d closed the book and turned out the light. Do you remember?”

  Philip realized Frank was staring at him and slowly nodded his head. He was holding it together only by the skin of his teeth. Cindy felt a wave of admiration for the kid that made her catch her breath.

  “I have something,” Frank said. “Something I brought from home.”

  He ran from the kitchen and clopped along the hallway into the front room. No more surprises, she thought. Please. Neither she nor Philip had the strength to endure it. If there was a God—and at this point she felt that the likelihood was slim—then she hoped He might glance down at them and acknowledge that He’d put them through more shit than any sane man or woman deserved.

  Frank returned to the kitchen and waved a book at them.

  “I brought ‘Jabberwocky’ with us, Jake. So we could read it again by the lake. The slithy toves and borogroves!”

  Cindy frowned. She had indeed brought Jake a copy of “Jabberwocky” last year, with wonderful illustrations by Graeme Base, but Frank had insisted that it was too disturbing and had confiscated it; the very copy he was now brandishing in his hand.

  “Frank, I don’t think we ever read him that one. You didn’t like it. You said it would give him nightmares.”

  He looked shocked. “‘Jabberwocky’? Nonsense. We read it all the time, didn’t we, Jakey? We especially like the bit where the little boy takes the Jabberwock’s head to his daddy. Remember that bit, kiddo? He left it dead and with its head he went galumphing back!”

  Cindy shook her head, defying Frank’s memory of events, terrified that if he disappeared down another dead end, he might never be able to find his way out.

  “You must be confusing it with something else, Frank. You don’t like that book. You never have.”

  Frank rubbed at his head and winced as though he was experiencing intense pain.

  “That can’t be true, Cind. I used to read it with my own daddy when I was a boy. We used to laugh when the vorpal blade went snicker-snack! Daddy said it sounded like a bear walking through the woods.”

  Cindy froze. Frank had rarely spoken about his own father, even to her; she had recognized early on that it was a subject he was keen to avoid. Might it be a road back to reality for him? Something he could cling to as the pain in his head chipped away at whatever was left of his awareness?

  “How old were you?” she asked. “When he read you the book?”

  Frank stared across the table at her and his face seemed to change. His eyes brightened; his mouth grew wide. A measure of affection returned.

  “You know how old I was, Mommy. You were right there! You made sure Daddy didn’t scare me with his voices.”

  Philip turned his head to look at her, but she refused to take her eyes off Frank. He had slipped into an unreachable vacuum; an airless space where the shadow of his family hung in an unreleased darkness that had been haunting him for the longest time. It was no longer 1989; it was the 1960s and Frank—wretched and unpredictable; on the verge of a glistening revelation—was back with his parents again.

  “I didn’t want Daddy upsetting you before bed,” Cindy said, falling seamlessly into the role of mother, feeling sick at the perversion of it as she thought once again of her own son, a cold fist squeezing her heart. “You’d never get to sleep, would you?”

  Frank narrowed his eyes. “Sometimes I never did,” he said softly.

  Cindy felt a change in Frank’s mood, but realized she had little choice but to press on.

  “Why not?”

  Frank—or a version of Frank, a composite of the boy and the man—looked away.

  “Because Dark Daddy woul
dn’t let me,” he said.

  Cindy held her breath. “Who’s Dark Daddy?”

  “The man who takes over Daddy and shouts at me and chases me up the stairs,” Frank said. “The man with one eye who we ran away from, Mommy. Don’t you remember?”

  “Of course I do, honey. It just seems like such a long time ago, that’s all.”

  Frank held a hand to his head and appeared to be listening to something; a voice, perhaps, from a distant horror echoing inside his skull.

  “Why didn’t you come back?” he whispered.

  For a moment, Cindy thought he was referring to the breakdown of their marriage, but whatever water had run under that particular bridge, it was of little consequence now; Frank was referring to something else.

  “What do you mean?” she said.

