The House of Canted Steps

by Gary Fry

  In response to Nina’s widened eyes, he told her what had happened during his latest visit to The House of Canted Steps. She looked shocked when he mentioned the violence he’d resorted to, and Mark felt ashamed. But he’d had to be honest. Then, after reaching the episode with his son’s phone, he indicated the blood on his hands.

  His girlfriend thought for a moment, and then said, “That might be from Justin. I mean, you…split his forehead open, didn’t you?”

  Mark wondered whether this was true. There were flecks of blood in his hair; after touching his scalp again, his fingers came back redder. Despite the absurdity of the suspicion, he couldn’t help thinking that the house in Nester Street was deliberately trying to confuse him. Perhaps it was avoiding becoming too transparent about its ultimate intentions…

  But that was ridiculous, wasn’t it? This was a building he was thinking about. Nevertheless, everything Mark had endured lately pointed towards this conclusion.

  So what was the place up to?

  After a long silence, during which he struggled to remain calm, Mark asked, “Have you told me everything now? Before I…before we try and work out what the hell’s going on, I think I should have all information you’ve gathered.”

  His girlfriend nodded in agreement, and despite wrestling with a belief system half-violated by indisputable facts, she replied, “There’s only one more thing.”

  “I’m ready for it. I’ve gone through worse lately. Tell me.”

  She nodded again, but this time with tangible apprehension. “Once I’d exhausted all the stuff I could find on the Hughes family, I…I put your surname into my search engine.”

  Mark felt surprisingly calm. “Presumably because of the link you forged earlier between the Kinder business and my dad? Well…what did you find out?”

  “It was about the company that the only article I unearthed cropped up.”

  He didn’t care for her use of the word “unearthed”—it put him in mind of his father’s corpse: disinterred, rotted, fed upon by ghastly parasites…But what Mark was about to learn might involve a similarly grisly revival. He was now anxious about what Nina was about to add.

  But she spoke anyway.

  “The report in question was about George Hughes’ surviving son, who was called Simon, incidentally. After benefitting from nepotism by being elected to the board of directors, he got involved with what the older man loathed: the Trade Unions. Having worked his way up from the shop floor and learning all aspects of the business, Simon had witnessed firsthand the conditions in the company’s factories and had decided, against his dad’s wishes, to champion the underdog. He started campaigning for workers’ rights.”

  “So much for blood begetting blood,” Mark said, reflecting on the elder Hughes’ outdated ideas. “But this Simon sounds like a decent sort. He’d obviously extended everything his dad had taught him about family to the field of work.” Mark hesitated, staring into a middle distance, and then asked, “And what did my dad have to do with all this?”

  Mark was also thinking about other issues: if the eldest son was willing to confront his dad, perhaps everything chez Hughes had been less cosy than it appeared from the outside. After all, hadn’t the younger boy died? And had that been an accident?

  But Mark remained silent as his girlfriend revealed more.

  “Your father was also involved in Union activities. Look, here’s a photo of him and Simon Hughes at a local rally.”

  Nina had zoomed into a digitized picture from the Hantley Gazette, circa 1980. Mark got up from the arm of the couch and stepped across to take a closer look.

  He was immediately stunned.

  Although he knew his dad’s face better than almost anyone else’s in this world—better than Gayle’s, better than her parents, and every bit as well as his mom’s and Lewis’s—Mark hadn’t taken the aged man on the right to be him. It was the man on the left who’d drawn his full attention.

  Mark experienced a terrible moment of cognitive dissonance. Examining the photograph was like staring into some perverse mirror.

  And it was several seconds before he admitted that the younger Simon Hughes had looked very much like Mark did now.

  15

  On Friday morning, Mark called Lewis on his mobile, and this time the boy himself answered.

  “ ’Lo.”

  “Hi there, son. You okay?”

  “Yep, I’m all right, Daddy. Just getting ready for school.”

  “Any bad dreams?”

  “No. I’m a bit tired, but I didn’t have no…I mean, any nightmares.”

  “Hey, that’s great. Remember: I’ll pick you up this afternoon from school. We’ll get some pizzas for tea, shall we?”

  “Yeah! I like pizza!” But then Lewis hesitated, before asking, “Daddy, why did you hit Justin?”

  Mark thought for a moment, despite knowing he’d be asked the question at some stage. But he’d yet to come up with an adequate reply. “I’ll explain that to you tonight. It was a…grown-ups’ thing.”

  The boy wouldn’t be put off so easily, however. “Are you still mad because Justin is now living with Mommy…with us.”

  “I’m a bit bothered that he’s living with you, maybe, but not with your mommy.” He’d decided to be as honest as possible; too much lately—that house—had been duplicitous, and Mark refused to add more deception to the situation. “I have Nina now. We talked about all this when it happened, didn’t we, champ? I thought you understood.”

  “I do. Well, kind of. But…but…”

  “But what, Lewis?”

  But the boy soon changed his mind. “But nothing, Daddy. See you after school.”

  “Yes, bye, mate. I’ll let you go now.” He paused to consider adding more, and then simply said it. “Aren’t your mommy and Justin going to the hospital this morning?”

