The House of Canted Steps

by Gary Fry

  “Why had he reached this decision? I’ve no idea. I understand his younger brother died when he was very young, and perhaps that had something to do with it. I know nothing more than that, and frankly back then—cruel though it seems—I didn’t much care. By now, I was desperate for a child.” She stopped to draw breath, but soon added, “And at last we—me and your dad, I mean—had a golden opportunity to get one.”

  “You mean, Simon Hughes provided his sperm and…you were artificially inseminated? That the result was…me?”

  He was tired following so many attacks on the structure of his existence. It was only now, hearing the facts from perhaps the one person alive who could provide them, that the truth was hitting home…a home that was falling, falling—to dust and demolition.

  His mom nodded. “The man even paid for all the treatment. I think he must have been trying to make amends for all the hardships your dad and others like him suffered as a result of his father’s company rules. His decision to help us could have been a…what do you call it?—a symbolic act. Or something like that. Anyway, your dad and me didn’t complain. We’d never had much money and couldn’t have afforded the treatment any other way. There’d been no alternative.” She sat back in her chair, awkwardly clasping her hands together. “And there you have it, Mark. I’m sorry it was a shock and for the way it had to come out, but I hope you’ll realize that it wasn’t as sordid as it first appeared.”

  “No, of course it wasn’t.” Despite his lingering unease, Mark felt regretful about his bullish behavior earlier. “Hey, look, I’m sorry about that, Mom. You’re right—I should have known better than to believe what Gayle had to say.”

  “Well, I won’t hold it against her if you don’t want me to. I know you’re all trying to get on with your new lives.” She gazed at him, her expression sympathetic. “Your dad and me decided early on that we wouldn’t tell you about all this, that there’d be no point. After all, the man who helped us never wanted anything to do with his child…with you. We even had him sign a legal contract to this effect and he did so willingly. As far as we were concerned, you belonged to us.” She blinked away a little moisture and then finished with a softer tone. “I know you and your dad didn’t always get along, and I can’t explain why that was, but he did love you, you know. He loved us both.”

  Beyond the conservatory’s windows, something moved in the garden, but when Mark glanced that way, he saw only a patch of vegetation swaying near the disused greenhouse. He returned his gaze to his mom, but said nothing.

  The silence prompted her to ask, “How did all this come about anyway?”

  Again The House of Canted Steps presented its façade to Mark’s exhausted mind. But somehow he managed to reply, “You know that place Justin bought—the one we visited the other night?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, that’s the Hugheses’ former home. It was where they all lived, where the younger son died, and where…where …”

  He was unable to continue, because he’d noticed how pale his mom had just grown. “My goodness,” she said, her hands shaking. “I had no idea. All I knew about the family was that their—for want of a better way of putting it—was that their blood was pure. I mean, they had no medical complications. Simon had lots of tests, of course, before my treatment.”

  No medical complications, Mark reflected with mounting fear. But what other terrors had their blood borne?

  Confusion rendered him mute, however, and before he could reply, his mom added, “It’s all such a coincidence, don’t you think? Our family history, and then your ex and her new partner moving into the place that…that…”

  As she sought appropriate words, Mark was unable to suppress many disturbing ones of his own: Ah, but was it a coincidence? Or has all this been ordained by darker forces than we can imagine? Eric Johnson claimed to have called my estate agency at an intuitive whim…and was that accidental? I recall the Yellow Pages being twitched by a breeze during my first visit to The House of Canted Steps, as if Eric getting in touch with Addisons had been prompted unnaturally. Was the property behind everything that had happened recently? Was it attempting to draw me back there? Indeed, if I have Hughes blood in me, Lewis does, too…Christ, what does the building want from us?

  Just then, Mark stood, his mind reeling. “Look, Mom, I need to go now,” he said, eager for some fresh air. “I…have to get my head round all this. It’s been too much to take in without…a little time to absorb it.”

  Despite being unaware about what he referred to, she also rose, grinned off a pain from her injured hip, stepped across, and offered him a rare hug. “I understand, Mark. And please forgive me. No, forgive us.”

  There was more movement outside near the greenhouse, but Mark didn’t even look that way. “I do forgive you. It’s fine, honestly. But I…just need some space—to think, you know.” He hesitated, blinking wetness from his vision. “Goodbye, Mom.”

  “Goodbye, Mark.” There were more tears in her eyes, too. “Go back to Nina. She…well, she needs you, now more than ever. She’s a lovely girl. And I believe you’re all going to be very happy together.”

  She must mean that he, Nina and Lewis would eventually get along well. That was essential, of course: the boy would stay at the flat the next two nights and many times in the future. But while making for the exit, Mark realized he had more important issues to consider than this, including what Nina would reveal later. Indeed, in his preoccupied state, he was unable to think what that might be.

  19

  As soon as Mark was back in the car, he realized that there was a plausible explanation for the misunderstanding in his mom’s house: his girlfriend had obviously called to ask for advice about taking on a full-time post at the library.

