Memories Never Die

by C Thomas Cox

  The sudden slam of the front door, followed by footfalls on the floor above me, seemed to make the pain worsen. My ear throbbed as I wondered to whom the footsteps belonged. Did Claire and Liz return and, in the process, cause Half-Ear to bolt? Did Half-Ear come back into the house with some new tool he'd use to inflict damage to my battered body? What of his other prisoner?

  The door to the basement soon creaked open, and I heard two sets of haphazard footfalls stop and start on their way down the steps. Hoping for the best -- but expecting the worst -- I watched from my position behind the staircase for their owners to arrive.

  The passenger of Half-Ear's car emerged first, compelled forward by the muzzle of the gun Half-Ear was shoving into the small of his back. Duct tape covered his mouth, and the way his bloodshot eyes appeared to droop made me think Half-Ear had forced him to consume some sort of narcotic...or worse.

  "Charlie!" I screamed. "Are you okay?" I tried to wriggle my arms free, but to no avail. I looked on as Half-Ear forced my son to sit in the other chair. In his bound and mentally diminished state, he was helpless to fight back.

  Charlie begged for my help with his eyes, and I felt like I was again at the side of seven-year-old Charlie's hospital bed after a car sideswiped his bike. Back then, however, his prognosis was far more favorable. While I sat bound in the basement, I would've been thrilled if Half-Ear merely broke his leg.

  "Let him go!" I said to Half-Ear. "I'm not sure what I did to you...what I did to cause you to hate me so much. But Charlie's one-hundred-percent innocent."

  After he used rope to tie Charlie's ankles and chest to the chair, he took a step toward me and again spat in my face. "He shares your blood, James Richmond. And your blood heaps your guilt upon his head."

  "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

  Charlie mumbled something from behind the silver tape, but I couldn't understand. Half-Ear turned, cocked his hand back, and slapped the side of Charlie’s face so hard that saliva flew from his open mouth onto the concrete floor. "God…help him," I mumbled.

  Half-Ear jerked his head back toward me. "God...there is no God." He paced back and forth a few times while looking down. He then stopped and glared at me. "Don't lie to me, James. A sinner like you doesn't believe in a God." Though I only darkened a church’s door when Claire begged, I did, in fact, believe that a God existed. To me, the evidence of the natural world alone was enough to confirm the existence of an intelligent creator. However, unlike Claire, I wasn’t satisfied with the way he ran His world. And I certainly wasn’t okay with the rampant wars he allowed men to convince themselves were worthwhile.

  He paused and felt just beneath the collar of his golf shirt for something. "A sinner like you becomes his own god," he said. He dropped his hand to his side. "He takes powers that should be reserved for a god into his own human hands." Out of nowhere, Half-Ear dropped to his knees, held his hands over his face, and wept.

  Instead of asking for clarification, I turned to Charlie and mouthed, "Are you okay?" It was obvious that the drugs still kept him in a daze, but he had the presence of mind to nod.

  While our captor sobbed, I tried to get a grip on his mysterious words. How did I take powers that should be reserved for a god into my hands? I was so confused.

  I was also confused as to why I felt sorry for him. After all he'd done, how could I? But there I was, watching with pity -- and perhaps even a hint of sympathy -- as his tears dropped to the floor.

  "Father, please give me the strength," he said. I assumed he was asking the God, whom he didn’t believe existed, for strength. However, he stared at the staircase instead of looking toward the heavens.

  I knew better than to question a killer, but that had never stopped me before. "I thought you said there is no God?"

  He jerked his head up. "Don't you ever disturb me while I'm speaking with my father!"

  "What do you..." I started to say, but Charlie interrupted me with a grunt. I realized he was right, so I fell silent.

  We both watched in confusion as Half-Ear continued his conversation. "Father, I've spent my life seeking the vengeance that you deserve." He reached through the top of his shirt and pulled out a medallion hanging from a tarnished silver necklace, clutching it in his clenched fist the entire time. "And now that moment is, at long last, about to arrive. Justice will be served."