  “Yeah, the doctors are going to make sure my new baby brother or sister is all right.”

  Something about this comment troubled Mark, particularly after everything he’d dwelt upon during a fitful sleep. “Okay,” he said, and then forced himself to add, “Wish them both my best, won’t you?”

  “I will. Bye!”

  “Bye, son.”

  Mark hung up.

  Next he phoned his office. It was nearly nine o’clock. Jenny always got in early to deal with the morning post, messages on the answering machine and email.

  “Hello. Addi—”

  He cut short her usual spiel. “Oh, hi there, Jen. It’s Mark. Listen, I won’t be in today. I feel dreadful. Think I’m coming down with something, a bug or some such. If anything urgent crops up, you can catch me on my mobile. I’m going to try and get an appointment at the doc’s, but God knows when that will be. Speak soon. Have a good weekend. Bye.”

  “Sorry to hear you’re not so well, Mark. I hope you get better soon. I’ll try not to bother you unless I really have to.”

  “Thanks,” he replied, and hung up.

  His girlfriend had left the flat half an hour ago, saying that she needed to buy something from town before starting work. This had given Mark an opportunity to speak to his son and deliver an inconsequential lie to his colleague. He’d referred to the ailment Nina had claimed to be suffering. Maybe his girlfriend was buying a cold remedy in the high street or something to settle her queasy stomach. Whatever the truth was, Mark had rarely avoided work in the past, but on this occasion it was necessary. Before Lewis came to stay at the flat, he needed a full day free to tackle two essential tasks.

  He unhooked his jacket from the peg in the hallway, checked to make sure his car keys were in one pocket, and then left the building, determined to act purposefully.

  Once he was driving, he decided to deal with his tasks in nonprioritized order. A visit to his mother’s and a revelatory chat about his family situation was the more important of the two, but first he needed time to consider the difficult material such a discussion might involve. And a solitary prowl around The House of Canted Steps would pr
esent a good opportunity to do so.

  He was wearing the pants in which he’d stored the spare key Eric Johnson had given him. All Mark must do now—while his son was at school, and his mom and her new lover were headed for the hospital—was visit their home and make a quick reconnaissance of the place. By doing so, he’d discover whether his presence in the building could help clarify all he’d learned lately.

  He soon reached the area of town where Nester Street nestled like a snake in deceptively peaceful grass. He steered past abandoned mills, considering other things his girlfriend had revealed last night after the shock of seeing that photo of Simon Hughes, a man who looked even more like himself than his father had.

  Once George Hughes, the founder of Kinder Enterprises, had died in his eighties, his son had refused chairmanship of the company and had sold it to investors who’d stripped its assets, ending sixty years of trade. Nobody was sure why he’d made this decision, but rumor suggested that Simon had been a reluctant recruit to the family business. Always considered eccentric, he’d suffered the loss of a younger brother in childhood, and speculation suggested that maybe this was why he’d never had children of his own, preferring a solitary life on the northeast coast of England, in the isolated fishing port of Whitby.

  Despite this knowledge, Mark had struggled to establish a link between this man and his family. Yes, he and Mark’s dad had campaigned together for workers’ rights, and this had caused the company’s owner difficulties. But these were only tenuous connections. The crucial issue was why Simon Hughes had closely resembled Mark at an equivalent age. The man had had the same brown hair, pale skin, and angular jawline. Even Nina had commented on the similarity after examining the newspaper photo. Had Mark’s father been related to the Hughes clan? Was that why the two men, a social league apart, had formed a bond and worked together against the founder of Kinder Enterprises?

  But that didn’t make sense. If Mark looked like Simon Hughes, and less like the person he’d always assumed was his dad, why should there be any link between the families? Mark had always thought he resembled his mom in looks. As an only child, there’d been no siblings to judge himself against. Even other people had often called him “his mother’s son,” and although he’d thought this referred to the way he got along better with her than his father, it was possible that they’d also meant in appearance.

  And what did this imply about his mom? Had she been a member of the Hughes family? But her maiden name had been King, hadn’t it?

  It was all so perplexing, but it would have to wait until later, when he visited his mother across town. Right now, he had another problem to tackle: what the hell was going on in The House of Canted Steps?

  Mark accelerated to reach the property more quickly. He didn’t want to think about the place until he was inside it, snooping around with unimpeded leisure, absorbing its pernicious atmosphere. He hoped this would nudge his mind the final distance between confusion and clarity. But as his car powered on, he struggled not to reflect on the key issue he’d identified: why the building had killed one child—the girl who’d choked in the garden—and then prompted another to leap from a window—Simon’s brother—before saving a third: the Johnsons’ boy, who’d been prevented from suffering an identical fate to the younger Hughes. If the crucial point was the legitimacy of each child, Mark could understand the death of the first victim, but why had the Johnsons’ son been saved while the Hughes boy had died?

  But the most troubling aspect concerned what the house wanted of Mark’s son. Or was it Lewis it desired? What about the drawing Mark had seen the previous evening, etched into the windshield he now squinted through? In that sketch, it had been the newborn child of the building’s owners bound for death.

