The Vanishing of Katharina Linden

by Helen Grant

  “Come on-does it look like anyone’s at home?”

  “No-o-o,” I said doubtfully, but looking around the street none of the houses looked any livelier than Herr Düster’s; all were utterly dark. He gave me a little push. “Go on.”

  “You go first,” I said, not moving.

  I heard an impatient little sigh, and then Stefan had brushed past me and entered the house. It was inky black inside, and almost immediately I heard a bump followed by a smothered exclamation.

  “I’m going to put my flashlight on,” whispered Stefan, fumbling for it.

  “Someone might see us.”

  “Someone will definitely hear us if I don’t.”

  There was a tiny click and a small circle of light appeared, traveling slowly over a heavy oak cupboard, its front panels carved with twining leaves and prancing stags, a section of faded wallpaper with an indistinct design of foliage, an old-fashioned clock whose metal face was spotted with tiny patches of rust. There was a smell on the air of dust and old furniture polish.

  “What’s that?” I whispered as softly as I could. Stefan let the light move up the wall until it illuminated the thing I had glimpsed; it was a wooden crucifix, the metal Jesus on it contorted in pain.

  Stefan said nothing, but let out a little sound like a sigh. He swung the flashlight around and the yellow beam drifted through the musty air like a phantom, touching without touching. We were in a narrow hallway, the wooden floor overlaid with a shabby-looking runner, the walls lined with dark blocks of furniture. Directly ahead of us the wooden staircase began. The treads were worn, and the newel post, carved into the shape of a face peeping out from a nest of leaves, had a dull shine that I suspected came more from the touch of many hands over the years than from polish. The beam of light moved on and the peeping face was swallowed in the darkness once more.

  To the left of the staircase the hallway continued farther back, but from where we stood the light was insufficient to do more than suggest a doorway at the end. As Stefan completed the sweep with the flashlight, I saw there was also a door to our immediate left, a stout wooden door, firmly closed. Just the living room, of course-it could hardly be some kind of Bluebeard’s chamber, facing onto the street as it did.

  All the same I was losing my taste for investigation. In the pervasive gloom it was difficult not to imagine the absent Herr Düster still lurking within, perhaps hunched in a high-backed armchair in the dark, like a lobster concealed within its cave in the rocks deep under the black water, nothing visible but the dull gleam of a carapace and the two shining beads of eyes.

  Stefan reached for the handle, and with infinite care opened the door. We slid cautiously into the darkened room. Inside, it was an obstacle course of standard lamps and cabinets and chairs. The same depressing smell of dust and old polish permeated everything. From the little detail that I could pick out by flashlight-the fringed edge of a lampshade, the claw foot of a chair, the dull gleam of a pewter plate-it looked as though the room hadn’t been redecorated for many years. The reflective glint of glass showed that the walls were crowded with framed pictures, though it was possible to see what they were only by training the light directly on them.

  I wondered what the friendless Herr Düster used to decorate his house. Fumbling for my own flashlight, I switched it on and examined some of the nearest pictures. They were all photographs, but old ones: some of them were sepia, and had the soft-focus effect at the edges that some very old photographs have.

  A portrait shot of a young woman in old-fashioned clothes caught my eye; hers was the only genuinely pretty face among the collection of stolidly respectable subjects with long upper lips and indignant eyes. I stared at her for a moment, wondering whether this was perhaps the Hannelore about whom Frau Kessel had gone on at such length, but looking at the style of her high-necked dress and her upswept hair, I was doubtful. Wasn’t this picture too old to be her?

  I was still contemplating the photograph when I heard a thump! somewhere behind me. I whirled around as though I had been stung.

  “Stefan, can’t you-?”

  He didn’t let me complete the sentence.

  “Shhhhhh.” He stretched a hand out toward me, as though warding something off.

  The next moment he switched off his flashlight. “Switch yours off too,” he hissed at me.

  I hesitated. The thought of being plunged into darkness was not a pleasant one. Stefan had no such qualms; he took a couple of steps nearer, plucked the light out of my hands, and switched it off.

