Applewood (Book 2): Fledge

by Myers, Brendan P.

  “My name is Joseph Kummler,” I said. “You stole our land. You stole our gold. You killed my father.” I raised the pistol to his head.

  For a brief moment, his eyes cleared, becoming once again the cruel eyes of the young man I remembered. But he also appeared to be waging some sort of deadly struggle within himself. I swear, I watched his eyes turn from yellow to brown and back again. When they finally settled on the brown that I remembered, for that moment at least, William Smithson seemed to have won the upper hand over whoever else was in there with him. Then, he smiled at me.

  “Kill me,” he said calmly, still smiling. “Please. Kill me.”

  I stood frozen above him, the pistol not three feet from his head, when suddenly I realized how wrong it was for me, a lawyer, to take the law into my own hands. I turned away from his continued pleadings to remember the kind and gentle face of my father. He would not have wanted this. I knew at that moment I could not bring myself to go through with it.

  I didn’t have to.

  When I turned back toward him, this time feeling more pity than disdain, I saw his eyes once again begin shading that strange shade of yellow. But they were still mostly brown when he reached out his hand for the gun, placed his finger upon mine, and pulled the trigger.

  The echo of the gunshot resounded through the alley and exploded in my ears. I watched his forehead explode, saw his brains splatter against the brick wall behind him. He was still smiling as he fell backward — more than smiling, really, for in the moment of death, his face took on a look of utter peace and contentment.

  At that same moment, I stepped backward in shock and horror. Instinctively, I glanced toward both ends of the alley, expecting at any moment to see someone come running. After looking down one last time at the face of the man who had killed my father . . . no, the face of the man I had just killed . . . I ran.

  I was half a block before I realized the pistol was still in my hand. I shoved it into my trousers and kept running. There were a few folks about here and there who might have glanced sidelong in my direction but I paid them no mind. Perhaps they thought I was fleeing another riot. I ran through the streets and back to my law office where I shut the door, throwing the pistol into the drawer. I poured myself a brandy and gulped it down and then poured myself another. I must have looked a fright as finally I slumped backward in my chair to ask myself if I was a murderer.

  I fell back upon my lawyer training: I had intent, I had motive, and I had opportunity. Why, I had even stalked the man over the previous days! Surely, someone had noticed. In the midst of my mental anguish, I smiled cynically to think that perhaps Mr. Windham would have yet another opportunity to testify in a case involving a Kummler. Then, I thought of my beloved Kathrin. She would be expecting me home at any moment now, as would my two strong and healthy sons. The shame of their own father being tried for murder was almost too much for me to bear. I found my eyes drifting again and again to the now closed drawer wherein sat the murder weapon.

  The hours ticked by as I sat lost in my own thoughts. The door to the street tinkled open every now and then, the staff and other attorneys going home for the evening. I longed for some interruption to my tortured thoughts, for some human interaction. But my colleagues were well trained that if my door was shut, I was not to be disturbed. I didn’t yet have the strength to leave my chair, grappling as I was with the enormity of my actions. And always, my eyes wandered back to the drawer. I realized then I had already made up my mind. It was now only a matter of time. I stood for the last time only to pour myself another brandy, both to savor the smoky liquid one last time and to summon the courage I would need to do what had to be done.

  In the midst of my despair, I had another thought. Reaching down, I pulled open my bottom drawer and pushed against its false back to reveal a hidden compartment. I pulled out the only item from within, a filthy satchel tied up with string. Placing it upon my desk, I opened it and removed each of a dozen or so black encrusted stones. It was the gold my father had given me. I realized only then that though I’d hidden it away, it had been the guiding force of my life. I stared in wonder at each of them before carefully placing them all back in the satchel. I retied the top and put the bag in my pocket. It was more than appropriate that I have them on my person when they found me.

