Father to Son

Word Count: 3,069

I grew up outside of Monroe, Louisiana. It was just me and my mother as my father passed away when I was only at the young age of five. I only carried vague images of him in my mind, but I wondered how many of these images came from a multitude of pictures I saw of him rather than genuine memories. 

Last year I lost my only grandmother, and a live-in nurse now took care of Papa. His house was on a enormous tract of land in Hebert. I could not have been more than an hour drive away, but my mother rarely brought me to visit him. Mom would make sure I was not alone with grandpa, not even for a second. 

Mother told me Papa was abusive with Dad, and for that reason she did not want me to be alone with him. It was during my ninth year I learned otherwise. Following a short drive through the country, we reached my grandpa’s house. It was a peculiar place which sat on a plot of ten thousand acres of land. The design of the house was somewhat colonial, but there was something unorthodox about it, something I could not explain. 

No trees stood on the property save a massive pecan and one gnarled, ancient walnut tree growing on either side of the house. Otherwise, the enormous tract of land was completely devoid of trees. All around the perimeter of the property the forest began, it nearly encircled the currently unused farm land but grew in no deeper. 

In the center of the property rested a singular, unnatural mound. Growing up, I heard stories that these were Native American burial mounds. As the story goes, when those of great power and great spiritual strength died, they were laid on the mound with their trinkets and totems and then covered with dirt. For thousands of years before the Europeans set foot on this nation, the Native Americans performed these rituals. 

In the flat lands of Louisiana, it was not uncommon to see these mounds dotting the scenery here and there. The one on Papa’s land was by far the largest I ever saw, implying it was probably one of the oldest. For as long as I can remember I was forbidden to even approach the mound within 100 yards. 

When we finally reached the large domicile, the home health care nurse, Amanda, greeted us at the door. Before we ever went inside, I heard my mother ask Amanda very quietly how Papa was doing. Amanda turned to face away from me and began to whisper in my mother’s ear. I could not hear what the pretty nurse said to Mother, but judging by the look on her face, I knew something was wrong. 

Mother had a smirk on her face, not one of arrogance, but one of sadness and grief. Her eyes seemed distant and vacant as she listened to whatever bad news the nurse gave her. I already knew my grand pap was given to delusional spells. Sometimes he conversed with people who were not there and other times seemed terrified by the things his aging mind created. He interacted with people, with things no one else saw. Doctors ran tests on him, on his brain. We were all sure he suffered from Alzheimer’s disease, but everything showed that was not the case. 

Finally we went inside, and Amanda escorted us into the main den. She left the room then returned a few minutes later pushing Papa in his wheelchair. He had the capability to walk on his own but did so very slowly. If he wanted to get somewhere with any sort of speed, he used the wheelchair. 

Papa grinned from ear-to-ear when he saw me. Every time we visited I watched as the look of fear and hopelessness in his eyes replaced by a spark of joy. There really seemed to be an actual spark of joy coming from within his eyes. His blue eyes took on a faint glow that came from no reflection of nearby illuminations. 

I ran to Papa and hugged him tightly. Papa wrapped his arms around me tightly. 

“You are my pride and joy son,” he said as he rubbed his hand and mussed up my hair. He wrapped his arms around me again then Papa whispered in my ear, “It’s up to you to pass on the bloodline.” 

I really did not know what to say. I was taken back by those last words. I thought he must be in one of his delusional spells. He always called me his pride and joy, but it scared me when he said something about the bloodline. Before he let me go, he gave me a kiss on the cheek. I remembered his kisses to be rather coarse from his aged, wrinkly lips. I also remembered them as rather cold from the decreased circulation of blood to his purple lips. 

This time I felt a static shock. It did not sting; if anything it tickled. When his lips made contact with my cheek, I felt a warmth and softness never there before. That unexpected warmth stayed with me even after our embrace was over. 

For an hour, our visit went on as normal. Mother and Papa reminisced about Grandma and my dad and discussed Papa’s deteriorating health. Occasionally his beautiful, voluptuous nurse would check his blood pressure. He was always connected to some sort of machine. The medical equipment showed a display of Papa’s heartbeat, and occasionally it made an out of place fluctuation. 

Every so often Papa’s attention seemed to drift away as if he was staring at something only he could see. This time it was different though and I did not say anything to Mother or to Amanda about it. When Papa turned his head to look at something else, I saw it too. I saw a man, if it could be called a man, standing next to Papa. The man spoke to Papa in words I could not hear. The being standing over my granfather stood about six feet tall with a high, slender head. Its dress appeared to be somewhat Native American, but many aspects of its dress appeared alien. 

