The House of Canted Steps

by Gary Fry

  Once they’d all finished eating, Mark asked Lewis, “Do you want to phone your mommy now? I think she’d like to know that you’re all right.”

  Surely he hadn’t just seen his girlfriend mimic these words in his peripheral vision. That was one of his ex-wife’s tricks, and hers alone. Gayle often resorted to such pettiness, and one reason why Mark had warmed so quickly to Nina was the way she boasted the opposite attitude: maturity and not petulance; straightforward honesty rather than sneaking duplicity. He couldn’t have been wrong about this…could he?

  Despite turning his thoughts to his girlfriend, Mark also found himself feeling anxious about his ex-wife and even Justin, who’d surely be together in their new house. By getting his son to call, Mark could reassure Gayle that all was well here and put his mind at ease about things over there. Did this mean he still cared for his ex-wife? But he pushed aside this question and attended to what Lewis was saying.

  “Yeah, I need to ask what the hospital said about my little baby brother or sister.” The boy, who’d confessed earlier that he’d accidentally left his mobile in his bedroom at home, leapt from the couch to cross the room, and after plucking the handset from its plastic cradle, he started dialling. “It’ll be here any day now, you know!”

  “I know, mate,” Mark replied, his voice compassionate. “And are you excited? I know I would be.”

  “Yes!”

  At that moment, Mark’s girlfriend got up from her seat, and without stooping to collect her discarded pizza box, crossed to the sink, poured herself a glassful of water and then drained it in one go. At least she wasn’t turning to alcohol tonight. Whatever ailment had troubled her lately must have come and gone.

  Mark switched his attention back to his son holding the telephone.

  “Hi, Mommy!” Lewis said as soon as the call connected. After listening briefly, he added, “Yep, we had lots of junk food like you said we would.”

  In light of his recent violent behavior, Mark rose above this typical slight from his ex-wife. He was just relieved Gayle had answered. Then, ignoring the sound of a glass slammed down in the kitchen behind him, Mark listened as his son continued talking to his mother.

  “Yeah, I’m watching telly…With Nina and Daddy…It was okay today, yes. I beat Kevin Bartley at football and Miss Marshall said that my story was good, but not as good as Lucy Jenkins’s, but she’s a big fat swot…What are you doing? I can hear clinking…Is Justin doing the washing-up like you said he should ’cause you’re so close to the big day?…Did the doctor say you have to rest?…How long will it be?…No, silly, I meant in time…Next week!…Remember, I want to be there when it’s ready to come out: you did promise…Okay, thanks…God, I’ll have to make sure I tidy my room every day, so some nights he can sleep with me…Yes, I know, Mommy: or her…Okay, I’m going now…I think Daddy wants to watch a DVD…No, they’ll be no monsters in it. He knows all about my nightmares…Bye! Bye!…Bye-bye!”

  Moments later, Lewis hung up.

  From where he was seated, Mark could see his girlfriend watching the boy across the room. If she appeared envious at the attention Lewis was receiving, she’d simply have to live with that, too. It was only for the next few days, and then each following weekend: only two days in every five. While overhearing his son speaking on the phone, Mark had realized how much he’d missed having a child around, but at least he still had these visits to savor. Then he decided to make his proposal about going to the coast tomorrow. It might even cheer up Nina, and he was convinced it would make Lewis’s stay a success.

  As the boy had slumped back onto the couch and Mark’s girlfriend had returned to her solitary chair, Mark said, “I’ve got a surprise for you two.”

  “Oh ye—”

  “What, Daddy? What is it?”

  Mark used his eyes to silently apologize to Nina for the boy’s interruption, but not too profusely. This was what children were like, after all; she’d certainly have to get used to that in the future. Then he simply said it: “How do we all feel about taking a trip to the seaside tomorrow?”

  “Yes! Yes! Yes!”

  Lewis’s ecstatic response hadn’t surprised Mark, but he was eager to see what his girlfriend’s might be. “And how about you, love?” he asked, his tone considerate.

