The House of Canted Steps

by Gary Fry

The boy nodded.

  “And what are they about?”

  “The Blood Boy.”

  “Who’s…The Blood Boy?”

  “He’s a boy who lives here and who’s always covered in blood. But the blood doesn’t come from inside him. It comes from…the walls of this house.”

  “The walls?” Again Mark recalled the stain in the photo he’d taken of this room. “What do you mean?”

  Lewis frowned and narrowed his eyes. “I don’t know for sure. It’s just that whenever I see him, he’s covered in red and the red is also on parts of the house he’s walking near and he’s horrible and I want him to go away. Can you make him, Daddy? Can you make him go away?”

  Then his son burst into tears, and Mark held him for long seconds while deciding what to say. This was a delicate stage in his enquiry, but he eventually asked, “And what about Justin? What about your…step-dad?”

  Lewis pulled away, his expression looking no more fearful than it had moments earlier. “How do you mean?”

  “Well,”—careful, careful—“does he get involved in any of this?”

  “No. I haven’t even told Mommy yet. She’s been too busy buying things and sorting stuff out.”

  How typical, thought Mark, but then eliminated unhelpful cattishness. “Well, she is expecting another baby, isn’t she? Are you…looking forward to that, Lewis? Are you happy that you, Mommy and…Justin live here now?”

  “I like the house,” his son replied firmly. “But I don’t like—”

  “The Blood Boy. Yes, you said.”

  Someone seemed to move nearby, but after turning to look, Mark noticed that only the door had popped open on its latch. He mustn’t have shut it properly after entering. It was certainly foolish to think that somebody was outside in the hall, eavesdropping on their conversation. He and the boy would have heard anybody else climbing the staircase.

  Mark twisted back to face his son. “I’m sure the dreams will go away soon, mate. In fact, I demand that they do.” He thrust out his chest like one of the superheroes on Lewis’s wall. “I command all bad boys to leave this place!” he added in a deep voice, and that made his son laugh, the wetness on his cheeks now all but dried up.

  “Thanks, Daddy. I bet that makes him go away.”

  “You’re welcome.” He paused, drew breath, and simply said it. “But seriously, Lewis, if you ever need me, whatever time it is or wherever you are, call me on your mobile. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “I mean it, son.”

  “So do I, Daddy.”

  Mark smiled and ruffled the boy’s short hair. “Good lad. After all, that’s what Daddies are for, isn’t it?”

  “That’s what makes me saddest. Justin’s not the same.”

  If this was a cryptic comment, Mark couldn’t figure out what it meant. Perhaps he should interpret it literally. Maybe that was all Lewis’s problem was: being unable to talk to the new man in his life the way he always had with his daddy. He understood his son’s situation because he’d always found it difficult talking to his own father. Satisfied with this explanation, Mark stood and paced back for the door. He bid the boy goodnight and then quietly exited the room.

  Mark hadn’t realized how much he needed to pee. Squatting beside the bed had compressed his bladder, and now he was desperate for the toilet. He paced along the hallway for the bathroom he’d briefly entered while valuing the place. It had a frosted glass window whose upper pane stood wide open, letting in gentle night air. Unburdening himself, Mark let this cool draught slip over him, sensing it untangle a cluster of inquiries in his mind.

  The Blood Boy—hadn’t Eric Johnson alluded to such a person while describing his family’s experiences? Wasn’t Lewis’s phrase similar to words the man had used about his own son’s dreams?

  Something was definitely wrong here, in this creepy house. Mark had suspected that for a long time, and had then attempted to deny it. But there was no use even trying to convince himself that the building wasn’t haunted.

  After urinating, Mark went up on his tiptoes to look through the open window, into the garden he’d observed only casually during his last visit. There was the greenhouse, glossy and cool under a streetlamp situated in the lane beyond the property’s grounds. And inside, looking as fond as he always had in his own when he was still alive, stood Mark’s late father, staring back at this building as if it owed him an explanation or possibly much more than that.

