“I have to hunt you now,” the three-armed creature said. “You have seen too much.”
“I’ll forget everything I’ve seen.”
“You won’t,” the monster said. “You’ll tell someone. They won’t believe you, being an African in this country. But it’ll stick in their minds.” Chris tried to back out of the basement and hit an array of hanging knives. “You smell good like suckling pig,” the creature said. “I’ll smell your scent in the town. My life is now short, but I’ll find you. I believed in the world. I believed in Adolf Hitler. Now I am a monster. Sons and fathers. I was old once.” He slurred as he spoke and stumbled into the walls. His eyes faded like cloudy days. One of them filled with milk and hung to the left. His third arm only twitched, hanging useless outside of his shirtless overalls.
“I love my father,” Chris said as he backed up stairs, tripping over something behind him on the floor. An arm grabbed him, its iron grip nearly snapping his bone. He slapped a hood over Chris’s head, and something sharp pierced his arm. A river rushed through his head, dragging him to darkness.
~ ~ ~
Chris’s thoughts stirred as he came to. Someone pulled the hood off his face. He sat in a chair, but his muscles felt weighed down like an ocean of pressure crushed him—the effects of a chemical injected into his body. He should have seen it coming but couldn’t find any strength.
“Welcome to my home, Herr?”
“Chris.”
“Very informal. Chris. But since we are in Amerika.”
A full lab bubbled around him. Electrical equipment buzzed and pulsed. Wheels turned, throwing sparks as they spun like some Tesla-creature gone wild. The scientist, taller than the creature and standing upright, wore a white lab coat; his silver hair flowed down his head. Sutures penetrated his flesh along his elbows and hands. Chris spotted a tattooed number written along his wrist in black ink strokes.
“Let me go man,” Chris said. “I won’t tell anyone. What do you want?”
“Such young blood,” the scientist said, the words spoken with a guttural German accent. His jackboots clanked along the floor as he walked. Even though he wore the garb of a scientist, the scientist marched like a soldier, though he must have been old when the war started.
“My blood?” Chris fought his petrified muscles, trying to run from the chair. His captor required no ropes or bondage. Chemicals lashed the boy to gravity. The scientist grabbed Chris’s arm, pushed up the jacket sleeve and pressed the sharp tip of a syringe into his flesh.
“A little research,” the old scientist said. “How aging works. Purely an arbitrary mechanism. Jellyfish and trees live thousands of years.” The penetration shook Chris. He began to break the frozen bones, thawing the chemical ice and moved his left leg. He kept working his muscles, fighting for freedom. The scientist brushed away his long white hair. Bugs crawled among the strands, and he didn’t seem to notice.
“You are seeking the secret to eternal life?” Chris asked.
“You are a smart lad. Ja?” The scientist sat down on a bench and pushed a few drops onto a slide then mixed several drops of a solution from a cracked bottle and replaced the cork. He studied the solution through the eye of a microscope.
“What good did ‘smart’ ever do for anyone?” Chris asked. “We got so smart, and now we’re dropping atomic bombs on cities. That’s what we’ve done with it. We could have cured all disease and fed the hungry, but we build tanks and bombs.”
“Smart boy,” the scientist said. He tilted his wrist while adjusting a dial on the microscope, exposing the numbers written on his wrist. Chris recalled his father’s stories about the camps, about the inmates being tagged with black scripted serial numbers.
“You’re a Nazi?”
“I was born into the party, made from national Socialist values. I was carved out of the S.S. faith. My flesh was conceived of their faith.”
“Why do you want me?” Chris asked.
“We’re out of balance. The beast and I. We seek immortality.”
Chris’ muscles awakened, a thousand needles stinging the fibers. He lifted his legs, but he quickly settled his body when the old scientist looked back at him. He’d never bothered to secure Chris, confident in his chemicals and science. Chris waited for his moment to run. He didn’t know where Frankenstein would lurk, waiting, watching to catch him if Chris ran.
“Why did you come here?” Chris asked.