  Shuffling in her seat, Nina shrugged. Her troubled expression reminded Mark that she’d been ill lately and that he hadn’t inquired about her health today. Maybe that was the reason she was behaving in a sulky way and why she’d seemed to resent him taking a day away from the office when there was little wrong with him. He’d make it up to her before sleep tonight, but right now he needed a response to his invitation.

  “Well, Nina,” he added, with a touch of impatience, “do you fancy coming along as well?”

  “Why don’t you two go together? I’ve…got quite a lot to think about. To be honest, I could do with a day to myself.”

  “But we want you to come,” Lewis said to the woman who’d surely one day become his step-mom. “I’ve got two families now. And I want both to be happy.”

  This comment made Mark feel both proud of and fearful for his son, and despite realizing his girlfriend must need some quiet in which to study for her forthcoming exam, he thought she was being selfish by not taking the opportunity to develop the new relationships in Lewis’s life. Even when she stood without another word and left the room, presumably to prepare for bed, Nina failed to reply to either his question or to the boy’s heartfelt plea.

  Well, if that was her attitude, so be it. Mark refused to be held to emotional ransom in the same way Gayle had behaved during their marriage. Nina had certainly suffered in the past, but today he’d learned something important about his own life and it was surely acceptable to prioritize that for a while. He’d decided to withhold from his girlfriend his news about his paternity, at least until he had the full story. Then they could talk about many issues, but none so soon and certainly not with Lewis in the flat.

  Eager not to dwell on such topics, Mark settled back to enjoy some quality time with his son. They watched daft TV comedies, talked about school, and then inflated his airbed. By the time Mark had kissed the boy goodnight and switched off the light, it had grown dark at the flat’s front window. But so far away from that house, Lewis was surely as safe as he’d ever be. And whatever happened during the next few days, the boy definitely wouldn’t return there. After Mark had acquired the knowledge he needed from his biological father, he could put the case to rest. He wasn’t sure how to go about this final stage, but he knew he’d achieve it somehow. The House of Canted Steps wouldn’t beat him.

  In the bedroom, Nina lay in thick shadow. Mark had visited the toilet several times earlier and noticed a lamp burning behind the closed door. Perhaps she’d been revising and was now eager for sleep. He hadn’t wanted to disturb her when his son was still awake, because experience told him an argument was percolating and this might upset the boy. Indeed, as Mark put on pajamas in the unforgiving blackness, he heard his girlfriend say, “I think your ex-wife’s new home has poisoned your mind.”

  He was startled. He could admit that the property had been preying on his thoughts this evening, but notwithstanding brief reflection on Lewis’s safety, he’d been determined not to dwell on it. And now here was Nina inviting it all back.

  Why, the twisted—

  But he halted that train of thought. This was his girlfriend, the love of his life now, and he’d just willingly entertained a disturbing mental image of her; she’d appeared every bit as red as The Blood Boy…and Mark had caused these injuries.

  Could Nina be right, after all? Was that place still dogging him the way it had every time he’d ventured inside it? And was he being insensitive to his new partner’s needs right now?

  He climbed into bed, and, trying to feel less combative, cuddled his girlfriend. “Please don’t worry. I’m still here with you.”

  “With us, you mean.”

  “Sorry? I don’t underst— Ah, you
mean now that Lewis is here? Well, look, Nina, as I’ve explained, that’s something you’ll have to adapt to. Kids don’t just go away whenever you want them to. They’re with you for life.”

  She stared at him, her face a faded disc in the dark. “I know, Mark. In fact, these last few days, I’ve had no choice but to dwell on that.”

  She must still be referring to his preoccupation with The House of Canted Steps. But all that was about to end; Mark simply knew it was. “Everything will be fine sooner than you think, my love. I guarantee it.”

  “Will it?” Nina replied, her voice eager for reassurance. She held him tighter. “Oh, will it, Mark?”

  “Without doubt.” A wave of tiredness swept over him. He felt a little of his distraction return, as if something was tugging tenaciously at his exhausted mind. “Once I’ve finished with him, Justin’s investment won’t look quite so handsome anymore.”

  Nina moved away, as if he’d grown alien to her, as if he was no longer himself. In the cloying gloom, Mark noticed pale hands clutch at her stomach.

