DARK FATHER
James Cooper
First Edition
Dark Father © 2013 by James Cooper
All Rights Reserved.
A DarkFuse Release
www.darkfuse.com
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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To all the fathers and all the sons,
including my own...
Paul & Ethan
Acknowledgements
Dark Father exists only because of the support of the following people: Andrew Jury, primary critic and confidant. My own “dark daddy,” Greg Gifune, peerless editor and friend. And my loving family, Ethan and Suzanna, who listened attentively when I first read aloud the opening chapter and were suitably appalled.
James Cooper
August, 2013
PART ONE: THIS IS NOT THAT
“I am terrified by this dark thing
That sleeps in me;
All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity.”
—Sylvia Plath, “Elm”
“The most important thing a father can do
for his children is to love their mother.”
—Theodore Hesburgh
The man has smiled at many things in his lifetime: lewd jokes, dazzling sunsets, the unconditional love of his son. But as he sits in the cottage, considering what he must do, a thought occurs: perhaps the smile on the face of his wife and child, who sit opposite with watchful eyes, is a fake. Perhaps it is a sign of fear, as cold and desperate as the sweat that laminates their brow. He stares at the clenched teeth, the stretched lips, the glistening gums. They tell a different story, something he has seen but wants to forget, returning him to a primal state of awareness, clutching at his memory, compelling him to do something bad. When he stares at them, their expression falters, then corrects itself. The muscles contract and the terror smiles out at him, a counterfeit distraction that looks so perfect it almost has him fooled…
The man smiles in the dark, the pain of it almost timeless, and he realizes it is because he too is afraid. He smiles because he wants to convince them he wouldn’t dream of hurting them. Not now. Not ever.
He looks across at them and blinks slowly. He smiles to remind them to run…
CHAPTER 1: BELONG
The boy awoke in the darkness and saw the outline of his mother’s face hovering over the bed. She placed a finger against his lips, soliciting silence, and waited for him to rediscover his bearings. He felt the familiar heat from her skin, smelled the lilac soap she used when she washed. It was only as he sat up and wrapped his fingers around her fist that he realized his mother’s hand was trembling. He looked at the dark hole into which her face seemed to have collapsed and felt a wave of panic reach out to claim him. She was breathing hard, as though she’d been interrupted in the middle of a run, and he could see the ghostly contrails of her breath being blown into the room.
“We need to leave,” she whispered. “Right now.” Her face was still in darkness, but he was sufficiently awake to allow his memory to sketch in what he was unable to see. “Can you do that for me, Billy? Is that okay?”
The boy thought for a moment. “Will Daddy be coming?”
He felt his mother tense. “No. It’ll just be you and me. Jasper and Alison have offered us a ride in their truck. Won’t that be fun?”
The boy frowned. “From next door?”
His mother nodded, but seemed a little uncertain even in the dark.
The boy shrugged. “What will Daddy do while we’re gone?” he said.
“It doesn’t matter,” his mother said, sounding flustered. “Daddy can look after himself. Okay?”
The boy looked at his mother’s face, a drizzle of hair falling over her right eye, and nodded.
“Will I need a suitcase?”
“I’ve already packed,” his mother said quickly.
The boy allowed himself to be lifted into his mother’s arms and wrapped his hands around her neck. She smelled sweet, like peppermint, and he buried his face in her hair.
“When we walk down the stairs,” she said, “you have to be extra quiet. Think you can manage that?”
The boy nodded, sensing his mother’s discomfort. He had a dozen questions he wanted to ask, and sensed a dozen more piling up behind, but the darkness, and his mother’s suspicion of it, had left him feeling disoriented. He clung tighter to his mother’s neck, infected with the same slow-burning dread.
“One more thing,” his mother said as she carried him out of the bedroom and across the landing. “I want you to close your eyes. Real tight, like you’re wishing for something good. Okay? You have to keep them closed till we’re sitting in Jasper’s truck.”
The boy suddenly felt sick and started to whimper.
“It’s just closing your eyes,” she whispered. “Like you’re still fast asleep. You can do that, can’t you?”
“I guess so,” the boy said, and shut his eyes as tightly as he could.
He felt his mother slowly descend the stairs. There were thirteen of them; he knew that, because he counted them, up and down, to make sure the house always stayed the same height. He counted them in his head, listening to his mother’s breathing. Wondering if Daddy was asleep.
His mother reached the bottom of the stairs and walked unsteadily towards the front door.
“Keep those eyes closed, sweetie.”
He heard his mother open the front door and felt a cold draft of air muscle its way through the house. He opened his eyes. He saw the parquet floor of the hall leading to the kitchen. A light was on; it flickered as though the bulb had been dislodged. Daddy was lying on the floor with his head hanging over the threshold. The kitchen tiles and the door and Daddy’s face were red. There was a hole where his left eye used to be.
