There are various definitions and traditions when it comes to the length of a lunar month. An anomalistic lunar month is around 27 days. A synodic lunar month is 29. I know this because I’ve always been interested in astronomy. I mention it because it is one of the few useful reference points I was able to carry over from the life I had before I went to visit my father two years ago.
I use the synodic lunar month as a basis for marking my calendar every month, not because I need it to keep track, but because it allows me the illusion of order and sanity. In reality, I keep track of the moon by the building pressure at the base of my skull, by the growing volume and frequency of the demands being whispered in the darkest chambers of my mind. Because this isn’t a struggle I have once a month, or just in the last days leading up to the moon rising fat and full in the sky. No.
Every night I fight the demon.
“You look just like I remember.”
I tried to hide my contempt at the empty platitude. My father hadn’t seen me in nearly thirty years, and I’d only been eight at the time. I stood before him now a grown man older than he’d been when he left, and he wanted to act as though he would recognize me on sight. As though some dishonest reference to some long-forsaken memory would bridge the gap of all those years in a moment. Make me forget the fact that he abandoned his family not just the day he left, but every day since that he hadn’t come back.
It was too strong a word to say I hated him though. If anything, my opinion of him was mainly one of disinterest and mild pity. He was in his early sixties, but he looked decades older than that. Whether it was drugs, hard living, or guilt, something had been burning away at him for some time. Maybe, I considered, it was just the cancer. The malignant tumor that lay sleeping and growing fat in his lung, and according to his letter, would see him dead within a month.
It wasn’t pity that had brought me all the way from my life in Indiana, however. It was the inheritance that he promised if I would come see him just one time before he passed. Fifteen years earlier, pride might have made me crumple up the letter or write him back, telling him to fuck off and keep his money. But that younger version of me didn’t have a mortgage or crushing student debt. The me that stood before this twisted ember of a man had seen enough of the world to know that it was a hostile, dirty place that was made more tolerable by money.
And money was something that my father had plenty of.
The day before this arranged meeting, I had met my father’s attorney at an office upstate. The man gave me a booklet detailing all of my father’s finances, holdings, and properties. He was a millionaire several times over.
I’d glanced up at the attorney as I read through the booklet. Asked him how my father had made all this money when he had been poor last I knew. The man had shrugged with a smile. Said my father had been lucky over the years and made a few good investments that paid off big. Said he’d known him for twenty years, and my father was a great man.
He didn’t look great when I met him. His eyes were wet and weak as he looked at my face, judging my reaction to his opening gambit at reconnecting with his long-lost son. I faked a smile and nodded.
“You look older. How’re you doing? Pain bad?”
My father shook his head. “Nothing the meds can’t handle. Main thing that bothers me is not being able to get out of this thing.” He patted the arms of the electric wheelchair he sat in, his lower half covered in a thick woolen blanket. “Two months ago I was jogging five miles a day. And now I need help wiping my ass.”
I shifted uncomfortably. I wanted this over with as soon as possible, but I knew there would be some expectation that I stay for awhile if he was going to give me anything in the will. Possibly even try to rope me into sticking around until he died. Even with all the staff and nurses, he might want someone here that gave a shit. I just wasn’t sure I could fake it that long.
Waving his hand, he went on. “But you didn’t come to hear me complain. And I have no right to bitch, especially to you. Not after I left you kids and your mother high and dry like I did. Never tried to reach out and help, even after I got all this…” He lowered his gaze. “I know it’s cliché, but all this cancer shit has made me wake up. I know I did wrong by you, and I’m sorry.”
I tried to fight down the anger, but it slipped through my fingers. “Yeah, you fucking are. Luke nearly died two years after you left. Mama didn’t have the money for the medical bills and…What am I doing? Like you fucking care. Why am I here at all?”
He raised his hands. “Please wait. Just wait. We both know you’re here because of the inheritance. I contacted you because you’re the oldest child and you were always good and fair. I want you, want all of you, to share in all that I’ve acquired.” My father gestured around at the massive study we were in. “And I want you to decide who gets what. Your mother, Luke, your sister Lynn, you dole out the remnants of my life as you see fit. I feel like it’s the least I can do after all these years.”
Gritting my teeth, I nodded. “Fine. What do you want me to do? Hang out for awhile? What will it take for us to get it?”
He smiled. “A straight, no-nonsense question. I like that.” When I just stared at him, he cleared his throat and went on. “I may be a foolish man in many ways, but I am not a fool. I know you don’t want to be here, and I have no illusions that the guilt and regret of a dying man is going to magically recreate a bond that I gave up long ago. All I ask is that you shake my hand, tell me that you forgive me, and that you accept taking on all my possessions upon my death.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Is this some kind of trick? Are you in deep debt or something?”
My father laughed. “No, far from it. You saw from your meeting yesterday with Anthony that I’ve done very well these past few years.”
