Ghost Train of Treblinka

by Hubert L. Mullins

  The old man, likely Addey’s father, launched into a barrage of Polish that was so animated by the way he held his hands up that Edmund assumed he probably didn’t even realize he wasn’t talking English anymore.

  “Slow down,” said Edmund.

  He relaxed a little, bit his bottom lip as he struggled to come up with the words he needed. Something in his eyes looked sad and distant, but they gleamed when he finally managed the word, “Sick.”

  “Sick?” said Bill. “So Adlai is sick.”

  “Yah,” said the man. “Adlai sick.”

  “Did he . . .” Edmund’s voice trailed off, unsure if he even wanted to know.

  “He no here,” said the man. “He get sick. He chase . . .” Again, his voice trailed off, searching for the right word. “Sonderzüge. He get sick.”

  “So if he’s not here, where is he?” This question came from Sophie who’d stepped up to talk. “Warsaw? Is he in Warsaw?”

  The man nodded. “War. Saw.”

  Sophie pulled up the map on her phone and zoomed out. She held it for him to see and said, “Show us.”

  The old man, who looked as far removed from such technology as possible, pulled out a pair of bifocals from his shirt pocket, then looked at the map with his nose high in the air. He pointed to a spot far to the east of where they were standing and said, “Bed. Bed here. Sleeping.”

  When he touched the screen, the app placed a bookmark on the spot. Edmund watched as Sophie zoomed in and found the building, nestled right by the Vistula River. The large cross icon indicated this was some sort of hospital or clinic.

  “Thank you,” said Edmund.

  They started to walk away, but the old man turned and said, “Adlai friend.”

  Edmund stopped, faced the old man who looked like he’d just aged twenty years. The woman, Addey’s mom, was peeking out into the street behind her husband.

  “Yes. I’m Adlai’s friend.”

  “Adlai sick.”

  “Right,” said Edmund. “That’s what you said.”

  He shook his head, as if his meaning was escaping this American kid. “Adlai . . .” His eyes searched the sky, the language barrier becoming frustrating. “no wake again.”

  Edmund didn’t know what that meant, but made his blood turn cold, either way. There was no answer he could give the old man, so he simply smiled politely and followed his friends back to the car.

  “What did that mean?” asked Bill.

  “I have no idea,” said Edmund. “I hope it’s not a roundabout way of saying he’s dead. But let’s go see him, shall we? Sophie?”

  “Hold on,” she said, scrolling through something on her phone. “Either of you catch that word? He said Adlai was chasing something.”

  Bill said, “Solder, Sonder?”

  “Sonderzüge,” Edmund said.

  Sophie took a moment to search it. From the backseat Edmund could see the image pop up on her phone, an old black and white photo crowded with people, and for the second time in only a few minutes, his blood turned cold.

  “It means Special Trains,” said Sophie, confusion in her voice. “I don’t understand.”

  Edmund said, “Special Trains were what the Nazis called the trains that carried the Jews to the concentration camps.”

  “Oh,” said Sophie, starting the car. “But Addey, he was . . . chasing one?”

  “Yeah,” said Edmund, a bitter taste in his mouth because this was part of the reason why he wanted to come to Europe. “He was chasing the Ghost Train of Treblinka.”

  ***

  What they saved in car rental they spent in gasoline. By Edmund’s estimates and his rudimentary understanding of gallon to liter conversion, they were paying over double what he’d paid to fill up his Ford Escort back home. While Bill pumped the gas, Edmund stocked up on snacks—things that looked like potato chips or candy—but he knew better than to accept them at face-value. Europeans loved to take something simple and change it a little, to make it something horrible. Peanut butter, chocolate and applesauce for one. Or a cinnamon roll filled with cream corn.

  It was another eight miles across the city, past the train station, and far to the east where the Vistula River cut a swath across Warsaw’s north-south border. In warmer months beachgoers actually came to the river’s edge and spread blankets and volleyball nets. Right now, with the bone-chilling wind, Edmund couldn’t even visualize such a thing.