When the boy screamed, he realized that his mother was already out the door, running down the short path towards the road. He heard the rattle of Jasper’s truck and was distantly aware that his mother was shoehorning him into the narrow backseat. Jasper was urging her to get the damn kid buckled up.
He looked back at the house and stared down the hall, still screaming his lungs raw.
He was the only one who saw his father open his good eye and clumsily stagger to his feet.
* * *
Jimmy Hopewell’s left eye was burning. He reached a hand towards the socket and his fingers came away wet. Where his eye should have been there was only white-hot pain and an emptiness so deep it made him feel ill. He tried to remember what had happened, why he was lying in the muck of his own congealing blood, but the memory, like his sight, was unclear. He remembered the argument with Kate, the dark swirl of rage that had billowed out of him, the flash of his clenched fists, but what she had done to him after that, what she had done to his eye, for Christ’s sake, he was unable, or unwilling, to recall.
Another surge of nausea overcame him and he gratefully reached for the darkness, passing out moments before the pain became too much. When he regained consciousness, his world made even less sense than it had before. He could hear Billy screaming somewhere in the dist
ance, and he felt a great swell of shame and anger at the thought of his son seeing him bleeding out on the floor like a slaughtered pig. The boy was screaming so hard it was difficult for Hopewell to focus. He tried to move his left arm, but it was numb from the shoulder down to the wrist and he could feel only the spidery advance of his fingers as they stirred in the oil of his own blood.
The boy was still screaming, and to Hopewell it sounded a little like his own voice raging against the pain in his head. He tried to open his eyes, to see for himself the horror unsettling his son, but his left eye showed only cosmic darkness and his right was glutinous with blood. He was desperate to attend to his son’s distress, but was clearly in no position to intervene. It never occurred to him, even as the pain began to recede and his awareness slowly returned, that the source of Billy’s terror might be Hopewell himself, lying voiceless and broken on the kitchen floor.
He worked his eye again, a concentrated effort this time, and finally felt it flick open. His vision was blurry, frustrated by dried blood and the inconstant light, but he could just make out two indistinct shapes at the bottom of the hall, moving through the front door to a waiting truck. One of them was Billy, screaming the house down; the other had the slender body shape of his wife, Kate.
He tried moving his arm again and this time felt sharp needles prodding it back to life. His body was beginning to ache all over as he labored to animate it and he felt a dull pressure behind his left eye, as though the cavity, even with the optic nerve severed, had discovered a way to compensate for the loss. His head also throbbed, like it had taken a whack or two from a mallet, and he pictured the silver steak tenderizer Kate’s sister had bought them as an engagement present eight years ago, his cortex spasming to life and showing him a memory of his wife earlier in the night, mid-swing, plowing it into the side of his head. Christ, how her sister would have been proud of her for that…
He let the boy’s screams drag him away from the pain and the dead memories and let the outrage they provoked guide him back to some semblance of life. He managed to maneuver himself onto his hands and knees, fighting back the threat of unconsciousness, slipped once in his own blood, and then pushed himself awkwardly to his feet.
He looked for his son and saw that Billy was staring at him, still screaming, from what looked like the end of a long tunnel. His mother was lowering him into a familiar-looking truck. It looked like Jasper McCray’s, Hopewell thought. He was not surprised. That useless old cunt and his interfering wife were always offering Kate advice. It had probably been their idea to steal away his son in the middle of the night. He closed his eyes as the pain and the fury coalesced.
“Billy!” he screamed. “Billy!”
He peered down the tunnel and started to move. He would not give up his family until every last drop of blood in his body had been shed. He hobbled down the hallway, feeling suddenly calm. The empty space behind his left eye glowed and showed him the way.
* * *
Kate looked behind her, deafened by her son’s screams and driven useless by the sight of her husband ponderously negotiating the distance between them. She tried to squeeze Billy into the back of Jasper’s truck, but Hopewell was screaming Billy’s name. The boy was struggling in his mother’s arms, failing to understand why they were leaving Daddy behind. He wanted to see if his eye was better, if the dark hole had somehow gone away. He started pummelling his mother’s body with his tiny fists, thwarting her attempts to shove him into the truck.
“Jesus…” Jasper said, and Kate risked another glance over her shoulder. Hopewell was fifty yards away, trailing blood; he was gaining ground fast. “Sweet-talking time’s over, honey,” Jasper said. “Time to get that little fucker in the truck.”
She nodded and gritted her teeth. She thrust Billy into the revving vehicle and clambered after him. The truck took off even before she had time to close the door.
