“Your family?” she repeated.
Daniel nodded, looking straight ahead at the road as he drove. The shadows were lengthening, the gloom descending. Through the endless stand of trees along the roadside, fields and hills were visible.
“It’s a composite,” he said. “You know, like a collage.” He glanced down at the photograph and pointed at the figure’s left hand. “That’s my hand. The right one’s my mother’s.”
“What?”
“And the chin, there, is my sister’s. That’s my brother’s… forehead, I think, yeah—and that’s his nose, too. The clothes, I—I’m not sure.”
“And the eyes?”
“My father’s.”
“Daniel, what is this? I mean, why?”
His hands tightened on the steering wheel. Paula found herself staring at his left hand. The one from the picture.
“Daniel, why?”
He shook his head. “My father’s a madman, that’s why. No reason for it, he’s just… Well, yeah, to him there’s a reason. This, to him, shows us as a group—close-knit. “One optimally functioning individual organism,” he used to say.
Paula looked at the picture with distaste, then slid it back into the briefcase from which Daniel had taken it.
“It’s grotesque,” she said, rubbing dust from her hands.
“He sent that to me three years ago, when I had just moved away from home. Made it out of old photographs, begging me to come back. God, he must have worked on that thing for weeks—the joins are almost invisible.”
He fell silent, perhaps watching the road for their turn-off, perhaps just thinking. After a while he sighed, shook his head.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know why I”m doing this—why I’m giving in and going back after all this time.”
Paula moved closer and put her hand on his arm. “He’s human—he’s alone. Your mother just died. You didn’t even go to the funeral, Daniel—I think this is the least you can do. It’s only for a few days.”
Daniel looked resentfully thoughtful. “Maybe that’s the problem. Maybe that started the whole thing.”
“What?”
“Loneliness. He must be awfully lonely, though, to have come up with his obsessions. He used to play with a jigsaw puzzle, Paula, made entirely out of a shattered pane of glass. For hours. And then that… thing.” He gestured towards the briefcase, but Paula knew he meant what was in it.
“You’ll survive,” she said.
“Yeah. To survive. That’s the whole thing.”
There was another silence as he considered this.
“Funny,” he said presently. “That’s exactly what my father was always saying.”
The shadows had swallowed the old farmhouse by the time they found it, trapped in ancient trees at the end of a rough dirt road. The sun was gone, only a pale wash of orange light marking the direction in which it had sunk. Paula looked for a sign of light or life around the weathered building, but found only flooding blackness, shining where it was a window, splintered and peeling where it was the front door.
Daniel stopped the car and stretched back in his seat, yawning. “I feel like I’ve been driving for a month.”
“You look it, too,” said Paula. “I offered to drive…”
He shrugged. “I”ll get to sleep early tonight,” he said, pushing open the door. They got out of the car, into the quiet grey evening.
“Is anyone home?” Paula asked as Daniel came around the car.
“With my luck, yes. Come on.”
They walked through a fringe of dead grass, then carefully up the rotten steps. Daniel paused at the top, stepping back on the step beneath him. It creaked and thumped. Creaked and thumped. Daniel smiled nostalgically. Paula reminded herself that he had grown up in this house, out here in the middle of nowhere, far from the city and the campus where she had met him, where they were now living together. Daniel never spoke of his childhood or family, for reasons Paula was unsure of. He seemed bothered by his past, and perhaps somewhat afraid of it.
Across the porch, the door was a panel of emptiness, suddenly creaking as it opened. Paula tried to look through the widening gap; she jerked back as something pale came into view.
“Dad?”
The voice that replied was as worn and weathered as the house: “Daniel, son, you’ve come. I knew you would.” The dim pale head bobbed and nodded in the darkness, coarse grey hair stirring. Something white fluttered into view, lower in the frame of darkness: a hand. Daniel’s father was coming out.
“Um, I’m sorry I didn’t make the funeral, Dad. I was really busy with school and my job… uh…”
And here he came, swimming through the gloom, both white hands coming forward like fish, grasping Daniel. Paula saw the hunched dark figure of the old man only dimly; her eyes were fastened on those hands. They clutched, grabbed, prodded Daniel, exploring as if hungry. It was vaguely revolting. Daniel stood motionless; he had determined to be firm with his father, now he was faltering.
“Dad…”
Daniel pushed away one flabby hand but it was clever; it twisted, writhed, locked around his own. Paula gasped. The sluggish white fingers intertwined with Daniel’s. He looked up at her, aghast, silently crying for help.
“Uh, hello,” Paula blurted, stepping towards them.
The hands jerked, stopped. The old man came around.
“Who are you? Daniel, who is this?”
“Dad, this is Paula, I told you about her. We’re living together.”
Paula started to extend her hand. She remembered what might meet it, and drew away. “Hello.”
“Living together?” Daniel’s father said, watching him. “Not married?”
“Uh, no, Dad. Not yet, anyway.”
“Good… good. Good. It would weaken the bond, break the bond between us.” He did not even look at Paula again. His hands returned to Daniel, though not so frantically this time. They guided him forward into the house. Paula followed, shutting the door behind her, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the dark. When her vision had cleared, she could see Daniel and his father vaguely limned against a distant doorway; there was light beyond.
When she caught up, they were seating themselves on an antique sofa. It had been poorly kept; springs and padding spilled through in places. The room around them had been equally neglected; darkness lay upon it like soot. A single dull lamp glowed beside the sofa.
Daniel caught Paula’s eye when she entered, warning her away from them. She sat in a nearby chair. Daniel was shrugging away the proddings of his father, fighting off the creeping fingers. But they kept coming, peering around the long shadows, then hurrying across Daniel while he sat at last unmoving, silent.
“We… we were terribly sorry to hear about your wife,” said Paula. The sound of her words muffled the rustling noises.
“Hm?” The old man sat up, leaving Daniel for a moment. His eyes were sharp, intense. “Yes, it’s bad… bad. She and I, we were—close, towards the end. Locked. Like this.” He clasped his two puffy hands together before his face, staring at them.
Daniel took this opportunity to move to a chair beside Paula, where his father could not follow. The old man hunched after him, hands straining, but didn’t rise.
“Daniel, come back here. Sit beside me.”
“Uh, I think I’d better stay right here, Dad.”
“Ah.” The old man hissed like a serpent. “Stubborn. You were always stubborn—all of you. Your sister, your brother, they both resisted. Look what happened to them.”