  “What-?”

  “Shut up.” His voice was so emphatic that I did shut up, and for a few moments the pair of us stood there in the darkness, listening.

  “Stefan?” I whispered eventually. “That was you, wasn’t it?”

  “Shhhhh,” came the reply, then: “No. It came from upstairs.”

  “Up-?”

  Realization trickled through me, momentarily robbing my limbs of the power to move. Scheisse, Scheisse, boomed my thoughts incoherently. I almost staggered, then grabbed Stefan’s arm, trying to pull him with me toward the door, knowing even as I did so that if someone-or something-was to come down the stairs at that moment, we could never get out of the house without passing within an arm’s reach of it.

  Stefan stood his ground, and the fingers of his free hand closed around my wrist with surprising strength.

  “Stay still,” came the whispered words out of the darkness.

  “No-” I twisted like a landed fish in his grasp.

  “He’ll hear you.”

  That was enough. I froze. Then from somewhere above us came another muffled sound, as though someone had dropped something on the floor. I could not help myself; I struggled to break away from Stefan.

  “Keep still,” hissed an agonized voice. “Your jacket-”

  He was right; with every movement the fat arms and body of my down jacket rubbed together with an audible rustle. I clutched Stefan in panic. “What are we going to do?” I whispered.

  “Get down. He might not come in here.”

  It was a slim hope, but I couldn’t think of a better plan. We squatted down on the worn carpet, so that a heavy armchair flanked by a little table with a lamp on it shielded us from the doorway. I felt for Stefan’s hand. His fingers closed around mine gratefully. We waited.

  For a brief moment I had entertained the hope that all we had heard was Pluto, springing down from some favorite sleeping spot onto the floor above. But now I could quite clearly hear footsteps moving across the room above our heads. There was a scraping sound, as though someone had moved a piece of furniture slightly, and then the sound of the footsteps changed and I realized that whoever it was must have moved out onto the upstairs landing.

  I put my lips close to Stefan’s ear. “He’s going to come downstairs.” I was near to tears.

  I felt Stefan’s breath on my cheek, and then his voice said very softly, “Stay here.”

  No. The moment I realized that Stefan meant to move I was flooded with panic. Suppose he managed to make a break for it and left me here, trapped in the house with the monster? I made a grab for him, with an alarming hiss of fabric rubbing fabric, but I was too late. As swiftly and silently as a cat, he had risen and slipped toward the door. Now that my eyes had adjusted to the dark he seemed painfully visible.

  A moment later I heard the first creak as someone put a heavy foot on the topmost stair. Smoothly as a dancer, Stefan slipped behind the door, which stood ajar. His head turned and I guessed that he was looking through the vertical crack by the hinges.

  Inexorably, the footsteps came on down the stairs, each one as heavy and final as a prison door closing, the wooden treads protesting under the weight. Kneeling on the floor, I curled my hands around the claw feet of the armchair, clenching them into fists as though trying to anchor myself against a storm.

  I squeezed my eyes shut in an agony of suspense, but it wasn’t possible to close them against the series of images that seemed to be running
in my head on an eternally repeating loop: a girl of my own age, light brown plaits bobbing as she ran down the street with her Ranzen on her back, running into nowhere; Frau Mahlberg screaming hysterically for Julia; Herr Düster hiding out after the war in the ruins on the Quecken hill, coming back to his lair at daybreak with the blood of slaughtered chickens on his lips. I was really afraid that I might wet myself, so intense was my terror; I squeezed my thighs together, the muscles rigid under the fabric of my jeans.

  There was a final creak and then a more muffled thump as whoever it was stepped onto the worn runner in the hallway. There was a pause, and then the footsteps moved slowly down the hall. At any moment they must pass the door.

  I opened my eyes again, and could clearly see Stefan still poised behind it, absolutely motionless. Whoever had come downstairs was carrying a light of some kind: the crack between the door and the frame showed as a dim yellow streak. I saw Stefan lean back toward the wall slightly, trying to make himself invisible.

