Authors: Joe Hart
Annette wavered, perhaps unwilling to voice out loud the waking nightmare within her mind.
“Go on,” Lance urged.
“He said, ‘Time is a funny thing. It slips away when you’re not looking.’ I remember wanting to run and hide, but I was stuck there, listening to this man who was pointing a gun at my husband. He pushed the barrel of the gun against Heinrich’s forehead and said, ‘You only hold onto time by remembering, and I remember you.’”
Annette began to cry again but kept her head up. “Heinrich told him he didn’t know who he was, but this man, this Aaron, said ‘Yes you do. You haven’t forgotten either. The last time I saw you I was five, and I still remember your eyes.’ Heinrich did know him. I saw how his body tensed at the man’s words. He pushed the gun into Heinrich’s eye and said ‘You killed them at the edge of that pit like dogs, but you missed me!’”
Annette’s voice rose with emotion as she remembered, not really telling the story but living it instead. “He said, ‘I remembered your eyes and that’s how I found you, across all this time.’ Then he threw a newspaper clipping of when we had our picture taken with the mayor on the floor.”
Lance recalled the clipping Harold had provided him and how his grandfather’s eyes had shone even through the dingy newspaper.
“He said, ‘I searched everywhere in
Europe
and finally followed you here,’” Annette continued. “And then Heinrich began to laugh. He laughed like it all was a joke. He told Aaron that he was still just a little Jew boy watching his parents die, and nothing had changed.”
Lance swallowed and watched as Annette slumped forward in her chair, her head stopping only inches from the desktop. “He killed him then. I remember something coming out of the back of Heinrich’s head, and then I heard the shot.”
Lance looked around the room, feeling something had changed and then realized what it was. The pressure had lifted. He looked at the hunched form of his grandmother, exhausted because of what she had set free.
“Annette?” he asked. She made no sign that she heard him. “Gisela?” he tried. No movement. The idea that she had expired from the onslaught of emotion occurred to him, but he looked closer and saw that her humped back still rose and fell with each shallow breath.
His mind began to reconcile what she had told him, but it was too much and instead he decided that he had gotten what he’d come for. He began to stand, but stopped and sat down in his chair again. He needed to tell her something. At least let her know why he was here and what was happening at the house. He reached out and placed a hand on her narrow forearm. The skin felt cold beneath the thin material she wore.
“He’s still there, Annette. Somehow, Erwin’s come back. I don’t know what he wants, but I’m going to find out.”
His words had the effect on her that a defibrillator might have on a dying man. Her arm jerked from his gentle touch and her head snapped toward him. Her eyes were wide and feral behind the hair that hung before them.
“You’ve seen him?” Her voice was a whisper, but it held the urgency of a scream. Her hand scrabbled at the desktop, and the photo along with the crossword fell like leaves to the floor.
Lance leaned forward, his hands out in a placating gesture. “Yes. I think something’s happening at the house, but you’ve helped me. You’ve helped me understand.”
Her fingernails danced across the desktop with a
chittering
sound.
“He’ll be so angry that I’ve told. He’ll come. He’ll come in the night when there’s no one and …” Her eyes blinked as she faced the wall. They moved up to the window, where dark clouds now held the majority of the sky. “They showed us ways.
So many ways if we were caught.
Heinrich showed me how. ‘Not too straight,’ he said. You have to angle it up.”
Annette grasped the sharpened pencil from the desk and raised it to her face. Before Lance thought to reach out, she put the black tip of the lead end into her nostril, and with a quick slap of her other hand to the eraser, the pencil disappeared into her head.
Lance cried out as blood erupted from his grandmother’s nose. She sat that way for a heartbeat, her eyes expanded with the shock of pain and her spine rigid. Then she slumped forward, her face hitting the desk like a heavy steak.
“Fuck!” he yelled, and scrambled backward, knocking his chair over as he stood.
The young nurse ran into the room, an expression that politely said
can I help with something?
She then noticed the dark blood running in a steady stream off the desk and onto the floor, and a scream that didn’t seem possible from such a petite woman barreled up out of her lungs. Her hands rose to her cheeks, and her eyes found Lance, asking and accusing at the same time.
