Lineage(114)

John walked toward the house and up the few stairs, unscrewing the cap as he disappeared inside.



The nurse’s key spun within the lock and Lance heard the tumblers falling away.

“Go right in, sir. Take as much time as you need,” the nurse said with a smile. She looked twenty years younger than any other worker in the nursing home, her blond hair curled and her uniform pressed in an almost obsessive way.

“I know you’re supposed to stand right outside the door, but could you give us a little privacy?” Lance asked as he motioned to the bench that sat a few feet from the elevator doors.

She smiled again and nodded in an obliging way. “She always seems so peaceful. I’ll be right over here if you need me.”

Lance thanked her and watched as she walked down the hall toward the bench. When he turned, he felt a flooding sense of déjà vu. The room looked exactly as it had during his last visit. The bed still made in the corner. The desk just below the high window. And the woman, who, for all he knew, hadn’t moved since he’d left. He stepped into the room and felt something change at once. It was like he had dropped several hundred feet toward sea level, the pressure of the air nudging against his eardrums. There seemed to be less air in the room as he crossed the space between the door and the desk, and he moved with effort through it.

Annette stared at the wall, her hair uncombed and her hands bundled beneath a light blanket resting over her lap. A new crossword along with a fresh pencil sat before her. The sharpened tip of the pencil pointed directly at Lance as he sat in the extra chair. The old woman remained statuesque, and for a moment Lance wondered if she’d died in the chair. He imagined her soul escaping without bothering to shut her eyes as it left, leaving her like an abandoned house with the windows open. He leaned closer and listened in the stillness of the pressurized room. Her breath whispered between her parted lips, and he sat back.

“Annette, I know you can hear me.” Lance watched for any reaction. Not a tremor broke the semblance of a painted picture. “Erwin killed Gerald Rhinelander, didn’t he? Along with all the other men who used to work for him. He killed them and dumped their cars in the lake, didn’t he?” Lance kept his voice low but increased its intensity. His eyes bored holes in the old woman’s face. He searched for an answer, some sign that she had heard him wherever she hid within herself. Even the blink of a wrinkled eyelid would have given him encouragement, but she did nothing. Her eyes never left the blank wall before her.

Lance reached into his back pocket and found the edges of the envelope there. He yanked it free and pulled the contents out into the dim light of the room. With a flip of his fingers, he turned the photo around and held it up several inches in front of Annette’s staring eyes.

“This man, Gerald Rhinelander. You’ve seen him before. He came to your house and Erwin killed him.” Lance’s voice began to shake. The emotional weight of the past few days, compounded by the squeezing air of the room, began to bleed through. His hand trembled, causing the picture of Gerald by his car in the sunlight to vibrate. Lance shook his head and dropped the photo onto the desk, covering the bulk of the crossword. He could see half of Gerald’s last name and the W in Wulf, and he marveled at the thought of this picture ending up here in this place of forgotten words and life, covering the name of the murdered man that graced its surface.

Lance looked at Annette again. Nothing could bring her back. It was clear now. The path she had taken had been too narrow to turn around and she was stuck somewhere in the inner sanctum of her psyche, unable to move one way or another.

All at once he felt defeat overcome him like a black shade being drawn. There would be no answers for him here; it was just another blocked alley in his life. So many times he had begun to hope that he would shed the skin of his past, that he would be reborn to pursue an existence without fear and suffering at every turn. He supposed it was too much to hope for. For some there could be no solace, only a constant weariness of what would come next.

He stood and swore quietly in his frustration and began to walk toward the door. He had to get out of this room. He needed to feel the sky above him, even if all it held for him now were thunder and the gray of forgetting. There was only one thing he could do now: run. Run away from it all, far enough to leave the souls of his father and grandfather behind to whatever malevolence they had planned. He had to leave this town, the house, his story, and Mary.

Mary.

A sound stopped him at the doorway. He turned toward an overhead vent, thinking the cooling system had unsuccessfully tried to start. It had been a keening sound, like air rushing over metal. It came again and his scalp shrunk tight to his skull. He turned and looked at the old woman, who still sat facing the wall.