Nathan saw an evenly lit space, all walls white, three feet high, less than twice his height in length, and only his height in width.
“Cozy, isn’t it?” Hain said. “And really it’s not as I said. I should correct myself. You can leave anytime.”
“But then I forfeit The Book.”
“Oh no. Whenever you leave, the book becomes yours. You have my word. Or you can leave now but leave without your precious book. I guarantee you, though, Mr. Nols, The Book of Yulen has the power to change you and yulen destiny. I can swear that to you.”
He had no choice, Nathan thought. He did have a choice of course to leave, but it was irrelevant. He’d come for The Book of Yulen. He had determined to risk everything. To leave was not only unthinkable but a betrayal to all who had come with him, trusted and hoped, and could not be there. For himself, for them, and for theirs, there was no question. “I’ll stay.”
“Splendid, and thank you. Allow me to hold the door for you.”
Hain held the door as his guest crawled into the low ceiling coffin like room.
“And there’ll be music. Did I forget to mention it?”
The room felt warm to Nols, and certainly much better than the chamber in Minsk. He heard the door click shut, checked the solid knob, and as he expected, it did not turn. Rows of recessed bulbs in the ceiling shined harshly on him, and along one of the longer walls, he saw a glass window from behind which Hain came up against the glass.
“Hello again, Mr. Nols. I trust you hear me alright,” Nathan heard Hain’s voice enter through speakers. “It’s a lovely time we’re going to have you and I. Nearly four weeks did you say? How nice to have you as my guest that long. How nice to see you slowly die.” Hain moved away from the glass, and as soon as he did, screams blared from the speakers. Female screams. A single female’s screams. Loud enough, that Nols covered his ears. Before long from the increasing heat of the bright room and ringing in his ears, he felt he was suffocating. When the screaming stopped, Hain spoke, “Like that, Mr. Nols?”
He did not respond.
“Mr. Nols, I asked if you liked it.”
His head shook no.
“That’s too bad. You’re going to hear it all day and all night, with breaks for very nasty music, oh how is it called? Heavy metal hate music or something. All I know is it’s enough to keep anyone awake at night. You might even welcome the screams after a while. The woman’s screams. The screams like that of my daughter. My daughter, Mr. Nols. The love of my life and reason for my life that you, one of you, took from me. One of you yulen, vile, vicious, odious yulen trash. There are no words to describe how low and loathsome you and your cretinous creatures are, so I won’t bore you with platitudes. That you actually believe you’re gifts are enlightenment, lights unto the world, purity and sanctity and blessedness, revolts me. That you believe yourselves good, all good, good all the time, only goodness, you won’t blame me if I tell you, disgusts me. Will you? Will you, Mr. Nols?”
The screams returned, louder, reflecting off the painted metallic surfaces of the box. “Get used to it Mr. Nols. These screams will be your constant companion. You’ll get to memorize every start, phrase, and timpani shattering call for mercy.”
“You said I could leave.”
“I did. Go ahead. Leave. Leave whenever you want. Whenever you’re able, Mr. Nols.”
“The door’s locked.”
“Yes, you bastard. My life is locked. Ended. My only purpose and relief—the destruction of as many of you as I can. Not just destroyed, but destroyed painfully. Your pain, my pleasure, as you destroyed and enjoyed my daughter.”
“We never did that for pleasure, Mr. Hain, but instinct, command, commanded by nature, in order to survive. Like a bear or—”
“Spare yourself, Mr. Nols. Do you think you’re the first of yours to be in this room? Do you think I haven’t talked and heard all your foul reasoning and explanations before? Spare yourself and me. You are monsters. And as monsters, must be destroyed. And I have killed as many and will continue to kill as many of you as I am able. Each one, one less of you on Earth, is a benediction to the planet.”
“So you aim to see me die.”
“You’re catching on, Mr. Nols. Reveal to you the powers found in The Book of Yulen? I would be insane. But now, Mr. Nols, I must attend to other duties. I leave you with the sound of music, or do you have a preference?”
“Were you ever known as H. H. von Nauman?”
“H. H. von Nauman,” Hain smiled. “New York?”
“Yes.”
“You were him?”
“Yes.”