  “What’s…wrong, Nina?” he asked, but his words were distorted by a sudden yawn. “Are you…okay?”

  “It’s true, isn’t it? You really have got a blindspot about this kind of thing.” His girlfriend turned over to go to sleep. And despite his confusion, Mark thought she’d offer no explanation until she added with a cold tone, “I can see what Gayle had to put up with now.”

  21

  He was back on the A64 and feeling as unsettled as he had during his last journey along this road. But he’d already passed the hotel in which he’d met Eric Johnson when Lewis, sitting beside him in the passenger seat, asked, “How far is it to Witterby, Daddy?”

  His mispronunciation of the coastal town made Mark smile. The atmosphere in the flat that morning as he and his son had prepared to leave for the trip northeast had been unsettling. Nina had remained silent as they’d got together essentials, responding to comments from him and the boy with only perfunctory phrases. Whatever her problem was, Mark hoped a day alone might help solve it; he’d certainly been glad to leave her to this task. He was too preoccupied by his own difficulties to allow for much reflection on his girlfriend’s, but that would surely end today.

  “About fifty miles from here,” he told Lewis, and then switched on the stereo, letting popular music no doubt more familiar to his son fill the awkward space between them.

  What had Nina meant the previous evening by a “blindspot?” As a survival mechanism following traumatic early experiences, she’d grown familiar with all those psychological thinkers…and did she have an insight into him he was unable to reach alone? He’d already admitted that he’d been as responsible as his ex-wife for his marriage’s failure, but was there more to it than that? And if so, what could it be?

  Perhaps he’d discover the truth today after visiting his biological father. Maybe some Freudian veil of illusion would be lifted from his mind. Whatever the truth was, he’d never know what that property wanted until he was fully equipped with all information relevant to its history. And to achieve that, he must reach Whitby as soon as possible.

  Racing across the North York Moors, he felt as if the landscape was making him accelerate his car above the national speed limit. He swept down lanes, took sharp corners with wild abandon, and after passing the infamous RAF building ten miles outside the town, he recalled that Lewis was travelling with him and that the boy might be scared of his daddy’s reckless driving.

  After looking left, however, Mark saw Lewis holding on to his locked door yet clearly enjoying the ride. Like father, like son, Mark thought, but while entering into the town’s charming environs, he realized that something about this last leg of their journey—the danger to which he’d exposed both himself and his boy—had disturbed him.

  Nevertheless, after parking in the portside, they enjoyed fish ’n’ chips in a small café near the town’s great clipper docked for tourists’ inspection. Once they’d eaten, Mark paid for them to go on board this wonderful boat, and later they ventured onto a beach frequented at this early hour only by an attractive woman dressed in stylish clothing, with a tall dog galloping beside her.

  “I like doggies,” Lewis told Mark, pausing from digging in the sand to watch the mongrel cut across a lapping fringe of sea.

  “Well, who knows, perhaps Nina and I can get one to play with whenever you come stay. Would you like that?”

  “Yeah!” his son replied, but then his eyes grew puzzled. “But won’t it be hard keeping a dog in a flat?”

  “Maybe we won’t be living there forever,” Mark explained, and although something stirred at the back of his mind, suggesting that before long, he and his girlfriend would have no choice but to move to a larger place, he was unable to figure out what it meant. He felt as if a mental fog was surrounding these reflections…But then he dismissed them entirely and instructed the boy to finish building his sandcastle.

  Next they hit the shops to buy a present for Nina (“Because she looked sad this morning, didn’t she, Daddy?” Lewis said) and then ventured up the cliff side through a giant whalebone tipped onto its jaw as a gimmicky tourist attraction. By now, it was four o’clock and they were both tired. It had been a good day, and after thinking about his own dad lately, Mark was glad he and his son had engaged in healthy bonding. But it was time to move on. As they descended from the West Cliff, a tall, bespectacled man walking a smaller dog than the one on the beach watched them pass, as if their presence had just lent him an idea relating to whatever preoccupied him in life.