  No sooner had I put them there when outside my office, I heard the tinkling of the outside door opening once again. Moments later, the silhouette of a man approached the frosted glass of my office door. He stood outside a moment, the greenish lamplight from my desk reflecting on his outline, sending strange and curious shapes along the wall. A moment later, my bowels loosened when I realized who it must be. They had come for me.

  So soon, I thought? I wasn’t ready yet.

  As the man raised his hand to knock upon my door, I reached down and opened the top drawer and felt the fine bone handle of my pistol. At the sound of the second, more demanding knock, I raised the pistol and placed its barrel inside my mouth. When I heard the sound of the door handle being turned, I pulled the trigger, and my world was extinguished in a green flash of light.

  Chapter Six

  1

  The black helicopter swept low across the Rio Grande valley, flying over checkerboard fields of citrus and grain and cotton on its approach to Harlingen. It landed at Valley International just after noon, where Arthur picked up his rental car. The day was warm, but a cool breeze blew in from the Gulf that had him remove his hat and roll down his windows while driving down the quaint, Mexican-flavored streets of the small city. Today, he wore the crisp uniform of an Air Force Colonel. When in Rome, he thought. As always, when putting it on, he reminded himself that should he ever sit in the chair his father now occupied, his commission to General was assured.

  They were expecting him. Arthur was ushered quickly through the military academy’s gates. He stopped by the Administration Building for a brief visit with the retired General who ran the place, where he thanked him again for his courtesy. Arthur answered no when the General asked again whether Arthur required an escort. He said he was in town for only a short while and just wanted a quick look around. When he shook the man’s hand before his walking tour, he told the General that the academy had developed a fine reputation and to keep up the good work.

  The small but pretty campus was all spit and polish, a smartly built series of buildings laid out close together and built for efficiency. Only about fifteen years old, the school did indeed have a fine reputation for producing high quality graduates, ninety eight percent of whom went on to either a four-year college or to one of the service academies. “Give us your boys . . . and we’ll give you back men” was its motto. Wilson’s research revealed a highly regimented structure. From thirteen hundred to thirteen fifty was chow time. Between thirteen fifty and fourteen fifty the boys were to write letters home. After that was free time until classes began again at fifteen hundred hours.

  Arthur was standing just outside the mess hall as the boys began leaving to head back to their dormitories. The boy with fiery red hair and freckles was easy to spot.

  “Excuse me?” Arthur asked.

  The boy looked up. Upon seeing Arthur, he came to crisp attention, saluted smartly, then put his hand to his side. Not bad for just three weeks time, Arthur thought. “Yes, Sir?” the boy asked.

  Arthur returned the salute and put the boy at ease. A few other boys leaving the commissary snapped to attention as well. Arthur returned all their salutes and told them to carry on before turning back to the boy.

  “Walk with me, won’t you?” Arthur asked. The boy answered in the affirmative.

  The two began strolling along the narrow tree-lined streets of the campus. “How do you like it here?” Arthur asked. He turned to the boy and watched him take in a deep breath.

  “Love it, Sir,” he answered.

  Arthur smiled. “Don’t bullshit me, cadet. It’s a long way from Andover to . . . this.”

  There was a slight hitch in the boy
’s step before he stopped in his tracks and turned to face the Colonel. “What do you want . . . Sir?” he asked.

  His thinly-veiled suspicion was tinged with just a hint of arrogance. In his mind, Arthur reconsidered his opinions about whether the Academy had made any progress with the boy.

  “Eyes front, cadet,” he ordered. The boy took his eyes off the Colonel and snapped to attention. Perhaps there was hope after all. “Walk,” he said.

  The two began walking. Arthur saw a small bench outside the Chapel. He walked over and asked the boy to sit. He had noticed too that the boy had not looked at him since his display of military command. He hoped he hadn’t blown it.

  “Look . . .” Arthur began after the two sat down. “I’m not here to ask about you at all. I want to know about your roommate at Andover, Robert Stetson.” When he saw the kid tense up, he knew he was on thin ice. “I need to know what happened to him. Why he left school. Not you.”

