Experiment in Terror Book 9 - Page 58

But I shrugged. “Don’t worry about it. We aren’t here to tell her anything. If you want to keep on like you’ve been keeping on, I can do the same. I’m an old pro.” I know it wasn’t exactly polite, but I was throwing pa.s.sive digs in there whenever I could.

He nodded quickly. “Thank you,” he said. “I made some mistakes in my past.” He smiled unsurely at me. “Not you, Declan. Not those kind of mistakes. Other kinds. There’s a lot I would rather forget. But, not you. There hasn’t been a day that I haven’t thought about you.” He paused and then added like an afterthought. “Or Michael.”

For the first time, I was able to see my parents talk about Michael and his reality. My father said his name like he was scared. All this time I thought I was the one they didn’t want. All this time I had beating myself up.

“When I heard about Regine,” he said quietly, looking at the flowers along the stoop, “I wanted to reach out, to say something. But I was afraid. I didn’t know how I’d handle you boys. I didn’t know if I would ruin things.”

I knew what he meant to say – he didn’t know if he would get in s.h.i.t for abandoning his family.

I swallowed my grudge, for now, and gave him a sharp nod. “I understand,” I said. “Well, I turned out okay.”

“And Michael?”

“That’s probably a conversation for another time,” I told him. I looked at Perry. “We should go.”

She nodded and gave my father – my father – a cautious smile. “It was nice meeting you.”

As she walked down the steps, he called after her. “Wait, Perry you said your name was?” She nodded and he looked at me. “When are you getting married? You said she was your fiancé?”

“I don’t know,” I told him. “Sooner rather than later, I think.”

He appeared to think that through. The more I stared at him, the more I was pulled back in time, to the life I once I had, the life I never wanted back. I couldn’t quite forgive my father for what he had done – I could, would, never think or act like him. But at the same time, he wasn’t to blame for everything. My mother and Michael, they would have ended up the same, I was sure of it. I would still have seen ghosts. It was just life and the s.h.i.tty hand she throws you sometime.

But was I ready to have him back in my life, in some form? That remained to be seen. The fact that I could take it or leave it was a f**king good thing.

“I’ll send you an invite,” I told him. “It’s up to you if you want to come. It will be West Coast though, Seattle area.” Perry and I had discussed at least that much.

He seemed to be happy with that, his face relaxing. I gave him a nod, not about to call him dad or be intimate with him in any sort of way, and jogged down the steps to Perry.

“It was nice meeting you,” my father called after us, like an afterthought.

In unison Perry and I raised our hands. I waited until we were out of sight from the house before I let the tears fall from my eyes. I didn’t regret a thing we had done, but all these years of believing you don’t have a father do a number on you. I cried for the loss I had suffered and the falsity that he was still alive and enjoying life, for the anger that propelled me and compelled me day to day. And, truth be told, I’d always wanted my dad to look at me like he was proud of me, and despite seeing him today, that still hadn’t happened.

But I didn’t cry for long. I’m macho like that. A couple of manly tears fell and then Perry snapped me out of it with a wet kiss.

“Donald Trump has a boat named after him?” she asked, trying to lighten the mood.

I shrugged. “I don’t know, he must. The Trump.”

“Maybe it’s You’re Fired.”

“Bad Combover III.”

And we went on our way back to Manhattan, thinking of names for Donald Trump’s non-existent boat.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Perry

“Do you want to take a carriage ride?” Dex asked as we crossed through Central Park. “I could feed the horse a can of beans like in Seinfeld.”

“And why would that be a good idea?”

He shrugged. “It would be funny. Funny is a good idea.”

It seemed that the more Dex could laugh about things, the better he was dealing with Maximus’s death. Of course, it probably helped that the meeting with his father went better than expected. Well, I thought it went better than expected. Curtis O’Shea seemed to be an old man with many regrets and in the end would only benefit from knowing his son. I didn’t expect them to start calling each other or anything like that, but it was a good step and a good start, even if it never went anywhere.

I sighed, suddenly feeling a tightness in my chest.

Dex grabbed my hand, super concerned about everything now. “What’s wrong? What is it?”

I shook my head, not sure why it was so hard to breathe. “I just need to sit down.” I walked over to the nearest tree and slumped down onto the ground, my back against the trunk.

Dex crouched beside me, holding onto my hand still. “Perry. Do I need to get help?”

I shook my head. It felt like a panic attack more than anything but I didn’t really have much to panic about. Perhaps it was grief catching up to me.

“I’m okay,” I said, still gasping. “It’s just a –”

I was about to say panic attack when I screamed. I just screamed. There was a man in a suit standing just a few yards away in the meadow, his back to me. The suit was crisp, dark and his hair darker. His hands were cloven hooves.

My world twisted into tunnel vision and at the end of the tunnel the man turned around. I saw his face, the indescribable face of evil and suddenly sharp black fingers were reaching inside my brain. I felt them behind my eyes, in my lungs, pulling at my veins and arteries. It was in my gut, black, penetrating me with depravity and the cries of the meek and tortured.

I wasn’t alone in my head. I was in a battle for my soul. I would not let it in, I would not let it win.

With what I could, I closed my eyes and concentrated, putting those walls up, imagining barbed wire and shards of broken gla.s.s around me, keeping the thing out. I created a Fort Knox inside of me, hard and sharp and unbreakable.

Something softer, the demented, raspy voice said in my head, a voice that burned at me like battery acid.