The Dark House (40 page)

His parents' room was across the hall. It had a double bed, unmade. What strange passion had it held? The closet was filled with clothes, all of them men's. He recognized some of his father's fine suits and jackets in see-through garment bags off to one end, evidently unused. He turned back to the room. A couple of Tom Clancy paperbacks were out on the bedside table by the telephone. The bureau was past the window under the eaves. He checked the driveway once more, then tried the drawers. The lower ones had the usual pants, sweaters, and shirts. All of them coarse and cheap; none were made of the splendid, rich material he'd always associated with his father. The smaller, upper-right drawer was filled with balled-up socks and jockey underwear. As he rummaged through these underthings, his flashlight caught on a patch of white toward the back.

He pulled the drawer open all the way. A small white box was taped to the drawer's rear wall. He peeled the box loose and set it down on the bureau top. He removed several rubber bands and lifted off the cover. Inside, there was a slender gold necklace, a couple of rings, and a woman's wristwatch, a slim Omega. Its crystal was shattered, and the watch hands were frozen at 10:23. The broken glass suggested violence, pain. With trembling fingers, he turned the watch over. The back bore an engraving.
From E. P. to C. B.
it said.
Love, always.
In a flash, Rollins could see his father's blows raining down, hear Neely's screams.

Almost frantic, Rollins stuffed the watch in his pocket, then dropped the other jewelry back into the box and resealed it in the back of the drawer. His lungs burned for air, and his heart pounded. But mostly he was conscious of a sickening feeling in the pit of his stomach. He needed a bathroom, desperately. Hunched over, he clapped a hand over his mouth and rushed down the hall. He pushed open the bathroom door, reached the toilet just in time before he bent over and delivered two heaves of vomit.

Then—the sound of an engine. The crank of a hand brake and the slam of a car door. He turned the tap for some water, but the faucet only
sputtered, producing a dribble of water that he swished around inside his mouth then spat into the sink. He pushed the plunger to flush the toilet, but nothing happened. He closed the toilet lid, slid the hammer under the bathtub, and hurried downstairs. He heard a dog yip, and out the front window, he could see a tall man striding across the driveway.

“Hold on there, Scamp,” the man said gruffly.

Rollins moved slowly, his stomach uneasy.

The man looked rugged in blue jeans and a faded T-shirt, clothes that had always been foreign to his father. He was reaching into the back of a red pickup truck, a vehicle that was all wrong, too. What had become of his beloved Saab? Stranger still, the man pulled out a rifle. This was inconceivable. His father had never hunted, never shot.

But it was his father, unmistakably.

Rollins yelled out to him: “Father! It's me! Edward!” His first impulse was to run to him, confess everything, and cling to him as he had when he was a boy. But the stiff, purposeful way his father moved, and his tight grip on the gun, caused Rollins to stay by the door.

“Edward?” his father called to him. He sounded as if he'd half-expected him.

A small black dog rushed toward Rollins, growling.

“Quiet,” his father commanded.

His father's hair had gone gray, and he was nearly bald on top. His eyes were hooded, and the set of his mouth suggested despondency. He came toward Rollins slowly. “Well, I'll be damned,” he said, shaking his head. “Look at you.”

Rollins had forgotten about his clothes.

“No car?” his father asked.

“I parked on the road.” Rollins paused, unsure how that would go down. “I didn't want to get in your way.”

His father eyed him a moment. “What brings you up here?”

“Well, I—I hadn't seen you in a while,” Rollins began. The dog continued to growl.

“Scamp!” His father slapped the side of his leg. The dog cowered on the driveway.

Henry Rollins finally extended his hand toward his son, who shook
it. The formality felt both strange and familiar. There'd never been any kisses or hugs from his father when Rollins was a child. Now, the skin felt leathery; the contact was brief, perfunctory, meaningless.

“Why the gun?” Rollins asked.

His father looked down at the rifle. “Oh, this?” He smiled. “Just for security. You have to be careful, living alone around here.” He led his son inside the house. “How long you been here?” His accent used to be so crisp and properly Bostonian. Now, his voice had dust in it, and some wear.

