The blizzard continued to fall; Haft watched as the road up ahead faded to a blanket of white.
* * *
Frank ran down the hallway to check on Cindy and Jake. There was a noise in his head that sounded like the drawing of a bow along a violin string and he couldn’t quite remember what he had done with his own family. He laughed as he sprinted up the stairs.
Misplaced them, he thought. That’s what you’ve done. You’ve misplaced your own wife and son.
Another laugh as he scrambled to the top of the stairs.
What kind of husband does that? What kind of fucking father misplaces his own kid?
He stopped at the top of the landing and looked around, puzzled by the simple configuration of the rooms. He waited and listened. Which one held his family? It seemed entirely possible that they could be anywhere; wasn’t that the horrifying truth of the matter? That his family might not even be in the cottage at all; they might be somewhere else entirely, living a different life, his wife remarried, his Jakey hugging an alternative father, a man with long arms and dark-haired hands.
He shook his head, trying hard to dislodge the image. He began to snort as the pattern of his breathing became labored; his eyes were frantically scanning the walls.
Are they sleeping? Is that why they’re so quiet? Jakey and Cind, both fast asleep in the master bedroom, waiting for Daddy to arrive…
He considered the layout of the cottage and tried to remember. He walked towards the second door on the left and paused.
They’re in there. You know they are. If you listen carefully, you can hear them. Your little boy and his mommy. Holding their breath. Waiting…
He opened the door and stepped inside. Cindy lay on the bed, watching him with patient, loving eyes. She wore a large red smile. On the floor, Jake was playing a game of some sort, rattling a toy against a pipe. He too was smiling, his eyes wide and alert.
Frank stood in the doorway and watched his family, feeling the rhythm of normal life return.
“I have a surprise for you both,” he said. His hands felt cool; he thought everything suddenly made sense. His skull vibrated with a furious noise.
“Not long to wait,” he said. “I promise.”
He blew them both a kiss and left the room.
* * *
When Frank was gone, Philip Rymer released a long breath and turned to look at Cindy.
“What do you think he meant by that?”
Cindy shook her head. “I have no idea, but the last thing we need is another surprise. The last few haven’t ended well.”
Philip frowned. “He seemed…different somehow.”
Cindy stared across at the boy and bit her lower lip as she considered his observation. She had thought the same thing, as though the old Frank had been completely absorbed by the new. It was a worrying development. The Frank she had known was floating away from her, moving beyond her reach faster than she had imagined, leaving behind this thin reflection, a duplicate she barely even recognized. What had happened to the man who had once charmed her into bed with his colorful analysis of Leonard Cohen’s poetry? What, too, of the man who had once run halfway across town to shield her with his coat in the driving rain? Who had held her in his arms as she had given birth to Jake and promised to protect them both from harm? The Frank she had just seen was a pale imitation of the man she had married; a counterfeit version who looked like Frank, but who had yielded to some kind of creeping influence that Cindy couldn’t even begin to comprehend.
Not wanting to frighten the child further, she simply said: “He’s losing the battle, Philip. That’s all. We need to stay on our toes. Okay?”
The boy nodded and quietly withdrew, waiting for Frank to return. Cindy did the same. The cottage fell silent. She wondered what her husband was doing downstairs; listened to her heart beating hard in the black stillness of the room.
* * *
In the kitchen, Frank was thinking about love. Outside, a fresh layer of snow was settling on the ground and the night was tipping towards a deeper dark. Before long, he’d be unable to see the lake or the trees. He sat at the kitchen table and stared instead at the tin of red paint he had used the night before and would use again before the night was out. He was thinking about his family and how lucky he’d been; he was imagining the darkness and red paint and love.
What he remembered was all the stuff he thought somebody like him might forget. A montage of frozen images tumbling out of the past to delight him; memories of Jake and Cindy that he had always assumed he had lost, cascading before him like a gentle reminder of better days.
He closed his eyes and let them come, immersing himself in the flickering heat of a dimly remembered journey; a life he had lived, but could only vaguely recall, as though his brain had initiated a cleansing memory dump to rid him of everything good in his meager existence.
As the reel ran on, he expected the predominant image in his head to be that of Jake, but on this point he was wrong; the face to which his mind insisted on returning belonged instead to his wife, Cindy. He saw her as she’d been just before Jake had been born: vibrant and beautiful, eyes fierce and demanding as hell. What he remembered most vividly was how she had taken him under her wing without a moment’s thought.
He skipped through a sequence of memories he’d imagined long deleted and relived, for a fleeting second or two, some of the moments that had bound them together: a fight in a pub over a stolen fiver; a frantic night of lovemaking in her mother’s front room; a pointless argument spilling over into violence as a hapless friend looked on. These were the memories that had constituted their life as a couple; flashes of brilliant emotion that the black gap inside Frank’s brain randomly disclosed before it finally shut down for good.
He wondered why his mind had chosen to filter out the more rounded profile of his son and he tried to summon a run of images that featured Jake; but it was Cindy that kept recurring. Always Cindy. Her smiling, intimate face.