  If the property was a House of Blood, whose did it prioritize: the Cooksons’ or Gayle and Justin’s? If it could be considered The House of Canted Steps, which was the doomed stepfamily? And what part did The Blood Boy play in this? Or the familial figures Mark had spotted lately in the property? Furthermore, what was Mark’s role in the building’s nefarious plans? Hadn’t he felt last night as if he’d been manipulated into attacking his ex-wife’s new lover? And if that was the case, why had the house wanted him to do this?

  All these inquiries almost rendered his body as sick as he’d told Jenny it was that morning. But as he drew his car into the high street from which Nester Street branched, he reduced all his concerns to a relatively trivial one: he mustn’t park at the head of the cul-de-sac. If his ex-wife had already made friends with neighbors, any one might tell her later that her ex-husband had returned, especially if they’d also witnessed all the rancor in the early hours of this morning. He’d have to go around the back of the building, along the narrow country lane he’d once spotted from its kitchen.

  He pulled up near the junction of Nester Street, in much the same place he had the other week after valuing the house. But on this occasion, he merely consulted his Sat-Nav unit to figure out how to access the rear of the property. Then he started moving again, taking a corner occupied by an old man who watched Mark pass with a critical look that made him feel guilty.

  He negotiated a bumpy lane wide enough for only one vehicle. The back gardens of three houses at the head of Nester Street appeared on his left, and beneath a streetlamp he located a patch of grass on which he could tuck his car. Trees and foliage hung over his roof, whipping his face as he climbed out. He felt for the front door key in one trouser pocket. He shouldn’t stay for long inside the property. If anyone saw him snooping, he could tell them he was an estate agent; he had a company card in his wallet to prove that.

  Then, with a long exhalation, he climbed over the short wall demarcating the grounds of The House of Canted Steps.

  16

  Unseasonable sunshine dramatized Mark’s movement through a cluttered hedge and onto the rear lawn stretching all the way to the house. In the flowerbeds—which, along with rickety fences, guarded the outer limits of the property—weeds grew in haphazard profusion, implying that Justin and even Gayle presently had had more important matters to consider than their home.

  While approaching the greenhouse he’d spotted during his first visit, he couldn’t help feeling ashamed of his behavior last night. But then he thrust aside these thoughts to examine the glass dwelling, which looked as if nobody had entered it in months, if not years.

  The door tilted awkwardly on its hinges as he put out a hand, but then he shunted it inwards, granting himself access. After pacing inside, trapped heat struck him, as did a number of whirling flies. Mark suppressed an unsettling connection between these insects and the proximity of a corpse, and ventured farther inside the greenhouse.

  Withered remnants of tomato plants (like those his dad had nurtured during his all-too-brief retirement) were intermingled with other, unrecognisable growths. In the middle of the greenhouse stood a table bearing a mossy watering can and a few broken plant pots. But it was the windows Mark was eager to examine. The floor bore no evidence of anyone moving around, but there was certainly evidence of activity on one of the glass panes.

  At first the words etched in grime resembled a tangle of meaningless lines, some straight, others curved. But after moving closer, Mark realized that two names had been written there, one on top of the other. The finger that had performed the deed surely had as little about it as the one that had sketched the picture on his car’s windshield, but any similarly brittle branch would have snapped during the carving process.

  Now Mark could see what the words were: one was “Cookson” and the second “Hughes.” But it was impossible to tell whether his surname had been written first and the other over it, or vice versa. The letters might almost not be there at all, and if not for the dirt on the glass, he mightn’t even have noticed them.

  Despite the heat in the greenhouse, Mark found himself shivering, and although the flies had now escaped, he felt as if someone else was present. A cold draught cut across his body, presumably coming from
the gaping doorway. The autumn chill wasn’t giving up its fight against the rebellious sun this morning.

  Mark exited the greenhouse and then, looking around and seeing nobody watching from any other building, he started strolling for the property at the head of the garden.

  Nevertheless, the closer he drew to the house, the more observed he felt. Maybe this was just guilt, internalized conscience, something like that; Nina might have a psychological term for it. This thought made Mark wish his girlfriend was here to lend him courage. That was surely a good sign; his presence at his ex-wife’s new home had nothing to do with Gayle and the hurt she’d caused by hooking up with Justin. It concerned only his son, was an attempt to protect the boy in a way nobody had protected other children who’d suffered at the house’s whim.

  After stopping and staring up at the building, he wondered what it was after again. Nothing came to mind, but that was when his gaze was drawn to one high window belonging to an unused bedroom that, on this evidence, had yet to be decorated. Multiple sticks of furniture had been piled high behind its single pane. It was hard to see them properly, because intense daylight was bouncing off the glass. But Mark decided that this must be a storage room for stuff yet to be found a home for. Sunshine rendered the window a swirling mass of movement, confusing all the objects inside. Moments later, they resembled a person, and not a particularly young one, shifting his or her languid limbs, as if under water or a decidedly redder liquid that that. Then the illusion dissipated, a consequence of Mark’s wandering attention. Now he believed someone had spoken nearby, and the worst thing was that the words appeared to have boasted an old man’s tone.

  “Grand…son…” he believed he’d heard.