“You survived . . . ,” Hain said intrigued. “Or did you lose your nerve? Not go through with it.”
“A technical difficulty,” he said, seeming to look away disappointed.
“Technical difficulty?” Hain chuckled. “It was the most un-technical way of death anyone could think of. Granted, I thought it was a brilliant bit of theater, I must say.”
“Theater?”
“Yes.”
“Would it have worked, if—”
“Does it really matter, now?”
“Yes. Would it have worked?”
“Would you have somehow transmuted, your heart restarted, returned to the heart of a man, and become to know, what . . . love? Love? You sought love.”
“Yes. Would the procedure have worked, Mr. Hain?”
“Hmmm . . .”
“Why won’t you tell me?”
“I think I’d rather keep you wondering as you have. I like that it still torments you. But I do think you are a naïve creature.”
“I believed you.”
“So you believed. That doesn’t make you deserving of anything. You believed because you wanted to believe.”
“I did. I did want to believe. I did want to hope and believe it was true. Was it?”
“Mr. Nols, I think you know the answer. If by now, here, in there, after these many weeks, and meeting me, you can’t answer that question for yourself, you are doomed to your own self-deception—as I must agree most men are—and that at least is something you can say you share with us.”
“You avoid answering the question.”
“You’re in no position to make demands on me, Mr. Nols. Again, I give you a choice, screams, or music?”
Nols did not answer.
“I offer you a choice, Mr. Nols . . . Mr. Nols? Damn you then, the screams and the music from hell.”
In an instant the tomb vibrated from the woman’s screams and the sounds of musical demons, screeching, pounding, the glaring lights turned to flashing. Four, even two weeks, Nathan realized, he would not survive, or at least not sane. He had to get out and quick. He’d already pushed the walls, and they were solid. The glass as well, thick and unbreakable by kicking. Besides, if there were a way to break out, the other poor yulen who’d come through there would have found it. Along the walls, signs of their tormented desperation remained. Fingernail trails filled the surface. Just opposite his nose on the floor, he spotted a dried fingernail, then a second. How many had he killed in that chamber? Waiting was no option. He had to get out soon or lose his mind. He again pushed against the only other possibility, the recessed lights, but they were behind solid glass bricks. There was no way out, and Hain intended to keep him there.
The agonizing screams and piercing metallic din stopped when Hain returned, but the ringing in his ears continued.
“I have a serious condition, Mr. Hain. Please, I’ll die if not let out.”
“You will die? It’s called mortality, Mr. Nols, your condition.”
“No. Another. You must let me out,” Nathan said, becoming anxious.
“Leave when you’re able. That was my condition. Go ahead.”
“The door’s locked. Unlock it. Please, Mr. Hain. Please stop this. Stop or I’ll die.”
“Mr. Nols . . .”
“Please. I suffer from a yulen condition. I won’t survive the night. Mercy. Mercy, please,” he b
egged, going to the glass.
“Mercy. Pity. How many endless days have I spent with my grief asking if they could have been shown to my daughter by the animal who took her, killed her, consumed her! Consumed her, Mr. Nols! Consumed! Consumed so he might live! My innocent beautiful daughter taken so he could live!”
“It wasn’t me, Mr. Hain. I’m innocent, and I’ll die by morning if not let out. Please. Mercy.”
“Die you bastard, die! Your condition, I spit on your condition. Die! Give you The Book of Yulen and see you overcome your deficiencies? Become equal to us? Even beyond us? Never, never, never! Die animal, die!”
“Please . . . I won’t survive to morning.”
“Round you up. Kill every last one of you, you bastard! Die. Die. Die!”
The screams switched on full. Nols fell back from the glass, covering his ears, his head shaking from the woman’s blood-curdling screams.
On it went for hours, Hain returning hourly to watch, but maybe more often, minutes seeming hours to the entombed.
>
Hain returned to the glass window and turned off the harrowing sounds. He saw his guest stretched facing the far wall. He flicked the lights. The body did not respond.
“Mr. Nols. Wake up, Mr. Nols.”
The body did not move. Hain knocked on the glass. He saw no motion from the body. He turned the sound on full, and then off, and again no movement from Nols. “Get up, Mr. Nols. Don’t play possum with me. I’ll leave you for days. You’ll eventually respond. Now get up.”
