The House of Canted Steps

by Gary Fry

  God alone knew what Mark would do in his present state of mind. His actions might not be legal. Like for like. Tit for tat. An eye for an eye.

  Other than exceeding the speed limit on B-roads through the town center, however, he wasn’t breaking the law yet. There was no alcohol in his blood, either. Mark reflected on the wisdom of refusing a drink when Nina had offered him one. The decision seemed to have been governed by some mysterious intervention…but he wouldn’t get started on that again. He simply treaded on the accelerator and tried keeping his mind clear for less inscrutable purposes.

  But while racing up the cul-de-sac he now knew well as Nester Street, he was unable to avoid dwelling on the way everything he’d experienced lately had led to this moment. The familial figures he’d spotted in the house in front of which he pulled up with a screech—these had been subconscious visions intended to inform Mark that step-arrangements in families were unnatural. The same went for the news that one of the building’s previous owners—a dedicated family man—had once employed Mark’s father, as if a bloodline flowed from the property to its occupants and all their associates. And finally—the most important factor—his girlfriend’s revelation last night that she’d been abused as a child: this had been a hint towards the obvious truth that Lewis now suffered the same.

  Mark climbed out of his vehicle and raced up the driveway, beyond the homeowner’s flash, overcompensating sports car. Was that Freudian idea true as well? Did pathetic individuals like him buy expensive things because they were inadequate in other aspects of their lives? And did some prey on children because they were too feeble to cope in an adult relationship? Reaching the property’s front door and pounding one clenched fist against it, Mark reflected that although Justin had got his ex-wife pregnant, this wasn’t his true motivation for setting up home with “used goods” like Gayle. Even the restaurant owner’s staff had expressed bewilderment about their boss’s motive here: why go for a readymade family when there was the field to play, innumerable possible partners with far more to offer than the one he’d selected?

  Although Mark’s argument no longer appeared as strong as it had back at his flat, it didn’t prevent him from stepping back to watch as a light went on in one upstairs room and then listen as several sounds came from inside. The house’s smug frontage leered back; its hooded eyes, which were its curtained windows, appeared wry and knowing. The sight only heightened Mark’s outrage. He felt his hands curl even tighter. His vision was momentarily starred with tears of anger.

  But then he thought with fleeting reason: You’re projecting your own issues onto this case, Mark—there’s more to it than your self-serving logic suggests…

  Nevertheless, while hearing uncertain footsteps descend those canted steps inside, he paced back towards the door, eagerly awaiting it opening, his hands like rocks, his face undoubtedly a pallid disc of rage.

  As the door was unlocked and slowly opened, something moved behind him in the garden. But Mark wouldn’t turn to look. The sound he’d heard had been ineffectual, like that of a tiny animal or a larger one lacking enough meat on its bones to propel such motion. He deliberately ignored this noise and then steeled himself to address the man now standing, visibly startled, in the house’s entrance.

  “Ma—” said Justin, and that was all he managed, because then the visitor he’d only half-addressed drove his strongest arm fist-first into his face.

  The homeowner went tumbling back, fetching up in an unruly pile against his uneven staircase. Mark charged inside, stooped to grab hold of the man’s dressing gown, lifted him with surprising strength, and then head-butted him. Blood splattered and flew, ruining Gayle’s new carpet on at least six risers. Mark took perverse pleasure from this sight, but then flung his victim along the hallway, towards the kitchen with its hard tiled floor. And oh, what damage he might do to the man’s skull there…

  Despite his unprecedented rage, however, he found himself hesitating. He now realized that it felt as if it was someone else committing these acts…or perhaps something else. He recalled his involuntary panic during his first trip here, to this twisted house, and then felt every bit as scared as Justin looked at the moment.

  Had Mark wanted to take out festering anger on the person who’d torn apart his family? And had the property in which he stood prompted this act? It sounded insane, but confronted with such evidence of violence, nothing seemed to make more sense. Lewis…abused? By his stepfather-to-be? What a crazy idea. Nevertheless, prior to Mark’s aggressive outburst, that was what he’d believed.

