by P. W. Child
“Yeah right,” he scoffed to himself, “don’t be expecting to see an apple tree growing around here, mate. With your know-how you’d probably eat a poisonous thing and die right here. Have all those bastards laughing their arses off at the daft Scotsman who died swallowing his tongue.”
It felt odd to talk to himself in such deathly silence. For some reason it seemed more crazy than doing it in the shower or the kitchen. An adjacent rock face where he could hear mountain water trickling down was a godsend, but he had to venture out of the shelter of the building to get there to investigate if the water was pure before the darkness would render him blind. His cell phone had been confiscated and his lighter had gotten wet when he jumped into the slimy water tank outside where his colleagues were held before they were executed.
Sam lamented their demise, probably because of his escape no less. But he was just a hired shooter on their trip and did not know any of them very well. One was an archaeologist from Bremen, another a linguist from Copenhagen – they were a couple – and with them there was a man from Plzeň who looked like some curator of a museum to Sam, but he never learned what his purpose was on the trek to the wilds near Nohra where they all came to a brutal end a few hours earlier. All Sam knew was that they were there to expose and claim an art smuggling ring that ransacked Eastern Europe for art, but not just any art. They apparently believed that the pieces that were acquired by the smugglers had intrinsic value – in the world of the supernatural. The revelation had initially made Sam laugh out loud until he realized that the other three were dead serious. After some thought upon his last adventure with The Brotherhood in Iceland and Russia he could not very well discard such claims anymore, he had to admit. Although not entirely convinced by the magical and fantastical, Sam had to concede that there was much more credibility to the more clandestine practices out there, than he had thought.
They had not discovered what they had come to unveil, him and his colleagues, but they did uncover a bunker where some really unusual symbols were drawn upon the walls. The linguist told them that it was a forgotten dialect of Moldovan, simply Romanian. Then the linguist remarked that there was no known diversion from the original language, save for some cultural differentiation. Much as Sam found all this fascinating, it sort of caused a mental Gordian knot in his brains to which he elected to nod and ignore for fear of too much confusion.
Being a Scottish lad with a roughshod demeanor Sam was far more interested in conversation with the curator from Plzeň after he discovered the city’s other name was Pilsen. Therefore, the city, and the entire country’s reputation for first class breweries definitely enjoyed the lion’s share of Sam’s attention. Now all he had left of the entire venture was the footage and the film he had on him, some depicting the inside of the bunker and others revealing the faces of the aggressors who were at this very moment hunting him.
Cradling the camera, Sam had inadvertently reached for it while in deep thought.
“Water, idiot. It’s getting pitch dark!” Suddenly his common sense kicked in.
With a keen ear for dogs and footsteps, Sam limped from the structure and braved thorns and sharp stones amongst the debris to make his way around the wall. His mission was to find the origin of the lapping sound, but he knew he could not tarry too long, for the scent he left would surely be picked up by the animals. There was just enough time to drink some water and wrench his wounded feet back into the uncomfortable soaked boots for another few hours of hell – if he survived that long.
In the dark Sam carefully paced forward on sore feet, his arms outstretched ahead to find the water. He would rather have moved slowly than to hasten and risk injury, but the thirst urged him on. Soon he crouched down and his fingertips found the cold wet rock. He slurped like a horse, sucking in the precious liquid to soothe his throat and fill him at least somewhat until he could get something to eat. When he drank his belly full, Sam leaned with his face against the stone surface to allow the water to run over his sticky perspiring face.
Behind him something moved through the bushes. Sam was horrified. He froze in place, listening. Inside his chest his heart threatened to explode, but he held his breath just the same. Snapping branches and twigs progressed very slowly, disappearing into the structure where he had left the camera.
Oh god, no! Don’t let them find the camera! It is all I have to prove that I was here. Without it, all this torture and the death of those people would have been in vain!, he thought to himself as he breathed through the surface of the trickling water against his cheek. By the sound of the rustling leaves and recoiling branches Sam could tell that the stalker was emerging from the structure.
Panic struck him and he turned to face the narrow pathway that ran in front of the structure. Sam stretched his eyes as wide as he could to see if he could discern some sort of outline or shape among the matte black shadows from the paltry sickle moon that rose over the edge of the cliff face. Sam could feel his flesh crawl and his breathing was virtually impossible to restrain as he watched silently, praying that they would not detect him a few feet away. He could feel his blood rush through his veins, his heart pounding in his ears like a cannibal drum with him as feast. A massive shape came out from the shed and rounded the corner, but it stopped. Its treads were heavy and Sam had no idea what to do. He had to retrieve his camera, at least, but it would be foolish to get killed for it. What help would evidence of an execution be, when the only witness was shot dead claiming it?
Sam saw that the figure stood still, but he could not tell in which direction he was looking. He had to provoke some sort of action from the threat, even just to see what he was dealing with. Quietly he stole closer, sweeping the coarse polls of grass and thorns for a rock as he crouched below the tall grasses. The wind bent the dead brown stalks of weed about Sam, but he stayed low not to be seen as he hurled the stone in the direction of the shape. He braced himself for the menacing miscreant to charge the moment the stone clanked against the nearby iron beams, but instead the figure took flight in the opposite direction.