The ghostly green person pressed his finger against his lips as if telling Papa to keep quiet about the events unfolding. Kneeling down, the man lightly pried Papa’s left hand open from its grip and placed something in his palm. The man then gently closed Papa’s hand, turned to me and nodded, then walked through the back wall as if it were not even there. It was like the wall was the illusion and not the other way around. 

Papa looked at me and a sly, lively grin crossed his lips. He just did something to me, and I had no idea at the time what it was. Mother and Amanda did not seem to notice, and I think Papa wanted to keep it that way. 

Mother was working on a big business project for work and Papa did not have a phone in the house. It took about thirty minutes of driving before someone could get any kind of decent signal strength for a cell phone. Usually Mom did not work on the weekends, but it was important she and the rest of her team finish their project by morning. Before she left to use her phone, she pulled the nurse to the side. 

I saw Mother’s lips repeat a familiar phrase, “Don’t leave him alone with his grandfather.” 

As my mother walked out of the parlor door, I saw what could only be described as a tentacled fish swimming through the air. The strange creature passed through the wall and was gone. Suddenly a whole school of the flying fish passed through the wall and into the room. They headed straight toward Mother, and I shouted out a warning to her. The fish passed through her and continued on through the next wall. She did not notice a thing. 

She turned with a start and looked at me with a panic in her eyes. 

“What is it dear?” 

I knew then she could not see these things and I had to think of a cover quick. I told her I thought I saw something, but it was only a shadow cast by a tree outside. Mother turned and gave Amanda a stern look and then exited through the front door. 

The three of us sat there quietly until we heard Mom’s car fade off into the distance. Papa opened his hand and showed me a small, twelve sided geometric shape. I was sure the strange green man gave it to Papa; he did not have anything in his hands prior to that. 

Suddenly a strange look washed across Papa’s face, a look like I never saw before. It was a look of strength, a look of wisdom, and a spark of life I never before witnessed in those eyes. He rolled the object in his fingers like a marble. When he would stop long enough, I could faintly make out the marking on the sides of the object. 

Papa appeared to press on specific symbol, and the thing let off a faint glow. Without looking at her, Papa said to Amanda, “Why don’t you go slow brew us some tea.” Amanda did something she never did before and left me alone in the same room with my grandfather. 

“Come, Ian,” Papa said. It was as if he were issuing a demand rather than offering a request. He did not sound cold or mean; he displayed a measure of strength I did not know he had. 

I felt strongly compelled but not controlled. When he spoke to the beautiful nurse a few moments ago, he had a strange tone to his voice. She did as he asked without question. I do not know how he did it, but Papa made her leave the room. Amanda would never leave us in the same room alone together under her own will. 

I perceived a foreboding sense of terror. Something in his face, the strange glow in his eyes, the change in his voice, and that object in his hand terrified me. Despite the churning in my gut, I got off the antique couch and made my way to Papa. As I stood face to face with him, I watched the glow in his eyes grow brighter and the blue of his eyes get deeper. Papa reached out his feeble hands and told me to take hold of them. 

“Hurry boy, we don’t have much time,” he said, sensing my hesitation. 

I took hold of his hand and immediately the world opened up to me. I did not know what I saw, and it absolutely petrified me. Suddenly, alien creatures of all sorts filled the room and the air around me. Grouped in colors, they ranged in hues from one end of the visible light spectrum and beyond. 

I tried to pull away, but Papa gripped me tightly. 

“I’m sorry boy, but this is the way it’s got to be,” Papa said with a seriousness I did not know he possessed. 

Absolute panic overtook me as yet more creatures became visible. The walls of the room became the illusion and these strange entities surrounding me became real. I noticed only the creatures of the same hue interacted with one another. Those of different colors seemed to have no awareness of the others, even passing through each other like one shadow penetrating another. 

As I tried to take it all in, I saw in the green spectrum more of the strange people like the one who spoke with Papa. I became aware one of them, the one I saw earlier, stood behind me with his hands on my shoulders. I cannot say how I knew, but there was no doubt this was the being who spoke with Papa. 

My weight seemed to increase as soon as I saw those long green fingers. Frantically I tried to pull my hands free from those of my grandfather. Not only did I fight against Papa’s new found strength but the strength of this green, otherworldly ghost. 