  But the telephone call…from his son’s mobile…

  Just then, Mark heard more footsteps coming downstairs, which ceased as soon as their source could see what he now observed. He glanced up at this figure, away from the gory red mess he’d rendered Justin’s face, and spotted his ex-wife standing halfway up the flight of steps, her dressing gown pushed wildly out of shape by what she nurtured inside her.

  “What the…?” she said, an attempt to speak that was stillborn. Then she descended the rest of the way, clutching her sides with hands that shook while passing Mark and then stooping to Justin.

  The silence in the building grew unbearable, begging to be filled.

  “I stopped myself,” Mark pleaded, struggling to come to terms with what he’d done. He looked at Gayle and then at her new lover, whose head was cradled in her arms. “I’m not a bad man. I realize I was…I was wrong. I think something…is trying to…poison me—to poison my mind, I mean.”

  He gazed at the house, at its high ceiling bearing down like a pernicious onlooker. In the afterglow of his exertions, he thought he saw eyes up there, lodged in the paintwork, staring hard with familial pride. Then he looked away, shaking his head free of whatever malignant influence had undoubtedly crept inside.

  “I’m a good man. A family man. You both understand that, don’t you? That’s why…I did it. That’s what made me do it.”

  Gayle was tending to Justin’s wounds. Despite her physical indisposition, she helped him shift into a more comfortable position on the floor. More blood leaked from his forehead, and then, in disconcerting unison, they looked back at Mark, as if unsure whether he’d just been addressing them.

  Was there a noise coming from beyond them, even farther back than the kitchen in whose entrance they slouched? The sound was muffled, as if its source was located either below or above ground-floor level. Mark thought of the two drug-taking guests he’d overheard in the cellar at the party. But then his mind settled on Lewis. Perhaps the boy had detected commotion from the first floor and was now seeking its cause.

  Mark ascended the staircase (…canted steps…), and refused to consider what Gayle and Justin would make of this maneuver until he reached the landing. He thought he’d just heard a child moving in the upstairs corridor, but after clearing his eyes of perspiration with one back-turned hand, he noticed nobody there. Why had he assumed this had been a youngster anyway? Maybe something about the smallness of the noise had hinted at that, but Mark might have imagined it. He certainly wasn’t thinking straight at the moment.

  That’s what the house wants you to think, he heard someone say in his mind. These words sounded asexual, a combination of his late dad’s voice and…someone else’s. But Mark was unable to reflect on the issue; he’d just reached his son’s bedroom door.

  And it was closed tight in its frame.

  What this meant could be revealed by entering the room. But the more he steeled himself to do so, the harder the act felt. Had Lewis emerged from the room, overheard the disturbance downstairs, and then fled back inside, slamming the door behind him…and all as a result of fear? But if that was true, Mark would surely have heard the door hitting the frame. Eliminating unfruitful speculation, he put one hand on the heavy brass knob his ex-wife had obviously selected and then turned it, revealing a moonlit realm in which little stirred.

  Mark edged inside. The curtains at the windows glowed with spectral luminescence, but he didn’
t allow this to restrict his movement towards the bed. In a stifling gloom, he saw a humped shape: short, low, and moving up and down with small increments. Was the boy sleeping…or was he hiding? Hiding from Mark, his own father. His daddy. The man who loved him enough to enact rare violence on one who’d violated his innocence.

  But Mark no longer believed that, did he?

  Did he?

  He struggled not to think about leaving Gayle downstairs to nurse Justin’s wounds and focused on his son. Mark nudged him, but to no avail. Then he shook one shoulder and said in a forceful whisper, “Lewis. Lewis. It’s me. It’s…Daddy.”

  “No, no…leave me alone…go away,” the boy replied, rousing slowly from his slumber. Mark was both disquieted and relieved to learn that his son hadn’t been addressing him. Lewis was only half-awake, perhaps still dreaming.

  “Who do you think I am?” Mark asked, keeping his voice quiet. Maybe this would elicit information from the boy. But now Mark had recalled that the call he’d received from a frightened youngster had been made only twenty minutes ago. And how was that possible if Lewis had been asleep?

