Like Father (13 page)

“Hi,” said Danny, looking from Cassie to her father and back again.

“We’re going up to look on the web, okay?” said Cassie. She stepped up onto the stairs and waved for Danny to follow.

As they went up to the landing, her father started counting off on his fingers, “
Ein. Zwei. Drei. Viere. Fünf. Sechs. Sieben
...”

There were three doors off the landing. One was half-open into the bathroom. The one towards the front of the house was closed, and now Cassie pushed through the other into her room.

“Don’t go getting any ideas,” she said to him over her shoulder. “You can leave the door open. I know what men are like. I’ve read all about it.”

He followed her in, leaving the door open.

“You know what they say,” she said, turning, and spreading her hands to indicate the room’s contents. “Tidy room, tidy mind. So what did you expect?”

The room was complete chaos. Every surface was loaded with books, notepads, CD cases, clothes, plastic models of aeroplanes and monsters, magazines, pens, hair brushes, boxes...

“Like I say: don’t go getting any ideas about tidying up or anything. Have a seat. There’s one ... over there somewhere. Pepsi?”

There was a leather cube that must be some kind of seat. He cleared the stack of magazines off it – a random mixture of
New Scientist
,
Sugar
, the
Observer Magazine
and some yellow-spined
National Geographic
s – and sat, waiting.

The windows looked out over the back garden to the fields. Cassie had stuck cardboard cut-outs into the corners of the windows so that they looked like gothic arches.

“So: you going to tell me what’s going on?”

“Did you get any more messages?”

She shook her head.

“It’s him, Hodeken. He took over the chatroom. Now he’s getting to us through our phones. He can’t control me, so he’s trying to get to me through you, now. There’s one thing, I suppose: this proves it’s not just in my head.”

“What? Just because I got a text message from your number? You’re winding me up.”

Danny took his own phone out, thumbed the controls and handed it to Cassie. “Did you send this message last night? It’s from your number.”

She stared at it. “God, Danny. What do we
do
?”

“You tell me to get out of here,” said Danny. “And we hope he leaves you alone.”

“Or we stick to Plan A,” said Cassie, shaking her head. “You came here to ask questions, so let’s ask questions.”

She handed him his phone, then swept some clothes off a chair so she could sit.

She twisted in her chair so she could open up a laptop Danny hadn’t noticed among all the debris on her desk. “So what do we want to ask?”

Danny listened to the computer’s mechanical chirruping as it dialled up an internet connection.

“Okay,” said Cassie into the silence. “You’re not a morning person, are you, Danny? Hell
o
? Time to wake up. Okay. Here. It’s remembered the search I did last time. Let’s go.”

She clicked as she talked, working through a series of web pages. Danny recognised one or two of them as sites he’d found the other day.

“So, Danny.” She turned to him, and leaned forward. “What is it that you want?”

“You’re going to grant me a wish, are you?”

She snorted. “In your dreams, matey. As if.”

“What I want? I want things to settle down again. I want to get Hodeken – whatever he or it is – out of our lives. I want it to stop interfering.”

Cassie was nodding as he spoke. “Danny, have you asked him? Have you told Hodeken this? He’s your family’s guardian spirit, after all. Maybe he’d listen to you if you find the right way to ask.”

Danny started to protest, but stopped himself. Hodeken always knew better, there was no point reasoning with the thing. But then, “Maybe,” he told her. “I’ve argued with him, over and over in my head. But I can’t remember if I’ve actually asked him to leave us alone, just like that. I’ve told him that what he wants to do will never work, that it’s impossible – but that’s different. Maybe we just need to find the right way to persuade him to go.”

“So we need to find out how to do that. What’s he like, this kobold? How would you describe him?”

Danny thought. “Grotesque,” he said. “Ancient. His skin’s shrivelled and wrinkled and covered with lumps and little hairy warts. His teeth are yellow and they look like they’ve been worn down – they’re too small for the spaces in his mouth. Pale eyes, with a tiny black centre and riddled with blood vessels. He wears a lumpy felt hat, pulled down hard onto his head. He hides things, and he hums tunes – he did that in a dream I had. They’re the ones Oma sings. Old German tunes. I think he taught them to her.”

