The Changeling

by Victor Lavalle

  “I saw—” Apollo began, but hesitated.

  “1-2-4, that’s the house number.” Patrice’s voice played weak and tinny in the air, but it brought him back. “86th Road. Forest Hills. Jorgen Knudsen. Go find that guy. Don’t think about anything else. I’m hanging up now. Just in case. We love you. Good luck.”

  OVERCAST MORNING. The snow hadn’t stuck, so the park sagged everywhere, as if a damp blanket had been cast over the land. The limbs of the bare trees hung low, and those that still had leaves hung even lower. Great swaths of grass lay matted. The single concrete road that wormed through the middle of Forest Park had been soaked so dark, it looked freshly laid. Apollo left the bathroom with the suitcase and went to find Emma.

  He tried the Carousel and then the George Seuffert, Sr., Bandshell, which looked like the kinds of places someone might hide to protect against the elements. Did Emma need such protection? The woman he’d seen last night seemed to generate her own weather system. Apollo walked until midday but never caught sight of Emma. For all he knew, they were separated by little more than a few dozen trees. When you were inside the thickest parts of the Northern Forest, it was possible to forget you were in one of the most densely populated cities on the planet in the twenty-first century. It could be a hundred years in the past, a thousand or more. Apollo wandered in the wilderness, and who knew what else was in there, too.

  Eventually he had to give in and give up, and by noon he’d left the forest and found the sidewalks surrounding the park. Now he and his suitcase made their way toward 86th Road.

  Little Norway. Apollo had seen this area only in the dark and learned the name only from the cops who’d stopped him. What did he expect to see now? What he got would’ve been familiar almost anywhere in the borough. One-family homes with aluminum siding walls; midpriced sedans and minivans parked on streets and in driveways; small front lawns behind chain-link fencing and satin window treatments in every room. Little Norway could’ve been Little Ecuador or Little Korea or Little Ghana. The flags might differ, but the stages were the same.

  Apollo stopped at the address Patrice gave him. He found a three-story house, one of the largest and oldest on the block. No car in the driveway. The windows were all blocked by yellowing blinds. Apollo brought his suitcase up a small flight of stairs, right to the front door, no bell, so he knocked. No answer, so he kept knocking, but eventually he gave up. When he turned to the street, he saw a neighbor watching him from the house across the way. Man or woman, young or old, he couldn’t say. The window treatments hid the details. How soon before more cops were called? Apollo descended the stairs and wheeled his suitcase down the block. He’d spent half a day in the park looking for Emma; now he’d have to do the same hunting for the person who lived here. If he couldn’t just sit on the steps, he’d make a circuit around the block. How long could it take before Jorgen Knudsen returned?

  It turned out to be hours. By the time the old Viking showed up, the sun was going down. Apollo’s knees hurt. He hadn’t had anything to eat or drink since yesterday. As a result, he felt so starved he thought he was hallucinating when that white-haired codger appeared on the block. He carried two large white plastic bags, both heavy with goods. Moving slowly. When he passed under a streetlamp, Apollo could see the man muttering as he walked.

  Apollo stopped at the far corner of 86th Road, right in the middle of the street. A woman had to beep three times to get him out of the way. The old man looked up when he heard the car horn, and there stood Apollo Kagwa, but the guy didn’t seem to notice. Instead he resumed that hobbled march until he reached the three-story house, climbed the stairs, unlocked his front door, and went inside.

  Apollo counted to one hundred before he moved up the block. When he reached the house, he actually gasped. The old man had left the front door wide open, the light above the front entrance turned on.

  Apollo almost took the stairs. Almost. He set his foot on the first one but stopped himself before he tried the second. He watched the open front door. He looked both ways. Many of the other houses on the block showed lights on the first floors, a few on the second. People were home, but no one seemed to be watching him at this moment. And yet he hesitated to simply walk inside. He looked behind him but didn’t see anyone peeking out from behind the curtains there.