“I didn’t” was all he could muster. His hands came up near his shoulders as he shook his head. “She did it to herself. I couldn’t stop her.” Shock began to numb his senses, but something urged him to get out of the building and away from what had happened.
The nurse still stood in the doorway, her mouth open in what otherwise would have been a comical O shape.
“Please, help her,” he
managed,
pointing at what he knew was an already cooling corpse.
The nurse nodded, and then she was in motion and kneeling at his dead grandmother’s side. Her hands prodded at the old woman’s sagging throat for a pulse that Lance knew she wouldn’t find.
He backed out of the room and into the desolate hallway. The open space of the hall was a relief, and he hurried to the elevator and punched the button to call the car. His heart slammed in his chest, as he saw the pencil vanish into Annette’s nostril over and over. He squeezed his eyes shut and willed the image away, as he became aware of another sound that filled the hallway. It was a shuffling that seemed familiar, yet he couldn’t place it. When he turned and saw the source of the noise, he barely restrained the urge to scream and pressed his back against the doors of the elevator.
The man he had seen on his first visit was shambling toward him, but this time, instead of a look of utter fear gracing his features, there were no features at all.
Bloody gristle covered the man’s countenance from forehead to chin. It looked as though the man had fed his features to the churning blades of a blender. There were no eyes to guide him, only swirled pools of congealed blood, yet he continued in a straight path toward Lance’s position, pausing only to turn an invisible doorknob.
A black hole opened where the man’s mouth should’ve been, and choked words spilled out in his father’s voice. “It’s the end, boy. Just drive yourself into a pole or slit a wrist. There’s nothing left for you.” The sliding steps were getting closer. “Or wait just a minute right there, and I’ll help you.” The man’s hands came up and reached yearningly toward Lance’s throat.
The doors behind Lance slid open and he fell onto the floor of the elevator. The shuffling monstrosity still approached, just a few yards from the threshold. Lance sat up and stabbed the button marked
Lobby
hard enough to send a jolt of pain through his wrist. The featureless figure moved closer, and at the last second the doors closed slow enough to cause Lance to slide to the back of the car and shut his eyes.
The unmistakable feeling of dropping filled his stomach, and he opened his eyes to the sealed doors of the car. His held breath rushed out of him in a hollow wheeze, and he watched the lights of the car nearly fade to darkness. He pinched the bridge of his nose hard to keep unconsciousness from claiming him and tried to stand. His stomach felt as if it might push everything out onto the floor of the elevator, but he forced the nausea away as the doors opened to the sound of running feet, and he stepped out into the hallway.
Lance pulled the door of the Land Rover closed and sat back in the seat, his eyes closed, his fists clenched in his lap. The air within the car felt thick around him, like liquid. The storm had fully arrived, and thunder rolled continuously overhead, sounding like a boulder caught in a tumbling barrel.
A swarm of nurses had met him as he rounded the last corner before the waiting room, most pushing past him without a second look. Only the mousy receptionist questioned him as he tried to glide past the desk unnoticed.
“What happened?” she had called from behind the Plexiglas.
Lance turned, furious at the sneering, accusatory look on her narrow features. “She killed herself,” he said, and kept walking even after her shrill voice yelled for him to stop several times.
A soft beep issued from near his right hand, and he looked down at the dark display of his phone. Someone had called while he was inside. He nearly left the phone where it was, but he wondered if it had been Mary. He hadn’t called her like he’d promised. He picked up the phone off the seat beside him and flipped it on.
Several numbers peppered the screen, listing the people that had called him. Mary’s number was first, and then Andy’s. The last number made him falter. He thumbed the screen to see if a message had been left. There had. Holding the phone to his ear, he waited, listening to the silence before the message began.
