9
The papers on the desk stirred, rustling in the slight breeze that came in through the open window; just a slight shuffle, barely noticeable to the sleeping ear, but enough to cause the mind to focus, to listen. Alex rolled to his side, the empty bottle falling from his grasp and hitting the hard wood floor with a glassy clank.
Moonlight wove like a pearly ribbon through the fluttering lace sheers, dancing through the shadows and reflected off the polished wood floor. A floorboard creaked – not too loud, but loud enough to tell Alex he was not alone. He opened his eyes.
A naked woman approached him from the direction of the window. Hair cascaded over her face so all he could see were piercing blue eyes staring at him between curled tendrils. Alex fought to clear the webs clouding his mind, but he couldn’t shake the last vestiges of drunkenness. Everything was a watercolor haze – shifting shapes, too loud noises, splashes of midnight color.
She stood before him draped in shadow. Moonlight swathed the space just behind her, but did not illuminate her features, only her eyes. She held one hand before her, wiggling her finger as if asking him to come to her.
“Kimberly?” he asked, but the hair on the woman was not wavy enough, not long enough, not glossy enough. And the eyes – they were blue, not Kimberly’s brown. He searched the bed for his bottle, but it was not to be found. “Whadya want?”
The woman came closer still. Here in the darker half of the room, Alex could only discern her outline. Her hand touched his bare chest. He jolted, but her caress soothed him and he quieted. Her hand moved between his legs and coaxed him erect. He sprawled on the bed, the cool night air tingling his flesh, her warm hand raising goose bumps of delight over his skin. He reached out to touch her, but she withdrew from his reach, until he felt her straddle him, one leg on each side, still silent.
“I dunno if we should do this, Kimberly--”
“Ssh--”
“Okay,” he slurred.
The woman rode him slow and easy, not caring if he were involved or not. She used him for her pleasure, working herself into an orgasmic frenzy, writhing on the end of his erection and emitting a piggish sounding squeal that both intrigued and alarmed him. He wasn’t exactly the Ladies Man of the Century, but he had never heard a woman come like that – so animal-like. He tried to push her off, but being locked in the stupor he was in, he couldn’t find her arm to give her a shove. It was as if she anticipated his moves and dodged him.
Finally she was done. She lifted herself from him and lay beside him on the bed. Too tired and wasted to protest, Alex drifted off to sleep, sated from the mystery seduction.
A siren sounded somewhere in the night, louder than usual because the window was open. Alex sat up, his head instantly screaming at his sudden movement. He grabbed his temples.
“Shit.” Standing, with the intention of going to close the window, he remembered the hazy, dream-like liaison and saw the form of a woman asleep, back to him, on his bed.
“Shit,” he said again. “—the fuck?” It wasn’t a drunken dream. He felt for the night table lamp and twisted the little black knob. Click.
The woman rolled over and faced him.
“Fuck!” Alex shouted and jumped away from the bed. “How the hell--?”
It was Perchta.
Alex couldn’t formulate thoughts; only surprised curse words flooded his mind. “How the hell did you get in my room?”
She pointed to the open window. He ran to it and peered outside. The ivy-laden trellis ran straight up the side of the house, directly beside his window.
“You fucking climbed into my god damn room?”
Perchta started to laugh.
Abruptly sober, Alex didn’t know whether he should be angry or terrified. “Did you – did we--?”
More maniacal laughter. Perchta’s tongue was grotesquely swollen, too big for her mouth. It was crimson and fat, stretching the sides of her mouth as if crammed in there with not enough space. She drooled constantly and continued to wipe the steady stream onto the back of her hand, and the back of her hand onto her leg or the bed beside her.
Revulsion seized him and Alex ran to the wastepaper basket and vomited waves of gin and supper. He wiped his mouth on his nearby bathrobe and stood upright again.
The woman made some sort of grunting sound.
“Get out! Just get the fuck out!” Alex shouted and pointed toward the open window.
Perchta grunted gruffly, more animated now. She was angry. Her thick tongue popped in and out of her too-small mouth like some sort of cheap sex doll with a vibrating mode. Alex felt his stomach rumble.
