Odd Adventures with your Other Father

by Prentiss, Norman

  Jack. It’s Jack.

  He was testing a projected image of himself, trying to smile at his daughter. It must have been terrifying for Celia last night, since she’d never experienced images like this before. It would have seemed like her whole world was falling apart. No wonder she fainted.

  Then Celia touched Shawn’s hand. He’d found her. She was safe, watching the movie with him.

  But it wasn’t her hand. It was larger. The grip filled him with a familiar, impossible warmth.

  A curtain fell over the movie screen, and then the whole room brightened. The roof peeled back like the lid of a sardine can, and the sky above shone clear and blue. Shawn looked down, and his feet were bare. His toes wriggled in sand.

  He heard the roar of waves, felt a cool ocean breeze across his bare, youthful chest. The curtain fell away, and a horizon of liquid blue stretched into the distance.

  It was the beach vacation he and Jack never quite had: the seaside resort Shawn always wanted to visit, instead of those shabby interstate motels while they pursued Jack’s dark, bizarre adventures.

  The adventures he complained about as they’d happened. The adventures he loved now, because he’d been with Jack.

  —I’ve been waiting for you for a long time.

  It was a memory of Jack’s voice—the one in his head whenever he added dialogue to stories he told their daughter.

  And where was Celia? Was she okay?

  —She’s fine. She’s giving us privacy.

  This had to be some kind of trick. The images Jack had been able to project—they were always frightening or bizarre. Never anything as peaceful as a beach on a clear, calm day.

  —Look at me.

  The voice came from the sky, from behind him, from the waves in front. But there was a physical presence as well, standing beside him and touching his hand.

  Shawn was afraid of what he might see if he turned toward that presence. Jack in his last days of illness, maybe, his weak body a patchwork of sores and bruises. Or that same body after a decade of rot, grave dirt spilling off bone and scraps of clothing, worms falling from an empty eye socket.

  Or worse: he’d see nothing.

  The hand let go. It was false hope, leaving him.

  Then a soft touch brushed his arm, moving to his shoulder. It rubbed the side of Shawn’s neck, massaged the tense muscle. The way Jack always used to do.

  Shawn arrived here after struggling through a hallway of gore and sickness, his mind clicking into the same frequency as his partner, the rusted dial still tuned to the last shared images of approaching death.

  —I learned, Shawn. I learned.

  He’d learned to project images of beauty instead of horror. The sounds, too, and the smell of fresh air. Was it possible?

  Shawn turned, and saw his partner again. Jack smiled back. He was tall and trim, with a faint sunburn giving a healthy glow to his face. He wore the blue bathing suit that had stayed unused in his suitcase during their travels. Other than the two of them, the beach was empty. Off to the side in a small parking lot, a single car: a red VW Beetle, with one blue door.

  “Jack?” His voice cracked as he spoke. He raised a hand to his lover’s face, needing proof.

  Shawn’s hand passed through him. The illusion shimmered. “Oh, Jack. Don’t go. Please.”

  —Still here. Close your eyes.

  He closed them, afraid the beautiful world would roll away like a receding tide; he’d wake in an ordinary room with chairs and desks and papers, with a guest bed or a broken exercise bike.

  But he felt arms around him, the strength of Jack’s long-absent embrace. A warm breath near his ear, the brush of lips against his mouth.

  Shawn opened his eyes again, and Jack hadn’t vanished. “You’re so young. You’ve made me look young again, too.”

  —That’s how you are to me. Always.

  #

  All those years, Jack’s spirit lay trapped in the room where he died—in the same house with his mother and father missing him, loving him in memory, but not receptive to his lingering presence.

  Celia was able to notice him. Shawn would always be grateful for that. Jack’s consciousness had sensed her in the house, and he had reached for her.

  It made sense: a father and daughter have a bond, too. Not the same bond Shawn and Jack shared during their adventures, but an undeniable connection. Jack threw desperate mental images at her, trying not to shout, trying not to scare her. His attempt at a reassuring smile must have been especially surreal.