  9

  “You should have read more Freud instead of Penthouse, Mark.”

  “How do you mean?”

  They’d just dropped off his mother, who’d been so unsteady on her damaged hip that Nina had had to escort her into her bungalow. Mark’s girlfriend was also a bit tipsy, and while watching her come back down the garden path, Mark had deliberately not looked at the greenhouse at the back of the building, the one left empty by his dad following his death eight years ago.

  When Nina was back in the car and he was driving again, he’d thought it a good moment to tell her about all he’d experienced lately—not just in his ex-wife’s house this evening, but before that, during the few weeks he’d been involved with that cursed place. And predictably enough, it had sounded ludicrous as a cold narrative.

  “Well, for one thing,” Nina said as Mark pulled the vehicle into the car park behind their block of flats, “your first piece of evidence—the photos you took—has been destroyed. Secondly, the nightmares both Lewis and this other boy experienced…well, in your son’s case, it’s obviously an anxiety dream related to the imminent birth of a rival: Gayle and Justin’s baby. And although I can’t speak for the Johnsons’ son, I bet there was something similar going on there. And finally—”

  “Now you’re going to tell me that what I saw out of the upstairs window in that house was just a hallucination, aren’t you? You’ll say I’ve been under as much stress as everyone else affected by these episodes, and that I should put the vision down to familial tensions or whatever that old quack would have called them.”

  “Freud has his detractors, but on the whole he was remarkably sensible about many things,” Nina explained in a voice that wavered, probably as a result of alcohol this evening. “Besides, it isn’t just his work we can draw upon. Many psychologists who came after him had less contentious things to say about the bizarre dynamics involved in family life. Melanie Klein, D. W. Winnicott, even Sigmund’s daughter, Anna—it’s quite a list.”

  “I see,” he said, genuinely impressed by her knowledge. “How come you know so much about this stuff, anyway?”

  “Hey, I’m not just a beauty, you know. I got brains from my gene pool, too.” She hesitated, appeared to reflect on the consequences of what she wanted to add, realized she was too drunk to care, and then blurted it out. “I was sexually abused as a child, Mark. By my…by my dad.”

  In one dreadful moment, everything fell into place for Mark: his girlfriend’s lack of contact with her parents…never wanting to discuss having her own children…and, most disturbingly of all, her attraction to him, an older man.

  He leant across the front seats to take her in his arms. She didn’t cry—in fact, she looked stoic, as if she’d experienced worse things than he could imagine and had returned stronger than many people who suffered only petty concerns, such as Gayle and her matrimonial unhappiness, which had arisen from Mark not filling her world. Just then, he felt anger towards his ex-wife and love for Nina. Even his son seemed to have dwindled in importance.

  “I’m so sorry,” he said, and kissed her on the nose, on each cheek, and finally her lips. These were gestures of care, of attentiveness, of everything that, since the breakdown of his marriage, he’d learned he must offer a lover. “I had no idea.”

  She looked at him for a few seconds. “Do you still want to live with this ruined little girl?”

  Her question brought tears to his eyes. He couldn’t help that, and then thought perhaps he shouldn’t try to resist the emotion welling inside him.

>   “Of course I do,” he told her, his voice breaking up. “Of course, of course, of course.”

  He embraced her, not speaking, simply allowing her to dictate the pace at which she wished to move on to their flat.

  Later, when they were in bed together, she said, “Make love to me, Mark. It feels great when you do that. Like I’m special.”

  “You are special.”

  She smiled, parted her legs, let him inside her. “Do you love me?”

  “I love you.” He did; he really meant that. He began thrusting against her slim body and she started to moan. And then cry. And when they came, almost simultaneously, around ten minutes later, he gasped out loud: he’d never done that with his ex-wife. Sex had always been a mechanical act with her.

  Lying side by side beneath the sheets, listening to the night grow older and darker, Nina said, “So when I tell what human relationships can do to the poor mind, you must believe me, mustn’t you?”

