They should have been over the moon, full of chat, and making fun of the temporary speech impediment until she became accustomed to the new fitting. She should have been smiling in the mirror of the sun visor instead of facing the window. She looked so very different, even more beautiful. They should have been celebrating her appearance, not falling out with each other.
Now Suzanne was both worried and annoyed. Sardis went straight to her room (again), with no explanation. It was a regression back to the Sardis of old. She had been locked in there for over two hours, leaving Suzanne to pace between the kitchen and the living room and ponder what the hell was up with her. She’d walked past her bedroom a few times on the way to the bathroom and even stopped outside her door, poised to knock and demand an explanation, but decided to wait until they sat down to dinner. That would be time enough. It takes three hours to change a mood, someone once said; it made sense. She hoped by then they would both be in a better place.
Things had been so good between them after Alex’s passing. Sardis helped with dinner most nights and they did talk. Sometimes, more often than not, they shared a bottle of wine and talked about Alex, cried, opened another (mainly for Suzanne’s benefit), and talked some more. They both missed him terribly. The cottage was left with an empty space, like the removal of a big hunk of furniture never to be replaced.
Suzanne didn’t know what she would do if Sardis reverted back to being difficult. Life would become unbearable; the cottage could be a lonely place. She wished Sardis would open up and talk about her feelings, what she was going through.
The potatoes were peeled, chopped, and covered with water, onions sliced, gravy granules in the measuring jug, and two raw steaks rested to room temperature. She held a bottle of red in her hand. With or without, that was the question? Suzanne hadn’t decided. Adding alcohol to the table the way she felt right now might be adding fuel to a smouldering fire. She didn’t want to “lose the head” and make things worse between them. But if Sardis carried on the way she was going, that’s exactly what was going to happen. The bottle was open, a glass poured, just the one with the radio on, that would be okay.
She stepped from the kitchen into the living room. “Sardis, dinner ready in five.” She heard an inaudible response, took it as confirmation, and went back to the cooker to fork the spuds; almost done. She turned on the gas, rested the frying pan over the flame and flicked the switch of the kettle to on. She picked up the bottle and topped up her glass. The bottle tilted past horizontal.
“Whoops,” she said but felt she was moving to a better place.
The living room door pushed open and Sardis entered. Her face was puffed (partly down to the new fitting), and her eyes ruddy, but she’d left the tears behind the bedroom door.
She could see through to the kitchen that Suzanne was at the cooker with her back to her and the obligatory glass of wine was within hand’s reach. She should have felt anger toward her mum for keeping secrets, though she wasn’t entirely sure what those secrets were. Part of her understood why Mum might have done it, given the very disturbing and upsetting things the young girl’s eyes had told. She knew Mum always wanted the best for her, loved her more than any mum could, and whatever the full extent of those secrets, mum had her best interests at heart. She felt bad for the way she behaved on the way home and for disappearing (again), without explanation. She knew it upset her and owed it to her now to try to explain. Mum could help if she was honest enough to tell the truth, and believed what she was about to tell her. No, it wasn’t anger Sardis felt. It was fear and disbelief, sadness, too, but that was never far away these days. She was afraid for what she now knew to be true, for what may follow, and for their safety.
“Can I have un uh dose, peas?” Sardis asked, referring to a glass of red wine when she came through the partition and into the kitchen.
Suzanne turned and looked at her daughter. All she could do was smile. “Not doing peas, honey; it’s only steak and onions today.”
Sardis smiled, almost laughed. “Mum sop bing silly. A glass uh wine.”
And the tension between them broke, just like that.
It was difficult for Sardis to take herself seriously, laughable. She put her fingers into her mouth and fumbled awkwardly until the top teeth came away, then the bottom, and held them in her hand.
“I’m only kidding. Coming right up, sweetheart.” Suzanne turned down the gas to let the onion gravy settle to a simmer. The potatoes were mashed in the pot, covered with a plate where the steaks rested in a pool of their own juice. She noticed the redness in Sardis’ eyes. “Hey, what’s the matter, do they hurt or something? Are you not happy with the teeth? They look really great, really. You look amazing, you’ll get used to them. What’s up, would you rather a shake?”
