Page 4

Hearing commotion in the hall, Joseph’s intruder could have fled but hasn’t, has instead chosen to draw a knife.
Erin is upstairs. Tilly, too. Joseph can think of few people less qualified to protect them than himself. He wants to creep back upstairs to his wife and stepdaughter and wait for help. But help isn’t coming, not yet. Even if he grabs his phone and manages to call the police, they’ll take time to arrive – if they show up at all. A confrontation, now, feels inevitable. Perhaps he should try to seize the initiative.
He can’t control his breathing. His body feels as insubstantial as air. Joseph kicks open the kitchen door, advances over the threshold.
He raises the torch in his fist and thumbs the power switch, throwing out a cone of light so brilliant he’s almost blinded but not quite, because he does see the knife that flashes through the air towards him, and when he jerks backwards even as his momentum carries him forward, it’s not enough to avoid the blade, which slices him clean across the abdomen – and then he’s skidding on his heels, crashing on to his tailbone with a jolt that rattles his teeth.
The torch flies from his hand. It clatters across the floor, throwing carnival shadows around the kitchen. When it comes to a rest, Joseph is pinioned by its light. Four thousand lumens is three times brighter than a car’s full beam.It fills his head, washes away colour, reduces his world to monochrome.
He squints, peers down at himself, can’t figure out why there’s no blood. And then, across his abdomen bleached white by the torchlight, a black line appears, finer than a papercut. It opens like a mouth, as if to speak, but instead of words it gushes black ink. Illusion or not, Joseph can’t help thinking that this really is the truth of what’s inside him.
And then the pain hits.
TWO
Pain that makes him clench his teeth and groan. That makes him puff his cheeks and blow. Pain that makes him forget, just for a moment, that he isn’t alone in here. That this isn’t over.
The tomahawk lies near Joseph’s right hand. It’s a stark silhouette more suited to an apocalyptic movie scene than a suburban kitchen. He scissors his legs, tries to get them under him. His heels scribe wet, black skid marks across the floor. With each contraction of his abdominals, his torso spills more ink. He snatches at the tomahawk, grateful that he’s blocking the door, that his family is still behind him. From somewhere beyond that halo of white light he hears movement. He raises his free hand in front of his face, anticipating another knife slash. Instead he hears a voice, a name. It scoops up his brain and whirls it around and around, because only one person in the world has ever called him that: ‘Dad?’
It’s phrased as a question, framed in shock and disbelief. Joseph groans. Despite the pain of his injury, he pushes himself to his feet. Recovering his breath, he reaches out to the wall.
‘Don’t,’ Max hisses, but Joseph’s fingers have already touched the switch. Overhead, the LED spots banish the shadows so abruptly that the room seems to flip, nearly throwing Joseph off balance. Colour floods in. Black ink morphs into bright blood. And there’s a lot. Smeared wet across his torso – across the floor, his legs and his feet. But what Joseph sees before him frightens him even more. He feels like he’s stepped into an alternate reality to confront a time-shifted version of himself. They’ve always looked similar, he and Max. Right now, though, except for their age difference and the weapons they’re both clutching, they appear almost identical. Max is in his underwear, too. And he’s similarly streaked with blood.
Joseph stares, aghast. Did he swing the tomahawk without thinking, eviscerating his son in the dark? If so, that’s a scenario so shocking even the YouTube guy didn’t foresee it.
He drops his weapon on the worktop. Across the kitchen, Max keeps his blade high, as if he’s thinking about slashing his father again. There’s a cornered-animal look to him, a white-faced terror Joseph hasn’t seen since the night, five years ago, that delineates thenowfrom thebefore. His eyes are wild, unfocused – as if captured, still, by whatever trauma they just encountered.
Max blinks, flinches. The knife slips from his fingers, clatters to the floor. Suddenly he looks present in a way he hadn’t moments earlier. When he speaks, his words come out in a rush. ‘Oh Jesus, Dad, Jesus, I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking, I just freaked. I never heard you come down. I thought … My head’s all over the place. I thought someone was …’ His gaze drops to his father’s abdomen. ‘Ahshit. I can’t— We’ve got to stop that bleeding.’
‘Are you hurt?’ Joseph asks, stumbling forward. He seizes his son’s shoulders, searches in vain for visible injuries.When he cups Max’s head, tilting it to examine his neck, the boy pulls away.
‘I’m fine, Dad. Seriously. You’re the one who’s cut. Let me get the first-aid kit. We need to—’
‘Joe?’
Erin’s voice, from the landing. It’s almost too much to process. Joseph had asked her to stay in the bedroom. Clearly, she hadn’t trusted him enough to do that. Looking around the blood-spattered kitchen, he can hardly blame her.
‘It’s OK,’ he shouts. ‘It’s just Max.’
‘Max?’
Now, he hears footsteps on the stairs. His eyes meet his son’s. Frantically, the teenager shakes his head. Joseph backtracks across the floor. ‘Don’t come down here, Erin,’ he says, closing the door and bracing it.
But Erin has already reached the hallway. He hears her bare feet slap towards the kitchen.
‘What’s going on?’ she demands.
‘I just need to talk to him. Please, go back to bed.’
‘Joe, it’s threea.m.’
‘I know. I’m sorry. We’ll be done soon.’
He hears her approach the door, senses her on the other side. The doorknob turns in his hand. He grips it tightly. ‘Erin, seriously. Go back to bed. I need to talk to Max. Father and son, alone.’
Even through the closed door he knows that he’s wounded her, that this will only exacerbate the problems their marriage has been facing.
The pressure on the doorknob ceases. Silence, now, from the other side. Joseph senses his wife’s thoughts – all the responses running through her head. Finally, she retreats, back along the hall and up the stairs.