Weighed down by a full-throated memory of love, he lifted the paintbrush from the tin and set to work.
Two hours later the job was done; amid dripping red paint and toxic fumes, the kitchen had been transformed. He had created happiness, where before there had been only an absence of it. Jake and Cindy would be thrilled.
He looked around the room and smiled. Happiness, he thought; it always looked better in red.
* * *
When Frank opened the bedroom door, neither Cindy nor Jake were quite ready for the sight that greeted them. His face and clothes were doused in paint and both made the mistake of thinking he was covered in blood. Jake gasped and held himself against the pipe, while Cindy looked on in horror.
“Frank…” she said. “What the hell have you done?”
He looked confused for a moment and then acknowledged the misunderstanding as he replaced two of the dying candles.
“Paint,” he said, wiping his hands across his shirt. “I’ve been making things better. I want you and Jake to remember how happy we were. Like before, in the photo.”
She had no idea to what he was referring and, worse still, had a bad feeling about the paint. The damn stuff was contaminated by Frank’s last application of it, and, for her and the boy, would no doubt remain so.
“It might be time to go home, Frank,” she said. “We’ve been here for a while now and the weather seems to have turned. Perhaps we could come again when it’s warmer.”
Frank grinned. “I’m way ahead of you, Cind. I’ve found one of Jake’s favorite games and set it up in the kitchen. Remember Frustration? The one where you smack the popper in the middle to make the dice dance? That’ll make us feel better, right?”
“I don’t know,” Cindy said. “I think Jake’s getting tired. He might need to see a doctor, Frank.”
He turned to look at Jake, who shrank away from his gaze.
“You okay, Jakey? Feel up to playing a game?”
The boy glanced at Cindy and said, “I don’t feel too good,
Daddy.”
Frank nodded and rubbed his hands together. His cheeks were starting to turn the same color as the paint on his clothes. “But I’ve just spent the last two hours making a happy place for us,” he said. “I suppose that was all for nothing, was it?”
Philip stared across at Cindy, lost for words, uncertain how the scene should be played out.
“Of course it wasn’t,” Cindy said, sensing Frank’s irritation. “It just might not be the best time, that’s all.”
“So when is the best time, Cindy? When it suits you? Should I consult you before my next surprise, make sure it fits in with your fucking schedule?”
Frank was looking around the room, unable to focus on anything for longer than a second.
“No, of course not. We just thought you’d want to know how Jake was feeling. We don’t want him to be sick, do we?”
Frank trained his gaze on Cindy and moved across the room to the bed.
“And what about me?” he said. “What about how I feel? Doesn’t that count for anything? I’ve made us a family game room, Cindy. A fucking game room! Somewhere we can be happy and think about before and not be bothered by any noises in our head. Isn’t that what the perfect father should do for his family? Isn’t that exactly how we imagined it should be? No noise, Cind; just happiness. Remember?”
His voice had risen now and he was towering over her on the bed, saliva flying from his mouth. She could see the madness incubating deep inside; she braced herself to be struck across the face.
“It’s alright, Daddy,” Philip said softly. “I think I’ll be fine. I didn’t realize how badly you wanted to play.”
Frank angled his head away from his wife and peered at the cowering boy, as though seeing him for the first time. His hair was in disarray and his shoulders were shaking; there were dark shadows stretched across his face.
“I just want to be happy,” he whispered. “That’s all. I want everyone to remember what it was like.”
“We do remember, Frank. We always will.”
And though Philip would be unable to relate to her assertion, she realized that what she was saying was true. Wherever the real Jake was, and whatever harrowing passage he was being forced to endure, his family would always be with him; all those memories, all those shared moments when they had been close, before the cracks had begun to appear, they would always be there for him. For all of them. That’s what they had to cling to; in the face of real horror, the past was everything. It was the only way any one of them would survive.
“Shall we play?” Frank said.
Philip nodded and slid his hands along the pipe. Frank reached down and severed the cable tie with his blade. The room was silent; the candlelight fluttered in an unseen breeze.
* * *
Frank held the choke chain and gently guided Cindy through the door into the kitchen. She stopped and held her breath, trying to process what he had done to the room. There were a dozen candles flickering in the dark; Philip was seated at the kitchen table, his neck turned to watch her entrance, his hands fastened behind his back. On the table was the board game Frank was so keen for the family to play; the plastic dome shielding the dice reminded her of Jake.
But none of these things really sank in; what hit her as she walked through the door was Frank’s handiwork. The red painted smiles that covered every single surface of the room. He had clearly been a busy boy. Not only had he painted full-lipped smiles on the walls, he had splashed them across the cupboards, the curtains, the ceiling, the floor. There were hundreds of them, each one looking ghastly in the orange glow of the candle light, the starkness of what they represented terrifying her. This was his idea of a happy place, she thought; a room full of smiles, where they could live together forever, playing board games and recreating the past. She wanted to scream, but she managed to stifle it, knowing that to do so would only invite in Frank another mood change, which she sensed would do none of them any good.
“Do you like it?” he said, shepherding her farther into the room. “I did it all for you and Jakey. To remind you to smile when you get sad.”
