The Nightwalker: A Novel

by Sebastian Fitzek

  ‘No,’ retorted Leon, more loudly than he had intended. ‘It’s worse than that. Believe me.’

  I can’t let him leave again. Not before I’ve proved it to him.

  Leon had let go of the wardrobe and was now down on his knees, peering under the bed.

  ‘What are you looking for?’

  ‘My headband. My head camera. I filmed it all while I was down there.’ Leon sat up and gave a tortured grin. ‘Of course, God, I’m so stupid. You can see it all yourself. Come on.’

  He jumped up and went over to the laptop on the bureau, which was still turned on, but in energy-saving mode.

  ‘Wait, soon you’ll understand what I’m talking about . . . Leon pressed the escape button multiple times. As the screen came back to life, he turned – and found himself alone in the room.

  ‘Sven?’

  No, please no. Don’t let him have disappeared too.

  He rushed into the hallway, looking frantically in all directions.

  ‘Sven?’

  Instead of an answer, he heard the creak of the parquet floor, relatively close by in the stairwell.

  ‘Sven, come back!’ he called after his friend, running towards the exit. Rushing to catch Sven at the lift, Leon almost stumbled over him, as he didn’t reckon on Sven being ducked down directly behind the front door.

  ‘Hey, watch out. Otherwise you’ll break it!’

  ‘Break what?’ asked Leon breathlessly. Instead of answering, Sven stepped to the side.

  ‘Voila! Our vanished model,’ grinned Sven, who was speaking more easily now. He lifted up the cardboard model of the hospital renovation with both hands and carried it past Leon.

  ‘But, but, but, but . . .’ Now it was Leon’s turn to stutter. ‘But that can’t be possible.’

  ‘And why not?’ asked Sven on his way into the study.

  ‘Where did you get it from?’

  Sven had reached the desk and was placing the model in the middle of the work surface. ‘Where do you think? I picked it up, remember?’ Worry lines appeared on his forehead. ‘You haven’t forgotten that, have you?’

  ‘Yes,’ sighed Leon.

  Like so many things.

  ‘I guess I must have been sleepwalking when you came.’

  His friend gave him a mocking look.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. That’s impossible. I had a long conversation with you.’

  ‘Well, that can happen in an unconscious state too.’

  ‘You’re kidding, right?’

  ‘No. It’s unusual, but not all that rare for sleepwalkers to act almost like normal, conscious people,’ explained Leon in agitation. As he spoke, his thoughts were crashing together in his mind.

  Who knows how often I fall asleep? And if I don't always have the camera on? What else have I done in my sleep that isn’t on the tapes?

  ‘Some cook meals for themselves, and by the next morning they’ve forgotten that they ate a salami pizza in deep sleep and washed up the dishes afterwards,’ he continued. ‘Others have whole conversations with their partners, go for a walk, turn the TV on or start up their cars.’

  And others enter into a gruesome underworld in order to hurt their wives . . .

  Leon didn’t want to dwell on this last thought.

  ‘There is a simpler answer to all this, partner,’ said Sven as he walked out of the study. ‘You’re just overworked.’

  Leon sighed. ‘No. That’s not it. I wish it was, but it’s not. You have no idea. You don’t know what’s happening here . . . what happens to me when I sleep. I filmed it. Please believe me. Watch the tape.’

  Sven groaned, and he sounded almost amused. ‘A film?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Of you sleeping?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘And it’s on your laptop?’

  ‘In the bedroom. Please.’

  For a while the friends didn’t say another word, then Sven rolled his eyes like a father who couldn’t say no to his son’s ridiculous request.

  ‘Fine. But first I need to use your bathroom.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The toilet. I need to go.’

  ‘No.’

  Leon made a step to block his way, but it was too late. His friend had already opened the bathroom door.

  ‘What the . . . Oh God!’

  Sven flinched as though he had just been lashed in the face with a whip.

  ‘You’re sick,’ he whispered. Strangely, when he lowered his voice, the stutter disappeared.

  ‘That wasn’t me,’ said Leon, pointing at the dead cat on the tiles.

