Holiday of the Dead (40 page)

Lindsey turned and walked into the house I’d left behind years ago. I followed, stepping reluctantly into the past, hoping that I’d have enough in reserve to stop me going to the dresser in search of some comfort from Ol’ Jack. Maybe I’d get lucky and my sister who fought for me, took the hurt for me, sacrificing her heart and soul in the process, wouldn’t see just what a disappointment I’d become. And if all else failed, there was always the hip flask I kept in my pockets.

The lounge was as I remembered it, the heavy leather sofas were soft with use, the big cushions moulded in the shape of our asses over the years. Threadbare rugs covered the beaten floorboards and in the fireplace flames licked at the kindling of a recently lit, half assed fire.

The cake was there, no surprise, still with the "Happy Father's Day" lie emblazoned in blue icing. The candle wasn't lit. Seems there was always darkness around Daddy Dearest.

I scanned the walls, my mind making a conscious effort to block out the drinks cabinet in the corner of the room, where bottles lay imprisoned behind leaded glass, muting the temptation, but not stopping it from calling, calling to me.

It was the axe that silenced them as abruptly as a concrete path silences the screams of a high rise jumper. A wedge of bright metal rested on the tattered rug, its long wooden stave dull against the highly polished rosewood cabinet. It seemed fitting that the tools of daddy’s demise should keep company. The axe, it seemed, was a statement; our salvation fashioned from iron and oak. And in its shadow things would end; Lindsey’s life of blind servitude; my life of guilt and self loathing.

And Daddy Dearest? Well he’d die twice today, though he deserved more. I would cleave his head from his scrawny neck, retribution wearing the face of mercy. And as the blood pumped out onto the floor I would see the red tide was turning and life would be so very different, life would be right.

She looked at me for a second yet in that moment we exchanged a lifetime; Conlon’s disregard of the Hippocratic Oath on his road to become hypocrite incarnate. All the years of abuse selectively shelved in lofty positions, safe from prying eyes. And part of me knew that the doctor’s presence was an extension of the family need to keep the dirty linen in the basket for fear the stink brought too much attention, for fear that people would need to see exactly what kind of stain was soiling the air.

I took it from her without comment. It was heavy and the weightiness gave me assurance that it would do the job and save us all.

I mounted the stairs leaving Lindsey to stare after me, her bright blue eyes muted by the darkness. Ahead, a slab of light appeared; a door opening in the gloom. But not just any door.

His door.

The sanctum of Daddy Dearest, the place where he kept company with his new companion: The Sickness. In the doorway a figure wavered in the light. I held my breath, stopping my advance mid way on the stairs, my hands lifting the axe in a subconscious act of preparation. I sensed danger. But it was muted, as though drifting through a thick mist.

Despite his age, Conlon was a big man. He had height, a good head and shoulders over me, and he had weight, his waist an inner tube of flesh that was barely contained by the belt of his pants. In the light of the doorway he stood a bloated bell shaped silhouette using the frame as support.

“Maybe we should accept that in this we’re on the same side?” he suggested.

“Just leave,” I said. “Then I’ll accept whatever you want.”

His shape sagged a little, his belly bouncing. “Maybe I should call the authorities?” he said softly. “Maybe I should let folk know that The Sickness is in town and it’s stopped to pay you guys a visit?”

“Maybe I take this axe to you and say it was a piece of mercy, that Daddy Dearest chowed down on your lard ass and you begged for someone to end it?”

It started out as a bluff, the ego rising from the ashes like a phoenix ready for magnificent rebirth. But as the words formed, becoming real in the gloomy stairwell, I considered it. And as fleeting as the thought was, it felt so right I became numb with shock that I even paid it any mind. I ushered the errant thought into a dark corner where it glowered, resentful and defiant.

The silence rolled in the way a sea fog clogs the coastline in spring. I felt someone far away lower the axe, a sign that nothing changes. Not really. There’s no end to the war but there is always place for a cease fire. And that time was here, now, in the gloomy stairwell of a house choked with bad memories.

There was hope in his tone, absolution seeking out a chink in my armour. But why now? Years of regret perhaps? Years of guilt eating him away like a cancer?

My skin crawled and my balls shrank. The hairs on my neck played host to goose flesh and the little boy who wet his pants when he heard the door click open at midnight, bringing Daddy Dearest and the stale sour odour of Ol’ Jack, screamed soundlessly in the locker chained shut at the back of my mind.

“Yes,” I said. But my voice was a small thing, lacking real conviction. “I’m coming to finish it.”

There were only seven steps separating the landing and me, yet there may as well have been ten storeys. My legs were uncooperative cylinders of leaden flesh, jittering with each footfall, and my heart was pumping way too fast.

My bravado had taken a vacation, gone off to console itself with false promises that it may return sometime soon with new vigour. I called out to it, but it was useless. The little boy was here, his bladder a ball of hot steel getting ready to flow.

“You need to hurry Johnny boy,” Daddy Dearest whispered. “My times almost up. And I don’t want to be coming back. Oh, my. No, I don’t, but I can feel the hunger, like a hard day on Ol' Jack, the need to feed.”

