Dark Father

by Cooper, James

  He gestured for Maggie to pull the Land Rover into a turnout adjoining a wide expanse of trees. The farmhouse was a few hundred yards on the other side. He remembered visiting the place a few times when Sally first inherited it; once with Kate, several times alone. The solo visits had been the most memorable, though the damn farmhouse itself had given him the creeps. He remembered Sally trying to drag him into one of the outhouses, ripping the buttons off his shirt, but the place had reeked of shit and made him feel ill. That she had seemed so turned on by it had set alarm bells ringing in Jimmy’s head. It wasn’t long before he began tiring of her incessant recklessness and the last time he’d been here was to tell her it was over; she’d gone fucking mental, tearing out chunks of her own hair and screaming blue murder. Frankly, he was surprised to discover that she still lived here. He thought she’d be rotting away in some asylum by now; though, judging by the state of the crumbling farmhouse through the trees, perhaps she’d already found one.

  Jimmy opened the car door and turned to look at Maggie. “If I’m not back in twenty minutes, come looking for me.”

  He made to step from the car, but she pulled him back. “Aren’t I coming with you?”

  “I need you to keep the car running. When I come back with Billy, I want you to be ready to go. Okay?”

  Maggie nodded, but looked less than certain about Jimmy’s plan. It seemed just a little too pared down for her liking. Not for the first time, she considered what the hell she had allowed herself to be dragged into. Perhaps when Jimmy ran towards the farmhouse, she would just drive away. Leave him to do battle with his family without her. It wasn’t as if she was obligated to stay. Jimmy had been good fun for a while, but this…losing an eye…trekking across country in pursuit of Kate…this was too much. This was something she could comfortably do without.

  “Don’t forget,” Jimmy said. “Twenty minutes.”

  He jumped from the car and darted through the trees. He ran across the misty field in the cold light, approaching the farmhouse at an angle, staying as low to the wet ground as he could. When he arrived at the outer path, he headed for the safety of the barns. Propped against one of the doors he saw a long-handled coal shovel, the flat blade gone to rust. He hefted it in his hand. It felt good. He imagined mapping a broad, unbroken furrow in the yielding sod. Smiling, he walked around the periphery of the farmhouse to the front door. He raised the tarnished blade; used it to knock hard on the wood.

  * * *

  As Sally placed her fingers on the door handle, Kate knew—with the conviction of a terrible weight falling into place—who was on the other side. She was already hauling herself from the kitchen chair as the smiling profile of Jimmy’s damaged face edged into view.

  Sally gasped and tried closing the door, but Jimmy wedged the coal shovel between the jamb and slammed it into her face. She went down and then instantly sprang back up, her nose dripping blood, as Jimmy stood in the frame of the door, bracing himself for a more concerted attack.

  “Okay,” he said, “there’s no need for anyone to get bent out of shape here. I just want Billy. That’s all. Just the boy.”

  Kate stared down the hall to the front door, barely able to process what her eyes compelled her to see. Jimmy stood there, his hair hanging across his brow, his face all but destroyed. His left eye was a black hole, rimmed with attenuated tissue and dried pulp. There was a large bruise down the left side of his face. His stubble was dark with blood.

  Her first instinct was to reach Billy, and she ran round the table and grabbed hold of him. She was conscious of other movement, too. Jasper had risen and had positioned himself in front of her and Billy. Sally had retreated into the kitchen and Kate was only vaguely aware of her trying to staunch the blood spilling from her nose in thick clots.

  “Daddy?” she heard Billy say, and her heart gave a lurch. She wrapped her hands around her son’s chest and whispered into his ear.

  “It’s okay, honey. You don’t have to look. Daddy just wants to talk to Mommy. Cover your eyes. It’s Mommy he wants.”

  She tried to place a hand over Billy’s eyes, but he knocked her hand away and said again, almost disbelievingly: “Daddy?”

  “I’m here, Billy,” Jimmy shouted down the hall. “I’ve come to take you home, buddy. Back where we belong. Just me and you. Okay?”

  Jasper moved between Kate and the door, blocking Jimmy’s view of his son.

