Dark Terrors 3: The Gollancz Book of Horror

The O’Briens’ son Dan was sitting on a stool by the television, his elbows on his knees and his big hands folded under his chin. Dan was her age and looked about the same as he had the last time she had seen him several years before, except there was a little less of his greying, light brown hair and a little more round softness in his face. He was watching her with an intensity that almost frightened her, that would frighten her if he kept it up.

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