Mark Edward Hall

Chapter 12

Annie and Doug were announced and they entered the study. De Roché sat with his back to them. He did not turn but simply addressed them from his vantage point in the plush leather chair. The only part of the man that was visible was the back of his head and the neatly-groomed shock of iron-gray hair that covered it.

“Good of you to come to your mother’s funeral,” were his first cutting words.

Ah yes, the games had already begun and Doug knew there would be no letup until the place was rank with carnage.

The effect was devastating, of course, as Doug knew it would be. De Roché was a master. He had shattered his daughter’s heart with that tactical first blow. Annie looked as if the wind had been punched from her body. This is how De Roché had become so powerful, Doug knew, by launching the first strike, attacking his enemies when their defenses were down, when they were most vulnerable. Over the years he had elevated this keen sense to nearly an art form. Annie had no strength for a fight. She was broken by the news of her mother’s murder. She only wanted to grieve.

“Daddy, I’m so sorry,” she said as if she herself had somehow been responsible for the tragedy. She went around to the front of her father’s chair, dropped down onto her knees and put her head in the old man’s lap, weeping.

The arrogant bastard sat stroking her head as if she were a pet.

Doug stood in the shadows feeling absurd, out of place, but mostly angry. He never had belonged here. The old man was right. Annie had never actually belonged to him. He could see that now. She had only been on loan to him, and now De Roché was calling in his debts. Annie would be snatched from his grasp in a heartbeat. Never had he felt closer to such an eventuality than at this very moment. The man had incredible power over people, and Doug knew that this was the reason Annie had run in the first place and had stayed away for so long. She feared his dominance, because she was powerless in the face of it. And she knew as did he, that De Roché’s power had somehow been strengthened by the death of her mother. His hold on Annie was greater now, and Doug knew something else, although he did not understand how he knew it. And it scared him more than anything ever had: the birth of Annie’s child would somehow give De Roché even more power, perhaps enough to . . .

“Douglas?”

“Yes, Edmund.”

“Come around so that I can look you in the eye when we speak.” He continued stroking his daughter’s hair.

Everyone was a servant to De Roché, jumping when he commanded, and this enraged Doug further. Nevertheless he did as he was told, going around to the front of the chair and facing the arrogant paragon. His hands balled suddenly and helplessly into tight fists, and he had to fight with himself to keep from slamming one of them into De Roché’s face. Watching Annie weep into the old man’s lap only added fuel to the fires of his rage. It was a tremendous effort just to keep his voice steady. “I’m sorry about Rachael,” he said. “I know how you must feel.”

De Roché looked up at Doug while stroking his daughter’s hair. “Do you now, Douglas?”

Doug nodded, trying with all his strength to keep his temper in check.

“Why have you kept my daughter from coming home?” De Roché asked.

Annie lifted her head and looked at her father. Her eyes were black wet pools. “He hasn’t, Daddy. It was my choice, not his.”

“Is that so?” the old man said, his piercing eyes dancing slightly with humor but never wavering, holding Doug’s attention with their hypnotic power. “Now you come . . . finally . . . when it is too late.”

“I’m so sorry, Daddy. I can’t undo what’s been done.”

“Things will be better now, child,” De Roché patronized. “I have you home again.”

Doug wanted to kill the bastard. If not for the way he was treating him, then for what he was doing to Annie. He was undoing everything Doug and Annie had worked so hard to gain. It had taken them years to build Annie’s confidence and self- esteem. And now, in an instant she had become Edmund De Roché’s obedient little girl again and he was punishing her for being bad, but worse, she was accepting his guilt, swallowing it like sustenance. He was playing her like a maestro, using her grief to manipulate her. The man was a monster. He didn’t give a shit about his dead wife or his daughter. He only cared about the game. Jesus Christ, he only cared about what Annie carried inside her.

“I don’t suppose there’s anything I can say or do that’ll be of interest to you,” Doug said, trying to keep his voice steady. “You had this scenario all worked out long ago.”

“Careful, Douglas, if you know what’s good for you. Mustn’t forget about our little bargain.”

“You manipulative bastard!” Doug said moving toward the chair. “I made no bargains with you.”

“Doug, no!” Annie cried.

“Why not, Annie? He deserves it.”

Annie had pulled away from her father and was standing now, facing Doug, her eyes gleaming wetly, her face contorted into a nearly unrecognizable mask of grief. “Can’t you see he’s upset? He’s just lost his wife!”

“Stop defending him, Annie. He never gave a shit about his wife. Jesus Christ you knew that. We talked about it.”

De Roché sat in his chair drumming his fingers, that same cruel smile creasing the corners of his handsome mouth. Doug saw that the man was enjoying this game, pitting husband against wife. Long ago Doug had heard that one of De Roché’s favorite sports was pitting killer hybrid dogs against one another in arenas of blood and death. A cruel and illegal game, yes, but men like De Roché, who were above the law, never seemed to pay for their crimes. This little show here in the study was an arena of De Roché’s making, and he was reveling in its success. Doug took several ill-advised steps toward the old man’s chair, raised his arm and showed De Roché the back of his hand.

“Doug, no!” Annie cried again.

De Roché’s smile did not waver. Calmly, he said, “Leave him be, child. Allow him to prove once again that he’s the fool I’ve always taken him for.”