  “I don’t think that’s going to happen, Jimmy. Do you?”

  Jimmy laughed and took a step towards them down the hall.

  “This isn’t your business, old man. Let’s not make it more complicated than it needs to be. Just give me my son back and I’ll leave you in peace. I promise.”

  “Not this time, Jimmy. You had your chance and you blew it. The boy deserves something better. Kate, too.”

  Jimmy stared at him, this weak apology of a man, standing between him and his own fucking son. Like he might make a difference to how any of this shit might turn out.

  “Listen,” Jimmy said softly. “Either you give Billy back, or I take him by force. Do you understand me?” He raised the blade of the coal shovel. “I don’t want to cause a scene here, but I swear to you, I’m in no fucking mood to mess around. Take a good look at me, old man. Do I look like someone you’d want to fuck with?”

  Alison moved closer to her husband and touched him on the arm. “Jasper…”

  He didn’t even look at her. He removed her hand and gently encouraged her to take up a position behind Billy and Kate.

  “I want my boy, Kate,” Jimmy shouted down the hall. “You hear me? This sad old fuck ain’t gonna stop me, either. I’ll do whatever it takes. Whatever it fucking takes!”

  Kate heard Billy start to whimper and she hugged him harder, her mind racing, her vision tearing up in terror. When Jimmy got going, he was like a cyclone. There was nothing that could stand in his way. Nothing. Taking his eye might slow him down, but he’d keep coming on, an unstoppable force. Iron-fisted and remorseless.

  She started to panic then, her terrified son bleating in her arms, the threat of losing him stark and alarmingly real. She couldn’t think; had no idea what to do. All she kept thinking was that she had to protect Billy. Had to insulate him from everything. There had been enough violence for one night. She closed her eyes and pictured Jimmy’s appallingly empty eye. She couldn’t allow Billy to see it. Not again. Not ever. It was too much. Not just because it was such a harrowing sight; but because she had been the one to inflict the damage. She had been the one who had ripped out Jimmy’s eye. She held on to her son; felt his tiny heart beating against her hand. The rhythm quick, unsettled. How could she ever expect him to understand? He was just a child. A lost soul, whose father she had driven away.

  Crazily, a line from an old Simon & Garfunkel song kept playing in her head and the more she tried to dislodge it, the more insistent it became: Hello darkness, my old friend echoing over and over in her head like the mindless ticking of a clock. She was losing perspective, both of what was real and what felt like something lost in a childhood nightmare. She could see Jasper standing before her, but he was wavering in and out of focus; she wondered if she had the strength, or the inclination, to be sick. She thought she saw Sally leave the farmhouse by the back door, but her surroundings were blurring together, as though she were watching everything by the light of a cold blue flame. She tried to regulate her breathing, desperate not to pass out, terrified of what might become of Billy if she did.

  “Tell you what, Jimmy,” she heard Jasper say. “Why don’t you put down the shovel and we’ll talk. Just the two of us. We’ll figure this thing out.”

  She looked over Jasper’s shoulder and saw Jimmy smile, his gaping eye seeming to radiate a cool darkness that filled her with dread.

  “No figuring to be done, old man. It’s as simple as it’s gonna get. I want my son. You hear? I want my FUCKING SON!”

  He scraped the blade of the coal shovel down the wall, gouging out chunk
s of painted plaster, which crumbled to the floor. He liked the effect and did it again, this time screaming at the top of his voice:

  “Come here, Billy! Come on, son. It’s time to go home. You and me, buddy. Time to fly back to our nest, like the good little birdies we are!”

  Kate clung to Billy for dear life; the boy was shaking in his mother’s arms. Jimmy continued to scrape the shovel down the wall.

  “Get ready, Big Bill!” he yelled. “Time to FUCKING FLY!”

  He made to run down the hallway and Kate saw Jasper’s body tense as he braced himself for the impact. There was blurred motion; a confusion of limbs. Then Kate saw Sally rear up behind Jimmy, swinging a shovel of her own, her eyes wild, her nose still streaming with blood. She smashed the shovel against the back of Jimmy’s head, producing a sound like a muffled gunshot. It was over so quickly, Kate could barely draw breath. Jimmy fell to the floor and Sally stood over his body, the shovel raised high, poised to land a second, more definitive blow. She looked deranged, Kate thought, like a wild animal shielding its kill.

