The Secret of Lions

by Scott Blade

  Wind blew out the hanging lanterns. Almost in an eerie rhythm, each lantern waved back and forth, one after the other like a long sequence of pendulums illuminating the sandy floor. Heinrik rose to his feet, his eyes squinting to make out a figure standing at the end of the hall. Heinrik could hear the sound of dripping water becoming louder.

  He reached for his rifle. It hung on a sling around his back. Quickly, he pulled the bolt action on it, chambering a bullet. He watched the figure begin to sway at the other end of the hall in unison to the swarms of swaying lanterns. He slowly walked toward the intruder.

  “Who are you?” he called out. The intruder did not answer.

  Passing by each cell, Heinrik studied the doors of each and made sure they were tightly secured. He did not want to fall prey to a trap.

  Startlingly, the lanterns that hung between Heinrik and the figure began to burst and shatter, frightening him.

  Glass broke off into hundreds of tiny pieces. The lantern closest to him was the first one to go out, followed by the second. He drew closer and closer to the figure. The face was blurry, but it seemed familiar. It was Gracy.

  “Gracy?” Heinrik said.

  She turned and sprinted swiftly down the hall. He chased after her. The dripping sound was louder now. Heinrik stopped in the middle of an intersection of hallways. He looked down the left corridor and saw her turning the corner.

  “Gracy!” he yelled. Heinrik chased after her. His rifle snagged on a loose door hinge and he let it drop to the ground. “Gracy, stop!” he screamed.

  Heinrik turned the last corner and stopped. She was standing in the open doorway of Adolf’s cell. Dust filled the air around her.

  “Gracy? What are you doing?”

  She did not answer. She glanced back at him once, and then with no warning she leapt into the darkness of Adolf’s cell. The opening resembled the open pit of a dark mouth. The pitch-blackness of the cell swallowed her up, making a slurping sound afterward.

  She dove into the darkest bowels of the prison.

  “Wait!” Heinrik yelled.

  He ran toward the cell, but the door slammed shut behind his wife. He grabbed the bars in the small portal to the cell and shook them violently. He could not open the door, no matter how much he struggled with it.

  Heinrik paused from his struggling and peered into the darkness, hoping to discover what was happening. It was to no avail; he could not see anything. After an excruciating moment of waiting, a moment that filled Heinrik with a gruesome agony that swelled up in the pits of his soul, he could hear breathing. Each breath sounded heavy at first and then intensified with each lingering second. He squinted and tried to make out the shapes in cell thirteen.

  He could see shadows moving in such a way it appeared cadenced, violent, and even sensual. He squinted harder until he could see exactly what was happening.

  Gracy and Adolf thrust repeatedly. It was the most terrifying moment of Heinrik’s life. Heinrik loomed in horror as Adolf thrust in and out of his wife.

  “Oh, Heinrik,” she moaned.

  “NO!” he shouted. “Gracy, that’s Adolf Hitler! Not me! It’s Hitler! STOP!”

  But his protests were useless. It was not that she could not hear him. The Gracy he saw before him turned and looked directly at him. She could hear him perfectly. She just did not care about his protests. She belonged to Hitler now. Heinrik trembled at the sight before him. His powerlessness consumed him in an instant. All he could do was watch.

  Candlelight flickered behind Hitler. Heinrik could see him perfectly now. His white body straddled and thrashed against hers.

  Suddenly, the sight of the two bodies encircled in each other enraged Heinrik. His mind became overwhelmed. He clenched his hands around the cold steel bars in the window of the door to cell thirteen. He jerked them violently. He jerked them until he lost all of his strength. He jerked them until blood ran from his fingernails.

  The sudden feeling of falling jerked Heinrik back to life.”

  “Hold it a second,” Barbara interrupted the story.

  She said, “How do you know what your father was dreaming and thinking?”

  “Like I said, some things are from my imagination. It’s the whole story the very best that I can tell it,” he said.

  She nodded.

  “No more interrupting,” he said. He leaned in and kissed her.

  Then he kept going.