“Lance,
it’s
Ellen. I was hoping to catch you in person. I’m sorry I haven’t called, we didn’t exactly say goodbye on great terms. I just wanted to say I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said what I did, it wasn’t fair. I have no idea what you’ve gone through and that’s exactly what made me angry in the first place. I guess I shouldn’t have pushed you to tell me if you weren’t ready. It’s a character flaw I
have,
I always need to know what’s going on, especially if it involves my life. Sorry, I’m rambling.” There was a pause, during which Ellen seemed to weigh her words. “I’ve been talking to Andy over the last few days, and he told me you’re working again. That’s great. And please don’t get mad at him, he loves you. But I don’t need to tell you that. I just really needed to see you. I want to try again, and maybe you can trust me enough to tell me everything someday. Andy gave me directions to your house, so I’m about fifteen minutes away now. I kind of wanted it to be a surprise, and I guess it will be! See you soon, bye.”
The phone dropped from his hand and bounced off the center console. It came to rest face-down on the middle floorboard. Lance could just hear the electronic voice reciting the time and date of the call: “Tuesday, September fourteenth, at 1:17 p.m.”
With a shaking hand, he fumbled the key ring from his pocket and finally managed to guide the key into the ignition. The glass display on the dash lit up and glowed the time:
1:35 PM
.
His hand grasped the shifter and slammed the SUV into drive. The tires caught on the pavement with a tearing sound, and the Land Rover leaned dangerously to the right as he floored the gas and aimed the car out of the empty lot. He had time to register several blue uniforms exiting the building, their arms waving in frantic motions, but he locked his eyes on the drive before him.
The first raindrop, fat and heavy, splattered against the windshield as he swung the vehicle left out of the driveway and pushed the accelerator to the floor.
“Coincidence is logical”
—Johan
Cruijff
Mary looked up from the words on the page before her when she heard the light tapping sound. For a few puzzling seconds she thought the sounds were coming from behind her, knowing full well that she was the only one in the store. The rows of books sat inert around her, and it was only when she raised her eyes to the windows on the far side of the room that she noticed rain speckling the glass. The storm that had held its humid palm over the area all morning was finally releasing a squall of moisture and wind. Mary watched the maple tree just outside the window, its leaves already turned an array of vivid oranges and
yellows,
bend back and forth. She saw several leaves fly off, no longer able to hold their moorings with the weather, and disappear from sight. Her mind turned to Lance, and she wondered if he was faring any better than the leaves.
She still didn’t truly know what to make of the man. She felt something for him that had been absent in her last two relationships. She couldn’t quite express it, but the vulnerability that floated just beneath the surface when he spoke to her was what intrigued her the most. If there ever was another person crying out for help without actually doing so, Lance Metzger was it. The way his eyes fluttered away from hers like he was trying to control and make sense of a thousand thoughts at once. The words he’d spoken the night on the shoreline had nudged something inside of her. Something cold and hard that she hadn’t thought anyone else understood. She could think of dozens of reasons not to see him again, but they all paled in comparison to the idea that he might be able to fathom who she truly was—and that he wanted to.
The phone jangled a few inches from her elbow, and she recoiled from it as if it had bitten her. She reached out a hand, and studied a number she didn’t recognize before answering.
“Stony Bay Books.”
“Mary.”
“Lance?”
“Yes. Could you come to the house as soon as you can?”
“Um, sure.
Is something wrong?” Mary asked.
“No, I just want to show you something.”
“Okay, I can be there in a half-hour.”
The line went dead in her hand, and she stared at the phone as if it would expel an answer somehow. She hung up, the urge to call the number back almost irresistible. Her brow wrinkled as she sat back in her chair. His voice had sounded strange. At one point she thought she had heard a zipping sound, like someone closing a coat in the background.
Mary frowned as she made her way to the front door, stepped outside, and locked it. The wind around her felt warm and was peppered with drops of rain.
As she ran toward her car, she felt anticipation. Perhaps Lance had made a breakthrough in the investigation of his past. Or perhaps he just wanted to see her. She hoped that it was the latter, as she backed her car away from the curb and set off into the deepening dusk of the afternoon.
The same infuriating tone issued out of the phone and into Lance’s ear as he pressed it tighter, crushing the cartilage against the side of this head. There was a pause, and then Ellen’s voice began speaking in the casual way he had heard a hundred times. “You’ve reached Ellen. I can’t come to the phone right now, but if you …”
Lance punched the end button and threw the device onto the seat beside him. Both hands gripped the steering wheel, and he glanced at the speedometer, not because he cared if he was speeding but to make sure he hadn’t dropped below eighty miles per hour. The needle hovered just under the ninety mark, and he braked to take the inside lane on a sharp curve.