  Apollo walked around the side of the house and down the open driveway. Houses like this always had more than one entrance. He found a second door along the side. He assumed this one led down to the basement, but this door had no handle, no lock either. After only a second standing there, a light flared on above his head. He leaped backward, letting the suitcase fall, scanning in all directions. He stood in place, and after another moment, the light snuffed out. Apollo stepped to the door again, and the light, on a motion sensor, flipped on again. Apollo pressed at the door once, but it was barred from the inside. He stepped back, and the driveway returned to darkness.

  He picked up the suitcase handle and went farther along the house, all the way around the back, and here he found a third door. It opened with a turn of the handle. Apollo left his suitcase outside. He didn’t want to worry about running out with it if things came to that. Inside he found a short set of stairs that led up into a kitchen.

  Two plastic bags sat on the kitchen counter. A large pot sat on a burner, the flame turned high, but the water inside still felt cold. Apollo stood quietly in the large, outdated kitchen. There were two open doorways out of the kitchen, leading to the rest of the first floor. One opened onto a dining room, and the other a hallway. He moved toward the hallway and leaned out. From here it was a straight path to the front door. The front door remained open. He stood there a moment listening for the old man but heard nothing.

  He moved to the other doorway and entered the dining room. There was a large dining table covered with mail and newspapers, circulars, all still in their rubber bands, a mound of the stuff, some spilling onto the floor. Apollo moved around the far side of the table, trying to keep silent, step softly.

  As he moved alongside the table, he found the old man. He stood with his back to Apollo. He waited at the threshold of the front door, hidden right behind it. In his left hand he held a large boning knife.

  Apollo scanned the table for some kind of weapon, or at least something he could use as defense. He touched his hand to the nearest rolled-up newspaper, and just as he lifted it, the old man turned.

  Apollo raised the newspaper like a club.

  The old man pointed his knife at Apollo. “I’m going to tell you a story about a little boy,” he said.

  THE OLD MAN spoke as he and Apollo faced each other in that dining room. One man poised with a boning knife, the other with a roll of newspaper. A standoff on the blue shag carpeting.

  “There once was a farmer who had three sons,” the old man began. “His farm was so badly off that none of them ever had enough to eat. A large, good forest sat right nearby, and the oldest brother went off one day to chop wood. He hoped to get enough wood to pay off their father’s debts and finally have some money of their own. But he returned before even an hour’s time, and he would not speak of what had happened. He had no wood with him.

  “The second son was sent next. He snatched the family’s ax from his older brother and marched off into the woods. But he returned even sooner than his older brother. This time he returned not only without wood but also without the family’s ax! The old farmer was distraught. Only his youngest son remained, and he was just a boy.

  “But the youngest, Askeladden, didn’t even wait for the sun to rise before going out to the woods. The moon lit the sky, and the boy left without telling his father, or his brothers, that he was going. He entered the woods as quietly as he could, and in no time he found the family’s ax. It was still stuck in a shaggy fir tree, right where the middle brother had left it. And just below that was a mark in the fir tree where the oldest brother had swung the same ax. Curious.

  “Askeladden then heard something moving through the
trees. The ground shook and the tops of the trees shivered as something enormous came closer. The boy needed to hide, but the forest floor offered no such places. If he could reach the upper branches of this fir tree, he thought, he could disappear in its leaves. But the limbs were too high up. Then he remembered the ax. He was still small enough that he could climb onto the handle and use it like a stair without shaking it loose. From the place on the handle, he could jump and reach the lowest branch.

  “He climbed almost to the top of the fir tree, and there he hid. The cuts his brothers made had caused sap to leak from the tree, but Askeladden didn’t realize it until he’d stopped climbing. His hands and feet were wet with the stuff, strong scent of wood and resin. He tried to wipe it off, but very quickly he had to be still.