Cassie was clicking. “Here’s some stuff I found before. The hiding and the tunes you mentioned.”

Danny looked at the page. This was just a plain text file, no formatting. It looked like some kind of archive or transcript.

The Hinzelmannchen or Kobold is a small goblin-like being, who can be both a great asset to his hosts and a mischievous nuisance. Give a kobold a home in your coal-cellar and he will repay you by working late into the night, finishing off chores and keeping a household in order. He is drawn to children, and will entertain them with his songs and physical humour. His favourite prank is to kick over stooping people, and

“Hang on – I’m reading.”

Cassie had been about to click the Back button.

“I dreamed this,” he told her, pointing at the screen. “He pointed at something on the ground and I bent to pick it up and he pushed me over. When I got up he’d gone.”

he can get very angry if he is not fed properly or if he is crossed. In the 17th century, kobolds were usually depicted in paintings as little daemons with a conical hat and pointed shoes. In the class of beings from folklore, they are considered to be the most dangerous and most ugly. The Hinzelmannchen is drawn to extremes of emotion and takes his duties particularly seriously (even to extremes, it must be said, in some legends).

Danny stared at the words, and Cassie waited patiently.

Finally, she said, “It doesn’t tell us how to get rid of him, does it? If anything, it makes it worse. It’s like, don’t cross them, or else!”

She set the page to print, and somewhere in the room a printer started to whine.

“Right,” said Cassie, decisively. “He wanted us to go to Spirit Talking. Are you up for that? This might be the best way to ask him to leave you in peace.”

“I don’t know.” Before, he’d been on his own in the HoST office. Now, with Cassie, it didn’t seem quite so daunting. But what would Hodeken have in store for them there? “Okay.”

The banner ad flashed up first of all, offering them genuine psychic readings at knockdown prices. Then the stone-effect frame and the photograph of the smiling Dr Bob welcoming them to the site.

“Do you think they’ll be there now?” Danny asked. “Headkin or FirstLady, or whatever they call themselves this time?”

“Who knows?” said Cassie. “You seemed to draw them in last time. Maybe they’ll show up again and you can ask them to go, if you dare.”

The link on the home page was there, as before, asking them to pick today’s card. Danny nodded at it. “What’s all that about?”

Absently, Cassie clicked on the link. A playing card appeared on the screen, revealing itself from the top down. The picture was upside down. It showed a jester. The caption underneath said, “0. Fool. (INVERTED)”

“What does that mean?”

“The unknown, I think. A wild card, like a modern joker.”

“And what does it mean by ‘inverted’?”

“The card’s been dealt upside down,” said Cassie. “It means ... I don’t know. Deception, hidden meanings, problems. I don’t like this. I’ve got a bad feeling about this. Let’s go back and find the chatroom.”

She slid the pointer across to the toolbar at the top and clicked on the Back button.

Nothing happened, then the screen flickered and the same page started to load again.

“You hit Refresh,” said Danny.

“I didn’t. You saw me. I hit Back. Why’s it reloading? Oh my god...”

A new card was revealing itself. The picture showed a stooped man in a dark cloak, carrying a long-bladed scythe. Underneath the image, the caption read, “XIII. Death.”

Cassie clicked the “X” in the top right corner of the window and the web browser vanished.

She turned.

“Oh, Danny,” she said. “Oh ... Danny.”

21 A telephone call and a visit

“Call me,” Cassie urged him, as she stood at the end of her drive and watched Danny leave. “Let me know you’re okay.”

“Sure,” he said, backing away, unsettled by her panicked reaction to the tarot cards. “I’ll be fine.”

