by Opal Edgar
“I’ll get him!”
My grandmother called for her to wait. But my mother rushed to the farmhouse. I complained about the sudden darkness, but she wasn’t paying attention. The room had all of its furniture still in place, I guess it was too heavy to move. Only the small things had been packed. I couldn’t have been one year old if we were still on the farm. Mama froze by a long wooden table, where a man sat on a bench. I could only see his hairy knuckles: golden threads shimmering in a spot of light. Grandfather. I wished I could turn my head, just to see him. But it didn’t work that way.
“Papa,” she spoke softly.
“Get out,” the man spat in a gravelly voice.
“Papa, we have to go. The red army is going to be here any time now.”
“Well, go! I never wanted you back, you whore. It’s your mother with all her sniffling and begging. You should have stayed in that nice little hospital they had for your kind. Scram with your bastard.”
The shaved head, the name calling and the absence of a father … it suddenly all clicked. I felt faint. I’d never even suspected it before. My mother had been recruited by the Lebensborn to birth Aryan children. My heart beat faster. Was it possible that she hadn’t been married to my father at all?
I had once found a picture of the two of them in their Sunday best. My mother had told me it was a photograph of her wedding day. Her dress hadn’t been white, but, with the war on, no one had white dresses. It hadn’t shocked me at the time.
My head felt wet. Warm drops slid behind my ear and down my neck. My fingers batted at the sensation. Mama was crying. Tears caught in my throat.
“Papa, you’ll be executed if you don’t go. Please. You heard what they do. The Nemmersdorf massacre …”
She tightened her grip on me.
She hadn’t fought the name calling. But that might have been because this wasn’t the time.
“The Nemmersdorf!” Grandpa scoffed. “Bloody propaganda, you stupid slut! This is the land of your ancestors, not that you care about that. I’m not bloody leaving. I’m an honest man, aren't I?”
I didn’t like all that squeezing and shaking. I burst into an ear splitting cry. The fight kept going, but I was louder than them. I couldn’t hear what they said anymore. I didn’t even hear the second set of footsteps coming in. Hard-working hands pulled me away from Mama’s grip and patted me softly, “There, there,” she sing-songed. It must have been Grandma. A light spot on the tiles caught my eye and immediately I stopped howling. My arms extended out to catch the spots. Gently, Grandma placed me on the kitchen floor.
“I just saw cars arrive in the village. Husband, you read the eviction letter with me.” Her tone was soothing. “In their eyes we’ll be Nazi sympathising trespassers. You know what they do to women. Let’s hurry.”
Fabric whispered as she softly patted his arm.
Grandfather exploded in a rage of swearing. But Grandma wasn’t done.
“Give them one reason and we are all dead, or worse. They thirst for revenge. Men are all chock-full of evil.”
He got up. His boots hammered the floor violently with each of his limping steps. His foot slammed centimetres from my hands. I batted at the light, oblivious, until he walked into my sunray, which now shimmered beautifully on his waxed shoe. My hand came down to catch it. He looked down as I looked up. His face contorted in disgust.
He kicked me.
Pain flared in my arm as the women screamed. It hadn’t been strong, but I couldn’t believe it. Mama scrambled to get me.
“Take that cursed thing out of my sight! Drown it! Plague be on daughters and the shame they bring their families. I wish I’d had sons, at least they’d be dead. Instead, we got harassed until we handed you over to their disgusting program, and did he marry you after he got what he wanted? No, you got payed. And fed.” He dragged the words out with a disgusted snarl. “And our cows were used as target practice, our crops—”
A car motor roared and tyres crunched on the gravelled lane. That immediately stopped the ranting. Grandpa swore. He grabbed the women by the arm. They squeaked and Mama almost dropped me. In a quick swirl past the window I saw soldiers getting out of the car. Two stopped to examine the cart, lifting a napkin to look into a basket. The three adults huddling round me looked everywhere round them. There was no hidey hole.
