Brenner: The Gospel of Madness (Book 5 of 6)

by Georg Bruckmann

  He smiled at her, and she realized that he wouldn’t stop until she smiled back. Mariam understood that he meant only well. That he tried to talk down the whole horror, for her and for himself alike. She thought it was nice, even though it didn’t work. So she tried to give him at least a little smile and said nothing.

  Shepard

  It had been approximately an hour since I discovered the death of Mrs. Doctor. The pool of blood was surprisingly small. Most of it my jacket must have absorbed, which was still draped around her naked body. The jacket now belonged to her. It was very unlikely anyone else would want it. I sure did not. Her head had sunk forward again after I had let it go. She was sitting there just like she was before. Cowered together in her corner, her knees pulled to her body, only now her left arm was hanging limply and her hand lay on the dirty floor with the inside facing up. The forearm of the other arm was still on her knees, held in place by its own weight and the wall. In the last few minutes two of my fellow inmates had been busy loosening each others shackles. Afterwards the uninjured had inspected the arrow wound in the leg of the younger one. He had decided that the missile should not be pulled out for the time being. Because of the bleeding. They would have progressed faster and easier, I thought, if they had asked Mr. Paul or me for help. But they didn’t, and so their awkward efforts had given me some distraction. Not that it was really funny. It was just something you could look at if you didn’t want to stare at a naked female corpse bleeding into your own jacket or at Mr. Paul, the traitor. He had given up standing and resigned himself to his fate of having to sit in deep shit in the truest sense of the word. So that’s where he was sitting staring. It still had to stink pathetically in our cellar. But none of us still smelled it. We got used to it in the meantime and stank just as much as the feces of our pre-prisoners. For a while I had fiddled unsuccessfully with the lock of the door. I’d given it up soon enough. It had been a childish and stupid hope. Now I had none left. In a pre-war film, the heroes now had created an excuse to call the guards into the cell so that they could overwhelm them. They would have faked a brawl or a seizure by one of the prisoners. A situation in which a cell inmate was in danger of death and would need outside help. However, these films were based on the assumption that the prison guards were not degenerates. They didn’t give a shit if one of us died in here or not. If we had a big yell, maybe they’d come. Could be. But not to help. No. They’d come to kick whoever was screaming a few more teeth out of their jaws. Mr. Paul had now huddled together. Basically, he was imitating the vampire doctor with his posture. His arms wrapped around his knees and his head lowered, he sat in the dirt of our unknown companions in fate. He constantly mumbled something to himself that no one but him understood. But I doubted he was aware of that fact. Only very rarely did he raise his head and stare at the dead woman or look at one of us. The two of the High People also sat on the ground. But not quite as self-forgotten as the traitor. They crouched opposite each other, their backs leaning against the damp basement walls. I could see from their faces that they were attentive and not fleeing into their own heads. Like me, I guessed, they were trying to eavesdrop on what was going on upstairs. I wondered if Brownjacket still screamed. At least we couldn’t hear him down here. I myself turned the bone splinter in my hand. I checked the tip with one finger and then began to grind it a little on the ground. Not that I really believed I could use it, but the simple action calmed me down. Waiting. I still hate it. Even now, I have to wait. Since I had noticed the death of Mrs. Doctor, I tried not to think of where the bone splinter had previously been in my hand. Now I put it in the pocket of my pants. Since then I had tried twice to get something like a conversation going, but nobody had anything to say. I guess making plans seemed as pointless to the others as it did to myself. I began to ponder away after all. Out of the cell, out of this world. What the leader of the bone-degenerate had said about himself - somehow it kept me busy for a while. When one stepped back and saw everything again from a certain distance, then one could ... The door blew open. Why hadn’t I heard their footsteps? The others flinched as much as I did. Eyes narrowed to cope with the sudden brightness. The silence was torn apart by barked orders. Two men dragged Mr. Paul to his feet and pushed him outside, while two others to the right and left of the door made sure we didn’t try anything stupid. He didn’t protest, and he didn’t fight back. Only once did he cry out when one of the Degs probably grabbed him too tightly. When they had dragged him out of the room, two new men immediately came in and pulled me up. After they had also pushed me out into the passage, I could see that four of the Degs were still waiting there to get the other two prisoners. So that’s how much staff the little degenerate leader had put aside for us. I guess he wanted to play it safe. When they pushed me along the aisle and finally dragged me up and back into the church, I could hear behind me that there was a wrangling between the two of the High People and the degenerate bloodhounds. It was over quickly, and the outcome was clear from the start. It’s a waste of energy. They led us to the altar where the degenerate leader sat. He casually held a bottle of red wine