  This had been in the offing for a while, and Nina must be uncertain about how Mark would respond to them dividing their lives between two demanding posts. Maybe that was also why she’d felt unwell lately: anxiety about her exam. This would certainly account for his mom’s happiness about the news. There’d be more money coming in, and the plans she’d mentioned might even involve him and his girlfriend buying a house together. Mark wouldn’t even put it past his mom to have considered selling her own place and, advancing into old age (when more than her hip would cause duress), coming to live with them. After all, he and Nina had no children and this was unlikely to change now she’d be working longer hours.

  Although something about this explanation didn’t ring true, Mark couldn’t help turning back to his main preoccupation at the moment. He could congratulate his girlfriend later, after getting home with Lewis, but right now he needed to focus on The House of Canted Steps. The knowledge he’d acquired from his mother had stunned him, but he had to figure out how it fit into the whole unsettling picture.

  He started his car and drove around Hantley for an hour, hoping the journey would allow him to think, to unpick the knot in his mind this situation had become. But after pulling up in front of a café close to his son’s school, he felt no nearer reaching a conclusion than he’d been while inside that terrible property. He muted the engine, sat motionless in his seat, and then attempted to summarize the case.

  One: the building had been constructed by a man called Edward Miller, who’d celebrated familial purity. He’d included several flights of canted steps as a way of expressing the expectation that whoever lived there would be such a natural group.

  Two: the first owners of the place had been a traditional family…until an illegitimate child had arrived and then “choked on a confection.”

  Three: the Hughes family had moved in, another blood-related clan, and one of whose children had died in ostensibly accidental circumstances.

  Four: the Johnsons had bought the place and their only child had been saved one night from certain death, presumably because he and his parents fit with what the house regarded as perfect tenants—each shared a bloodline.

  Five: Gayle and Justin now lived there, and Mark had experienced
supernatural episodes both inside and outside the property, all of which were linked to his own or his ex-wife’s parents. These visions were also almost certainly connected to the fact that Mark and Lewis boasted Hughes genes.

  Surely logic decreed that the building was seeking a natural family, and that any deviating from this path would be punished. It didn’t matter who the people were; Miller’s nefarious design merely demanded such commonality. Indeed, the Johnsons’ boy had been saved, while the first owners had suffered the death of an illegitimate granddaughter…But this knowledge led Mark to consider again a hole in his argument.

  How had the younger Hughes son died?

  Frustration almost made Mark punch his steering wheel, but he restrained himself. After glancing again at his windshield, he noticed faint traces of the drawing he’d spotted the other night. In that sketch, Gayle and her new lover’s unborn child had been headed for a grave, but why had the property targeted the infant when, according to Mark’s reasoning, Lewis was the more likely candidate for such punishment? With his own son out of the way, the building would have the uncorrupted family it desired, wouldn’t it? After all, there was no chance of Mark and his ex-wife getting back together, and even if there was, she’d get custody of her newborn child, just as (without Mark even contesting the fact) she had of Lewis. This boy or girl would have to live with the three of them in The House of Canted Steps, always assuming Justin would sign over the property to Gayle, and Nina agreed to let Mark go without a messy fight…

  His reasoning was growing increasingly absurd, and the main problem was a lack of knowledge about what had happened to Simon Hughes’ little brother, the boy who, many years ago, had fallen to his death from his bedroom window. Mark had originally believed that the property had killed the child, but wasn’t so sure now. Maybe his death had been suicide, but if that was true, why had he chosen to take his own life?

  There was only one way to learn the facts. Mark looked up and noticed that the café in front of which he’d parked had an A-board outside: INTERNET ACCESS, its handwritten message read in chalk. £2 PER HOUR.

  He was unable to go to his agency and use his office PC; he was supposed to be off sick. He wasn’t even sure whether the information he required would be available online. But after all his efforts today, he could use a strong cup of tea to help acquire more knowledge, in the hope of putting this experience behind him for good. His next step remained uncertain, but before taking it, he knew he must be equipped with all the information it was possible to get hold of.

  While climbing out of his car and walking towards the café, he reflected on the man who hadn’t turned out to be his real father, after all. Despite a begrudging coexistence, they’d shared some good times: trips to parks to kick a ball around, visits to cinemas, holidays on the English coast during which, among other things, they’d eaten ice cream and played on bleeping arcade machines. Mark could forgive the man some of his standoffish nature, as well as his inability to give himself completely to their relationship. Mark reflected on how he’d feel if he ever suspected he wasn’t Lewis’s father, let alone knowing he wasn’t. It was a humbling feeling, and he realized that for arguably the first time in his life he was at peace with a misgiving he’d always held in his mind. He’d learned the truth about how he’d been brought up and appreciated how challenging the circumstances had been for his dad. Perhaps infertility had made him feel vulnerable; at any rate, his experiences at the Kinder factory surely had. And yet he’d battled on, doing his best, despite knowing he hadn’t been able to provide his wife with their own child. What could that do to a man’s sense of worth? In a far less difficult scenario, Mark had failed as a husband and father, and so he could only begin to imagine what it must have been like in his dad’s situation…

  Mark thrust aside this material, entered the café, ordered a mug of sugarless tea, requested an hour’s use of the Internet, paid the teenager who appeared to be singlehandedly running the place, and finally retreated to one of several booths, where a computer awaited his enquiry, about the man who’d provided the seed that had resulted in his existence.

