FATHERLAND
Copyright © 2012 Griffin Hayes
Cover design by Andre Ciaccia and Griffin Hayes
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Table of Contents
Copyright Page
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The rain was coming down in sheets and Thomson wondered if it would ever let up.
“Been crapping on our heads like this for nearly a week,” his partner Brooks said, wiping the water off the brim of his hat with one finger. Brooks wore one of those snap-brimmed antique hats that looked about as beat up as the man wearing it, but his partner seemed to think it made him look like Nick Nolte in the movie Mullhulland Falls. Cept we ain’t detectives, Thomson thought, gritting his teeth, and this ain’t L.A.
Brooks rang the doorbell again, just as the woman answered.
She was slight and plump with soft skin the color of clean linen. “I’m so glad you came,” she stammered, wringing her hands.
Thomson and Brooks entered and removed their trench coats. Threads of water collected on the sterile off-white tiles at their feet. Place almost looked like a hospital.
She took the men’s coats and hung them up. “Don’t you have any equipment? I mean, you did say you would run a battery of tests.”
Thomson was the one to speak. “Mrs. Kesler, our first order of business is always to speak with the child. Your claim is quite... extraordinary... therefore we make it a point not to rush anything. I hope you understand.”
She nodded in agreement, although the look of concern on her face said otherwise. “I just want to know, one way or another.”
“We understand,” Brooks cut in. “But if it’s any consolation, given what you told us over the phone, the whole thing is rather incredible.”
“Incredible is hardly the word I’d use,” she snapped and Brooks recoiled slightly.
Thomson shook his head in contempt at Brooks’ blunder. Lack of experience was all it came down to. Kid was as green as a grape and about as soft as one too. Of course, paranormal investigators don’t need psych degrees, but knowing a thing or two about the way people think can often be the difference between a paycheck and the unemployment line.
“Let me apologize for my partner,” Thomson offered. “It was a poor choice of words. Let me assure you, if there’s anything at all to your suspicions we’ll get to the bottom of it tonight. Before we begin however, there is the small issue of our fee.”
“Oh yes,” the woman said and pulled a thick envelope from her apron. She handed it to Thomson who made it vanish into the inner pocket of his dark blue blazer with all the grace of a street magician.
“Now, Mrs. Kesler, where is your son?”
-2-
The three of them ascended the stairs while Mrs. Kesler told them what a wonderful boy Donald was. For a moment, Thomson almost felt guilty taking this poor woman’s money. He and Brooks had investigated well over a hundred cases of supposed paranormal activity and during each and every one the pattern had played out the same. Brooks always found one more piece of evidence to bolster his belief that strange things did, in fact, go bump in the night. But for Thomson, every case drew him one step closer to the inevitable realization that Brooks was a gullible fool. Perhaps the perfect example of this was the case of the old man in Hardin County, Tennessee. The old hoot’s name was Joshua Cosgrove and he claimed to have daily conversations with Albert Sidney Johnston, a General killed at the battle of Shiloh in 1862. So was it any surprise that the good general developed a sudden case of stage fright whenever Thomson and Brooks set up their equipment to record the ghostly meetings?
And then there was Mrs. Patel, who swore that her statue of Vishnu cried real tears of blood. Not surprisingly, when the blood samples came back from the lab reading Porcus blood, as in pig, well even that didn’t seem to sway her one bit. Thomson was into facts, the colder and the harder the better. Brooks had speculated whether the lab had made a mistake. But gullibility aside, Brooks wasn’t all bad. There were trade-offs, like his connections over at the local university where the bulk of their findings were analyzed, not that any of them had ever come back with conclusive proof of the supernatural.
The boy’s room was just ahead of them now and Thomson felt an uncharacteristic prickle of gooseflesh crawl up his arms. He was pulling out a pad of paper and a pen when Mrs. Kesler pushed the door open. Seated cross legged on the floor was a boy, no more than five or six years old, his gaze fixed on the toys around him as the trio shuffled into the room. They had walked into a scale model battlefield. Lined up in parade formation were dozens of gray toy soldiers. The kind they sell in bags of 50 and 100.
“Donald,” Mrs. Kesler said sheepishly. “Did you wanna say hello to the nice men who’ve come to see you?”
The boy lifted his head and both men winced when they saw the flesh on his face. It was pink and stretched into a horrible scar.
“Was he burned in a fire?” Brooks asked.
“Oh, no,” Mrs. Kesler said. “This only started showing up in the spring. Nothing more than a thin line at first. We called it his lucky soft patch. Then it started spreading and that’s part of why I called you people. The doctors have looked him up and down and all they can tell me is it’s either a skin irritation or a late blooming birthmark.”
Donald went back to lining up his men, as if he were alone.
Brooks flipped through the pages of his notepad. “Wound migration isn’t at all unusual,” he offered. “Ian Stevenson’s work on birthmarks and soul transference is quite extensive.”
More mumbo jumbo, Thomson thought. He was growing tired of playing games. “Mrs. Kesler, why exactly are you so certain your son is the reincarnation of Adolf Hitler?”
-3-
Her face blanched. Thomson felt Brooks’ hand touch his elbow warning him to ‘take it back a notch’ but shrugged his partner off.