Nothing.
“I said get up!”
Nols looked dead.
Hain left the room. He entered the foyer and stopped at the entrance to his special guest room. Before kneeling to open the door, off a dartboard on the opposite wall he pulled three darts from the bristle, then hunched and opened the low door.
He looked in and saw Nols’ body unchanged, the head angled toward the door. “Nols, get up. Up. You won’t trick me, you know.” Hain took one of the darts, pulled back, and threw it at the body. The dart’s tip penetrated Nols’ head. Hain waited and watched the dart’s shaft slowly ease from the cranium and fall to the floor. “You’re not getting away this.” Hain aimed a second steel dart, threw, and its tip entered Nathan’s back. It induced not the slightest movement from the body.
Hain then crawled into the box, pulled back his arm, and let go the third dart. It nailed Nathan’s upper shoulder, and it looked to Hain that the body moved. “Ahhh, I think I saw something that time, Mr. Nols,” Hain smiled relieved. “Now, get up. Get up! Or I’ll have my revenge on your body, pulling your filthy dermis from your flesh! Get up, Nols! Up! The body did not move.
“I know you’re unable to harm me,” Hain said, removing a shoe to hold the door open. “I know you can’t do anything to hurt me.” He moved closer to the body. “So help me, if I find you alive, you’ll wish I hadn’t. Now, get up. Get up!”
He went beside the body. His fist struck it again. “Up. Up. Don’t you die on me. I haven’t finished with you.”
As Hain’s hands pressed on the body to turn it over, it’s firm feet flat against the back wall strained from bent knees, pushed, and legs uncoiling, the body thrust toward the door the way Nathan had practiced repeatedly that night when Hain was away. “Bastard!” Hain screamed, lunging for the sprung body, falling onto its legs. “Bastard!” He stabbed Nols’ flailing legs with a dart from the floor. “Lying bastard!”
Nathan’s hands grabbed the doorframe, his legs thrashing. Hain, trying to climb onto the kicking legs, kept stabbing the dart into ankles and thighs, and then accidentally into his own hand. “Aghh—you bastard!” he screamed, hands loosening, and in that instant Nols pulling away, making it through the door, but not before Hain reached it.
They battled straining against the door on opposite sides.
“Lying bastard!”
Each struggled pushing against the separation, Nathan’s side starting to close.
“No! No! Nooooo!” Hain screamed, when with the faintest of clicks the door latch caught and the door locked.
“Come back you bastard!” Hain hysterically screamed from the pen. “Bastard! You bastard animal! Bastard!”
Nathan doddered to his stabbed legs, and Hain’s yelling receded as he straggled into Hain’s study, where The Book of Yulen rested open on the desk, the light shining on it. He fell into a chair to catch his breath. He could not believe that finally he was within arm’s reach of The Book. The fireplace roared. Out of windows behind him he saw it was still night. A wall clock showed it was still the night of the day he arrived. Above the roaring fireplace hung the oil of Hain’s daughter, and the flames’ reflections playing on her face gave the illusion it moved. Hain’s screams were no more than muffled noise.
Nathan stood and took a step to the desk, then stopped. Something about the sudden ease of gaining the book did not fit. He looked up to the spotlight warmly directing him to his quest’s end. He looked around and picked up the long iron fireplace poker, and holding its end while standing back from the desk, stretched his arm out and eased the point under the book. Slowly, the poker pushed up, raising the book, and when the lifted volume was on its edge, the desk caved in, breaking in two, the two sides snapping against their center like a giant bear trap.
Whoever the trap snapped, if not immediately killed would sprawl caught and mangled with the book. Clearly, that book was a decoy, the real one too valuable to harm or leave out.
He gazed along Hain’s sanctum that contained his daughter’s portrait, and where the real book must be. The door ahead, a closet, he stepped to it, turned the knob and cautiously opened the door. When what stood inside the closet revealed itself, his spirit dropped to his knees and he feel against the doorframe. Lifting its putrefied head, raising its white eyes, a creature trembled before him. Thick twine wrapped around the yulen’s neck secured him to the wall behind.