I caught sight of spots of light on the floor again. This time Mama was unable to keep hold of me, not with the vice-like grip on her other arm pulling her in the opposite direction. I was crawling to the front door when it swung open.
A sickly-thin officer walked in, he was in his mid-thirties and wearing nicer clothes than the lowly soldiers, but too large for him. He picked me up and I didn’t complain, he had shiny medals on his chest just at the right level for me to touch.
“Well, isn’t this a handsome fellow,” he cooed with a heavy Russian accent. Actually it might have been Polish, or Czech, I couldn’t tell. “I love babies, I’ve had five of these little things myself.”
“He’s not one yet, but he’s big for his age.” My mother smiled shyly.
“I bet his mama ate plenty well to grow him healthy like that,” the officer said with a smile, and my grandpa recoiled. “Good nutrition is important for little children, even in war time. Does he get good milk and eggs and white bread?”
Mama smiled. “White bread is impossible to get! He eats coarse bread like everyone else, but we still have a cow and a few chickens.”
Grandma had stopped breathing. Her hand clenched onto my mother.
“A cow and a few chickens, that’s good to know.”
The officer got a big ledger out of his bag. He had me bouncing on one knee and unscrewed the cap of his pen one-handed. He was calm and efficient. Mortified, my mother looked down. He was already listing his new property.
“And how old is the charming mother of this cherub?” the officer asked, smile still in place.
My grandfather walked in front of her. “She’s just 19, and we’re leaving.”
“Such a lucky man,” the officer cut in. “A husband, a father and a grandfather … I never even got to say goodbye to my wife and children when my family was deported. My baby son yelled so loud on the train: I rocked him on my chest, but I had nothing to give him. When we arrived at the labour camp, a soldier grabbed him by the leg, but he was already stiff. I wouldn’t let go. They knocked me unconscious. They should have shot me.”
He bounced me nonchalantly. I was just a stupid baby and laughed. No sound came from the corner my family huddled in. He pulled out his pistol.
“Uncomfortable,” he said, sighing as his posture relaxed.
The metal clicked in his hand. “By the way, you’re under arrest. You Germans left some neat detention camps in our country for us for use ... and we can’t have able bodies running round becoming enemies.”
Mama had never said what had happened to her parents. I hadn’t consciously remembered anything.
“So the question is: what do we do with that useless mouth to feed?” he said.
The round eye of the pistol stared at me. My starfish hands tried to grab it – that was shiny too. Yells. And a shot.
It caught Grandma, the first to leap to my defence. Grandpa fell down too. I didn’t like any of that and my lungs exploded into cries … but it made no noise. Nothing made noise anymore. The shots had been too loud. My eyes were crinkled shut and I had no idea what was happening, blind and deaf that I was. Suddenly the world shook and I was in Mama’s arms. I recognised her smell. I opened my eyes.
An even more decorated officer had materialised by the pistol bearer. He frowned at the smoking gun. The pistol bearer shrugged and opened his mouth, I think I read, “Looters,” on his lips. Mama tumbled out of the house and ran.
I’d had no idea those memories were in me. And yet ...
The scene melted. My hands were their normal size again. The glass of the window rippled round the frame and I pushed away, eyes burning and voice gone. I folded i
n two and barfed.
“Hey, man! Uncool!” Stanley yelled. “I wanted to warn you, but you were too fast: the evaluation reveals your most intimate trauma to Death.”
A mop and bucket clattered at my side. I wobbled up.
“Congratulations, pales,” Stanley said. “You opened the portal.”
The window had gone completely black.
I still couldn’t say anything. I held onto the mop so I didn’t fall down. Baas pushed back from the window. He hugged his hand. His knees were wobbly too. His sunglasses had slipped down and his eyes looked as haunted as mine.
“Hurray for the confirmed dimwits, let’s not linger!” Baas barked.
Despite everything, it still felt good that he dumped us both in the same bag.
