Fear Mountain

by Mike Dellosso

  “Billy.” Peter looked at me again, his head tilted to one side. “Do you believe that Jesus died for them too, just as he died for you? That you’re no better than they are.”

  I didn’t want to answer; I wanted to change the subject or crawl into a hole and hide so I didn’t have to say anything. An image of Dad and Pop and Henry, beaten and bruised, bound like criminals, treated worse than animals, oozed into my mind. I wanted to curse those Nazis to hell where I thought they belonged. The thought of Jesus loving them just as much as he loved me tied my stomach in a knot and put the taste of bile in my throat.

  “Billy.” It was Peter again. He wasn’t going to give up. “Look at me.”

  I did.

  “Do you believe that Jesus died for them too?” Then, as if he could read my mind, “That he loves them as much as he loves you?”

  A sudden wave of conviction washed over me, tossing me about until I felt disoriented. My eyes burned with tears. I knew it was true, my Bible said it was. Jesus did love them. I nodded. I couldn’t say anything because I knew the moment I opened my mouth and tried to force words past the lump in my throat the dam would break and the tears would flow.

  “Good,” Peter said, then picked up a stick and poked at the fire. “Good.”

  After a few minutes of silence and trying to push back the tears I finally said, “You never answered my question.”

  “What question was that?” Peter had that blank expression again.

  “Why are you here with them?”

  Peter smiled and looked like he was ready to laugh. “Here with them? Yes. But not for the same reason. I’m here for you.”

  “For me.” I was about to ask him why when he started up again.

  “You need me. I’m here for you.”

  My friend’s mysteriousness had me befuddled. I still wasn’t even sure if he was German or not or if he’d really come here to help me or harm me. “How did you know I needed help?”

  Peter’s smile broadened and he gave me a scolding look. “You were beat up and fettered to a workbench in a cellar. You don’t think you looked like you needed help?”

  He had a point. I dropped my eyes to the gyrating flames of the fire and shrugged. “I guess I looked pretty helpless.”

  “Helpless, yes. And you still need my help.”

  Looking up from the fire, I found Peter’s gaze heavy on me. His face was serious; the smile had vanished.

  “You need to rescue your kinfolk, don’t you?” he said.

  I nodded. “First thing in the morning. First light.”

  “Then you’ll need my help.” He paused and prodded the fire with his stick sending a burst of sparks into the air. The red-hot ashes caught on a gentle breeze and immediately faded into the darkness that surrounded us.

  “How. What are we gonna do?” I wanted a plan, to know what was on his mind. How were the two of us going to take on the four German killing machines that occupied the house?

  “You’ll know when the time comes. You’ll have to trust me though. Can you do that?”

  I wanted to. I had no reason not to. But I didn’t like being kept in the dark. He was being cryptic again and part of me was annoyed. Nevertheless, the question bounced around in my head, unable to find a suitable resting spot. Could I trust him? Could I place my life and the lives of my family in a stranger’s hands? I didn’t see that I had much of a choice. “I guess so.”

  “You’ll need to do more than guess.”

  “Sure then.”

  Peter smiled and rocked back. “That’s swell. Good then.”

  We both sat in silence for a few minutes, each watching the fire and occasionally poking at it with a stick. My mind was awash with the day’s events. I wondered how Dad, Pop, and Henry were doing, if they were still alive. Henry looked bad when I saw him last and Dad didn’t look much better.

  As much as I tried to ignore the thought, to push it from my mind and shove it into some remote corner, the question of whether they were still alive or not surfaced repeatedly like a buoy nodding in rough water. And the more I struggled against the negative thoughts and wrestled with the possibility of this hunting trip getting any worse than it had already gotten the heavier my eyelids grew, as if weights were tied to them and gravity was my gravest enemy. I didn’t want to sleep, though. Sleep meant losing my grip on reality and I didn’t want to imagine what could be taking place in that house while I slept.

