Lineage(124)

He stared at the belt of knives sitting on the floor beside him and wondered which one had killed Aaron’s parents years ago. He wondered which one Erwin had grasped to part the flesh of his wife, and then his son. He wondered which one would slide through his own skin and end his life.

Gripping the belt as he rose, Lance walked across the tacky floor to the chair and hung the knives from the right armrest. He eased himself onto the cold surface of the chair and sat slumped forward, his elbows resting on his knees, his face in his hands.

A tumult of emotions coursed through him as he sat where so many others had before him. He imagined Aaron’s face, contorted with rage and sorrow before he pulled the trigger to end Erwin’s life. Then his mother appeared, her features obscured with the distance time created, but the feeling of her hands on his shoulders and her words still so clear, like they had been hours ago.

She faded into an image of John, staring out over the lake and the weight of his secrets hanging on his kind face. Then it was Ellen. He had loved her laughter and her energy, untouched by tragedy. The memory faded before he could see what lay beneath the floor a few feet away, and Mary replaced it.

Mary.

He could see her eyes, two emerald points, searching for something. Looking for it, not in the outside world but inside of him. As John’s and Ellen’s blood dried to red crusts on his hands, Lance felt the wall within him completely crumble. The seismic echoes of its collapse rippled through him, and he knew then what he must do if he wanted to be truly free of it all.

Lance sat up straight and placed his wrists in the open shackles of the chair. The cold steel met his skin and he felt goose bumps flow outward from those points. He breathed in and exhaled, trying to rid himself of the fear filling his chest and prodding his heart into a gallop. He closed his eyes to the room.

The shackles snapped shut over his wrists.

His eyes flew open to the sight of a fish-belly leg stepping out of the shadows at the far end of the room. Erwin emerged into the gray light. He was still naked, and Lance could see that his bare feet were stained red where he had waded through the blood on the floor. Erwin’s mouth hung open, his upper teeth rimming the dark hole, and his piercing eyes were locked not on Lance but on something to his right—the knives.

“My tools.” Erwin’s voice was low, the Germanic brogue still evident. “You’ve brought them back to me.”

The ghost’s eyes flashed to Lance’s face, and he felt a dread, so thick and palpable it nearly made him whimper, sink into him. Erwin’s eyes were the same as when Lance had first glimpsed them—hungry and longing—and now he knew why. The blood lust had been brewing for years, and now that it had been released on John and Ellen, there would be no quenching it.

Erwin shuffled closer and Lance could smell him. Putrescence of a kind he had never experienced before invaded his nostrils, and Lance felt his stomach revolt. He turned his head and tried to breathe as the thing that used to be his grandfather approached.

“We’ve waited so long for you, Lance. So long for you to come.”

The words were soft and close. Lance turned his head and saw his father emerging from the corner of the room. The clothes he wore were familiar, and it took him only a moment to realize why. They were the same ones Anthony had been wearing the day the baler had swallowed and gnashed his body to bits in its steel innards. His father was nodding as he drew closer, a cold smile playing at the corners of his mouth.

“You really did it this time, boy. Got yourself in a spot.” His father stopped a few feet away and appraised him. “Finally listened and decided to end it, huh? Smartest thing you did since this started.”

Lance felt his hands tighten into fists. “It was the block, wasn’t it? You did that to me. That’s how you drew me here.”

Anthony’s pale face sneered in the dim light. “You did that to yourself, boy, just regular old writer’s block is what it was. Would’ve passed away as easily as it came if you were someone else.” Anthony bent closer to him and the same rotting smell buffeted Lance’s senses. “But we were waiting. Waiting for our chance. That writing of yours kept you just out of reach for years. When you had a gap in it, that doubt and fear started to build up, you know what I’m talking about.”

Lance remembered the anxiety he had felt sitting at his computer in his home. The cursor blinking on the page before him, without words to fill the empty space. His father was right. The fear that had gripped him was unnatural. A creeping sense that he had lost some intricate mechanism that kept the horror of his past at bay. That night the nightmare had gripped him and the block had become complete.