  “When you went to meet Dark Daddy,” Frank said. “You never came back. Not for a long time. Only now; right at the end.” He paused. “I thought I’d never see you again.”

  He wept then; his head sank to the kitchen table and rested in the painted smiles. She could see his cheek and his hair turn red.

  “I told you I’d come back,” she said. “I told you.” She had to look away, look anywhere but at Frank. She didn’t know who he was—what a broken, miserable creature he’d become—and she could feel her own disgust and fear giving way to an emotion she didn’t want to acknowledge; something that resembled regret.

  Frank slowly raised his head and stared into Cindy’s eyes.

  “I think you saved me,” he said. “When you left, I mean. You made Dark Daddy go away. After I saw the black hole where his eye was, I thought he’d always know how to find me. But I was wrong. I never saw him again.”

  “Then we saved each other, didn’t we,” Cindy said quietly.

  In the ensuing silence the sound of smashing glass at the front of the house made all three of them jump. Even Philip was startled by it. It sounded like it had come from the front room, but Cindy’s perspective on things had become increasingly confused and she was no longer sure in which direction she wanted the evening to turn. By contrast, Frank suddenly seemed agitated, attracted to a logic of his own and convinced that the intruder had dragged himself from that deep well into which he had so painstakingly consigned the past. He flung himself into a dark corner of the kitchen, curled himself into a ball, and retreated into his own private hell.

  “It’s Dark Daddy!” he screamed. “I know it is. He’s come back; he can see me with his eye!”

  Cindy said nothing. She wanted to scream something back at him, but by this stage she realized it would make absolutely no difference. Her prime concern had to be herself and the boy. She listened for a moment but heard only Frank’s whimpering and Philip’s unsteady breathing. She wondered what on earth was happening at the front of the house.

  “He’s here!” Frank whispered. “I know he is. I can sense him.”

  Cindy heard muted footsteps in the hallway. Outside, a shelf of snow slid down the roof and landed with a thump on the ground. She could hear the distant sound of a late-night badger ferreting for food.

  The kitchen door opened and a large man walked in. He had a face as tight and bloodless as a crushed heart. He looked calm and assured and Cindy felt her stomach clench. He had already zeroed in on Frank. He was businesslike and direct; in complete control. He approached the cowering man in the corner of the kitchen and hovered over him. Frank wrapped his arms around his head and began to sob.

  “Don’t hurt me!” he begged. “Please, Daddy. I won’t be bad again. I promise.”

  The man turned towards Cindy. “What’s wrong with him?” he said. She looked pale and drawn and Haft thought she resembled the woman in the photograph he had taken from the house.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “He needs help. Please don’t hurt him.”

  The man said nothing. He left Frank shaking like a frightened child, having disregarded him as a threat, and moved behind Cindy and the boy. He removed the Gerber folding knife from his jacket pocket, opened it, and used it to sever the cable ties binding their hands.

  “He do that?” he asked Cindy, pointing to her face. For a moment she thought he meant the bruises and the broken nose; then she realized he was staring at both her and Philip in disgust, having noticed the red painted smiles Frank had daubed across their mouth.

  She nodded.

  “Those too?” He indicated the candlelit smiles scrawled over every surface of the room.

  “Yes.”

  The man leaned in and removed the choke chain and the leash from around their throat. He turned his attention to the boy. He looked him in the eyes and said, “You okay, kid?”

  Philip nodded, though he appeared a shadow of the boy Cindy had observed at the beginning of this ordeal; his spirit had been broken by Frank’s ghostly, unknowable face.

  The man stood before Philip and gave him a thorough examination, making sure he was unharmed. The man in the corner would need reminding that there was always a reckoning due; Haft decided it was important to know exactly how far he needed go to balance the books.

  “What’s with all the smiles?” he said, directing the question to Cindy as he finished his inspection of the boy.

  She lowered her head. “He wanted us all to be happy,” she said quietly. “He just lost control of it.”