“Your government needed spies, people who knew the Soviet system. A man in a gray suit and yellow tie came to us and said for information he’d get us out of Europe—a new life. I told them what I remembered about the Soviets. Most of it I make up. Dummkopfs. Then they give us a new passport. They try to make us go to South America, Argentina, but I want to see Amerika. I’m a young man, a new creation to the world. I wish to see the new world.”
Chris didn’t quite understand the madman, but it didn’t matter. He pushed off against the ground, trying to find traction, strength. The chair creaked, and Chris froze, trying not to give himself away.
“I can see you have a strong heart, from your blood,” the scientist said. He got up from his bench and grabbed a scalpel from a shelf. Chris turned his gaze. Fear would kill him. It was probably a straight shot out the door, up the basement stairs out into the field where he could cut out and head home. “Now let us see this heart. You won’t miss it. Troublesome organ anyway.” The scientist focused on preparing his equipment, and Chris pushed from the chair, staggering off the ground, trying to not make a noise. The scientist focused on preparing for surgery, and Chris knew if he didn’t get away, his mind would be dead and his body would be subject to the slicing.
“We cut many,” the old scientist said. “Mengele was my master. A stupid man. In the body, in the code of the cells exists the secret to the immortal—the true master race. I am close, but I am so young. So old, though. An error. I’m caused suffering for this error. They just found the code: Francis Crick and James Watson found the double helix model of DNA, the materials in chemical strings that control heredity. This should have been us! We knew this long ago!”
Chris cut out, stumbling on his numb legs. He nearly collapsed and hit the wall, striking his shoulder. Pain radiated up his arm and into his chest. He pushed on, thrusting against the wall, and Chris recognized the room where he’d first intruded on this mad playhouse in Levittown. He didn’t spot the three-armed mutation anywhere in the basement room, and he studied the dry-rotted staircase, pushing ahead. Finally, the Nazi scientist found him on the run and called out:
“Mein liebchen! There is nowhere to run. It is better this way. I will give you peace forever. And you will give me life eternal. Me and my creator.”
Chris held onto to the railing and pulled himself up the staircase. He rubbed his brother’s coat and rushed into the warm air of the summer night then slammed shut the basement shutters in the ground. Chris found the ditch and followed the low trail through his section of Levittown.
Chris climbed up the wall into his bedroom window and curled into bed, thinking of the voice that chilled his skin so. The scientist had felt reptilian, yet there was something Chris mourned in the voice. He had been alive once like Chris, and now he dwelled in two worlds, between life and death. Something in his voice longed for an end. Chris wasn’t the man to deliver it, and he regretted having snuck out against his father’s wishes. Maybe Papa wasn’t reprimanding him as much as protecting him. Papa had seen a world of darkness, and he didn’t want his son to see it. Still, he knew he owned it now, and he would have to contend with the monster. It was his Christian duty.
~ ~ ~
The first bottle smashed the dining room bay window just after midnight on the following night. Two more empty beer bottles followed it. Glass shards sprayed into the dining room from the shattered front bay window. Momma yelled out, startled in her sleep. Chris jumped to the bedroom window. Live fire torch lights stunned his eyes, and he shunned away, squinting until his eyes adjusted. His n
eighbors amassed in a crowd standing on the sidewalk and front lawn, trampling Momma’s bushes and late season flowers.
Chris had kept indoors all day, hoping he’d be forgotten, and perhaps the monsters he’d witnessed the night before would melt away like all nightmares. He’d helped his mother sort storage in the attic and clean the garage. Word on the radio from WBBC—the local Levittown station—reported folk missing from town. Police cruisers scanned the streets, and they slowed whenever they passed their new house.
