Like Father by Nick Gifford

tongue. It was Eva who saw her nephew looking at her over the sights of her own old Luftwaffe Luger. That pistol must have been the last thing she had ever seen.
    “He killed Eva,” Danny told Cassie now. “And he killed a friend of his, who was also ... a friend of my mother. And some others. Three. They were in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
    “God.”
    He had expected horror and Cassie was horrified.
    He had expected shock and she was, clearly, shocked by what he told her.
    He had expected revulsion, too, but no, far from being repelled by Danny and his story she was clinging to him more tightly, holding him.
    “What must it have been like for you? God.” She pressed against him.
    After a time, she asked, “So... how did they know?”
    For a moment he was thrown by her question.
    “Your name,” she said. “That your father is locked up and your mother might have a new boyfriend. How did they know those things in the talk board?”
    “Someone from the past?” Danny said. “Someone who’s tracked us down and wants to stir everything up again?” But that still left a lot unexplained.
    “Adam and Eve,” said Cassie slowly. “Eve: the first woman. FirstLady. Eve. Eva. She seemed lost. Confused. The talk board’s supposed to be like a Ouija board, calling up spirits from the other side, talking to the dead.”
    “Eva? No.”
    “She said something that looked German.”
    “Something - mannchen ,” said Danny. “‘Little man’? What’s that supposed to mean?”
    “I don’t know. That’s what she was calling Headkin, though. She seemed to recognise him.”
    That was when Danny saw it.
    The connection.
    All it took was hearing Cassie pronounce the name aloud.
    Headkin.
    “What?” She had sensed his body tensing. “What is it?”
    “I know that name,” he told her. “Headkin. My father – he kept a journal. He wrote about the voices in his head that were driving him mad. He had a name for the voice that tormented him the most.”
    “Headkin?”
    “Almost. He called it Hodeken. The evil little man in his head. Taunting him. Driving him mad.”
    “I’m scared.”
    He held her tight.
    Danny was scared too. More scared than he had ever been in his life.

12 Hodeken
    Back at the flat, Josh was asleep and Oma Schmidt was cleaning the oven. “Danny,” she said, when she saw him hanging up the office key. “My boy. Is okay, ja ?”
    She seemed upset. Danny wondered if she had sensed his state of confusion and fear.
    He nodded and Oma returned to her scrubbing, arms deep in the oven’s interior.
    “Where’s mum?”
    Oma clicked her tongue in disapproval. “He has been,” she said. “Rick.”
    So that was why she was upset. Danny wondered what Little Rick might have said. Had he come straight here from the office to tell Val that her son had been fooling with chatrooms and the paranormal?
    He struggled to calm himself.
    “They argued,” said Oma. “I did not want to listen, but how to not? She went with him even so. Off together like the two loving birds.” She clicked her tongue again.
    Danny suspected he knew the cause of their argument. Rick must have come here to tell Val that he had seen Danny logged into a chatroom. She would have been upset. She would probably have defended Danny. And now they would be discussing how to tackle his “problem”.
    He went to his room.
    He slid the box out from under his bed and found the envelope.
    Sitting in the window seat, he reminded himself why it was that he should always be in control of his own reactions. He reminded himself exactly what it was that he must never become.
    And he listened.
    In his head: silence. A thin whistling in one ear that he always had when he was stressed. The soft background sound of his breathing.
    No voices, though. No evil spirits in his head, telling him what he must do.
    Not yet.
    ~
    It was after eleven when Val came home. Kicking out time at the Wishbourne Inn – maybe that was where they had gone to debate