  He’d haunted her, at first. Celia fainted; she lost touch with reality and shrank in horror from her rediscovered grandfather Edward. But after a dark series of hospital dreams, the elongating shadow became familiar, and its sinister smile twisted into something comforting and . . . impossible. She wanted to tell Dad Shawn that she might have seen his partner—her other father. If she was mistaken, though, she’d be getting his hopes up over nothing. And what if her first impression was the more accurate one? Something monstrous might lay in wait for Celia’s return—one of her fathers’ enemies from the past, hoping for revenge. Did she dare revisit that house, knowing the possible dangers?

  Their daughter had taken the risk. The happier possibility was too important to shy away from.

  Celia wrote down some of the stories, preserved them as a gift she planned for her Dad Shawn. Last night, she’d discovered an even better gift—she could bring her fathers together again. A true reunion.

  Jack’s arms were around him now. Shawn let out a sigh of relief—as if he’d been holding his breath these past ten years. It wasn’t right, it couldn’t be a true reunion. And yet, where their bodies joined, the connection felt as natural as it always had . . .

  Well, it was a glamour, as true as that ever was. In the moment, Jack’s projected visions had always created their own intense reality. Outside this world, far away from the secluded beach scene Jack had conjured, Celia would have stepped away from the room at the end of the hallway, the room where her other father had died. She gave her dads their privacy, wandered back to her grandparents and family reminiscences, stalled them with questions, turned pages in a photo album, said she was fine, her dad would be back soon.

  And he would have to join them. Jack’s glamours couldn’t last forever. Shawn hugged him, his arms around warm skin with muscle and life beneath, breath and heartbeat, and soon he’d squeeze too tight, passing through the wisp of spirit until his arms hugged air, kept going until he hugged himself alone, pulled himself back into the everyday world without monsters, without a partner’s impossible presence, but with the lasting gift of a wonderful daughter who loved them both.

  Chapter IX

  What are your parents like?

  Such a difficult question to answer. Family relationships are complicated. It’s almost impossible to get another person to understand.

  And how long does it take before you can trust others? Trust them enough to reveal the whole truth?

  “Here,” Celia says, handing over a stack of pages. “Read this.”

  Thanks to Michael McBride, a great friend to fellow writers; Brian James Freeman and my second family at Cemetery Dance; Lynne Hansen Design for the eye-catching cover; early readers Peter Atkins, Douglas Clegg, and Boyd White; Mark Sieber, Andrew Monge, and the gang at Horror Drive-In; Robert Mingee, Charlene Cocrane, MommaCat, Andi Rawson, and Kimberly Yerina; The Behrg, Hunter Shea, and Steve Vernon; Doug Rose and the Washington College Drama Alumni; and with special gratitude to Megan and the Kindle Press team, and all the Scouts who were kind enough to nominate this book!

  Norman Prentiss won the 2010 Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in Long Fiction for his first book, Invisible Fences. Previously he won a Stoker in the Short Fiction category for “In the Porches of My Ears,” which originally appeared in Postscripts 18. Other publications include the novella The Fleshless Man, a mini-collection Four Legs in the Morning, The Narrator (with Michael McBride), The Halloween Children (with Brian Ja
mes Freeman) and anthology appearances in Dark Screams Volume Two, Four Zombies, Four Halloweens, Dark Fusions, All-American Horror of the 21st Century, Blood Lite 3, Zombies vs. Robots: This Means War, Horror Drive-In: An All-Night Short Story Marathon, Black Static, Commutability, Damned Nation, Tales from the Gorezone, Best Horror of the Year, The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror, and four editions of the Shivers anthology series. His poetry has appeared in Writer Online, Southern Poetry Review, Baltimore's City Paper, and A Sea of Alone: Poems for Alfred Hitchcock.

  Visit him online at www.normanprentiss.com.