Greybeard

by Paul Christensen

  ‘It’s the same guy!!!’

  ‘Really?’ I wasn’t quite sure what to make of this, and so turned my attention to Perdita, who had loaded up (is that the correct term for it?) her laptop computer. ‘I’m not sure if I mentioned it,’ I said, ‘but my vengeance will be vast and all-encompassing. It’s not just my grandson I want to avenge, but another, just as blameless, who died a long time ago.

  ‘Now, there is a commune in the northern suburbs of Paderborn, a nest of purely evil hypocrites, who must be the first to taste divine justice.’ I explained why, and after I had finished, they both agreed with me, just as I had predicted they would. And then I explained what I wanted them to do. Naturally I was doubtful as to whether they would actually be able to do it. To my surprise, however, the Russian seemed confident.

  The next couple of hours were spent conferring with remote others on something they called a ‘private board’, located in somewhere called the ‘darknet’. I grew restless, and went out the front for a breath of air. When I returned, things were whirling into motion, and I was looking with fascination upon a form of remote magic, wherein a government decision was overturned and the invaders resettled in the commune after all – in far greater number than before. The orders to bus them in were given out in quadruplicate to all relevant parties. Unless someone detected the hack, there was nothing the communards could do to prevent the full weight of the German bureaucratic machine from tearing their phony world apart.

  ‘We take great Risiko,’ said Gleb, lapsing into German. ‘But I sense something in you. Something I can’t speak in words.’ I didn’t know what he meant, but nonetheless thanked him graciously for the risk he had taken. It would be worth it, a thousandfold, I assured him.

  * * *

  Shortly, the Lügenpresse announced it would be taking place. Everyone going along with orders that seemed official, just as I had foreseen.

  The stereotype about Germans and bureaucracy is largely true – Perdita had told me of her first day in Paderborn, when as a new exchange student she had literally spent half a day at the Rathaus filling in dozens of forms in quadruplicate. Hadn’t they heard of carbon paper, she had asked incredulously. But the official had bristled at the very idea of carbon paper.

  If, however, the government’s bureaucracy was an intractable engine, then its momentum could also be used against it, judo-style.

  * * *

  I decided not to use the Dazzle yet. I was to be a hidden observer, elevated in the branches of a spreading pine I had marked out a week earlier as a near-impeccable point of concealed surveillance. Perdita and Gleb had declined to come, as violence didn’t interest them (so they said). Well it didn’t interest me either, but, at this point in time, justice overwhelmingly did.

  Inside the commune all was deathly quiet. From outside, however, a clamour was approaching. Chants and chaos. Yes, here they came, marching up to the gate in twos and threes, soft flabby faces puckered up in hatred. These were the ‘Antifa’…and unlike the far-left radicals of my own day, their hatred was race-based rather than class-based; and the only race they hated was their own. For they were overwhelmingly white…I could spot perhaps one Asiatic among the two hundred or so anti-German Germanics. Their patches identified them as belonging to Antifa chapters in various big cities – Frankfurt, Hannover, Berlin, even a couple from as far afield as Rotterdam – but none, of course, from Paderborn itself.

  Now the communards began to emerge, like sleepwalkers, ashen-faced, from the outbuildings. There’s always a bigger fish, they were learning for the first time. Their leader, a woman I recognised from the paper, came right up to the fence, but soon stepped back when some Antifa spat through it at her. A few of them rattled the wire-mesh gate. Her eyes filled with tears. She asked why they were doing it, as this was a peaceful commune, progressive in its values. They were on the same side, she appealed. Pro-refugee, just like them! But the commune was populated by human beings, and it wasn’t fair that their home was to be disrupted, violated. I could barely refrain from yelling, ‘aren’t Sennelagens human, then?’, but of course my plan didn’t involve being ripped from a tree and stomped to death by two hundred smirking Antifa.

  The smirkers would have none of her special pleading, of course. They drowned her appeals out with hoots and screeches. I had attended a number of loud rock concerts in the old days, but never with noise so fortissimo as this. It shook the very ground, and I worried briefly that the tree would uproot itself.

  Soon I noticed something else, however – the air around was becoming cushioned in by an overpowering stench. It seemed to envelop everything, like a rolling cloud of dung. It smelt like the very essence of dark despair and mental squalor.

  What supernatural intervention was this?

  I needn’t have worried, however. It was only the presence of invaders announcing itself a few blocks in advance of their vanguard.

  Soon I could see them, and their armed police escort, not to mention an obligatory handful of German women walking alongside them with handmade banners reading ‘Willkommen’ etc., presumably trying not to hold their noses. The faces of the invaders themselves looked far from overwhelmed at the escort, or the raucous Antifa, who had now ceased their screeching and began to cheer and applaud the new arrivals. No, their faces merely looked, how shall I put it, animally expectant. As if it were feeding time…

  The police certainly didn’t mess around, either.

  They produced bolt cutters and removed the padlocks from the gate, the brass bodies of the locks crushed beneath the iron jaws of the State. And then, without warning, they began to spray the communards with tear gas. I desperately hoped it wouldn’t waft up to me in the tree (I was already half-choking from the invader smell). Some of the cops tried to hold back the Antifa, but in vain – there were too many of them, and they roared and whistled into the commune like a legion of steam trains. It was hard to know what propelled them – the desire to assail the communards while they were down (which they merrily did), or the cloud of stench behind them.

