by Various
“Don’t shoot.” The creature spoke in a harsh German accent, careering toward them and eventually separating into three men. The one in the middle limped along, one leg drenched in blood from where Eddie had shot him. The other two carried him, both holding up their free hand in surrender. “We are not armed, do not shoot.”
Donnie kept his gun where it was.
“What do you want?” he said as they came to a halt, the middle Nazi moaning in pain. He recognized the one on the right as the man who’d told Hans to leave them alone, and he was the one who answered: “Those things, those Dämon, they are coming.”
Sure enough, Donnie could hear a distant cry, the chuckling laughter of a child. He turned to Henry.
“Get him awake, we’ve got to move.”
Donnie grabbed Kreuz under his armpit, helping the boy scramble onto his feet. He was quiet now, and fearful. He too must have heard the whoops of delight rising in pitch, getting closer. Henry was shaking the giant now, but the big man was out cold.
“Must’ve hit him harder than you thought,” Henry said with a shrug.
Donnie swore.
“Then we leave him.”
“At least free his hands,” said Joan.
Mike grunted. “You serious?”
“You can’t leave him here, trussed up like a turkey. Every man has a right to defend himself.”
Donnie nodded at Henry. “Do it,” he said, then turned to the Germans. “Follow us. You so much as lift a finger in the wrong direction and we’ll execute you on the spot. Verstehen?”
They understood, he could see it in the frantic nodding of their heads.
“Which way?” asked Henry, sliding his bayonet back into its scabbard. Donnie didn’t know. The forest grew all around them, stretching for miles in every direction, and who knew what other horrors lay in its moldered roots, its skeletal branches? Is there even a world left out there? Donnie asked. Maybe this place has swallowed it all, maybe we could walk for a hundred years in the same direction and never leave, just end up back where we started. He heard the cries, almost like children at the beach, only tinged with cruelty, with desperation, with rage—a record played backward at the wrong speed; then he pointed in the opposite direction and started to walk.
0520
When they could not take another step, they stopped, drained by fear and exhaustion. The noises behind them had softened, then finally stopped about half an hour ago. Yet they had kept treading a path through the snow-strewn undergrowth, slumped against each other, tripping with every other step, cramped and half-crazed, until they had fallen. Now they huddled in a circle around a rusted gas stove that one of the Germans had pulled from his backpack, the flame guttering in the calm air as if it were trying to wish itself out of existence.
Donnie, too, prayed that it could be so easy—snuffed out in an instant, never again to face whatever it was that had bounded from the trees with an infant grin and blood on its breath. How lucky were the men who’d fallen on the front with a round to the head, never aware that their lives had ended. Better that than this, better death than a purgatory spent in the boundless woods waiting for the devil’s children to loom up behind you.
He shivered, pressing himself into the slender figure of Joan by his side. She still wore the parachute, wrapped tight around her throat to hide the bruises there. Beside her was one of the Germans, his body racked by the same tremors. Next to him was Mike, then the other two Nazis, then Henry, and finally Kreuz still bound tight and gagged. The boy stared into the flames, and their reflection in his eyes wasn’t the only fire there. He was alight with fury, Donnie knew, and biding his time. They should have left him with the giant, left them both to be devoured.
“Do you have any idea where we are?” Donnie said, not speaking to anyone in particular.
“We were running northeast,” said Henry. “Far as I can figure anyway, going by the moss on the trees. Other than that…”
He petered out.
“North of Bertogne[CE1], maybe,” said one of the Germans, the one who had spoken earlier. Kreuz lifted his head, grunting something beneath his muzzle, but the other man ignored him. “We were stationed close to the town but we got lost in the woods. His fault.”
He nodded at his first lieutenant, and the two locked eyes for a few seconds before Kreuz looked away.
“I don’t know where we are,” the soldier continued, running a hand through his fair hair.
“What’s your name?” asked Joan.