  I looked at Peter through sleep-blurred eyes and saw that he was still upright, sitting Indian-style, probing the flames with his stick. Rubbing my eyes and shaking my head, I pulled myself out of the haze of twilight sleep. Peter’s mouth moved slightly as if he spoke to himself, and his eyes were watery again and rimmed red. He was agonizing over something. There was a storm raging inside him. He knew something I didn’t.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked. “There’s more isn’t there?” More of what, I hadn’t a clue. But there was more of something. Peter wasn’t all that good at hiding his emotions.

  He tilted his head up and met my eyes. His chin quivered, and a single tear spilled over his lower lid and left a shiny track of salty water down his cheek. He nodded once. “There is. But it’s not for you to know now. Not now.”

  I could stand it no longer. “Peter, you’re messing me up, driving me batty. What are you talking about? What’s going on?”

  He opened his mouth to speak then clamped it shut. More tears tumbled out of his eyes and wetted his face. His Adam’s apple seemed to stick in mid-bob.

  Peter looked away, swiped his sleeve over his eyes, took a deep breath, then turned toward me again. “I know what is to come.”

  26

  Fitfully, with much restlessness and agitation, I passed the night in a pseudo-slumber. Images came and went, like phantoms drifting through a haze. Dad, Pop, Henry, Aaron, but ever-present was the round-featured face of my mysterious rescuer, Peter, hovering like an artist’s rendition of a UFO on the cover of one of those sci-fi magazines I’ve seen at Smeltzer’s Grocery.

  Emotions—fear, confusion, anger—washed in and out of my head, as if carried on the ebb and flow of a dark ocean meeting the corroded walls of a cove then rushing away, only to return moments later.

  When the first glow of morning light finally touched my face, I opened my eyes wide, welcoming full wakefulness, and stared up at the leafy ceiling above me. Peter’s final words of the previous night were on my lips: “I know what is to come.” After he’d spoken them, he’d turned his back to me and lay on the ground, using his arm as a pillow. Within minutes his breathing slowed and deepened, and I knew he was asleep. I envied him. That’s when I assumed the same position and started my sparring match with my elusive opponent, sleep.

  Now, finding the pale blue sky through a few scattered gaps in the autumn foliage above me, I thought about his words. Was he speaking of the future? Did—could—he really know what the future held? For certain, Peter was an odd case, like no one I’d ever met. Our discussion last night left me with more questions than answers. His probing was deep and penetrating, exposing me like I’d only ever experienced while meditating on God’s Word. Though simple and, at times, ambiguous, Peter’s words pierced me to the bone and left me feeling like I was standing naked before a panel of judges whose duty it was to examine my deepest motives and offer a verdict. And I was sure the verdict would be guilty.

  And what of his powers? The ability to heal? The luminous quality of his skin? Starting the fire with nothing but his hands? Were they mere parlor tricks? Something he’d learned in his motherland? Was my healing nothing more than the power of persuasion? Mind over matter? Obviously, there had to be a scientific explanation for his eerie blush. A mixture of chemicals or compounds that, when mixed with the oils of human sebaceous glands, caused the skin to temporarily glow like a firefly. Bioluminescence. I read about it in Time magazine. The phenomena where the pigment luciferin is oxidized by the enzyme luciferase. It happens frequently in the animal kingdom, the two mos
t popular examples being fireflies and New Zealand glow worms. Maybe the Germans had developed a way to apply the phenomena to humans. Germany had some of the best scientists in the western world and many of their discoveries were held under the tightest security, kept safe from prying eyes.