He scanned the streets of
Stony
Bay
as he tore through the sleepy town. Ellen’s silver Trailblazer wasn’t in any of the parking spaces along the narrow street. After passing the city limits, he hoped—foolishly, he knew—he would see her car on the side of the road around the next bend, a flat tire sinking its frame to one side or steam rising from its hood. Only the black glaze of wet pavement and an occasional lightning flash met his eyes after each turn.
Sweat trickled down the sides of his face, and every so often he could feel a drop fall away from the bottom of his chin. His eyes remained focused on the rain-slicked road, his concentration only breaking to check his speed.
Thoughts slithered to the edges of his mind.
What if she’s already there and I’m too late?
What if the things in the house that once were my father and grandfather met her at the door and pulled her inside?
I locked the door on the way out, didn’t I?
The driveway came into sight.
As he turned in, water spraying from the wheels, he searched the mud for other tire tracks, but the rain had battered the soil into a meaningless jumble of puddles and divots. Dead leaves covered the breadth of the drive in a carpet of crimson and orange. The wind pushed the trees to their breaking points and then relinquished them, only to force them down again with a renewed vigor.
The Land Rover roared into the final curve, and Lance blinked at what he had glimpsed through the trees. For a moment he thought he’d seen two vehicles parked before the house, but the shafts of the swaying trees must have thrown his vision off. The last patch of oaks receded from his side view and his breath snagged in his throat.
Ellen’s vehicle sat just where he’d imagined it, the rain spraying off of its roof and sliding down its darkened windows. But the rusty pickup truck parked ahead of it should not have been there.
“Oh God, John,” Lance whispered as he drew even with the Trailblazer. There were no figures behind the glass of either car—he hadn’t expected there to be. His eyes landed on the front door.
It was open.
He waited. The Land Rover hummed around him and runners of water kept obscuring the view through the passenger window.
Just leave,
the voice said.
Just drive away. This isn’t your fight anymore. You didn’t ask Ellen to come here, and John’s fate was sealed as soon as he laid eyes on you. Don’t go into that house and see what you know you’ll see. Put the car in drive and just go. Try to forget and maybe someday you will.
It felt as though an electric cable had been stripped and set loose inside him. He thrummed with indecision, but as his hand touched the keys and twisted the vehicle into silence, he knew that there would be no leaving what lay in the house behind. His imagination would never let him rest. Horrific vistas would appear each time he closed his eyes, blood-soaked corpses of people he once knew. Perhaps he’d eventually tell himself that he didn’t know them, that it was all a story he’d imagined. But figments don’t contain memories and ghosts always know how to find you.
The rain soaked him instantly as he stepped out into its stinging embrace. The lake drew his attention as he walked around the back of the Trailblazer. He had never seen it in such turmoil. A calm area could no longer be found on the surface. All was churning and boiling waves that frothed and seethed onto the shore. Foam flew into the air as the waves pounded against the exposed rocks, and for a moment Lance thought the water looked closer than it had that morning. Not from the turbulence that gripped it but just generally higher, a new line on the shore where it refused to relinquish its hold.
As he approached the house, Lance watched the darkened doorway for movement of any kind. He wished more than he ever had before that Ellen would appear with John in the background, smiles of the newly acquainted on their faces. Only an arc of lightning on the far side of the house revealed that the entry was empty, its space devoid of both living and dead.
The rain was a roaring inferno burning atop the house as Lance stepped onto the tile just inside the threshold. He threw a quick look into the bathroom to the right and saw nothing out of place in the dim light. He pushed the entry door shut behind him while his eyes roamed the visible portions of the rooms.
A dark oblong shape sat just past the entry on the floor. It looked flat and had a radiant shine to it like oil in moonlight.
Blood.
Lance edged through the entry and noticed a scent that assaulted his nose.
Gasoline.