  He was about to reply—what he intended to say, he had no idea—but then she continued.

  “By the way, I will do what you want me to do tomorrow.”

  He was bewildered; he couldn’t keep up with this. He was just a simple boy from a simple home, whose past was disappointingly normal. “You’ll do what? I don’t understand.”

  “Maybe you haven’t thought it yet, but it’s only a matter of time before you do.” His girlfriend hesitated, but then went on less cryptically. “I’ll investigate the history of that house in records stored at the library. I’ll see what I can find out about it.”

  As she’d ventured so deeply into his world, he thought it appropriate to delve into hers. “Did it go on for a long time? How bad was it? Have you ever told anyone else?”

  “I hope the old bastard dies of a guilty conscience.” But her tone brightened when she added, “We have lots of ledgers and newspaper reports stored in vaults, on microfiches and computer. I’m sure I’ll come up with something about that place to set your mind at rest.”

  “Okay. Thanks,” he said, and no longer knew which of her comments he referred to. He simply kissed her again, prayed his son would have as peaceful a night as he wished for Nina, and then fell asleep with his girlfriend clasped tightly in his arms.

  10

  Mark had forgotten to hand on the spare key he’d been given by Eric Johnson. The main sets had been handled by solicitors who’d fast-tracked the sale at Justin’s expense. But now, as Mark sat in his office finalizing paperwork to claim the commission owed by the restaurateur, he looked at the spare key and wondered whether he’d simply forgotten about it, after all.

  He wasn’t highly educated, but had nonetheless acquired a more sophisticated understanding of mental life than the average person’s. And he was well aware of Freudian ideas about the subconscious.

  Had he projected the image of his late father into that greenhouse the previous night? Mark could admit that the man had been on his mind at the time. The presence of his mother, his chat with Lewis alluding to fathering, subsequent reflections on his dad—all these elements may have caused him to mistake a tangle of vegetation for a narrow body and a pale face. That was all he’d seen of the figure, shifting and then dissipating in the shadowy gloom. Maybe Mark had just imagined it.

  And here now was something else that might be easily accounted for by a simple psychological explanation: he’d “forgotten” to pass on this key to the new owners of The House of Canted Steps.

  He lifted the item from the desk, squinting as unseasonable afternoon sunshine from his office window glinted on its side. This was his only tangible connection to the property in which his son now lived. After processing the offer from Gayle, Jenny had cancelled the order for promotional leaflets and removed all the details from the website. It was as if the house had never been on their books…But here in Mark’s hand was evidence to the contrary.

  At least Lewis hadn’t called last night. Following Nina’s monumental revelation, Mark wasn’t sure he could have coped with another crisis anyway. This morning, while driving his girlfriend to work, she hadn’t spoken but had again held his hand between gear changes. Words had seemed inappropriate and unnecessary, but the simple gesture had communicated so much: Even though I was drunk, I’m glad I told you, and thanks for understanding…

  And now that he’d had chance to reflect on the news, what were Mark’s thoughts about it?

  Her dad had abused his familial role in the worst way imaginable. Whatever difficulties Mark had experienced with his own father, they were negligible compared to Nina’s. Perversely, even if he’d been in doubt, this had helped him realize how much he loved her. He could admit that his feelings about Gayle and what had happened to their marriage had left him confused, but it was also true that his respect for his ex-wife had vanished during their final days together. He’d stood by her only for their son’s sake.

  He’d originally ascribed his ex-wife’s affair to stereotypical motives, claiming that she was an irrepressible flirt and a shameless gold digger. But after all he’d learned recently, he’d realized that perhaps she’d had deeper reasons for seeking another man. Gayle wasn’t complex on the surface, expressing needs and desires through commercial goods and lifestyle choices. But such behavior might hint at an unaddressed problem, just as Nina’s cheerful demeanor had concealed an unspeakable secret.

  And what of his own ostensibly straightforward attitude to life? Was that an illusion, too? Had the difficulties he’d experienced as a husband and a father also had deeper roots?