  Heinrik awoke still sitting in his chair, alone in the gloomy darkness of the blood mile. He had fallen asleep and he had never been so glad to be awake.

  32

  Gracy lay in his arms, oblivious to the dreams that plagued her husband. Heinrik watched, finding great solace in her restful sleep. He did not want to worry her with the horrible dreams that he’d been having, so he said nothing. Heinrik’s arm fell asleep under the weight of Gracy’s body, but he did not want to move her in order to free it. He decided that it was best to let her sleep. She looked far too peaceful, far too beautiful. She was completely unaware of the evil that had befallen him. They were completely unaware of the evil that had befallen them both.

  As if it were meant to happen, she woke up on her own. Gracy could sense that he was awake and she turned to him.

  “Darling, what’s the matter?” she asked.

  “Nothing,” he lied while forming a deceptive smile, a smile that she had learned to see through; even still she never questioned his authenticity or his genuine love for her. But that smile gave him away. Instead of prying, she changed the subject.

  “Darling, there is something I wanted to tell you. Something is going on.” She squirmed in his arms and readjusted herself so that she was at eye level with him. Her long, black hair fell across her neck and down her back. It snaked like a river flowing around the contours of her body.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  She paused for a long moment. Her eyes focused on his, leaping from one to the other. She felt this was the moment, a perfect moment to tell him the truth.

  “I’ve been keeping a secret from you,” she said.

  “Secret? What secret?” he asked, nervously.

  “I'm pregnant.”

  Heinrik took a deep breath and let it out. Stunned, he was swept away by her words.

  “Heinrik?”

  “That’s great. It’s wonderful,” he smiled at her. She could tell this smile was a true smile, filled with all of the happiness and pride of a new father. His child was coming.

  They had waited for this moment for a long time. It felt right—creating a new life. It was what they had always wanted, a child of their own to rear in a world of peace, a world where the child could grow up knowing everything was safe for him.

  Heinrik couldn’t help but be filled with both joy and fear simultaneously.

  After thinking about a new child, Heinrik began to think of the realities of that venture. A sense of sheer terror came over him. Suddenly, it was clear that politics did matter.

  33

  5:00 a.m.

  The morning smelled of gasoline and cigarettes. Delivery trucks passed in and out of the prison. They started their daily drop-offs of supplies. The truck drivers shifted in their seats.

  The prison’s different crews changed shifts. Graveyard became day shift. Guards approached the entrance to the prison. They wore fresh clothes and walked in with full bellies. The sun was out, but it was barely visible through the thick fog. Heinrik walked in front of the prison’s oversized gates. The prison guards staggered along the tops of the high walls. A single guard patrolled the westernmost wall. A sniper rifle rested under his arm.

  Although Heinrik had been reassigned, the prison staff was shorthanded. He agreed to fill in as necessary. One of his duties had become to walk Hitler in the mornings. It was only for thirty minutes, but still he dreaded it.

  It was just about time for Hitler’s morning walk. Heinrik glowered at the thought of him.

  Hitler should have become a distant memory. He should have been forgott
en by now, left in the ashes of Heinrik’s mind. There should have been no more reason to worry about that man. Gracy had forgotten him, but Heinrik’s dreams and fears would not allow him to forget.

  Upon entering the guards’ walkway, Heinrik heard the blare of the alarm. It screeched over and over. It emitted from the loudspeakers. The nearest one to Heinrik was out in the hallway, near the main staff entrance. He searched franticly for another guard, someone to tell him what was happening.

  One guard was still inside the employees’ lounge. He looked young. Heinrik could tell that he was definitely new and was barely old enough to even be considered a grown man. He looked back at Heinrik with fear in his eyes. The guard did not know what to do. He was completely inept. Heinrik shared his fear and anxiety. The young guard paced back and forth. He looked lost in his own tracks.

  Heinrik had never heard the prison’s alarm go off before, not in the five years that he’d worked there. He remembered participating in numerous training exercises, as was required by the prison, but never did they sound the alarm. He gathered his thoughts and tried to stay calm. He was the highest-ranking guard in the prison. It was his responsibility to rise to the occasion and lead others. The alarm meant that there were prisoners loose; it was up to him to lead the other guards to locate and detain the escaped prisoners.