Sam’s jaw dropped as he heard the clopping of its hoofs down the decrepit little road as its brisk pace became more lenient, eventually coming to a slow walk and then ceasing again. The beast had calmed and once more it was walking into the tall grass to seek out something to chew on.
“A fucking horse,” Sam whispered to himself, uncertain whether a chuckle or a cry of relief would be more apt. He stood up and ran his hands through his unkempt hair, shaking his head. “I think I just shat meself, you bastard,” he laughed softly as he walked back to the dirt pathway and looked the indifferent animal in the eye at a short distance. It was chewing lazily and stared at him with a glare that bordered on amusement. Sam could not stop shaking his head in disbelief and embarrassment, smiling as he painstakingly got his boots laced up and collected his camera. He had never ridden a horse bareback before. In fact, he had not mounted a horse since he was seventeen and even then, it was a dire ride for the entire six minutes he stayed on.
For several minutes he scoured the shed for something he could use as reins. After all, the structure appeared to have been a stable or barn a long time ago. With all the rusted farm tools and dry troughs Sam guessed that there would be leather strapping or rope somewhere under all the timber and metal. Not long after lifting what resembled a broken stable door in the corner, Sam struck the jackpot. A wealth of helpful tools and straps were buried underneath, illuminated by the slight beams of the risen moon which fell through the gap in the wall and formed a twisted square on the shed floor.
After luring the horse with a succession of tongue clicks and coaxing, holding some succulent grass in his hand, Sam finally got the animal close enough to give him a stroke on the nose. It turned out to be a rather tame creature, even affectionate, and Sam enjoyed just petting the horse for a while. He had almost forgotten that his life was still in danger while he was in the vicinity. The skin of Sam’s feet burned profusely as he tried to mount the hor
se with his camera cradled in his long sleeved shirt, which he had made a sling from and used as some sort of makeshift rucksack. He winced and moaned every time he felt the inside of his boots chafe his open flesh, but he had to escape this area, or it would be the last of him.
His dark eyes scouted the road ahead to determine the course best to take.
By now the cold had become cruel on Sam’s bare arms, but his survival was of more importance. Rather get the flu or take his chances with pneumonia than to perish altogether, he reckoned, and spurred the horse onward. He made sure not to drive the horse into a full gallop, because it would sound through the dead cold night, no doubt reverberating against the rising hilltops of the valleys and alerting his pursuers. Gradually they made their way through the night, carefully navigating the trenches and dry riverbeds so that neither of them would sustain any unwelcome injuries in the pitch dark of the strange landscape.
By midnight both Sam and his horse were exhausted. He dismounted just short of the brook they had come to, a few miles before the main road he hoped was on the right track to civilization.
“Oh my god, I think I’m lost,” he finally admitted next to the slurping horse that had its snout immersed in the cascading brook. Its shoulder muscles quivered wildly every now and then as it drank, its ears rotating to the sound of the strange rider’s mouth sounds next to him.
“Do you know where we are?” Sam asked the horse. He found even the animal’s lack of interest soothing, as long as it kept him company. Sam felt utterly lonely, ravenous and cold in the godforsaken patch of German land where he was being hunted like an animal.
Chap ter 3 – Skullduggery
Radu stormed out of the tiny alleyway in pursuit of the rat, but he hitched his toes on the protruding cobbles and came slamming down on the stone walkway. All around him passers-by complained about the tumbling boy obstructing their path as they walked along the sidewalk and some of them leered at him with hands raised in a gesture of warning. The ten year old boy scurried out of the way as quickly as he could to avoid a trouncing from one of them. His dark brown eyes appeared enormous in their deep sockets and his head was disproportionately large on his shoulders due to malnutrition. His gaunt appearance likened him to some eerie imp, but his age compelled the citizens of the town to tolerate him.
Since Radu’s mother was killed in an altercation with three drunken attackers three years before he had been eluding social workers’ claws. Even at his age his freedom was more important than a full tummy and a warm bed. He had no idea why he would relinquish the privilege of education and a steady upbringing, but in his little heart he knew he was born to live under the radar of society, a wanderer, like his missing father.
His mother used to hold him at night in their run-down little room, the AM radio waves obscuring the crackling tunes that came and went from what sounded like another galaxy. There she used to tell her son about his father, how he went to work for an affluent family for the harvest season and never returned. Radu remembered looking at the tears in her eyes as she re-told his favorite story of how his parents met while running from the police after a rock concert that got out of hand in Budapest. He remembered how she smiled as she spoke of his father, staring out into space while reminiscing and fondly thinking of her husband.
They had moved to Cluj-Napoca right after their wedding and two months later Radu was born in this very alleyway.
This was why the child remained close to the dirty little space between two mid-town business buildings. He felt close to his mother when he was here. The state took her body and he did not know what became of her remains, because he hid from the authorities, not to be taken in by the system where strangers would pretend to love him for a state subsidy to feed their own desires.
