His Father's Son Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  One

  Two - Leaving New Mexico

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine - The Hand of God

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen - After the Date

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen - The Promise

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-one

  Twenty-two - Friends

  Twenty-three

  Twenty-four

  Twenty-five

  Twenty-six

  Twenty-seven - Writing Habits

  Twenty-eight

  Twenty-nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-one - Philip Glass Is the Lord of the Flies

  Thirty-two

  Thirty-three

  Thirty-four

  Thirty-five

  Thirty-six - I Am God

  Thirty-seven

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  “BENTLEY LITTLE KEEPS THE HIGH-TENSION JOLTS COMING.” —Stephen King

  Praise for the Novels of Bentley Little

  The Academy

  “A tightly allegorical piece of horror.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  The Vanishing

  “A plethora of gore and perversion.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  The Burning

  “Stephen King-size epic horror.”—Publishers Weekly

  Dispatch

  “Little has the unparalleled ability to evoke surreal, satiric terror . . . should not be missed.”—Horror Reader

  The Resort

  “An explicitly repulsive yet surrealistically sad tale of everyday horror.”—Publishers Weekly

  The Policy

  “A chilling tale.”—Publishers Weekly

  The Return

  “A master of horror on par with Koontz and King . . . so powerful that readers will keep the lights on day and night.”—Midwest Book Review

  The Collection

  “Snippets of everyday life given a creepy twist.”

  —Booklist continued . . .

  “IF THERE’S A BETTER HORROR NOVELIST

  WORKING TODAY, I DON’T KNOW

  WHO IT IS.”

  —Los Angeles Times

  The Association

  “Haunting . . . terrifying . . . graphic and fantastic . . . will stick with readers for a long time. Just enough sex, violence, and Big Brother rhetoric to make this an incredibly credible tale.”—Publishers Weekly

  The Walking

  “Wonderful, fast-paced, rock-’em, jolt-’em, shock-’em contemporary terror fiction with believable characters and an unusually clever plot. Highly entertaining.”

  —Dean Koontz

  “Bentley Little’s The Walking is the horror event of the year. If you like spooky stories you must read this book.”—Stephen King

  “The Walking is a waking nightmare. A spellbinding tale of witchcraft and vengeance. Scary and intense.”

  —Michael Prescott, author of In Dark Places

  “Flowing seamlessly between time and place, the Bram Stoker Award-winning author ’s ability to transfix his audience . . . is superb . . . terrifying. [The Walking] has the potential to be a major sleeper.”

  —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

  The Ignored

  “This is Bentley Little’s best book yet. Frightening, thought-provoking, and impossible to put down.”

  —Stephen King

  “LITTLE POSSESSES THE UNCANNY

  ABILITY TO TAKE EVERYDAY

  SITUATIONS AND TURN THEM

  INTO NIGHTMARES.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “A singular achievement by a writer who makes the leap from the ranks of the merely talented to true distinction with this book. This one may become a classic.”

  —DarkEcho

  “Little is so wonderful that he can make the act of ordering a Coke at McDonald’s take on a sinister dimension. This philosophical soul-searcher is provocative.”

  —Fangoria

  The Revelation Winner of the Bram Stoker Award

  “I guarantee, once you start reading this book, you’ll be up until dawn with your eyes glued to the pages. A nail-biting, throat-squeezing, nonstop plunge into darkness and evil.”—Rick Hautala

  The Store

  “Frightening.”—Los Angeles Times

  The Mailman

  “A thinking person’s horror novel. The Mailman delivers.”

  —Los Angeles Times

  University

  “By the time I finished, my nerves were pretty well fried, and I have a pretty high shock level. University is unlike anything else in popular fiction.”

  —Stephen King

  ALSO BY BENTLEY LITTLE

  The Academy

  The Vanishing

  The Burning

  Dispatch

  The Resort

  The Policy

  The Return

  The Collection

  The Association

  The Walking

  The Town

  The House

  The Store

  The Ignored

  The Revelation

  University

  Dominion

  The Mailman

  Death Instinct

  SIGNET

  Published by New American Library, a division of

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street,

  New York, New York 10014, USA

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  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices:

  80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  First published by Signet, an imprint of New American Library,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  First Printing, September 2009

  Copyright © Bentley Little, 2009

  All rights reserved

  eISBN : 978-1-101-13620-1

  REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party
Web sites or their content.