  I still wasn’t wholly satisfied to put my complete trust in Peter. He was, after all, a German and had aligned himself with the Nazis no matter how adamantly he denied his allegiance to their cause. But still a part of me, and more than just a morsel, did trust him. He had rescued me from the cellar and led me to safety when the Nazis were in hot pursuit, and he’d done nothing to betray my trust thus far. Though I was convinced he had lied to me about the healing and glowing and the fire-starting saying he didn’t know how he did it. But maybe he simply meant he didn’t know how the chemical reaction worked, the science behind the trick. Or maybe he had been sworn to secrecy, brainwashed to protect the clandestine experiments and successes of the Nazi war machine. After all, everyone in the free world knew the backbone of the Third Reich was the indoctrination of every boy, girl, man, and woman from youth to death. Peter may not be a full-fledged Nazi, but he’d undergone the training of one, and that meant they—Hitler and his henchmen—were in his head, somewhere.

  A stirring to my right, the quiet whisper of rustled clothes and the papery crunch of dry leaves, brought me out of my thoughts and shifted my attention to the source of the noise. Peter was on his side, propped on one elbow, facing me with an odd grin on his face. His hair stuck straight up on one side and red crease lines spider webbed across the same side of his face. “Sleep good?” he asked, as if he already knew the answer and somehow found it amusing that I’d wrestled the night away while he’d slept like a bear during the coldest months of winter.

  After pulling myself up to a sitting position and stretching the stiffness out of my shoulders, I shook my head and grunted. “Hardly slept at all. How come you slept so good?”

  Peter shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  Then I remembered who it was I was talking to, a Nazi. Peter had probably been well-trained in the art of sleeping in places and under circumstances far worse than what we found ourselves in. And only he knew when the last time was that he’d had a decent sleep.

  He stood, brushed a few dry leaves from his trousers, and forked his hands through his hair. “I guess I don’t worry like you do. Helps the sleep come better.”

  I knew what he was getting at, me worrying about Dad and Pop and Henry. “Don’t you have family?” I asked.

  Shifting his eyes skyward, Peter searched the leafy canopy as if looking for a lost bird. “I have a father. And siblings. Lots of siblings.”

  “Don’t you ever worry about them? Especially if they’re in trouble?”

  Eyes still scanning the leafy awning above us, he puckered his lips and shook his head slowly. “Nope.”

  “Then you must not love them very much.”

  As if my words had materialized into an open hand and smacked him squarely on the cheek, Peter flinched and stared at me directly, his eyes intent. “I love them dearly. They are all I have.”

  “Then how can you not worry about them?” Again, Peter was confusing me with his enigmatic way. Whether it was his personality and therefore unintentional, or whether he was deliberately keeping me off-balance with his elusive answers, I felt like he was tangling me in a cord of logic for which there was no beginning and no end. At least none I could easily find.

  His head tilted back and, once again, his eyes found the outstretched arms of the trees. When he opened his mouth, he spoke in a quiet voice as if to another listener other than myself. “I know everything is already taken care of. Don’t worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry itself.” Then, still watching for the lost bird, he said, “You can’t go back to the house.”

  Not sure if I heard him correctly, or if he was even speaking to me, I said, “Come again? What did you say?”

  Peter slipped his hands into his pockets and turned his gaze upon me. “You can’t go back to the house.”

  “What do you mean? I’m going back; I have to help Dad and Henry. And Pop.”

  Peter just looked at me as if he knew something I didn’t. “You can’t.”

  Anger rose in my chest and spread heat up my neck. “Don’t tell me I can’t, Peter. I am, and I thought you were here to help me. That’s what you said last night, all that talk about being here to help me. What are you telling me now? You’re not going to help me?” My voice had risen until I was almost shouting.

  Peter didn’t say anything. He stood still, silent, sobered by my sudden outburst. Finally he opened his mouth and when he looked at me I saw the tears that had pooled in his eyes. “You said you trusted me.”

  “I do trust you when you’re making sense. But this makes no sense. I have to go back there and help. They need me.” Suddenly it did make sense. Peter was a Nazi. And once a Nazi always a Nazi. He was trying to keep me from the house, keep me from rescuing Dad, Pop, and Henry. He may have had good intentions at first, but his training had finally kicked in and he’d given in to the indoctrination he’d received. He was turning on me, betraying me. My temperature rose, and I firmed my jaw. Resolve had settled like concrete in my feet. I would not be dissuaded. I was going back to the house, and I was going to rescue my family, or die trying. “I’m going back and you won’t stop me.”

