Behavior Report 37

Dearest Love,

There is a broad array of courage that people exhibit every day. There’s running headfirst into a trench, filled with the enemy, and fighting them to protect the men in your platoon. There’s courage in entering an airplane filled with explosives and flying it into enemy territory where hundreds of enemy aircraft do what they can to stop you. There’s leaving your family to work ten or twelve hours a day to break your back manufacturing the equipment soldiers need to fight this war. There are thousands of men and women who exhibit this type of courage every day.

On the other side of the array is a courage that doesn’t consider the possible harm. Some may call it idiocy. This is the courage that is usually preceded by a few rounds of alcohol, or a dare presented by a friend. It’s a man who’s five feet tall and one hundred and twenty pounds seeking to start a fight with another who’s six foot five and full of muscles. It’s the soldier who sets out to prove that he can hold the grenade longest in his squad before throwing it. And finally, it’s the soldier who sees a monster wrapped in chains and believes he can save it.

Why? You may ask.

Frankly, I don’t know why. All I know is that I find myself pressing closer and closer to the monster with the intention of cutting through the thick steel bands to free it. In some strange way, I view the monster as human. I think of how I would react if I found Earl in the same predicament. Nothing should ever be chained to anything, man, or beast.

Stupid courage pushes me and is rewarded when the monster does nothing in response to my presence. There’s no movement to attack. There’s no flinching from fear. Pain and passion burn in the monster’s sapphire eyes, of what I don’t understand, but I can tell that it could calm the seas were it not chained and exhausted. I can sense that it knows my intentions. Its horns and sharp edges are useless against the thick steel band wrapped around its neck. But it sees my sword and somehow knows that it means relief.

Strange, I know.

I step closer, reaching to touch the beast with my free hand. Its breathing is labored, like a wheeze. Each inhale lasts about a minute and its exhalation is just as long. When my hand touches the monster’s cheek, we both hold our breath.

“Hey there,” I say in the calmest voice I can muster. “It’s all right.”

It’s like touching a stone, cold and hard and completely unmovable. Scales the size of a kitchen table cover the monster’s body and limbs. The monster lowers its head to rest on the ground and in doing so, pushes the steel collar up to reveal a bloody wound. All the stone scales were worn down from the collar’s weight. Thick, crusty scabs and raw, bloody pools are visible.

“You poor thing. What are these Krauts doing with you?”

I look for a latch or a lock to unclip the collar, but it is a solid ring just like the shackles that tied me to the bed. The only solution to break the steel is my sword.

“Let me see what I can do. You’ll have to be still, okay?”

For a moment, I believe that the monster nods as if to say, “Okay.” 

I walk back to the collar and place the edge of the sword against the steel. I push and the hilt starts to vibrate. The harder I push, the greater the vibration and difficulty in holding the sword. My Love, you likely will not believe this and, frankly, I wouldn’t either were I not here. The sword cuts into the metal collar, not by sliding through as it did with the door in my room, but more like a jackhammer, vibrating and shaking the harder I push it against the steel. The collar glows like molten iron wherever the sword passes through. My forearms burn from the constant vibration. I push and push. And then, everything stops once I’m through.

I move around the monster to cut the other side. My sword sizzles and glows orange like the center of the sun. Debris along the blade appear like shadows. I wait until the glow fades and the sword returns to its mirror like appearance before I drive it back into the other side of the steel collar.

A huge crash signals the end of my second cut. I push off the top half, careful not to touch any of the glowing, recently cut edges.

“You’re free!” I yell and laugh at the same time.

“You’re crazy!” Lieutenant Talbott yells from afar.

The monster stands and I quickly realize that I need to get out of the way fast or else be flattened. All the sorrow and weight that once rested upon its stony neck is gone. Life returns to its sapphire eyes. As much as I know that this seems crazy, I am certain that the monster grins. There’s a playfulness in its steps like a dog waiting to be let outside. However, in this case, the monster’s steps shake the ground. It leads me toward the farthest wall in the cave where the chandelier light is lowest and nudges its nose against a spot in the wall that doesn’t match the rest.

“Is that steel?” I ask the monster. I touch the wall. “Sure enough.”

