The Collection

by Bentley Little

He picked up the phone and dialed 911.

  He left Pam and Amy home alone the next morning, told them not to answer the door or the telephone and to call the police if they saw any strangers hanging around the neigh­borhood. He had formulated a plan during the long sleepless hours between the cops' departure and dawn, and he drove to New York University, asking a fresh-faced clerk in ad­ministration where the history department was located. Fol­lowing the kid's directions across campus, he read the posted signs until he found the correct building.

  The secretary of the history department informed him that Dr. Hartkinson had his office hours from eight to ten-thirty and was available to speak with him, and he followed her down the hallway to the professor's office.

  Hartkinson stood upon introduction and shook his hand. He was an elderly man in his mid- to late sixties, with the short stature, spectacles, and whiskers of a Disney movie college professor. "Have a seat," the old man said, clearing a stack of papers from an old straight-backed chair. He thanked the secretary, who retreated down the hall, then moved back behind his oversized desk and sat down him­self. "What can I do for you?"

  Mike cleared his throat nervously. "I don't really know how to bring this up. It may sound kind of stupid to you, but last night my wife and I were... well, we were sleeping, and we were woken up by this pounding on our front door. I went out to investigate, and there were these four men on my porch, calling out my name and threatening me. They were wearing powdered wigs and what looked like Revolu­tionary War clothes-"

  The old man's eyes widened. "Washingtonians!"

  "Washingtonians?"

  "Shh!" The professor quickly stood and closed his office door. His relaxed, easygoing manner no longer seemed so relaxed and easygoing. There was a tenseness in his move­ments, an urgency in his walk. He immediately sat back down, took the phone off the hook, and pulled closed his lone window. He leaned conspiratorially across the desk, and when he spoke his voice was low and frightened. "You're lucky you came to me," he said. "They have spies everywhere."

  "What?"

  "Dr. Gluck and Dr. Cannon, in our history department here, are Washingtonians. Most of the other professors are sympathizers. It's pure luck you talked to me first. What do you have?"

  "What?"

  "Come on now. They wouldn't have come after you un­less you had something they wanted. What is it? A letter?"

  Mike nodded dumbly.

  "I thought so. What did this letter say?"

  Mike reached into his coat pocket and pulled out the piece of parchment.

  The professor took the note out of the plastic. He nodded when he'd finished reading. "The truth. That's what's in this letter."

  Mike nodded.

  "George Washington was a cannibal. He was a fiend and a murderer and a child eater. But he was also chosen to be the father of our country, and that image is more important than the actuality."

  "Someone else told me that."

  "He was right." The professor shifted in his seat. "Let me tell you something about historians. Historians, for the most part, are not interested in truth. They are not interested in learning facts and teaching people what really happened. They want to perpetuate the lies they are sworn to defend. It's an exclusive club, the people who know why our wars were really fought, what really happened behind the closed doors of our world's leaders, and most of them want to keep it that way. There are a few of us altruists, people like my­self who got into this business to learn and share our learn­ing. But the majority of historians are PR people for the past." He thought for a moment. "Benjamin Franklin did not exist. Did you know that? He never lived. He was a com­posite character created for mass consumption. It was felt by the historians that a character was needed who would em­body America's scientific curiosity, boldness of vision, and farsighted determination, who would inspire people to reach for greatness in intellectual endeavors. So they came up with Franklin, an avuncular American Renaissance man. Ameri­cans wanted to believe in Franklin, wanted to believe that his qualities were their qualities, and they bought into the concept lock, stock, and barrel, even falling for that absurd kite story.

  "It was the same with Washington. Americans wanted him to be the father of our country, needed him to be the fa­ther of our country, and they were only too happy to believe what we historians told them."

  Mike stared at Hartkinson, then looked away toward the rows of history books on the professor's shelves. These were the men who had really determined our country's course, he realized. The historians. They had altered the past i and affected the future. It was not the great men who shaped' the world, it was the men who told of the great men who j shaped the world.