  When his son failed to reply, Mark went on with intuition. “How many times have I been here before?”

  Lewis was roused to comment. While doing so, his body twisted under the sheets and then directly faced who—or what—he regarded as an unwelcome intruder. “Too many,” he said, rising from what was surely a nightmare. “You’re horrible. I hate you. Please go away.”

  He opened his eyes, and as he noticed who was there, relief leapt into his face like a child might jump from a window in some evil house.

  “Daddy!” Lewis cried, and while hugging the boy, Mark only half-acknowledged footsteps encroaching behind. These came from beyond the bedroom door, which stood ajar as if deliberately left that way to enable anyone in the corridor to overhear their conversation.

  After breaking from their needful embrace, Mark asked, “Lewis, you have to tell me. Who did you think I was just then?”

  The boy looked fearful and embarrassed. He glanced away, at one wall. “I…don’t want to say.”

  “But you called me—on your telephone. Why?”

  Lewis shook his head, looking puzzled; his eyes narrowed in faint moonlight. But then he pointed over one of Mark’s shoulders. “I didn’t ring you, Daddy. I couldn’t. My mobile’s over there.”

  Mark turned to look behind him. By now, that impression of nearby movement had become firmer and he suspected someone else was about to join them. But this didn’t interfere with his response to the sight of his son’s new phone: it was laid on the carpet, close to the wall on which he’d seen a ghastly red stain in the photo he’d once taken of this room.

  Something was definitely amiss in this house. Mark didn’t care who was now eavesdropping on him and Lewis from the hallway, either Gayle or Justin. They had to know. They all had to know.

  Despite feeling regretful about what he’d done to his ex-wife’s lover, Mark cut across the carpet to retrieve the handset. The gadget’s coldness prompted a troubling thought, and then he turned to the boy.

  “Who were you dreaming about, Lewis? Who did you want to go away?”

  His firm voice finally drew from his son a confession he clearly hadn’t wished to make. “The Blood Boy,” he said, looking as if he’d failed someone other than his daddy—maybe his mommy, whom Mark now realized was standing beyond the bedroom door. But his mind was focused on more serious matters.

  Lewis had taken his arrival for The Blood Boy and not Justin. Surely that overturned Mark’s terrible suspicion after taking the call in his flat. But was the alternative less unsettling? Whatever the truth was, he knew it was time to address these issues directly. He stepped across to open the door, revealing his ex-wife standing in the hall, which burned with soft light. Mark paced back to the bottom of their son’s bed and glanced at the phone in his hands.

  “Lewis, what have I told you before about talking nonsense?” Gayle asked, trying to refocus on everyday concerns. Justin must be tending to his wounds elsewhere; as Gayle entered the room, nobody was behind her. After reaching the boy sitting up in his bed, she added, “There’s no such thing as…as…”

  “Yes, there is,” Mark interrupted, and for a good reason. While examining the phone in the hallway light to see if a call had been made earlier, he’d noticed a smear on its display: a streak of red liquid like a fingerprint, but not one that had much physical substance. “Look at what this thing is covered in.”

  He handed the phone to Gayle, who examined the stuff smeared on it, and then said, “Don’t you think you’ve behaved badly enough for one evening without adding this kind of madness?” She rubbed off the redness with one dressing gown sleeve. “It’s ketchup. Lewis had a burger earlier. You know how much he likes tomato sauce.”

  “But I washed my hands, Mommy. And then I put my phone under my pillow. And when Daddy woke me up, it was on the floor, miles away from me.”

  “Don’t exaggerate,” Gayle replied, her voice familiarly fierce.

  By now, Mark had moved closer to the window. He’d pushed back a wedge of curtain and could see his car parked at the head of the cul-de-sac. The bony, whitish figure that looked to be seated in one front seat must be just a reflection of autumn-bare trees in the garden. The shape’s movement was surely an effect of wind howling in the area, dramatizing the silence behind Mark. He let the curtain fall and turned to address his ex-wife.