A massive steel door with thousands of rivets lining the outside edges fills the wall. I use my sword to gather some light and aim it all along the seam to find that the door is as big, if not bigger, than the monster.

“This isn’t something built by the original owners,” Lieutenant Talbott says. He steps up next to me.

“You think the Krauts installed this door?”

“I can’t think of any reason why the French would. This cave is bizarre.” He turns back toward the center. “You have a table, that looks like an operating table from the middle ages, complete with leather straps and horribly looking devices of medical torture. There are prison cells that could be described in any swashbuckling adventure from a hundred years ago. But then you also have newer medical things, like syringes and intravenous needles and this steel door. None of it makes any sense.”

I shine the sword’s glow along the steel door frame and illuminate a junction box with a lever that sticks out parallel to the ground. I walk over to it, study the box, and then push the lever up. Nothing happens. I pull the lever down and nearly jump out of my pants when an enormous boom blasts through the cave. Light, altogether different from the chandelier flames, seeps through the top of the door and begins to flood the cave as the door opens by moving downward into the floor.

The monster can’t wait to get out. Its tail wags like a dog, granted, a really, really large dog whose tail wagging is the equivalent of picking up a building and waving it back and forth. Once the door is open about three quarters of the way, the monster steps over and walks outside.

Lieutenant Talbott walks up behind me and places a hand on my shoulder. “Well, you’ve done your good deed for the day.”

“I suppose. But I can’t help but feel like that monster was more than just a monster. All the other ones I’ve encountered in this forest have been blood thirsty nightmares with an insatiable desire to eat me.”

“Maybe it’s an herbivore?”

“Whatever it is, it’s nothing like the others.”

Lieutenant Talbott leads me outside as soon as the door levels out with the floor. “Let’s forget about that monster. The important thing to consider is that you’ve found a way out. It looks like we’ve discovered a road that looks like it wraps around the mountain. You’re free!”

I don’t know how to respond.

A part of me wants to take off running and not stop until I cross the bridge back into reality.

Another part of me, the stronger part, wants to turn around and walk right back into the cave and continue my search for Earl.

“We stick together,” I say.

Lieutenant Talbott gives me a strange look.

“And keep our heads on straight,” I finish.

All this time, the monster has been making its escape down the road. When it reaches the bend where the road curves and follows the mountain side, the monster turns to look at me. Sunlight explodes in the monster’s sapphire eyes, and I experience something I’ve never seen before in a creature.

Connection.

No. The monster isn’t Earl. I don’t mean to lead you down that path. But I think long and hard about why the monster seems so familiar, and I can only guess one thing. Those sapphire eyes remind me of Rosalie. But it can’t be. No. It can’t. My loneliness is playing with my mind, making it see things that can’t be. I feel like a small child lying in bed in the middle of the night and seeing a monster form from the pile of clothes left on the floor. I’m seeing things that don’t make sense.

But in that connection, I see that the monster is attempting to show me something. It looks at me and then up toward a spot overhead. It repeats this motion several times. I look up and only see mountain. The monster notices this and nods downward as if to say, “Come here and look.” I obey and join the monster further along the road. When I turn around to look up to the spot where the monster stares, I find the most amazing castle I’ve ever seen.

I want you to think about the castles you’ve seen in photographs and drawings and motion pictures. They all have that same feel with cone shaped towers and battlement walls with parapets that remind you of chess pieces. You think of stone walls crafted from blocks surrounded by a mote and one large drawbridge to allow people in.

The Cauchemar Forest mountain castle is nothing like that.

There’s a wall, but it appears to be shorn smooth from the mountain side. Rounded pillars break up the wall in hundred-foot intervals and a statue stands atop each. The statue closest to me is of a hand holding a globe in its fingertips. The next closest is of two horses standing on their rears and frozen in a battle between each other. I study each subsequent statue and find a knight sitting atop a horse and holding his sword toward the sky. I find a shirtless man forever frozen midway through a swing of his hammer. Another pillar depicts a man holding a book and reaching out his hand as if in the middle of a lecture.

“The longer you look, the more you see.” Lieutenant Talbott says. “This may be one of the greatest architectural feats of mankind and no one knows about it.”