“You think I’m crazy, don’t you?” she asked.
“No, of course we don’t,” Brooks said, tripping all over his words like a gawky schoolboy.
On the ground, the boy continued to play.
“Mrs. Kesler, right now all I’m seeing is a little boy who likes to play soldier,” Thomson said. “There are millions like him all over the country.”
The woman looked flustered and Thomson thought he knew why. She’s seen the kid’s fascination with war, noticed what looked like scar tissue creeping across his face and jumped to a ridiculous conclusion.
She fiddled with the strings on her apron, looping them around her fingers like tiny nooses. “About a month ago, I was cleaning the kitchen when Donald came up behind me, nearly scared me witless. He was asking where the dog was. I hadn’t the faintest idea what he was talking about. I mean, we don’t have a dog. I told him as much and he shook his head and became real adamant that he owned a dog and wanted to know where I’d put her. Said she was a gift from Martin, that she’d just had a litter and he needed to find her right away. Wasn’t more than an hour later that I heard him upstairs in his room, calling out for Blondi. I was afraid. I wasn’t sure who he was talking to, but he kept on tapping his leg and saying ‘Kommen hier Blondie’ over and over aga
in.”
“That’s German,” Brooks said. He was searching the net on his phone, his fingers dancing over the tiny keyboard at a frantic pace. “Says here Hitler loved dogs. His favorite was a Shepherd named Blondi that he took with him into the Führerbunker.” Brooks paused, the blood draining from his face. “She had a litter of pups right before she died.”
“She didn’t just die. The dog was killed,” Thomson amended. “Hitler fed her cyanide capsules because he had doubts about the poison’s potency.” Thomson flipped through his notepad and poised the pen in his hand to take notes. “How many hours of television does Donald watch, Mrs. Kesler?”
“Very few.”
“Does he have friends? Go on play dates?”
“Well, sure he does. Other little boys from his class mostly. One of them lives on our street, Samuel. You think he got this from one of them? None of them speak any German though, at least I don’t think they do.”
Thomson looked up from his notes. “The key here, Mrs. Kesler, is that you don’t think they do. A child’s mind is like a sponge, you see. You’d be absolutely amazed at the amount of raw data they absorb on a daily basis. Wouldn’t take much more than an absent minded adult watching a war documentary in another room for that kind of thing to seep into Donald’s subconscious mind.”
“I want you to be right, Mr. Thomson. Not just for obvious reasons. I’m not sure if you’re aware, but I’m Jewish and so is most of the neighborhood. I wanted this to go away so badly, but after the scar on Donald’s face started to spread, I didn’t think I could ignore it any longer. But you see, no one can know what I’m telling you here. Can you imagine what would happen? You don’t know what people are capable of.” Mrs. Kesler’s voice started to rise and Donald looked up at her. “The Goldbergs were at Dachau, for crying out loud. For all I know, their son is liable to kick down the door and hurt Donald and I won’t take that risk. I don’t care what he was all those years ago, he’s my son now. That’s why I want you to be right, Mr. Thomson. More than you know.”
Thomson’s eyes fell and found Donald, clutching his mother’s leg.
-4-
Thomson and Brooks retrieved their equipment from the van they had arrived in and hauled it up to Donald’s bedroom. EMF detectors, temperature sensors, a portable oscilloscope and even an ionization detector. Donald sat on his bed, his tiny, pale hands gripping the superman bedspread as he watched the men set up their equipment.
Outside, heavy drops of rain battered the windows.
Brooks sat on the bed next to Donald and got him to lift his shirt. They needed to attach the suction cups to his temples and chest. Patches of skin on Donald’s chest also looked burned.
“What happened to your skin Donald?” Brooks asked as he attached the receptors.
Donald’s eyes dropped. “The fire touched me.”
“You got burned?”
The boy nodded.
“Can you tell me when this happened?”
“I don’t remember.”
Brooks applied the last suction cup. “I need you to be still, Donald. Can you do that for me?”
“I think so.”
Reaching down, Brooks scooped up a toy soldier and slid it into the boy’s hand. “Just relax now.”
Thomson had set most of the equipment on a dresser and was still fiddling with various settings.
“I don’t think any of this stuff’s gonna do us any good,” Brooks said coming up behind him.
Thomson shook his head in mock disgust. “That’s a surprise. I thought you were a believer?”
“You mean, do I think this kid really was Hitler?” Brooks asked, whispering that last part as though he’d said a curse word. “I’m not sure yet. I’m only saying we can bring in all the ghost busting gear you want, but I don’t think it’s gonna do much good. We need to talk to the boy. We might even need to call in Shrodder.”
Thomson let out a dry laugh. “We need hard scientific data, not some whack job quack who specializes in hypnosis. You still don’t get it, do you Brooks? We’ll never be taken seriously unless we do things right.”
“But at least Shrodder might be able to get some historical facts we can verify. Remember the James Leininger case? That boy said he was a World War II fighter pilot and how did his parents discover the truth? They called in a hypnotist.” Brooks was shaking his head. “I think you’ve already made up your mind on this one.”