in his hands and drank while they forced us to our knees in front of him and tied our hands again. I wasn’t sure how much time had passed. A few hours, certainly. There was still some blood on the leader’s lips. The degenerates who had taken us out of the cell now stepped aside, but stayed close, and I could see something lurking in their faces. It was not until the moment the little blonde man on the altar began to speak that I realized that both the perverted songs and the cries of Brownjacket outside had stopped. “There you are at last, you little skunks. I’ve missed you so much!” He put both hands over his heart in a silly gesture. “I’m sure you’re glad you don’t have to be down there in the basement anymore, aren’t you?” He looked at each one of us attentively. One at a time. He had some mean thing to say to each and every one of them. Then he started explaining what he was going to do to us. I wasn’t listening. Behind him and the altar some other degenerates had gathered and formed a wall of human bodies, which closed the hole in the outer wall of the church. Then the organ began to play, clear and loud, and just at the moment when the degenerate woman, whom the leader had called Silvia, stepped next to him and whispered something into his ear. Then he turned to me. “Tommy’s upstairs, they tell me, do you hear? Doesn’t want to see you now. But I’m sure when we start with you, he’ll come down. He’s a good kid, you know?” He winked at me. It wasn’t a real song Tommy played, not a song I knew at least. But where was he supposed to learn that? On the tracks at the station? I don’t think so. But nevertheless it was somehow music and still the sounds had an expressive kind of melancholy and anger. The peculiar tune filled the whole church and spread a disastrous mood. Dissonances shrilled from time to time into the simple melodies that Tommy’s fingers elicited from the large instrument. Silvia had now loosely laid a hand on the shoulder of the leader and leaned next to him at the altar, while she let her gaze wander over us prisoners. The blonde kept talking as he laid a hand on hers. An intimate gesture that somehow surprised me in this context. It seemed too gentle to me , too tender for creatures that would gut and cut open and hang others from street lights. A red spark of anger glowed inside me. They weren’t allowed to do that. They could not have tender feelings for each other. That was for us. Not for them. There was unrest behind me, and the leader interrupted his autocratic monologue with a displeased expression on his face. I turned my head to see something. They took the Doctor’s body from the cellar. A degenerate had grabbed her under the arms and one by the knees and walked between her legs. Together with the intense wheeze he gave when he stopped in the aisle of the church and told the leader that there had been a death, the whole thing seemed like a very, very twisted sexual act. A malicious and at the same time amused grin surrounded the blonde’s lips when he said: “Well, well. So you really use every chance you get to kill your enemies, huh? How did you do it?” Those words were meant for me. I could have said she did it herself. Bu
t whether he believed me or not, it didn’t matter at all. I didn’t expect to get out of this church alive. There were twenty-five or thirty degenerates around us and there were certainly as many outside. Not a chance. You’re done, you idiot. “Huh? Why so shy? Don’t you talk to me now?” I hadn’t actually turned my head to him when he approached me, but had continued to watch some blood from Mrs. Doctor dripping out of my jacket, hanging from her naked, flabby corpse, onto the floor of the church. It wasn’t much. Just single, fine droplets. I doubt anybody but me noticed them. Slowly I turned my head towards the altar again. The man just took another sip from his wine bottle and drove his tongue over his lips. “Listen. If you don’t want to talk to me, we’ll start earlier with our entertainment, you know that, right?” For a short moment the strange music that Tommy produced up at the church organ broke off. He started a new tune. It consisted only of a few elongated tones, half steps, monotonous and dull. I saw the face of the boy before my inner eye, the empty gaze directed into nothingness. Finally I broke away from the thought and brought it upon me to answer the leader. “Doesn’t matter, does it? Nothing I could say would change anything about what you’re going to do to us, would it?” For a moment, I thought he was actually thinking about an answer. Instead he took another sip of wine and repelled himself from the altar. Two meters from me, he set himself up and said: “No. No, not really. Let’s get started. And you two...”, he turned to the two porters of the corpses “... bring the old bitch out. Let’s show them how we get our jewelry.” With an exaggerated gesture, he made it clear that he meant the strange bone formations with which he and the other members of his group had been hanging themselves. The porters preceded us. Then others took us outside to the forecourt. “Leave them up here. The dead fuck doll in the middle!” It was not a particularly high gate pedestal on which we had to kneel down again. Just a few steps above the forecourt. Some degenerates, their leader and Silvia stayed behind us. The majority of the other Degs formed a semicircle of about seven meters in diameter around us in front of the church entrance. The two corpse bearers let the dead doctor fall carelessly in the middle of this semicircle. She landed with a dull and somehow wet sound on her back, exposing the white, dead body. It looked just as miserable as any I’d ever seen. As soon as the spark leaves the body, it’s just an empty flesh shell, I said to myself. Just a shell. A little further away, there was another shell. Brownjacket. I almost didn’t recognize him. His jacket was gone. This applied to all his clothes and to parts of his body. Yet, he still on his cross. From the inside of the church, Tommy’s bizarre organ playing penetrated to the outside. The two of the High People had now fallen silent, and the younger one with the arrow in his leg was covered with a pale, waxy layer of sweat and pain. They had placed Mr. Paul to my left, and now I could hear what he was still mumbling all the time. Jesus Christ. