The Devil of Fallujah

The Sergeant handed the folded American flag to my mother. His stoic ridged face showed no emotion as he stared into the face of the sobbing woman breaking down in front of him. Even though he was very fond of my father, and considered him a friend, he couldn’t let his feeling of loss interfere with his sacred duty. He rose up from his knee and bowed his head towards her arms. Slowly raising his knife-like hand to his brow, he delivered a perfect salute to our flag. Another marine immediately began to play Reveille through his bugle. My heart sank as mother’s sobbing cut through the blaring solemn song. I looked across to the seat next to her and saw my little brother’s sorrowful gaze fixated on the headstone. It read, “William J. Russo, Major, US Marine Corps”.

My father was an incredible man. I was truly blessed by his unwavering love and loyalty to my family and I. Although the military took him away for long periods of time from us, whenever he was home, his only mission was to spend time with my mother, brother and I. At least that was before he came home from Iraq last year. But my father’s entire being seemed to change. There were no more family trips or vacations. He spent most of his time in his office except for night time. I was lucky that the memories of my father were mostly before his PTSD and before his downward spiral that would lead him to take his own life.

For the weeks to come, time moved very slowly. I would find myself going through old photo albums with my mother and laughing and smiling at the memories, only to be brought back to reality when she would begin to choke up and cry into my arms. My little brother’s presence was almost non existent. He looked up to my father more than I did if you could believe it. Most of his time was spent in his room grieving in his own way. I tried hard to give him his space but would begin arguing with him when he wasn’t around enough for our mother. This lead us further apart from each other. Soon there would be days where we wouldn’t even talk to each other. Worst of all, I could see how much it was hurting my mother. Not long after, the photo albums went away and then his personal belongings. One day my mother asked me to help bring up some of his tools into his office. She was putting all his personal belongings up there in piles and boxes and soon it became a hoarders dream.

His office was always a room in the house my brother and I weren’t allowed to play in when we were younger. But when he came back from Iraq, it was strictly off limits. Some nights I would wake up and creep from my bedroom into the hallway to try and find out what exactly he was doing in there. I would tip toe over and put my ear against the door and listen to see if I could hear anything. Most of the time it was just silence. But I could tell his T.V. was on and would hear him take out and replace the VHS tapes over and over again. One night though, a little while back, I overheard him start to cry. I never asked him why, as it would seem suspicious I was listening in on him. Every time I went back into that room to put away another box or pile of clothes, I would look at his old T.V. and wonder what exactly he use to do in here on those late nights. Then I remembered.

Shortly after he died, his best friend James who served with him in Iraq came over one night to have dinner with us. He seemed very anxious and nervous. It was like he was scared to be here. He finished his dinner pretty quickly and asked my mother if it would be okay if he could go into my father’s office. He said he wanted to take a look at his awards and plaques so that he could write up a good citation on his military career for the base to display in his memory. We didn’t think very much of it and of course she said that it was fine. We were still eating when he came back downstairs with a big cardboard box in his hands. When my mother asked him what was in the box he said it was just some old papers and documents that would be better off back at base. Before she could start to question him, he was heading to the door saying he had to get back to his wife and thanked her for dinner. It was rather strange and upsetting for us to see our fathers best friend, someone we considered family, just leave us like that in our time of grieving. Stranger though was that as he was leaving, I noticed on the side of the box written in sharpie said, “Iraq Tapes”.

I began to wonder if those were the VHS tapes that he would watch in his office alone, and why James would take them. My curiosity overtook me and I would soon find myself looking throughout his office, in and around all his belongings looking for an answer. The most compelling stuff I found were old dusty uniforms and countless military coins, but no VHS tapes. I called James one day hoping to find out exactly what those tapes were. “I’m sorry buddy,” he said, “but I don’t recall Will talking about any tapes he use to watch.” He quickly tried to change the subject with questions like how my mother and little brother were doing. After hanging up I knew for sure he had the tapes. But how cloud I ever get my hands on them?

Frustrated, I went back up into my father’s office and sat in his big leather desk chair. I swirled around a few times and my gaze kept going towards the T.V. To my surprise, I noticed that the entry flap on the VHS player wasn’t flush with the rest of the box. I quickly stumbled over to it for a closer look. The flap was leaning inwards and I could see there was a tape already inside the device. I pushed the flap against the tape more and the player automatically ejected the tape. The label read, “Fallujah, April 10th, 2004”. James must have taken all of the other tapes and left this one, not having checked the player. I turned on the T.V. and pushed the tape back into the player. It was already rewound to the beginning and began playing immediately.

