Lineage

Lineage by Hart, Joe



Introduction


I’ve always loved ghost stories. I used to read them for hours under a card table with a blanket thrown over it and only a small lamp when it was sunny outside, just for effect. My nieces and nephews used to beg me to tell them stories by candlelight in the basement of my childhood home. I’ve read so many that each one has become a little part of me. Whenever the sky begins to blacken and threaten rain, I want to read one, a good one that makes you glance around the room uncomfortably when you’re alone. The ghost stories I’ve read have shaped my view of the world (well, at least my writing view of the world), and I finally gathered the courage to write my own.

What follows within these pages are not just the musings of a socially deprived guy with some pretty dark takes on life. It’s the culmination of years spent scaring myself silly. Of hurrying across my darkened room after flipping the light off, knowing something was going to grab me before I jumped into bed. Of always getting my chores done before darkness claimed my daytime playgrounds.

If you’re reading this, then you’re just like me, and somewhere deep down inside there’s a scared little kid hiding beneath a card table, eyes wide as the pages turn, loving every minute of it. Hopefully, I live up to what’s brought me here and I’m able to take you somewhere terrifying that you’ve never been before.



Joe Hart

May 30, 2012





Prologue


“The worst possible turn can not be programmed. It is caused by coincidence.”

—Friedrich Dürrenmatt



Germany, February 1945


“The final order came through, sir.” The words hung in the nearly empty room like the cobwebs that would reside there later when the office had been abandoned completely, and only the spiders remained to move within the dead air.

The man who sat at the desk at the far end of the room let the words sink into his mind like drops of water on a dry sponge. They mingled with the feelings that were rising to meet them, and for the first time since joining his nation’s army, he felt a sense of unease.

He licked his cracked lips and sat back from the desk he had been leaning his elbows on. The double-S insignia on his collar caught the dim light coldly on its silver facing as he settled into the padded chair and gazed across the expanse of the room at the soldier standing in the doorway.

“And what is the final order?” His voice carried across the room as if it had been magnified, but in actuality he had nearly whispered. He preferred not to speak above a conversational level if he could help it. He didn’t need to. His words held power and they always meant something. So many spoke without meaning, and he refused to be one of the many.

“We are to pull back to Berlin and await orders there.”

The SS officer exhaled through his nose and turned his brilliant blue eyes to the window that sat a few yards to his left. The gray grounds of the camp lay beyond, and he noticed a light sleet had begun to fall. He could see the long, squat buildings that sat beneath the snow mixture like cattle barns. Water had begun to drip from the eaves and pool into miniature lakes below.

Without bringing his gaze back to the younger man in the doorway, he spoke again. “And who issued the order?”

The young soldier shifted in his polished boots, as though he were standing on the edge of a cliff that dropped into an unknown abyss. “The Führer himself, sir.”

The officer’s jaws clenched so hard that he felt pain in several teeth as he did so. He gazed at the gray puddles next to the buildings and wondered, as he often did, how so many instances and decisions came to be. There was no order, only chaos and the choices therein. Nevertheless, it was time. He blinked once and turned his attention back to the young man who stood before him in the crisp, black uniform.

“Has the disassembly begun?”

The soldier in the doorway dropped his gaze, which had been resting on a spot just above the officer’s left shoulder, to the seated man’s eyes. He could only hold the contact for a few seconds before he had to look away again. He swallowed and breathed deeply before responding.

“No. The men have been lining up supplies, along with the vehicles, for abandonment of the camp.”

The man behind the desk didn’t change position or look away, but the soldier in the doorway felt a shift in the atmosphere. It was almost imperceptible, as if an errant gust of wind had entered the room and disturbed the quiet air between the two men.