  The kid seemed to think carefully for a moment. His left cheek went hollow as if he was biting on the inside of his mouth.

  “It’s important, kid,” Arthur said. “I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t important. You know that.”

  The boy contemplated his shoes a while before letting out a long sigh and beginning to speak.

  “Why not?” he said. “It wasn’t my fault. Not that my father believed me. But that’s a whole ‘nother story. Anyway, Robbie and me, we weren’t really friends or anything. We were just roommates. Still, I guess we got to know each other pretty well, like roommates do. I even liked him. I mean, he wasn’t a bad kid and all. But . . . I don’t know quite how to say it. Robbie was . . . confused about a lot of things. And it didn’t help any that his parents put all this pressure on him to live up to his family name. That was always a big thing with them, the family name. Anyway, in my opinion, he’d done a pretty good job of it. But no one ever asked my opinion.”

  The kid stopped a while, letting the silence linger before smiling and looking away.

  “I guess what I’m trying to say is that to Robbie, everything was a big deal. I mean everything. He was really sensitive, you know? He took everything really hard. Then one day, he convinced himself he was in love with someone. Another boy.”

  He turned to Arthur to gauge his reaction before laughing.

  “Hah! No, not me. I mean . . . look at me. It was another kid. It’s not even important who it was. And it wasn’t that kid’s fault either. It was just . . . that was Rob. After he told me about it, I told him not to do anything stupid, said it was maybe just a phase, you know? Just a prep school thing. For Christ’s sake, he wouldn’t be the first and wouldn’t be the last. But there was no talking him out of it. He was in love.”

  He paused a moment to chew again inside his mouth before going on.

  “Anyway, his father comes up that weekend, and Rob decides he’s going to tell him everything, tell him there wasn’t going to be another generation of Stetsons, and that the family line — like I said, that’s a huge deal in their family, the vaunted “family line” — was gonna end with him. Again, I told him not to, said it was way too soon and maybe he would think different later on. But for him, there was no going back. So later, he comes back from the dinner with his father in tears. He wouldn’t talk about it. I tried getting him to go to a party with me, maybe take his mind off it. But he just lay on his bed and cried. Man, I don’t know what his father said to him, but whatever it was, it was bad. Long story short, I go to the party, I get home after midnight, and find him. He was dead.”

  While the boy let that sink in, Arthur found himself chewing the inside of his own mouth. So that was it? Use the Dugan kid to somehow keep up appearances? But what was in it for Dugan? Maybe the uncle. The boy let him live, after all. Maybe he felt some kind of bond, or attachment . . .

  God, what was he thinking. He threw all those thoughts out of his head when remembering what the boy was. The plan — whatever it might be — would never work. His first inclination had been right. It was madness. The kid continued.

  “He still had the bottle of pills in his hand. His face was blue. I panicked and dragged him off the bed onto the floor. Funny, I remember his head cracked against his night table. I still feel bad about that. Anyway, I pumped his chest a while and blew into his mouth. There mighta been a weak pulse, but hell, what do I know? After a few minutes of that, I called his father. He stayed at the same place every time he came to visit, a small bed and breakfast just down the road. Robbie kept the number tacked up on his bulletin board. So, his father comes, and we carried Robbie out to his car and put him in the back seat. He thanked me and asked me to keep it to myself, and that’s what I did. Until now, that is.”

  The boy shook his head. His tone turned bitter as he went on.

  “But he didn’t. Now, I don’t know this for sure, but I think what happened is he called my dad and told him . . . stuff. Who knows what? Maybe he blamed me for it, or told him I was the one that Rob . . . you know? Hell, maybe Stetson even thought that himself. But the next thing I know is, I’m coming here and not going back to Andover.” Turning, he smiled at Arthur and said, “But you know what? This place is even further away from those assholes who call themselves my parents, so it’s okay by me. I don’t really give a shit. Not one single shit.”