  "You've stumbled upon something here," Hartkinson said. "And that's why they're after you. That note's like a; leak from Nixon's White House, and the President's going to do everything in his power to make damn sure it goes no further than you. Like I said, the history biz isn't anything like it appears on the outside. It's a weird world in here, weird and secretive. And the Washingtonians ..." He shook his head, "They're the fringe of the fringe. And they are a very dangerous group indeed."

  "They all had wooden teeth, the ones who came to my house-"

  "Ivory, not wood. That's one of those little pieces of trivia they're very adamant about getting out to the public. The original core group of Washingtonians screwed up on that one, and subsequent generations have felt that the im­pression that was created made Washington out to be a weak buffoon. They've had a hard time erasing that 'wooden teeth' image, though."

  "Is that how you can spot them? Their teeth?"

  "No. They wear modern dentures when they're not in uniform. They're like the Klan in that respect."

  "Only in that respect?"

  The professor met his eyes. "No."

  "What..." He cleared his throat. "What will they try to do to me?"

  "Kill you. And eat you."

  Mike stood. "Jesus fucking Christ. I'm going to the po­lice with this. I'm not going to let them terrorize my fam­ily-"

  "Now just hold your horses there. That's what they'll try to do to you. If you listen to me, and if you do exactly what I say, they won't succeed." He looked at Mike, tried unsuc­cessfully to smile. "I'm going to help you. But you'll have to tell me a few things first. Do you have any children? Any daughters?"

  "Yes. Amy."

  "This is kind of awkward. Is she ... a virgin?"

  "She's ten years old!"

  The professor frowned. "That's not good."

  "Why isn't it good?"

  "Have you see the insignia they wear on their arms?"

  "The hatchet and the cherry tree?"

  "Yes."

  "What about it?"

  "That was Professor Summerlin's contribution. The Washingtonians have always interpreted the cherry tree story as a cannibal allegory, a metaphoric retelling of Wash­ington's discovery of the joys of killing people and eating their flesh. To take it a step further, Washington's fondness for the meat of virgins is well documented, and that's what made Professor Summerlin think of the patch. He simply updated the symbol to include the modern colloquial defini­tion of 'cherry.'"

  Mike understood what Hartkinson meant, and he felt sick to his stomach.

  "They all like virgin meat," the professor said.

  "I'm going to the police. Thanks for your help and all, but I don't think you can-"

  The door to the office was suddenly thrown open, and there they stood: four men and one woman dressed in Rev­olutionary garb. Mike saw yellowish teeth in smiling mouths.

  "You should have known better, Julius," the tallest man said, pushing his way into the room.

  "Run!" Hartkinson yelled.

  Mike tried to, making a full-bore, straight-ahead dash toward the door, but he was stopped by the line of unmoving Washingtonians. He'd thought he'd be able to break through, to knock a few of them over and take off down the hall, but evidently they had expected that and were prepared.

  Two of
the men grabbed Mike and held him.

  "My wife'll call the police if I'm not back in time."

  "Who cares?" the tall man said.

  "They'll publish it!" Mike yelled in desperation. "I gave orders for them to publish the letter if anything happened to me! If I was even later

  The woman looked at him calmly. "No, you didn't."

  "Yes, I did. My wife'll-"

  "We have your wife," she said.

  A stab of terror flashed through him.

  She smiled at him, nodding. "And your daughter."

  He was not sure where they were taking him, but wher­ever it was, it was far. Although he was struggling as they hustled him out of the building and into their van, no one tried to help him or tried to stop them. A few onlookers smiled indulgently, as though they were witnessing the re­hearsal of a play or a staged publicity stunt, but that was the extent of the attention they received.

  If only they hadn't been wearing those damn costumes,

  Mike thought. His abduction wouldn't have looked so com­ical if they'd been dressed in terrorist attire.

  He was thrown into the rear of the van, the door was slammed shut, and a few seconds later the engine roared to life and they were off.