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  One

  Steve Nye knew something was wrong when his mother called him at work.

  His mother never called him at work. She seldom called him period, and the truth was he couldn’t remember the last time they had spoken. Easter? Mother ’s Day? They didn’t exactly have the world’s closest family, and aside from birthdays and major holidays, he hardly ever saw his parents. So when Gina, the department secretary, told him that his mother was on line one, Steve braced himself, taking a long sip of coffee from the Starbucks cup next to his computer before pressing the lighted red button on his phone console. He took a deep breath, closed his eyes. “Hello? Mom?”

  “There’s something the matter with your father.”

  As usual, there was no greeting, no small talk, no introductory conversation, just the reason for her call, stated flatly, unadorned. He waited for more, not yet sure what to say.

  “He tried to kill me.”

  That got his attention. Steve opened his eyes, sat up straighter in his chair. “What happened?” he asked. “Are you all right?”

  His mother sighed. “Well, I have a broken wrist—”

  “Jesus!”

  A pause. “I think you should come over.”

  “Where are you? The hospital?”

  “No. I’m home.”

  “Home? When did this happen?”

  “Yesterday.”

  “Yesterday! Jesus, Mom, why didn’t you call me?”

  “There is no need for that type of language, Steven.” Her voice was stern, hard, and his muscles tensed involuntarily at the familiar tone. “That is twice now that you have taken the Lord’s name in vain.”

  He stood up to her. “I have a right to be upset, Mom. You should’ve called me when it happened.” The next question seemed almost impossible for him to ask, but he asked it anyway. “Where’s Dad? In jail?” His father was the most straight-and-narrow man he’d ever met, and just the thought of him sitting in a jail cell seemed not only incongruous but ridiculous. Steve tried to imagine the sight and couldn’t.

  “No. He’s in the hospital. Under observation.”

  “He really tried to kill you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Kill you,” Steve repeated. He still couldn’t believe it.

  “Yes.”

  “What happened?”

  “I’d rather not say over the phone. I think it would be better if you came over.”

  “Mom—”

  “I don’t want to talk about it over the phone.”

  “Okay, all right. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  As always, they both hung up without saying good-bye, and Steve switched off his computer, trying to ignore a welling feeling of panic. He could not seem to wrap his mind around what his mother had told him. His father had attacked her—tried to kill her—and had broken her wrist, sending her to the hospital? It was inconceivable. His parents might not be the most loving couple he had ever met, but they were definitely the politest, and while he had never seen them kiss, hold hands or show any physical affection, he could not recall the two of them ever arguing or disagreeing. About anything. As far as he knew, they had always been completely in sync, especially in their constant criticism of him, and whenever they spoke to each other, their even-toned conversations were full of “pleases,” “thank-yous” and other mannerly considerations. The idea that his father had attacked and injured his mother seemed utterly crazy, and Steve had no idea how on earth such a thing could have possibly occurred. That was what frightened him, the incomprehensibility of it all, and his hand was shaking as he picked up the notes on his desk, put them in his bottom file drawer and locked them in.

  He told Gina he’d be gone for the rest of the day, asked her to transfer all incoming calls to his voice mail, then hurried past her desk and down the hall to Mark McColl’s office. As usual, the department head was leaning back in the chair behind his oversize desk, reading the Wall Street Journal. Steve knocked on the doorjamb, and McColl looked up, an expression of mild annoyance registering on his face. “Yes?”

  “I’m going to be out the rest of the day,” Steve said. “Family emergency.”

  McColl looked not only unconcerned but uninterested. “Let Gina know,” he said, returning to his paper.

  Steve nodded and headed back down the hall, waving to Gina as he strode quickly out to the lobby and through the front door of the building. He was in Irvine and his parents lived in Anaheim, which meant that even if there was no traffic on the freeway—a highly unlikely scenario—it would be a half hour to forty-five minutes before he could reach their house. Why hadn’t his mother called him yesterday, from the hospital, when it had happened? Why had she waited so long? There were a lot of possible reasons, not the least of which was the fact that they were not a close family, but what stuck in his mind was what his mother had said when he’d tried to ask for specifics: I don’t want to talk about it over the phone. It made him think that there was something else involved here, and he sprinted through the parking lot to his car.

