Dark Terrors 3 (27 page)

If he
does
keep it up,
she decided,
I’ll go over there and give him one upside the head, as the kids say. Knock that stupid look right off his face.

Her Aunt Daisy was watching her with almost the same expression, she realized suddenly. They
all
were. They were
watching
her, as if they expected her to do something strange and dangerous. A chill spread out over her scalp and down her neck, and she knew that if her hair could actually have stood on end, it would have.

She thought absurdly of the woman on the plane.
Too bad I don’t have
that
hair to stand on end
-
that would
really
give them something to stare at.
And now she was staring right back at all of them, each and every one in turn, and the fact that they weren’t the least bit put off by this, that not one of them felt compelled to look away or even blink, was the worst of all.

‘What?’ she said finally, trying to force down the panic that was lifting so rapidly inside her that she had to gasp for breath. ‘What?
What is it?
What the hell are you all looking at me like this for?’

There was a moment of utter silence, not long, but if it had stretched out any longer, she would have screamed into it. Abruptly, Dan O’Brien got up from the stool over by the television and gestured at it. ‘Renata, there’s something you have to see before the funeral.’

She gave her head a quick, minute shake. ‘What - an old re-run of
Masterpiece Theater?’’

‘Please,’ he said, and his voice was as frightening as everything else, because it was so damned
calm.
‘This hasn’t been easy on your mother or Jules, it isn’t easy for any of us, and it won’t be easy for you. But you have to see this. You do. And after you see it, you’ll understand. Everything will be clear.’

Renata looked to her mother for some sign but her mother
had buried her face in Daisy’s waist, while Daisy held her, stroking her hair and glaring at Renata as if she were to blame. ‘Where’s Jules?’ she asked Dan, glancing at her twin cousins and their respective partners.

‘Jules has seen it,’ Dan said, suddenly sounding prim.

She wanted to make a smart remark about how they all had cable where she lived, so she had probably seen it herself, but something in her gave out and she sat down on the stool instead.
Just get it over with,
she told herself firmly.
If it’s something utterly horrid, just leave. Don’t even stay for the funeral.

Dan put on the TV and then reached down to the VCR on the shelf underneath. Renata had a glimpse of a greasy man standing in front of a chat-show panel of even greasier people and then her father was looking earnestly out at her from the television screen. She jumped, putting one hand to her chest. God, but it looked and sounded so
much
like him, it was positively scary.

Then she suppressed a groan. It was one of these ghoulish videotaped will things that people knew would be played back after their deaths. So
ghoulish.
She felt her stomach turn over. Didn’t anyone ever consider what it would be like for the survivors to watch something like this? No wonder Jules was hiding out.

‘My darling Renata,’ her father said, folding his hands and leaning forward, as if he really were seeing her in the lens of the camera focused on him. He had been videotaped sitting at the head of the dining-room table. How much she and her father had resembled each other, she thought, much more than her father and Jules, or even herself and Jules. There was no missing the similarity of the shape of their faces and eyes, and even their voices shared a certain timbre. ‘My darling daughter Renata, this is the hardest thing I have ever had to do. Harder, in some ways, than dying, really. I know I
am
dying. I can feel my heart becoming weaker every day. If my hearing were good enough, I would probably hear the blood in my veins and arteries slowing down, swashing and gurgling, getting ready to stop.’

Renata took a deep, careful breath to control her nausea. Maybe her father
did
know what sort of effect this would have and he was doing it on purpose, some kind of weird revenge of an angry, dying man on his still-living relatives.

‘So I must -
must
- make a clean breast of things. I cannot die carrying the guilt and the shame of what’s happened between us any longer.’

Her nausea melted into bewilderment. ‘The guilt and shame of what had happened between them?’ Being a distant, mostly absent father figure was a source of
guilt
and
shame?
The poor man, she thought in a sudden rush of pity. Then her bewilderment returned, along with a dash of irritation. If it had bothered him
that
much, he could have apologized, in person, while he’d still been alive.

‘No parent should ever put a child through the terrible things I put you through,’ he continued. ‘When I think of the hell you endured, I want to—’

‘Stop it,’ Renata snapped suddenly and jumped up from the stool. ‘Stop it
right now.’

Dan O’Brien looked startled but obediently pointed a slender remote control at the VCR. Her father’s face froze in mid-word. Everyone in the room was looking at her as if she were displaying the worst manners possible, except for her mother who was slumped against Daisy and sobbing softly into a wad of tissues.

‘I refuse to listen to another moment of this travesty,’ Renata said angrily. ‘Obviously Dad went a little wonky before he died. I’m awfully sorry about that, it’s a terrible thing to happen. But now he’s gone. His troubles are over, and there’s no good reason to torture ourselves with this kind of thing.’

There was no answer except the sound of her mother’s sobbing.

‘Where’s Jules?’ Renata said, disgusted. ‘I want my suitcase. I’m going. If Jules won’t drive me back to the airport, I’ll take a cab or I’ll even walk if I have to, but I’m not going to stay here—’

‘Please,’ Dan said and she turned to him in surprise. ‘You don’t know how important this is.’

‘You’re probably right about that. You’re not family to me, however—’

‘Well, no, I’m not. Though in some ways, I may be even closer.’ Dan’s face was frighteningly sincere as well as serious. ‘I’m your father’s therapist. I treated him for two years before he died.’