“Stefan,” he replied. “Stefan Holst. Obergrenadier. This is Andreas Becker and Gyorgy Markus.”
“Gyorgy,” said Joan. “Doesn’t sound very German.”
“He’s Ungarisch, Hungarian,” said Andreas, cradling the head of the boy with the injured leg. Gyorgy’s face was covered with a sheen of sweat and his body shook uncontrollably. Joan had bandaged the wound a while back, but the shinbone had been totally destroyed and the wound was an ugly one. Even out here, in the cold, it would get very bad very quick if they didn’t find a medic. They didn’t even have any morphine for the poor kid. “He just joined us.”
“Did any more of you make it out alive?” Joan asked. Stefan shook his head.
“Last I looked, only those creatures were moving. The rest of them…” He shook his head, swallowing. “…looked like…like borscht.”
There was silence for a moment, just the lulling hiss of the stove.
“What’s his story?” Donnie said eventually, glancing to his right.
“Kreuz?” Stefan laughed bitterly. “He is a Dummkopf, a fool. Uncle is a party member, got him posted out here as an Oberleutnant even though he hasn’t seen his eighteenth birthday yet. He led us into the snow looking for little lost American boys like you. Kaninchen, how you say…rabbits, an easy kill.”
There was no denying the hatred in the man’s voice. Kreuz kept his eyes on the ground, fuming quietly.
“We’ve got a few of those ourselves,” said Henry. “Commissioned officers straight out of training who barely know which way around to hold a rifle. In it for the glory, but as soon as the shooting starts they fall to pieces. Haven’t got a clue.”
“Ja,” said Stefan. “We were lost inside a day. Then something started picking us off. Holzmann and Kohl just vanished into thin air. When we found them…”
“No bodies,” said Donnie.
“Just faces,” the soldier answered, lost in the memory. “Kreuz, he said the Americans were responsible, maybe the British. But he must have known the truth. We all did. Nothing human could do that.”
“What then?” said Joan. “What were those things?”
“Ejszaka gyermekei,” said the injured boy, his voice as quiet as the husking leaves.
“What did he say?” Donnie asked, leaning in.
“I don’t know,” Stefan said. “It’s Hungarian. Gyorgy, Deutsch sprechen.”
The boy stared into the flames of the stove and said: “Nacht Kinder.”
“Night children,” Stefan interpreted with a shrug. “I don’t know.”
“What do you mean, Gyorgy?” said Joan. “What are the night children, the Nacht Kinder?”
“Was sind sie?” said Stefan.
“Sie sind gebrochen,” he answered.
“They are broken,” said Donnie. He was about to ask who when the boy began to speak, his words shaken up by shivers and sobs. Next to him, Andreas translated.
“He says that he lived in the Badacsony, on the edge of the forest. They were verboten…ah, forbidden, I think, from going into the trees. His grandmother, and her grandmother, and her grandmother, they told stories of the forest, of the creatures who lived there. Creatures?”
Andreas looked up, startled by his own translation.
“When he was a child,” he went on as Gyorgy continued to talk, “there was one story that used to scare him more than any of the others, the story of the night children. They were stolen when they were babies and taken into the woods. They would grow up there, becoming
fat on moonlight, given flesh as hard as bark, limbs as tough as branches. They became stronger than any man, faster, but they were broken, because they never grew old, they were always children.”
“This is crazy,” said Mike. “Goddamned fairy tales.”
Gyorgy didn’t hear him, his story growing more and more urgent.
“They were broken, and they knew it,” said Andreas. “They would creep to the edge of the forest and see the people they had left behind, see them grow old and have children of their own, see them live their lives by the fire, lives of laughter and warmth and comfort, and see them die happy and loved and with no regret. So the night children, they became angry. They would return to the homes from where they were taken, and they would slaughter their families—men, women, children, babies—slaughter them all and they would laugh and laugh and laugh just like they were playing a game, playing Himmel und Hölle.”