  The GPS brought them to a small, two-story building that looked very out of place with the riverfront properties lining the street to the left and right. A large, fenced-in area filled with picnic tables was attached to the side but there was no one out there, certainly not in this kind of cold. Edmund didn’t bother trying to read signs in this place, but the large, neon placard didn’t show a hospital cross like he’d expected, but a female’s hands held together, as if in prayer.

  “This isn’t a hospital,” said Edmund. He turned to his unsure companions and added, “Is it?” Poland, and most of Europe was so strange and alien at times that he walked around in a constant state of uncertainty.

  “Maybe it’s a clinic,” said Bill. “C’mon.”

  He led them through the double doors and into a warm lobby that smelled of urine. In the time it took Bill to approach the man sitting at the receptionist’s desk, Edmund had given the place a once-over, and had instantly deduced that it wasn’t a hospital.

  The odor, the soft music coming from down the hall, the three men sitting in heavy robes in a commissary watching television—it all made sense now. Edmund had spent many hours of his childhood coming to a place like this, when his grandmother had fallen and broken her hip and could never live alone again.

  “It’s a nursing home,” Edmund whispered to Sophie. She blankly nodded.

  “Adlai Chobot,” said Bill to the man who simply nodded and motioned for the group to follow. Sophie raised an eyebrow to Edmund and he to her—back in the United States there’d be at least a few questions before someone off the street could venture into the halls of an assisted living facility.

  The receptionist ushered them past a pair of reaching old men who, despite their words in Polish, were just as sad. Edmund hated places like this—hated the smell, the food, the way the hired help smiled while scraping shit off bed-sore ridden asses. It broke his heart to think of his friend interred here. What could possibly have happened to land Addey in such a state?

  At the end of a long, depressing hall, the receptionist stopped, held up a hand and said, “Chobot,” before quietly nodding and walking back to his post. The door was cracked open, and as Edmund paused to enter, he realized his friends were waiting on him to go first.

  Edmund eased the door wider, unsure what waited, but quite certain it wouldn’t be his friend, sitting up, smiling and enjoying a cup of Jell-O. Inside, the room was dark, so he flipped on the light, his eyes burning.

  Adlai was slightly elevated in bed, eyes closed, his stoic face giving no hint of pain or discomfort. His hair had been cut back neatly, his dark skin shaven. Someone had been taking care of him, Edmund thought with a bit of comfort. There was an array of machines—heart monitor, IV drip, ventilator. A tube ran from beneath the single, pale sheet that must have led to a cath.

  “Addey?” Edmund said, reaching out and taking his friend’s cold hand in his own. It was foolish to even think he’d be heard, but what else was there to say? To do? Edmund looked the room over, not seeing a single personal item. The television remote lay upon a table that was so neat that it probably hadn’t been used in years. No flowers, no cards. No trace of a meal eaten here. Did his parents come visit him? Did they come and say his name, just as Edmund had?

  Bill and Sophie said nothing, simply hung by the door to the bathroom, letting Edmund have a moment with his friend. He just sat on the edge of the bed, looking at his friend, wondering what could have happened.

  “This explains why his dad said he wouldn’t wake up,” said Edmund. “It’s a coma, right?”

 
“It’s weird,” said Sophie. “My best friend in elementary school was in a car wreck and she had so many machines keeping her alive, but she also had wounds. I don’t see any of those.”

  Edmund pulled up the blanket and found a dingy hospital gown atop hairy legs, the cath tube running down the edge. He pulled down Addey’s robe from the collar but saw nothing more than heart monitors and a tube bandaged to his stomach. There wasn’t a single thing to suggest trauma. So how did he end up this way?

  They sat for a moment longer, and as Edmund was about to say something to Bill, a woman entered the room, almost stopping dead from a sprint. She looked at the three kids sitting around Addey and her eyes beamed.

  “He’s never had a visitor,” she said excitedly. This nurse, a younger lady who couldn’t have been many years older than Edmund, spoke in such good English that it made him long for his own country.

  “His parents?” Bill asked.