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. It was a mistake. I know it now. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Asshole. One of the group of degenerates who had gathered in front of us stepped forward on the command of the leader. A giant guy with a dog-eyed face and sagging, flabby cheeks. In times like these, how could a man manage to be so fat? I received my reply immediately. I didn’t like it. “Come on, Eater. Persevere in your office,” the leader ordered again. And that’s what Eater did. Suddenly he held a butcher’s hatchet in his hands and tore my jacket off the corpse of the Doctor. Then he cut her up. Poor thing. Arms. Legs. Head. When he theatrically tore up one leg at the ankle with his left hand and almost cut it with a horizontally guided blow close to the knee, Mr. Paul began to puke. He infected the one of the High People with the arrow in his leg, and the leader made some cynical remark, which I can no longer remember, whereupon all bystanders began to laugh. They laughed so loud, Tommy must have even heard it in church. The organ playing stopped, and when the laughter had faded away, Eater did what had obviously given him his name. My stomach acid now also rose when he asked if the leader, whom he called Benito, wanted the finger bones as usual. “Yes, Eater, of course! You know that. I’m not as big a guy as you are. Everything else looks way too clunky on me. You have to maintain a certain degree of aesthetics. Don’t you think? Besides, I like hands. You can do amazing things with them if you think about it.” Eater hummed to the answer. Then he started gnawing off the doctor’s left hand. It took a long time for the bones to be freed from the flesh to his satisfaction, and I turned my gaze away. I couldn’t close my ears though. Within the surrounding degenerates I could perceive something like unrest. Eater must have been the master of ceremonies for this kind of celebration, but he couldn’t eat the whole doctor on his own. Not all of them were like him. But in at least five of the bone-degenerates, I could detect something like greed in their eyes. A shining. Ominous. Sick. The longer Eater ate, the more they pushed themselves into the foreground, fixed the pieces they wanted with glances. They wore more bone jewelry than the others from Benito’s group. Benito. The Blessed One. A misleading name for this man. At some point, Eater was ready, came close to us and handed the Blessed One his gnawed at hand over our heads. I turned away, but could feel something, it might be blood or saliva, dripping down on me. At close range, Eater stank like the predator he was. “Nice and clean sucked. Good work,” Benito praised. Eater turned around with a nod and went back to the middle of the circle. Then he stopped and turned his face again to Benito thus also to me and the other prisoners. His lips were dyed red in an obscene, false feminine way. I was surprised he hadn’t gotten so much blood. Questioning, he looked at the leader. “Oh, yeah, right. The allotment. You can have the torso if you want. Then you can still ... but please do it somewhere else. We still have work to do here.” Eater’s so far rather expressionless dog face brightened up. Once again he pulled out with his hatchet and struck. He split the upper body of the vampire doctor below the solar plexus. Then he pushed two fingers into the wound, hooked them under the breastbone and carried his prey out of the circle formed by the degenerates with a lightness that testified to great physical strength and was at the same time nauseatingly wrong. Immediately after Eater had left the stage, the other glowing eyes jumped at the remains of the doctor, like a pack of starving dogs. They did not eat on the spot, but did it like their foreman and withdrew somewhere with their prey. All that remained of Mrs. Doctor was some blood and some tissue fragments. Then Benito’s voice resounded behind me again. “Tommy. There you are at last. You’re just in time. We’ve just finished the formalities and now we’re ready to start the fun.” Someone - I assumed it was Benito - put both hands on my shoulders. Was it my turn now? I felt my body trying to elude my control. But then I heard Benito’s voice again: “Like I said, here comes the fun part. Who wants to make the start? The traitor? No. I think he should see what’s ahead of him... and this one... ” The Blessed One pressed my shoulders harder with both hands so that I knew that he had spoken about me. “...will definitely be the last to have the pleasure of losing his life and entertaining us. We’ll start with the one that’s already broken. Let’s go! Let’s go! Let’s go! Let’s go! Bring him forward!” He must have pointed to the wounded of the High People, to the one with the arrow in his leg, for it was he who was roughly dragged down the steps of the church entrance by two Degs. With expectant faces toward their leader, the two stopped in the middle of the circle next to their victim, who fell as soon as they released it. As cautiously as his dwindling powers allowed him to, he tried to get himself up and into a halfway upright posture. I could see from his face, distorted by blood loss and pain, that he had accepted his fate and was now trying to get it over with as much dignity as possible. They wouldn’t let it happen. As soon as he had fought his way to his knees and lifted his head in our and Benito’s direction, one of the guards stepped on the arrow that was stuck in his thigh and drove it in deeper. Instantly he collapsed. His hands, which were also tied to each other again in the meantime, closed around the shaft