Nodding warily, I shrugged. “Okay. So that’s it? I shake your hand, say I forgive you, and that I want to inherit everything when you die. That’s all? Then I can go?”
“That’s all. You’ll be provided a copy of the new will as you leave and it’ll be filed in probate court in the morning. You don’t even have to come to my funeral. All the arrangements have already been made.” He leaned forward slightly in his chair and stuck out his hand. “Do we have a deal?”
I hesitated for a moment. This was all so strange, and while I could understand guilt and his impending death as reasonable motivations, I still wondered if I was somehow being tricked.
But to what end? I didn’t think he was faking having cancer, and I didn’t have anything to offer him other than a comfortable lie to ease his conscience before he passed. I glanced around the study, thought about the massive house it was a part of, the other estates he had around the world. It would change all of our lives forever. How could I give all that up, keep that kind of money and security from my family, just because I was uncomfortable?
The answer was that I couldn’t. So I stepped forward and shook his hand. Told him I forgave him, and that I would accept taking everything when he died.
It was as his grip on my hand tightened that I first knew something was terribly wrong.
He pulled me closer even as he pushed himself toward me, the sudden shifts of weight sending me off balance and stumbling. I would have recovered, but his bottom half was free of the blanket now—a coiled tangle of black-green meat that lashed out and wrapped around me tightly, driving me back onto the ground as I began to scream.
My father pulled himself up my legs and torso, his strong hands and the whipcord legs that made up his lower body painful and heavy on me as I struggled to get free. My first thought was that he was going to kill me or start biting out chunks of my chest. I kept screaming and struggling, but I was barely moving at all now. As his face drifted down, I felt my body growing distant, as though pushed away by the tides of his dead eyes boring into mine. He was going to do it. Whatever he was, it was, he was going to eat me, starting with my face.
Instead, he planted a light kiss on my lips. I felt my face go numb as I tried to move my head, but then it was over. Not just the kiss, but all of it. When I sat up and looked around, my father was gone.
I sold off that house and all of the other properties. From the start I knew that I didn’t want anything that had ever belonged to that man, that thing, near my family. It was a few weeks after the last house had been sold that I started to feel something growing inside of me. When it was strong enough, it started directing my actions when I slept. Speaking to me when I was awake.
Even when it was just a low hum of words scratching at the back of my head, I could recognize the voice of my father.
He said this was a necessary thing for him to live on. He needed a host and he needed to kill. He hoped that I didn’t mind helping with both.
I refused, of course. It only took a couple of months to realize that he grew stronger with the moon, and when it was full, he could kill no matter how hard I fought him. I begged him to stop, but he only laughed. He told me that I needed to develop a stronger stomach, or if I was too weak, there was always the other option.
I could share my true inheritance with my family.
I wouldn’t mind seeing your mother again. Could be fun. And Lynn is in college now, right? I could join a sorority. It chuckled. The choice is yours. I know what I’d pick. Time to see if you’re really my son.
I didn’t answer him. There was no point, because there was no real choice. He won’t let me kill myself, and isolating or confining myself doesn’t work. At the end of each month, I drive to a new random place. At least…I think it’s my choice to do that…it gets blurry when the last day is close. I tell myself that the randomness makes the horrible things we do more fair. Like an accident or an Act of God.
And I can keep him at bay 28 days out of the month. Even on the 29th day I try, but it’s no use. His grip is too tight.
I don’t see my family any more. They try to contact me, but I ignore it. I stay on the move and won’t respond to messages. They need to forget about me, let me go. I don’t know what my father is or what he can do, and I won’t risk them getting hurt by him again.
I know I’m getting to where I don’t go around people much at all. I spend most days watching t.v. or sleeping. Marking time alone until the sun goes down. Dreading how quickly the darkness comes.
Because just past twilight I feel the familiar scratching at the back of my head, like a cat asking to come in for the evening. And then it’s fully awake, pushing at me, trying to shove me down, to take me over, until the next sunrise.
Someone watching me would think it very odd—a tired-looking young man sitting alone in a fancy room somewhere, staring into the distance with fixed concentration for hours on end. A strange, but very placid, scene.
But inside, it’s very different. It’s shoving and clawing and biting. Pain and fear and dread as I feel my strength begin to go. Every night I fight the demon, and every night ends with me crying and screaming as I push the thing back down for a few more hours. Most nights it slips back into the dark nest it’s made in my soul without threat or complaint—it knows the sun is coming up soon anyway.
But some nights, when I’m at my most broken and alone, I beg it to stop. To leave. To end this. Without fail, it repeats the offer to share my burden with the people I love. So far, I’ve managed to refuse every time.
Those nights are always the worst. Not because I’ve been lowered to begging or because I feel so utterly isolated in my father’s trap. It’s because of what he does as he slithers back down inside me for the day.
He laughs. It’s a nasty, inhuman laugh that says I don’t see the joke yet, but someday I will. That someday I’ll be laughing beside him, readying myself for the next night.
Comments