  She just shook her head. “No. They came once to fill out the paperwork to get him here but that’s it. They’ve not been back.”

  Edmund’s anger flared, wondering just how a parent could so easily turn a blind eye to a sick child. He was lucky he came from a family that would never have done such a thing.

  “What’s wrong with him?’ Sophie asked.

  The nurse entered the room and fixed his collar. That’s when Edmund knew she was the one who’d been taking care of him, the angel who’d made sure he didn’t develop sores and who kept his hair neatly trimmed. She said, “We honestly don’t know. He doesn’t have much brain function. Heart is fine. The prevailing theory is a stroke, but he’s not been properly tested for that. When they found him, they took him to the hospital for examination, kept him three days, then it was his parents’ prerogative to send him here.”

  “So they just abandoned him,” Edmund said, voice rising.

  “I wouldn’t be so tough on them,” she said. “They both work, they’re both, what’s the word? Elderly? You see the machinery needed to keep him alive. This could not be done at home. As awful as it sounds, this is where he needs to be.”

  “Still, they could at least come visit,” said Edmund.

  She nodded, conceding the point. She moved past Edmund and opened up the drawer under the television and pulled out a green storage tote. Inside was a pair of jeans, a sweatshirt, shoes, and a clear plastic bag holding a wallet and a few other odds and ends.

  “This was all of his belongings,” she said. “His phone was found about twenty meters away, and it was a miracle someone saw it out there in the snow. My guess is that it’s broken. We forgot to give all of this to his parents and they haven’t returned any of our calls. I suppose you can have it.”

  “Thank you,” Edmund said, taking the baggie and opening it.

  “I’m just starting my shift. I’ll be at the desk should you need me. It was good of you to come visit him.” With that, she turned and left.

  Inside the bag was Addey’s wallet which held a few banknotes, a credit card, driver’s license, a voter ID card, and a little metal cross on a green background. Edmund held it up for his friends to see, nearly fighting back tears. Bill and Sophie just grinned.

  This was a pin from their high school, West King’s Cross. During the fall, the yearbook committee held a fundraiser where they sold the pins which the students dubbed Impurity Crosses. The idea was that a boy gave one to the girl he fancied and if she accepted it, they went to the spring formal together. It was bad luck for a boy to graduate with an Impurity Cross still on his person. Addey never got the chance. He never dated, never had a girlfriend while at WKC. He’d kept his cross in his wallet and dragged it all the way back to Poland, where it would stay forevermore.

  Tucked in the jeans of his pocket was a small key with a blue, diamond-shaped tag. It read: Krakus House – 1. Edmund remembered the name coming up on several occasions when he talked about visiting Poland.

  The only other item Edmund cared about was Addey’s bright green cellphone, a sleek newer model than the one he’d had back in high school. Edmund tried to power it on but naturally the battery was dead. He was left there holding the device, staring into the black void of the screen and wondering what it could tell him. Without much thought, Edmund slid the phone into his back pocket.

  He didn’t care to take any of the other belongings with him. The only logical thing to do with them was deliver them to the Chobots, but Edmund wasn’t about to go back there, not after what the nurse had told him. Carefully he folded the pants and the shirt and placed them back neatly in the tote, then returned the tote to the drawer.

  He looked at his friend one last time, put a hand up to his cool brow, then followed his companions out into the sad, dim hallway. The pair of robed gentlemen had moved on, replaced by a single lady with braided hair who watched them from a wheelchair as they passed by. Edmund just smiled and tipped his head.

  At the desk, Edmund turned to his friends and said, “Go on, I’ll be out there in a moment.”

  Sophie and Bill nodded, joined hands, then marched out toward the car.

  The nurse was putting checkmarks in a ledger when Edmund approached the counter. Again, her eyes lit up, happy to see one of those who’d been nice enough to visit her curious patient. He took a business card from a little deck on the counter, flipped it over, then scribbled his cellphone number and name on it.

  “If there’s any change, could you possibly give me a call?”

  She took his number, glanced at it, then nodded sincerely.