  In any case, those communards who weren’t being kicked by Antifa as they lay in fetal positions on the ground soon fled out the front gate. The police made no effort to detain them, being busy ushering the ungrateful invaders into their new home. The women with signs followed them inside. I knew what would become of these women when my plan was carried through, but hardened myself – they knew full well what had happened in Cologne and a dozen other cities recently, but continued their virtue-signaling regardless. They deserved whatever was coming to them I told myself, trembling with rage – but it was nevertheless a hard thing to do.

  Soon, predictably, one could hear invaders yelling in booming voices, in English, that the facilities here weren’t good enough. One was outraged that the food in the kitchen was vegetarian, another that there were no video game consoles. They started to turn on the police, a spiraling screech indicating that their Antifa allies were siding with them against the cops. Faced with non-pacifist enemies the latter chose not to use their tear gas or other weapons, and beat a hasty retreat through the gate. I heard one Polizei growling that their job was now done, and that was an end to it. To my relief (which I was disgusted to feel), the placard-bearing women emerged with them. Only the Antifa remained in the compound with the invaders, perhaps having fun helping them tear the place apart looking for money and food. And so, they were finally alone with their ‘friends’.

  I got down from the tree, unobserved, and with a pair of pliers I had in my pocket for just such a purpose proceeded to snip a dozen lengths of thick wire from an obscure part of the fence that no one would notice in a hurry. Working quickly, covered in sweat lest I be discovered, I proceeded to seal up the gate by twisting the lengths of wire around it in a dozen places, so that it could not be easily undone. Then I got back in my tree, unnoticed.

  You probably know already what ensued. For despite the Lügenpresse blacking it out, rumours of this terrible event swept the country, and i
ndeed the entire world…made all the more terrible because no one knew what actually happened. Well, I can only tell you what I saw from my greenwood tree.

  The Antifa, usually so good at inflicting casual violence, suddenly lost their ability to do so; they seemed confused, as animals caught in headlights. One shook in bewilderment as his pet project punched him repeatedly in the head. I could feel the wave of fear as they sensed, almost as one, that this was a concerted attack…not confused excitement that could somehow be assuaged. So naturally they headed en masse for the gate, doubtless hoping to come to terms with this perceived illogic using doublethink at some later date.

  When they found the gates wired shut, they began to panic. And the panic itself seemed to stir their pets to greater heights of excess.

  Even from outside I could see dark smears of blood in the background, while many Antis tried to batter down the gate, to no avail. Some attempted to climb it, but the savages were upon them, so they ran, presumably to try and find a back way out. Except, that is, for one sorry specimen, a bratty looking creature with purple dreadlocks. An invader had him pressed against the fence, preparing to finish him off, and he literally began shrieking for the cops. I gave a stony laugh, which they both heard, and looking up into the tree the invader made eye contact.

  Through the branches I must have appeared a figure of incredible obscurity, like an ancient tree spirit, but no doubt he could see the glint of my eyes.

  He looked at me with his saucer-wide peepers, thinking perhaps that I was a ghost. I nodded at him. And then the Anti looked up and saw me, and terror came into his face. The last expression he ever gave, in fact, before the invader brought something solid down on his head, shattering his skull. Blood dripped from the mesh of the gate, as the invader turned to look for more prey.

  The rout ended in a general massacre.

  I heard later that around a dozen Antis had managed to escape through a weak spot in the fence, in an obscure corner of the compound, but these were the last survivors – their comrades had all been butchered.

  Around 180 of them, apparently; and after that, the invaders hunkered down in their living quarters, safe in the knowledge they would not be brought to account for their butchery, to begin their protest in search of better accommodation.

  I could see a few of them dragging Antifa bodies away, laughing, possibly taking them down to the kitchen to cook them up. I looked upon the scene of my triumph with a strange feeling of sadness. All those bodies, so haunting. It gave me no pleasure…but the path of justice was one I was helplessly bound to pursue.

  * * *

  The Lügenpresse didn’t report on the massacre at all, of course. Not even Junge Freiheit recorded it, presumably in case they should be branded as wild conspiracy theorists. The German Antifa community must have known about it, but kept it to themselves, shocked, or perhaps worried that it might reflect badly on the invaders.

  Also shocked (when I explained to them what had gone down) were Perdita and Gleb. Perdita seemed to go a little pale, which surprised me, as she came across as being generally strong-stomached. Worried the two of them might regard my project with increasing scepticism, and perhaps even have second thoughts about putting their services at my disposal, I scoured the depths of my soul and blurted out an impassioned speech, a true oration. It concluded with these words:

  ‘I don’t seek antagonism between the nations, but this thing is out of control. I’ve seen it before in communes, you know, in the 1970s – you can’t let a group of people in if some are there to take advantage. And there’s more than that – they are conspiring to seek our ruin. You can see it in their eyes – the hatred they feel for us, for Europeans, is unbelievable. You must instill fear in them, or they will crush you from existence. If you don’t impose some penalty on them, then evil will surely follow. Perdition will follow.’