  The door, I thought suddenly: the door had not been open when we entered the house, and now it was ajar. Too late to do anything about it now; I ducked my head, trying to compress myself into as small a space as possible, in case the unseen person in the hallway looked into the room.

  The footsteps passed the door. There was a slight hitch to them, as though whoever it was had hesitated, perhaps seeing that the door was ajar. But the next moment they had passed it, and I heard the front door open, then softly close.

  I sagged forward, my body loose with relief, and let my forehead rest upon the shabby seat of the armchair. Thank you, thank you was all I could think. I heard Stefan’s light footsteps approaching and the next moment I felt his hand on my shoulder. His flashlight clicked on too close to my face, making me wince.

  “Are you OK?” said his voice close to my ear.

  “I think so.”

  With an effort I sat back on my heels. I felt peculiar; my lower jaw seemed to have taken on a life of its own and was quivering as though I were about to burst out crying. “Stefan?” Even my voice sounded strange, vibrating as though I were trying to speak while being driven over rough ground.

  “It’s OK.”

  “I want to go home.”

  There was a silence. Finally, Stefan said, “Pia, I think he’s locked the door.”

  “What?” My voice rose wildly. Careless now of being heard, I began to succumb to panic.

  “Calm down,” said Stefan quietly. He put an arm around my shoulders.

  “He can’t have locked the door,” I babbled. “I didn’t hear him lock it.”

  “Pia,” said Stefan in the same low voice, “I don’t think he had a key.”

  “That’s Quatsch.” I said eagerly. “He can’t have locked it.” I tried to push Stefan away. All I could think of was getting to my feet and getting out of the house.

  “He did lock it,” said Stefan.

  Shaking my head, I got up and went to the door as quickly as my cramped legs would allow. I looked into the hallway; the door certainly was closed. I ran to it and tried the handle. Stefan was right. It was locked. I tried it again, rattling the handle violently, putting my shoulder against the door and shoving as hard as I could.

  Intransigent as a barricade, it refused to budge an inch. In desperation I kicked the bottom panel, then fell back, panting. Silently Stefan came to stand by me.

  “I can’t open it,” I gasped.

  “I know.”

  Before I could stop myself, I had struck him on the shoulder with the flat of my hand. I could not understand how he could be so infuriatingly calm.

  “We can’t get out!” My chest was heaving. Fear and frustration were buzzing through my body like toxins. “He’s locked us in. He’s locked us in. Herr Düster-”

  “Pia.” Stefan put out a hand to ward off another blow. “It wasn’t Herr Düster.”

  “What do you mean, it wasn’t Herr Düster?” I was beside myself. “Who was it then? Verdammter Dracula-?”

  “It was Boris,” said Stefan.

  Chapter Forty-four

  B oris?” The information stopped me in my tracks. “It was Boris?”

  “Doch. I saw him through the crack in the door.”

  “But-but-” I was floundering, trying to make sense of it. “How could it be Boris?”

  “I don’t know. But that’s why the door was open. He must have unlocked it.”

  “How?” I demanded. “He can’t have a key, can he?”

  “Of course not. But that wouldn’t stop him.”

  Stefan’s voice was matter-of-fact; closer to the epicenter of Boris’s questionable pursuits than I was, he found the idea of his cousin picking the lock of someone’s house quite unremarkable. “It’s a good thing he didn’t hear us come in. He’d have gone nuts.”

  “But-if that was Boris, where’s Herr Düster?”

  Stefan shrugged. “Gone away. Like Frau Koch said.” He clicked his flashlight back on, then leaned past me almost casually and tried the door handle, but of course the door did not budge.

  “Why did he lock it?” I asked, sullen with the unfairness of it.

  “So Herr Düster wouldn’t know he’d been in here-I suppose.”

  “Can you unlock it?”

  Stefan shook his head. “I don’t think so.” He glanced at me swiftly and took in the hunched shoulders, the fists held out in front of me like claws. Gently, he reached out with his free hand and grasped my wrist. “Hey. Don’t panic.”

  “We’re locked in.” My voice sounded unnaturally high.