  I knew he most likely could if he tried. He was trained in hand-to-hand combat that could incapacitate me and render me helpless in mere seconds. I knew I was at his mercy. I also knew Peter was wrestling with himself. The part of him that served Christ was grappling with the part of him that had been mercilessly instructed to obey Hitler. My only hope was that the Christ-follower would gain the advantage long enough to allow me to leave unscathed.

  I glared at him for more than a few seconds then said through clenched teeth. “I’m going. You’ll have to kill me to stop me, but know this, I will put up a fight.” How much of a fight it would be, I had no idea, but intuition told me it wouldn’t last long. Regardless, I was prepared to give it my all. Survival was a priority now—for me, for Dad, for Pop, and for Henry.

  Turning to leave, I heard the whisper of clothes and two heavy footfalls in the leaves. Before I could spin back toward the sound, Peter’s hand clasped around my arm. I planted my left foot, fisted my hand, and used the momentum of my spin to land a roundhouse punch to the side of Peter’s face, just below the cheekbone. He lost his grip and reeled backwards, dropping to one knee.

  My hand ached from the collision, and my heart seized in my chest. I’d never hit anyone before and the sudden burst of adrenaline into my bloodstream was almost too much for my system to handle. I opened and closed my hand while my head swam and nausea gripped my stomach.

  Peter was still on one knee, bent forward, holding his face. He shook his head twice and looked at me. Tears tumbled out of his eyes and streaked down his cheek, mingling with his fingers.

  I drew in a long breath through my nostrils. I felt both sickened by what I had just done and exhilarated at the same time. I’d proved to myself that I would indeed fight for the right cause. I was not the coward Dad thought I was. I was not the coward I thought I was. “I’m . . . I’m . . .” I was going to apologize, for some reason it just seemed like the right thing to do. Looking at Peter, I had the feeling that I had injured him far worse than just physically. “I’m going,” I said instead. “Don’t try to stop me again.”

  For the second time, I turned to leave and this time Peter stopped me, not with a hand around my arm, but with words around my heart. “I’m with you.”

  And for the second time, I stopped and spun around. I was tired of his muddied messages. “With me? What does that mean?”

  Peter swallowed and climbed to his feet. The side of his face, between the cheekbone and ear, had already reddened and looked a little puffy. My blow had left him slightly unsteady. He swayed slowly to his right, caught himself, and rubbed his cheek aga
in. “I’m going with you. I have to . . . I have to help you.”

  I was in no mood to argue with him, daybreak had come and gone and I’d wasted enough time already. “Suit yourself, but if you decide not to help, stay out of my way.”

  Peter pointed to his right, my left, toward the rising sun. “The house is that way. East.”

  So together, with me in the lead and Peter following a good ten yards behind, we set off east, toward the sun climbing higher in the morning sky, toward the house where Dad and Pop and Henry were being held captive.

  Or so I thought.

  27

  Like a freight train barreling by a hobo, with a gentle but steady breeze pushing against my face, I rambled through the woods toward the ever-brightening, sun-dazzled sky. Peter trailed noiselessly save for the soft fall of his boots and the even rhythm of his labored breathing. Dividing my close attention between the bouncing horizon and the maze of natural obstacles, I was barely aware of his presence. He could trail if he so desired, but if he tried to get in my way, tried even the slightest bit to push me from my predetermined course, I would push back. I had resolved that in my heart immediately upon setting out for the house.

  The run took no more than nine or ten minutes at three-quarters speed so I calculated it must have been almost a mile. But a mile through thick underbrush and over uneven terrain is not the same as a mile around an oval track or across an open meadow. When I finally reached the clearing where the house stood, I collapsed onto the ground just inside the tree line, sucking air into my spasmodic lungs.