by S. F. Henson
Only one house is dark. The one in the center, with a giant red X painted on the door. I know that house all too well, but the X is new.
The smart thing to do would be stay put. Wait for the FBI, watch the arrests, make sure they find the bodies, then leave.
But the house calls to me. The X reaches off the battered wood, summoning me.
Everyone’s in the meeting hall. There were plenty of nights I made it from the house to here without being seen. I can do it again. One last time.
I skirt the field as quickly as possible. The smell of cold threatens to attack me with memories of the last time I ran in these woods. I dig my nails into my palms and zero in on the X that doesn’t exist in my flashbacks, only slowing when I’m at the porch.
A quick glance around confirms that I’m still alone. No one has seen me yet. Standing here in plain view is reckless, but I can’t bring myself to go in. My hand rests on the screen handle. I shouldn’t be here. I should stay hidden until the FBI shows up.
With a deep breath, I ease the screen open, lifting up slightly as I pull to keep it from squeaking, then my hand is on the knob. It’s probably locked. Someone else—the current leader—could’ve moved in, even though the X seems to indicate otherwise.
The knob turns easily.
I cross the threshold for the first time since I left for the woods to meet Kelsey that night.
It’s exactly the same. Eerily the same. Like a giant mausoleum, a memorial to the great leader who once lived here. The swastika flag still hangs over the fireplace, lording its hate over everyone who enters.
Large framed pictures rest on the mantle on either side of the flag. On one side is Hitler, hand raised in the Bellamy salute, and on the other is him. Someone laid fake white edelweiss—Hitler’s favorite flower—in tribute before the photos. Plastic pearls of dew cling to the tiny white petals.
Someone has been here recently. The room is strangely dust-free, but still unlived in. The multicolored afghan still lies across the back of the black leather couch, looking even more out of place now than it did then. A bright red SS armband lies in the straight-backed chair across the room. The brass fire poker he once used to beat me gleams in its stand.
Holy shit, it really is a museum. Do they parade children through here, telling stories about their fearless leader and his disrespectful child who stripped the world of his glory?
Unable to stomach it any longer, I cross the living room to the hall, my feet automatically avoiding the noisiest floorboards. Boards still darkened with bloodstains, splotchy reminders of all the horrors that occurred under this roof. That’s my blood. And Mom’s. And who knows how many others have dripped their lives out here. I pause in my bedroom doorway for an instant before pushing on—there’s nothing I want from there.
His room is the one I need.
Just standing outside it makes me nervous. Even though I know he’s not here.
He yells in my head, What the hell do you want, Nathaniel? You spyin’, boy?
“Yes,” I say aloud. I step into his room and immediately leave.
It still smells like him. After all these years. Stale cigarettes and gunpowder and cinnamon gum. I start to fall back and catch myself on the wall. Pictures of Joseph Goebbels and Hermann Göring rattle on their nails.
The last time I was in his room, I was thirteen. He was drunk, coming off a celebration of one of his buddies slipping an assault charge.
“Nathaniel! Get your ass in here,” he’d yelled. “Gotta show you somethin’.”
I’d paused outside the door, same as tonight. He grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and pulled me to him, even though I was almost as tall as he was by then. Cigarette ash rained down on my arms. He waved a pistol under my nose.
“See this, boy?” he slurred. “This here is my new best friend, GG. Every good leader’s gotta have good sidekicks.” He twisted me around and pointed at the pictures of Hitler’s right-hand men. “Them was his.” He shook the gun again, inches from my temple, the same place he’d point it directly in a year. “GG is mine. A little present to myself. Yessir, everything’s goin’ my way tonight!”
The memory echoes through the empty house. GG is in an evidence locker somewhere—the one friend who turned on him. Goebbels and Göring sneer at me from their positions of honor on the wall outside his room. There’s not one single picture of me hanging anywhere. None of Mom.
I rip down Hitler’s right-hand men and smash their faces on the floor, shattering the glass and the memories of his voice.