  Once they’d relocated the car, Mark typed the postcode he’d memorized from the Internet into his Sat-Nav unit. Then, belting himself in the front seat and prompting Lewis to do the same in his, he said, “I need to call in and see someone before we head home, mate—is that okay?”

  “Is it to do with a house, Daddy?” his son asked, and despite experiencing unease, Mark knew what the boy meant. He’d simply assumed his father would be working today, as he often had when Lewis had been growing up. Sometimes valuing property had struck him as preferable to the intimacy involved in normal family life, but was that surprising given what he’d learned recently about his upbringing? And was this what his girlfriend had described last night as his “blindspot?”

  It was still too puzzling to figure out, and so he said to Lewis, “Yes, it is to do with a house, champ.”

  But he wasn’t about to tell the boy whose. Instead, Mark triggered his ignition, engaged the gearbox, let out the clutch, and started obeying his screen-mounted gadget’s instructions.

  A long seafront road led them to a cluster of large houses occupying land overlooking the beach and a golf course. Once he’d been directed to the correct building, Mark switched off the engine with a hand that shook and then turned to his son. “Right, we’re here. I won’t be long. Keep the doors locked while I’m gone, won’t you?”

  There was surely no need to fear for Lewis’s safety in such a trouble-free neighborhood. The road was deserted, the only sign of life shadows of cloud that made hedges between each dwelling look full of stealthy motion. What choice did Mark have but to leave his son in the car? His girlfriend’s absence had prevented Mark from visiting this property alone, but that wasn’t the only reason he’d wanted her here today. He loved her, and now he’d got sufficient distance between himself and everything troubling him lately, he realized he’d been neglecting her. She’d had something to tell him last night, hadn’t she? And what imp in his mind had stopped him asking her about that again?

  “I’ll be okay, Daddy,” Lewis said, his voice admirably unconcerned. “I’m going to play with the action figure you bought me in that shop.”

  After spotting the model of a rugged pirate, a character from a popular recent film, Mark had tried distracting his son before he also noticed it. But he’d failed. Something about the figure’s shredded flesh and decaying skeleton made Mark wonder whether it was an appropriate toy for a youngster, but the movie in q
uestion was clearly aimed at families. Still, if it kept the boy occupied until Mark had a chance to do what he must do in the house, he was happy to leave him to it.

  He patted Lewis on one shoulder and then climbed outside. A stiff breeze removed a little of his stress but gusted noisily against the nearby buildings. After locking his vehicle with his key fob, Mark advanced up the lengthy garden path of the property whose owner he’d come to talk to.

  The house was a modern dwelling, probably built within the last twenty years. Its plush façade bore neither traces of salt erosion from the proximate sea, nor any other mild decay. Simon Hughes might even have commissioned the place’s construction, and if that was true, what did it suggest about his experience of the building in which he’d lived as a child? Had he avoided anything other than a new and surely unhaunted home?

  Mark suppressed all these inquiries, if only to reserve them for after he’d gained access to the property. He stepped up to the front entrance and knocked on the door several times, listening as each rap resounded in the unnerving silence hereabouts. Then he waited. And waited. And was eventually rewarded by the sounds of footsteps approaching slowly from inside, as if the bearer was either wary or infirm.

  At last the door opened. Mark felt his heart rate soar to an unprecedented speed, even in light of everything he’d endured in the past few weeks.

  A man stood in the entrance, one hand holding the interior door handle, as if it lent him support. The other bore hooked fingers, and Mark realized that the homeowner must surely suffer from arthritis. His body was stooped, his legs bent slightly backwards. He was dressed in a sweater and thick trousers; presumably he felt the cold more than anyone unaffected by such a medical condition.

  Then Mark glanced at his face.

  The man was examining Mark in the same way he now scrutinized him. His eyes were narrow and rheumy, and a pair of frameless glasses clung to his large nose. Mark shared these characteristics, as well as the same wide lips, high cheekbones, low forehead and brownish hair. It was like glancing into some time-transcending mirror. It was pointless to ask his host’s name, to make sure he was the person he’d come to see. Mark had recognized him immediately. This man was undoubtedly his biological father.