Henry Franks A Novel

eight





The house was too quiet when Henry opened the door after school, missing the steady thrum of the central air fighting the good fight against August. No lights illuminated the dark foyer, only weak sunlight struggling through the lead-glass windows high in the walls. The air, thick, heavy, and wet, was difficult to breathe in the heat.

“Dad?” Henry said, still standing in the doorway, though it was hours too early for his father to be home.

Silence.

Henry closed the door, and the light was cut in half while the temperature spiked. The curtains, tattered and torn green fabric that might once have been serviceable, let in slanted rays of weak sunlight, bringing heat more than illumination.

He flipped the switch at the kitchen door. Nothing. He flipped it back and forth once more. Still nothing.

“Again?” he said, his voice quiet in the stillness of the house. He sighed. “Crappy fuse.”

In the kitchen he pulled open the drawers, rifling through the random contents—dead batteries and a collection of broken pencils, empty pill bottles. One drawer held hundreds of plastic forks and a single packet of ketchup; another held nothing but pink ribbon tied into miniature bows. Next to an old bag of syringes on top of the fridge, Henry found the flashlight he was looking for, though the batteries were weak when he tested it.

Bigger windows in the laundry room let in more light. A thin door stood behind a rolling cart filled with cleaning supplies, and the wheels squeaked as Henry pulled it out far enough to reach the doorknob. A narrow set of stairs led down into the dark. The air, released on opening, was cool, smelling of age and dust.

The boards creaked on the first wooden step but they held his weight. The flashlight shook with his movements, making the shadows jump around him. Cobwebs came in and out of the light as he turned around, looking for the path to the circuit box to reset the breaker. Shallow footprints were visible in the dust from the last time he’d had to do this, and he followed them through the maze of boxes stored in the basement.

Sweat coated his skin, and kicked-up dust stuck to his arms and face. The metal door of the circuit box squealed in protest as he slid the latch to open it, and the heavy switch fought against him as he flipped it back into place. The air-conditioner kicked in immediately, a loud roar in the silence.

He’d forgotten to pull the cord to turn on the single bulb hanging from the ceiling; as the batteries of his flashlight died, he was plunged into darkness. Henry shook the flashlight. A weak glow cast shadows but the beam didn’t travel very far. He reached his other hand out, back and forth, sensing for boxes, hoping to find the string attached to the light.

Near the circuit breakers? Behind the boxes? Closer to the stairs?

He took a step, his arm swaying back and forth, patting the air as the flashlight died a second death. He shook it, harder and longer, banging it against his hip when it still refused to work.

“Damn it.”

The words echoed in the basement as he dropped the flashlight. He took another step, both arms moving to lead the way; the blind leading the blind. His fingers ran into a cobweb, the spider silk sticking to his hand, and he wiped it off on his jeans. Another step and he kicked a stack of boxes. He steadied them with an unsteady hand, continuing to shuffle forward in the darkness.

A hint of light appeared—the sunlight through the windows in the laundry room leaking down the stairs. Another step, a little lighter, until he could actually see the string hanging down a few feet away.

With a sigh, he pulled it, flooding the basement with light. Henry blinked. Again. The brightness and the dust brought on a sneeze.

He walked back to the circuit breaker to pick up the flashlight. It wasn’t there; a trail through the dust showed where it had rolled next to the box he’d kicked. Another inch or so and he would have stepped on it, probably would have tripped and fallen over everything.

As he picked the flashlight up, a feeble beam came out of it and he smiled.

SCRAPBOOK SUPPLIES was written on the bottom box in his father’s nearly impossible-to-read scrawl. Henry thought about the photo album upstairs in his room, now battered and torn with use. The mad flipping of pages in his bed late at night when sleep was slow in coming and the pain of forgetting was lessened, somewhat, by the handful of pictures his father had collected for him.

The box on top was heavy, with nothing written on it. He moved it to the side to get to the supplies. Inside, pages of scrapbook paper and little tape dispensers and archival pens were thrown together. He took a few of each. Beneath, he found scissors and stickers, unopened, which had probably come with the paper and pens. He took those as well.

He tried to pick up the other box with his hands partially full. It seemed even heavier than before. In the poor lighting and worse ventilation, dust kicked up and he almost lost his hold on the box.

