The Changeling

by Victor Lavalle

  “But he was her father,” Apollo said.

  “He’s the one who took Agnes into the woods in the first place,” Jorgen said. “And he’s the one who left her out there. In the cave.”

  JORGEN SAID SOMETHING more and gestured toward the Japanese screens, but Apollo couldn’t hear him. His ears had plugged, and Jorgen’s words were little more than a vibration against his skull. Instead he found himself staring at the utility knife in his left hand. It had been the casual tone of the words. He’s the one who left her out there. In the cave. The knife began to rise, as slowly as a helium balloon.

  Jorgen placed his hand on Apollo’s, the one that held the blade. He pressed the hand back down. It settled by Apollo’s side for now.

  “Have you noticed that the stories about the first colonists in America are always about how they think the Devil is living out in the woods?”

  Jorgen peeked down at the knife quickly, with little more than a glance, and when the knife didn’t rise again, he stopped holding Apollo’s wrist.

  “I’m talking about the Puritans, I guess. They came to North America and swore monsters were waiting to get them in this savage land. But maybe it was the other way around. Maybe those Puritans brought monsters with them. Unloaded them from their ships right alongside the cargo. That’s what my people did. My great-great-great-grandfather. He brought a monster with him. It emigrated to America just like him.”

  “Did the others on the ship know? The Sloopers?”

  Jorgen patted his belly. “No. I don’t think so. They put their faith in their crew and their God, but Nils put his faith in something older. They all have him to thank for making a safe crossing to America even if none of those pious sorts ever would. People can choose ignorance, can’t they? Life is easier in blinders. In my old age now I have time to wonder about such things though. Even if you choose to ignore the truth, the truth still changes you.”

  Jorgen pointed at the Japanese panels again and walked around them, disappeared on the other side. Apollo looked at the knife, then at the rendering of those three people—Nils, Petra, and Anna Sofie. The heaters clattered and snapped, the heat so strong by now it felt as if they were trying to chase him away.

  Then, on the other side of the panels, Jorgen raised a hand and waved to Apollo, a big goofy gesture like when you’re meeting a relative at the airport and you want them to see you at Arrivals. Apollo walked around the Japanese panels and joined Jorgen.

  The old Viking stood before the long wall where well over one hundred framed photos hung. This side of the den felt significantly cooler. No heaters on the ground. Jorgen tapped at a picture frame when Apollo joined him. Hardly more than an outline, really. A child. Its eyes were closed and its mouth tight, as if it was whistling, wisps of hair splayed out over both ears.

  “Agnes,” he said. “My father drew this likeness much later, from memory.”

  Jorgen took his hand away from the sketch, then brushed at the edges of the frame.

  That baby had been abandoned in the woods—in a cave—by her own father? It was too much to contemplate. Apollo looked away from the sketch to the walls, the mystery of the windowless den. Now he could see there had been windows once but the walls had been altered. The windows hadn’t been covered. They’d been removed. This wall had been reframed, but the job still showed. The places where the new framing had been set stood out slightly from the rest of the wall so there was a faint up-and-down effect, like the difference between the black keys and white keys on a piano. This variation in the wall made the framed photos seem to undulate, some pitching forward and others rolling back, an effect like watching waves. From here he had an easier time identifying the subjects. Children. All of them were portraits of kids. A sea of small faces.

  “Why did Nils bring the monster over?”

  “He had to leave Norway, and he needed to bring his wife with him. He loved her, I expect, and didn’t want to start his new life without her. But when he saw the ship those naïve Quakers planned to sail, he immediately held doubts. The sloop was too small. He had to think of his family. So he brought insurance. But it came at a price. The Sloopers made it to New York and scurried away upstate. But Nils and Anna Sofie and Petra Mikkelsdatter stayed here in Queens. There was no park here, it was farmland. Thousands of acres of forest and greens. In our homeland these things are creatures of the natural world. Forests and mountains are where they make their lairs. Queens was a perfect place for it to settle. By 1898 the land for the park, as you see it now, was bought, and they began to design it. Golf courses, hiking paths, on and on. But it’s hilly country, still lots of pockets. Lots of caves. Lots of places for something large to hide. Jotunn. Trolde. That’s how we say it in Norwegian.”