  “Mother of God,” Jasper said. He looked pale; his hands were shaking.

  Kate stared at Jimmy. It was the second time tonight she had seen her husband lying unconscious on the floor, and she was no less grateful for it now than she had been on the first occasion. She wasn’t even aware that she was crying. She hugged Billy and looked at the broken body.

  She smiled. Hello darkness, my old friend, she thought.

  * * *

  “There’s not much time,” Sally said, propping the shovel against the wall. She was calm and business-like, as though she’d been involved in this kind of lunacy before. She was the only one of them that Jimmy had managed to hurt before he’d been taken down. Kate thought she and Jimmy looked perfect for each other, both of them bleeding and messed up; one a violent, unpredictable mirror image of the other.

  “Jasper,” Sally said, bending over Jimmy’s body. “Give me a hand here.”

  The old man shuffled forward. He moved like a man half-paralyzed by what he’d just witnessed.

  “Is he dead?”

  Sally chuckled. “It’ll take more than a whack on the head to kill Jimmy Hopewell. Right, Kate?”

  There was a lengthy pause into which Kate nodded dumbly. More than a whack to the head, she thought. She suspected the same could be said of Sally, who suddenly seemed altogether too animated. She looked more alive than at any other time since they’d arrived, as though Jimmy’s appearance had allowed her baser impulse to rise to the surface. She vaguely wondered what character flaw lay dormant in her own psyche that seemed to attract dysfunctional individuals like Jimmy and Sally, whose personality disorders she’d been unable to detect. Maybe the frailty was hers. Perhaps she was unwittingly drawn to people like this, responding to some complex defect of her own. She kept Billy’s head averted as Jasper and Sally straightened Jimmy’s body. She tried not to feel as though her life was unravelling before her eyes.

  “Alison, see if you can spot his car outside,” Sally said. “We may have to move it round the back.”

  Jasper looked up. “I think we should talk about this.”

  Sally dropped Jimmy’s feet and stared at him. “What’s to talk about?”

  “We should discuss what to do next. How best to handle Jimmy.”

  Sally wiped strands of hair from her brow and raised her eyes. “Listen, Pops. When Jimmy comes round, he’ll be ready to rip you a new arsehole. I don’t think there’s a whole lot to discuss.”

  Jasper looked at Kate, but she was rocking Billy on her lap, her gaze distant and unfocused.

  “So what do you suggest?”

  “That you take Kate and the boy as far away from here as possible,” Sally said.

  “What about Jimmy?”

  “You can help me restrain him before you go,” she said. “I’ll take it from there.”

  Jasper watched the mist drift over the fields through the open door, disturbed as much by Sally’s comment as by her apparent confidence in it.

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “It means I’ll figure it all out when you’re gone. Now grab hold of his shoulders. We’ll move him into one of the barns.”

  Alison appeared in the frame of the door and shook her head. “No sign of any car,” she said.

  “We need to move fast,” Sally said, barely giving any indication that she’d heard. “I don’t want Billy to hear his father screaming the house down. He’s heard enough.”

  Jasper didn’t disagree with that; the poor boy was probably traumatized beyond imagining. He hefted Jimmy under his shoulders and took the bulk of the weight, as Sally grabbed hold of his feet.

  “Get the back door, love,” he said to Alison. He glanced up at Sally. “Is the barn door locked?”

  Sally shook her head; they moved gingerly down the hall and into the kitchen, Jimmy sagging between them like a human hammock. His body was heavy and repellent; a wild animal with the fight shot out of it. Jasper reminded himself not to look down at the man’s ravaged eye. The mere fact that he knew it was there was horror enough.

  “Just give us a minute, Kate,” he said, “and then we’ll be out of here. Okay?” But if she was listening, Kate gave no suggestion of it. She had turned her back on them and was soothing her troubled son, the boy still whimpering in the hot crease of his mother’s arms.