She looked behind her and saw her husband standing in the road. She started to weep as she realized what she’d done. Her husband’s empty eye, the one she had taken, watched her go. She shuddered and tried to look away, but the darkness held her until the truck turned a corner and her husband and her old life disappeared. She was breathing heavily and she reached out to hold Billy’s hand, to reassure him. Daddy was fine, she said. He just had a fall.
She pictured Hopewell coming after them and started to shake. He would be relentless, she thought. Ferociously single-minded.
The only thing left between them, the eye.
CHAPTER 2: FALLING SKY
Frank was in the one place where he felt truly alone: the woodshed. He whistled through his teeth as he brought the axe crashing down on another log, splitting it in two. His skin would smell of freshly chopped wood for days.
He raised his goggles and wiped a rill of sweat from around his eyes. His back was beginning to ache. He’d work his way through another cord or two and then he’d have to call it a night. He glanced down at the axe and saw a single bead of tree sap. He watched it for a moment, feeling uncomfortable. The sap bled down the edge of the blade and gathered on the chopping block like glue. He bent down and used his glove to wipe it away.
There was a gentle knock at the shed door.
“Daddy?” a small voice said.
Frank unlatched the door and saw Jacob standing there in his Star Wars pajamas and red Wellington boots. He saw Cindy in the distance, standing on the patio, waving to him. In the gloom she was no more than a dark silhouette. Her features had been completely rubbed away. It occurred to Frank that it could have been anyone waving to him from the patio. He waved back and the figure disappeared inside the house.
“Hello, little man,” Frank said. “Come to chop a little firewood?”
Jake shook his head solemnly. “Mommy said you have to stop now. It’s getting dark.” He looked behind him to make sure this was still the case. “She says if it gets too dark, you’ll chop off a toe.”
Frank stared at his son; Jake looked so appalled by this prospect, Frank could barely contain his amusement.
“Good point, kiddo,” he said. “But what if I do this?” He took a box of matches from his pocket and lit a Coleman lantern that was suspended from the roof. The woodshed was illuminated by a warm light.
“See,” Frank said, easing the boy inside. “Problem solved. No toes chopped off tonight, Jake, I promise.”
The boy looked unconvinced. He stared at his father and twisted his hands; he seemed confused, wary of the dusty goggles and the heavy gloves and the acidic sweat that had altered his father’s reassuring smell. Frank looked at him and frowned. He was surprised to discover that his son was afraid. Not of him, surely? He watched Jake’s eyes dart uncertainly around the woodshed. The orange wash of the lantern flickered over a vast array of strange objects that he could see Jake trying to process: tools, axe heads, hatchets, jars of screws and nails, tubs of motor oil, dented tins of paint. As he scanned the woodshed, Jake had left his face unattended and Frank could clearly see the fear unsettling his pale features. This bizarre new environment, he suddenly realized, with its sharp tools and sinister light, was the place where Daddy changed into someone else. Someone Jake barely recognized, with alien eyes and scarecrow hands, each holding a beaker of chopped-off toes.
Again he stifled a laugh, sensing it would alarm his son. Frank placed his arm around Jake and drew him close.
“Tell you what,” he said, removing the goggles and the gloves. “You give me a hug and I’ll let you use my extra-special axe that no one has ever used before to chop a very special piece of wood. How’s that sound?”
Jake’s eyes widened. He stopped twisting his hands and focused on his daddy’s face.
“Why is it special?” he asked.
Frank reached for a small hatchet that hung from the side of the shed.
“Because it’s been waiting for you, of course.”
It sounded sickeningly sweet, even to him, but Jake was thrilled to think that such a thing might be true. H
e looked at the hatchet with the kind of earnest deliberation Frank himself used when considering his next move in a game of chess.
“Can I touch it?”
Jake reached out a white, probing hand and Frank withdrew the hatchet.
“Not that bit,” he said, pointing to the blade. “It’s too sharp. This is the part we hold right here.”
He turned the handle towards Jake’s hands, and the boy placed his hands around the wood with a gentle reverence that Frank admired.
“Now,” he said, keeping his large hand wrapped around the boy’s grip. “Here’s that special piece of wood I was telling you about.”
He placed a small off-cut onto the chopping block with his other hand and watched the boy stare at it.
“Why’s the wood special?” Jake asked, watching the blade of the hatchet gleam in the orange light.
Frank looked into his boy’s eyes. “Because this piece of wood’s been waiting for you too, Jake.”
He waited for his son to question him further, but his answer, despite its ambiguity, seemed to be enough.
“What do we do now?” Jake said.
Frank stared into the boy’s eyes and wondered what his memory of this night might mean to him when he became a man.
“We raise the axe,” he said, guiding the hatchet above the boy’s head. “We watch the wood closely…” He paused for a moment, enjoying the sudden intimacy that seemed to have developed between them. “Are you watching?” he asked.
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