Cindy looked up at the ceiling, at the variety of smiles on display. Some had teeth, she noticed; others were just lips. A number of them were part of a full face, resting below rudimentary eyes and a red splodge of a nose. These were the worst of all, Cindy thought, for the smiling eyes looked full of hate and purpose and seemed to resent her even occupying the room. How Frank had managed to reach the ceiling she had no idea, and didn’t want to know; the fact that he had was disturbing enough. It seemed to embody everything she feared: his single-minded determination, his relentless compulsion to please. How far his delusion had travelled since abducting the boy.
She didn’t know quite where to look, or what to say to him that wouldn’t perpetuate his emotional crisis. Instead she looked at the painted smiles and felt a hollow pressure building up, a sense of emptiness and futility that she knew she would never be able to escape. She shook her head and stared at the smiles covering the kitchen table and chairs, the stainless steel sink, even the darkened lamp shade hanging above her head. Many of those he had painted on the floor had been badly smeared by Frank’s own footprints before they’d had a chance to dry, and this had added to their sense of distortion and lunacy. Wherever she looked there was a smile waiting, as though Frank had wanted to trap her inside his own head; a place of crooked smiles and cartoon fun, where everyone was happy all the time.
“You did this?” she said. She felt nervous just asking the question.
“For you,” Frank said. “And Jakey, of course.” He produced a smile of his own and the candlelight took it and made it into a pantomime grin.
“I don’t…” She floundered, trying to come up with something that sounded vaguely appreciative, but nothing came. “I don’t know what to say,” she added, her voice trailing away. She reached for a compliment, anything to satisfy his twisted ego. “I guess it’s…beautiful.”
Frank laughed. “Jakey thought so too, didn’t you, son?” He reached across and patted Philip on the back. The boy cringed and pulled away and Cindy wondered how on earth the poor kid was controlling his fear. Whatever memory he was holding on to for comfort, she wished him well with it and prayed that it would see him through the entire ordeal. Quite how long that might be she didn’t know; even the thought of an ending seemed so distant it was impossible to consider for more than a moment or two. Even then her worry was never about herself or the boy, but about Frank.
“How about we celebrate with a game of Frustration?” he said, steering Cindy towards one of the painted chairs. She hesitated for a moment, not wanting to lower herself onto the wet emulsion. She felt Frank apply gentle pressure to her shoulder and she closed her eyes and quickly dropped into the seat. Beneath her she felt the oil of the painted smiles begin to spread as she smeared them across her rear; she slid across the seat and wondered briefly how they might look now. More like grotesque howls of rage, perhaps, in keeping with the tortured reality of the cottage that only Frank continued to deny.
“Everybody comfortable?” he said.
Cindy and Philip stared across the table at each other. The boy looked genuinely ill now, as though the painted smiles had suddenly made everything horribly real, reinforcing for him Frank’s diminishing condition.
“I’m not sure this is such a good idea,” Cindy said softly.
“Oh, really. And why is that?”
“It’s getting late, Frank. I think everyone’s getting tired.”
“Nonsense. This is what family life is all about, Cind. Late-night drama over a game of Frustration, eh, Jakey!”
Philip was motionless; his eyes never once left Frank’s.
“Okay. Youngest first, little man. You’re first to play.”
Frank reached across the table and popped the plastic dome; the dice skittered. The endless winter night wore on.
* * *
For once, Haft’s prayers had been answered. The falling sno
w, while not stopping completely, had tapered off until only intermittent flurries were descending on the car. The temperature had dropped another two or three degrees, though, and Haft was abusing the heater to try and counter the chill, hoping to squeeze a little extra juice from the damn thing by cursing it and hitting the dial with his fist. Neither option seemed to work, and Haft pulled up the collar of his coat, damned Lionel Rymer for failing to protect his own son, and stared through the windshield at the deserted road.
Progress had been slow, but the Ford had trawled steadily along the snow-covered roads and was now only a mile or two from the village of Bolventor, itself no more than a few miles from Colliford Lake. Haft was already starting to feel his body react: his nerves were tingling, adrenaline was beginning to course through his veins. Within a matter of minutes he would be in sight of the darkened lake; after that it was a case of locating a cottage at the water’s edge whose windows were lit and whose access road boasted a black Volvo. Registration B852 DGR.
He considered for a moment how strange his work must appear to someone who scratched away at a traditional nine-to-five job; how appalled they must be by the questionable moral and ethical choices he was forced to make every day. It wasn’t so tough, he thought. The key was to keep everything simple. Wasn’t that always the trick, no matter what the profession? Reduce everything to its basest property; boil down each complication until you were left with the only viable solution. That was how Haft operated: he eliminated whatever obstacle stood in his way and worked forward from there. It was usually enough to see the job through to a satisfactory end. In this case, the complication was the unknown; but, if you had the right backing, knowledge could always be bought. Right now, Haft’s biggest concern was the snow. Though it was no longer falling, he was having to work damn hard just to keep the Ford on the road. As soon as he turned off onto one of the narrow arteries that wound around the lake, the problem could deteriorate fast.
Dark Father Page 24
