Chapter 7: Sharpening the Past

Chapter 7: Sharpening the Past

The house slept. A deep, suburban quiet settled over the cul-de-sac, broken only by the hum of the refrigerator and the distant sigh of a passing car. But for Thomas, sleep was a forgotten country. He sat at the kitchen table in the pre-dawn gloom, the house lights off, staring at the lump of scorched iron on the polished wood. The melted crucifix was a magnet for his terror, a black hole that pulled all light and hope from the room.

He could still see the messenger’s eyes, flat and dead as discarded coins. He could feel the phantom weight of the box in his hands, a cold that had nothing to do with temperature. Thirty years. Thirty years of running, of looking over his shoulder, of building a life out of lies and half-truths, and it had all been a pointless, panicked marathon leading back to this exact moment. The monster hadn't been chasing him; it had been shepherding him. It had waited until he had a wife he adored and a son who was the very architecture of his heart. It had waited until the price of his fear was no longer just his own life, but theirs.

The time for running was over. The race had been a sham from the start.

A new, unfamiliar resolve, cold and hard as the iron on the table, settled in his bones. It wasn't courage. Courage was what Klaus Baumann had shown in that dusty attic, standing against an immortal evil with nothing but a silver pistol and a lifetime of conviction. This was something different. This was the cornered-animal desperation of a father who had seen the wolf sniffing at his child’s door.

He pushed himself away from the table, the scrape of the chair legs loud in the silence. He moved through the sleeping house, his steps quiet and sure, and unlocked the door that led to the garage. The air inside was cool and smelled of gasoline, cut grass, and sawdust. It was his sanctuary of the mundane, filled with lawn equipment, holiday decorations, and the accumulated junk of a family’s life. Tonight, it would become an armory.

His eyes scanned the clutter. A baseball bat? Too clumsy. A crowbar? Too heavy. His gaze fell upon an old wooden dining chair tucked away in a corner, one of a set they’d replaced years ago but never thrown away. It was made of solid oak, sturdy and unassuming. Domestic. He remembered David, as a toddler, using its legs as a hiding place during games of hide-and-seek.

He dragged the chair into the center of the garage, under the stark glare of the single bare bulb hanging from the ceiling. From his toolbox, he took a rusty hand saw. The teeth were dull. It would be hard work. Good.

The memory, sharp and shameful, rose unbidden: the feel of the stake in his hand thirty years ago. Perfectly balanced, expertly carved by Mr. Baumann, its point honed to a vicious needle. He had dropped it. He had dropped the weapon, the duty, the hope, and had fled into the night. Now, his penance was to fashion his own.

He braced the chair against his knee and set the saw to one of the thick back legs. The first few passes were clumsy, the blade skittering across the varnished wood. Then it bit. The rhythmic rasp of metal on wood filled the garage, a harsh, grating sound that seemed to be sawing away the last twenty years of his cowardice. Sawdust, smelling of old, dry wood, puffed into the air. His hand, unaccustomed to the work, began to cramp. Sweat beaded on his forehead and trickled down his temples. His knuckles were white. He wasn't just sawing a chair leg; he was severing his connection to the man who ran.

With a final, splintering crack, the leg came free. It was about two feet long, heavy and solid in his hand. He took a utility knife and began to whittle a point. His work was crude, ugly. He wasn’t a craftsman like Baumann. The blade slipped, slicing a shallow cut across his thumb. He barely felt it, watching with a detached fascination as a bead of blood welled up, dark in the yellow light. He wiped it on his jeans and kept carving, shaving away slivers of wood until he had a rough, wicked-looking point.

It was a pathetic imitation of a true Jaeger’s weapon, but it was his. He gripped it tightly. This time, he wouldn't drop it.

He needed to know how it felt. He needed to turn the static terror in his veins into motion. He grabbed an old canvas duffel bag from a shelf, stuffed it with beach towels and old rags until it was dense and vaguely torso-shaped, and hung it from a ceiling hook meant for a bicycle.

It was his dummy. It was Ulrich. It was the smiling man from his son’s drawing.

He faced it, the crude stake held in a two-handed grip. His heart hammered against his ribs. His first strike was a frantic, clumsy lunge. The point of the stake hit the bag with a dull thud, the impact jarring his wrists. He grunted, pulling it back. He struck again, and again, his breath coming in harsh, ragged pants. These weren't the precise, practiced blows of a hunter. They were the panicked, flailing attacks of a terrified man trying to beat back the darkness. He put his whole body into it, sweat flying from his brow, a low, guttural sound building in his throat. He pictured the luminous blue eyes, the fanged smile, the effortless cruelty.

"Get away from him," he snarled at the bag, the words torn from his soul. "Get away from my family."

The stake became an extension of his will, each clumsy thrust a declaration. No more running. No more hiding. No more fear. It was a lie, of course. He was terrified. But for the first time in his adult life, the terror was pushing him forward instead of sending him fleeing.

The soft click of the door opening behind him was as loud as a gunshot.

Thomas froze, the stake held high, his chest heaving. He turned slowly.

Sarah stood there, silhouetted in the doorway from the kitchen, her robe pulled tight around her. Her face was a pale oval of confusion and burgeoning fear. She took in the scene—her husband, wild-eyed and sweat-soaked in the middle of the night, holding a sharpened piece of wood, facing a battered duffel bag hanging from the ceiling.

"Thomas?" Her voice was a fragile whisper. "What in God's name are you doing?"

The spell was broken. He was no longer a nascent hunter in his secret lair; he was a suburban husband who looked like he had finally, completely lost his mind. The stake suddenly felt foolish and heavy in his hands.

"I... I couldn't sleep," he stammered, his mind racing for a plausible lie. The truth was impossible. 'Our lives are in danger from a century-old Nazi vampire, honey. I'm making a stake to kill him.' They would have him committed.

"Practicing," he said, the word sounding hollow and absurd. "Self-defense. I saw a story on the news... a home invasion..."

Sarah took a step into the garage, her eyes flicking from his face to the crude weapon, to the brutalized duffel bag. The lie, already thin, was tearing at the seams. She had been living with his paranoia for fifteen years, had seen him check locks, scan crowds, and uproot their lives on a whim. She knew this was something more.

"Self-defense? With that?" she asked, her voice trembling slightly. "Thomas, this isn't normal. This is... you're scaring me. You're scaring me, and you have been for years. What is going on with you? What are you so afraid of?"

The question hung in the air between them, heavy with two decades of unspoken fear and buried secrets. He looked at his wife, at the genuine terror in her eyes—terror for him, for his sanity—and the weight of his isolation crashed down on him. He couldn't tell her. To tell her would be to drag her into the nightmare, to make the monster real for her, too. His silence was the last shield he had to protect her.

"I'm just being careful, Sarah," he said, his voice flat.

She stared at him for a long moment, her expression shifting from fear to a profound, bone-deep sadness. She saw the wall between them, the one he had been building for years, and knew she couldn't break it down. Without another word, she turned and closed the door, leaving him alone in the stark, revealing light.

The click of the latch was a final, sealing sound. He was utterly, completely on his own. Thomas lowered the stake, his shoulders slumping. His secret, one-man war had begun, and his first casualty was the trust of the woman he was trying to save.