Every color, every layer of other worlds became my reality. Too much bombarded my mind all at once. I attempted to scream as my head throbbed in agony. Tears streamed down my cheeks. It felt as if my brain grew larger while my skull contracted. It was all too much for me to handle. My five senses, and new senses becoming open to me, flooded my mind with more input than any limit the human brain was meant to handle. 

My body convulsed and seized, yet I somehow remained upright. The powerful green hands on my shoulders held me tight. I did not know what they did to me, but I knew I was dying. I was going to die and my grandpa is the one who was killing me. The glow in his eyes grew so strong the blue hue illuminated everything around us. 

Suddenly I once again stood in the conversation room in front of Papa’s chair. Those overlapping worlds of chaos were gone and so was Papa. 

In a weak whisper he said sadly, “I’m sorry Ian. I knowed you wuz too young.” 

He said one more thing to me, and that was the last sound he made. The high pitched whine of his heart monitor flat-lining followed an instant later. 

The next few days flew by as a blur. I only retained vague memories of me talking to Mother or anyone else. Papa revealed so much to me, and I did not know how or if I could retell this to anybody. I did not know what I was supposed to say. I could not tell Mother I saw through to worlds beyond the infinite expanse of our own universe. If I tried to convince others Papa was not senile, that what he saw was real, everyone would think I was crazy. 

Papa left me the house, land, and an astounding amount of money. Because of my age, I could not yet have control over the monetary assets. Papa thought of this. He gave mother a trust fund and asked her in his will to take care of me until I reached eighteen years-old. 

The next day I learned the land Papa owned was in the family for tens of thousands of years. That perplexed me because this land was in the family long before the Europeans arrived five hundred-fifty years ago. As a widely encompassing Native American belief, land ownership did not occur. How then could this land have belonged to my family for untold centuries? 

After more than a week following Papa’s death, I was terrified at the thought of entering the day room in which he died. I did not want to go back into that room where I nearly lost my sanity. Eventually, I worked up the nerve to enter the room that turned illusion that day while the illusions turned real. 

The sense of worlds existing in every color imaginable was a difficult thing to describe. I did not think any words existed that could describe it. Seconds after entering the room, the illusions began again. I leapt back with a start as something yellow swam before my eyes. Falling back, I landed in what I thought to be some orange, fluidic life-form. 

A flood of colored images crashed in upon me. Maybe Papa was mad and now faulty genetics were making me become crazy. I wanted to die all while wondering if I already had. Terror unlike any I could fathom tore at my soul when those long green fingers again took hold of my arm. I knew the damn thing was going to restrain me until I lost all semblances of sanity. 

Something entirely different happened. The being did not hold me in the chaos; he pulled me out. The vertigo faded and I became aware of a warm object the green man put in my hand. It was roundish, and I could feel the polished flat surfaces. It was the object my grandpa held when he died. I never thought to recover it after he passed. 

I looked down to the object and found a dodecahedron. The six colors of the rainbow covered one side each. Five colors that did not exist in my reality covered each remaining sides. The twelfth side represented my own reality. This object was my family’s blessing and its curse. 

Nye’too, as I later learned to call him, had much to tell me. A distant ancestor of mine, who lived in a time before man recorded history, desired knowledge above all else. So deeply did he cherish knowledge that he sacrificed the souls of others to a god born with the forging of the Earth. Every soul sacrificed to the demon-god brought the man a deeper and deeper level of understanding. 

He and his tribe took over one nation after the next, sacrificing all those who resisted to his long forgotten god. He grew his knowledge until he knew everything that was and everything would be. The capabilities of the human brain, as it still is now, were much too primitive to take in all there was to see. The man descended into insanity while his god was now free to roam upon the Earth. 

Nye’too’s ancestors were appalled when they learned of what the man did. The green man told me how most of his ancestors died while imprisoning the maligned god in a chamber deep under the surface of the world. Only one exit existed in the magically warded prison, a giant iron door inscribed with the hieroglyphs found on the object I now owned. 

As punishment for his deeds, the man’s bloodline was cursed for all times to see all there is to see. One male of each generation was charged with guarding the trapped god. The only thing that could prevent madness was the key; this key for a door buried deep in a familiar mound of dirt and stone. 

The madness forever followed the man’s descendants. I remembered Papa’s final words. With the most sincerely apologetic tone he whispered to me, “I’m sorry Ian. I knowed you wuz too young, but this is usually passed from father to son.”