He shook his head; when these peculiar thoughts arose, he always had great difficulty holding on to them. They swam at him out of the blue and with each passing day they came closer and closer, without ever being completely within reach. It was as though he had to prove that he was willing to accept them before the memories would fully return.
He rose and slowly eased himself off the bed. He walked across to the window and stared out at the darkness; all he could see was his own disfigured face reflected back at him in the unpolished glass.
Who are you? he thought. Where did you come from? And how the devil did you end up here?
He smiled and cringed at the horror show he saw in the glass. He stared at his reflection and trained his eye on the pink scar enveloping his mouth. He looked inwards, deep inside, to the point at which his awareness of his own history fell apart, and felt a sudden jolt of recognition; a wrenching force that looped in on itself and hurled him towards the past. In a different life he’d had a family; he was sure of it. He remembered a son named Jake; and a wife named Cindy. Was that right? Could he trust his own memory, even now, to show him sights he’d been too terrified to behold? He had adored them, that much he recalled easily, but something had gone monstrously wrong, and that part remained concealed in the dark.
He sank back onto the bed and clutched at his skull, wanting to rip the truth from his head.
Show me! Please. I want to see everything; just once. That’s all I ask.
There was a brief fluttering of the veil and he thought for a moment that he could remember a man cutting away his mouth; but the memory buckled under the weight of disclosure and he began to wonder if it might just have been Dark Daddy, dressed in a different face, eager to drag him beyond the reach of the light.
He drew the curtains, blocking out his own reflection, and spent a minute trying to organize his thoughts. He was sweating heavily and he held a hand to his juddering heart. When he closed his eyes, he saw spilled blood and a neatly carved medallion of flesh. He felt sick; he was staring at his own flayed lips and they were smiling at him as a soft voice repeatedly sang: The vorpal blade went snicker-snack… until it began to sound full of heartbreak and agony and loss.
The conceit jumped and he saw a small blond boy carrying a severed head through a strange, exotic land. The face it wore was his own.
He opened his eyes and brought with him a single, inconclusive thought: He left it dead and with its head he went galumphing back.
He was happy not to know what any of it meant.
* * *
Half an hour later there was a knock at the door. Mack frowned; he wasn’t expecting company tonight. He put down his book and walked across to the bedside cabinet to retrieve his mask.
“Just a moment.”
He rinsed the mask in the solution and then dabbed it dry with a small sponge. He attached the silicone to his face, ensured it was correctly positioned, and then pulled open the door.
“Good evening, Mack.”
“Dr. Faber,” Mack said, smiling. “Do we have an appointment?”
“Not officially,” Faber said. “I was just passing and thought I’d drop in to see how you were doing. May I come in?”
Mack moved aside and invited him across the threshold. “Please,” he said. “I don’t often receive visitors anymore. My condition seems to have driven everyone away.”
Faber smiled sympathetically and entered the room.
“Please,” Mack said, “take a seat. I’ll pop the kettle on and make us a pot of tea.”
“None for me,” Faber said. “My rounds start in twenty minutes and tea goes right through me, I’m afraid. I’ll be stopping every five minutes to use the bathroom.” He planted himself in the chair by the window and gestured for Mack to take a seat opposite on the bed.
“How have you been feeling since we last met? You’ve been experiencing an awful lot of changes recently, Mack, haven’t you? Sometimes that can be a little overwhelming. If there’s anything on your mind, or something you’re not sure about it, I want you to let me know. Will you do that for me?”
Mack sighed and nodded shyly. He briefly considered telling him all about Jake and Cindy and the man from the past who might be Dark Daddy, but he didn’t know how to begin. He thought if he started talking about these things, his relationship with Dr. Faber might change; he sensed something bigger than he could probably handle right now waiting for him just around the corner, and he was afraid to deliver any more troubled dispatches from the past.
He held Faber’s gaze for a moment and felt intensely grateful. “Thank you, Doctor,” he said. “I’ll try and remember that. You’ve been very kind.” He closed his eyes for a moment and pictured Cindy and Jake, two strangers with whom he was desperate to be reacquainted, positioned at the remote edge of his awareness like smooth pebbles at the water’s edge. “Is there anything else?”
Faber hesitated for a moment and then leaned forward. “Actually, Mack,” he said, “I think there is.” He reached into his jacket and pulled out a faded photograph. He handed it to Mack.
“Do you recognize them?” he said.
Mack glanced down at the photo and held his breath. It was of a woman and a little boy. They were laughing as they paddled in the sea. Mack thought they looked familiar, but his mind was still fresh with images of Cindy and Jake; these two he couldn’t seem to place.
“I don’t think so,” he told Faber. “Who are they?”
