The Secret of Lions

by Scott Blade

  He stood up and looked around the neighborhood. Some of the porch lights were on. Many of the neighbors had started to come out to see what all the noise was. He smiled at one of them and continued down the road, leaving the French assassin’s family to rot on the street they had lived on for so many years.

  Part Four

  Secrets Roaring

  Chapter Seven

  School in the Mountains

  Germany, 1938

  63

  Snow covered the mountains. The elevation was high. The mountains were difficult to climb. The mountain range proved to be adequate training grounds for mountaineers. It was isolated, secluded, and provided the harshest conditions. Germany had produced some of the world’s most famous mountaineers, including the first Westerners to complete the journey to the peaks of Tibet.

  A secret school nested in one of the peaks. It was half exposed and half buried into the ground. Much of the outer part of the school stood on stilts—thick like the ones built for the piers and harbors of southern Germany.

  The school housed the children of Germany’s elite. The students were the future of Germany and possibly the world. They were the children of the leaders of the Nazi party. Some of their parents were the highest members of the government. I was one of these children.

  “Herr Hitler, your scores were the highest in the class for the second exam in a month. Your father will be pleased,” said Professor Rouscher.

  A thick man, Rouscher towered over the children. We both feared and respected him. He was the hardest instructor in the school. This would be my final semester.

  The professor dismissed class, but not before mentioning a special seminar scheduled for the following day. The students would start a series on interrogation and torture. We were to spend our night studying the different methods of interrogation used by commanding officers in the field. We studied the methods used by the best generals in history. Many studied as far back as ancient Greece.

  I gathered my books and headed for my room. It was in the darkness of my room where I thought about Rouscher’s words. I wondered what the project would be. More importantly, I worried about the torture part. It was a year ago that I’d witnessed the torture of the Frenchman, but it still haunted my sleep; it still haunts my sleep.

  Classes lasted well into the evenings. Today was no different. I took off my shirt and lay down in bed. I turned on the nearest lamp and started to draw in my sketchbook. The picture was a non-violent portrayal of the Frenchman’s torture. It was just a picture of three men in a room together. One of them sat in a chair of his own free will, no one making him sit. No restraints. No violence. No one making him answer any questions. This was the way I wanted to remember it. It helped me to sleep; back then I could trick myself like that.

  64

  The morning sun rose over the peaks of the mountains. It was warmer than usual. The heat melted some of the snow overnight. The roads were mostly passable. My room was filled with light. Suddenly I heard a sound. It was a truck. The wheels shoveled snow behind it and onto the road. This left enormous tire tracks that stretched down through the mountain range.

  My chest encapsulated the echo of my waking heart. I was not normally quick to rise, but the noise of the truck woke me. The contents of the truck aroused my curiosity. I wondered if it had something to do with our project. Sunlight lit the orange wallpaper that littered my room. And I was up.

  I found my pants and met up with some other boys in the hall. They too had been awakened by the arriving truck. In fact, the boys on the lower part of the school already waited to see what was inside of the truck. They sat on the steps to the entrance of the school. Most of them were still in their pajamas. No one knew the contents of the vehicle, but they were all curious and very speculative.

  “Peter,” one of the boys screamed out, “there is a truck pulling up to the school.”

  “I know that. Why else would everyone be out here at 5:30 in the morning?” I replied.

  “Did you see all of the armed guards waiting outside for the truck to stop?” the kid said back.

  “No, why are there guards?” I asked.

  Now it was definitely worth my getting out of bed, I’d decided.

  The walk down three flights of stairs to the first floor was not an easy one because the entire school was now awake and shuffling about in order to see what all the excitement was. Already rumors flew around. A small crowd began surrounding the truck. At least they were as close to it as the armed guards would let them get.

  I finally pushed my way to the outside steps so I could get a better view. I couldn’t stay at my bedroom window; it would be too hard for me to see anything from there.

  Too many kids were scattered in the yard. They obstructed my view. The guards did their best to hold the kids back. Everyone watched as a team of armed guards stepped off the truck. They walked over to Professor Rouscher. He was standing near the gates to the loading section at the side of the school. He instructed the guards to unload the contents of the truck into the large opening of the school’s auditorium.

  At first the guards lowered their weapons and followed his instructions. However, when it was time to open the back of the truck, they became hesitant. Flagrant doubt dominated their demeanor. The guard closest to the back of the truck signaled to the others. He stirred as though he saw something moving in the truck. Whatever the truck’s cargo was, it terrified him. The cargo in the truck was alive and restless. The crowd could hear it rustling around.

  We were all startled by how fear-stricken the guards suddenly were. They were never afraid of anything, never. The children did not know what to make of the sudden uneasiness of the most violent and efficient SS police that the world had ever seen.

  The rear guard crept closer to the back of the truck. His fellow guards urged him to open the rear so that they could let something out. I wondered what it was.

  The guard did as he was told and unlocked the cab. He opened the gate and stared inside. All the crowd could see was the darkness of the cab.

  “Is it still sleeping?” another guard asked. He held a tranquilizer gun at the ready.