He sneezed.

The box slipped, reached its tipping point, and fell to the floor. Henry’s papers, pens, scissors, and tape went flying.

On its side, the heavy box had opened just enough to make it difficult to pick up again. A single photograph fell out of the small opening, landing on its face. On the back, a woman’s hand had written Frank above a yellowed date, March 14, followed by a year that could have been 1968 or 1963.

The little boy in the picture was less than five. If Henry squinted in the dim light, it sort of looked like him.

Like Pandora, he opened the box.

There were hundreds of photos, all black-and-white, dated throughout the 1960s and into the 1970s, with the same handwriting. By the time the boy in the photographs was a teen, the resemblance between the stranger and himself was unmistakable.

Frank?

Henry sat in the basement, sneezing, holding the box of snapshots in his lap. One spider had visited to take a look but hadn’t stayed for long. A smaller one, barely visible, had scurried back into the box of pictures and not been seen since.

The photos were taken in front of unknown houses; no addresses could be seen or found. No other names appeared even in the pictures where Frank wasn’t alone. And in the mid-seventies, the pictures stopped altogether.

Henry dumped the box onto the floor and sifted through them all again, but there was nothing more.

He scooped all the pictures back into the box, gathered up his supplies, and walked to the stairs. On the bottom step he turned around to pull the cord. He froze with his hand on the string and, for the first time, really looked at the boxes lining the maze. Each identical, some with labels, most without.

He walked to the first box and peeked inside.

Blank paper.

Next.

Electrical cords.

Again.

Socks.

And again.

Again.

Another.

Behind him, boxes littered the floor.

Nothing.

Halfway through, with dozens of boxes still to search, he heard the garage door open. He stopped and surveyed the damage he’d done.

Henry jumped over the boxes strewn about and took the narrow stairs two at a time, tugging the string as he ran past. Each step threatened to collapse underneath him and he slipped halfway up. He stopped his fall with his palms and walked the rest of the way, then closed the door and pushed the cart back into place. His pants were dust-covered, cobwebs in his hair and on his shirt.

The clothes went into the washer and he ran his fingers through his hair to dislodge the webs. He hurried up the stairs before his father entered the kitchen. In his room, he went to put on clean clothes and noticed a trail of blood running down his left arm. A splinter from the basement steps stuck out of his palm and small red drops had splattered on the floor.

Henry tried to grab the wood, but his mismatched finger didn’t bend far enough. He brought his palm to his mouth and bit down on the splinter. His skin ripped as it tore free. Blood ran over his scar, creating a bracelet of blood on his skin.

A small piece of wood bit into his lip when he spit the splinter out, and he groaned with the sudden pain. He grabbed some tissues to stem the bleeding from his palm. No matter how hard he pressed, his hand didn’t hurt at all.

“Why’s it so hot?” his father asked when Henry walked downstairs.

“Circuit blew, had to reset the breaker a few minutes ago.”

His father looked at the ceiling, where the fan blew warm air around the room. His shoulders slumped and he sighed. He looked at Henry, closed his eyes, and placed the mail on the table unread. Without a word, he walked out of the kitchen.

Henry started to follow, standing at the transition between kitchen tile and hardwood floor, but stopped before he’d taken more than a step or two. A couple of doors stood open, one to a small bathroom and one to an unused office. At the very end of the hall, his father stood before the heavy oak door to the master bedroom.

“Been a long summer, Henry,” his father said, not turning around as he rested his hand on the doorknob. He looked back over his shoulder, sighed, and then opened the door.

The air-conditioner had yet to have much of an impact on the heat that had built up in the house. Henry wiped his fingers through his hair, coming away with a few remaining cobwebs, as his father’s door locked behind him with a deep thud.

In his room, Henry slid the scrapbook out and opened it up. A page ripped at the bottom when he turned it. Some of the pictures were no longer completely attached to the paper. He gathered his new supplies, switched the light on over his desk, and set to work.

The back of each picture was blank and he had to rely on his father’s shaky handwriting in the old scrapbook to keep them in order. One by one, he taped them down on the new paper and copied their captions as neatly as possible. When he was done, he started at the beginning, looking at each photograph of himself and trying to remember who he was.