Chapter 18
Meet Death
In step, we walked out of 1960s Berlin and into … what the hell was this place? I stumbled after Baas, still stunned, numbed and horrified. We were amongst squat houses made of untreated planks held together with clay. The ground was mud. The people were monsters from a circus freak show. You could only tell the difference between sexes because the men had shaggy beards growing all over their faces. Then again, some of the women looked pretty hairy too. They whispered unintelligibly. Everything smelt like burst sewer pipes. At their belts were coiled whips, on their other hip shone pistols I knew only too well because I’d just seen one exactly like it. It was the same size and make – I heaved.
Baas grabbed me forcefully. A horse and carriage appeared out of nowhere. It grazed my elbow and almost severed my leg before rolling off, driven by the dirtiest farmer I’d ever seen. Piled high inside were my family’s belongings.
“What is this?” I asked.
A chicken ran past, chased by a naked kid with mud up to his armpits. After him was a group of long-toothed white men with clubs. The men yelled war cries and laughed. Baas looked like he was also going to be sick.
“Mind games,” he spat.
If this was part of one of his memories … I hugged myself. What the hell had a slave from the 1600s suffered through? I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. Right now, I had swallowed all I could take of the bitter truth for one day. Baas dislodged himself from the muck. His satin slippers made ungainly suction noises as he pulled them free, and he looked accusingly at them – betrayed by his very own clothes.
“We’re as discreet as squawking bagpipers on ostriches,” he furiously whispered.
Quickly, we strode out of the squalid village and into open fields. The crops had been left to rot and the heads of heavy black flowers weighed down on dried stems the size of javelins. The fields ran for more than a kilometre before turning to dense forest. In the distance were hills, and at the top of the tallest mount was a castle so high its turrets disappeared into the sky. The few turrets I could see ended in cute round shapes like plump cakes slathered in icing. That didn’t make the place any less threatening.
“Let me guess, we’re going to that castle over there. Is there a single person we’re going to visit who doesn’t live in a castle and believes he controls the world?”
“It’s precisely because they hold power you seek them,” answered Baas.
He adjusted his sunglasses, made sure his frills sat right and, with all his dignity, trudged through the muddy field. I ran after him, my shoes pushing against one of the broken stems. I expected the fibre to collapse under the trampling, but it did nothing of the sort. It cut through the leather sole, as sharp as steel.
“What the hell are they growing here?”
“Death’s scythe, only one in a million will turn out like he wants.”
I avoided touching the stumps of the plants after that. We both walked in the wake of the plough. Gooey water slipped through the hole in my shoe, and my toes wiggled in the revolting mush. I had to focus. We were doing this to save Elise. Memories couldn’t be saved.
We squeezed into the dense forest protecting the castle. This certainly wasn’t one of Elise’s creations. Here the leaves were ashen, the trunks like bone and bearded with moss. No animals made a peep. Bramble grabbed our clothes and skin. Regularly, little things stabbed exactly where it hurt. One tree had leaves like military medals, glistening with dew. In a clearing, patches of black grass grew in the shape of the hammer and sickle, but, when I stopped to stare, the shapes were gone. I saw Baas avert his eyes from strips of linen knotted on a branch and flapping in the wind. Ravens gathered over us, playing hide and seek in the treetops. Their beady eyes were everywhere.
We concentrated on our footsteps, slowly acquiring a rhythm, learning which branches supported our weight and which ones cracked in brittle thunder. After what felt like hours, milky daylight touched our skin once more, spotting through the leaves. We had reached the foot of the hill. The landscape was sad and desolate, mainly sandy soil pockmarked by clumps of sturdy whitish grass. The castle teased us, still awfully far away.
“We’ve hardly made any progress at all,” I complained, lifting my pierced, soaked shoe. “And is it me or is the water level rising? We’re going to end up swimming in a river!”
“There’s only one river going to the castle and it’s alive. I wouldn’t recommend anyone going through it. Now, let’s get round the hill,” Baas said, ripping his shredded waistcoat off his shoulders.