  “We’ll get out.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know… we just will.”

  “But we’re locked in!”

  “You said that.” Stefan’s voice was mild. He cocked his head. “We’re in here already, so why don’t we finish looking?”

  The sudden realization that if there were any corpses in the house we were now locked in with them was almost too much for me; it felt nothing short of miraculous that I was still on my feet and not writhing in paroxysms of terror on the threadbare runner. I kept staring at Stefan as though concentrating on him rather than the house around me would stave off the thought.

  “Come on,” I managed in a weak voice.

  He shook his head. “Take your jacket off first.”

  “Why?” I was reluctant to emerge from the warm shell of down and expose myself to the house’s atmosphere.

  “Because whenever you move it makes that stupid noise.”

  I sighed, but he was right. I undid the zip and shrugged out of the jacket.

  “Put it in there,” said Stefan, indicating the living room. He didn’t need to add in case anyone sees it. I was already spooked enough. I stuffed the jacket underneath one of Herr Düster’s ancient sideboards.

  “Now what?”

  “We can go upstairs first, or down into the cellar.”

  “You said we didn’t need to go upstairs,” I pointed out. “You said serial killers never leave dead bodies up there.”

  “Well, they probably don’t.” Stefan made a face. “I mean, could you go to sleep at night if you knew there was a dead person stuffed in your wardrobe?” He saw my expression and added hurriedly, “Look, we couldn’t have gone up there if Herr Düster had been here, but we can now he’s away. We might as well.”

  I looked at the black space at the top of the stairs and then down at the floor under my feet.

  “I don’t know,” I said feebly.

  “Toss for it, then,” said Stefan briskly, fumbling in his pocket and eventually producing a single ten-pfennig coin. “Which side do you want?”

  “The oak leaves.”

  Solemnly Stefan tossed the coin into the air, made as if to catch it, fumbled, and dropped it on the floor. We both squatted down. In the flashlight’s beam we could just make out the coin, glinting dully: 10, we both read. I stood up and leaned against the wall. I felt a strange lack of interest in which option Stefan would choose; the whole affai
r seemed out of my hands.

  “The cellar,” he said decisively. He set off down the dark hallway, then turned, his flashlight winking at me. “Come on.”

  I trailed unwillingly behind him. The hallway narrowed slightly as it passed the stairs; in the dark it felt oppressively like entering a tunnel. Outside the sickly yellow of the flashlight beam, everything was draped in velvety shadow. Anything could have been lurking in the corners of the hallway and the angles where the walls joined the ceiling: great spiders, snub-nosed bats, chittering rodents. I shuddered.

  “Here,” said Stefan.

  There was a narrow door under the stairs, the wood worn and battered. There was no lock, only a black metal latch, which Stefan carefully lifted. The door opened easily. “I bet he oils the hinges,” said Stefan. “So nobody hears him going in and out-you know, with the bodies.”

  “Shut up.”

  “Come right inside,” he said, unabashed, as he stepped into the rectangle of darkness. “Come on,” he added, seeing me hesitate. “I want to shut the door.”

  “What?” I could not imagine anything worse than being shut inside that unfamiliar dark space, with the smell of dust and decay and the weak light from the flashlight picking out little night creatures as they scurried away across the walls, their many legs working furiously.

  “I want to put the light on.” Stefan sounded impatient. “No one will see it, as long as we shut the door.”

  “Oh.”

  Reluctantly, I squeezed in beside him, peering down and feeling about with the toe of my boot, afraid of taking a tumble down the stairs. A moment later there was a firm-sounding click and the light came on. Suddenly Stefan was no longer a dim shape highlighted with the yellow flashlight, but a solid figure standing close to me with his fingertips still grasping the old-fashioned switch. I was grateful for the light; a half turn showed me that we were both perilously close to the top of the cellar stairs. A fall down those in the dark would have been disastrous. The little space we were standing in seemed to double as a closet; a row of Herr Düster’s battered-looking jackets hung from pegs.

  I nudged Stefan. “Look.” There was an ancient-looking rifle propped up against the wall under the coats.