  “I think so,” the first guard said. He lowered his weapon and lifted a flashlight from behind his belt. Inside the darkness, he saw it dart through the flashlight’s beam. He realized he had been mistaken. It was not sleeping. It was very much awake and alert.

  A very rare, African Cape lion with a black mane and dark fur appeared from out of the darkness. It was easily the largest in captivity. With intense speed and power, the beast leapt out from the back of the truck.

  Before anyone could react, the lion had taken the guard’s head half off. The head hung, still attached, to his neck. Exposed veins and bones barely held the head onto the body. It dangled as the body fell to the ground. Blood ran from the open wound and merged into the snow. Horrified, I imagined a glass of red wine spilling onto a fine, white satin tablecloth; only in my eyes the wine was black. The wine filled the honeycomb shapes made by the cloth’s stitching.

  The next guard also carried a tranquilizer rifle. He responded slowly but managed to fire a single dart into the lion’s side. The angry lion leapt on him before he could fire another shot. The lion tore out the man’s throat with its large razor-like claws. Blood spurted out of the man’s neck and fell onto the snowy ground.

  The crowd of children screamed as they ran off in different directions. Some of them zigzagged and ran smack into each other. The lion looked around, confused and slightly scared. It hesitated for a moment. Then it suddenly leapt through the crowd of children and locked eyes with me. It ran directly at me.

  The black beast was enormous. Its fur fluttered from the cold breeze, waving like thick grass at night on the plains of Africa. It lunged toward me as if to attack, but it stopped moments before a deadly strike. With interlocked eyes, we both recognized each other. Deep down in my blood I knew it was my black cub from years before.

  “Mocha?” I asked. />
  The black lion sniffed me. He did not attack. Instead, he gave me a look I never thought I would see again. It was the playful eyes of my black lion cub.

  Suddenly, Mocha started to growl at me. At first I was scared, but then I realized that he was growling at one of the guards who was standing behind me. The guard thought the lion was coming for him. Out of fright, he grabbed me.

  “Back away, beast!” he shouted.

  “No, let me go,” I said. “Put me down!”

  “Stop moving, you little brat!” the guard said.

  “Mocha!” I shouted.

  The black lion roared at the guard. I felt the man’s heart skip a beat in his chest. He began trembling. With lightning-like ferocity, Mocha lunged at the guard. Afraid for his life, the guard ducked down behind me, using me as a shield against the lion.

  Mocha tried to retract his claws, but it was too late. He pulled back as much as he could in the last possible second; if he hadn’t, I would be dead. The tips of his claws slashed through my sweater and tore into my chest, leaving the faded scars across my chest and down my abdomen.

  The guard slapped his hands down on my chest, trying to stop the immense bleeding. I felt nothing. Everything had suddenly become numb. I was going into shock.

  Mocha approached us. The guard trembled in overwhelming fear, but he could not run. Mocha did not attack him again. He reached his head out and started to lick my wounds.

  It was my fault he had gotten caught. As he tried to save me, one of the guards crept up behind him and fired his tranquilizer gun into Mocha’s back. The dart hit just above the creature’s shoulder blades. The animal weakened, stumbled around, and finally fell down.

  The crowd, which had begun to trample each other, had stopped fleeing. It took some time for the teachers to calm the other children. One of the guards couldn’t even be found for a while. He hid, trembling behind one of the maintenance sheds.

  I remember the guard who saved my life ended up getting a medal for it, even though he’d cowardly hid behind me

  They lifted me up and carried me off immediately to the infirmary.

  The faculty rounded up the missing children and sent them back into the dorms.

  It took six guards to lift the sleeping lion. Professor Rouscher began shouting profanities at them. He particularly emphasized their incompetence for allowing the beast to escape in the first place.

  “You have scared the children! And threatened the Furher’s son’s life!” he shouted at them.

  After several minutes, Professor Rouscher, the guards, and the sedated lion disappeared into the depths of the school.

  As they carried me off into the infirmary, I remembered staring down at the corpse of the headless guard. We passed close enough to smell the blood. There was something else. There was the smell of seared flesh. It was faint, but it was there. As we neared the double doors, I saw that the claws had severed the head and left a straight gash. The lion’s attack was so fast that the slash had partly seared the torn skin.

  “Peter, hold on. We are going to get you fixed up,” one of the professors who followed us said.

  Before we entered the infirmary, I blacked out, leaving my surroundings and the bleeding bodies that covered the white canvas of snow with black blood. For some reason, the color red was black for me, and I could still not remember why.

  65

  I spent weeks in a hospital bed. All I have is blurred images of that period of time. I remember it felt like days, but it was weeks.

  “Peter? Peter?” my doctor said. I awoke to see him staring down at me with a nurse standing behind him.

  “Peter can you hear me?” he asked.

  “Yes, doctor,” I said.

  “Good. I hoped you would recover nicely.”

  “I feel sleepy,” I said.

  “That is the medication. Listen, you have four, deep scars across your chest and abdomen. I sewed them all shut, but you are going to have some long scars,” he said.

  “We need you to just lie here in bed. Okay, Peter?” the nurse asked.