He was left in a large shirt that billowed and flapped with each step. His collar spilt lace waves to the four winds. As far as I could see, the castle wasn’t getting any nearer. We kept it in view at all times, so maybe it was an optical illusion, but it wasn’t encouraging. I was getting tired again. Being a zombie meant I was like a bottle with a hole in it. You could fill it up but it didn’t stay that way for long.
“Something’s wrong here,” I said. “We’ve been churning dirt for hours, I know it for sure because my stomach is empty again, but the castle is just as far away. I’m not going to make it. I’ll fall asleep or rot to pieces first.”
“Here.” Baas handed me a flask tucked into his trousers.
“What’s in there?”
He crocked an eyebrow. “Want me to state the obvious?”
“I’m not drinking that.” I pushed it back.
“Suit yourself,” he said. “You think you’re the only one that rots?”
He took a swig and pocketed it again.
“You’re right, we’re not getting closer,” he said, teeth stained red.
I shivered in disgust. He couldn’t be killing people for blood, Elise wouldn’t hang out with him if he’d been a psycho, would she? Vampires had some kind of exemption in the living world, but how far did it extend? How did he get his blood? I burned to know.
“We’ll have to get there the other way,” Baas said.
“I knew it. I hate water. D’you know how to swim? Can you teach me in, like, two minutes?”
“We’re not getting into the river,” Baas grumbled. “We’re flying.”
“You can do that? What have we been doing killing our ankles for the last day or so? What’s wrong with you? Elise needs us! It’s not the time to explore the depressing bodings of the Grim Reaper!”
He pulled his usual angry face and grabbed my arm. The world went cold and dark. I tried to rub my eyes, but realised I had no eyes anymore, or hands, or anything else for that matter. The forest was gone and all that was left was an intense chill.
“What the hell did you do to me?” I exclaimed, but it only came out a soft whisper.
“I turned us into fog. And stop fretting like that, I’ve never carried someone inside me before. I might not be able to dislodge you properly if your keep stirring us together!”
Baas’s voice was now the whining of a strong wind, growing into a howler when he got angry. I’m not sure anyone else but us could understand what we were saying.
“What the hell do you mean?”
“Blasted cockroach soup gobbler! Shut up! We’re attempting to be discreet here, just let me carry you without moving like that!”
“What
do you mean you might not be able to dislodge us properly?” I insisted.
“Let’s just say we might end up with more body parts than we started with if you don’t stop fretting!”
I had no idea what was going on, so I just stopped talking. I felt some kind of movement, like wind sweeping my skin. It was getting colder every instant. In fact, it seemed we were flowing towards the cold. After a while, I started to perceive other things too. Like something tickling my foot.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Could you be a little more specific?”
I concentrated on the different sensations. The world was reduced to touch alone. We were like star-nosed moles with overactive nose-feelers. On the one hand, there was the cold intensifying steadily, and, on the other, a constant pins and needles sensation marching through me.
“What are all those things we’re touching?”
“Truthfully, it’s everything on the way,” Baas answered, his voice hardly audible. “There’s the grass grazing us, the rocks cutting through our path and the wind reshaping us.”
“How about the cold? What is that?”
“That’s the Grim Reaper’s presence. And that’s where we’re headed, without eyes we won’t be tricked.”
We continued to glide. I learnt to recognise what it was we touched as Baas named them for me. Rocks were smooth bumps, rain drops were sharp sizzling ice shards and the grass and sand tickled gently. Slowly, I even gained a sense of smell. And while, at first, I enjoyed the cut grass scent, something unpleasant hid under it.
The cold was biting. Were we going to freeze by the time we got to the castle? The grass disappeared, replaced everywhere by smooth stone. And suddenly I could put a name on the bad smell: it was rotten meat.
“We’re in the castle, aren’t we?”
“Yes, now silence,” Baas whispered.
I still had no idea how he could direct himself, even less find the mirror without eyes. We glided over steps and carpets, and under doors. The nasty smell intensified until it felt like a third person locked within us.