William locked the door with a deep thud as the deadbolt slid home. He stood there for a long time, hand still gripping the knob, his breathing ragged and uneven, trying to find the strength to move. There was nothing there, no energy left. No motivation to do anything beyond collapse to the ground, curl up into a ball, and stay there until his heart finally gave out.

He shook his head, thin gray hair fluttering in front of his eyes. Reaching up, he grabbed a few of the remaining strands and pulled them out. The sharp pain brought relief from the lethargy and he ripped out another small handful until he was able to move from the door to the window. As he walked he let the hair fall from his fingers, landing on the dusty floor to join the rest.

Pushing aside the thick curtains just enough to peek out, he looked at the backyard, studying the way the shadows crawled across the barren dirt as the sun began to set. He stood there, a single trail of blood running down the side of his face where he’d pulled too hard, until the moon cast a pale light over the island.

He smiled, letting the curtain fall closed. “Time to hunt,” he said, his voice soft as he wiped the blood away.





Possible Second Head Trauma

Victim Discovered in Brunswick

Brunswick, GA—August 18, 2009: Barely two months after Sylvia Foote’s death was ruled a homicide, the Glynn County Sheriff’s office has announced the possibility of a connected victim. Derrick Fischer, 31, was found off Route 17, half buried along the side of the road. “Along with the state forensics lab, FLETC, and the Brunswick Police Department, we have assigned a task force to look into these unfortunate events to determine if they’re related,” said Assistant District Attorney Brian Winters when asked if Fischer and Foote had any similarities.

Preliminary autopsy results on Fischer, according to unofficial sources, show that death was, as in the Foote case, allegedly caused by blunt force trauma, though what is believed to be post-mortem injuries make an exact cause of death difficult to determine at this time.

FLETC houses multi-departmental government training facilities for all branches of law enforcement throughout the United States. To assist with this investigation, Winters has announced that a liaison officer has been assigned by FLETC to coordinate with local police as a symbol of the concern they have for the community. “As of this time,” Winters said, “we will gratefully accept any assistance and do not believe there are any additional concerns in regards to the current matter that would necessitate FLETC involvement.”

Major Daniel Johnson of the United States Army Criminal Investigation Command (USACIDC) in Fort Belvoir, VA, who is in Brunswick as a trainer at FLETC, has been assigned to act as liaison but was unavailable for comment.





“Comedy of Errors” Leads to

Temporary “Escape” for GRPH Patients

Brunswick, GA—August 18, 2009: During a recent field trip by residents of the minimum-security wing of the Georgia Regional Psychiatric Hospital in Brunswick to the Jacksonville Zoo, several patients were temporarily reported missing. Despite repeated calls for greater security due to previous errors in the intake process at the state-run facility, this is the first incident reported where convicted patients have allegedly not been under direct supervision.

“These non-violent offenders are no danger to the community,” said Dr. Jason Rapp, Chief of Staff for the hospital, after rumors of the temporary escape were reported in the Savannah Morning News. “At no time were the patients thought to have escaped. All current residents of the hospital are present and accounted for.”





Margaret Saville, PhD

St. Simons Island, Glynn County, GA

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Patient: Henry Franks

(DOB: November 19, 1992)

Henry crossed his legs, pressing his palms into his thighs to keep from scratching. Despite the air-conditioning, sweat coated his skin. He pushed down and sighed.

“The heat index is over one hundred, Henry,” Dr. Saville said. “You don’t actually have to wear pants.”

He looked at her and moved his hands out to the side. “You’ve seen my legs, Doctor.”

She nodded. “Still, maybe something lighter than denim, at least?”

Henry shrugged.

“Just a thought.”

“It’ll be cooler soon.”

“November isn’t actually soon,” she said. “How’s school?”

He shrugged again. “It’s school.”

“Two word answers aren’t really much better than one, Henry.”

Is my father’s name Frank Franks or are the pictures of me? But he didn’t ask that particular question out loud. If Franks isn’t my father’s real name, what’s my name? But he didn’t ask that question either.

“A lot more police outside the hospital,” he said.

“Excuse me?”

“This morning. On the bus, when we drove past, it was surrounded.”

“Do you always notice the hospital?”

Henry shook his head, hiding behind his hair. “It’s big.”

“Does it bother you?”