Heading back to the flat, Danny realised that he was feeling frustrated. He hadn’t wanted to go anywhere near that Spirit Talking website again. Not after last time and those phone messages. But today, with Cassie, it had seemed worth trying. He had psyched himself up for it, and he had been ready to go into that chatroom again and confront “Headkin”.

Maybe he would try it on his own, later.

As he walked, his thoughts kept returning to his grandmother. She knew more than she had told him. When he had asked her about Hodeken before she had played innocent, accused him of asking odd questions.

But maybe if he tried again, if he told her that he knew that she and Eva and their brothers had called on Hodeken in the war, and later in East Berlin – maybe she would tell him more then.

Maybe she would tell him what her relationship with the kobold really was. She had lived with him as a presence in her life, in some form or another, for several decades, and she had not cracked like his father had. She must have worked out how to cope. She even seemed to have adapted well to his presence.

She hummed Hodeken’s tunes.

And when she worked late into the night – on her own, they had always thought – just how much help did she have?

They had always thought it something of a miracle that such a frail old thing could achieve so much, but no-one had objected, or queried how she did it. After the trouble with Danny’s father she had just thrown herself into looking after what remained of her family and they had all accepted it gratefully.

Danny thought of all the times he had heard that familiar sound late at night. The high-pitched humming of ancient German folk tunes. How often had it been Oma, he wondered, and how often might he have listened to Hodeken humming as he worked?

Oma had the answers, but he did not know if he would be able to persuade her to share them with him.

Back at the flat, Val told him that Oma was still unwell with a bad headache. He slipped into her darkened room and was reminded of how she had been before, when Eva had been the one who fussed over people and Oma had been poorly and bed-ridden for much of the time.

She was an old woman, and she had suffered a lot over recent years. Danny swallowed, and tried to stop himself from thinking along such gloomy lines.

Just then, her eyes glinted in the low light and she looked at him. “Anthony?” she said weakly. “
Bist du es
, Anthony? Have you come back to your mother? My boy... is good,
ja
?

Danny backed out of the room, saying nothing. As he eased the door shut he saw that she had closed her eyes again, and appeared to be asleep.

~

Later, while Val prepared lunch from left-overs from the Open Day catering, the phone went and Danny answered.

“Danny?”

“Yes...? Dad? Is that you?” Danny had been expecting his father to call at some point, as they hadn’t spoken since the visit, last weekend. But he didn’t usually call on a Sunday.

“Are you okay, Dad?” He had sounded odd, even in that single word, but then he had
been
odd last weekend. Losing it again.

“Danny. How are things?”

“Okay,” said Danny, sinking into the sofa in the front room. “What’s up?”

“Nothing. Nothing at all, Danny.”

Danny still couldn’t put a finger on what it was that seemed so peculiar. “Mr Peters called a couple of days ago,” he said. “He told us about the appeal. That they didn’t have enough to support it.”

“Never mind,” said his father. “Never mind about that. It’s all water under the bridge, eh?”

He was talking in a slow, measured way and suddenly Danny realised what it was that was odd: the cool, lazy way he was speaking. He had been losing it last weekend, and Mr Peters had mentioned his erratic behaviour. They were sedating him, Danny guessed. Calming him down with injections or pills.

“You okay, Dad?”

“Yeah. I’m fine, Danny. I’m cool. I’ve been dreaming, Danny. We could have another try, couldn’t we, Danny? You’re a good lad, aren’t you? We can be okay...”

“Sure, Dad. Take it easy.”

“I will, Danny. We’re cool, aren’t we, Danny?”

“Yes, Dad. We’re cool.”

A click, a buzz, and his father had gone.

~

“How would you feel if people here knew about ... about our past?”

Danny had known something was coming. His mother had put Josh through to play in the front room once he had finished his lunch and for the last few minutes she had sat, toying with her food, barely eating a thing.

“I don’t know,” said Danny. “It’d be tough. But it’d be a relief, too, in some ways. Why?”

“We can’t hide it away forever,” she said. “If the appeal had gone through it would have been in the papers again. Someone would have made the connection. I think ... well, it’s bound to happen at some stage.”