  “Someone called me at home half an hour ago. That’s why I’m here. I already know you were all asleep when I arrived—hell, Lewis still was when I reached him. And so,” he finished, struggling to overrule an unease that felt ice-cold inside him, “what do you make of that?”

  Gayle shook her head and dropped the phone beside her son. Then she held hands across her swollen belly, presumably to combat discomfort she experienced there. But Mark knew this strategy well; she’d always played on health and other bodily matters to get her own way. And he wasn’t about to let her to ignore this latest problem.

  “Well, Gayle?” he asked, his voice insistent. “Can you explain this to me?”

  Then she responded. “I think you’ve got a bloody nerve. First, you come here and assault Justin—”

  In his peripheral vision, Mark saw Lewis’s eyes widen, as if he was more troubled than pleased by this news, which wouldn’t be the case if his future stepfather had defiled him. Indeed, Mark could put to rest his earlier suspicions…but none of the rest, oh no.

  “—and then you start implying that we have a…a…”

  “Go on, say it, Gayle. It wouldn’t be the first time you’ve been irrational in my company. Let’s have that word out of you?”

  But before she could continue, someone else appeared in the bedroom doorway.

  “I think you should leave now, Mark,” Justin said, entering the room and holding a bloodied cloth to his forehead where a hairline wound had wept considerably more redness than had been on Lewis’s phone.

  Glancing at the man, Mark felt apologetical. “Hey, look, I’m sorry about that, mate. It was just a…misunderstanding. But you must listen—”

  “I’m listening to nothing,” Justin replied with inarguable firmness. “Now please leave. I’m willing to forgive you for what you’ve just done to me. Some might say I had that coming. But when you upset Gayle in her condition, you’ve pushed me too far. I’ll give you a minute to say goodbye to Lewis and if you’re not gone after that, I’m calling the police.”

  Mark respected the man for being authoritative, particularly the way he’d referred to both Gayle’s pregnancy and the boy’s feelings. Nevertheless, Mark was reluctant to depart, chiefly because that would mean leaving Lewis in this house—this undeniably haunted house. But would one more night matter? After school tomorrow, he and Nina would have the boy staying at their flat for the weekend. Mark had already arranged to pick him up outside his playground. Perhaps he’d be safe until then. He’d have to be. Mark knew that suggesting h
e take his son away tonight would be poorly received by his ex-wife.

  Mark reluctantly consented to the man’s demands. Over the weekend, with his son away from his new home, Mark would get to the heart of what was wrong here. He felt close to achieving this, anyway.

  Letting his shoulders fall, he crossed to the boy and hugged him again. “I’d better go, champ. I’ll see you tomorrow, yeah?”

  “Yes, see you, Daddy. But I wish I could come now.”

  He’d kept his voice low because Gayle was still within earshot. Indeed, as Mark stood and paced beyond his ex-wife, she said, “You’re lucky to be seeing him at all after your behavior tonight.”

  Justin’s expression added nothing other than agreement, and then Mark moved away, down that canted flight of steps and into the hallway, where he put one hand to the front door.

  “I’m not finished with you,” he said to the house as if it was sentient, and quickly went out.

  But the property clearly wasn’t finished with him, either.

  After reaching his car (which, in his blind rage earlier, he’d failed to lock), he climbed inside to help his tension slide away.

  And then he saw the markings on his windshield.

  This always happened in autumn: before driving, he must wipe the glass free of condensation. But now someone had had a go on his behalf.

  In narrow, crooked lines on the cloudy windshield, two tall people stood side by side, like refugees from a child’s game of Hangman. Between them, they held a tinier person by the legs, its body headdown and pointed towards another figure on a makeshift ground.

  Mark realized this drawing had been made by either a stick or a finger so thin it had no right to be called human. But then he understood that the person on the floor below the adults and their newborn child wasn’t a person, after all. Mark hadn’t interrupted the perverse artist before it had finished the picture. The figure on the ground bore two lines to denote a torso and arms, but had no legs or a head. Indeed, those weren’t a torso and arms. The shape was complete and wasn’t supposed to be Lewis.