by Gary Fry
“Hello?” asked Simon Hughes, his tone firm despite his physical indisposition. He’d surely have attended a public school; he exhibited that unmistakeable combination of natural politeness and zero-tolerant superiority. “May I help you?”
Mark nodded and drew in a lengthy breath. “Yes, hello. My name’s Mark…Mark Cookson. I’m…Frank’s son, a guy you used to work with at Kinder Carpets. I…believe you and I have a few things to discuss.”
Contrary to Mark’s naïve expectations, the man didn’t flinch as the revelation was made. He merely gazed back, as neutral in his appraisal as a businessman might be while inspecting newly delivered produce. But then he shuffled backwards, allowing Mark access to the property. “You’d better come inside. I can’t say I haven’t been expecting this for a long time.”
Mark’s pulse quickened as he entered the building and shut the door behind him. All the while, he watched the elder Hughes brother walk with some difficulty into a large room at the front of the property. Perhaps nascent familial concern was making Mark want to help the older man…or maybe he’d feel this way about anyone suffering such a condition? In the event, he gave no assistance, and after advancing into a lounge that looked remarkably clean for a bachelor (Mark simply knew the homeowner was single, and suspected he employed a cleaner), he sat opposite his host, in a normal-looking chair unlike the specially adapted one Simon had selected.
“You must forgive the pace at which I function these days. The years have been rather unkind to me.”
Once the man seemed settled, Mark asked, “How old are you?”
“Sixty-three. I look older, don’t I? There are solid reasons for that. But I expect you’re about to inquire about these.”
“Why do you assume I’m here to talk about anything other than the fact that you’re my…well, my father?”
Simon Hughes shook his head. “I’m not your dad. A dad spends time with his children, works hard to bring them up, and treats his wife with care and compassion.” He paused to draw a sharp breath, but then added, “I’m capable of none of these things, so please don’t suggest otherwise.”
This remark caused Mark to feel even more respect for the man who’d brought him up. But he pushed aside that troubling thought and quickly asked, “Why aren’t you? What happened to you to make you this way?”
“You see?” The older man laughed with a hoarse rasp. “All roads lead to Rome. I know where this is headed. So why not get down to business and ask me what you came to ask.”
“About Nester Street, you mean? About The House of Canted Steps?”
“The House of Blood, I think you’ll find. Why, I can sense its shadow hanging over us as we sit here and speak.”
The observation made Mark feel guilty and concerned about leaving Lewis in the car, but there was surely nothing to worry about nearly sixty miles from that property, even if it had already supplanted any natural conversation between an unwilling father and his unsettled son.
Late-afternoon dimness gathered at the bay window, beyond which Mark could see only tangles of foliage and no vehicle. Then he heard his host continue.
“I’ll ask you kindly not to take these words to heart, but I pledged almost thirty years ago never to have anything to do with you, and, alas, advancing years have not mellowed me. Nevertheless, your presence today suggests that…place is at work again. It’s cunning, and one way or another, I fear it’s triggered a revelation—from your mother, I imagine. I gave up trying to work out the house’s machinations when I sold it after my father died. But now you’re here, and it’s still there, and the connections between us ripple incomprehensibly down the years. And so I ask you: what do you want to know about it?”
Something about this justification for avoiding reference to their relationship rang untrue, and Mark gave voice to it at once. “If you believed that the building would seek you out in this way, why did you agree to help out my mom and…dad? Why did you agree to…to father me and extend your bloodline? I mean, that is what the property wants, isn’t it?”
Simon Hughes smiled, but it was neither an affectionate nor a sympathetic expression. “Haven’t you figured it out yet? Don’t you realize its power?”
“I…don’t understand.”
“It’s probably working on you now,” the man continued with a gruff tone, attempting to straighten one rising hand and failing with a sigh. “It certainly manipulated me back then, fogging up my thoughts, nudging me every which way.”