  “Out of the woods came an enormous troll. Six stories high, with shoulders as wide as a bull. It was hideous and smelled of swamp rot. It growled and coughed. When it bumped the fir tree, poor Askeladden was almost thrown to his death. The troll sniffed the air. If the sap hadn’t been on the boy’s hands and feet, the troll would’ve smelled him right away. They can track the scent of human flesh like a shark tracks blood. But still it knew something was wrong. Hadn’t there been two other boys in its woods not long before? It pulled a face of rage.

  “ ‘Who dares come into my woods?’ the troll howled. ‘I will eat his bones!’

  “Askeladden had an idea. He shouted, ‘My head is right there on the ground! Why don’t you just try and crack my skull!’

  “The troll bent low and found a stone on the ground, the size of a boy. ‘I have you!’ he shouted, and bit down hard, but immediately he howled. ‘My teeth! You have broken my teeth with your thick skull! I will do better with your other bones instead.’ The troll became so angry, it could hardly think.

  This time the boy shouted, ‘I have no bones! I am made of wood, you stupid troll!’

  “ ‘Stupid, am I?’ shouted the troll. ‘Then I will chop you to pieces!’

  “ ‘But where will you find an ax, you buffoon?’ taunted Askeladden.

  “ ‘There is one here!’ the troll bellowed. ‘And I will chop down this whole forest to find you!’

  “The troll had fallen into a fury, and not being very bright, he began chopping at every tree nearby. Finally that fir tree was the only one left in all the wood. All the rest had been chopped into small pieces.

  “ ‘Now I have you!’ the troll called. He raised his ax to fell the last tree, but his chopping had taken all night, and now it was morning. As the troll raised the ax, the sun finally rose, and that troll was turned to stone by the daylight.

  “Askeladden climbed down. He tried to push the stone troll over because he wanted his father’s ax. But eventually he gave up. It was too big and heavy to budge. But what did it matter? The boy realized that with all the wood the troll had chopped, his father would be a rich man and more than able to afford a new one. And they lived happily ever after.”

  The old man cleared his throat. He waggled the knife so the tip of the blade seemed to be sniffing the air.

  “Why did I tell you that story?” the old man asked. “What did I want you to hear?” He paused here a moment and watched Apollo.

  “I have no fucking idea,” Apollo said eventually.

  “My father told it to me. And his father told him. On and on like that. We’re from Norway originally, and we brought the tale with us. There are a lot of stories about that boy, Askeladden. He always beats the monsters and comes away with some treasure. It’s nice stuff to hear when you’re a pup.”

  The old man waved to take in the run-down living room, worn carpet, frayed curtains, and cluttered dining table with room enough for only one.

  “But now I think I hate those fairy tales.” He raised his hands in a gesture of peace, as if used to being argued with. “Not really the tales, but how they end. Three words that ruin everything. ‘Happily ever after.’ ” He stuck his tongue out as if tasting something bitter as bile.

  “ ‘Happily ever after,’ ” he repeated. “Even when they don’t say it in the story, those three words are there. Take my story, just as an example. Will Askeladden’s father become truly wealthy and have enough money to send all three sons to university or only one or two? How does he decide? The youngest beat the troll, but the oldest boy is still firstborn and deserves the spoils, no? What about when father dies? Did he leave a will? Will there be an equitable distribution of his assets? If not, will the sons all retain legal counsel and spend the next twenty years in court haggling over the estate?” The old man laughed bitterly. “ ‘Happily ever after’ won’t prepare you for that!

  “Personally,” he continued, “I always thought it was there to shut the child up. It’s bedtime, and you’ve just told this incredible story, and a child, as children do, wants to know more. Did they throw a party for Askeladden when he came home? Did the brothers and the father go out to the woods to see where the troll had turned to stone? Did Askeladden ever marry? If so, what was she like? And did they have children of their own? What were they called, all of them?