  Again the man said nothing. His silence and his composure made Cindy feel uneasy; her whole body felt tense, her muscles coiled, her knuckles white, yet this stranger—who seemed intent on setting them free—was working with such cool detachment, she could barely compel herself to breathe.

  “Go outside and wait in the car,” he told Philip. “You too, lady. Your friend and I are about to get real happy.”

  As Philip left the cottage and crunched across the snow, Cindy took a discreet step towards Frank. “Please,” she said. “I don’t want him hurt. We need to get him to a hospital.”

  Haft watched her; the four-inch blade of the Gerber knife hung between them, promising the worst possible kind of settlement. She had no doubt that, if it came down to it, the man would have no compunction about using it on her.

  “There are consequences,” he said. “He needs to understand that.”

  He moved towards Frank and waited, wondering if the woman would be sufficiently impulsive to intercede. There was a moment’s hesitation, where Cindy clearly thought about challenging the man, before her breathing regulated and she realized how futile such a gesture would be. She looked away, out through the window of the kitchen door, at Philip running towards the main road through the snow.

  “I don’t like Dark Daddy,” Frank said, lifting his head up and staring in terror at the man. “He chases me and tries to hurt my head.”

  Haft bent down and placed a large hand on Frank’s shoulder. “I won’t hurt you,” he said. “I just want to see you smile.”

  He raised the blade of the Gerber and used it to cut off Frank’s mouth. It was over so fast, Cindy wasn’t really aware of what the man was doing until she saw all the blood pooling on the kitchen floor. He drew the blade around Frank’s lips and peeled away the skin, leaving an artificial grin of bloody teeth and gums spread across his grimacing face. Frank was screaming like a butchered pig, and Cindy watched it all unfold, her hysteria growing as her mind sang The vorpal blade went snicker-snack over and over again. Frank’s hands were clawing at the damaged tissue as though he were trying to physically tear the pain from his mouth, but the blood was clotting in the back of his throat and the new deformity was widening with every agonized shriek he unleashed.

  Without pausing to consider the consequences, Cindy lurched across the room and flung herself onto the man’s back, pitching abuse at him, flailing wildly with arms and fists. Haft absorbed some of the blows and then hit her once around the head, hard enough to send her scurrying across the floor. She clattered against the kitchen cupboards and lay there for a moment, stunned by the speed with which he had reacted.

  “I should thin
k you’d be grateful,” he said, wiping the blade on the palm of his hand. Cindy dabbed at her right eye; it was leaking fresh blood. It felt like he had knocked something loose inside her head. She turned onto her back and slowly propped herself up.

  “Why would you think that, after what you’ve just done. He just needed help, not more pain.”

  Frank was in a bloody heap in the far corner of the kitchen, crying into his sleeve and muttering to himself about Dark Daddy. His face was a wet ruin; it looked like he had been set upon by a wolf.

  “You’re wrong,” the man said. “If I hadn’t arrived, think what this lunatic might have done. Not just to you, but to the kid.”

  Cindy crawled across the floor to Frank and took his trembling body in her arms. She stroked his hair; she kissed his head. She never once let her eyes drift away from Haft. She sat in Frank’s blood and watched in silence as he walked towards the door.

  “Sometimes,” the man said, “a smile can be made to last forever.”

  He walked out of the cottage and disappeared into the night. Cindy and Frank clung to each other and wept. If there was happiness to be had, she thought, somewhere up ahead, it would only come fleetingly, as a memory, embedded in the deepest shadows of the past.

  CHAPTER 21: ECCE HOMO

  Mack was lying on his bed, speculating about the man he used to be. His mask was floating in a clear solution in a bowl on his bedside cabinet and his teeth and gums were exposed. The evening air against the hardened tissue felt cool. He closed his eyes and remembered being someone else, a long time ago, but the details eluded him. It was a strange sensation; like peeking into an old friend’s front room and seeing items that looked vaguely familiar: a chair that you had once sat in, a coffee mug reserved especially for you. Your imprint left behind on both.