  It was all too perplexing to work out. All he knew was that at the heart of family life, there were—as Eric Johnson had suggested during their hotel chat—demons at work…And this thought brought Mark back to where these troubling ruminations had begun: The House of Canted Steps, and the spare key to its front entrance he still held in one hand.

  But he decided to accept his girlfriend’s rational explanations and return to his everyday office tasks. He told himself that this would maintain his mental well-being, but was damned if he knew why he felt threatened in such a serious way. The issue would have to wait until later, however. Nina might currently be discovering important information about the house at the heart of his unrest; Mark would find out this evening. For the time being, he put the key in his trouser pocket and pledged to give it back to either Lewis or Gayle the next time he saw one or the other.

  Before leaving for home later, he bid his enviably young colleagues an affectionate goodbye. It was almost the weekend, a time to rest in advance of more work next Monday. Lewis was coming to stay at the flat, and this would be an opportunity to cement their new familial situation and for Mark to reassure himself that his decision to suppress suspicions about the boy’s new home was correct. Nevertheless, after parking in the tenants’ slots under a sickly moon, he struggled not to wonder what Nina had learned about that house and whether this would merely add to his problems.

  Something pursued him to the communal entrance—a dark, crooked figure—but after turning to look, he noticed it was only an ancient tree stump, bent by time and nature into a twisted shape. The chill wind had simply pushed its gnarled limbs forward, like an old man pressed into vengeful action.

  Mark keyed the lock and then climbed upstairs, where he passed beyond another door to access his one true haven at the moment: not a house, with no canted stairs, and whose only familial elements were merely ghosts in memory—his and Nina’s.

  After hanging up his jacket and setting aside his briefcase, he entered the lounge and said, “Hiya.”

  “Hello.”

  His girlfriend was seated on the couch, reading what appeared to be a self-published book about Hantley. It bore a rudimentary cover displaying a photograph of the old town center, which must have been taken around a hundred years ago. Another book was on the seat beside her, this one entitled A History of the Northern British Wool Industry, 1890–1990. That looked to have been more professionally printed.

  He sat next to her,
unconcerned about food or even a drink. Two other primal needs had overruled these: concern for his son and concern for Nina. And neither felt like the priority.

  “Hello, lover,” he said, and the term of endearment felt natural. His kissed her on one cheek and didn’t let his gaze stray towards the page she was reading. “How are you? Good day at work?”

  “Very good, thanks. I had another chat with plum-throated Sheila. There’s definitely a good chance I’ll be interviewed for that post.”

  “That’s excellent. You should be. You’re great at your job.”

  She smiled and then raised the issue she clearly believed lurked between them, just below the surface of their trust-laden engagement. “I learnt some stuff about the house your ex and Justin have bought. Do you want me to tell you about it?”

  He wasn’t sure how to proceed. Of course he wanted to know what she could add to his investigation, but in light of all she’d revealed last night, would expecting to be told so soon be impolitic?

  “Yes. But only in your own time,” he said, smiling tenderly. “Perhaps I can make us a cup of tea first—would you like one?”

  “There are sandwiches in the fridge. I made us a couple each after I got home. Then I started reading. It’s all very interesting. Let me tell you about it.”

  She was so selfless; her behavior made him feel almost dishonorable. Nevertheless, he settled back on the couch and attempted to steady his racing heartbeat. “Okay, if you’re sure. Fire away.”

  His girlfriend adjusted her sitting position, ready to deliver an impromptu version of whatever she’d acquired from the books. When she started speaking, her voice was both eager and excited.

  “All the property in Nester Street was built in the early 1910s, along with much of the housing in the neighboring area. It was financed by a guy called Edward Miller, who went on after the First World War to become MP for Hantley. He’d built up his construction company in the late nineteenth century, having secured a number of major contracts in the town: that big building now used as the casualty ward of the hospital, the main police station out towards the A64, and even the library where I work. Funny old world, eh?”