  Apollo’s eyes met Jorgen’s now.

  “Nils would be its caretaker. That was part of the deal he struck in Norway. Making sure it was appeased. It demanded only one thing. A child. That had been the bargain. So one night, when he couldn’t put it off any longer, Nils Knudsen took his daughter Agnes out into the woods, and to the cave of the beast he delivered her.”

  THE PICTURE FRAMES ran left to right like a time line, one that began at the upper left end of this long wall and ran to the right. When the limit of the wall was reached, it started again, one row lower. Sketches and charcoal renderings, then the almost shocking leap into clarity that was the daguerreotype, then black-and-white photos led to the early, grainy color stock. All of them infants. None older than a year. The magnitude of this collected horror made Apollo feel as if the skin had been peeled back from his face.

  “All these kids,” Apollo finally said. “You fed them to it?”

  “No,” Jorgen said firmly. “That’s not accurate. It tries to raise them. You see? It tries to be a good—”

  “Father,” Apollo said, but the word sounded spoiled in his mouth.

  Jorgen raised his arms and shrugged faintly. “It tries, but it fails. When it fails, it feeds. Then we must try again. That was our pact.”

  “Our,” Apollo repeated.

  “The men of the Knudsen line,” Jorgen said.

  “What about its own babies? Couldn’t it raise those?”

  “Those things?” Jorgen cleared his throat as if he was about to spit. “They’re too ugly to love.”

  Apollo might just have fallen backward, paralyzed by this tableau, this horror history. What was this? An education of a kind. Jorgen Knudsen had taken Apollo Kagwa to school.

  “Nils learned it was difficult to ask a mother to hand over her own child, you see. Anna Sofie cracked. She disappeared into the woods to look for her daughter and never came out.”

  “Then maybe she found Agnes,” Apollo said. “Found Agnes and ran like hell because her husband couldn’t be trusted.”

  Jorgen gave Apollo a thin smile. “Isn’t it pretty to think so?”

  Apollo nearly sank at the words.

  “Nils married Petra quickly and had seven children with her. But he never took them into the woods. He’d learned his lesson. And I like to believe it was too hard for him to make such a sacrifice again. He wasn’t evil, no matter what you might think. All seven of his children told stories of his kindness.”

  Apollo switched the utility knife from his left hand to his right as he moved toward Jorgen. His hands wanted to use the blade again. But he stopped and looked at the pictures of those victims once more. These other boys and girls—black and brown, yellow, white, and red—a roster as varied as the general assembly of the United Nations.

  “If he didn’t sacrifice his own kids,” Apollo said, “whose children did he use?”

  “Queens has many immigrants,” Jorgen said. “Immigrants have many children. It was a different time. You can’t judge him by the standards of today. Men like him, men with the temperament to make tough choices and see them through, made this country thrive.”

  “You really believe that?” Apollo asked.

  “No one wants to learn their history,” Jorgen said firmly. “
Not all of it. We want our parents to provide but don’t want to know what they had to sacrifice to do it. No nation was ever built with kindness.”

  From the other side of the Japanese panels, the three heaters squawked and rattled. It sounded like tinny laughter just then.

  “How do you find them?” Apollo asked. “How do you choose?”

  Jorgen ran a hand over his nose and down to his chin.

  “When I was in service, I could be searching for hours. Days. In the eighties I drove everywhere in my white van. It was really too much. But eventually I would find a candidate. A boy or girl without protection. A baby that no one is watching. The castoffs. They have a look to them. I learned to recognize it instantly.”

  He shook his head at Apollo as if Apollo might offer sympathy.

  “But now you hardly have to leave the house,” Jorgen said. “All a man needs these days is an Internet connection.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “In folktales a vampire couldn’t enter your home unless you invited him in. Without your consent the beast could never cross your threshold. Well, what do you think your computer is? Your phone? You live inside those devices so those devices are your homes. But at least a home, a physical building, has a door you can shut, windows you can latch. Technology has no locked doors.

