Lineage(8)

The plane smashed into the ground several feet beyond the edge of the ditch, inside the camp’s fences. Metal rent and chunks of the aircraft flew hundreds of yards in different directions. The heavy three-bladed prop tore free of its anchoring, and as it stuttered hastily across the wet ground, it cut through the Blockwart’s body, leaving the two gaping halves, once a man, to tip apart. Flying shrapnel wounded a number of other soldiers, and a fireball erupted as the remaining gas in the plane’s tanks caught fire.

The officer blinked his eyes into the cold mud below the layer of sleet that he was lying on. He pushed his gloved hands into the ground and sat up. His ears rang with the explosion, and his vision titled as he tried to regain his feet. His hat had been lost when he dove, and his light blond hair stuck up at odd angles above his pallid face. He looked around at the grounds and saw many of the soldiers that were assisting him earlier lying in pieces, their insides turned out in a shocking display. Smoking chunks of meat still clung to the burning bones of the plane fifty yards away, and he heard screaming from the injured.

He turned and looked down at the trench before him, at the bodies now covered with a slight layer of dirt and sleet from the impact of the plane.

The boy wasn’t there.

His eyes scanned up and down the tangled limbs in the depression, searching for movement among the dead. He even looked for a body with an unnatural arch to it, just in case the boy had burrowed beneath one of the corpses to hide as he had seen done several times.

When he concluded the boy wasn’t present in the ditch before him, he began to inspect the far bank and the fence beyond. A field merged into a rough forest of bramble and pine. Several yards from the edge of the barbed wire, the woods faded into an inky gloom, even in the full light of day. It was at the border of the trees that the boy stood looking at him.

Blood ran down his white face from the cut on his cheek and nose, so that the left side of his face was encased in a red mask. But other than where the knife had made a path in his flesh, he seemed unharmed.

The officer stood there in the sleet and stared back at the boy. A presence hung between them, as real and palpable as the moisture that fell from the sky. A hatred so deep and strong radiated from the boy’s eyes that the officer imagined it would cut him down where he stood. The pressure that had been building in the air multiplied, until it was almost unbearable for the few remaining soldiers in the vicinity, although the boy and the officer didn’t seem to notice. The intensity in the stare grew and bloated until there was no longer room between them, and the officer felt he might be pushed back because of it.

Without thinking, he drew his pistol from the holster at his side and pointed it across the ditch. His finger squeezed the trigger three times in succession, and smoke from the barrel obscured his vision. The heaviness and pressure in the air lifted with the gunshots, as if the shots had pierced a swollen hide. Nearby soldiers shook their heads to rid themselves of the vacuum left behind.

When the cordite began to clear, the officer saw that the area in which the boy had been standing was empty. He examined the trees and brush beyond for a swinging branch or a patch of flattened shrub. Nothing remained to indicate the boy had ever been there.

He felt an irresistible urge to cross the ditch, climb through the roughly strung wire, and follow the boy into the forest. He needed to, it was imperative to find him now. Just as he began to move in that direction, a panting soldier ran up to him and stopped a respectful distance away.

“Are you injured, Oberführer?” the youth nearly yelled, seemingly deafened by the explosion from the plane.

The officer stood staring at the woods beyond the camp, and it was only after the soldier repeated himself that he glanced over and acknowledged the other man. “I am fine.” The officer threw a last fleeting look at the edge of the camp where the boy had disappeared, and then turned back to the soldier that stood before him. “Ready my personal car, we will be leaving momentarily.”

The younger man nodded and ran back the way he had come. The officer turned begrudgingly from the ditch and the unmoving occupants within it. He strode across the expanse of the white-layered camp, past the flaming wreckage of the destroyed plane, and disappeared into the still heavily falling snow.





Part 1





Chapter 1



“Evil is done without effort, naturally, it is the working of fate.”



—Charles Baudelaire





Black Lake, Minnesota, October 1990