“People who can’t remember who they are get sent there,” he said, the words bitten off and harsh.

“Is that what you’re afraid of?”

“Would it help?” he asked.

“What?”

“Going there; would it help?”

Dr. Saville tapped her pen against the pad, her head cocked to the side. “The Georgia Regional Psychiatric Hospital is for criminals who have been admitted for detention and treatment, Henry. Not for teenage boys who survived accidents.”

“It’s still big,” he said with a half-smile.

“Yes, it is,” she said. “Any dreams lately?”

“My dad switched the dosages around on me,” he said. “I don’t dream as much now.”

“Is that a good thing?”

“I miss Elizabeth,” he said and closed his eyes.

“Henry?”

“In my dreams now, I don’t recognize anyone. Or any place. Like they’re not my dreams.”

“Maybe they’re people and places you’ve forgotten?”

He pressed his hands into his legs. “I don’t think so.”

“Why not?”

“They call me Victor.”

“That’s not really your name, Henry.”

“That’s what they tell me.” He smiled and then shrugged. “How would I know?”

“Have you talked to your father about any of this?”

“We don’t … well, no,” he said. “That’s not what we do.”

“What?”

“Talk.”

“About this?” she asked.

“About anything. I don’t think he likes me very much.”

Dr. Saville’s pen stopped and she looked up at him over her notebook. “Why do you say that?”

“Mom died.”

“That’s it?”

Henry wiped his eyes. “I should have died too. It’s been hard on him, I guess.”

“You lived, Henry.”

“I forget what my mother looked like as soon as I stop looking at her picture, like she’s a stranger and the photo came in the frame from the store.”

“Post-traumatic stress and retrograde amnesia, that’s what we’ve been working on,” Dr. Saville said. “It’s a process.”

“It’s not working.”

“It takes time.”

“I can’t remember her name.”

“Henry.” She stretched her hand out, resting long fingers against the arm of his chair for just a moment.

He slammed his head back, striking the fabric with a dull thud, and then looked at her through the fall of his hair with red eyes. His breath came hard and fast, hyperventilating. “I can’t remember me.”

“Take deep breaths.”

“I can’t.”

“Henry!” Dr. Saville reached his side in one step, and then moved back as his arms flailed out.

“I—” He rocked back and forth, banging his head against the chair. “I—” He blinked, over and over again, the motions erratic and strained as he clawed at his skin, leaving faint trails of blood behind.

“Deep breaths, Henry.”

Dr. Saville knelt in front of him and held his hands down after he drew blood from the scar on his wrist. He shook like a wild animal cornered after a fight; his thrashing banged his skull against her chin. “Breathe, Henry.”

His heart hammered against his ribs and he couldn’t catch his breath.

“Breathe.” She took a deep breath. “Slow, Henry, remember?”

When he looked up at her, a trail of blood ran from her bottom lip, and the bright red caught his attention more than her words.

“Breathe,” she said before she took another deep breath. “Count to ten, Henry.”

And he did.

“Again.”

Together, they held their breath. Inhale. Exhale. Again. Until she released him and he collapsed into the chair.

“You need to practice your relaxation techniques more.”

“You’re bleeding,” he said, pointing at her chin.

Dr. Saville grabbed a tissue and wiped her face.

Henry hung his head between his knees, letting his hair fall back in front of his eyes. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right, Henry,” she said. “Are you feeling better now?”

“I miss Elizabeth.”

“Why?”

“We talked.”

“About?”

“I can’t remember. Just stuff.”

“Is there anyone else you talk to?”

“You.” Henry sat up, brushing the hair away, trying to forget the brief image of her eating breakfast with his father. He wanted to ask her about it but the words caught inside his throat and all that came out was a hiss.

“Anyone else?”

“No.”

“Don’t you talk with Justine?” she asked.

“On the bus.”

“That’s someone.”

He shrugged. “She does most of the talking.”

“Do you know that you smile when you talk about her?”

Henry pulled his hair in front of his face and then turned away. “So?”

“You don’t smile when you talk about Elizabeth.”

“So?” He took a deep breath, held it and counted to ten on his fingers, then released it.

“So, Henry,” she said. “Better?”

Who’s Henry? But like all the others, that question was silent as well.

“Maybe,” he said.