Tortus Bay

2.21: Temptations

Henry stood paralyzed in the hallway, staring down the unblinking gaze of Mathas Bernard. The man's eyes, he could now see, were not quite right. They were filmy, and unfocused. Yellowed. And there was dirt in them, clumping along the ridge of the eyelids.

Niles waved to get his attention. "In here!" he mouthed.

He beckoned Into the living room, which would require Henry to approach Mathas. But even as he pondered the thought, the man's head turned away, once more resuming what looked like a blind search of the counter-tops.

Henry took a deep breath, steeled himself, and darted across the hallway into the living room. To enter, he had to vault over a sort of barricade which had been set up. The armchair sat toppled on its side, blocking the entrance. A few boxes had been piled on top, for weight. He sat with his back against it, waiting for the inevitable sound of the dead man's approaching footfalls. It did not come.

Bruce lay huddled in the corner, soundlessly whimpering. Niles sat on the floor behind the couch, clearly trying to decide whether it was worth the effort to add it to the barricade. Sweat poured down his face. "I don't believe it," he said. "I mean, obviously I believed Jenny, and you, but I didn't believe, you know? Now he's here."

"We have to get out of the house."

"No," Niles snapped. A rare hardness entered his voice. "No, he's not kicking me out of my own house."

Henry peered over the top of the armchair. From his angle, he could only see the faint reflection of movement. Mathas was still safe in the kitchen. "What happened?

"I didn't realize anything was off until Bruce started whining. I thought he was sick, at first, but he kept nipping at my heels and staring off at the kitchen. I walked in there, Henry." He shuddered.

"What was he doing?"

Niles covered his face with his hands. "I don't know."

He wanted nothing more than to crawl over to the couch, and take the man by the shoulders. But he stayed where he was. That would be too much. "Did he come in through the front?"

"No, through the back. I had the door open. I was baking a cake, and I wanted to air the place out."

That settled into Henry's mind. "You were baking a cake?"

"Yes. What does that matter?"

"Where is it now?"

Niles drew his hands away from his face. "I think he ate it."

And he'd stayed in the kitchen since, looking for more. "You used to bake cakes for his birthdays, right? How often did you do that?"

"Every year. And more, besides. The man had a sweet tooth."

"I think he still does."

Niles' eyes widened in understanding. "He's looking for the things he used to love."

"Which explains why he was caught circling his old house." Henry leaned over and pulled the bookmark out of the ratty paperback copy of The Alpha Aliens Save Jupiter... Again! A photograph, featuring a slighter younger Mathas Bernard standing in a crowd of people. Most notably amongst them was his wife. Beth Brihte beamed out of that photo as Henry had never known her to in real life. He stood, and whistled.

"What are you doing?" Niles hissed, but the trick had worked. Mathas looked again into the stove-top mirror, and saw when he did the photograph which Henry held above the barricade.

In this way they lured the man out of the house. He moved with a limping gate, but a surprising speed, once he was focused on a target. There was a single-mindedness to it which recalled a cat, or a toddler.