“What are you implying here? That I’m closed minded or that I’m burned out?”
Brooks raised his hands in a kind of peace offering. “I didn’t use those words, you did.”
“At least I haven’t turned into a gullible fool. Is it any surprise we aren’t taken seriously? Every time we stumble onto a case you’re so ready to believe that gullibility’s dribbling out your ears.”
“You crusty old son of a bitch! You think you’re Stephen frikin’ Hawking, don’t you?”
Mrs. Kesler’s voice came from downstairs. “Everything all right up there?”
“Everything’s fine,” Thomson called back in reply, drawing in a deep breath. “We’re running a few tests, that’s all.” He could feel his heart hammering in his chest. Brooks wasn’t more than a foot away from him, his smooth, youthful face a mask of indignation. In spite of their professional differences, the two men had never lashed out at each other, especially not on a job. They stood there for a moment, staring at each other, wondering what had triggered the outburst. Stress? Lack of sleep? Could have been either one really.
Both men looked over at the same time, and found Donald still seated on the bed, watching them with a strange glimmer in his eyes. The boy was smiling.
-5-
The readings on the equipment were coming back now and everything seemed to be normal. Donald’s heartbeat and vital signs. Temperature fluctuations. Ionization levels. But Thomson knew Brooks was right. None of this expensive gear was worth a damn when investigating past lives. Perhaps, Thomson acknowledged, it had more to do with looking official and scientific. Had more to do with wanting to stick it to the critics and finally be taken seriously. How could they call themselves scientific investigators without scientific instruments, right?
Thomson would need to question the kid. He knew that. The boy wasn’t more than a few feet away, watching them both, displaying the patience of a saint. Apart from a few odd circumstantial indicators, nothing they’d seen so far suggested they were dealing with anything other than a little boy with an unfortunate skin condition. So why don’t I want to speak with him? Thomson wondered skittishly.
Brooks brought Donald to the kiddy table, where he began playing with Plasticine and Crayola crayons. For all his youth and awkwardness on the job, Brooks was a natural with kids and Thomson couldn’t help feeling a little envious. Thomson pulled up one of the tiny chairs and felt his knees pop as he settled into it, not entirely sure it would hold his weight. Streaks of sweat were rolling down his face and he dabbed at his forehead with a hanky from his back pocket.
“Donald.”
The boy looked up. He was rolling a piece of purple modeling clay into the shape of a gun barrel or was it a cannon? Thomson couldn’t tell which.
“I’m gonna run some names by you and I want you to tell me what you know about them. Can you do that?”
Donald nodded. “Okay”
“Bob the Builder.”
Donald’s face lit up. “He hammers stuff.” Donald swung his arm up and down enthusiastically.
“What about Thomas the Train.”
“I know him too. I watch him on TV, with my mom.”
“So far so good,” Thomson said. “How about Strawberry Shortcake?”
The boy’s smile disappeared. “I don’t know that one.”
“That’s a girl’s toy. See I was testing you.”
Brooks was behind them, trying to stifle a laugh. “Guess I’m not the only one that doesn’t get your sad jokes.”
Thomson ignored him.
“I have another
name for you. Joseph Goebbels? Does that sound familiar?”
Donald’s eyes suddenly looked glassy and vacant. “I don’t know that one either,” he said, sounding as though he were miles away.
“What about Adolf Hitler? Ever heard that name before?”
Donald’s eyes sank to the clay cannon in his hands and he resumed rolling out that crude barrel shape.
“Donald?” Thomson nudged him gently. “Do you know the last name I asked you?”
No answer.
“Maybe the kid doesn’t wanna play anymore, Thomson.”
“Let’s draw a picture together Donald,” Thomson said, trying his best to block Brooks’ voice out of his head.
On his left was a bucket with more crayons and rolled up pieces of sketch paper. Thomson unfurled them and laid them flat across his lap. A number of them already contained images Donald had drawn.
“Oh, what a fine artist you are,” Thomson said, hoping he didn’t sound fake or condescending. “Is this a picture you drew at Christmas?” he asked holding up what looked like a row of blockhouses and chimneys belching black smoke. Thomson held the picture in mid air, rotating it, his head beginning to crane at an odd angle. No, this wasn’t a row of blockhouses at all. There was a gate and spewing out the mouth of it was a crudely drawn pair of train tracks. The smoke stacks were also too high. And those powdery flakes tumbling to the ground wasn’t snow at all, was it?
“Donald, what have you drawn here?” Thomson asked, although the question sounded more like a demand. “Look at me. Is this what I think it is?”
Donald stopped rolling his clay cannon. Their eyes met and suddenly the boy didn’t look so young anymore. There was depth in the boy’s ink blot eyes. “What does it look like to you, old man?” Donald snapped and Thomson wasn’t sure anymore who he was speaking to. Children weren’t supposed to talk like this.
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“It looks like Auschwitz,” Thomson said, feeling Brooks move to his side, looking down at the pictures in his lap. Brooks snatched them up, leafing through them one by one. Thomson’s eyes rose and saw that Brooks’ face had suddenly turned the color of bleached bone.
Fatherland (Prequel to Primal Shift) Page 1