Free The Monster Man of Horror House by Danny King

eventually reaching us via the ringing
of our telephone.
    “…
really don’t know what… … of course… yes yes…” came my father’s voice, floating
up the stairs to draw me to the landing banisters. “Well I’m sure there’s been
some sort of… yes, of course. No, that won’t be a problem. I’ll come right
away. Thank you. Thank you,” he said, setting the phone down, thinking for a
moment, and then turning for the stairs. I ducked back into my bedroom and hid
as he rushed past, then tip-toed along the landing until I could peek into my
father’s room. He was tearing through his wardrobe and emptying the drawers of
his dresser as he scoured for something in particular, only to turn several
shades of scarlet when he came up short.
    His
eyes lifted to the doorjamb and I fell back to avoid his glare, but he must’ve
seen my shadow recede for he barked at me to make my presence known.
    “Sorry
father, I was just…”
    “Where’s
my medal?” he demanded, in no mood to dally with my expositions. “Where is it?”
he said, rattling his emptier-than-usual biscuit tin.
    “I
don’t know father. Have you checked…” I started to suggest but father cut me
short.
    “I’ve
checked everywhere! I keep it in here, as you damn well know, so where is it?
What have you done with it?” he smouldered.
    “Father,
honestly…” I got as far as bullshitting before he barked at me once more.
    “Liar!
Liar, damn you! Who did you give it to?”
    “Father…”
    “You
gave it to some little scrubber, didn’t you? Who was she? Some little tart you
were trying to impress? Tell me boy before…” but now it was my father’s turn to
bypass a full stop when an uncomfortable notion suddenly occurred to him. “You
gave it to her , didn’t you? You gave
it to her , instead of… oh God. Oh you
foolish boy. What have you done? What have you done”
    “Father
please, I can explain,” I told him, although I think that was the very thing he
was most afraid of.
    “Mother
said I should never involve you in the sport,” he then bemoaned, catching me full
in the kisser with the full weight of that one. “She said you weren’t up to
it.”
    “Mother
knew?” I almost choked.
    “Of
course she knew. How could she not with all mine and father’s comings and goings?”
he contended, which was a fair point, if totally fucking insane.
    “But…”
    “Mother
understood the sport for what it was. And she gave me her total and unequivocal
loyalty,” he vented, rising to him feet and dropping the biscuit tin on the
bed. “Now be a man and come clean,” he ordered, utterly unmoved by deafening
hypocrisy claxons that were suddenly going off all around us. “You gave it to
that harlot, didn’t you? You gave it to that whore?”
    “I
didn’t know about the sport when I gave it to her. I still thought I was
bargaining for our lives, so I paid her off with your medal and made it look
like a disappearance. I thought I was doing the right thing at the time,” I pleaded
wondering if this was a good time to tell him about the mattress cash he no longer
had either.
    “So
you gave her my medal. And how exactly did you explain this benevolence to
her?” he asked.
    “I…
I just made out that I was a Good Samaritan, intent on saving fallen women,” I
blarneyed, though this blarney barely made it past his eyebrows.
    “Did
you indeed?” he flickered.
    We
stood facing each other across the bed for a second or two before I decided to
fill the air in-between us with a little more hot air to distract my father from
reading between the lines.
    “She
doesn’t know about us, she doesn’t have anything on us, we don’t have to worry
about her,” I promised.
    “Don’t
we now?” he replied, chewing on the gristle out of my assurances before asking;
“And so what about Sergeant Crow?”
    “Sergeant
Crow? Who’s he?”
    “Sergeant
Crow is the fellow who’s just rang me. He’s holding your young strumpet at
Lincoln Police Station