  His GPS system was on, and his radio was tuned to a local news station that offered traffic updates every twelve minutes, but neither mentioned the slowdown that occurred between the San Diego and Santa Ana freeways, and it was close to an hour later that he passed Disneyland and pulled off the Euclid exit in Anaheim. He turned right at the old Taco Bell building, which had recently been converted into something called Moon’s Teriyaki Burger, and drove past the series of auto repair shops and storage units that acted as a buffer zone for the residential area beyond. A street-light, a stop sign, a left turn, a right turn and he was there.

  His parents’ house looked the same as it had when he’d lived in it, though the surrounding neighborhood had deteriorated badly. Next door, at what had once been the Swansons’ place, a fierce-looking teenage girl with too many tattoos and front teeth that should have been fixed long ago stood defiantly in the middle of a dead lawn, arms folded, staring at him. The house on the other side of his parents’ was empty, the yard overgrown with weeds, a red-lettered addendum to the freestanding For Sale sign reading, FORECLOSURE. Across the street, four young Latino men with shaved heads and identical white T-shirts were huddled together in front of a shocking pink house with a piece of plywood placed over its front window.

  His parents’ home, by contrast, was well maintained, like something beamed down from the planet Brady: windows washed, house nicely painted, grass neatly trimmed, flower box full of blooming geraniums. He found himself wondering who mowed his parents’ lawn, and realized that not only didn’t he know, but he had never cared enough to ask. His father was obviously too old to do the work himself, but whether they hired a gardener or paid some neighborhood kid to do it, he had no idea. Although the lawn had been Steve’s responsibility from the time they’d moved into the house when he was thirteen until he’d finally moved out after college, he had never been paid an allowance, not even as a teenager. His father had claimed that working around the house was part of his duty as a member of the family, an obligation that deserved no monetary reward, so he had had to find other work—including mowing neighbors’ lawns—in order to earn spending money.

  Not that he’d complained. At that age, he was grateful for anything that got him out of the house and away from his old man.

  Steve tried the front door before ringing the bell, and the knob turned easily in his hand. He’d told his parents a thousand times that they needed to lock their doors even in the daytime, that times had changed, but the two of them were still stuck in some Ward Cleaver world that had never really exis
ted, and refused to take even simple precautions to protect themselves. It was a wonder they hadn’t been robbed blind—or murdered.

  He walked into the living room. “Mom?” he called out. “Mom?”

  “I’m in here!”

  Steve went into the converted den his parents called the television room. His mother was watching Oprah. She looked small sitting in the oversize recliner. Small and old. Part of it, he supposed, was because that was usually his father’s chair and he was used to seeing his dad in it, but part of it was the fact that she was old. In his mind, she remained perpetually in her mid-forties, and whenever he thought of her, she looked the way she had when he was in high school. Each time he saw her in person, though, he realized that those days were long gone, and looking at her right now, with her arm in a sling and the stress of everything that had occurred weighing on her face, he thought she seemed particularly frail and aged.

  Steve sat down hard on the love seat next to her. “Are you okay?”

  “Yes.” She nodded.

  It seemed strange to be talking to his mother alone. He could not remember the last time he had seen her without his father being present. “What happened exactly?”

  “He attacked me.”

  “How? Where?”

  “Out there. On the lawn. I’d just come home from Target and gotten out of the car, and he jumped me. Just ran off the porch and threw me on the grass.”

  “Jesus!”

  She fixed him with a disapproving look.

  “Sorry,” he apologized. “But I just can’t believe Dad could do something like that.”

  “A boy from across the street pulled him off me. If he hadn’t, I probably wouldn’t be here now. I was down on the lawn, and he was hitting me. There was a look in his eyes. . . .” She shook her head, remembering. “He wanted to kill me. I could tell he did. I knew he did. Then that teenager pulled him off me, and someone else called the police. By the time they got there, four young men were holding him down, and he was screaming for all he was worth. I’d fallen on my wrist when he knocked me to the ground, and I could tell that it was broken, but I’d gotten my breath back, and even though it hurt where he’d hit me, I didn’t think there was any major damage.”

  “And you didn’t think to call me? You waited a whole day?”

  “Are you going to keep interrupting me or are you going to let me explain?”