The shards crunch as I barrel into the room again. This time I’m prepared for his scent. I start with the closet. It’s full of fatigue pants and blue jeans and combat boots and not much else. I drag it all down, tearing at the patches with my fingers before grabbing my knife. I slash and rip until the floor is littered with swastikas and “White Power” and weiss & stolz.
His bathroom is next. I sweep everything off the counter. Shaving cream and razors and magazines fall into the toilet. The shower curtain rips free, leaving tatters of white fabric clinging to the plastic hooks.
I’ve wanted to do this since I was eleven. Since I first cowered in this bathtub, scrubbing my boots clean of an innocent Muslim kid’s blood.
I storm back into the bedroom, about to tackle the nightstand, when unnatural light sweeps over me. I drop to my stomach, breathing heavily. Shit! I lost myself, made too much noise destroying the skinheads’ little gallery. I crawl to the window and peek out.
A black-clad, helmeted swarm crosses the field, their flashlights glowing at the end of their drawn guns. Three beautiful white letters—FBI—stand out on their chests. They’re here. Finally. I slump against the wall and swallow my heart back into my chest.
Time to get out of here. I’m about to stand when I notice a weird board under the bed. One end is slightly elevated, like someone had pried it up and didn’t quite replace it. I inch under the bed and use my knife to wrench the board up enough to grab it. Instead of subfloor beneath, there’s a hole. I can’t see, so I plunge my hand in blind, crossing my fingers a rat doesn’t bite off one of my fingers.
My fingertip hits something hard. I drag it out from under the bed with me. It’s a metal box, not much bigger than his beloved GG. Unlike the living room, thick dust covers the lid. I examine it in the moonlight pouring through the window, then flick up the simple latch and open the lid.
Mom smiles up at me. I almost drop the box. Can it really be her? Am I imaging it? I flip through the stack of pictures. There are dozens of her. Smiling, laughing, pouting. Some are only of half her face, others are of the two of them together. They both look happy. There are even a couple of her holding me.
I found her. Finally.
She was here at The Fort with me all along.
At the bottom of the box is a simple gold band. Nothing fancy, no stone. I shuffle back to a picture of me and Mom. She’s wearing the ring in them. Third finger of her left hand. Her wedding band. She left it behind.
And he kept it.
He kept all this stuff, buried under his bed. As cold and hard and evil as he was, he couldn’t completely throw her away. It doesn’t destroy my image of him, but it twists it a little. All these years, I’ve seen him from a certain angle—me on the ground and him above me. Now, I feel like I’m finally above him, looking down and seeing the full puzzle spread out before me, seeing all the pieces clicked into place. The whole picture is more complex than I ever thought.
I’ll never understand him, or know what Mom saw in him, but I can learn from him. At one point, he was capable of love and something broke that part of him. And whatever it was, he let it shape him into something distorted and ugly.
I refuse to do that. I choose to be shaped, polished by my past. I choose to be like that tree in the hole at Dell’s. I choose to grow in spite of where I started.
I tuck most of the pictures and the wedding band into my inner jacket pocket and drop the box back under the bed. Screams erupt fro
m the meeting hall. I peek out the window again. The FBI has broken up the gathering. A few people try to make a run for it and agents take off after them.
A squad of FBI vests advances toward the houses. I have to go before they start checking them. Without ID, would they believe me if I told them who I am? I press against the wall as they pass by, then watch again, expecting them to start their search.
They hit the second row, then turn right.
They’re looking for the bodies. I wade through the mess of shredded clothing and tiptoe down the hall to the back door. My instinct urges me to run, run, run.
But I’m tired of running.
I slip between the houses and enter the woods parallel to the agents. I’ll just keep an eye on them and make sure they head in the right direction. Their flashlights sweep over the brush. One starts toward me and I freeze behind a tree.
“Paul, this look like a path to you?” he calls.
“I think it’s here,” another responds.