“Hopscotch,” said Stefan. “I think that’s what you call it.”
“The night children,” said Andreas, translating Gyorgy’s garbled German. “Always smiling, but always sad. They can never go home because they have the night inside them.”
“What does he mean?” asked Donnie, rubbing the gooseflesh from his arms.
“Their eyes,” interpreted Andreas. “As black as pitch, and their veins ran with…I don’t know how to say this, flüssige Dunkelheit, liquid darkness?”
“Ja,” said Gyorgy. “Dunkelheit in ihnen.”
He was growing weaker by the second, blood seeping through the bandage on his leg. But he carried on talking.
“His grandmother told him that the night children hated themselves, hated their broken bodies. That’s what they wanted more than anything, to be human again. They thought that if they collected pieces…” Andreas turned a shade paler, looking down at Gyorgy as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “That if they collected pieces of their victims then they could somehow make themselves better, patch themselves up. If they looked human, then they would grow old like mortal men. That’s why they are here, that’s what they want with us. They want to fix themselves.”
“That’s enough,” said Mike. “I don’t want to hear any more.”
“They won’t stop hunting us, not until they have what they need. But they cannot fix themselves. They are broken, and they will never rest.”
Gyorgy spoke again, but this time it was Stefan who explained: “He says we are all dead. We belong to them.”
“That’s enough,” shouted Mike, pushing himself to his feet. “Tell him to shut his goddamned Kraut mouth or I swear I’ll tear it off.”
Gyorgy’s eyes glazed over, and for a moment Donnie thought the boy was dead. But then he blinked and his lips began to move again, Andreas leaning in and catching those whispers, saying: “His grandmother, she said that the night children were taken by a man who lived in the forest. A man who…again, I don’t know how to say this…a man who drank from death, or demons. Dämon, das ist richtig?”
Gyorgy nodded.
“A man who drank from demons. The night children, they also go by another name, the man’s name: die Kinder des Kázán. The children of Kázán.”
“Kázán?” said Donnie. Andreas shrugged.
“It is a Hungarian word,” he said, gesturing at the stove. “It means, uh, fire, maybe.” He paused. “Or Furnace.”
0547
“We should go,” said Donnie, speaking only because the forest was once again oppressively silent, as if it had been listening to Gyorgy’s story and was now thinking of ways to make it real.
“No,” said Joan. “We should stay. We’re exhausted. We’ve got one man seriously injured. We don’t know where we’re going. We’ve got very limited food. We should rest, just until dawn. It will be easier when it’s light.”
“But those things,” said Henry. “The…the night children. They’re out there.”
“They’re not night children,” said Joan. “That was just a story, told by a fevered mind. Look at him. How can he know what he’s saying? Besides, we stand as much chance of running into them as we do getting away from them, wandering around in circles in the dark.”
It was dark. The moon had sunk beneath the trees, the faintest trace of silver feathering the trunks. The sky was low and heavy, ready to compound their troubles with more snow. As much as Donnie wanted to be on the move, leaving the nightmare behind, he knew that they would step into a grave much more swiftly if they set off again now. The sun would be up in a couple of hours, and although its cold light never penetrated far into this forest, at least they’d have a better idea of what was around them, and which way was west.
“Okay,” he said. “We stay here until dawn. I’ll take watch if any of you want to sleep.”
“Sleep?” snorted Henry. “I don’t think I’ll ever sleep again. I’ll take it with you.”
Stefan nodded, drawing his knees up and wrapping his arms around them, using them as a pillow. Gyorgy coughed, a line of crimson spit hanging from his lips, and Andreas pulled him tighter, stroking his head gently and murmuring something soft and sweet. Kreuz still glared at the fizzing stove, the mechanics of his mind almost visible in the intensity of his gaze. Mike stopped pacing, squeezing back in next to Stefan and cradling the assault rifle on his legs.