Sometimes his beautiful mother would look at him through her bloodshot eyes after working for eighteen hours at two different residences, and she would shake her head. Smiling at her son, she would say, “You are just like your father, Radu. You are a roamer, a rebel – typical Gypsy.” At the time it was just a word, but he was told by some other hobo’s in the city that the term was either a thing of pride, if you belonged to the culture by blood, while other times being called a Gypsy was an insult and an insinuation of thievery or cheating. Radu chose to be proud of it, because it was the only emotional thread connecting him with his father.
Now he was more alone than ever, with the approach of that dreaded festival that reminded poor people how forgotten they were and nailed the spike of class differences even deeper into the blind eye of morality and compassion – Christmas.
Having abandoned his efforts of catching the rat the young streetwise boy took a walk, wandering up a few blocks north where marveled at the merriment of the patrons under the trees of a local beer garden. Radu wondered what it was like to have. Just to have the means to live. There was a distinct difference between being alive and living, something which he doubted any of them knew. Like he often did lately, Radu frowned with no kind look in his eye. In particular, there was a rowdy bunch of German tourists sitting at one of the bigger tables, looking smug and snobbish to the boy, more so than most.
Immediately he felt a warm wave of willing loathing take him and he started devising a plan to alleviate them of their belongings. Radu watched them keenly. There were two women in their fifties and three men of similar age, apart from one, who was much younger. He reckoned the younger man was the son of one of the couples and the one to watch out for. The younger man was in his late twenties, tall and powerful and very attractive. But he said very little, so the young Romanian vagrant assumed he was too reserved to get violent. After three years on the streets Radu had learned to sum up people’s mannerisms quite easily. He could read people quickly to determine when to make his move and which method to use. Not once did he feel guilty or shamed by his deeds, because he felt like it was owed to him by those who lived in luxury. Giving to people like him, willingly or not, was after all a good gesture, was it not? Radu grinned as he strolled on, hatching his plan.
What worked best in his favor was that he did not look homeless. Little Radu was the epitome of an adorable foreigner – often pretending to be a lost Italian or Portuguese boy looking for his parents. With all the tourists frequenting his city on their way to visit all places that mentioned Vlad Tepes of the legend of the Order of Dracul, it was easy to pick up on their accents and the way they acted. Radu had become an accomplished actor by now and he was rarely ever nervous anymore staging his cons.
After he had gone to the park fountain to wet his hair and wash his face, he returned to the beer garden where the loud Germans were still sitting. Pretending to be the son of one of the establishment’s patrons, Radu simply walked in and hovered around a large table near the corner tree where a local company had their year-end function. All the people at the long wooden table chatted in small cliques as the third round of drinks were already kicking in. Nobody paid attention to the fresh face among the children playing around the tree, running about the whole time. Radu used the opportunity to blend in, because the staff of the company did not know one another’s families well enough to notice that this child had no parents present.
From here Radu eyed the Germans, making sure that they saw him playing there so that they would assume the same as the waiters and guests. A while after he had joined the party, the young boy cordially asked one of the waiters where the restroom was and of course, they were only too happy to direct him there. All this was Radu’s way of building an alibi. Being a child just made his criminal activities easier. With his dirty sweater turned inside out and tied over his shoulders the Romanian boy looked like a proper little yuppie, fooling anyone who did not care to check his fingernails or socks.
On his way to the restroom, Radu checked his surroundings for witnesses. It was at the back of the beer garden where the all the vehicles of the patrons were parked. Once he determined that there were no prying eyes to blame him, he took two rocks, climbed into one o
f the trees and, from the shelter of the high set branches, he picked two luxury cars. Honing his aim, Radu flung the first rock at the wind shield of a brand new red Mercedes. As the alarm started to scream, he rapidly hurled the other rock at another posh set of wheels well away from the first, the make of which he could not determine from the vantage of the tree.
At once there was an unholy cacophony of screeching car alarms coming from the parking lot and as he expected, it immediately drew the urgent attention of all the establishment’s patrons. With their focus on what was happening, some running to check on their cars and other watching the panicking runners, the people at the beer garden presented an easy pick-off for the unremarkable little boy. Without hesitation he swept the one German women’s bag from under her seat in the stride of his walk as he casually sauntered past the table while she was leaning across the table to see what was ensuing in the parking area.
By the time she noticed that her bag was stolen it was too late. Radu was long gone; he had left during the madness and stopped only to slip on his sweater and ruffle up his hair. There were many things he learned quickly on the streets, but one of these was paramount. Never run.
Running through a crowd of slow pacing people drew attention. He learned to take his time moving through people to get away from a scene where he had committed a theft, because for some reason police officers had the mistaken idea that all thieves sprinted. Radu smiled as he slipped into the back yard area of a petrol station where he emptied the bag. From the contents he kept the cash, discarding the woman’s wallet. He did not want to look at her ID. He did not want to know her name, because then she would be a person, not a target. If he knew her name she would become someone’s mother, someone’s daughter, someone’s widow, even. Then he would feel guilty about stealing from her, because his mother taught him that only hard work gave a man pride in his money. Stealing would then be construed as quite the opposite according to his mother’s law.