  They drove for hours. There were no windows in the back of the van, and he could not tell in which direction they were traveling, but after a series of initial stops and starts and turns, the route straightened out, the speed became con­stant, and he assumed they were moving along a highway.

  When the van finally stopped and the back door was opened and he was dragged out, it was in the country, in a wooded, meadowed area that was unfamiliar to him. Through the trees he saw a building, a white, green-trimmed colonial structure that he almost but not quite recognized. The Washingtonians led him away from the building to a small shed. The shed door was opened, and he saw a dark tunnel and a series of steps leading down. Two of the Wash­ingtonians went before him, the other three remained behind him, and in a group they descended the stairway.

  Mt. Vernon, Mike suddenly realized. The building was Mt. Vernon, George Washington's home.

  The steps ended at a tunnel, which wound back in the di­rection of the building and ended in a large warehouse-sized basement that looked as if it had been converted into a mu­seum of the Inquisition. They were underneath Mt. Vernon, he assumed, in what must have been Washington's secret lair.

  "Where's Pam?" he demanded. "Where's Amy?"

  "You'll see them," the woman said.

  The tall man walked over to a cabinet, pointed at the dull ivory objects inside. "These are spoons carved entirely from the femurs of the First Continental Congress." He gestured toward an expensively framed painting hanging above the cabinet. The painting, obviously done by one of early America's finer artists, depicted a blood-spattered George Washington, flanked by two naked and equally blood-spattered women, devouring a screaming man. "Washington commis­sioned this while he was president."

  The man seemed eager to show off the room's posses­sions, and Mike wondered if he could use that somehow to get an edge, to aid in an escape attempt. He was still being held tightly by two of the Washingtonians, and though he had not tried breaking out of their grip since entering the basement, he knew he would not be able to do so.

  The tall man continued to stare reverently at the painting. "He acquired the taste during the winter when he and his men were starving and without supplies or reinforcements. The army began to eat its dead, and Washington found that he liked the taste. During the long days, he carved eating utensils and small good luck fetishes from the bones of the devoured men. Even after supplies began arriving, he con­tinued to kill a man a day for his meals."

  "He began to realize that with the army in his control, he was in a position to call the shots," the woman explained from behind him. "He could create a country of cannibals. A nation celebrating and dedicated to the eating of human flesh!"

  Mike turned his head, looked at her. "He didn't do it, though, did he?" He shook his head. "You people are so full of crap."

  "You won't think so when we eat your daughter's kid­neys."

  Anger coursed through him and Mike tried to jerk out of his captors' grasps. The men's grips tightened, and he soon gave up, slumping back in defeat. The tall man ran a hand lovingly over the top of a strange tablelike contraption in the middle of the room. "This is where John Hancock was flayed alive," he said. "His blood anointed this wood. His screams sang in these chambers."

  "You're full of shit."

  "Am I?" He looked dreamily around the room. "Jefferson gave his life for us, you know. Sacrificed himself right here, allowed Washingtonians to rip him apart with their teeth. Franklin donated his body to us after death-"

  "There was no Benjamin Franklin."

  The man smiled, showing overly white teeth. "So you know."

  "Shouldn't you be wearing your wooden choppers?"

  The man punched him in the stomach, and Mike doubled over, pain flaring in his abdomen, his lungs suddenly unable to draw in enough breath.

  "You are not a guest," the man said. "You are a prisoner. Our prisoner. For now." He smiled. "Later you may be sup­per."

  Mike closed his eyes, tried not to vomit. When he could again breathe normally, he looked up at the man. "Why this James Bond shit? You going to give me your whole fucking history before you kill me? You going to explain all of your toys to me and hope I admire them? Fuck you! Eat me, you sick assholes!"

  The woman grinned. "Don't worry. We will."

  A door opened at the opposite end of the room, and Pam and Amy were herded in by three new Washingtonians. His daughter and wife looked white and frightened. Amy was crying, and she cried even harder when she saw him. "Daddy!" she screamed.