At that moment, another insight came to Mark. Nina’s face flashed in his mind, and he knew what his girlfriend had wanted to tell him the previous evening and why he’d struggled to focus on that at the time.
The House of Canted Steps hadn’t wanted him to.
His voice laden with tension, he said to his biological father, “You’re saying your home gave you the idea, aren’t you? You’re saying it exploited your remorse over the way the company you represented treated its staff. After what happened to your…brother when you were children, you’d already decided not to marry or have kids. And that made the house seek another way of preventing the Hughes family from dying out.” Mark hesitated, thought for a moment, and then concluded, “I’m the offspring of that building.”
“Indeed you are. And it wants you above all others under its roof.” The older man leant forward in his chair, clearly a painful maneuver. “Are you thinking of buying it? Is that how it’s got hold of you? Is that why you’re here today? I know it has devious ways. Tell me, do you have children?”
Struggling to cope with so many questions, Mark replied rapidly and honestly. “My ex-wife and her new partner own it. But my son lives with them. That’s why I’m concerned.”
“And so you should be, but not about your boy. He’s safe, and so are you. If you’ve both been inside the place and come out alive, that’s enough to tell me it isn’t seeking to eliminate either of you. After all, it could easily do so if it wished.”
“You mean like…it did to your brother?” But then Mark frowned. “That’s what I don’t understand, however. It’s partly why I came to see you. If he was born to your parents naturally, why would the property want him out of the way?”
Simon Hughes scowled again, but Mark thought he saw tears welling in his faded eyes. These seemed anathema to his unemotional manner, but when he replied, his voice was reduced to a plaintive whisper. “An accident, it was called, but I know different. The truth was that James committed suicide.”
Finally the child had a name. In Mark’s mind, that made the entity he’d known only as The Blood Boy seem more human, less frightening. Indeed, hadn’t this poor lad been his uncle?
Mark asked, “But why? Why would he do that?”
His host glanced away. He looked unlikely to reply until he sighed again and then said, “Let’s just say that my father preferred to keep rather too much in the family.”
Mark knew that he’d get no more information about this and that it would be impolitic to even try. The meaning had been clear enough, confirming many things Mark already suspected. That house was immoral and evil. Its antagonism towards stepfamilies ignored the corruption that could blight even those that were blood-related, just as it had for Nina, Mark’s poor girlfriend who’d had something momentous to tell him the previous evening and whom he’d thoughtlessly ignored. The property had prevented him from engaging with her at the deep level necessary for such an important revelation. It was sly and played on people’s weaknesses: Simon’s humanitarian stance at work and associated feelings of guilt; the unhappiness of Mark’s parents over their childlessness; Mark’s ambiguous thoughts about having another child when he was half-estranged from one he’d already fathered; and Justin’s uncharacteristic bad mood yesterday while Gayle had been uncommonly sympathetic.
Mark realized that he was caught in a terrible web, and that prowling its flanks was The House of Canted Steps, a building rendered spiderlike and hideous, hungry and cruel.
“I need to leave you now, do
n’t I?” he said to his real father, a man who could never match up to the person who’d brought him up, even if he made an effort to do so.
“I think that’s best,” replied Simon Hughes. It was possible that he’d also experienced unwelcome attention as a child and that only superior age had helped him survive such a ruthless father. He looked nothing less than fearful when he spoke again. “I’m done with all that history now. It’s your battle. But I…I wish you luck.”
Mark stood to leave. But then a final question occurred to him.
“Another family recently sold the building to my ex and her boyfriend. And I know it was kindly disposed to them. Why should that be? If it’s always been me it’s wanted, and possibly even my ex-wife and son, why should it protect anyone else?”
While climbing to his feet and shepherding Mark towards the exit, the older man laughed, but it was a dry, despairing noise.
“Don’t flatter yourself,” he said, pulling open the door as if he couldn’t wait for his only offspring to leave. Moments later, he went on, his tone no less standoffish. “The house isn’t that fussy. It’ll take what it can get.”