Suzanne had improvised the shake recipe after Alex’s death, using pig’s blood from a number of butchers under the guise of making black pudding. She added a compilation of meats and offal and liquidised it, but it wasn’t the same. Sardis didn’t drink as many as she used to, her choice, which was a good thing.
Sardis stretched her mouth out wide before attempting to speak again. “No, thanks, I’d prefer wine. I’ll be all right. Sorry for being such a pain; it’s taken a bit of getting used to, that’s all.”
Suzanne knew Sardis was lying, still hiding something. She decided not to say anything. The mood was much lighter than before and she didn’t want to spoil it. Once they ate and cleared up that would be time enough to talk.
Unbeknown to Suzanne, Sardis was thinking the same thing, grateful for the respite.
“You wanted to cook the steak, that’s it, isn’t it? Don’t worry, it’s rare, just the way you like it.”
“Ha-ha. How many of those have you already had?”
“Hey, missy, we’re celebrating, remember?” Suzanne said, smiling giddy, her mood noticeably upbeat.
“Come on, then.” Sardis smiled. “Pour me that glass and I’ll help you get the dinner on the plates. You might drop them.”
49:
“Prove it.”
“So, are you going to tell me what’s been going on with you?” Suzanne asked when they were sitting together on the sofa. She had a half glass of wine in one hand and rubbed Sardis’ leg with the other.
“It’s hard to explain. It’s going to sound crazy.”
“Try me. I’m full as a tic but I’m all ears.”
Sardis looked down at her own glass and tapped it with her nail. She exhaled out her nose. “Okay, but you have to be honest.” Suzanne nodded she would be. Sardis wasn’t convinced. “I need you to tell me some things.” She looked up to show she was serious and Suzanne lost her smile. “I want to know who I am, where I came from, and what happened to me.” She lifted her hand from the glass and spread her fingers to show her nails. She didn’t bare her teeth because the point was made.
Her appeal caught Suzanne off guard. She felt her face heat up and redden. “I don’t understand. I wanted to know about what has been going on with you, the whole incident with the dentist and why you left so abruptly today.”
“And that’s what I’m trying to tell you, but you need to answer me first. I don’t want you to lie to me, Mum; I need you to be honest, you have to tell me everything, I know you know.” She spoke with unusual impatience and conviction. The mood began to spoil.
Suzanne took a deep breath and drained her glass. She wasn’t sure what Sardis was getting at and the wine wasn’t helping. Whatever the reason for her sudden interest, she believed Sardis did know things—but how much? It felt like too lie to her daughter now would be a mistake. But what good would it do to tell the truth? “Okay, let me tell you,” Suzanne said, trying to thread her words carefully, the wine getting in the way of that, too. “Well, you know you were adopt—”
“Mum, enough. That’s not true, and you said you’d be honest. I wan
t to know about the girl, the one you met at the hospital, and the dark tank. They have something to do with it. I need to know, are they real? Please stop lying and tell me the truth.”
The girl, the dark tank—the green septic tank?—how could she possibly know any of that? “Just give me a moment to think what you’re on about.”
Suzanne gave in with a loose tongue and told her everything that had happened, everything Sardis suspected to be true, everything relevant. About the four miscarriages she’d had. About what Alex had done in the time of recession. About Bentley, a dog Sardis barely remembered, barking furiously at the tank and alerting Suzanne to her existence. She described seeing Sardis for the first time and the joy she felt inside, and the measures they had taken to keep her alive. And when pressed to tell her about the shakes, she did that, too.
Then Sardis asked of her mum, back to the girl again.
