Lineage(118)

A congealed mass of puckered flesh snaked its way across the pale skin of her back and vanished from view. He let go of the fabric and sat back in his chair, the pieces falling into place. The pressure within the room hadn’t eased. In fact, it had increased, and he wondered if his head might implode. The only explanation for its presence the stress of the knowledge that had been laid at his feet.

“They’re still there, you know,” Annette said.

Lance rubbed his temples, trying in vain to ease the pressure. “What are?”

“The knives. He kept them under the third board into the room. It has a knot shaped like a hand on it. I think he might’ve kept other things there too, things that belonged to the men.”

Lance imagined the dark space and what might lie next to the instruments his grandfather had used to murder and disfigure his family, what he might have kept from his kills as trophies. “Tell me how he died,” he heard himself say.

Annette remained facing away for a while, but at last turned back enough for him to see her profile behind the fan of white hair.

“I can see it better than anything else in my mind. It replays over and over like a never-ending dream in my head.

“Tell me,” Lance repeated.

Annette’s head came up and she turned just enough for him to see the side of her face. “We were sitting in the living room when he kicked open the door. I remember pieces of trim flying in different directions and then he was there, his arm out and the gun in his hand. I can still see his face, a little scar running across his nose and onto his cheek. He made Heinrich kneel before him on the floor.”

Annette wavered, perhaps unwilling to voice out loud the waking nightmare within her mind.

“Go on,” Lance urged.

“He said, ‘Time is a funny thing. It slips away when you’re not looking.’ I remember wanting to run and hide, but I was stuck there, listening to this man who was pointing a gun at my husband. He pushed the barrel of the gun against Heinrich’s forehead and said, ‘You only hold onto time by remembering, and I remember you.’”

Annette began to cry again but kept her head up. “Heinrich told him he didn’t know who he was, but this man, this Aaron, said ‘Yes you do. You haven’t forgotten either. The last time I saw you I was five, and I still remember your eyes.’ Heinrich did know him. I saw how his body tensed at the man’s words. He pushed the gun into Heinrich’s eye and said ‘You killed them at the edge of that pit like dogs, but you missed me!’”

Annette’s voice rose with emotion as she remembered, not really telling the story but living it instead. “He said, ‘I remembered your eyes and that’s how I found you, across all this time.’ Then he threw a newspaper clipping of when we had our picture taken with the mayor on the floor.”

Lance recalled the clipping Harold had provided him and how his grandfather’s eyes had shone even through the dingy newspaper.

“He said, ‘I searched everywhere in Europe and finally followed you here,’” Annette continued. “And then Heinrich began to laugh. He laughed like it all was a joke. He told Aaron that he was still just a little Jew boy watching his parents die, and nothing had changed.”

Lance swallowed and watched as Annette slumped forward in her chair, her head stopping only inches from the desktop. “He killed him then. I remember something coming out of the back of Heinrich’s head, and then I heard the shot.”

Lance looked around the room, feeling something had changed and then realized what it was. The pressure had lifted. He looked at the hunched form of his grandmother, exhausted because of what she had set free.

“Annette?” he asked. She made no sign that she heard him. “Gisela?” he tried. No movement. The idea that she had expired from the onslaught of emotion occurred to him, but he looked closer and saw that her humped back still rose and fell with each shallow breath.

His mind began to reconcile what she had told him, but it was too much and instead he decided that he had gotten what he’d come for. He began to stand, but stopped and sat down in his chair again. He needed to tell her something. At least let her know why he was here and what was happening at the house. He reached out and placed a hand on her narrow forearm. The skin felt cold beneath the thin material she wore.

“He’s still there, Annette. Somehow, Erwin’s come back. I don’t know what he wants, but I’m going to find out.”

His words had the effect on her that a defibrillator might have on a dying man. Her arm jerked from his gentle touch and her head snapped toward him. Her eyes were wide and feral behind the hair that hung before them.