Renata turned to her mother for confirmation, but her mother wouldn’t look at her. Her gaze went to the O’Briens to see what their reaction was. They had none, or none that she could see, except for the same strange quiet that everyone except her mother was hell-bent on maintaining. She turned back to Dan. ‘I didn’t know you were a doctor. I thought you went to business school.’

‘I did, but I switched direction a little while ago. Now I’m a therapist. Not a doctor in the sense that I could prescribe medications, but most of that stuff is poison anyway.’ Renata was sure that Dan’s smile was meant to look benevolent, but to her it seemed more vacant than anything. ‘I do a lot of work with hypnosis.’

‘Fine,’ Renata said. ‘But don’t expect me to make an appointment just because my father did. I’m a lousy subject for hypnosis, I just don’t have the attention span.’ She raised her voice. ‘Jules! Jules,
dammit,
where are you, I want to—’

Dan caught her arm as she was about to walk out of the room. ‘Renata, you’re making a hard situation all but impossible. Sit down and watch the tape, and then you’ll understand everything.’

Her gaze went from his face to his hand, still gripping her upper arm just a little too tightly and back again several times. Astoundingly, he failed to get the message. ‘Let
go
of my fucking
arm,’
she said finally. He glanced over at his parents, who turned as one to Mrs Anderson. Mrs Anderson’s gaze went to the twins, who passed the look to their respective partners before raising their eyebrows at their mother.

They were all crazy, Renata realized suddenly. She didn’t
know what brand of psychosis they were sharing, what it involved or whether it was dangerous, but they were nuts and she wasn’t and by God, she was getting out of there. She bolted for the door, deciding she could live with the loss of her overnight bag and collided with someone else, someone too strong for her to twist away from, who struggled her back from the doorway, bruising her forearms with a hard grip, and forced her down on to the couch in front of the television set.

‘Jules! What—’

He grabbed the stool she had been sitting on and planted it just to her left, sat down on it and seized her arms again.
‘Shut up!’
he bellowed into her face, so close that she could feel how hot his breath was. It was that sensation more than anything that shocked her. She could not remember ever being that physically close to her brother.

‘Now,
listen,’’
he growled at her and she was horrified to see tears welling in his eyes.
‘Listen
and
watch.
The suffering is—’ He stopped, breathing hard and deep through his nose, glaring at her.

And again he left the sentence unfinished.
At a time like this. Everything is so. The suffering.

Then her father was speaking to her from the television again, the live man performing the task that the dead man had delegated.

‘. . . to punish myself in more hideous ways than the state would, I think. I
had
thought of turning myself in, as a matter of fact, but your mother talked me out of it. She said that a man in my health, so many years later - well, the only thing that would really make a difference would be if we could - if
I
could, actually - try to make it up to you in some way. To get you the help that you’re going to need, for the rest of your life.’

Renata made a disgusted noise. ‘Oh, Christ, what is it? Was there a trust fund and he embezzled—’

‘Shut up,’ her brother warned her quietly.

‘—can never give you back those years of your childhood
that I stole. Her father’s voice was beginning to sound whiny. ‘All I can do is tell you I was wrong, beg for your forgiveness from here, beyond the grave, and assure you that you will get only the very best counsellors, doctors, hospitalization when you need it—’

‘‘Hospitalization?’
Warning bells went off in her head to the point where she could not have told the difference if she had been hearing them outside. Abruptly she remembered a basic self-defence move Vinnie had taught her, a way to twist your wrist to get out of a man’s grip so that no matter how big and strong he was, he would have to let you go.
My brothers taught me this one,
Vinnie had said,
they told me that if any guy was gonna beat me up, it would be them, not some stranger. Of course, they never did beat me up, not that I recall, anyway
-

She pushed Jules away and stood up. To her surprise, Jules launched himself at her and pinned her down on the couch with his body. Renata cried out, more in anger than anything else. The worst part about it was that no one else in the room had moved,
no one,
not to help her, not to help Jules, not to do
anything,
and all the while her father’s voice went on and on and on, talking and talking and talking.
Dead Man Talking,
she thought, and bit her lip to keep from laughing hysterically.

‘. . . to treat my beloved daughter in such a hideous fashion. I don’t know what drove me to it, to act out my vile needs on your innocence, to soil and betray your trust in me as your father, your protector . ..’

‘What?’ Renata said, trying to push Jules off her. ‘What? Stop that! Turn that fucking TV
off.’

But no one moved, and her father’s voice whined on, ‘. . . and you, so pure, so loving, so unwilling to believe that life would have such ugliness in it that you completely repressed all memory of what I had done to you. It was as if your sweet little mind said, “All right, then, if he won’t be a father to me out here, then I will create the loving father that he isn’t in my mind—”‘

‘What?’
She arched her back, trying to buck her brother off but he seemed to get heavier and heavier.

‘“—and if I can’t get anyone to protect me or help me out here, then I will create the support group that I need in my
mind—”‘

Support group?
Had her father just said
support group?
Renata was beyond disbelief. This was some kind of horrible joke, it had to be. Some kind of absurd practical joke put on by Jules and her mother. They had been driven mad with grief, they—