I was on the landing now, my feet shuffling across the heavy pile. The axe, now a sudden weight against my arm, trailed behind like a lame third leg, its steel heel bringing with it fibres and dust devils. My lungs were steel and my throat, fire. I fought to stay focused but the world wanted to flip, and send me screaming into a pit of fear.

Conlon watched my trial, his face a mixture of bemusement and remorse. In that moment, as I realised that perhaps bridges, whilst not returned to their former glory, may be patched up just enough to allow safe passage, a huge cry punched through the air. It was agony vented into the ether, agony coupled with anger that is born from the last vestiges of hope.

Daddy Dearest was dying. It was the sound that in another time, another place I would have celebrated. Hell, I’d have probably cranked up the dial and danced to its tune. But this wasn’t the dark corners I found when Ol’ Jack was hauling the shots. I was stone cold sober and Daddy Dearest was in the room barred only by a doctor stewing in the juices of guilt.

He stepped aside and the light played on a large damp stain on the arm of his shirt sleeve. Blood. Soaking into the cotton fabric.

My face acted puzzled on behalf of a dawning mind and he nodded sadly.

“The hunger starts early.” His words explained more than just the chunk Daddy Dearest had relieved from the bad doctor’s arm. It also gave an answer to his sudden change of heart. The Sickness was in him. And soon he would follow Daddy Dearest into its endless world of hunger. The Dear Doctor needed out.

And he needed me to do it. I was taken aback that my earlier thoughts of murder would now come with sanction.

“I’ll help you to help me,” Conlon said, his smile slack and forlorn.

I never thought the time would come when such an enemy would become an ally. But that time had come knocking; dressed in its Sunday best.

I stepped into the room, where a small part of hell played out before me.

Daddy Dearest lay still upon his bed, the bedding a ruffled mess, streaked with blood. His limbs, twig thin and bare save for the crimson wheals cross-crossing his skin, jutted out from his pale blue pyjamas, toes and fingers clawed by the agony that had taken him to his momentary death. My eyes traced his gaunt stiffened outline until they alighted upon Daddy Dearest’s face, which was twisted into a mask of pain, mouth clamped in a crimson, oval grimace, cheeks sallow, and his eyes so wide they appeared to be without lids. I had seen those eyes many times, looked into them, and they were as terrifying in death as they were in life: piercing blue, devoid of expression or remorse, love or morality, rolling back into his head like a shark about to take a bite.

The blood on the sheets belonged to Conlon. I felt both disgusted and relieved by this knowledge. After all, it could so easily have been Lindsey with a chunk missing from her forearm.

“You’re going to have to do it soon. John,” Conlon said beside me, “I can support you through it. Then you know you’ll be able to do me.”

“I can’t swing that axe hard enough,” Conlon said holding out his bloodied arm towards me, just in case I wasn’t getting the message. “No, John, this is your duty.”

I was about to respond, saying anything that would get the time passing without having to focus on what was unavoidable, but then I saw Daddy Dearest move. Only a finger at first, the one that used to have a wedding band as a sign of his eternal love for the mother I’d never known. It was a slight and deliberate movement, the clawed digit unfolding as though it were a flower seen through time lapse TV. The other fingers followed suit, accompanied by the protesting pop and snap of seized knuckles.

“Oh sweet Jesus,” Conlon whispered. “Ain’t that the damnedest thing?”

Damned alright. No doubts about that.

Even knowing it was coming to this made no odds to my ability to act swiftly. Last time I saw such a thing it was blunted by a TV screen. But up close and personal it was something else. It needed something to happen. It needed something from me.

“Do it, John!” No whisper from Conlon this time. Daddy Dearest was jerking into life like a mannequin bouncing down a stairway, arms and legs tight angles, C3PIO wearing a flesh suit.

I lifted the axe just as the first piteous moan wavered from Daddy Dearest’s throat. It was a sound at once woeful and deadly and turned my heart to ice.

“For Christ’s sake, do it!”

Another voice, loud and shrill: Lindsey’s voice from the doorway. I yanked my head towards her, caught the blend of shock and fear in her eyes. It held her gaze for a moment longer than I intended.

The next thing I knew, Conlon was screaming.

Daddy Dearest had hold of the doctor’s shirt, dragging the hem from out of his pants and exposing his big belly. Daddy’s reanimated corpse was using Conlon to haul itself up from the bed, dragging the bad, bad doctor forwards, towards its yawning mouth. Before I could take aim with the axe, Daddy Dearest was clamping down on Conlon’s flabby cheek and tearing him a new mouth.

I heard Conlon’s high pitched protest shortly before Daddy Dearest ripped the wad of flesh away with a sickening purring sound. Lindsey retched in the doorway.

“Get out of the way!” I yelled, stepping back so that I had room for a decent swing. But such instruction was fruitless, since the big man and Daddy Dearest were now intertwined. I clamped a hand over my mouth as daddy’s hands sought Conlon’s navel and the hooked fingers yanked open his abdomen, exposing a visceral kaleidoscope to the world.

Conlon wore a quasi-comical expression of disbelief and agony, his breath a prolonged hiss. His big frame flopped forwards, his ample innards slopping out onto the bed linen, and for a time the world stood still, punctuated by the greedy slurping of Daddy Dearest getting to know the doctor really well. Inside and out.