  Heinrik abandoned his lunch pail. He tossed it onto an old table that sat in the middle of the guards’ lounge. The table was littered with playing cards, soda bottles, and old soup cans. The guards were not the cleanest members of the prison staff, but no one complained.

  Heinrik ran out of the lounge, passing another guard who headed toward the yard. On his way out, he turned to Heinrik and said, “Sir. Sir. It’s a prison break.”

  Heinrik followed him to the yard. No one was out there. In the distance, Heinrik observed several birds scattering from their perches. The approaching guards startled them. A host of sparrows flew off into completely different directions. Some of the birds became confused by the different flight patterns. They scattered everywhere. Many of them readjusted their flight paths in order to follow their brethren. It was chaos.

  A good number of the day crew had not yet arrived and many of the night crew had already left, leaving few guards to recover the loose prisoners.

  The other guard turned toward him and said, “Follow me into cell block five. I think that’s where we are needed. I heard one of the cleaning guys mention something about block five.”

  Five is Hitler’s cell block, Heinrik thought.

  The majority of inmates of cell block five were mental patients. They were dangerous criminals; some were armed robbers, rapists, murders, but most were psychotic. Some had even lost their grip on reality. Some of these prisoners did not believe that they were even in prison. Instead, they believed that they were working a farm or still in the army in the trenches fighting the war.

  One believed he was a POW in a British prison camp during the Great War, never mind that none of the guards spoke English. Heinrik and his fellow guards often chuckled at his expense.

  Heinrik followed his comrade who ran toward a building opposite from the guards’ entrance. He lost track of the other guard for a moment. The guard disappeared into an open doorway. When Heinrik followed, he saw a shadow in the corner of his eye. It was the other guard. He quickly disappeared around the opposite corner. Heinrik picked up his pace and chased after him, trying desperately to keep up.

  Before Heinrik could realize what the sound was, the guard shrieked. His inhuman scream echoed in Heinrik’s ears. He gurgled and gagged as if he were submerged underwater.

  Heinrik turned the corner to find a horrible scene. Three prisoners stood around the screaming guard. One of them held the guard by pulling both of his arms back in an inescapable death-lock. He stabbed a shiv into the back of the man’s neck. Heinrik watched as a rusted blade pierced from out of the guard’s Adam’s apple.

  Blood splattered, soaking the collar of his shirt in a wet, crimson color. The guard gyrated and squirmed violently, trying to escape with his life; instead, he weakened himself and sped up his death. Still, he fought, kicking his legs up in the air. Within moments of struggling with his attackers for his life, he was dead. The free prisoners dropped the corpse and turned their focus to Heinrik.

  “Come here, guard, and join your friend,” one of the prisoners said. He gestured at Heinrik with the shiv.

  Heinrik froze.

  One of the prisoners knelt down beside the dead guard and picked up his gun. He cocked it and aimed it toward Heinrik. The young, inexperienced guard Heinrik had seen out at the guards’ lounge had suddenly entered from behind. The young guard entered so fast that he startled the prisoners.

  The gun went off. The prisoner shot him, firing three times. The bullets entered into his chest and exited through his back. The first bullet splintered into a cell door on the opposite side of the corridor. The other ricocheted off the concrete wall and shattered the lantern above.

  At that moment, Heinrik ran down the hall. He narrowly escaped his attackers. They chased close behind him. Each time his foot hit the ground, dust shot up behind Heinrik.

  “Stop, guard,” one prisoner called out.

  The floor down the corridor was wet. Heinrik slipped and hit the ground hard. Dazed for a moment, he looked up. A cell door was open in front of him. The cell was number thirteen. It was Hitler’s cell.

  Heinrik saw a blurry figure standing in the doorway. He stood almost dreamlike. The face was covered in shadow, but there was a gleam from a metal object in his hand. It appeared to be a razor-sharp shiv.