There was a long moment while Doug stood studying De Roché’s face. The eyes were filled with expression, and Doug thought he could see things in them, like dark and fluttering reflections in pools of stagnant water; there were remnants there of unspeakable things, a history of atrocities; things so repugnant that Doug wanted to shrink away in terror. Was De Roché purposely giving him this glimpse inside himself in hopes of frightening him off? De Roché had power over men, this was incontestable. Perhaps he had even mastered sleight-of-hand or studied the quirks of hypnosis. Suddenly Doug knew that it wasn’t a ploy, that his instincts were telling him something real. He was actually seeing things in De Roché’s eyes, and De Roché was taking a perverse kind of pleasure in showing him. Doug dropped his arm to his side and backed away, feeling slightly disoriented, now more uneasy than angry.

“Your husband’s quite the hothead,” De Roché said to his daughter, and Doug was unsure if the man was relieved or disappointed that Doug had backed down.

“Yes, Edmund ,” Doug said. “I guess you bring out the best in me.”

“Please,” Annie said. “Mama’s dead. Can’t we stop this for her sake?” She wiped tears from her cheek with the heel of her hand.

“Yes, of course, child,” De Roché patronized. “Now come back over here and comfort your father.”

A terrible jolting pain slammed suddenly into Doug’s frontal lobe, not unlike hot needles being driven into his brain. He knew what it was, of course: the eternal bone shard, the prophetic thorn in his brain, and he also knew what was to follow. The pain was so electrifying that he nearly collapsed. His knees began to buckle, but Doug would not allow them to do so. He would not give De Roché the satisfaction of seeing him in his moment of sudden and agonizing weakness. He concentrated on keeping his kneecaps locked in place. As the pain began to subside Doug felt the familiar and dreaded stirrings of inspiration. A picture was forming in his mind, one of a much younger Annie cowering on her bed weeping and terrified, surrounded by a veil of shimmering black evil. The realization of what was happening was nearly enough to unlock Doug’s kneecaps and drive him to the floor. “You locked her away up there with that . . . thing, didn’t you, Edmund?” Doug said before he could stop the expulsion of words.

“What are you talking about, Doug?” Annie cried. She was moving closer to her husband now, her head moving slowly from side, her eyes wild with a mixture of terror and fury and incredulity. “What thing?”

“Oh, you know, Annie. I don’t have to tell you. It still lives inside you like a cancer. I see it sometimes in the dead of night when you don’t think I see. Isn’t it time you stopped denying it?”

“No!” Annie continued shaking her head as tears streamed down her cheeks.

“Look at him,” Doug said to Annie, speaking of her father. “He knows that I know. Just look at that smug expression on his face.” Annie spun around to look at her father and then quickly turned back to Doug, her eyes large and round and gleaming wetly.

“Douglas . . .” Edmund  said sternly.

“No, Edmund,” Doug said. “You can’t make me not see what I’m seeing. No matter how much you want it to be so.” Another violent burst of agony slammed through Doug’s frontal lobe, accompanied by a light so brilliant and white-hot that he thought his brain had been flash fried. The light subsided quickly but the image inside the light remained, burning like a negative against the blackness of his retinal nerves. His eyes were now nearly closed and the lids fluttered as though he were in the midst of an REM sleep. “Annie is on her bed in her room, weeping, rocking back and forth in spasms of fear and grief,” he said. “She’s hugging her rag doll. She’s young, perhaps no more than eight or nine years old. There is a terrible weight in her heart. She is so lonely, and so . . . empty. You’ve been there with her, haven’t you, trying to console her, trying to explain why it has to be the way it is? Now you’re gone, but in your place you’ve left her with that . . . thing, that . . .” Doug had to think before he could adequately articulate what his vision was telling him. “. . . That soul thief. That’s what it is, a soul sucker. A Godless creature that’s helping you to draw everything good from her. It’s part of some . . . bargain, isn’t it Edmund?”

“Douglas, enough!”

“Rachael never knew,” Doug continued as though De Roché hadn’t spoken. “She never knew about the bargain you made with evil. She suspected but she never really knew what you were doing to her daughter. Isn’t that right, you sick son of a bitch? Everything I’m seeing is real. You allowed that evil thing to nearly empty your daughter of her soul, so that you could prepare her . . . for . . . for . . .” Doug stopped. Deep inside him he knew what he could not say. It was too horrible, too evil.

“He’s a psychopath,” De Roché said to his daughter, who had spun back around and was now staring accusingly down at him. “Can’t you see it? Listen to him. He’s babbling on like a lunatic about soul suckers or some such nonsense.”

“That’s why she’s the way she is,” Doug went on, ignoring the old man’s insults. “That’s why Annie needs constant love and reassurance. You’ve allowed that thing to steal her soul. She has no natural defenses left.”

Something burst inside Annie’s head, like hot light bulbs shattering. “Shut up!” she screamed, spun around and struck Doug full force across the face with an open hand. The sound was a searing whip-crack on horseflesh.

The blow wiped the revelations from Doug’s mind in an instant, but not before he recognized it as an old enemy, at once familiar and foul. Its shimmering residue lingered, of course, like bad blood, even as copious amounts of the red stuff flowed from his nose and onto his upper lip. His eyes filled with burning tears and his heart filled with sorrow, although he did not give father or daughter the pleasure of a flinch. He stood for a moment staring sadly at his wife before doing an about face and walking smartly from the room.

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