The Keep

by F. Paul Wilson

  The back of her scalp suddenly turned to fire and her feet almost left the ground as the second soldier yanked viciously on the fistful of hair and kerchief he had grabbed as she leaped past him. But he was not satisfied with that. As tears of pain sprang to her eyes, he pulled her toward him by her hair, placed a hand between her breasts, and slammed her against the wall.

  Magda lost her breath and felt consciousness fade as her shoulders and the back of her head struck the stone with numbing force. The next few moments were a collage of blurs and disembodied voices:

  “You didn’t kill her, did you?”

  “She’ll be all right.”

  “Doesn’t know her place, that one.”

  “Perhaps no one’s ever taken the time to properly teach her.”

  A brief pause, then: “In there.”

  Still in a fog, her body numb, her vision blurred, Magda felt herself dragged by the arms along the cold stone floor, pulled around a corner and out of the direct light. She realized she was in one of the rooms. But why? When they released her arms, she heard the door close, saw the room go dark, felt them fall upon her, fumbling over each other in their urgency, one trying to pull her skirt down while the other tried to lift it up to her waist to get at her undergarments.

  She would have screamed but her voice was gone, would have fought back but her arms and legs were leaden and useless, would have been utterly terrified had it not all seemed so far away and dreamlike. Over the hunched shoulders of her assailants she could see the lighted outline of the door to the corridor. She wanted to be out there.

  Then the outline of the door changed, as if a shadow had moved across it. She sensed a presence outside the door. Suddenly, with a thundering crash the door split down the middle and smashed open, showering them all with splinters and larger fragments of wood. A form—huge, masculine—filled the doorway, blotting out most of the light.

  Glenn! she thought at first, but that hope was instantly doused by the wave of cold and malevolence flooding the room.

  The startled Germans cried out in terror as they rolled away from her. The form seemed to swell as it leaped forward. Magda felt herself kicked and jostled as the two soldiers dove for the weapons they had lain aside. But they were not quick enough. The newcomer was upon them with blinding swiftness, bending, grasping each soldier by the throat, and then straightening up again to his full height.

  Magda’s head began to clear as the horror of what she was watching broke through to her. It was Molasar who stood over her, a huge, black figure silhouetted in the light from the corridor, two red points of fire where his eyes should be, and in each hand a struggling, kicking, choking, gagging einsatzkommando held out at arm’s length on either side of him. He clutched them until their movements slowed and their strangled, agonized sounds died away, until both hung limp in his hands. He then shook them violently, so violently that Magda could hear the bones and cartilage in their necks snap, break, grind, and splinter. Then he threw them into a dark corner and disappeared after them.

  Fighting her pain and weakness, Magda rolled over and struggled to a crouching position on her hands and knees. She still was not able to get to her feet. It would take a few more minutes before her legs would support her.

  Then came a sound—a greedy, sibilant, sucking noise that made her want to retch. It drove her to her feet and, after she leaned against the wall for an instant, propelled her toward the light of the corridor.

  She had to get out! Her father was forgotten in the wake of the unspeakable horror taking place in the room behind her. The corridor wavered as she stumbled toward the ruptured wall, but she determinedly held on to consciousness. She reached the opening without falling, but as she stepped through, she caught a movement out of the corner of her eye.

  Molasar was coming, his long, purposeful stride bringing him swiftly, gracefully closer, his cloak billowing behind him, his eyes bright, his lips and chin smeared with blood.

  With a small cry, Magda ducked inside the wall and ran for the steps to the subcellar. It did not seem even remotely possible that she could outrun him, yet she refused to give in. She sensed him close behind her but did not look around. Instead she leaped for the steps.

  As she landed, her heel skidded on slime and she began to fall. Strong arms, cold as the night, gripped her from behind, one slipping around her back, the other beneath her knees. She opened her mouth to scream out her terror and revulsion but her voice was locked. She felt herself lifted and carried downward. After one brief, horrified glance at the angular lines of Molasar’s pale, blood-flecked face, his long, unkempt, stringy hair, the madness in his eyes, she was carried out of the light and into the subcellar and could no longer see anything.

  Molasar turned. He was bearing her toward the stairwell in the base of the watchtower. She tried to fight him but his grip easily overcame her best efforts. Finally she gave up. She would save her strength until she saw a chance to escape.

  As before, despite her multiple layers of clothing, she sensed numbing cold where he touched her. He had a heavy, stale odor about him. And although he did not appear physically dirty, he seemed…unclean.

  He carried her through the narrow opening into the base of the tower.

  “Where…?” Her voice croaked out the first word of her question before her terror strangled it.

  No answer came.

  Magda had begun to shiver as they had moved through the subcellar; now, on the stairwell, her teeth were chattering. Contact with Molasar seemed to be siphoning off her body heat.

  All was dark around them, yet Molasar was taking the steps two at a time with ease and confidence. After a full circuit around the inner surface of the tower’s base, he stopped. Magda felt the sides of the niche within the ceiling press around her, heard stone grate upon stone, and then light poured in on her.

  “Magda!” Papa’s voice.