Further still is a statue of a woman standing amongst a field of plants and holding a basket as if harvesting. Countless other pillars exist, but they are so far away that I can’t see what they depict. The furthest I can see is of another woman with several children about her in various states of play.

There is a large, rounded bridge or skywalk, held up by two giant statues of stylized muscular men that expands several thousand feet out from the center of the castle wall. The men appear to be locked in a struggle to hold the halo of stone that is large enough for an entire battalion to stand upon and battle invading armies below.

Lieutenant Talbott takes off his helmet to scratch his head in wonderment. He says, “Whoever built this castle married military intelligence with art. It is a beauty. I don’t know what is most impressive, its defense or the art. I mean, if you look at it one way, no army can attack from behind because of the mountain. And if an army tries to attack from the front, they must climb the cliffs. But if that wasn’t enough, they then have to scale the walls before they can get in.

“And if you look at it from another way, this castle is a work of art. Nothing from our known world even comes close to this scale. Those statues must be fifty-feet tall and are carved directly from the mountain. I almost feel like we are not even on this world anymore.”

Within the wall is the next amazing wonder. Hundreds of buildings of all shapes and sizes huddle together and follow the curvature of the wall. The shortest structures are closest to the wall and form into an outer ring of buildings. The next layer is taller, followed by several other taller layers. There is a gap between each layer like concentric circles that may form a road or maybe more defenses. Some of the buildings are rounded. Some are square. Some look like a pile of hat boxes haphazardly stacked upon one another. Every building has a different architectural style. Studying the castle is like standing on the outskirts of New York or Chicago where there are buildings as far as the eye can see.

Their heights build upon one another like steps that lead up to the tallest building of all, the keep. The keep is a massive cylinder of polished stone that reflects sunlight like a mirror. I’m reminded of my first moment in the Cauchemar Forest when I came upon the first tree and looked up. I felt myself leaning further and further back to see the top. The keep has the same effect.

The tower’s pinnacle is a colossal horizontal cross that expands toward each cardinal direction. There are no supports or buttresses. The structure practically hovers at the top. Statues of women, holding basins tipped downward, stand along the edge of each direction. My assumption is that they are the last line of defense, capable of pouring out molten metal or tar or some other terrible liquid to stop the enemy.

“Even if the enemy were to get past the cliff and the wall and through all the rings of buildings, how would they ever scale that tower? There must be hundreds of stairs leading to the top. This place is impenetrable,” Lieutenant Talbott says.  

“And inescapable,” I respond.

“Take a look at what is flapping on the flagpole on top. If there was ever a question as to Madam Teuflisch’s allegiances …”

Directly in the center of the horizontal cross stands a flagpole holding onto a piece of blood red fabric catching the steady mountain wind.

“This isn’t some Red Cross hospital or even a ragtag group of underground expatriates looking for freedom.” Lieutenant Talbott says. “This is one of Hitler’s secret bases planning a surprise attack.

“All of this has been hiding from the world for probably several hundred years. And how terrible is it that the first to come and see it are the Krauts? Who did they have to kill to get it?”

The longer I stare at the castle and the red flag with the white circle in its center, the greater I feel like there is molten steel heating up inside of me. Only a short while ago did that same burning sensation warrant fear and anxiety when I was under the protection of my squad and Lieutenant Talbott. Now, anger is the cause. Anger against the Krauts. Anger that they apply an awful stain to such beauty. Anger that they would lock me up to eventually use me for some terrible experiment. Anger that they still have Earl somewhere within all those buildings.

I started this letter about the array of different types of courage and I’m not certain where my next decision falls within that array. In front of me is a doorway to a cave that leads to a stairwell that somehow connects to the concentric circles of buildings that all lead to one tower. Somewhere within that mess is Earl and I will find him.

I take off my pack and find an empty tin can that I kept from one of the ration meals. I kneel, gather a handful of soil, and pack it in tightly into the can.

“What are you doing?” Lieutenant Talbott says.

“Lafe promised a tin of Kraut soil. We’re in occupied Kraut lands.” I stand up and look toward the red flag and add, “But not for long.”