Inheritance

The lights of Hector’s black Tahoe bounced and reflected off the woods as he followed the sparse gravel path toward his father’s house. It wound back and forth like the back of a long viper, until finally it yawned open into the small clearing that contained the double wide mobile home.

Hector pulled up next to the old rust spotted Dodge truck. In the darkness Hector tried to spot the model. He never was a car guy, and he couldn’t tell the type. Either way, he could tell he wasn’t going to be getting much value out of it.

The dull LED glow from his car’s dash told him the time was nearing 5AM. He’d had to come early before work to scope the place out, to make a plan of action for the weekend. For the real cleanup time.

Hector sat for a long time, hand poised over the start button. He tried to summon the grief he knew he should be feeling. There was only the mind-numbing exhaustion from going to bed too late and getting up too early.

He killed the engine and stepped out. He stretched and yawned, his jaw cracking with the motion. The lights from the SUV went out, plunging him into total darkness. He couldn’t suppress the shudder as he pulled out his phone light. With the white light he marched up to the small porch and fumbled out the key that had been given to him. The door creaked open, disturbing the tranquility of the early morning symphony.

The harsh smell that reminded him of his grandparents assaulted his nose. Too many cigarettes and candle wax to cover them. He entered a small living room, with a love seat and a tiny TV atop a too small entertainment center. An ash tray and empty beer cans sat on the coffee table, with a pizza box covering most of the space. A cursory glance told Hector there was nothing of value there, but he still moved aside the empty pizza box and made sure. He found the keys to the truck hanging near the door, and he pocketed them, that way he could check the vehicle on the way out.

Hector turned right, heading into the kitchen. After flipping the light on he opened a cupboard, which he didn’t bother closing, giving nothing more than a glance inside. Junk drawer—filled to the brim with junk. A silverware drawer—filled with an assortment of unmatching spoons and forks and knives. A coffee drawer—filled with filters and a hand  coffee grinder.

Fearing what he’d find, he opened the fridge and nearly gagged. The smell that wafted out punched him in the nose, and he slammed the door shut. The motion rocked the small appliance, and a flash of metal soared past Hector’s face. It hit the ground with a thud, causing him to jump back with alarm. He looked down to see an ancient looking handgun in a leather holster. Now that might have some value. Hector picked the weapon up and tentatively drew it out. He looked at it, attempting to recall the few times from his childhood that his father had shown him any firearms.

Afraid he’d give himself an aneurysm trying to remember, he carefully pushed the weapon back into the leather and placed it on the counter. Then, thinking better of it, he picked it back up and returned to the coffee table. He knocked the pizza box and several cans off to make room for himself and placed the first of his valuables pile down.

Hands on hips he surveyed the rest of the living room. He grunted when he realized he wasn’t finding much.

Heading down the small hall he stopped at the one bathroom. He only gave it a momentary glance inside and retreated before the smell could flatten him. The bedroom then, the best for last.

The door opened smoothly, not a creak to be heard. He was pleasantly surprised to find there was no smoke smell. The bed was made to perfection, with expensive sheets and what looked like a single block pillow, some kind of internet fad about the shape of the pillow being important. There was a massive U-shaped desk dominating the far wall, and Hector clapped his hands together as he made his way to it. Here it was! He knew there had to be something of value.

The left and right sides of the desk were littered with well-organized tools and materials to assist with the main section of the table. The desktop was covered with a leather pad, and had a line of knives laid on it, in various levels of being sharpened. Near each blade was a stone with a grit number on it, but what the difference between the high and low numbers was anyone’s guess.

Hector whistled appreciatively as he picked up the massive Bowie knife inlaid with pearls. There were several different blades, each he guessed was worth fifty to one hundred dollars—maybe even more—and there were dozens of blades. There was a peg board hung on the wall above the main section of desk, with baskets and hangers and all kinds of tools and blades. Unsure where to start, he grabbed as many of the sharp objects as he could safely carry and began making trips out to his coffee table pile.

With the most valuable items out, he turned to the dresser opposite the bed. There was an incredibly old TV sitting on it with a built in VCR. A VCR, imagine that. When was the last time he’d even seen a VCR turn on?

He hit the power button and to his surprise it fired on.

“Huh,” Hector said. The noise of his voice echoed around a bit, causing him to jump.

