Chapter 2 #2
The study is dominated by the imposing desk my father lived behind whenever he was home. It stands as an immovable sentry in the center of the room, forcing anyone who wants to enjoy the garden to go around it. In that way, my father made the garden his domain, too.
When he sat here, the desk’s cherry tones set off the red in his beard and eyebrows. And his ruddy complexion, when I made him angry. I smile, thinking of the time I left fingerprints on the polished surface. He knew how to connect fingerprints to crimes before anyone.
Though my only crime was coming into his space uninvited.
There was no other way for me to be in here, though.
I was forever trying to sneak in and glimpse his papers and journals so I could discover what he was working on.
If I could understand what he was doing, then I’d know why I never took priority. Or, better yet, I could join him.
Unlike when he was living, the desk is cleared of papers and notebooks and scribbles. Those are all safely locked away in the hidden cupboards built into the wall. I tried to read them once, after he died. I haven’t tried again.
All my dreams of a life spent working together were destroyed when I finally had access to what he was doing.
Because by the time he died, my father—renowned across Europe and esteemed at countless universities—was consumed with madness.
I thought I would find the work of a brilliant scientist, doctor, and researcher.
Instead, his journals detailed occult practices, theories about supernatural creatures walking among us, and outlandish tales of his own efforts to kill them.
A genius, reduced to paranoid ramblings about vampires, demons, and monsters.
Maybe that’s why he kept me out. On some level he recognized his own decline into insanity and was ashamed.
I could have helped him, if he’d only let me in. Or if I’d been brave enough to defy him and read his work without permission. I would have seen what was amiss. I would have intervened. I would have saved him.
But all that is in the past, any opportunity to truly know my father lost. I sit in the chair in front of the desk. It’s a little low, so I feel like a child once again.
“Hi, Papa,” I say. It doesn’t hurt to get no response. I rarely did when he was alive, either. In the five years since his death, little about our lives has changed. His is only a theoretical absence, his role in our lives always more vacancy than presence. It might be the saddest part of all.
I wipe under my eyes and turn my attention to the parcel. The return address is Budapest, which is a pleasant surprise. Dávid still sends me the occasional puzzle despite his claims that I broke his heart.
Inside, I find a neat stack of photographs tied with a ribbon. A note from Dávid dares me to solve what happened with only the images provided. I stack them on Papa’s desk, feeling only a twinge of discomfort. I’ll be careful not to leave fingerprints.
I’m looking at what I assume is a family, all dead, neatly laid out in a row on the floor. Two children, a woman, and a man. There are no visible wounds, other than blood dried around their nostrils. What did Dávid think I could discover from this?
I move on to the next photograph, a close-up of the first child.
The eyes are sunken in a strange way, though the body looks newly dead.
The next child, then the mother, have the same sunken eyes, but the father only has one that looks sunken, the other open wide.
That’s a clue. Another clue is that each body has only bled from the left nostril.
I’ve figured it out already. Dávid will be disappointed that it only took me five photographs instead of the entire stack.
In the next image, another angle of the four bodies, more of the room is visible. There’s a lamp on the floor next to the father’s head.
A table lamp on the floor, where a lamp has no business being. My heart rate ticks up.
I flip through the other photographs quickly, hoping for more images of the room.
There are no connections to the scene I saw earlier other than the oddly placed lighting—this is a family instead of a single man, and the method of murder is much different—but that lamp.
I can’t stop looking at it. I need to speak with Dávid.
Because if the police photographer didn’t move the lamp, it seems too strange to be a coincidence.
I almost don’t look through the rest of the photos, but I need to be thorough. I stop when I come to the last photo. It can’t be.
It is.
In a blurry shot, a crowd of onlookers gather behind an officer.
He’s holding up a slender rod ending in a delicate hook.
Over his right shoulder, the only thing in focus, the only thing that has been in focus in my heart or mind for the last five years, is her.
The woman I last saw in this very room, standing over the dying body of my father.
“I found you,” I whisper, my heart racing with a thrill that feels almost like falling in love.