  “What about Mocha?” I asked.

  “Mocha?” he asked, confused.

  “The lion. Where is he?”

  “They took the lion. I have no idea where, but he is here on campus. We hear him roaring at night,” the doctor said. “Some nights, he roars something fierce."

  He is still alive, I thought. Still alive.

  66

  Nearly two months had passed since the day the soldiers brought the lion to the academy; I could not imagine what they were going to do with an African black-mane lion in an elite boarding school in the middle of the cold mountains.

  I was told whatever the special project Professor Rouscher was planning had been postponed until I recovered. He visited me a couple of times while I drifted in and out of consciousness. I guess we spoke, but I don’t recall much.

  After I was completely recuperated, the day came when the professor was going to incorporate us into his special presentation on torture and interrogation techniques.

  As an extra security measure the entire guard staff was called to duty that day. The compound was locked up like a small fortress. It was impenetrable on all sides.

  The rugged mountain slope covered the western side; a snowy peak lay to the east, and no less than six armed sentries stood guard at the southern entrance.

  Each carried a MP38 machine gun. It was a close-to-medium range weapon with an extended magazine. The SS guards preferred it because of its light weight and intimidation factor. It was good at scaring off unwanted visitors who stopped at the front gates from time to time.

  The year before, a group of British tourists traveled through and stopped at the gate to ask for directions. None of the guards spoke English, and somehow the whole thing escalated into an incident. So they shot the tourists while they were still in their car. It was the administration’s decision to burn the car and the remains of the passengers. No one ever came looking for them. Officials from the British embassy just assumed they’d gotten lost in the mountains and froze to death.

  Today, the number of guards posted around the gate was depleted due to the presence of the lion. Instead of there being six guards on duty near the gate, there were only four. Two extra guards were assigned to monitor the lion. He was caged throughout the night. As the school slept, the lion’s roars were constant. Everyone heard him. I could only imagine what they were going to use him for. I guessed that Mocha was caged somewhere near the supply area of the school. I could not have been further from the truth. I found out later that Mocha was actually residing in one of the classrooms under the dorms.

  Monday morning came. The sun was hotter than usual. The snow melted in places where it was less thick—ledges, rooftops, handrails, and some of the walkways. I walked alone. I did not have many friends. Although everyone pretended to like me, they only did so because their parents made them. They were only nice to me because they thought Hitler was my father like I did at that time.

  For me, the typical day involved the same routine set of classes. First at 7 a.m. I went to physical class. We ran, lifted weights, or trained in hand-to-hand combat. We learned close-quarter combat, knife combat, and the quickest ways to kill.

  Then the class shifted to a new subject every two hours. At 9, we had social science. This was where we studied the general points of politics, German politics mostly. However, we did dabble in the theories of communism, capitalism and Leninism.

  At 11 we met in a seminar on the strategies of warfare. We broke for lunch at 1 and returned at 2 when we had two one-hour courses. The first was art history; it excluded or cursed all art that was not pro-German, pro-Nazi, or even anti-Semitic.

  My art history teacher had spent most of this semester trying to uncover the Jewish secrets locked in Da Vinci’s paintings. He said there was evidence that Leonardo da Vinci was part Jewish on his mother’s side.

  After art we studied grammar and foreign language. I excelled at all field
s of study. I had to. In particular, I performed with excellence in warfare, art, and most surprisingly, combat. Of course, I did not let on that I could draw and paint. It was not hard to hide my talents since we did not spend a lot of time being creative, only learning.

  One day, we had a single class in the morning. It was the special presentation that we had heard about for months. It was given by the headmaster, Professor Rouscher. The seminar was on interrogation and prisoners of war; the title kept changing.

  I was nervous about it. The evening before I’d dreamed about the night when my father had killed the Frenchman in the basement. It haunted me like a lingering nightmare.

  I could see myself standing in that dark basement in the presence of Hitler and Beowulf. I remembered that they tortured the Frenchman so brutally. Hitler explained to me later that the torture was justified and necessary. He convinced me it was a part of his job. And someday it would be a part of my job.

  Two guards stood outside the double doors that led down a corridor to the entrance of the crowded auditorium. They waved at me as I passed by.

  Inside the auditorium, I saw my classmates. They were scattered all over the room. Many of them were seated. Some of them turned around in their seats so they could talk to the boys sitting behind them.

  The auditorium was full of students. I sat in the back. Rouscher stood tall on stage, towering over the student body. He leered at me over the rest of the students. It was as though he were waiting to call on me to take part in his demonstration, as though he expected great things from me.

  “All right, students. Let’s come to order,” a stern voice said over the loudspeaker.

  I looked up at the stage. Dr. Rouscher stood dead center. Behind him was a large shroud of darkness. It covered the whole upper area of the stage. It was particularly dark directly behind him. I could make out the edges of something in the darkness. It looked like a giant box.

  I could faintly see shapes moving about on the sides of the stage. I could tell there were guards waiting in the wings. I could barely see the outline of the curtain. It was not fully drawn. It stopped on both sides of some oversized object––the box. It took up a large portion of upstage center.