  Edmund started to walk off, but turned back just as she had started to busy herself once more with paperwork.

  “You said he was found.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Adlai. You said they found him. Where?”

  Her face darkened. “In the woods. About half a mile from the Treblinka Memorial.”

  Warsaw

  January 8th, 2019

  Edmund stayed quiet for most of the evening and Sophie nor Bill pressed him to talk. Seeing Addey in such a state was a much bigger deal for him and they understood that. He was torn between feeling bad for his friend and feeling like an embarrassing drag on this trip.

  The evening was uneventful. They ate, they did a little sightseeing around the city by foot, then settled in at the BnB just as the sun was going down. Edmund stooped down to pet the Corgi in the old man’s foyer, said his goodnight, then went up to his room.

  “Where to in the morning?” said Bill, leaning against his doorway in the hall. Sophie was gathering her bathroom bag to go take a shower.

  Edmund shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. I know you want to get down to Romania. That would be fine.”

  “We can hang around another few days if you want,” said Bill. Sophie walked by, kissed him on the cheek and then headed to the bathroom, wordlessly letting them talk.

  “Maybe,” he said, distant. “I’m sorry I’m not much fun right now.”

  “Let’s do some ghost hunting.” This comment was made from down the hall, just as Sophie was about to go into the communal bathroom.

  “Seriously?” asked Bill, laughing a little.

  “Why not? Ed brought his cool little infrared camera, after all. It’s what he and Addey wanted to do. So let’s go do it. Addey will be there in spirit.”

  Bill turned to look at Edmund and raised an eyebrow. “Whatcha think, buddy?”

  Stay away from Treblinka, Addey had said.

  Edmund shrugged, but couldn’t hide the tiny smile that had surfaced. “Could be fun. Let’s talk about it in the morning.”

  “Okay,” Bill said. The bathroom door behind them shut as Sophie went in. “Well sleep well.”

  Unfortunately Edmund could not sleep well at all. At two different times throughout the night he’d heard some sort of siren. It wasn’t the warble of an American ambulance or cop car either, but a strange, high chirrup that was so off-putting that he woke from a dead sleep.

  It was nearly two in the morning when he sat up in bed and de
cided to take a shower, rather than wait until after he slept. While undressing, he found Addey’s phone in his jeans pocket and the events of the day came back to his tired, troubled mind.

  He turned it over, immediately clueless as to the type of charger he would need. Perhaps he could find one of those universal, knock-off brands. Those were abundant in America and online, but he wasn’t so sure around here. It had been a struggle just to track down a can of shaving cream early this week.

  Still, if he could only charge the phone and see what was on it . . .

  Half an hour later he was bathed, dressed, and standing by Sophie and Bill’s bedroom door, listening for any sort of movement on the other side. They were asleep, surely, but if he’d heard even the slightest noise, he’d planned to knock and ask if they wanted to go for a late-night walk.

  Downstairs, the old man, which they learned earlier was named Eliasz, was sleeping soundly in his chair, the recliner tilted back. The Corgi, named Boczek, was curled across his lap. Edmund had a key to the door, but it was unlocked. He held up his hand and grabbed the bell, then did his best to walk himself out while keeping it from ringing.

  It was chilly out, doubly so with Edmund’s wet hair. The street in which the BnB operated was residential, so this late at night there weren’t people milling about. He followed the sounds of the highway, remembering that foot traffic crossed a median bridge, and on the other side of that was a conglomerate of shops—which may not even be open at such an hour.

  Warsaw was lit up at night. In the distance a plane was coming in, its flashing light growing closer to the ground as it cut across the sky. Most every building and monument had floodlights to keep them bright, and neither were in short supply after he crossed the bridge.

  He passed two synagogues on his way there. So far he’d lost count of them while in Warsaw, at least the ones that were easily identifiable by their domed roofs. Edmund thought, eighty years ago, those kinds of places would be bulldozed just for existing. Had the Germans decimated this city instead of almost decimating it, Warsaw would look a lot different today.