Rifling through the dresser turned up another handgun, smaller but no less deadly. This one was more modern, black and blocky looking, but like the other Hector was unsure of the model. The rest of the dresser shared the same clean and organized shape as the rest of the room.

Next to the closet was an incredibly tall bookcase, absolutely loaded with books. Half of them looked untouched, and the half that had been read were clearly well loved. The spines of those books were completely degraded, to the point that Hector could hardly make out the titles.

“Vital Spots and Best Ways to Puncture, A Guide to Practical Knife Fighting,” Hector took a long breath. “What a title.”

The books that were unread looked promising. Some serious heavy hitters, a lot of psychology books that he thought he recognized. These would be ‘found value,’ in the sense that there were a few on his own reading list that he wouldn’t have to buy himself.

Into the closet, which was a walk-in. Here was some clutter that mirrored the rest of the home. A cardboard box contained an assortment of older looking knives. Some looked rusted and unpolished. After some thought, he figured it wouldn’t hurt to add them to the pile, and he transferred them to the living room.

There were three long guns in various places in the closet. One on the tall shelf, and two on either corner against the wall. One looked like a shotgun, one looked like a hunting rifle, and the other was one of those military rifles. These had to be worth some money. He added them to the pile.

The clothes wouldn’t fit him, and after some consideration he decided he wouldn’t be willing to wear a dead man’s clothes. There was a shoebox at the top shelf that Hector had to blow dust off of. It was labeled Hector. With a shaky hand he opened the box and found pages and pages of keepsakes. Old report cards that made it to the third grade, pictures of him as a child, drawings he couldn’t remember making. A handwritten letter his mother had made him write when he was in the sixth grade.

And there it was. The grief he’d thought he should feel. It hit him, breaking the dam, and finally he cried. He cried for a long time, holding the letter he’d written as a boy, telling a father he hadn’t spoken to in years that he missed him so much it hurt. Why had he not tried to reconnect with his father as an adult? Why hadn’t he tried to regain what they had lost? Now he never could.

Hector sat at the desk and laid back, looking up at the dingy ceiling. He sat like that for a long time, longer than he would have liked. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. His eyes scanned idly and noticed cardboard under the bed. There was no bed skirt, so now that he was lower to the ground and looking underneath, he could see there were many boxes down there. Standing, he set his expectations low. Seasonal decorations most likely, nothing of value.

Hector slid out the first box. It was taped shut, the packing tape so old it had yellowed and frayed at the edges. After flicking out his pocketknife, he slit the tape and peeled open the box. It was filled to the top with VCR tapes, each clearly labeled with a date and a name. After verifying each row was the same, he put them back and grasped out the next box. When he found the same thing, he glanced up at the old VCR player.

An uneasiness stole his resolve. He decided against plugging one in and pulled all of the boxes out from underneath the bed. There was a relatively new box at the foot of the bed, unsealed. It contained rows and rows of composition notebooks, with a stark white envelope on top. Hector flipped through a notebook and was met with lines and lines of neat scripted penned with black ink. The pages were old and yellowing in many of them, but some appeared to be from the last few years.

Addressing the letter, he ripped open the sealed envelope and pulled out the paper. Like the journals, it was written with a neat script.

“Son, if you’re reading this then that means I’m dead. Spooky, cliché maybe, but we’ve all known about the cancer for some time now.

I know you and I haven’t been very close. But you’re the only family I’ve got left. Which is why I’m trusting you with my life’s most terrible secret. I’m going to tell you where the bodies are. You should see a journal in the box you got this letter from with your name on it. Details can be found there.”

Hector felt bile from his stomach burning the back of his throat. He hadn’t eaten yet, but his stomach heaved involuntarily. Sweat pricked his forehead, despite the chill of the morning invading the small mobile home. He looked at the desk where all those knives had been, and swept his gaze to the closet that had contained the firearms.

He returned to the first box with the VCRs and began pulling them out. Camryn, 1987. Joselyn, 1988. He pulled them out faster and faster, the names and dates blurring together as each tape piled up and up. The revulsion was overpowering, and he stumbled down the hall, covering his mouth. He passed the bathroom and instead burst out the front door and collapsed to his knees, dry heaving into the dirt. Tears streamed down his face, falling in fat drops to the dusty ground, mixing with the thin splatter of his watery puke.

“Some inheritance,” he muttered.