The cloying vapors were thick in the house, and some other odor hung just below it. Lance eased forward and peeked into the living room to make sure nothing waited just beyond the archway. When he brought his scrutiny back to the puddle near the kitchen, he saw the boots. They were pointed up at the ceiling, as if the wearer had decided that this was as good as any place to take an overdue rest.
A sinking sensation plunged down to the lowest point in his bowels and his throat constricted. They were John’s boots. He had seen them propped up on the edge of his steps many times over the past month, a beer in the old man’s hand with a story partially told in the air around him. As Lance inched farther into the room, more and more of the scene came into view. The boots were attached to a pair of dark pants. Above the pants a dark shirt lay hiked up over a slice of pale belly. No, he was wrong. He realized the shirt had originally been white, now that he could see the upper section near the shoulders where a few spots still remained untouched. But the rest had been colored black with blood. Lance stepped closer and knelt beside the caretaker’s still form.
A massive wound had been opened just above John’s left shoulder at the meeting with his neck. Lance could see the shattered white of the other man’s collarbone within the cavernous hole that stretched almost all the way to the middle of his chest. Blood had pooled there, a black lake filled with chunks of muscle and pulp. But John’s face had been left untouched. A few speckles of blood stained the underside of his chin, but his cheeks and forehead were free of gore. A gas can
lay
on its side farther into the kitchen, spilling its volatile contents across the floor and making the air nearly
unbreathable
. He could see the head of a lighter clutched in John’s left hand. Absently, Lance wondered what John had seen to drive him inside and attempt to carry out the plan that was now clear.
Lance stared at his friend, tears welling up and tightening his eye sockets with their pressure. John’s own eyes were mercifully closed, and as a stroke of lightning gave the kitchen brief refulgence, Lance noticed something that stopped the grief he felt rising out of control. An unmistakable look of peace graced John’s aged features. The worry lines that had been so prominent in life were gone from his brow. The etched frown that had creased the outside of his mouth was smoothed.
He’s finally dreaming,
Lance thought. The weight of life had been lifted from him and death had released a fist that, until now, had gripped the old man tightly.
Lance swallowed and placed his hand on the inner part of John’s forearm. He felt blood coat his palm, along with the coldness of uninhabited flesh, but Lance felt no revulsion. Instead, a comfort flowed through him. John was no longer here, but the feeling that he had gone somewhere else, past what life had done to him,
was
all but a certainty.
Lance came back to his surroundings and looked over his shoulder, expecting to see the flash of the ax blade falling toward him. The empty living room was still behind him. Where the hell was Ellen? He listened for a few seconds, holding his breath and trying to make out the familiar features of the house. He stood and walked into the living room. More blood covered the floor there. He turned and looked at the point where John’s blood pool had stopped. The two areas weren’t connected.
Don’t try to make it anonymous—it’s Ellen’s blood. Now you’ve killed two innocent people through your stubbornness and need to know. You can have that on your conscience. Great resume you’re creating.
Lance pushed the voice away but couldn’t help acknowledging the truth of the words. He could’ve left when things had begun to accelerate out of control. He could’ve done just what John had intended to do. He could’ve burned it to the ground and walked away. But he knew that it wouldn’t have freed him of what resided here. He knew that no matter how far he ran or how many times he told himself that it hadn’t been real, he would’ve secretly been waiting for the night when he would wake to see the massacred face of his grandfather hanging in the darkness and his father’s voice in his ears.
Lightning crawled across the sky just above the tossing waves of the lake, and Lance saw the stain beneath the fresh blood on the floor illuminate in its membranous shape. There were footprints trailing out of the fresh pool. They were the crescent outlines of bare feet leading away from the splattered floor. Lance followed them to the hanging shards of the door. They disappeared inside.
A trail to follow.
Lance peered into the
darkness,
waiting for something to lunge toward him, but the gloom within was still. He could hear something though, an intermittent whistling. It sounded like the wind catching just right on a jutting piece of eave or hollow on the house and making it sing, but it came from inside the room, not from the storm outside. His eyes adjusted to the gloom, and when he leaned across the threshold, he could see that the space was empty.