"There must have been more."
Sparks looked back at Doyle. "The priest went out of his way to warn me that my father was in a deep state of shock when they had spoken, that he might have been, God rest his soul, even quite deranged in the torment of his final hours. Therefore I should not consequently accept everything he, my father, had said to the man as gospel. I looked into his eyes: I knew the fellow, this priest, I'd known him since I was a child. A family friend, kind, well-meaning. Weak. And I knew he was withholding something from me. I was well versed enough in sacred doctrine to threaten him straight-faced with the damnation of Judas if he lied to me about my father's last confession. That quickly melted his resolve. He handed over to me the second half of Father's letter. I read it. It became clear that what the priest had hoped were the mad ravings of a dying man, his mind ravaged by pain, was in fact the unspeakable truth."
Sparks paused, steeling himself before carrying Doyle the last few steps into the core of his nightmare.
"Theirs had never been an easy marriage, my father wanted me to know. Two strong wills, two independent spirits. They had known great passion and caused each other tremendous sorrow. During their life together, he had loved other women. He offered no apology. He expected no sympathy or understanding. Shortly before Alexander was born, their difficulties reached such an impasse that he accepted the post in Cairo as a trial separation. Stung by his withdrawal, Mother formed an unnatural attachment to the little boy, calling upon Alexander to fill a role in her life for which he was quite naturally ill-suited. The effects were unwholesome.
"During a brief, unsuccessful reconciliation, my sister was conceived. Father returned to Egypt unawares. He did not even learn of the pregnancy until weeks after her birth. By the time he could free himself to return to England, the disaster had already occurred. Mother was severed; she desperately craved the comforting, unconditional love she had come to depend on from Alexander, but she was also unable to deny the horror her eyes had witnessed. Father wanted the boy sent away forever, punished, made a ward of the state. Self-divided as she was, my mother threatened to take her own life if he initiated such an action. Thus stalemated, Father took his leave once again. A year later, in a last attempt to salvage the tenuous covenant remaining between them, my father returned from overseas for good and extracted from her the compromise that resulted in Alexander's banishment, a third pregnancy, and the reorganization of their marriage around a second son. The son they would raise together. A son beloved by both parents, not one exclusively. I don't believe they were altogether unhappy during my early years. Far from it. They surrendered to the life they had forged and made their sorry peace with it."
Sparks flicked the butt of his cigar down into the turbulent
current. Doyle was reeling inside. He braced himself, for he sensed the worst of all was about to come.
"On the night they died, my father retired early to his rooms. He read for a while, then fell asleep before the fire. My mother's voice woke him, crying out in pain. Going to her chamber, he discovered her bound hand and foot to the posts of the bed. He was struck from behind and fell, unconscious. When he regained his senses, he was tied securely to a chair. My mother was on the bed as before. A figure was on top of her, assaulting her intimately. A figure all in black. She was screaming as if she had lost her mind. The figure completed the loathsome act and turned and smiled, and my father was greeted by the face of his oldest son."
Doyle turned away, short of breath, gasping for air. He was afraid he might be ill.
"Alexander was in no hurry to take leave of their company. He had already killed all the servants in the house; with gruesome detail, he described how each of them had died. He held my parents prisoner in that corrupt purgatory for more than four hours. He poured kerosene onto the bed, dousing my mother. He lit one of father's cigars and sat beside her, blowing on the tip, reddening the ash. He held it on her skin and told her not to bother with her prayers: They would not be sent to hell when he killed them for their sins against him. They were already there: This was hell. And he, their tormentor, was the Devil.
"Alexander untied my father and presented him with a choice: You can now either make love to your wife for the last time or fight with me. My father attacked him in a blind rage. He was still a strong and powerful man, but Alexander beat him easily, expertly and unmercifully, taking him time and again to the edge of unconsciousness, each time pulling him back only to begin again, administering more refined punishments. Things were said to my father that made him realize this nightmarish automaton they were in the grasp of was not in any recognizable way a human being. At last he slipped away into the refuge of darkness.
"Father was awakened the last time by a terrible heat. His skin was burning and the room consumed by fire, the bed and my mother's body already destroyed. My father somehow got himself out of that room, into the hall. The whole interior was ablaze. He hurled himself through a window. The fall broke his legs. He dragged himself away from the house, where my friend from the stable found him."
Sparks exhaled heavily. He slumped slightly forward, his face in the shadows. Doyle leaned over the rail and was sick into the river. He coughed and sputtered, but it was not unpleasant to void his body of the liquor and rich food. It all seemed foul in the company of what he'd just taken in. He waited for his head to clear.
"Sorry ..." A half-whisper was all he could manage. "Sorry."
Sparks nodded imperceptibly and waited for Doyle to retrieve his dignity.
"I asked to see my father's body. Again the priest resisted, this time without conviction. My friend from the stable took me to a potting shed, the only structure on the grounds the fire had spared, where bodies recovered from the wreckage lay on rough tables under vulcanized sheets. I did not recognize my father's face. I looked at his hands. The gold of his wedding band had melted and reformed around the exposed bone of his ring finger. Then I noticed that in the palm of that hand a queer pattern was burned into the remaining flesh. I studied that pattern, drew it later from memory, and still later remembered where I had seen it before.
"Over the years, my father had brought from Egypt a great number of ancient artifacts. An entire room in our house was dedicated to his collection. I had always been fascinated by a silver insignia in the shape of the eye of Thoth. Aware of my interest, Father made a necklace of it and gave me the insignia on my seventh birthday. When we first met and Alexander gave me that black rock which he said was his most precious possession, to reciprocate I sent him my prized necklace in a letter. My father soon noticed it was missing. I told him I had lost it swimming in the river, never quite sure that he believed me.
"I knew Alexander had taken to wearing the necklace on his nightly visitations. He felt it possessed some mystic property, that its power somehow helped him remain invisible. So I knew that every word my father had spoken to the priest was true; he had ripped the insignia from Alexander's neck as
they fought. He wanted to die with that necklace in his hand. So I would see it, and I would know."
Doyle had by now regained enough self-possession to speak. "But Alexander must have reclaimed it from him."
"Not before it had left its mark seared into his flesh."
"Did they find Alexander?"
Sparks shook his head. "Vanished into the air. The school never saw him again. Alexander's course had been set for years; now his two most profound goals were accomplished. He was already far beyond the pale. Three weeks after the funeral, a package arrived at our solicitor's, addressed to me. Origin of postage unknown. A letter in a neutral hand described the murder of the boy at the beehives, the attack on the woman by the river, and the assault on the girl in Germany. It explained the origin of the keepsakes Alexander had given me over the years. And he included this: the last and most repellent of his trophies."