  “People share everything now,” Jorgen said in a marveled hush. “They share which playgrounds they visit with their children and at what times. They share when they’ve hired a babysitter. They share photos of the schools their children attend. They’re so proud of their children. They can’t help themselves. They want to share it all. But who are they sharing it with? Do they really know what they’ve invited into their homes? I promise they don’t.”

  He extended a finger and wagged it at Apollo.

  “And you, I know you. One of these special new fathers. You’re going to document every moment, every breath of your child’s life. You take videos of them while they’re sleeping and slap them on the computer before the baby wakes up. You think you’re being so loving. You’ll be a better father than the one who raised you! Or the one who was never there at all. But let me tell you what I see instead. The neediness of it. The begging to be applauded. As if the praise of a thousand strangers would ever make up for the fact that you didn’t feel loved enough as a child. Oh, you poor thing. You were begging to be devoured. Maybe it’s you your child needed to be protected from. You leave a trail of breadcrumbs any wolf could follow, then act shocked when the wolf is outside your door. So concerned about being the perfect father, you don’t even notice your child has been snatched away! Replaced in the night by the offspring of a troll, a changeling whose beauty is only a projection of your own vanity.”

  Jorgen clapped his hands.

  “Shall we go check on the sheep’s head?”

  APOLLO PRACTICALLY CHASED Jorgen down. A short sprint from the den into the hall. The old man went to the kitchen, and Apollo followed.

  “Why not say no?” Apollo asked. “That was Nils’s fucking daughter. Why not refuse!”

  Before checking on the sheep’s head, Jorgen poured himself more to drink. He’d finished off the bottle of Brennivín, but no worries, he had more. He took a new bottle from the cabinet as well as another Ensure. After he’d made the mixture and swigged it, he checked the timer. Almost done.

  “He tried that,” Jorgen said, leaning back against the sink. “That’s the first thing he did.”

  Apollo pointed the blade at Jorgen. “And?”

  Jorgen raised the mug and waved it from side to side. “That beast destroyed everything. I told you the Sloopers settled here for a short time? Well, that’s why they packed up for Orleans County.”

  “So then they did know,” Apollo said. “If it destroyed their homes.”

  “Do you know what those people said?” Jorgen asked. “Until they all passed on, do you know what those people said happened to their property here in Little Norway?” He closed his eyes and raised the mug high. “It was an act of God.” He laughed bitterly.

  He drank slowly, but Apollo caught his eyes dancing over Apollo’s shoulder, down the hallway, toward that open front door. Apollo spun, expecting to find himself under attack. But no one was there. He turned back to Jorgen, who had finished the drink and held the mug tightly in two hands. The old man looked worn down, tapped out. His lips were shut tight but quivered with exhaustion.

  “Why have you told me all this?” Apollo finally asked. “What’s the point? Confession?”

  The lids danced on their pots. Jorgen turned off the fire under the potatoes and the cabbage. Only the pot with the sheep’s head rattled on.

  “Why do you think I did it?” Jorgen asked. He opened another cupboard, above the fridge, and pulled down a silver serving tray.

  “You feel guilty,” Apollo said. “For what you’ve done. For what the men in your family have done. And you should.”

  Jorgen went back into the cupboard for the serving tray’s matching domed lid.

  “You’re right about the guilt. I can’t deny that.” He set down the lid and tapped his scarred throat, proof of his previous suicide attempt. “I wouldn’t have done this otherwise. But let me ask you, and think about your answer, what would you do for your child?”

  “I’d do anything,” Apollo said. “There’s no end to what I’d do.”

  Jorgen wagged a finger. “Exactly. Exactly. This is what a good father must say. This is what a good father must do. The same for me as it is for you.”

  Jorgen looked to the bottle of Brennivín again but could hardly raise a hand. The old man must’ve been drunker than he seemed. Instead of reaching for the bottle, he simply swayed in its direction, then gave up on the effort.