  Addisons had an account with 192.com, the comprehensive electoral role search engine, and after logging in with his company’s username and password, Mark typed “HUGHES, SIMON” into the first box and then “WHITBY” into the second. That was where his girlfriend had said the man lived, and after several seconds, the sluggish PC returned an address and a telephone number belonging to someone with this name who resided in that geographical area. Mark removed a pen and notepad from one jacket pocket and jotted down the details.

  Next he accessed Google Maps and typed in the street name. This proved to be directly on the North Yorkshire town’s seafront, and Hughes’ house was a sizeable detached overlooking the beach. Mark needn’t print out an image of the locality; his Sat-Nav system would take him straight to the property after he’d entered the postcode he’d also located online.

  But he was unable to travel there this evening. He had to collect his son from school and take him home to the flat to enjoy the pizzas he’d promised that morning. Mark was convinced that Lewis would like a day at the seaside tomorrow. Nina could come, too, leading to more of that bonding Mark’s mom had hinted at earlier. His girlfriend and the boy could be left temporarily, either shopping or paddling, and after Mark had acquired the information he required from the only living ancestor of George Hughes, they’d all return to Hantley and The House of Canted Steps, where Mark would tell his ex-wife and her new partner all he’d learned about their property. Whether they chose to heed these warnings was their decision, but Mark wouldn’t allow his son to stay so much as another night in his new home.

  Mark drained his cup, exited the café, and then strolled back for his car. He had a few hours to kill before the school day ended and with nothing planned to fill them. In the event, he drove back to the end of Nester Street and sat looking at his ex-wife’s house looming above all the other properties in the neighborhood. He wondered how many of these dwellings had similar furtive secrets to the one that had obsessed him lately. And when he spotted a misshapen figure appear in one of the building’s upstairs windows, he initially recoiled…until he realized it was just Gayle going about everyday household chores in her delicate condition.

  20

  “Hi, Nina!”

  “Hi, Lewis.”

  Mark also advanced into the flat’s kitchen. “Hiya, love.”

  “Hello, stranger,” she replied.

  Once the boy had kissed Mark’s girlfriend un-self-consciously on the lips and retreated to the couch in the lounge to unpack the overnight bag his mom had presumably prepared, Mark asked Nina, “Stranger? What do you mean by that?”

  “I called you at the office today. Jenny said you weren’t there, that you’d phoned in sick.”

  Guilt was now added to all his other burdens. “Ah yes. I’m sorry about that.” He thought quickly, his eyes averted from his girlfriend. “Why didn’t…well, why didn’t you try me on my mobile?”

  “Daddy, can I watch TV?”

  “Of course you can, champ. Here, let me turn it on for you.”

  Mark moved away from the kitchen area to look for the remote control. This was mainly a way of giving himself more time to marshal his body, which had threatened to be treacherous in response to his girlfriend’s unexpected interrogation. But after activating the set and putting on his son’s beloved cartoons, he returned to Nina and said in a steady voice, “I just didn’t feel like going in today. I’ve had a lot on my mind lately and felt like a break. Do you know what I mean?”

  “You’ve had things on your mind?”

  Mark frowned. “Well, yes. I mean all the stuff about Gayle and Justin and their…new house.”

  “I see.”

  Now she appeared sullen, quite unlike any attitude he’d ever associated with her. “Hey, are you all right? I…visited my mom this afternoon, actually. She mentioned you’d called and had some…news. Do you wa
nt to tell me about that?”

  “Daddy! Mommy says this one is stupid, but I love it!”

  Once Mark had nodded and watched Road Runner evade another desperate attempt at ensnarement by Wile E. Coyote, he switched his attention back to his girlfriend. “Well? What is it, darling? I thought it must have something to do with that job you’ve been after.”

  Nina glanced away, and Mark thought her eyes might even be glistening with moisture. “It doesn’t matter,” she said, pouring boiling water from the kettle into two waiting cups. “It can wait. I mean, I can. You go and deal with your son.”

  Whatever that meant, Mark was unable to figure out, despite feeling unnerved by his girlfriend’s words. He promptly experienced a number of emotions, the combination of which prompted him to sit beside Lewis on the couch and hug him so hard he thought all his problems could be solved by this primal act. When his mind was calmer, he decided to speak to Nina later, once the boy had gone to bed. Then he removed his mobile, ordered fast food, and settled down to some mercifully uncomplicated telly.

  After the meal was delivered and the national news was being broadcast—headline features included another Middle East war, the global banking crisis, and the flaccid housing market—Mark muted the television so that they could eat without distraction. But there was little conversation as they consumed garlic bread, French fries and deep pan pepperoni. Sitting alone in an armchair they’d rarely used since moving in, Nina appeared miserable. If she was growing tired of sharing her life with Mark’s family, she’d simply have to get used to it. He’d never denied that his circumstances were complicated, and she’d claimed to understand what living with a divorced father would be like. It was unfair of her to change her mind according to a fickle whim. That veered dismayingly close to Gayle’s behavior during their marriage, and Mark had decided months ago never again to be coerced by moodiness.