Fighting the urge to retch again, Alex stomped across the bedroom and seized the woman by her arm, pulling her from the bed, and dragged her toward the window. Touching her flesh, he realized she was covered with hair – not like a man, but like an animal. “God!” he shouted and withdrew his hand with a start. He wiped his palm on his bare leg as if he could remove the feel of her body hair somehow.
Perchta resisted, fighting him, grunting.
“You’re going or I’m throwing your ass out the window! You choose, you hideous beast! Get the fuck out of my room!” He gave her a shove, and she snarled at him, big tongue protruding awkwardly.
She hitched a leg up to the window sill and pulled herself up. She peered over her shoulder and made a face.
“Get out!”
He couldn’t keep his eyes off of her hairy ass. Her strong arms grasped the trellis outside and hoisted herself through the window and onto the side of the house. Not waiting to see if she made it down or not, Alex slammed the window closed and locked it. Then, he yanked closed the sheers and the heavy drapes.
Alex felt the urge to vomit again and made a run for the adjoining bathroom. He made it to the sink and filled the basin with his hot, frothing sickness. Not even bothering to wipe his face, Alex turned on the shower and dived beneath the cleansing water, trying to scrub anything of the monster that might be left from his flesh – but sadly, soap could not cleanse his mind.
10
“Through the open window, you say?” Gerd asked, examining the sill, moving the drapes around as if looking for something to tell him more than what Alex already told him.
“Yes. I was so damn drunk. God,” Alex sat on the end of the bed and ran his hands through his wet hair.
“Don’t get too upset with yourself. You were tricked.”
“Don’t know how much of a trick it was really. A naked woman appears in my bedroom so I fuck her and then practically throw her out the window. More like, I was an idiot.”
“Well, ja, but you can’t undo what is done.” Gerd double-checked the lock on the window and let the drapes fall into place. “This has moved beyond what it once was.”
“What do you mean?”
“Before – you came here to find answers and if there were no answers, to put the past to rest. Your story was always consistent even as a child. Do you know how hard it is for a child to maintain a consistent accounting of events? Especially one as traumatized as you were?”
Alex shook his head.
“Very hard. But you--” Gerd pointed at him. “You stuck to your tale and even though artist after artist tried their damnedest to draw some human monster, you insisted it was Krampus. I don’t think your own father believed you.”
Alex raised his eyebrows.
“I proposed the theory that the man who perpetrated this crime was a Krampus imposter.”
“A copy cat?” Alex asked.
“Ja. Copy cat. Trying to cover tracks, make it look like something it wasn’t so the real murderer could escape.”
“Gerd, with all due respect, what I saw in those woods that night was no man in a costume. It was demonic, and as real as you and I.”
“What I’m about to suggest is very unorthodox of me.”
Alex laughed. “Give it your best shot, Polizeimeister. Nothing about this whole thing has ever been orthodox.”
Gerd sat in the ch
air in front of the desk to the side of Alex’s bed. “Let me play along for a minute, okay?”
“Okay.”
“Krampus raped and killed one woman in the woods that night. He copulated with, possibly raped, your sister. After discovering you and your friends were observing their ritual, he chased down the other boys, devoured them, dismembered them and left them in his bag – the bag he normally carries his coal and switches and unpleasantries in, ja?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Krampus carries big rusty chains around to scare children. Chains, just like the ones Henrik found on the steps and that killed him. You have gotten letters – threatening letters – since you arrived; and the town simpleton has made it a point to follow you around – and now to sneak into your bedroom and have relations with you.”
“Yeah, that’s the part I’m having difficulty working into the rest of the scenario. Unless Perchta knows something about my sister.”
Gerd shook his head. “She’s younger than you. How would she know your sister?”
“I don’t know.”
“I think that instead of closure to these terrible events, you’ve actually stirred up something. Someone has been waiting for you to return. Someone who has unfinished business with you.”
“Awesome.”
“No, not awesome. Very bad.” Gerd picked up a pencil and fiddled with it.