  “This is what the children would be saying, should be saying, after a tale like that, but by then it’s already late and you’ve been up all day working, and now you just want to go to sleep, and in fact this child is starting to really get on your nerves with all these questions. Always more questions! So you lean close and say, ‘What happened next? They lived happily.’ ‘For how long?’ your beautiful babies ask. ‘Forever,’ you say. ‘Now go to sleep!’ ”

  The old man sighed.

  “And your lovely, stupid child believes you. Then he grows up and tells the same lie to his daughters. And she tells them to her sons. Then, finally, it has to be true, because why else would my good, caring family have passed it on for so very long? Do you know how much harm ‘happily ever after’ has done to mankind? I wish they said something else at the end of those stories instead. ‘They tried to be happy.’ Or ‘Eternal happiness is a fruitless pursuit.’ What do you think?”

  “You’re definitely Norwegian,” Apollo said.

  He lowered the knife. “Why don’t we go into the kitchen?” he said. “The water is probably boiling, and I’m making a meal for her.”

  “No more Starbucks?” Apollo asked.

  The old man dropped his head. “Normally I cook her food myself, but yesterday morning she told me exactly where to go and when to go there. Isn’t that funny? Never once has that happened before, but then snap, just like that, she sends me there.”

  “I know,” Apollo said. “I saw you.”

  “Wouldn’t it be funny if—” he began. “I mean, if she’d known that you’d be there.”

  The old man, Jorgen Knudsen, swept his free hand over his wild, white hair.

  “Forgive me, I’ve been drinking,” he said.

  “Today?”

  “Every day.” His eyes fluttered with weariness.

  Apollo looked toward the kitchen, where he could hear the water roiling. “What are you making?” he asked.

  “Smalahove,” he said. “It’s Norwegian. Just like my story. Let me show you.” He gestured toward the kitchen with the blade.

  Apollo waved the newspaper. “You go first.”

  THE WATER HAD indeed come to a boil. The old man set the boning knife on the counter and turned to the plastic bags on the small kitchen table. He reached into one but kept his gaze on Apollo. He pulled something large out of the bag. It was wrapped in wax paper. He set it on the counter. It was as big as a bowling ball but oval shaped. The old man folded the empty plastic bag neatly and opened a cupboard under the sink where he had a stack of the exact same plastic bags, also folded. He added the new one, then shut the door and returned to the kitchen table. He unfolded the wax paper, that snapping sound as it came flat.

  A sheep’s head lay on the table.

  Apollo audibly gagged.

  The old man laughed quietly and wagged a finger at Apollo. “You can’t be disgust
ed,” he said. “This is a tradition from my home country, and we must never judge anyone’s traditions! Be politically correct, or I will protest you. No judging. Just acceptance. Well, here it is. Accept it.”

  Now he slapped a hand on the side of the sheep’s head. It made a wet squelch and spun a few degrees so that its mouth pointed directly at Apollo. Its lower teeth, a row of small, discolored pegs, jutted out past the slightly open lips. The skin and fleece had been removed, so the head shone a reddish-pink under the kitchen lights. It still had its eyes. Each looked like a globe of black jelly set into the puttied red flesh.

  The old man grabbed it by the snout and in one motion lifted it, brought it to the pot of boiling water, and dropped it in. Small amounts of scalding water flew out of the pot, some of it landing on the old man’s forearm, but if it hurt he showed no sign. He simply turned back to Apollo and clapped, a proud chef. He scanned the countertop and grabbed a novelty kitchen timer that was made to look like a fluffy white sheep.

  “If I don’t use the timer, I’ll forget the head is boiling,” the old man said. He held up the display screen, which was set in the center of the sheep’s belly. “I let it go three and a half hours so the meat isn’t too tough or too soft.”

  Apollo nodded because he simply couldn’t keep up. The open front door, the old man hiding in wait with a knife, the tale of Askeladden and the troll, and now a sheep’s head boiling in a pot. And he thought the island had been as wild as things would get?

  “My wife,” Apollo said, the words like a lifeline. He raised his free hand to show the red string on his finger. “I don’t care about all this other shit. I just have to find Emma.”