  Suddenly, the figure moved slightly out of the shadow. It was Hitler. He peered down at Heinrik with a sinister look on his face. He placed a finger over his lips and said, “Shh.”

  Very slowly, he recoiled into the darkness of his cell.

  “There you are, guard,” the prisoner said, standing over him. He pointed the gun right at Heinrik’s face. “You are going to die.”

  Out of the darkness, from beyond the cell’s door, Hitler stepped out directly behind the three prisoners. The one standing in the far back vanished into the darkness and let out the slightest whimper. Hitler stabbed the shiv straight through him, penetrating through to the other side of his body. The tip of the shiv was visibly poking out of his chest underneath his shirt. The blade retracted out of the man’s back and stabbed once again.

  Heinrik was the only person to witness the brutal slaying.

  The second prisoner noticed that his companion was missing. He moved closer to the darkened cell to look for him. Suddenly, Hitler appeared holding two shivs. He slashed out with both blades and cut the man’s throat clean away.

  The prisoner staggered backward toward the wall, his hand gripped tightly around the bloody gash. His head swayed back, the weight of it too heavy for the remaining part of his neck to hold upright. Blood seeped out, covering his chest until the dull colors of his prison clothes became unrecognizable and he fell back into the darkness.

  The final prisoner realized what was happening. He turned and fired the gun twice into the blackness of cell thirteen. He paused and started to tremble, stricken with fear. Hitler stepped out into the light. His features were outlined like a silhouette by the morning sunlight that glimmered in through cracks in his cell’s outer wall.

  With betrayal reflected deep within his voice, the final prisoner uttered one final word before his death, “Adolf?”

  A moment later, Hitler pierced both shivs into his chest, completely shattering the man’s ribcage.

  Hitler’s thick, stumpy hands tightly squeezed the shivs’ handles. In a vile act of brutality, he twisted the murderous blades toward each other and then away, as if they were knobs on a mechanical man. He left them there for a long moment, staring into the man’s eyes as he died. The pupils dilated until they lost all sense of life. Finally, Hitler pulled the blood-soaked shivs out of the corpse.

  Heinrik watched in sheer terror as t
he prisoner’s body fell to the ground, flushing out all of its previous flesh color. Very quickly, the body turned into a ghastly, white tone.

  34

  Hitler stood over the corpse for a moment and watched as it made a death twitch.

  Heinrik looked up at him; his eyes met with Hitler’s for a long, terrifying moment. Hitler tilted his head slightly. Heinrik had never felt such terror before. The nightmare that he had had about Gracy and Hitler came crawling to the forefront of his mind. His terror in that moment was as close to the fear that he felt in his dream as he could imagine himself reaching. The stench of the prison halls crept into his nostrils, causing him to relive every sensation that he’d endured in that horrible nightmare.

  In his nightmare, Hitler had embraced Gracy, and Heinrik had been powerless to stop it. Heinrik’s words and protests were useless. Gracy ignored them. The nightmare had become real, too real. The horror overwhelmed him.

  He was exhausted from the chase, from the tension. He felt faint. His fatigue was so potent that he blacked out.

  35

  Trees rustled under the weight of the heavy wind. Special investigators, soldiers, and night guards populated the prison yard as they walked up and down, surveying the attempted prison break. A furious warden stood with them. He had been called in on his day off. He was forced to help wade through the unexplained events of the failed prison break and the dead bodies that lay in its wake.

  My father was the key to the entire perplexing event. He woke up lying on a cot in the guards’ quarters. He felt dazed. Various uniformed officials surrounded him in this cramped, tiny room, including some military officials he did not recognize.

  Heinrik sat up and realized his cot was elevated slightly higher off the ground than it should have been. The warden sat in front of him looking disturbed and uncomfortable. He sipped on a mug filled with hot coffee, and unbeknownst to Heinrik, it had a little whiskey in it. A pale steam emerged gently from the top of the cup and evaporated into the musty room.

  “Do you want some coffee? It’s fresher than usual. The military officers brought it with them,” the warden said. He held out an extra cup, whiskey and all. It struck Heinrik as odd that the warden was acting so nice.