Another bottle hit the wall, and brown shards sprayed into the open window, slicing Chris’s cheek. Blood dripped down his neck, and he caught the drops with his fingers and tasted the blood. He gripped the windowsill, driving splinters into his digits, and the pain only sharpened his rage, fueling it. He jumped down from the bed and grabbed Tom’s coat. “My father fought the Nazis. My brother is in Korea. They can’t do this!” He grabbed a baseball bat from the closet, knocking over his mitt and old uniform from when he played for their high school in Philly. Chris dragged the bat along the hallway, heading to bust someone’s head. His father, wearing a brown wool robe, caught him by the coat sleeve. Chris ignored his touch, pulled against his grasp, and the sleeve of the jacket ripped. He swung the bat in a blind rage at his father in the dark of his hall, just wanting to hit anything, and his father caught it then tore it from his grasp. Chris’ hands ached, and his arm muscles tensed.
“Christopher. Where do you think you’re going?”
“This is our home, Papa! Don’t you have any pride? You going to let Momma down like this? Just hide like some groundhog in the dirt?” Momma wore a housecoat and stood behind him. Her smooth cheeks and forehead beheld no anger or temper. She listened, and Chris hadn’t realized how much he needed her to listen right now.
“Don’t be so goddamn stupid. That mob will kill you!”
“It’s not right,” Chris said. Another bottle shattered against the house. The crowd cheered.
“Much in this world isn’t right, son,” Poppa said. “It’s never going to be a fair world.”
Chris sunk against the wall, his anger spent. “It’s my fault, Poppa. Cause I snuck out again. I saw something: I saw a Nazi and a monster. They did this. The old scientist made some sort of Frankenstein. The creature sunk bodies in the drainage ditch on Thornridge Drive.”
“Jesus wept,” Momma said. “It’s your imagination, son.”
“No,” Poppa said. “I’ve seen it early in the morning when I’m leaving for work. It’s got a third arm. I’m not sure it was created. It carries a world on its back, not like a child. It looked in agony, longing to end.”
“I know too much,” Chris said. “He’s an escaped Nazi. He’s being hunted and hiding.” Papa rubbed his shoulder. He knew when the confrontation came, he’d be on his own, but for now he enjoyed the comfort, the last moments of his childhood before it was robbed away from him by a greater and darker world.
Someone yelled through the broken bay window in the dining room. “Come out and face justice.” Momma grabbed hold of Papa.
“You dumb hicks. It was the Nazi!” Chris yelled down the hall. The mob yelled from outside. Some of the men sounded tight, drinking the whole night. The mob leaders had probably gotten riled up in a bar after the men had a few drinks. He was sure the old cop had something to do with it, spreading rumors, setting the town on a witch-hunt.
Momma screamed, and her voice muffled by a palm wrapped around her mouth. A hunched-over creature grabbed her face and arm, dragging her low. Its third arm hung out of the overalls, mostly useless. Its fingers fluttered in the air, reaching for anything, nothing. The creature held her in a vice, and it averted its eyes from the orange glow of the torches shining through the broken bay window.
“Your boy’s seen too much,” spoke the old scientist. He wore a black uniform and cap. A silver skull—a death’s head—reflected the light of the torch on his cap. The old man’s hair flowed silver, and he marched from behind them in jackboots. They’d either broken in through a window or had been waiting in the darkness, maybe in Tom’s room. Father and son, creature and creation, God and Adam had come for him—for what Chris had seen, for all his sins.
“Come out, murderer!” some of the crowd chanted. The mob knew about his midnight walks. The mob called to him, and Chris sensed its collective power bearing down on him. His hands shook, and he clutched his brother’s jacket. He stood alone, between two monsters of Levittown.
“S.S. son of a bitch,” Papa said. “You’ll have to come through me first.” The gleam in Papa’s eye could have sliced a man in two. The old scientist raised his ceremonial dagger from its sheath and held a pistol on the family.
“I demand this sacrifice. In the body of this African child is the code that will give to us all eternal life. In his body is the key that I have been searching for since my young life began.” Chris didn’t understand what he meant. The scientist appeared to be nearly ancient. Holding the gun, his hands shook, and maybe Chris could move fast enough to get by him.
“You’re insane, Adam,” the creature slurred. He held Momma by the neck. The crowd chanted outside, and rocks pelted the ranch house. “There is nothing to be found in his inferior filth.”