“No shit.” Alex sighed. “So, here’s the thing Gerd. It really was Krampus. A demon. Not a man. But, no one fucking believes me. All my damn life. So, how am I supposed to fight this thing or stop this thing or what the fuck ever, if no one believes me?”
Gerd leaned back in the chair and Alex got a glimpse of the former polizeimeister that was the younger Gerd Fischer. “This is where I am going to say something unorthodox.”
Get the fuck on with it. Alex nodded in anticipation.
“Maybe what you say all these years is true. Maybe a demon did do these things. Maybe that same demon is trying to kill you now. If that is true, I’m not much help.”
“Who is?”
Gerd lowered his volume. “Alte Hexe Adalwolfa.”
“My German isn’t very good.”
“Translated, it means Old Hag Adalwolfa – Adalwolfa is her name. She’s what you would say is a witch, cunning woman. She knows things about the, uh … worlds beyond, if you will.”
“Heaven and Hell?”
“Ja.”
Alex laughed.
Gerd stood up, offended. “You tell me of demons and women crawling into your window in the dead of night and you have the balls to laugh at me?”
“I’m sorry. Really--”
“Alte Hexe Adalwolfa knows the old ways. She’s at least 100. Her mother was Alte Hexe before her. She has been raised in the ways of our ancient fathers, when the world was wild and barbaric and the forces of hell roamed the earth.”
“I thought you didn’t believe in any of this?”
“I believe in lots of things,” Gerd said, gruffly. “Just because I didn’t believe a boy – now a man – saw Krampus fucking girls in the forest, doesn’t mean I don’t believe other supernatural things.”
Alex frowned, puzzling on this.
“If this demon, Krampus as you say, has returned and is here to conclude his dealings with you, you will need more than an old polizeimeister with a bad knee and bum back,” Gerd said.
“And this, Alte Hexe, she can help me?”
“I now confess a secret,” Gerd said, voice lowered.
“My lips are sealed.”
“Huh?” Gerd asked.
“It means, I won’t tell anyone your secret.”
“Ah. Ja. After you left Germany with your father, I could not get the murder of your friends, the woman and the disappearance of Ilona from my mind. I lay awake at night trying to fit all the pieces into the puzzle, but never anything. Finally, I went to see Alte Hexe Adalwolfa. My mother used to go to her for potions and advice. So, not having any other hope, I went to see her too.”
“What did she say?” Alex asked.
“I told her everything. She refused to say anything. Pushed my money back to me. Opened the door and showed me out. I thought it was because I was Polizei.”
“Why do you think she’ll see us now then?”
“Because now I am starting to believe your story.”
11
Alex and Gerd climbed into his vierradantrieb, an old four wheel drive that had seen its prime one long decade past. Still, it was a capable machine that made the treacherous climb up a steep mountain west of the village without much complaint. The old road to Adalwolfa’s home traversed the pine-swept slope that rose high above the valley and lakes far below. Although the air was cold, it invigorated Alex, so he let the window down to dispel some of his gloom. The scent of evergreens and crisp air washed over him like the atmosphere of another world, and on occasion, as the road cleared the trees and he could see down into the valley beyond. This was not America, these were the Alps, and from this high above the village of Füssen, the ranges and lakes spread far and wide, the distant spires of Neuschwanstein Castle making it seem like a fantasy world. Then the road curved again into thick forest. Gerd took a dangerous turn up a road that was really no more than a worn path, fraught with roots and rocks.
After a quarter-mile of rough travel, they finally reached the old woman’s remote hideaway in a lush grove. The ancient half-timber home looked like something from an old postcard.
Alex rapped on the wooden door. He and Gerd could hear the clopping of shoes coming in their direction. A heavy bolt scraped to one side and the door creaked open. A stooped, gray-haired woman peered around the edge.
“Was wünschen Sie?” she snapped.
“Begnadigen Sie mich, aber wir benötigen Ihre Hilfe,” Gerd answered.
“Help? What kind of help do you need?” Alte Hexe asked.