  He paced back and forth, and Charlie and I exchanged puzzled glances. "James Richmond stole you from me just weeks after one of the Yanks' stray shots ended mother's life." He paused and looked again at the staircase. He took a step toward it, appearing to lock eyes with a person neither Charlie nor I could see.

  "I've spent my entire life searching for some way to bring you back to me...to bring you back into this world." He took a deep breath and ran his fingers through his hair. "Are you sure?" He listened intently to a voice that only he could hear. He then nodded at his invisible father. "I will do as you say." He pulled the gun out of his pocket and marched toward us.

  Chapter Seventy-Two

  Charlie was no closer to discerning what was going on than he was when Half-Ear had kidnapped him at gunpoint. In my mind, however, Half-Ear’s cryptic words began to coalesce into the story that, more than anything, I wanted to forget.

  "Do you now know why I'm here?" he asked as he approached.

  I nodded.

  "You sure?"

  "I'm sorry," I said.

  He ripped the chain from his necklace and threw it at me. It bounced off of my chest and landed in my lap.

  I gasped as I realized that what Half-Ear wore wasn't a necklace after all. Instead, it was the dog tag that his father -- the innocent Vietnamese farmer -- had ripped from my neck. The name engraved half a century earlier stared up at me like a self-righteous priest. It dragged the past back to the present just as Half-Ear's initial appearance had done over and over again. This time, however, it was more than memories that haunted me. The ghost of my past had become the executioner of my present.

  "Did your daddy ever tell you about my father?" he said, kneeling at Charlie's side and winking at him. Charlie looked down in terror.

  "Don't," I said. "Please don't." I didn't want murderer to be the last word Charlie associated with of me.

  "Don't you think he deserves the truth?"

  I drew in quick, short breaths. Charlie watched for my response, but I was unable to speak. Instead, I looked at the ceiling. I was hopeful that I'd eventually hear the front door, followed by footsteps that belonged to the cops. Claire and Liz would surely phone the police once they spotted the SUV of my visions in the driveway.

  "Don't expect your wife and that girl to help you," he said with a grin that rivaled Thomas's. "They're incapacitated at the moment."

  "What the hell did you do?" I screamed. I tried to use every ounce of energy remaining in my body to force my way out of the chair. Instead of getting out, though, throwing my body around caused the chair to tip over and crash sideways onto the floor. I shrieked when my ear bounced off of the concrete.

  "I think you have enough to worry about right here," he said. “Focus on the present and forget about the future. That’s what you did fifty years ago, isn’t it?”

  I rested my head against the cold floor and prepared to give up. Half-Ear was going to tell Charlie everything, and I could do nothing to stop him. Even worse, I was too late to protect Claire and Liz.

  "Do you know why I taped his mouth shut?" He gestured toward Charlie. "Your boy wouldn’t stop begging me to leave you alone. Over and over again he told me how great a father…how great a man you are. He obviously doesn’t know the real you."

  Half-Ear crawled over to me and leaned over my ear. "Do you want to tell him, or should I?" he whispered. I'd lost all hope, like a dog preparing to be put to sleep.

  "I'm so sorry," I whispered. "What I did was wrong."

  "It's too late now," he growled. "Besides, your apologies mean nothing." His hand drifted toward his severed ear. "Bet you wish your aim was be
tter. That, after you killed father, you killed me too...instead of just shooting off half my ear." He pointed to the stump on the side of his head, and I squeezed my eyes shut. I couldn't believe what was happening. And I couldn't believe that the farmer's son -- the one who I thought had been dead for half a century -- had spent his life seeking justice for my sins.

  "Father's ready to come back...to reclaim the life you stole from him. To become the earthly father that I've waited for ever since." My eyes widened at this straightforward revelation of his psychosis. Sure, I'd suffered through delusions caused by my PTSD, but his condition was on a different plane. And his ensuing revelations showed me that I would be able to do nothing to counteract his insanity.