  As her pupils adjusted to the change in light, she felt herself placed on her feet and released. She put out a hand and felt it contact the armrest of Papa’s wheelchair. She grasped it, clung to it like a drowning sailor clutching a floating plank.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked in a harsh, shocked whisper.

  “Soldiers…” was all she could say. As her vision adjusted, she found Papa staring at her openmouthed.

  “They abducted you from the inn?”

  She shook her head. “No. I came in below.”

  “But why would you do such a foolish thing?”

  “So you would not have to face him alone.”

  Magda did not make any gesture toward Molasar. Her meaning was clear.

  The room had darkened noticeably since her arrival. She knew Molasar was standing somewhere behind her in the shadows by the hinged stone, but she could not bring herself to look in his direction.

  She went on: “Two of the SS soldiers caught me. They pulled me into a room. They were going to…”

  “What happened?” Papa asked, his eyes wide.

  “I was…” Magda glanced briefly over her shoulder at the shadow. “…saved.”

  Papa continued to stare at her, no longer with shock or concern, but with something else—disbelief.

  “By Molasar?”

  Magda nodded and finally found the strength to turn and face Molasar. “He killed them both!”

  She stared at him. He stood in shadow by the open slab of stone, cloaked in darkness, a figure out of a nightmare, his face dimly seen but his eyes bright. The blood was gone from his face, as if it had been absorbed through the skin rather than wiped away. Magda shuddered.

  “Now you’ve ruined everything!” Papa said, startling her with the anger in his voice. “Once the new bodies are found I’ll be subjected to the full force of the major’s wrath! And all because of you!”

  “I came here to be with you,” Magda said, stung. Why was he angry with her?

  “I did not ask you to come! I did not want you here before, and I do not want you here now!”

  “Papa
, please!”

  He pointed a gnarled finger at the opening in the wall.

  “Leave, Magda! I have too much to do and too little time in which to do it! The Nazis will soon be storming in here asking me why two more of their men are dead and I will have no answer! I must speak to Molasar before they arrive!”

  “Papa—”

  “Go!”

  Magda stood and stared at him. How could he speak to her this way? She wanted to cry, wanted to plead, wanted to slap some sense into him. But she could not. She could not defy him, even before Molasar. He was her father, and although she knew he was being brutally unfair, she could not defy him.

  Magda turned and rushed past the impassive Molasar into the opening. The slab swung closed behind her and she was again in darkness. She felt in her waistband for the flashlight—gone! It must have fallen out somewhere.

  Magda had two alternatives: return to Papa’s room and ask for a lamp or a candle, or descend in the dark.

  After only a few seconds she chose the latter. She could not face Papa again tonight. He had hurt her more than she had ever known she could be hurt. A change had come over him. He was somehow losing his gentleness, and losing the empathy that had always been part of him. He had dismissed her tonight as though she were a stranger. And he hadn’t even cared enough to be sure she had a light with her!

  Magda bit back a sob. She would not cry! But what was there to do? She felt helpless. And worse, she felt betrayed.

  The only thing left was to leave the keep. She began her descent, relying on touch alone. She could see nothing, but knew that if she kept her left hand against the wall and took each step slowly and carefully, she could make it to the bottom without falling to her death.

  As she completed the first spiral, Magda half expected to hear that odd scraping sound through the opening into the subcellar. But it did not come. Instead, there was a new sound in the dark—louder, closer, heavier. She slowed her progress until her left hand slid off the stone of the wall and met the cool air flowing through the opening. The noise grew as she listened.

  It was a scuffling sound, a dragging, fulsome, shambling sound that set her teeth on edge and dried her tongue so it stuck to the roof of her mouth. This could not be rats…much too big. It seemed to come from the deeper darkness to her left. Off to the right, dim light still seeped down from the cellar above, but it did not reach to the area where the sound was. Just as well. Magda did not want to see what was over there.

  She groped wildly across the opening and, for a mind-numbing moment, could not find the far edge. Then her hand contacted cold, wonderfully solid stone and she continued downward, faster than before, dangerously fast, her heart pounding, her breath coming in gulps. If the thing in the subcellar was coming her way, she had to be out of the keep by the time it reached the stairwell.

  She kept going down, endlessly down, every so often looking back over her shoulder in an instinctive and utterly futile attempt to see in the darkness. A dim rectangle beckoned to her as she reached the bottom. She stumbled toward it, through it, and out into the fog. She swung the slab closed and leaned against it, gasping with relief.

  After composing herself, Magda realized that she had not escaped the malevolent atmosphere of the keep by merely stepping outside its walls. This morning the vileness that permeated the keep had stopped at the threshold; now it extended beyond the walls. She began to walk, to stumble through the darkness. It was not until she was almost to the stream that she felt she had escaped the aura of evil.

  Suddenly from above came faint shouts, and the fog brightened. The lights in the keep had been turned up to maximum. Someone must have found the two newly dead bodies.