Suzanne told her about the young girl she had met in the hospital, sparing her the details of her condition, only to say that she was not fit to conceive and it was a judgment order to carry out the abortion, but that the outcome was their good fortune. She told her she was a miracle sent to them from God. And when Sardis pressed her for the girl’s name, Suzanne lied again, saying she couldn’t remember and warned for her own sake that she shouldn’t pursue her curiosity any further. Sardis knew all she needed to know, there was no more to tell.
Sardis persisted, wanting to know the details. The guts of a bottle of wine (give or take a glass too many), prompted Suzanne to reluctantly speak of the attack in Brushy Park so Sardis didn’t have to research it on line and stumble upon more than she should.
To Suzanne’s surprise Sardis was coping better than she expected with all that had been said. Whatever her thoughts, she was doing well to keep her feelings hidden. “So it is real. It’s all real.”
“What is going on? How do you know any of this, like the tank, it was all gone when you were just a baby.”
“I see things, awful things, things I shouldn’t, but I do. Those nightmares when I was younger were just the beginning back when I came into your bed, but I still have them. They never went away.” Sardis started to sob as Suzanne listened with sobering disbelief, eyes wide open. “I see what he does to others, to her; somehow I go there, it’s as if I’m inside of him, seeing what he sees, the things he does, like I’m supposed to be there. I try to stop it, but I can’t. I wanted to believe that none of it was true, even when they found the bodies just as I knew they would, and everyone talking about it around me, everybody scared. I just blanked it or walked away, switched it off in my mind because it couldn’t have been true. And I can’t do that anymore. I can’t pretend it didn’t happen because she won’t let me. All those people really did die.”
The look in Sardis’ eyes was nothing but honest, convinced about what she was saying. Suzanne had so many questions floating about her head but could only pick up on the last one. “Who are you talking about, Sardis? What ‘she’ are you talking about?”
Sardis’ stare was fixed. “She comes to me in my dreams, the girl, Helen. Helen comes to me. She was my mother, wasn’t she? The girl you met in the hospital, it’s her, isn’t it, a pretty girl, ever so pretty.” She sniffled, rubbed her eyes with the knuckles of her hands, then brought them away. The tone in her voice angered her and she began to speak as if reciting lines before she forgot them.
“He killed her, not right away but he did kill her. I thought it was a big dog growling, angry. It sounded like it was sitting outside under my window. I could hear it so clearly, but it wasn’t a dog, it was him as the Wolf-man attacking her among the trees, on a branch. He went off and then came back because he had to do something, something important to him that he had to finish. So he pretended that he found her and tried to help. But that wasn’t it at all. He thought she’d died but she hadn’t. And then he sent a letter to her mother and her mother smothered her with a pillow because Helen asked her to do it. She did it because she couldn’t bear the pain and pity any longer. And then her mother killed herself in the bath. And then her dad came home and couldn’t live without them so he put them together in their double bed and killed himself with pills and alcohol so that the three of them could be together. But they’re not together, not yet. He killed them all. I know he did. Helen, my mother, told me.”
Sardis was speaking so fast Suzanne was finding it hard to keep up. She thought she would’ve minded Sardis referring to someone else as her mum but the way Sardis was speaking about it, it seemed okay, non-threatening to her stature. She couldn’t believe her ears, though. Sardis was telling her things that she didn’t even know about. The papers didn’t have all that information. She’d read them, watched the news, there was no mention of the circumstances to how the Dooley family died. She’d have remembered. The papers only reported that the three of them had been found upstairs and the police weren’t looking for anyone else in connection with the tragedy. It was described as a tragedy, there was nothing else. There was no mention of the specifics. The name Helen Dooley had come up countless times over the years, on the news, in newspapers and documentaries, reminding people of when they suspected the killings began and looking for new information. It was never broadcast in the house, always switched off at the first mention . . . but the rest of it?
And there was no guessing about the “he” Sardis was referring to. The blood in her body felt like it was swelling, every inch of her tingled as the veins and arteries expanded to accommodate, and her skin felt cold. How could Sardis possibly know it all, but she sounded certain. It was almost therapeutic in the way she spoke. The words spilled out of her mouth in a tidal wave of emotion with spumes of relief cresting over the surface. Suzanne believed what Sardis was telling her to be true; it felt right.