of the arrow. His jaws ground as he tried to stand up again. The other of the High People began to insult the degenerates until he received a blow on his shaved skull. “But hello, hello. Look at that! Even now, these guys still have a sense of loyalty. Quite amazing, considering they’re allied with a fucking coward like you.” Again he exerted pressure and something let me know, really deep down, that in his right hand he held the bones of the vampire doctor and pressed them onto my shoulder as if they were some kind of oven cloth. “But we’re not gonna let that impress us, are we?” Even his followers knew when he was asking a rhetorical question. Not one made attempts to answer it. Instead, a dirty grin appeared on almost all of the faces. No. Nobody here would be impressed by something like loyalty and cohesion. Benito continued. “I think I feel like doing something with fire. Generally it would be nice if we could set up some torches or lamps. It’ll be dark soon, and it’ll take us quite a while to finish here.” Shortly there was some movement in the back tiers of the degenerate pack, that I could perceive. I can’t remember individual faces. The sight of what had happened to Frau Doctor had probably blurred my gaze. In any case, the restlessness subsided quite quickly, and it soon became clear which of the Degs would carry out the leader’s command. A handful or perhaps a dozen disappeared from the ring of dirty individuals and soon returned with lamps and torches. I turned my head to the right to see if the guy from the High People whom they had struck on the head had recovered. Indeed, he held himself upright and his gaze was clear as blood flowed from a laceration to the side of his face. Then Benito gave instructions again: “Somehow today I have a weakness for hands. Start with their hands. Or what do you think, Tommy?” The unpleasant pressure disappeared from my shoulders and I heard rustling and movement. In front of my inner eye I saw Benito now laying his hands on Tommy’s shoulders. Perhaps he also stroked his head with a disgustingly tender gesture. Maybe he also lifted the boy´s chin with a finger to get him to look in the right direction. Everything my imagination showed me was disgusting. I heard Tommy make sounds himself, that he said something, and that Benito answered. I can’t remember the exact wording any more than I can remember the faces of the Degs adorned with bones of their victims, but in the end they did what Benito had suggested. They started with the hands. The arms of the delinquent were each grabbed by two degenerates and stretched out to the sides. He started to wriggle when two more came with the torches. It got him nowhere. Nothing but a slap in the face. The blow wasn´t enough. He wriggled and struggled and screamed and yelled so that they had trouble holding him. “Oh, you can’t do that to me. How disgraceful! Get something to tie him up with. He’s messing up all the fun with his fidgeting.” They did what Benito asked. From somewhere they came with a piece of construction fence. Two of them held up the large wire mesh and two others tied his arms to it. The poor pig was still in a kneeling position and the lower edge of the fence pressed relentlessly against the hollows of his knees. Then they started with the right hand. A degenerate approached with a torch and scorched the flesh. His friend of the High People, the one who had taken care of him, endured his cries for about five seconds. Then he jumped up against better knowledge and wanted to run to his help, knowing that he would have no chance to avert his friend’s fate. Anger and fear and incipient madness lay in his roar. He got surprisingly far, considering how many degenerates stood around us. He succeeded in ramming the woman holding the torch with his shoulder and hurling her against the construction fence. She and the two degenerate men who had held up the fence were knocked over, and with them the tied one was pulled back. Mr. Paul still mumbled how sorry he was for everything and so on and did not dare to look at the consequences of his betrayal. Before I could react and take advantage of the resulting turmoil in any way, Benito had already jumped past me, suddenly a long blade in his hands, and had thrown himself into the struggle. It all was over in no time at all and they quickly regained control of the situation. Benito now roared with a red head as he fidgeted with his weapon: “So that’s how much you like your friend? So much that you’re making things worse for him? So much that you’re making things worse for yourself, too? That little bit of fire would have been very gracious contrary to what awaits you now, you hear?” He now shouted directly at the troublemaker, his nose only inches away from the man´s face. Then he bit his ear off. The screams of the man were generally drowned in cheer and laughter. Benito chewed on the ear and finally spat it out. Then he made a gesture, and the degenerates fell silent. Only the whimpering and groaning of the two of the High People and the mad murmur of Mr. Paul could still be heard when Benito said: “Get spears. I have a wonderful idea.”