Nathan’s breast heaved. The yulen, at late season’s end days, barely able to lift his arms, placed his hands before his face to protect himself from this man— for he did not smell of yulen.
Nathan, overcome with great sadness slid his arms around the thin frail body and embraced it. And the yulen, with equal softness toward this person toward him his end of season calling had not responded, lowered his hands from his face and embraced him in turn, fellow yulen. And should the imprisoned yulen hold any doubt of who he was, between swelling breasts Nathan breathed, “Brother . . . Brother . . . ,” and he sobbed together with his kin.
Nathan looked around the room for something to cut the yulen’s tether. From a draw, he took scissors, cut the rope, and freed him. He helped him from the closet, the yulen’s strides stiff. He was near death, but might have sufficient strength to accomplish his taking, Nathan thought.
The ungainly near-corpse leaned against his rescuer as Nathan led him to the foyer. Hain yelled inside the box. The dying yulen caught the faintest of scents, and his calling began pushing him, directing him, toward the far wall. But before he went there, his spindly arm lifted and pointed to the portrait of Hain’s daughter. Nathan nodded and watched him go. He could help him no more.
He returned to Hain’s sanctum, and went to look behind the oil painting. Angling the frame away from the wall, he saw something. He lifted the painting from its hooks and placed it down beyond the roaring fire. From behind the painting and above the fireplace, an inset metallic hatch covered a recess in the wall. He slid it open, and saw resting before him The Book of Yulen. He adoringly reached for it, fingers closing tenderly around its edges. Horrible screams beyond the foyer startled him and the book almost fell from the nook into the fire. He listened to the screams, could not tell whose they were, and continued removing The Book from its resting place.
With reverence he took the ancient volume, knowing its worth and importance, and how many yulen suffered and dyed to hold it as he did. Soon he would own and read it, and from it gain the power to end the afflictions they’d endured for
centuries at the hand of man. Holding it practically like a newborn against his body, he stepped away from the fireplace, then startled. A ferocious scream like fire sirens coming at him blared from the foyer. Turning, he saw Hain rushing him arms raised, the fierceness of Hell contorting his face. Reacting to protect himself from the lunging attack, he instinctively raised his arms, book still in his hands, and hurtling onto him, Hain grabbed it and fell into the fire.
Hain and his tightly held book instantly caught fire. Nathan tried to take hold of Hain’s legs and pull him out, but the legs kicked as the upper body rolled in the licking flames. Quickly, Nathan took the iron poker and pulled on Hain’s hands to release the book, but Hain held tight, hate filled, refusing to give it up, taking it with him so it never fall into yulen hands. However, as Hain’s consciousness slipped, his grip let go, and Nathan plucked the book from the fire. Still alive and crazed, Hain’s flaming body sprung from the fire and flung itself onto Nathan. Shaking side to side, Nathan tossed him, and Hain fell into the window drapes, igniting them. Falling onto the burning book, Nathan tried to dampen its flames, but the fire seared his chest. He slapped the books flames with open palms, and that only broke the book into charred pieces, so he again lowered his chest onto the book’s remains to smother further destruction.
Behind him, the wall was on fire, blaze spreading to the furniture. Remaining on top of the book, Nathan’s chest put the book’s consuming fire out. He tore a piece off the burning curtain, spread it on the floor, and tossed charred clumps of the book onto it. Taking the wrapped bundle, he ran from the fire roaring room.
In the foyer, he saw the yulen’s unmoving body caught in the doorway to the low room, dead. Fire engine horns neared. Coughing, he threw open the front door and hastened over the house’s bushes, the next house, and the next as fire trucks roared by.
XXVII
In a toilet stall of a Brussels gas station after escaping the blaze at Hain’s house, Nathan Nols opened the torn curtain in which he’d tossed the pieces of The Book of Yulen he salvaged. Most of the black content was ashes. Mostly surviving was a long piece from the spine, but lamentably, its unburned parchment held empty margin. Those few fragments preserving legible script, he carefully slid between pages of the thickest paperback he found in the station’s quick mart. He did not try to decipher them out of context, except for one fragment that conserved its heading, On Return to Origin and Yulen Remain.
Yulen: Return of the Beast – Mystery Suspense Thriller (Yulen - Book 2) Page 26