The footage began with a group of marines moving slowly through an Iraqi city with their rifles up scanning their surroundings. Although I wasn’t interested in the military and had no intention of joining, I knew this was footage of the battle of Fallujah, a brutal month long campaign to capture insurgents in the city responsible for killing American contractors. I watched as the marines checked their corners and carefully maneuvered around each other. Even with the brutal video quality, I could make out that James was one of the marines in the front of the squad of men.

James stopped in front of an entrance to an alleyway and waited as the rest of the marines stacked up behind him on the wall. The marine behind him squeezed his shoulder. I realized that man was my father. They both slowly turned the corner together and started down the alleyway. Maneuvering flawlessly with tight precision, they approached the first door on their left and stacked up again. The marine in the back ran up to the front and checked the sides of the door for wires or explosive devices. Once he cleared it, he gave a nod to James and kicked the door in.

The marines flooded into the room screaming and yelling “get down!” When the camera operator entered, there were two men with their hands behind their heads, laying face down on their dirt floor. Two marines had their guns drawn on the men while the rest of the marines cleared the other rooms. “Weapon cache!” one of them yelled from the other room. The camera operator ran towards the commotion. A large wooden door lay on the ground with a rusty padlock. The men in custody started screaming at the marines. Although I couldn’t make out what they were saying, they sounded terrified, as if they were pleading with them not to open it. “Shut up!” James yelled. “Will, we got to cut through this”, he reported to my father. My father turned towards another marine who was carrying large bolt cutters in his pack. After pulling them out, my father quickly broke the lock. James flew open the door and immediately all the marines covered their faces. There must have been a putrid smell of some kind because they started coughing as if they were about to vomit. My first thought was they must have come across a dead body or bodies. When they regained their composure, the camera operator approached the entry in the ground. What lay ahead of them was a stairway down into pure darkness. “Lets go”, my father ordered, and he lead them down the stairs into the darkness.

The camera switched to a night vision setting and the sparkly green contrast flashed a few times before revealing a long hallway at the bottom of the stairs. My father, followed by James and the camera operator, slowly made their way down what seemed to be an endless labyrinth. The corridor started getting wider and suddenly hundreds of human skulls appeared on the outlining the walls. “What the fuck is this?” James said out loud. I watched as the nightmare that my father and his best friend stumbled into sent a bloodcurdling surge throughout my body. Candles started popping into view. At first only a few but then many more, which lit up the maze enough for the camera operator to turn off the night vision setting. They were stumbled upon a large room. Splattered on the walls were diabolical paintings of monstrous beings feeding on humans. These beasts sported large wings of dark gray skin, accenting the white of their venomous teeth. On the back wall sat a large wooden box surrounded by more candles. James went up to the box and gave a horrifying look towards my fathers ghastly face. But even still, he nodded at James to open it. Both of them grabbed a side of the box and slid the lid away. It crashed onto the ground behind it. Kicking up sand and dust about the room. “Oh my God”, James shuddered as the words seemed to barely make it out of him. Inside of the box were padded sides made of purple velvet. A large pillow of the same hue lay at one end with an imprint in the middle as if someone's head was recently laying on it. “What is this?” The camera operator asked terrified. He panned towards my father who was staring at the wall in front of them. He was moving his mouth silently, as to be reading something. The camera operator slowly turned the camera toward the wall. In large sloppy red writing was a message in Arabic. I quickly grabbed the T.V. remote and paused the video. It flickered on the message. I ran behind his desk to the computer and quickly typed in Google Translate. I took Arabic in high school as an elective and knew most of the letters but not the words. After rewriting the message and typing it in the translator, it gave me a result that read, “For the evil that lay beneath, may we halt it’s devastation with our sacrifice of…” before I could finish the translated message, the screen of the computer went black.

“Shit!” I exclaimed. I looked back at the T.V. The screen was also black. I didn’t turn the T.V. off, I thought. Suddenly, the fan in the ceiling stopped spinning. Then, one by one, the decorative light bulbs beneath it burst into pieces. I fumbled back in my chair almost falling to the ground. The world around me went silent. The pumping of my racing heart beat was all I could hear. Then I heard a long creak of wood coming from somewhere in the hallway. I looked over the desk to the open doorway. A long shadow began to rise from one side of the door jamb to the other. Another creak. Then another. Holding my breath, terror overtook me as the shadow began to grow wings.