Free Fatherland (Prequel to Primal Shift) by Griffin Hayes Page A

findings were analyzed, not that any of them had ever come back
with conclusive proof of the supernatural. 
    The boy’s room was just
ahead of them now and Thomson felt an uncharacteristic prickle of gooseflesh
crawl up his arms. He was pulling out a pad of paper and a pen when Mrs. Kesler
pushed the door open. Seated cross legged on the floor was a boy, no more than
five or six years old, his gaze fixed on the toys around him as the trio
shuffled into the room. They had walked into a scale model battlefield. Lined
up in parade formation were dozens of gray toy soldiers. The kind they sell in
bags of 50 and 100.
    “Donald,” Mrs. Kesler
said sheepishly. “Did you wanna say hello to the nice men who’ve come to see
you?”
    The boy lifted his head
and both men winced when they saw the flesh on his face. It was pink and
stretched into a horrible scar.
    “Was he burned in a
fire?” Brooks asked.
    “Oh, no,” Mrs. Kesler
said. “This only started showing up in the spring. Nothing more than a thin
line at first. We called it his lucky soft patch. Then it started spreading and
that’s part of why I called you people. The doctors have looked him up and down
and all they can tell me is it’s either a skin irritation or a late blooming
birthmark.”
    Donald went back to
lining up his men, as if he were alone.
    Brooks flipped through
the pages of his notepad. “Wound migration isn’t at all unusual,” he offered.
“Ian Stevenson’s work on birthmarks and soul transference is quite extensive.”
    More mumbo jumbo , Thomson thought. He
was growing tired of playing games. “Mrs. Kesler, why exactly are you so
certain your son is the reincarnation of Adolf Hitler?”

-3-
    H er face blanched.
Thomson felt Brooks’ hand touch his elbow warning him to ‘take it back a notch’
but shrugged his partner off.
    “You think I’m crazy,
don’t you?” she asked.
    “No, of course we
don’t,” Brooks said, tripping all over his words like a gawky schoolboy.
    On the ground, the boy
continued to play.
    “Mrs. Kesler, right now
all I’m seeing is a little boy who likes to play soldier,” Thomson said. “There
are millions like him all over the country.”
    The woman looked
flustered and Thomson thought he knew why. She’s seen the kid’s fascination
with war, noticed what looked like scar tissue creeping across his face and
jumped to a ridiculous conclusion.
    She fiddled with the
strings on her apron, looping them around her fingers like tiny nooses. “About
a month ago, I was cleaning the kitchen when Donald came up behind me, nearly
scared me witless. He was asking where the dog was. I hadn’t the faintest idea
what he was talking about. I mean, we don’t have a dog. I told him as much and
he shook his head and became real adamant that he owned a dog and wanted to
know where I’d put her. Said she was a gift from Martin, that she’d just had a
litter and he needed to find her right away. Wasn’t more than an hour later
that I heard him upstairs in his room, calling out for Blondi. I was afraid. I
wasn’t sure who he was talking to, but he kept on tapping his leg and saying ‘Kommen
hier Blondie’ over and over again.”
    “That’s German,” Brooks
said. He was searching the net on his phone, his fingers dancing over the tiny
keyboard at a frantic pace. “Says here Hitler loved dogs. His favorite was a
Shepherd named Blondi that he took with him into the Führerbunker.” Brooks paused,
the blood draining from his face. “She had a litter of pups right before she
died.”
    “She didn’t just die.
The dog was killed,” Thomson amended. “Hitler fed her cyanide capsules because
he had doubts about the poison’s potency.” Thomson flipped through his notepad
and poised the pen in his hand to take notes. “How many hours of television
does Donald watch, Mrs. Kesler?”
    “Very few.”
    “Does he have friends?
Go on play dates?”
    “Well, sure he does.
Other little boys from his class mostly. One of