  Chapter Seventy-Three

  The iciness of Half-Ear's words penetrated my skin and forced its way into my bloodstream. The resultant chills overtook by body, and I couldn't shake the nonstop shivers. I wanted to speak up...to ask him what his words meant. But I couldn't convince my body to cooperate.

  That changed when he leapt to his feet and aimed his muzzle at Charlie. My voice broke through the cold and I screamed, "No!"

  He jerked his head toward me. "You're right old man...I need to explain why I'm going to murder your son -- and what's going to happen afterward -- before I pull the trigger."

  "Don't you touch him!" I screamed. I again tried to wriggle free, but it was no use. We were hopeless.

  "My hope all along was to kill your father,” Half-Ear said as he leaned his face to within three inches of mine. “But since it took longer than expected to track you down, a stroke took him before I could." His knowledge of the cause of my father's death compounded the fright he'd already instilled in my soul. It didn't surprise me, though. After all, he was also able to track down Charlie, Claire, and Liz.

  "Once I learned he was dead, I pleaded with my father to forgive me for taking too long to find you. Since my dad’s an example of what every father should be, he excused my failure. Instead of punishing me, he told me to turn my attention to your son instead." He crept behind Charlie and ran his hands through Charlie's hair. "What better way to cause a father pain than to force him to watch his own son suffer?" He pinched one of Charlie's hairs between his thumb and middle finger and yanked. Charlie let out a muffled scream and I cringed. "See what I mean?"

  I ground my molars as he continued to reveal evidence of his insanity. "You won't believe how many James Richmonds live this God-forsaken country," he said as he paced in front of me. "Took me years to track you down...way longer than I expected."

  He stopped and turned to Charlie. "I apologize for leaving you out of this conversation. I'm sure you're interested in hearing about your father's sin...the act that will soon force me to end your life."

  Charlie mumbled beneath his tape, but I couldn't make out anything he said.

  "You see, Charlie, your daddy isn’t at all the man you described on our ride over here.” He knelt in front of me and took his time running the backs of his clammy fingers over my face. “Your daddy here murdered my innocent father fifty years ago. I know because, when I was only five-years-old, I watched him pull the trigger." Charlie watched me...his eyes begging me to tell him it wasn't so. To tell him that, instead of the monster Half-Ear had been describing, I was instead the good-hearted man he’d known all his life. Even in our dire situation, however, I couldn't bring myself to lie to him.

  "He's right, Charlie," I said. "While I was in Vietnam, I..." The words were stuck in my throat like desert sand. I felt like I was going to choke on them, but I couldn't let Charlie down by refusing to take accountability. "I killed his father."

  Charlie couldn't move his mouth, but I'm certain his jaw would've dropped if it could've. "Back then I was an angry young man...a man who believed that Americans were inherently superior to the rest of the world. I was a macho solider who allowed any sign of disrespect to drive me into a fit of rage."

  While Half-Ear remained silent for the first time, I detailed what I recalled about the encounter with his father. From his objection to my soldiers eating his corn to my reaction to his spit, I explained the circumstances that led to me pulling the trigger. "I'd give my own life if it would bring your father back," I said after I'd finished. And I meant it.

  Tears rained down Charlie's face. "He's right," I said. "I'm not the man you thought I was." I tried to swallow, but no saliva remained my mouth. "I've changed, though. Your mother's changed me. Life has changed me. My love for you has changed me." Half-Ear returned to the staircase and appeared to whisper to the man who we still could not see. "Charlie, although I did something you never thought possible, I'm still the man who would give his life for you."

  "You are going to give your own life," Half-Ear said with a jerk of his head. “Killing you is going to undo your sin…it’s going to bring my daddy back.”

  “You crazy bastard!” I screamed.

  "Shut up and suffer while you watch me kill your son."

  "Just shoot me!" I begged.

  He shook his head. Then he said, "I've been waiting for this moment ever since I found your dog tag lying next to father's body. I'm going to do things my way...and my father's way."

  I glanced at Charlie and mouthed, "I'm sorry."

  Charlie mumbled something. Although I couldn't make out everything he said, I'm pretty sure I heard, "I love you," mixed in.