“Just arrived. I thought I'd find you inside.”

Mr. Rollins flipped the switch in the front hall, and the house blazed up. “What—you don't need light?”

“I didn't want to frighten anyone.”

For the first time, Mr. Rollins looked at his son suspiciously. “You're not scared of your old man, now, are you?” He went into the kitchen, propped the gun up in the corner, then dropped down into the nearest chair. “There's probably a beer in the refrigerator.” His head drooped slightly, as if he'd grown tired of being tall. In the kitchen's harsh, overhead light, his skin—which had once radiated health and confidence—looked worn and sallow.

“I might take some coffee.” Rollins checked his watch again: 8:05. He'd pass a little time with his father, then slip away well before Sloane arrived. He'd hide in the shadows somewhere by the turn off the main road onto Bald Mountain Road, watch for Sloane, then warn off Schecter following behind. That was his new plan.

Mr. Rollins went to the stove and put on the kettle. He got out a mug and spooned some instant into it. “Hope this is all right.” He showed his son the jar. “It's all I've got.”

“Fine.”

His father went to the refrigerator and snapped open a can of beer.

Rollins eyed the rifle. “I spoke to Kathi. That's how I found you.”

“Oh, yeah?” He seemed amused.

“Richard had her address. She says hi.”

“Yeah, she would.” He took a slurp of beer. There was a time when his father would never have touched beer, let alone drunk it straight
from the can. Silence again as his father surveyed him. It was as if he were trying to decide something about him.

“I was at Mother's this morning,” Rollins said.

“Making the rounds, were you?”

“She had a stroke.”

“Did she?” The tone was both unsurprised and uncaring. Rollins might have told him that she'd eaten a nice dinner.

“It's serious, Father. The doctor said she's paralyzed on her right side.” Rollins felt for her just then. He imagined he
was
her, trying to win this gruff man's attention.

Nothing doing. Henry Rollins tipped his head back to take another draft of beer, then set the empty can down on the counter. “Well, I'm sorry to hear that.”

The clock on the wall ticked. They'd had so little time together, and so little time remained. They might have been strangers on a train. “Kathi told me your marriage broke up.”

His father's features hardened. “Yes, that's right.” He looked out at his son through slitlike eyes. “You're not married, are you?”

Rollins shook his head, although his father must have known from Sloane that he wasn't.

“So you don't know how tight it gets.”

Rollins braced himself; he was moving into realms of intimacy with his father that he had never dared penetrate before. His heart churned, and his palms turned slick. “That how you felt with Mother?”

“Sometimes, sure.” His father got up and casually cracked open another beer. “But it doesn't have to be that way. Richard, for instance. He's married, and that seems to be going well. How about you—thinking about it?”

“It's crossed my mind.” It calmed him to think of Marj.

His father returned to his seat. “That why you wanted to see me? Get my permission?” He seemed to find that amusing.

Rollins said nothing; it seemed safer at that point just to let his father talk.

“Well, don't do anything I did.” He took another gulp. “She any good in bed?”

Rollins' pulse jumped. What a question! If anyone else were to have asked such a thing to the father Rollins
thought
he knew, he was sure that the old man would have exploded. And it was all the more horrifying knowing that his father had already sicced Sloane on the question of Marj already. Was Rollins' own relationship just another one to bore into the way he'd watched Elizabeth fondle Sloane at the Elmhurst house? Was he more grist for his father's warped mill?

The water on the stove started to boil, producing a low whistling noise and sending a cloud of steam into the air, but both men ignored it.

“Don't be shy, son. These things are important. I think that's what broke your mother and me up. She was always so uptight about all that stuff.” Rollins was astonished to hear this revisionist history. It was as if Neely had never existed.

The kettle grew agonizingly shrill, and his father finally stood up to attend to it. He poured in the water and handed the mug to his son. “How long's it been, since we—?” He flicked a finger back and forth between the two of them.

“Almost nine years.”

“That long? Imagine that.”