He cracked open one of the rolls, and pulled at its soft insides. “That might be a good thing,” he said. He wasn’t as sure as he sounded. The thought of what he had been through before! But they couldn’t keep running and hiding forever.

“There’s a chance it might come out soon,” Val told him. She was talking slowly, as if choosing her words with great care. “Someone knows already.”

“Rick?”

She looked up at him, sharply. “How...?”

“He told me,” said Danny. “I assumed you must have told him.”

“He was being inquisitive, pushy. I thought I was being clever. I wanted to put him off, so I said your father was a violent man, a jealous man. I thought that might scare Rick off.”

“Scare him off? You mean...” Danny wasn’t sure
what
she meant.

“Rick’s very single-minded,” said Val. “He isn’t easily put off. He went away and dug up our past, and now he’s threatening me. I don’t want to lose what we have, Danny. I don’t know what to do.”

“How’s he threatening you? Why?”

“Because he loves me, he claims. He’s convinced that he’s going to win me over, and that anything is forgiveable in the long run. I should feel flattered, I suppose. You read about people like him: people so fixated that they can’t see how things really are. For some people it’s some kind of medical condition – an illness. And now he’s casually mentioning how awful life would be for you if word got out about our past. How difficult it would be at school. He keeps telling me how he’s in a position where he can protect you. But by putting it like that he’s also making it absolutely clear that he can make life hell for you, too.”

She was crying now, and Danny sat silently for a time. “He said that to me, too,” he said finally.

She looked up, surprised.

“He said he could make life hell for you, too, if I didn’t keep out of it. He’s been threatening both of us, Mum.”

Another drawn out silence.

“Do you want to be rid of him?” Danny asked softly.

He remembered the lump of rock in his hand, that night he had followed them.

And the knife, flying through the air, burying itself in the soft ground.

He knew what Hodeken would have him do to get Rick out of the way...

Val nodded. “There’s nothing I’d like more,” she said.

“Then tell him to go,” Danny said. “Tell him to leave us all alone.”

Before anything worse happens.

~

But by that stage, things were out of Danny’s control.

Early that afternoon, he took Josh down to the lawn by the lake.

“Where’s the tent?” said the little boy, wandering round in circles where the marquee had been. “I want the big tent.”

“You’re in it,” said Danny. “Can’t you see it?”

Josh stopped and looked all around, and then at Danny. “Liar,” he said. “Pants on fire, liar.”

He trotted off towards the water, where bees hummed over the clover and, out over the lake, swallows darted and skimmed, low across the surface. “Don’t go too near the edge,” said Danny, hurrying after him.

He wondered how Val was getting on. She had gone to find Rick. To reason with him, she said. To convince him that he was wasting his time.

The sunny weather had shifted slightly. The air was muggy, thick. It felt as if it was pressing in on Danny. There was sweat on his forehead, even though he had only been walking slowly. Over in the west, the sky’s blue butted up against a thick grey wall of cloud. A storm was coming.

He thought of Cassie, as he realised he often thought of her. She had asked him to call her, tell her he was okay.

He reached into his pocket for the phone, then stopped. He could always call her later. Right now, Josh had headed off on the trail through the willows, and Danny hurried to catch up with him.

Later, they came up through the orchard.

When he spotted Rick working among the trees, Danny considered turning back, but it was too late. Rick waved, wiping his forehead with a small white cloth. He seemed relaxed, as if nothing had happened. Maybe Val hadn’t found him after all.

“Danny, Josh,” he said, as they approached. He was standing by a neat stack of logs, all cut to a length of about thirty centimetres and split neatly into quarters. Where he had been working, there was another log, standing on end, with a small hand-axe embedded in it, and a mallet and wooden wedges arranged nearby.

Josh ran up to him and started making buzzing noises as he ran in tight circles around the teacher’s legs. “Hey there!” cried Rick. He lifted Josh with a hand under each armpit and spun him round in the air.