The light moves away and I risk a glance. They’ve found the path. I move with them, staying a hundred feet or so away, stopping when they stop, pressing on when they find the trail again.
I don’t know how long we go like that. Long enough for my feet and my brain to stop interacting, for the moon to rise high overhead. Then they lose the path for good. The brush is thick. Even though most of the land out here is barren, the leaves left a wall of thorns and branches behind. The Feds have entered an impassable nook. They veered too far left and got turned around.
How do I help them? Appear out of nowhere and say, Hey, guys. I’m your friendly former skinhead sent to guide the way? That would never work. I can get ahead of them, though. They’ll eventually get through the brush. I can make the trail clear enough for them to follow.
Quiet as possible, I dash up the hill, arcing out of the way before circling back to the path. I break sticks and stomp my feet in the frost to make a clean trail. They’re so close, if they can just push through this—
A boulder slams into my side, pinning me to the ground. Fists pummel my face. I fling a knee up and nail the massive human in the groin. He groans and doubles over. I push him to the hard ground. The moonlight bounces off his face.
Thomas-freaking-Mayes.
He looks like an extra in horror movie. His face is yellow and green from almost-healed bruises, still recovering from our last fight. I did a better job on him than I thought. He lunges for me. I slam the heel of my hand into his nose, pulling back just before the point the bone could pierce his brain. He flops back into the snow, blood spurting out of his face.
“This way!” an agent shouts. They found the trail again.
“I don’t have time for this shit,” I hiss.
Thomas Mayes claws at me. “You did this. You brought them here, you spineless asswipe. Too scared to come alone?”
I scramble out of his reach.
“I’m gonna finish you. Shoulda done it years ago,” he says. “Woulda done us all a favor.” He springs. His shoulder catches me in the ribs and it’s all I can do to keep from yowling. Sharp pain stings my side.
Thomas Mayes draws his hand back. A knife glints in the faint light. Son of a bitch stabbed me. I punch him across the jaw with my right fist and grab at his knife hand with my left. The punch knocks him off balance. We roll down the hill a few feet, grappling for the knife.
The Feds are almost on top of us. If they catch us here, they’ll arrest us both. I hit Thomas Mayes in the gut three times, knocking the wind out of him. It’s enough to pry the knife away.
He snatches for it. I duck under his arm and grasp him from behind, pressing the knife against his throat.
One deep slash, and this will be over. This feud that has raged between us for nine years will end. What’s another death on my conscience, another body for the mass grave we’re so close to? It would be fitting to leave him here with all the corpses he contributed to. One swipe and I save the world from another neo-nazi.
The knife shakes in my hand. It would be so easy and I’d probably save so many innocent people.
“Stop,” I whisper. “Just stop.”
I shove him to the ground and run uphill. Sharp pain shoots through my side. I’m losing blood from the stab wound. How much? Did the knife hit anything critical or—
Stop.
If I keep thinking about this it will overwhelm me.
The Feds are ahead of me now, looking for the trail. I stumble forward, actually grateful for the cold that wraps its ice pack arms around me, numbing my aching body. My side is sticky and wet. I touch it and my hand comes away red.
Thomas Mayes got me deeper than I thought. My jacket is soaked through. I’m freezing. I don’t think I’ve ever been this cold in my life. I can’t die here. Anywhere but here. I have to keep going.
Footsteps thunder behind me. Someone is coming.
They can’t catch me. I can’t go back.
I run. Frost crunches underfoot. Or is it snow?
It’s snow. It grazes my lashes, hangs in my arm hair for an instant before melting way. My arms are bare. When did I lose my jacket? Or did I not grab a jacket? Why didn’t I think to get one before I ran?
Too late now. Have to keep running.
“Nathaniel!” someone yells. It shakes the trees. There’s so much anger in that voice. Panic, almost.
I have to get away from it.
If he catches me, he’ll kill me. Actually murder me.
I stagger forward. My foot catches on a root and I crash to the ground. My boot is stuck, the red laces stand out on the white snow like streaks of blood.