  Magda continued to move away from the keep. The extra light was no threat, for none of it reached her. It filtered down like sunshine viewed from the bottom of a murky lake. The light was caught and held by the fog, thickening it, whitening it, concealing her rather than revealing her. She splashed carelessly across the stream this time without pausing to remove her shoes and stockings—she wanted to be away from the keep as quickly as possible. The shadow of the causeway passed overhead and soon she was at the base of the wedge of rubble. After a brief rest to catch her breath, she began to climb until she reached the upper level of the fog. It filled the gorge almost completely now, leaving only a short unprotected distance to the top. A few seconds of exposure and she would be safe.

  Magda pulled herself up over the rim and ran in a half-crouch. As she felt the brush enfold her, her foot caught on a root and she fell headlong, striking her left knee on a stone. She hugged the knee to her chest and began to cry, long, wracking sobs far out of proportion to the pain. It was anguish for Papa, relief at being safely away from the keep, a reaction to all she had seen and heard there, to all that had been done to her, or almost done to her.

  “You’ve been to the keep.”

  It was Glenn. She could think of no one she wanted more to see at this moment. Hurriedly drying her eyes on her sleeve, she stood—or tried to. Her injured knee sent a knifing pain up her leg and Glenn put out a hand to keep her from falling.

  “Are you hurt?” His voice was gentle.

  “Just a bruise.”

  She tried to take a step but the leg refused to bear her weight. Without a word, Glenn scooped her up in his arms and began carrying her back to the inn.

  It was the second time tonight she had been carried so. But this time was different. Glenn’s arms were a warm sanctuary, thawing all the cold left by Molasar’s touch. As she leaned against him she felt all the fear ooze out of her. But how had he come up behind her without her hearing him? Or had he been standing there all along, waiting for her?

  Magda let her head rest on his shoulder, feeling safe, at peace.

  If only I could feel this way forever.

  He carried her effortlessly through the front door of the inn, through the empty foyer, up the stairs, and into her room. After depositing her gently on the edge of the bed, he knelt before her.

  “Let’s take a look at that knee.”

  Magda hesitated at first, then drew her skirt up over her left knee, leaving the right one covered and keeping the rest of the heavy fabric tight around and between her thighs. In the back of her mind was the thought that she should not be sitting here on a bed exposing her leg to a man she hardly knew. But somehow…

  Her coarse, dark blue stocking was torn, revealing a purpling bruise on the kneecap. The flesh was swollen, puffy. Glenn stepped over to the near side of the dresser and dipped a washcloth into the water pitcher, then brought the cloth over and placed it on her knee.

  “That ought to help,” he said.

  “What’s gone wrong with the keep?” she asked, staring at his red hair, trying to ignore, and yet reveling in, the tingling warmth that crept steadily up her thigh from where his hand held the cloth against her.

  He looked up at her. “You were there tonight. Why don’t you tell me?”

  “I was there, but I can’t explain—or perhaps I can’t accept—what’s happening. I do know that Molasar’s awakening has changed the keep. I used to love that place. Now I fear it. There’s a very definite…wrongness there. You don’t have to see it or touch it to be aware of its presence, just as sometimes you don’t have to look outside to know there’s bad weather coming. It pervades the very air…seeps right into your pores.”

  “What kind of ‘wrongness’ do you sense in Molasar?”

  “He’s evil. I know that’s vague, but I mean evil. Inherently evil. A monstrous, ancient evil who thrives on death, who values all that is noxious to the living, who hates and fears everything we cherish.” She shrugged, embarrassed by the intensity of her words. “That’s what I feel. Does it make any sense to you?”

  Glenn watched her closely for a long moment before replying. “You must be extremely sensitive to have felt all that.”

  “And yet…”

  “And yet what?”

  “And yet tonight Molasar saved me
from the hands of two fellow human beings who should have by all rights been allied with me against him.”

  The pupils in Glenn’s blue eyes dilated. “Molasar saved you?”

  “Yes. Killed two German soldiers”—she winced at the memory—“horribly…but didn’t harm me. Strange, isn’t it?”

  “Very.” Leaving the damp cloth in place, Glenn slid his hand off her knee and ran it through the red of his hair. Magda wanted him to put it back where it had been, but he seemed preoccupied. “You escaped him?”

  “No. He delivered me to my father.”

  She watched Glenn mull this, then nod as if it made some sort of sense to him.

  “And there was something else.”

  “About Molasar?”

  “No. Something else in the keep. In the subcellar…something moving around in there. Maybe it was what had been making the scraping noise earlier.”

  “Scraping noise,” Glenn repeated, his voice low.

  “Rasping, scraping…from far back in the subcellar.”

  Without a word, Glenn rose and went to the window. Motionless, he stood staring out at the keep.

  “Tell me everything that happened to you tonight—from the moment you stepped into the keep until the moment you left. Spare no detail.”

  Magda told him everything she could remember up to the time Molasar deposited her in Papa’s room. Then her voice choked off.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.”

  “How was your father?” Glenn asked. “Was he all right?”

  Pain gathered in her throat. “Oh, he was fine.” In spite of her brave smile, tears started in her eyes and began to spill onto her cheeks. Try as she might to will them back, they kept coming. “He told me to get out…to leave him alone with Molasar. Can you imagine that? After what I went through to reach him, he tells me to get out!”

  The anguish in her voice must have penetrated Glenn’s preoccupied state, for he turned away from the window and stared at her.