Outside, the sky turned dark, blackening the trees out the window. His father poured his son more coffee and helped himself to more beer. Henry Rollins' words, once so clipped and sharp, loosened further, dropping into vulgarities here and there. His father seemed to enjoy the chance to catch up with his firstborn. He relaxed in his chair, but never did venture far from the rifle. He told Rollins about some of the places he'd been in Europe, and explained about the second wife, Christine, whom Rollins had only barely heard of. “That was pretty much a rebound thing. Didn't last.” He'd tried different jobs. He had indeed taken up real estate for a while, in Oregon. “Sold little office buildings, mostly.” He never did mention Kathi.

It was nearly eight-thirty, but Rollins still needed answers. “So, why'd you come back here to Vermont?” he asked, trying to make the question sound innocent.

His father's initial wariness returned. “Well, your old man had to go someplace, didn't he?”

“Of course.” Rollins tried to keep his voice soft. “I just never thought you were particularly attached to this house.”

“I've got happy-enough memories of this place. Skiing, all that. Your mother gave it to me, straight out. Seven, eight years ago, she sent me the deed in the mail. Damnedest thing.” Mr. Rollins eyed his son. “And this was
after
she put the screws to me in the divorce. Of course, I don't have the cash to keep it up, but I'm working on that.”

“Are you?” His words, with their simplicity and their skepticism, hung in the air.

“Yes,” his father said evenly. “I am.” He held his son's gaze a moment.

Rollins felt an understanding pass between them—an understanding that both locked them together and blew them apart. The edge to Henry's words and the silence that followed seemed to acknowledge that he suspected his son knew all about his financial dealings involving Neely's inheritance—and dared Rollins to do anything about it. And there was another message, too: I am past caring about your mother. And now I am past caring about you.

Rollins drained the last of his coffee. It was over. This was the time. He'd go to the bathroom off the front hall, start the water running, then dash to his car and drive away. “Mind if I use the bathroom?” Rollins asked.

“Actually, I do.”

Rollins tensed. Was there no escape?

“Aw, don't give me that look,” his father said. “I've just got a little problem with the plumbing. You'll have to go out back. Just a piss you need, right?”

Rollins nodded.

“Go out in the bushes there past the door. That's what I do.”

Rollins got up and went to the kitchen door. It was dark out, but the bushes were lit up by the light from the kitchen. Rollins stepped toward them, settled himself, then released a long yellow stream. He zipped up, turned back, just to look. He saw no sign of his father. This was his chance. He should have run, right then. He might have made it. But when he turned back toward the lawn, he saw the slender cro
quet wickets. And then a gust of wind sent the stench his way, and he remembered the mound of dirt beyond. He glanced back at the kitchen once more, saw nothing, then crossed the lawn to the hay field. In the moonlight, the dirt pile was a heap of black. He still had the flashlight in his pocket and he shined his beam down into the hole beside the mound. It went in about a foot or so before it bottomed out onto white plastic. He swept away some loose dirt, and made out a word scrawled in Magic Marker.
Septic.
The lid was about eighteen inches across.

Wide enough to fit a body through.

Rollins crouched down, recalling the facts of Neely's disappearance. What had been a notion hardened into an inescapable fact. He flicked the flashlight off, shoved it back into his pocket where it clicked dully against the wristwatch, and dropped to his knees. “Oh, God.” He brought his hands to his face as horror spread through his chest.

Above him, a few stars peeked through the lightly overcast skies, and a quarter moon over Bald Mountain shone dully upon him, casting a dim shadow on the field around him. The breeze had turned chilly, and it cut through his shirt. The full weight of the universe had settled down upon him.

Neely was buried in the septic tank beneath him.

He could still get to his car from there. He'd just go. Quickly. He'd be free of his father, and what he'd done, forever. Free of his family, free to start a new family with Marj.

He stood up and started running toward the far side of the house. It was 8:34.
Quickly
. Some change jiggled in his pocket; he reached in a hand to still it, for fear his father would hear.
Quickly
. To the road and then to his car, and then—