“Nathaniel!” He’s closer. Too close.
I don’t want to die. I have to live. Need to live.
I fight the root, but its greedy hands won’t release me. My numb fingers tear at the laces. The knot won’t loosen. I pull with all my might.
“Nathaniel!”
My foot slips out of the combat boot. I drag myself up the hill. Icy water seeps into my sock from the slushy snow. I can’t stop can’t stop can’t stop.
My face is pressed into the snow again. He’s on top of me. He manhandles me onto my back and pins my arms with his knees. Then he’s punching me again and again and again.
“I’ll teach you to disobey me,” he says.
I stare at his face, into his dead brown eyes. His expression doesn’t change as he draws his gun out of his waistband.
“I don’t wanna kill you, boy,” he says. “But sometimes, we gotta do things we don’t want to do.”
Air whooshes as the gun butt flies at my head. Time seems to slow until it’s one of those flip-books I used to draw as a kid. Frame by frame, I see the gun about to smash into my face, my arm coming up to block it, hitting his arm, knocking the gun to the snow.
We both leap for it. I throw an elbow and catch him in the eye. He counters with a backhand so hard fireworks erupt behind my eyes. I claw at the snow for the gun. My fingertips graze the freezing steel.
His hand wraps around it first. This time, it’s not the butt he has pointed at me, but the muzzle. His finger slides to the trigger.
I push him back and dive to the side. He fires and it’s so freaking loud. All I hear is white noise. The Fort is hundreds of miles away and I’m floating in space. My arm burns like I’ve just been branded.
I don’t have time to process the fact I’ve just been shot by my own father, because he’s lifting the gun again and this time he won’t just graze my arm. The beast in my gut takes over my body and there’s no stopping it.
I lower my shoulder and plow into my father’s stomach. He clings to the gun, trying to hit me with it. I grab his arm and twist, and the gun falls into my hand. It’s heavier than I thought it would be—the weight of the world.
He comes at me, his pocketknife out now, swiping the air.
I raise the gun.
Point it at his head.
And fire.
Red blood and gray brain matter and white bone explod
e from his skull, splattering the snow in a disgusting tie-dye. His body slumps to the ground. The tang of gunpowder and blood taint the air. The gun drops to the snow, still smoking. There’s a little hiss as it hits.
Voices shout behind me.
Holy shit.
I have to get out of here.
I take off, but I don’t make it far. Strong arms hold me. I struggle against them. I can’t go back. “This can’t be for nothing,” I mutter. “It can’t be for nothing.”
“Shh,” a familiar voice says in my ear. “It won’t be, Nate. You got ’em. You did good.”
That’s not right. No one from The Fort would tell me killing him was a good thing. “I killed him. Let me go, I have to go.”
“Hush,” the voice says. “I’m here. Come back to me. Back to the now. Open your eyes and look at me.”
Against my better judgment, I do as the voice says. I open my eyes. My mother stands over me. She’s hazy, glowing in the white light behind her like an angel. My body relaxes. I’m dead, but it’s okay, because I’m with Mom. I’m home. I blink and her features sharpen. It’s not my mother, it’s Dell. For a moment, I’m overwhelmed with disappointment, then it oozes away with the blood from my side.
“Hey,” Dell says. “Good. Can you walk?”
“Dell? How?”
He scowls. “The FBI knocking on the door in the middle of the night was a pretty good clue. They needed me to sign the affidavit since you’re still a minor.”
“And you signed?”
“If you’d stuck around you would’ve learned that I came around to their thinking. Now, can you walk?”
I move my legs. They seem to work. “I think so.”
“Good. ’Cause you need to get that seen to.” He holds something out. “Put your jacket back on. And next time you decide to run away, take your damn medicine with you. Your little flashbacks aren’t good for either of us.”
He turns toward the light and I notice the fresh scratch marks on his cheeks. He helps me into my jacket and to my feet.