“It’s for me. I lived here as a boy. I was involved in the Krampusnacht Massacre as a child,” Alex said.
She opened the door wider and stepped into the light. “You are the boy that got away, are you not?”
“I am.”
“I have been waiting a long time for you to come see me.” She moved to the side and gestured for them to enter. “And, for you--” she pointed to Gerd, “to return.”
Gerd and Alex exchanged surprised glances and entered the musty house. The rooms smelled of damp and mildew, of rotting wood and burning logs – all the scents you’d expect in a house a couple of centuries old.
“Come this way,” she said, hobbling before them, leading the way into a dimly lit room. She moved her knitting from the round table into a basket on the floor beside a wood rocker. Alex grimaced at the memory of Kimberly knitting, but kept his attention focused on the old woman.
She pointed to a bench as she crossed the room to peruse crooked bookshelves bent and bowed from time and too much weight.
They sat on the wood bench beside the fire. Alte Hexe Adalwolfa hefted a large book from the middle shelf and dropped it with a plume of dust onto the table. Then she unclicked a brass lock and the book sprang open, free from its restraints. She licked a gnarled finger and flipped through the brittle, browned pages, finally stopping at the one she sought.
Turning the book around so Alex and Gerd could view it right-side up, she sat in her rocker. The two men scooted the bench closer to the table for a better view. The pages bore detailed prints of old wood engravings depicting Krampus in various settings. Alex looked up at Alte Hexe Adalwolfa.
Alte Hexe, still silent save for her wheezy breathing, turned a page and removed an envelope. She opened the envelope and removed a newspaper clipping which she slid across the book to Alex.
“That’s the news story,” Gerd said. “From the newspaper. It talked about the disappearance of your sister, Ilona.”
Alex picked up the scrap of paper and stared at it. He didn’t remember enough German to read it.
“I have answers that you seek about your siste
r. About Krampus.” She sat in her rocker, folding her skeletal hands in her lap. She used her feet to gently rock her chair.
“Do you know what happened to her? Is she alive?” Alex was surprised at the excitement and force of his words. He gripped the news clipping a little too tightly, wrinkling the paper.
Alte Hexe shook her head. “Nein.”
“No?”
“I have kept a terrible secret for many years – partly out of pity for those involved and partly out of fear.” Alte Hexe tapped the book. “Is this the monster that killed your little friends? The monster that coupled with your sister?”
“Ja. That’s Krampus. No one ever believed my story.”
Alte Hexe continued rocking. “Not surprising. Children tell tall tales. What is a taller tale than of Krampus coupling with beautiful women in the forest on Krampusnacht?” She laughed softly. “But Adalwolfa knows you were telling the truth.”
Alex nodded.
“Almost a year after that terrible night, a young woman, that young woman, your sister--” She pointed to the clipping. “--came to me under the cover of night. She was big with child.” Alte Hexe made a rounded gesture indicating a pregnancy. “I am a mid-wife. Ilona begged me to deliver her child, telling me something was very bad wrong.”
“Ilona? So, she was alive?” Alex asked.
“Ja, but not for long. I brought her inside and got ready to assist her babe into this world when terrible things began to happen. Your sister screamed and wailed, thrashing about on the bed. Her baby was large, much too large, and it became clear that this child’s birth would not end well.” Alte Hexe closed her eyes as if remembering the events of that night. “I went to fetch boiling water, and when I was in the kitchen, your sister rent the air with a terrifying shout. I ran to the room. When I entered, I saw something I have never seen before in my life and pray I never see again.”
“Much blood?” Gerd asked.
“The babe was splitting Ilona apart. One scrawny arm, covered with reddish hair popped free from the birth canal and reached up and over and grasped Ilona’s thigh. Digging talons into her bloody flesh, the demonic spawn began to claw and crawl its way from her womb. Ilona’s stomach was torn in half, her innards spilled sloppily over her legs and bed.” The old hag shuddered. “As I stood watching, the abomination began to chew its own placenta, devouring every piece. It ate the umbilical cord, and then began to devour the guts of the very woman who gave it life.”
The Devil Behind Me Page 5