  The two sat in silence another few moments beneath the shade of the elm, lost in their own thoughts. Having gotten what he came for, Arthur turned to the boy and thanked him before telling him he was dismissed. The boy stood and saluted smartly before he turned on his heel and walked away. He had only gone a few feet when Arthur yelled something at his back.

  “Cadet!” The boy turned and waited. “You’re a good kid, son,” Arthur said. “And you did the right thing. Don’t ever take no shit from nobody, ya hear me?”

  The boy nodded and came to attention, then gave his crispest salute before turning again and walking away.

  2

  On that third evening, Dugan expected Julian to continue telling his tale. Therefore, he was surprised and a little disappointed when Julian said that was enough for now, reminding him he had work to do. Dugan puzzled over that as Julian took him to the second floor of the sprawling house where the real library was located.

  Unlike the smaller library downstairs, this large room contained thousands upon thousands of carefully placed and catalogued volumes. Waiting for Dugan on one of the tables was a stack of a dozen or so. Julian said he was to read them all within the next two weeks. Afterward, the two would discuss them.

  “Read them carefully, boy,” he warned.

  “I don’t get it,” Dugan asked. “Why is this important? What does this have to do with me?”

  Julian smiled as if he’d heard the question a thousand times before.

  “If you are going to live like a civilized person, it is important to be a civilized person. In my opinion, a person can only be civilized when they are conversant with the concepts contained in those books. However, to be honest, your . . . condition . . . does grant you another alternative. You can live like an animal. Go back to eating rats. It’s your choice. Which is it going to be?”

  Dugan smiled and shook his head, and Julian left Dugan alone with only the books for company. Walking to the table, he began going through the stack. The collected works of Homer. Thicker volumes containing tales of Greek mythology. He spent each evening over the next few weeks reading those, finishing within the proscribed time period, but just barely.

  As promised, when he was finished, Julian quizzed him long into the night, and over the next few weeks and months, the reading got more difficult. In his stacks he began to find thick works of philosophy by Plato, Virgil, Aristotle, and others. Though Dugan found much of it hard to follow, Julian was a born teacher, and none of it ever felt like school. Through all his reading, Dugan couldn’t help but notice the vampire legend ran deep. From those creatures of Greek mythology known as Empusas and Lamia, to Plato’s appetite, to Aristotle’s embrace of the scie
ntific, Dugan knew intuitively that Julian had suggested these books for a reason, and before long, Dugan saw that the history of what he had become ran through the books like an invisible theme.

  When they discussed it, neither of them were surprised that they both empathized more with Grendel than with Beowulf. After reading Dante, they had a fascinating discussion about the nature of human love. That segued neatly into discussing the bawdy tales of Chaucer. While reading Shakespeare’s tragedies, Julian broke out a pair of foils. Over the next few weeks and months, he taught Dugan expert swordsmanship in the huge, but empty ballroom on the first floor.

  When the Bible was incorporated into his reading, Dugan couldn’t help but think he wasn’t being taught by Julian, but by the good Reverend Haggstrom himself, reaching through time. Yet even within the Bible were the vampires, though that came as no surprise, because that blood drenched volume was a veritable Sears Catalog of flesh eating, a virtual celebration of blood drinking. He didn’t need Julian to point out to him that the ritual eating and drinking of human flesh and blood was the most sacred sacrament of the Catholic Church.

  While working his way through Swift and Dickens, Julian surprised him with a field trip. The two put on warm clothes and a jacket, stepping out into the brisk mountain air and into the back of a warm limousine. “Where are we going?” Dugan asked.

  “Hunting,” Julian answered, smiling. “You’ve earned it.”

  After a half hour’s drive through rocky cliffs and winding roads, they approached a pair of large stone tablets with the words Garden of the Gods carved into them. The car pulled over a half mile beyond and the two of them walked out into the cold. High clouds blocked much of the moonlight, but keen night vision was one of the positive things about their condition.