  "Lunch," the tall man said. "Start up the barbecue."

  The Washingtonians laughed.

  The woman turned to Mike. "Give us the letter," she said.

  "And you'll let me go? Yeah. Right."

  Where was the letter? he wondered. Hartkinson had had it last. Had he destroyed it or ditched it somewhere, like a junkie flushing drugs down the toilet after the arrival of the cops?

  And where was Hartkinson? Why hadn't they kidnapped him, too?

  He was about to ask just that very question when there was the sound of scuffling from the door through which Pam and Amy had entered. All of the Washingtonians turned to face that direction.

  And there was Hartkinson.

  He was dressed in a red British Revolutionary War uniform, and behind him stood a group of other redcoats clutching bayonets. A confused and frightened youth, who looked like a tour guide, peered into the room from behind them.

  "Unhand those civilians!" Hartkinson demanded in an affected British accent.

  He and his friends looked comical in their shabby mis-matched British uniforms, but they also looked heroic, and Mike's adrenaline started pumping as they burst through the doorway. There were a lot of them, he saw, fifteen or twenty, and they outnumbered the Washingtonians more than two to one.

  Two of the Washingtonians drew knives and ran toward Pam and Amy.

  "No!" Mike yelled.

  Musket balls cut the men down in midstride.

  Mike took a chance and tried his escape tactic again. Either the men holding him were distracted or their grip had simply weakened after all this time, but he successfully jerked out of their hands, broke away, and turned and kicked one of the men hard in the groin. The other man moved quickly out of his way, but Mike didn't care. He ran across the room, past arcane torture devices, to Pam and Amy.

  "Attack!" someone yelled.

  The fight began.

  It was mercifully short. Mike heard gunfire, heard rico­chets, heard screams, saw frenzied movement, but he kept his head low and knew nothing of the specifics of what was happening. All he knew was that by the time he reached Pam and Amy they were free. He stood up from his crouch, looked around the room, and saw instantly that most of the Washingtonians were dead or ca
ptured. The tall man was lying on the floor with a dark crimson stain spreading across his powder blue uniform, and that made Mike feel good. Served the bastard right.

  Both Pam and Amy were hugging each other and crying, and he hugged them too and found that he was crying as well. He felt a light tap on his shoulder and instinctively whirled around, fists clenched, but it was only Hartkinson.

  Mike stared at him for a moment, blinked. "Thank you," he said, and he began crying anew, tears of relief. "Thank you."

  The professor nodded, smiled. There were flecks of blood in his white Disney beard. "Leave," he said. "You don't want to see what comes next."

  "But-"

  His voice was gentle. "The Washingtonians aren't the only ones with ... different traditions."

  "You're not cannibals, too?"

  "No, but..." He shook his head. "You'd better go."

  Mike looked at Pam and Amy, and nodded.

  From inside his red coat, Hartkinson withdrew a piece of parchment wrapped in plastic.

  The letter.

  "Take it to the Smithsonian. Tell the world." His voice was low and filled with reverence. "It's history."

  "Are you going to be okay here?"

  "We've done this before." He gestured toward the tour guide, who was still standing in the corner. "He'll show you the way out." He shook his head, smiling ruefully. "The history biz is not like it appears from the outside."

  "I guess not." Mike put his arm around Pam, who in turn pulled Amy toward the door. The tour guide, white-faced, started slowly up the steps.

  "Don't look back," Hartkinson advised.

  Mike waved his acquiesence and began walking up the stairs, clutching Washington's letter. Behind them, he heard screams-cries of terror, cries of pain-and though he didn't want to, though he knew he shouldn't, he smiled as he led his family out of the basement and into Washington's home above.

  Life with Father

  I wrote "Life with Father" and "The Pond" for an eco­logical horror anthology titled The Earth Strikes Back. Both were rejected. Judging by the title of the book, I figured that most if not all of the stories would deal with the negative effects of pollution, overpopulation, deforestation, etc.