  “My son saw what was left of the Knudsen line. Just me, this house, and all the debt associated with it. But he had a wife and two daughters of his own. A good job, working with computers, but it hardly made him enough. There was a time in this country when a man like him could be sure his children would do better than he had done. Once that was the birthright of every white man in America. But not anymore. Suddenly men like my son were being passed over in the name of things like ‘fairness’ and ‘balance.’ Where’s the justice in that?”

  Apollo approached Jorgen Knudsen. “He’s your boy,” Apollo whispered.

  “He believed that the troll wasn’t our burden but our blessing. That we had to go back to the old ways, before we abandoned our traditions. When we were great. He thought maybe things had been going wrong from the moment Nils refused to sacrifice one of Petra’s children. The troll brought us to these shores, and it could save us again. That’s what he believed. We could channel that monster’s power into our own deliverance. That was our right, our heritage. That’s why we came to America! That’s why we worked so hard. But to do that, we had to return to our origins with whole hearts. So he took it upon himself to honor the pact, as it was meant to be. He did exactly as Nils had done one hundred and ninety years ago. I admired his fortitude.”

  “He left Agnes in the forest. In a cave.”

  Jorgen slapped the countertop. “But his wife couldn’t understand his vision. She didn’t appreciate his courage, she scorned it. She left him. And took Grace with her. He loved them so much, he would sacrifice his own child—and Gretta abandoned him! That broke him. I saw it. My son lost his mind. I’ve been taking care of him ever since.”

  Jorgen slipped down from where he’d been leaning against the sink. Fell right on his butt. Instead of trying to stand again, he went slack there on the floor.

  “Did you really think I left the front door open for you?” Jorgen asked, his eyes focused on the blade rather than on Apollo. “Did you believe I told you all this history simply to unburden myself?

  “If the front door is open and the front light left on, my son knows to run,” Jorgen said. “What you took as a confession was my way of giving him time to flee.” He looked up at Apollo. “It’s what any good
father would do. I’ve done all I can. Now give that blade to me.”

  Apollo went down on a knee. “You can have it.”

  Apollo brought the blade to Jorgen’s neck and thrust. Instinctively, Apollo’s eyes fluttered shut. He heard the old man’s choking, astonished cough. When he opened his eyes again, the man’s throat threw out gouts of blood. Apollo blinked furiously but was blinded. His face felt scalded. Jorgen’s blood clogged Apollo’s nose and clotted his left ear; it cloaked his eyes. Apollo felt absolute disgust spread across his skin like a coating of mud. It threatened to suffocate him.

  On the counter the kitchen timer beeped. It sounded as loud as a tornado siren. The old man’s legs kicked underneath Apollo and nearly sent him over. The only way to stay upright was to lean into the knife so it pressed deeper into Jorgen Knudsen’s throat. Apollo felt it lodge into something sturdy that was either the wooden drawer face or the old man’s spine. The pot with the sheep’s head jumped and shook, and it seemed as if the whole house was giving off the old man’s death rattle.

  Apollo fell back from the body. He rubbed the sleeves of his shirt over his face just to clear the blood from his eyes. There was Jorgen Knudsen, back against the kitchen cupboards, and his eyes were gone back in his head. A house without its lights on, that’s what Jorgen’s body looked like now.

  The alarm continued to sound, and its cry brought Apollo back to himself. He looked at the alarm, then at the large pot with the fire still going high beneath it. He turned off the flames.

  “The sheep is ready,” Apollo said.

  APOLLO KAGWA LEFT 124 86th Road under cover of night. He carried, in two hands, a large serving plate covered by a domed lid. The potatoes and the cabbage had been boiled for as long as the sheep’s head, three hours, and were ruined. In both pots the water had long boiled away, and the rest left behind was scorched. Only the sheep’s head came out whole. Its flesh had gone from yellowish red to an overall darkish gray, and its eyes hardened until they looked like marbles. Apollo took the sheep’s head out of the boiling water with his bare hands and set it on the tray. His hands turned a bright red, nearly purple, but if there was any pain, his mind couldn’t register it. His body still throbbed in the aftermath of the murder he’d just done. The water in the big pot turned a murky maroon from the blood on his fingers.