  Jasper grunted and guided the body through the rear door of the kitchen and out into the yard. Alison followed, her face ashen, her eyes directed at Jasper the whole time.

  “Which barn?”

  “Last one on the left,” Sally said.

  Alison ran forward and rolled back the barn door. It was dark inside and smelled of leather and oil. There were hardened ruts in the ground.

  “There’s a paraffin lamp hanging on the wall just inside the door,” Sally said. She urged Jasper to stop for a moment, dug around in her pockets and threw Alison a box of matches. “You can light the wick with these.”

  While Alison attended to the lamp, Jasper and Sally negotiated the last of the misty cobbles and carried Jimmy’s body into the barn. There were two large wooden pillars positioned in the center of the space supporting the roof beam.

  “This ought to do it,” she said, guiding Jasper towards the nearer of the two pillars. “Set him down here.”

  They rested the body against the wooden upright and took a step back. Jasper’s breathing had become ragged, but Sally seemed perfectly composed, her face relaxed, her mind busy and calculating.

  Alison came over with the lamp and handed it to Jasper. The light seemed shockingly bright.

  “Can we go now?” she asked. She glanced at Jimmy’s body, grateful that his head was slumped on his chest, the black moon of his eye in discreet shadow. The lamplight flickered. The crumpled body made Alison feel sick.

  “We should make sure first,” Jasper said.

  Alison didn’t follow. “Make sure of what?”

  Jasper didn’t elaborate on the statement because he wasn’t entirely sure himself. All he knew was that he had an obligation to Kate and the boy to consolidate their shift in fortune and offer a hand to the woman who had brought it about.

  Sally had been foraging in a darkened corner of the barn and now returned carrying a coiled length of rope. She started wrapping it around Jimmy’s body, pulling it taut across his chest and throat. Alison watched her, appalled.

  “You ought to leave,” Sally said, not even bothering to look at them. She wore a look of concentration that made Jasper feel hollow inside. He turned away from the woman and took his wife by the hand. They walked across the yard through the mist.

  * * *

  Back inside the farmhouse, Jasper was quick and purposeful. He moved over to Kate, who was still seated at the kitchen table, and placed a hand on her shoulder.

  “It’s time to leave, Kate,” he said. “You need a hand with Billy?”

  She hugged the boy harder, shook her head. She still looked dazed.
Her eyes were gray and still, locked on to something only she could see, perhaps the frail shape of her son lost in an impossibly dark future.

  Jasper knelt in front of her. “You need to keep going,” he said. “There’ll be time for this shit later. Right now, you just have to keep moving. Okay? Carry Billy to the truck and let’s put as many miles between us and those two crazy bastards as we can.” He paused and wondered what Sally was doing to Jimmy out in the barn. “Right now I’m not sure who I pity more. Us or that twisted husband of yours.”

  Kate looked at him, confused by his comment, but Jasper failed to elaborate. He helped her to her feet and steered her towards the front door. She cradled Billy in her arms and allowed herself to be guided from the kitchen.

  “Help them into the truck,” Jasper said, turning to his wife. “I’ll be along in a minute.”

  He watched Alison place a protective arm around Kate’s shoulders and escort her out of the farmhouse to the waiting truck. Jasper breathed slowly, his instincts dulled by the deviant turn the night seemed to have taken while he was still half-asleep. He moved towards the window above the kitchen sink and glanced out into the rolling mist towards the barn. He could see the dim light of the paraffin lamp, but nothing more. He shook his head, not even daring to imagine what might be unfolding inside.

  He glanced around the kitchen and saw a wooden knife block on the counter by the stove. He pulled the largest blade from the block: a forged carving knife. He stared at it for a moment, unsure what to do next. The damn thing felt ridiculous in his hand, like a prop from one of those silly movies the kids watched. He returned it to the block and felt as though he’d just resisted a dreadful temptation. Better to be unarmed and vulnerable, he thought, than to turn himself into a mirror image of Jimmy Hopewell. Billy was confused enough as it was; the last thing he needed was to receive mixed messages from the people he trusted the most.