After a short time, he put the boy down and laughed at him while he staggered around trying to regain his balance.

Then he looked sideways at Danny. “I spoke to Val,” he said.

Danny looked at him, but couldn’t work out his expression.

“She seemed confused,” Rick continued. “Over-emotional, I’d say. Has she been okay lately?”

This was man-to-man stuff. Consulting Danny about woman trouble.

“Some of the things she was saying, Danny. As I say: very confused. I think I see your hand in that. Would I be right?” Still smiling, still talking casually, good mates having a chat. “Don’t you remember our little conversation, Danny? I thought we understood each other.”

He took out his cloth again, unfolded it, and dabbed at his brow, then folded it and put it away again. He stooped, took the axe in one hand and the mallet in the other. He tapped at the small log and it fell from the axe’s blade.

“I’m disappointed in you, Danny,” Rick continued. “You know what I’d like? I have this ... I suppose you’d call it a vision, a daydream. What I’d like is, when Val and I are together, I’d like to be able to treat you and Josh, here, like my own sons. We’d do things together. You’d have a father figure to look up to. How about that?”

He swung the axe down, and it stuck deep in the log. He hammered it deeper with the mallet until the log split in two.

“I don’t want us to be enemies, Danny.” He took one half of the log, turned it through ninety degrees and swung the axe down again to split it.

“And I don’t think you’d want that, either, would you?”

~

They followed the path around the corner of the Hall. Danny carried Josh, the little boy tired and cross with the sticky heat.

Danny was nervous. He wondered what state Val might be in now. She had quite clearly failed to get through to Rick.

They emerged in a gap between an ancient yew tree and the corner of the main building. As usual, for a weekend, the car park was pretty much full with the hostas’ cars. HoST was running fewer residential courses this weekend because of the Open Day, but there were still at least three groups that Danny was aware of.

There was a car pulled up across the drive, though, as if the driver had tried to park, found no spaces and just pulled up where he could.

Standing by the car, in the shade of the lime trees, was a policeman.

Danny’s heart rushed, suddenly. For him, the sight of that uniform would always be an alarming thing.

He turned, and there was Val, talking to a man and a woman by the door to the flat. They were clearly police, even though they were not in uniform. There was something about them, something Danny had learnt to spot.

Josh squirmed in his arms, and Danny relaxed his grip, allowing the little boy to slide down, wriggle free and run across the gravel to his mother.

Danny followed, more slowly.

He studied her face as she spoke, paused, glanced across at him, and then carried on speaking.

She was pale, her movements jerky, nervous.

Josh reached her and threw his arms around her legs. He knew when things weren’t right.

“...but how?” she insisted, as Danny drew near. “How
could
he?” She turned to Danny, and explained, “It’s your father, Danny. They say ... they say he’s got out.”

She was speaking very slowly, as if she still couldn’t believe what she had been told. “Somehow,” she said, “he just managed to walk out of there.”

Danny looked at the two police officers. One, a dark-haired woman in her thirties carefully avoided his look. The older one, a man with a bristly grey moustache and a weary look in his eye, said, “He didn’t just walk out, Mrs Smith. It’s not quite clear how it happened. Nothing like it has ever happened there before. There was a lot of confusion. Somehow he managed to talk his way through to the outer gates before anyone challenged him. That guard is in intensive care now.” The officer looked away. He looked embarrassed.

His colleague spoke up now. “As I was saying, Mrs Smith. Have you or your family had any contact with your husband since Danny and his grandmother visited last Saturday?”

“He called,” said Danny. They all looked at him. “Today. At lunchtime – about one-ish. He seemed odd. Spaced out. When did he escape?”

The two officers were staring at him.

“He broke out this morning, shortly after eleven,” said the man. “What did he say? Did he tell you where he was?”

Danny shook his head. “Nothing,” he said. “He wasn’t on the phone for long. He asked how we were. Said he’d been dreaming.”