And just before Mark, now outside, observed the front door shutting with unambiguous haste, his biological father finished from inside his new, uncorrupted property.
“But it does have its preferences.”
22
On the way back to Hantley, Mark pulled off the A64, and didn’t stop the car until he reached a supermarket in York’s suburbs. He took Lewis inside, and after leaving the boy to choose a packet of sweets, he ventured down the Wines and Spirits aisle to find an expensive bottle of champagne.
Nina wouldn’t be able to consume much of this, but Mark knew it was the right thing to buy. His chat with Simon Hughes had released him from a willful refusal to face the fact that his girlfriend was pregnant. This had been the “blindspot”—the issue of fatherhood—Nina had mentioned last night, but he was determined to make up for his lapse in style.
Driving again, with his son beside him munching mints and playing with his plastic toy, Mark considered all he’d learnt during this last stage in his investigation. He now understood what the house was after, and knew it wouldn’t beat him. He’d take the boy home tomorrow and tell Gayle and Justin everything. His ex-wife wasn’t due to give birth until next week, and Mark would have to hope that she and her new partner would remain unharmed one final night. He’d call them after getting home, letting them know Lewis was okay. But Mark had already decided not to visit this evening. Nina would want him with her once he’d expressed his delight at her amazing news.
And so, after all these events, they were destined to be two step-families, each as pure as any bonded by common blood—purer, actually, if he considered the rotten Hughes clan as well as Mark’s girlfriend’s. The builder of The House of Canted Steps had woven his pernicious prejudices into the building’s structure, but had got it terribly wrong. A person was no safer in a natural family than any other. The idiot servant the man had created—that sentient property bearing only one perverse goal—had since become irrevocably insane.
Even now, steering back into Hantley, he wondered whether its influence continued to guide his plans. He recalled it forcing him to talk to his girlfriend on the way home from the housewarming party, the same evening he’d seen his dad in its greenhouse. That had led Nina to tell him about her past, which had resulted in them making love later, which might have created a baby…
This was why Mark had decided not to return to that house tonight. He knew it sounded crazy, but he’d given up trying to rationalize the building’s nefarious strategies. Nevertheless, he remained sufficiently aware to wonder why, if all he’d just considered was true, it wanted him to stay away tonight…
But he decided not to think about this now, and simply pulled into the parking slots behind the flats he’d soon have to exchange for larger accommodation. After unbuckling his seat belt, he instructed Lewis to do the same, and then he climbed out, clutching the bottle of bubbly like a medieval club.
“Daddy, I’m tired,” his son said, yawning as widely as whatever lurked behind a nearby bush did. But after looking that way, Mark realized the movement he’d detected was just wind rushing through a cluster of leafless branches, making shadows stir with a restless energy.
“I know you are, champ. I’m whacked, too. It’s been a long day. When you get inside, you can get into your pajamas and go straight to sleep. It’s nearly nine o’clock.” He paused, thought for a moment, and then added, “Nina and I are going to have a little chat in the bedroom. That okay with you, mate?”
“You’re going to get drunkerered, aren’t you?”
Mark laughed, realizing he’d failed to buy the booze without the boy noticing it. Then, as much to himself as to his son, he replied, “I think I’ve earned a glass or two lately, you know.”
Lewis obviously didn’t understand what his daddy meant, but nodded anyway.
“Thanks for taking me to Witterby, Daddy. It was brill.” Then, as they both entered the communal lobby, the boy added, “Let’s not forget to give Nina her present!”
“We certainly won’t do that,” Mark replied, directing his son up the mercifully level steps towards the second-floor landing.
Mark juggled his keys as Lewis put his ear to the door and whispered, “It sounds really quiet in there. Let’s surprise her.”
“I imagine she’s already heard us climb the…stairs.”
Despite his creeping unease, Mark inserted his key, turned it, and then allowed his son to enter the flat first. As Mark removed his jacket in the entrance hall, the boy brandished the tiny stuffed animal he’d insisted they buy for Nina and paced quickly forwards.