“Stille, Vater!” yelled the old scientist.
“Nein!” slurred the creature. “I can no longer endure this! I created you. You are to obey like all good little kinder.”
“But you blundered, Father,” said the old one with the silvery hair. “You built me out of men and women and gave me life from alchemical chemicals and ions. You taught me your sciences. My limbs and organs came from the wretches in your camps. You slaughtered them like hogs, and you even experimented on yourself! Now you are the monster, and the grains of my life fall through the hourglass fast.”
Chris finally understood. The three-armed wretch created the old scientist. The wretch, the monster had once been a normal man, an S.S. researcher doing experiments at the camps. He made the old one, wove him of flesh and organ, but something had gone wrong. His creation, his son aged fast, soon approaching death, and in his arrogance, they had begun to experiment on the original scientist, changing his body, grafting on parts, growing new flesh and always running into a dead end.
“I am close!” spoke the wretch, the creature. “The master race will live forever! The realization of the Führer’s dream.”
“I am that dream!” the old scientist yelled.
“You are an abomination! A mistake! I should have destroyed you in the camps and never taken you with me when the Amerikans came to us.” The creature released Momma and tackled the old scientist. The gun fell from his hand and hit the wall. They wrestled, hitting the walls, knocking family pictures to the ground, cracking glass. Papa grabbed Momma and pulled her to safety. Her eyes rolled, and she looked ready to faint. Father and son wrestled, cracking the drywall. The crowd outside roared up, and a lit torch launched through the broken bay window, hit the brick chimney and rolled at an angle up the hall. Fire oozed and seeded as the makeshift torch moved, leaving traces of burning fuel on the carpet, spreading up the rug and igniting the furniture covers and curtains. Streams of fire lit up the house. The fire illuminated the dark house, and the creature turned its head away, shielding its eyes from the bright flame. The old son saw its moment, aimed its S.S. dagger that must have at one time belonged to the abomination—born healthy and whole of four limbs and human mind. He stabbed it above the third arm, sticking it in his chest. The abomination fell back, rolling on the carpet. Chris used the melee to grab the makeshift torch, the tree branch wrapped in cloth and reeking of gasoline, and he pressed it to the black S.S. uniform, holding it fast to the material until some of the fuel smeared and ignited the old scientist creation. It howled, revealing its animalistic nature, screeching into the night, shutting up the crowd outside. The abomination rushed forward, weakened and wounded, wheezing from its wound and wrestled the old scientist, seemingly driven by its rage now, beyond pain. Chris backed out
of the way and followed them as they spun into the dining room, banging into the walls and finally threw themselves out of the shattered bay windows, landing on the concrete porch and twirling through Momma’s new rosebushes.
The mob hovered outside with torches, waiting for their next moment, for their ignorant and drunk leaders to make the next move. The family abomination spun out, shocking the crowd, and the mob yelled out when they saw the burning figures, merging together, their flesh melting. Finally, they stopped, burned from this life, mercifully and no longer suffering.
“Here’s your killers!” Chris yelled at the crowd. “Go to the old house on the field. They’re Nazis.” The young cop drove up in a cruiser and ordered them to disperse. He didn’t make any speeches, but nor did he show his support to the mob. There would be more young cops with new ideas.
~ ~ ~
Chris didn’t need to explain the story of the S.S. monster and his creator. The crowd never would have accepted his tale. Though driven to hatred and violence, they were in their hearts but good people, as were all people in the world when not afraid. He had to show them patience. He’d have to wait. They’d come out of it, figure out there was nothing to fear. It was the best way to fight the monsters of Levittown and not become one of them.
The police took custody of the bodies, but the newly formed C.I.A. came in and took all the evidence. The local authorities didn’t fight them. The local police didn’t want the responsibility, not in the suburbs. The Levittown Corporation knocked down the old mansion and built a new section of houses called North Park. They built an elementary school there across from Penn Valley Road, and the old evil vanished into the earth. Children played on swing sets where the house had housed the old evil.
American Nightmare Page 10