Faber smiled and gave an encouraging wave. “Take another look,” he said. “And think back.”
Mack held the photograph close and stared hard at the two unfamiliar faces. Whoever they were, he thought, they looked happy; purely happy, as though nothing in the world could ever make them miserable again.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m not getting anything. Do I know them?”
Faber nodded. “The little boy is you,” he said.
Mack stared at him, then looked back at the photograph.
“We hired somebody to do a little digging, Mack. Your name is William Hopewell, but everybody knew you as Billy. By all accounts you were quite the little charmer.” He smiled.
“And the woman?”
Faber breathed slowly; his eyes stayed firmly focused on his patient.
“The woman is your mother, Mack. Her name was Kate. I’m sorry to say she died many years ago; we still don’t know how.”
Mack sat on the edge of the bed and gazed at the photograph. The nuances of the image had suddenly taken on a whole new context. He wanted to leap into the picture and tell the child to make the most of his happiness; that an unrelenting darkness was coming and his life—the rhythms of childhood and his desperate attachment to it—would never be the same again.
“What happened?” Mack said softly. “What happened to that little boy?”
“You were raised by two of your mother’s friends,” Faber said. “Jasper and Alison McCray. You evidently took on a new name—for reasons that aren’t yet fully apparent—and you reemerged as Frank McCray.” He smiled. “Guess that explains the nickname.”
Mack turned away. He hadn’t meant that; not in those terms, at least. He was trying to make the connection between the smiling boy in the photograph and the line that had drawn him here, to this hospital, to the loveless old man he had become.
“Are they still alive?” he asked. “The McCrays?”
Faber shook his head. “They died when you were still a young man, Mack. Long before you arrived here with us.”
Mack threw back his head and felt a lump in his throat, like dry ice. He wanted to howl—not just because everything good in his childhood had been destroyed—but because he couldn’t remember a single moment of it. Not Billy; not his mother, Kate. Not even the McCrays.
He listened to his own heartbeat and waited for the raw emotion to pass. The anguish would move on in time, he knew that; if nothing else, he was living proof that there was life after unimaginable pain. His face alone was testament to that.
Faber reached out and touched him on the knee. He made to say something, but then decided against it. There was no need; there was nothing else of any consequence to add. He got to his feet and silently walked towards the door. Before he reached it, he stopped, turned, and glanced back down at Mack.
“One other thing,” he said. “Our man found it in the same envelope as the photograph and thought it might be important.”
He reached into his jacket and handed Mack a crumpled playing card. It had been folded many times and looked on the verge of falling apart. There was a distant roaring in Mack’s skull, like the derailing of a freight train. He turned the card over and held the fragile edges to the light.
Staring back at him was the Queen of Hearts.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
James Cooper is the author of the short story collections You Are The Fly and The Beautiful Red. His novella Terra Damnata was published by PS Publishing in 2011 and was shortlisted for a British Fantasy Award; Strange Fruit will appear from the same publisher in 2014. Upcoming is Country Dark, part of the TTA Novella Series, and a third collection, Human Pieces, due for publication in 2015. You can visit his website at: jamescooperfiction.co.uk.
ABOUT THE PUBLISHER
DarkFuse is a leading independent publisher of modern fiction in the horror, suspense and thriller genres. As an independent company, it is focused on bringing to the masses the highest quality dark fiction, published as collectible limited hardcover, paperback and eBook editions.
To discover more titles published by DarkFuse, please visit its official site at www.darkfuse.com.
Table of Contents
DARK FATHER
Connect With Us
PART ONE: THIS IS NOT THAT
Chapter 1: Belong
Chapter 2: Falling Sky
Chapter 3: The Mouths of Men
Session #F001/624
Chapter 4: Breathe
Chapter 5: Family Circle
Chapter 6: I See My Daddy, My Daddy Sees Me
Session #F001/625
Chapter 7: Our Father
PART TWO: SCREAM WHEN YOU HEAR YOURSELF SCREAM
Chapter 8: Home
Chapter 9: Daddy Made Me
Session #F001/626
Chapter 10: Run
Chapter 11: Haft
Chapter 12: Crazy Eights
Session #F001/627
Chapter 13: The Last Kiss
Chapter 14: The Squeeze
Chapter 15: A Weighing of the Heart
Session #F001/628
PART THREE: NUCLEAR FAMILY
Chapter 16: The Sound of Nothing
Chapter 17: Home Fires Burning
Chapter 18: The Throwing of Soil
Session #F001/629
Chapter 19: Shedding Skin
Chapter 20: The Vermilion Border
Chapter 21: Ecce Homo
About the Author
About the Publisher
Dark Father Page 26