But she wasn’t in the lounge; the room stood in darkness until Mark flipped on its light switch. He told Lewis to start dressing for bed while he went into the bedroom to see what his girlfriend was doing. In her present condition, she’d probably needed an early night or had felt so depressed that she’d struggled to remain awake. The second possibility troubled him in a way he was unable to figure out, and as his son searched for pajamas beside the still-inflated airbed, Mark carried the bottle of champagne along the hall passage.
Approaching the bedroom entrance, he tried suppressing the recollection that people were always more complicated than they appeared. His ex-wife’s recent benevolence was one example, as was Justin’s bullish attitude on the same day. But most crucially, Mark remembered Nina’s perpetual good humor while concealing such a heartbreaking familial secret.
Raising one hand to the door, Mark hesitated. Were these thoughts the result of the house at work again? The place had almost certainly interfered with Gayle’s and her partner’s behavior the morning Mark had been trapped in their cellar, and he himself had also suffered lately at its whim. But surely, in his absence from the flat today, it couldn’t have reached out across the town to influence his girlfriend…
At that moment, a terrible thought occurred to Mark: Nina had been inside The House of Canted Steps. And had the building played with her mind, too? Was that why she’d told him all she had the other night, on their way home from the party?
He shook his head. God, he was still being tormented by that property. He’d simply have to believe that it was unable to perform its pernicious acts on the far side of Hantley…that it couldn’t have driven another abused person to suicide.
Now realizing that he’d forgotten to mention The Blood Boy to Simon Hughes, Mark pushed open the bedroom door. He thought he must have withheld this information out of respect for the child’s aging brother, but the truth was that the entity Mark had seen in the building’s kitchen had slipped his mind. Or had that been accidental, after all?
Advancing for the bed in a gloom caused by closed curtains, Mark imagined a red shape occupying the dim hump he could now see under the sheets. When he put out a hand to rouse the figure inside, it would rear up before him, its frame a seething mass of liquid, its eyes and
mouth gaping like those of a creature robbed of its usual habitat: glutinous blood…
But these thoughts were foolish; Mark should push them aside. He did so…and then reached out to tug the bedsheet from the shrunken form beneath.
“Darling,” he said, as the thing inside jerked promptly his way to greet him.
He flinched back, his flesh crawling, but could soon see more clearly. That was when he spotted Nina.
“Oh, Mark, you…frightened me,” his girlfriend said in a forceful whisper, and then used one hand to wipe away a sleepiness that was rendering her eyes hooded. “What…time is it? I must have nodded off. I’ve been so…tired lately.”
Mark smiled, despite knowing the expression would be hard to make out in the darkness. “I know you have, love. And with good reason.” He paused, and then after drawing a full breath, he added, “I know all about it, Nina. I know.”
By now, she’d come round.
“Know what, Mark?” She hesitated, appeared to think for a moment, and finally realized what he meant. “Oh. Yes. That. Of course.”
He stooped to hug her, kissing her face, and quickly proffered the bottle he’d brought home.
“It’s the best brand the supermarket had in stock,” he said, struggling to control a giddiness that, despite all he’d gone through lately—or possibly even because of that—had stolen into his voice.
“How…lovely,” his girlfriend said, her voice now sounding animated by her habitual smile. But soon she became serious. “But do you mean you’re…happy about it? I wasn’t sure. You seemed so distant before you went away.”
“Are you kidding? I’m delighted!” Whatever Freudian exorcism he’d begun experiencing when Eric Johnson had booked a property valuation several weeks ago had now ended, and its aftereffects felt sweet indeed. In one sense, that terrible house had done him a huge favor, one a psychologist might have taken years to achieve. Observing his beautiful girlfriend, Mark said, “I’m sorry for how I’ve been lately, but that’s all in the past. I’m a changed man. So come and join me in a glass of this stuff. Lewis is in the other room. He’s bought you a gift, too.”
