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“You don’t know what to say, I am sure. Did you know you had a father this side of the Atlantic?”
“You never wrote. You never called…”
My depressive sarcasm is missed entirely.
“I didn't know where you were. Your mother hid in plain sight and she did it extremely well. I could not travel to America. I have certain legal issues that make entering your country unfeasible.”
I can’t say I am surprised. This man has an air of sin and crime and cruelty about him. He says he is my father, but I have no connection to him. He is just another older stranger who likes to wear dark clothes and wander about in misty conditions. I see nothing of myself in him. Nothing at all.
“Am I supposed to be overjoyed?”
“You can be whatever you are, girl. But you should know that you do not have to stay with these people. And you should know that you are not alone in the world. You do have family.”
“You.”
“Yes. Me.”
“What’s your name?”
“Craig.”
Craig. What a strangely normal name. Sounds like it should belong to an accountant or something. I am not silly enough to mistake him for someone benign, though. My mother did run away from him, and I would put money on her having a good reason.
“What do you think about angel blood, Craig?”
“I think it is superstition of the kind these poor bastards cling to in the effort to keep themselves relevant in a world that no longer needs them. God has been replaced in the lives of the everyman. Even if angel blood was real, it wouldn’t be nearly as powerful as the social contagions blighting every corner of this forsaken world.”
I am talking theology in the woods with a man who says he's my dad. Every day is weird in this place, but this is weirder than usual.
“I don't know you. Obviously. So. This might seem like a big deal to you, but…”
“I have a flat in town, and a cat named Nibbles. I make good baked beans on toast, and I work at the local supermarket. It may not be much, but it pays what bills I have. I live an ascetic life, free from ties.”
Sounds like a simple, plain, maybe even pleasant life. Also sounds like the sort of life a serial killer lives, simple and without connection to others. Cats basically encourage serial killing, or at least, they don’t specifically look down on it.
"You never got married?”
“I was not made for marriage. I was going to have a family and that was taken from me. You were taken from me. And your brother. I gave up after that. I left the priesthood. They betrayed me.” He gestures back toward the abbey with a pointy finger of accusation. “Bryn helped your mother take you and hide you. I never got to see you born. I never got to watch you grow up. I was denied all the rights of a parent because of that sanctimonious prick.”
“Why did she leave you?” Time for the big question.
“I beat her for being a demon fucker.”
And there’s the admission of domestic violence, though of course, it is, as always, couched in some kind of excuse.
“Okay. Nice knowing you, Craig. Good luck at the checkouts.”
“Don’t go.”
I look at him, and I feel a mixture of hatred, disgust, and pity. “Why shouldn’t I go?”
“Because you are being used, and I am offering you a way out. They will break you. Bryn will hurt you.”
“Bryn killed Jonah.”
Craig doesn't even flinch. “Of course he did. He could not risk me knowing my son.”
“I’ll look you up if I ever want baked beans with cat fur in them,” I say. “In the meantime, I’m going back…”
“Why?”
“Because you're creepier than they are, and considering Bryn murdered my brother, that’s saying a lot. Maybe you could take that into account, you know, presentation-wise. Maybe don’t come and drag me into the forest next time.”
Craig’s face performs an unpleasant contortion. “You’ve got her mouth.”
“Yeah? You want to beat me for sass? Like you did Mom?” I screw my face up in turn. “She left you. She ran away and she married a man who couldn’t pronounce asparagus properly. Aspabagus. That’s how he said it, the man who raised me. That man was my, our, real father. You’re a weird man in the fog. That’s all.”
The fog is getting thicker. I’ve waited too long to get away. It's trickling inside me, taking its misty tendrils and reaching into my being. It's making the world swim and shift.
I have seen monsters in the fog. I have seen the death and torture of my brother. I have seen truths and torturous pains. I brace myself for what I can only imagine I will see in his stead. My biological father must have been true evil for my mom to have fled him. I watch him with narrowed eyes, expecting him to turn into something like a ten-foot-tall behemoth with obsidian eyes, or a literal demon drooling vile poison, or a serpent of evil… but nothing like that happens. He appears before me older and weaker, and more broken, with the hint of a misty cat about his legs. He is genuine. And he is mundane.
