Lineage: A Supernatural Thriller

by Joe Hart

  Annette fell silent and closed her eyes. Lance didn’t know what to say. His mind attempted to grasp everything she’d said, but it felt huge and he was unable to organize it into anything that neared cohesion.

  “Why the shipping company? Was he trying to start a new life?” Lance shrugged his shoulders with the question, and Annette responded by shaking her head again.

  “That company was nothing but a cattle farm. He knew all along what he wanted to do. He wrote the applications himself. He put questions on them that meant something to him.”

  “Questions? Like what?” Lance asked.

  “Questions about their family and next of kin. He was looking for something in each of the men he hired. He was looking for isolation. Someone who had no family or that had moved far away from anyone of relation.” Annette stared at Lance again, an intensity in the look that told Lance she needed him to understand. That something was coming, like a tsunami he couldn’t see in the darkness. “He was singling them out, one by one. Selecting the ones who were alone.”

  “So he could kill them,” Lance finished. He watched his grandmother nod, her guilt so palpable he could almost see the word etched across her face. “And you helped him, didn’t you?” Again the nod. “Tell me.”

  Annette sighed the crinkling of dry paper again. “I would approach them after their shift and invite them to dinner at the house. Tell them there was a promotion of sorts that Heinrich had picked them for, and that they must not say a word to their fellow workers about. ‘Tell no one,’ I’d say, and they would answer, ‘Yes, of course,’ thrilled that they were moving up in the company. Only I knew the truth—they were condemned.”

  The immensity of what he was hearing overwhelmed Lance, and he felt his gorge rise as his heart began to beat faster. His grandfather had manipulated the woman before him into a femme fatale of sorts. Luring the young men, expecting a grand promotion, to their home, when all that actually awaited them was death. Lance nearly stood, unable to be in the presence of a vileness the sort of which sat in the chair opposite him. But he had to know the truth. It was the only possible way that he could extricate himself from the labyrinth of secrets he had discovered.

  “So you lured them there and then Erwin killed them? Is that about it?” he asked, no longer able to keep the anger out of his voice. He expected the young nurse to appear at the doorway any moment, concerned with the sounds from within the room, but the hallway remained clear for the time being.

  “He didn’t just kill them,” Annette said. “He tortured them. He would sneak up behind them while I engaged them in conversation, and hit them over the head. When they awoke, they would be in the room, lashed to the chair he had built.” Lance saw her shudder, an involuntary movement, and he wondered how a person could subsist in the environment she described, in the presence of evil, without succumbing to madness. “I never went in there while he worked on them. I didn’t want to see. He would emerge, soaked in blood, and tell me it was time.”

  “Time for what?” Lance asked.

  “To dispose of them. He put what was left—just pieces, normally—in their vehicles and we would guide them down the hill to the lake. So slowly would they disappear beneath the water. Like an animal submerging. He knew the lake was deep there. That’s why he bought the land he did, for the depth of the lake, the capacity.”

  Annette reached up with an atrophied hand and rubbed the paper-thin skin of her cheek. She frowned, feeling the wrinkles there. “How long? How long have I been here?”

  “Over thirty years,” Lance answered. He watched her absorb the information.

  “So long. Half a lifetime, gone.” Her hand drifted back down to the picture of Rhinelander that still sat before her. Lance noticed her attention focus on the face of the young man smiling beside his car.

  “What happened to him?” Lance asked, tapping the photograph. Annette remained frozen, her eyes wide, only her mouth moving.

  “He was the last. Heinrich was almost fifty by then. His reflexes weren’t as fast, and Gerald noticed him before he could bring the club down on his head. Gerald caught it and sent Heinrich to the floor. He tried to flee, and I was near the door.” The old woman’s breath fell from her dried lips. “The knife was in my hand, and then it was in his throat. Like magic. And he looked at me. The look in his eyes, I won’t ever forget it. Surprised. So shocked at what I had done, and maybe I looked that way too. Then he was on the floor, his blood covering my feet, soaking into my shoes. Heinrich came to me, held me, and told me I’d done well. Saved us. But then I saw Anthony was watching from upstairs. He saw everything. I think it changed him somehow. I think it cursed him.”

  Annette looked at Lance, her eyes seeking something from him. Forgiveness? Understanding? He couldn’t hold her gaze for long, and looked down at the desk. He couldn’t give her any of the things that her eyes asked for. She turned from him, shifting in her chair until she almost faced completely away, held in the grip of shame.

  “He cut us after that. He had to do something. He knew that he could no longer handle a full-grown man. The tables had turned with time, and he was too slow. I think somewhere inside he loved us, but the other thing that lived in him was stronger. He started with me. He would lock me in the chair and the blade would touch me, at first so gentle, and then horribly deep, until I’d scream for him to stop. And he would, but just barely. I always expected not to come out of that room alive, that he would go too far and then I would be gone. And then one day he took Anthony. I meant to stop him, because I knew. I knew what went on in that room, but I couldn’t, and deep down I was glad. Glad it wasn’t me this time. Glad I wouldn’t have to feel the steel cutting through my skin and hear the patter of my blood as it hit the floor.”

  The old woman’s shoulders hitched in a quiet sob, and the revulsion that Lance had felt up to this point eased. He could see the suffering within the shell of the woman before him, and despite her confession, he felt himself leaning forward and reaching toward a bony shoulder. Only then did he notice the single white line extending from beneath the collar of the gown she wore. A scar. He changed the trajectory of his hand and drew back the collar.

  A congealed mass of puckered flesh snaked its way across the pale skin of her back and vanished from view. He let go of the fabric and sat back in his chair, the pieces falling into place. The pressure within the room hadn’t eased. In fact, it had increased, and he wondered if his head might implode. The only explanation for its presence the stress of the knowledge that had been laid at his feet.

  “They’re still there, you know,” Annette said.

  Lance rubbed his temples, trying in vain to ease the pressure. “What are?”

  “The knives. He kept them under the third board into the room. It has a knot shaped like a hand on it. I think he might’ve kept other things there too, things that belonged to the men.”

  Lance imagined the dark space and what might lie next to the instruments his grandfather had used to murder and disfigure his family, what he might have kept from his kills as trophies. “Tell me how he died,” he heard himself say.

  Annette remained facing away for a while, but at last turned back enough for him to see her profile behind the fan of white hair.

  “I can see it better than anything else in my mind. It replays over and over like a never-ending dream in my head.

  “Tell me,” Lance repeated.

  Annette’s head came up and she turned just enough for him to see the side of her face. “We were sitting in the living room when he kicked open the door. I remember pieces of trim flying in different directions and then he was there, his arm out and the gun in his hand. I can still see his face, a little scar running across his nose and onto his cheek. He made Heinrich kneel before him on the floor.”

  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 l
ooking.’ 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 snee
ring, 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.