“Thank you,” said Joan. She smiled at Donnie, and it could have been dawn already. He wrapped an arm around her shoulders, pulling her tight, both shivering together, blowing out puffs of cotton wool breath. He watched them entwining in the heat from the stove, rising up toward the storm-laden sky, fading into the vast weight overhead.
“Just until dawn,” he mumbled, his eyes as heavy as the clouds. “Just until dawn.”
“Donnie.”
He rose from the trench at the sound of his name, his feet stuck for an instant in the mud—gripped by hidden fingers as a hundred faces stared from the wet earth and screamed for him—but then slipped loose, letting him drift out of the dream.
“Donnie.”
He snapped open his eyes, his heart lurching as he realized he’d fallen asleep. A weak light filtered into the forest from the horizon to his right, silky ghost fingers that probed the trees, searching. Joan was next to him, her head on his shoulder, snoring gently. The others dozed, too, even Kreuz, who was curled up cat-like around the cold stove.
“Donnie.”
A whisper, coming from close by. He glanced at Mike, and Henry, both sleeping. But it couldn’t have been one of them calling him anyway, because he knew that voice. He recognized it instantly.
It was Eddie.
“Donnie, help me.”
His mouth dried out so quickly that he uttered a frightened croak. It was Eddie, there was no doubt about it, that same high-pitched, nasal voice. But Eddie was dead. Eddie had been crushed, folded into a concertina of flesh, carried off into the night. There was no way he could have survived, not like that, not broken into pieces.
Yes, he’s broken, Donnie’s brain said. He’s one of the night children now.
“Shut up,” he hissed at himself. There was an explanation for this, something simple. He was still dreaming. He had to be, because Eddie was dead and dead men didn’t talk.
“I’m scared, Donnie,” said the dead man, dead Eddie. At least that’s what it sounded like, the whisper ebbed in and out like a gentle, whistling breeze.
Donnie stood up, easing Joan to the floor. Her breathing quickened and she almost woke before sinking back into sleep. The scene before him could have been a publicity shot for the peace effort, four Nazis, two American GIs and a British Royal Air Force pilot, all curled up together on the thawing ground like babes in the wood. Maybe the whole thing has been a dream, he thought. Because how can this be real? How can any of it be real?
But he could feel the morning chill on his cheeks, the softest of breezes in his hair, the crunch of the snow underfoot.
And Eddie’s voice was there, as true as it ever was in life.
“Donnie.”
“Eddie, where are you?”
“Donnie,” he replied, the only sound in the forest. Where were the birds? Even on the front, even the morning after a firefight or mortar attack, the birds had sung out, their memories short and their optimism relentless. But here there wasn’t so much as a sparrow or a wood pigeon. Here, only the dead could talk, and they did, softly: “Please, Donnie.”
He pushed through the clinging arms of the pines, Eddie’s voice seeming to flit from place to place, a snowflake buffeted by the wind.
“Eddie, where are you?”
No voice this time, just an awful, rattling wheeze that rose in pitch, lasting too long. It became a bubbling choke, then a soft, wet purr. Donnie stopped, thinking, This is a trap, it has to be, they’re luring me in. The sickening noise came again, like a dying man drawing his last breath.
“Eddie?” He should turn around, head back. He should at least wake the others. But something drove him on, alone, through the thickening needles, into the snow. “I’m coming, Eddie, don’t move, kiddo, don’t move.”
He stepped out into a line between the trees, so long and so straight that it could have been a hospital corridor. The pines knitted overhead, cutting out the rising sun, and yet the snow picked up what little light there was and bounced it back tenfold, making the whole world glow.
“Donnie.”
Eddie was there, and he was the wrong way around. His body, broken in a hundred places, was facing toward Donnie. But his shaved head was wrenched backward so that it looked as though his face had been erased. His hands were lifted, as if he were about to dive into a pool, and it took Donnie a moment to notice the rope that held them, slung over a branch like a hangman’s noose, keeping him upright.