  Half-Ear ignored the mumbled words. Instead, he took three steps toward Charlie and aimed the pistol at his head.

  Chapter Seventy-Four

  I couldn't let Half-Ear kill Charlie without a fight, so I did the first thing that came to mind. I banged the side of my head against the concrete floor.

  Half-Ear heard the sound and spun toward me. "What the hell are you doing?"

  "Figure I'll kill myself before you can take Charlie's life. That way you won't have the satisfaction of seeing me suffer while you pull the trigger." I paused, grinned, and then resumed pounding my skull into oblivion. "Worst case, I'll knock myself out."

  "Stop it, you crazy old man!" He glared at me, but I didn't stop. I wouldn't allow his demands to make me stop. My head pounded, my ear throbbed, and my mind was spinning. But I wasn't going to give in to this maniac.

  "You stop right now, or I'll shoot." He trained his muzzle on me.

  "Go ahead, kill me first," I said with an air of confidence that I didn't really possess. "If that's what your father wants you to do."

  He glanced at the staircase, and then back at me. He dropped to his side the hand in which he held the gun, and he began to tremble. The certainty with which he previously held reign over us disappeared.

  Every few seconds, I threw my skull against the floor. I didn't let up. I also started letting my eyelids drift closed. I wanted him to think I was fading into oblivion...that I was losing touch with the reality he wanted to force upon me.

  "Damn you!" He let out a scream loud enough to wake even his father. He then threw his gun on the bottom stair, jogged over, grabbed the back of my chair, and started to tug. He grunted as he tried to lift me upright. "How heavy are you?" Due to my height and, to a lesser extent, my stomach, I outweighed him by at least fifty pounds.

  After a struggle that included dropping me back to the floor a couple times, he was able to raise me up. As he walked toward his gun, however, I thrashed around until I fell back onto my side. Half-Ear was pissed.

  "That's it...I'm done playing games." He marched over, dragged the chair toward the staircase by the legs, jerked it upright -- adrenaline must've given him a burst of strength -- and pulled some leftover rope from his pocket. He proceeded to tie the chair's spindles to the railing that ran alongside the staircase.

  He then dragged Charlie's chair toward mine so we were again facing each other.

  I tried again to force my chair to again fall onto its side, but it was no use. The rope worked just as he had hoped.

  He picked up the gun and said, "This is for you, father." Before he had a chance to aim it at Charlie, h
owever, the house shook as the front door slammed shut above us.

  Chapter Seventy-Five

  "Claire!" I started to shout. But, before I could get the word out, Half-Ear sent blades of pain through my face when he slapped my cheek with his pistol.

  "Shut up," he whispered. "I need to think." He then tore a piece of duct tape from the roll sitting on my nearby workbench and affixed it over my mouth. I wanted to warn Claire and Liz to stay away. Warning them, however, was no longer an option.

  He paced back and forth while the footsteps above us continued. "Jimmy?" Claire called. "Gene?" When she didn't receive a response, her calls transformed into screams.

  "How'd they get here?" Half-Ear asked himself...or perhaps he asked his father. Either way, I was relieved that he hadn't already killed them. Now that they were inside our house, though, he had the opportunity to do so.

  He shook his head as if to knock out the confusion, wrapped his finger around the gun's trigger, and tiptoed up the stairs. Just before he reached the top, I did my best to yell from beneath the tape, "Run! He's coming!" But it was no use. They couldn’t hear me. Other than the faint creak that the stairs made as he moved across them, Claire and Liz had no warning that Half-Ear was headed toward them.

  I heard a smattering of footfalls above us just after he finished his ascent. I listened intently. However, the footfalls stopped just as quickly as they started.

  During the ensuing silence, I hypothesized that Half-Ear's pistol was fitted with a silencer. He must've shot both Claire and Liz, and he was in the process of cleaning up the mess that their bodies left behind -- or at least taking the steps necessary to ensure the cops couldn't identify him as their killer. I was proven wrong when I heard a shot that sounded identical to -- only more distant than -- the one that took off part of my ear.