  I knew as I spoke that I could no longer justify my life if I could not justify these actions. This was about more than revenge for Davey. It was no longer purely personal; I realised that now with a flash of haunted clarity. No factional slave, I spoke with a voice of Thunder. My words from higher planes. Perdita and Gleb sensed this, and bowed their heads, utterly convinced of the need for justice.

  * * *

  I returned to the commune, but it was deserted. I looked around at the bloodstains, searching for the new-made ghosts I had created. I wondered if this place would become a part of folklore, the home of an event so unspeakable it could not be whispered, even in the dead of night.

  The year before my imprisonment by the Stasi, I had embarked on a folklore-collecting trip throughout England and Wales – a common enough pastime in hippie days – and so I knew a thing or two about legend. I had visited the Mere of Morridge and the Wailing Wood; had beheld the Screaming Skull of Somerset; and climbed Long Lonkin’s Tree. I had even sought (alas, in vain!) for the Headless Duck of Cheshire…

  But now I saw, in my mind’s eye, the Black Boy of Gloucestershire.

  The Black Boy had been brought to England as a baby from the West Indies and raised alongside the Son of the House…only to murder the Son of the House when he became an adult.

  Not an invader, but a cuckoo in the nest.

  I pondered long and hard on this, not at all liking the implications.

  * * *

  We set to work to create a tribal war between the new arrivals and the first wave of invaders, the ones who had murdered my grandson. After some research, however, we found that both waves were diverse in their make-up, not merely consisting of a single group each. And so we singled out the two biggest ethnic groups from the overall invader population, and found where they were staying.

  The ones who had thought the commune not prestigious enough were now being housed in a homeless shelter in Bielefeld, an hour’s train ride from Paderborn. On visiting, I was just in time to see a homeless woman, protesting the fact she had been evicted from the shelter to make way for invaders, being dragged away by police (I took care to stay out of sight), doubling my resolve to deliver the flyers I was holding, leaving them bundled on the doorstep, as the front door was locked. These showed pictures, from an online encyclopedia, of various homosexual acts, and words to the effect that the invaders routinely engaged in such, signed their very good friends of the _____ tribe, who would be relaxing at the Paderborn Hauptbahnhof at noon tomorrow, in case the ‘gutless faggots’ should want to engage them in combat, not that they would, because they were unmanly etc. etc. (and Gleb delivered similar notices to certain addresses at Sennelager.)

  * * *

  The gang war began in the Hauptbahnhof, but I scarcely noticed as I was staring, fascinated, at two advertising posters near the doors to the first platform. The ads were for two rival burger chains, and seemed to be competing in…something. In how far they could go?

  The first showed what was clearly an invader baby being switched for a German one: a changeling. The parents, far from being distressed however, welcomed the new arrival with wide grins, while their flesh-and-blood baby was whisked into an obscurity of shadow. How this was supposed to make the average consumer want a burger was unclear, particularly as no burger appeared in the ad.

  The second showed a woman shivering in bed in the dead of winter, her face blue with cold. She reached for an extra blanket, but the blanket was actually…an invader. An inset showed her snuggling her invader-blanket contentedly, while the invader himself smiled serenely, only too happy to be of service.

  The logos at the bottom identified these ads as belonging to two well-known global franchises.

  But something snapped me out of my reverie – a crazed face, staring into mine.

  ‘I see you, old man. You emerge often.’ That was what he said in cropped German (still probably better than mine, ironically). It was the one who had seen me in the tree…and now here I was again at the scene of violence. His instincts were unsettled.

  He eyed me menacingly, but I held his gaze, having, of course, nothing to l
ose. And my gaze was stronger. Too strong…it sent him into a frenzy, from which I retreated swiftly into the whirl of the crowd, a whirl that was mainly Germans fleeing the melee. Another invader soon engaged the starer in combat, and so I emerged into the street outside, listening to the sweet sounds within – my enemies tearing each other apart.

  Outside wasn’t safe for long, however. More tribalists arrived, and the fight spilled out into the street, even down into the Altstadt of Paderborn, which began two blocks along the road. The police were nowhere to be seen. I myself witnessed only one killing, but there were around two dozen deaths in total. This time, there was no way the Lügenpresse could cover it up. Lethal tribal warfare, in broad daylight, in the shopping streets of a prosperous regional city! Instead, the media spun the deaths as ‘how terrible and traumatic for these traumatised souls…they must have witnessed atrocities in wartime to make them so prone and desensitized to violence etc. etc.’

  (Not a word, of course, for the German children who had to witness the invaders butchering each other…would they be traumatised as armed warriors destroyed each other on the Field of Mars? I hoped not, but the media cared no whit.)

  * * *

  The invader who had thought me an apparition…I now appeared before him for the third time. I told him exactly what to do, and he listened obediently, resigned to the fact that I was a messenger from the other world, and impervious to physical attack, from which he accordingly refrained.

  With my newfound power I ordered him to talk to his surviving tribesmen, and convince them to occupy the private home of the Paderborn police chief, which Perdita had tracked down for me.