A question rose to the fore of her mind, not one she would have asked in the past. It was a question Alex would have asked if he were here, straight and to the point because he’d have believed her. “Do you know who this person is, Sardis, the person responsible? Could Helen show or tell you that?”
Suzanne could see relief in her daughter’s eyes. Maybe it was Alex’s question. “She didn’t have to; I know who he is. I recognised his bag, first. He always has it with him. There’s a hole in the side of it. He said it was a bullet hole from the Wild West. I’d seen that when I dreamed—I say dream, but they’re more like outings, out-of-body experiences. I know it sounds weird.”
“Go on,” Suzanne said, though it sounded more like Alex talking.
He always dresses up as different . . . creature or monster, scary things, so I mostly never got to see his face. When he went to shake my hand today I saw the mole on his wrist with the three dark hairs. I saw that in my last dream when he knocked on that woman’s door and the sleeve fell down. That’s how I know it was him. Then when we touched, it set something off in me. I saw Helen, and what he was doing to her, bad things, very bad things. You must have touched me, too, because then I saw . . . . Well, the rest of it, and you were looking in at me.”
Suzanne’s frown turned to astonishment. “The dentist, Sardis, you’re talking about the dentist? Eamon Masterson, that’s his name. You’re right. I remember who he is now, where I heard it before. He was the one to find her, a dentist. They had said if only for him, she wouldn’t have survived. Dear God, Sardis, you’re right.”
The calamity of what was unfolding had only begun to bite when Sardis said, “He made her pregnant, didn’t he, it wasn’t anybody else, and that makes him my fath—”
Suzanne grabbed hold of her hands in a rush to quell her thoughts. “No, no, he’s not.” A white lie this time. “I don’t know who might have impregnated her, and it doesn’t matter. Dad was your real father, as I am your real mother, no one else. Don’t ever think anything less. That man is a very sick and twisted individual who needs to be caught and executed for what he’s done. He’s nothing to d
o with you.” She was looking at Sardis, long since sober, the alcohol shocked out of her system.
“But that’s why I go there, that’s why I see what he does; he bites and eats parts of them. He makes teeth like mine so he can do it. I have those teeth for real, and I nearly did eat—I had bad urges and I nearly . . . .” Sardis had tears in her eyes again. She couldn’t bring herself to finish. “I’m afraid, Mum. I’m afraid I might be like him. I don’t want to be; I don’t want to be like him.”
“You’re not, Sardis. I promise you. Listen to me.” She took Sardis’ face in her hands. “You are nothing like him. You were given those teeth and your nails to help you survive in a very hostile place. You don’t ever want to hurt people; you’ve never done that.”
Sardis seemed to assess herself, and said, “No.”
“What happened with your dad had more to do with the Shakes than anything else. It’s my fault I let you carry them on so long. It was an addiction like smoking or alcohol. Your body couldn’t cope without those shakes when you were just a baby. You would have died but for them and because of them we have you. As you got older you became less dependent, able to eat other foods.” Suzanne smirked. “In fact, you used to eat just about anything put in front of you. They remained a natural part of your diet and I continued to give them to you but you could have done without them; it wouldn’t have done you any harm. You just became so used to them that without, you felt anxious and that made you feel dependent. I tried stopping them a couple of times but you got so upset I gave in. You didn’t get sick or anything. It’s an addiction, Sardis, that’s all it is. You don’t need them and it doesn’t mean you are going to go on and do bad things. You are nothing like him. Think about it: What happened with your dad in the driveway, it shocked you. You’re not taking them as much anymore, hardly at all now?” Suzanne took Sardis in her arms and squeezed her tight. “I’m right, Sardis, aren’t I? Your only crime is that you’re a beautiful girl born of unusual circumstances.” She felt Sardis’ tension taper ever so slightly.
The Ice Scream Man Page 37