  ‘I mean, it wasn’t the Leon that you know.’

  ‘Get away from me,’ exclaimed Sven with a look of disgust on his face, stretching both his arms out to keep Leon at a distance.

  ‘No, you have to stay!’

  Leon screamed so loudly that spittle flew from his mouth. He grabbed Sven with both arms to keep him from going by force if necessary, but he was too weak. Sven had no difficulty in freeing himself from his grasp.

  ‘Don’t touch me!’ he panted, backing towards the exit with his hands balled into fists.

  ‘Please, Sven. I filmed everything. Myself, the shaft, the tunnel. Even the Falconis behind the mirror.’

  He begged Sven to stay, to look at the video, but his words just drove his friend from the apartment more quickly.

  ‘You’ve completely lost your mind,’ shouted Sven. These were his last words as he flung open the front door and disappeared from view. Leon could only hear his heavy footsteps hammering down the stairs.

  And now?What do I do now?

  Leon would have hurried after him, but just the memory of Natalie fleeing into the stairwell only a few days ago under similarly mysterious circumstances – perhaps to disappear from his life for ever – held him back.

  He leaned against the door from the inside, exhausted, closing it with his back and beginning to talk to himself again.

  ‘I should get out of here. Ivana was right. It’s the building. I have to get out of here.’

  He went over to the telephone table and picked up the landline from its unit.

  ‘I have to get out of here.’

  When he heard the dial tone, he lost it completely. Leon laughed so hard that his whole body shook.

  My key. The model. The dial tone – they’re all back.

  ‘Only my sanity is still nowhere to be found.’

  Giggling hysterically, he went back into the bedroom to fetch the policeman’s card. It was next to the laptop, and at least his memory didn’t fail him on that point.

  ‘Hello, Herr Kroeger? Please come and pick me up,’ he laughed breathlessly as he dialled the inspector’s number. After the fourth digit, he heard an engaged tone and stopped in confusion.

  Clearly the blinking light of the USB stick in the laptop had distracted him so much that he had delayed too long dialling the number, and now needed to start again from scratch.

  ‘No. Things can’t go on like this,’ he said to himself. ‘I don’t want to see what I recorded.’

  During my last sleep phase. After I fell asleep in the tunnel in front of the DANGER door.

  ‘I don’t want to see it,’ repeated Leon in a whisper.

  Not while I’m alone, he added in his head.

  But then he leaned over to lift up the metal chair and put it in front of the laptop screen.

  31

  A few minutes later Leon ran back into the bathroom so quickly he almost lost his boot that was missing its lace.

  Too late. Damn it. Hopefully I won’t be too late.

  His wet clothes rubbed against his skin with every movement, but right now that was the least of his worries.

  I shouldn’t have watched it, he thought, cursing himself mentally. But how could he have resisted the blinking light when it might have signalled the solution to all his problems?

  His hopes had been dashed, of course. Even worse than that: the images on the last recording had punished him ruthles
sly for his lack of self-control.

  If he had interpreted the video correctly, he had much bigger problems than he’d feared. Of the huge volume of material that had now been collected by the hard drive, he had watched only the very last, continuous recording, the first seconds of which were entirely unspectacular: the video had predominantly shown walls, stones and steps, in other words the path that Leon had walked along – from the door with the DANGER sign, out of the shaft and back to his apartment – almost as soon as he had fallen asleep.

  The violin is the key!

  Leon had been expecting to see himself operate the keypad and open the secret door.

  But instead, I did something much worse.

  He hadn’t even glanced at the secret door at the far end of the dead-end tunnel, but instead went straight back, clambered up into his apartment, and pushed the wardrobe back in front of the opening in the wall. Still sleepwalking, he had then hobbled into the bathroom with strangely wooden movements.

  At this point the bathtub wasn’t yet filled with bloody water, Alba wasn’t yet lying dead on the tiles, and apart from the debris from the destroyed mirror, there was no sign at all of the chaos Leon would unleash in just a few minutes.

  Right now Leon was stood exactly on the spot where he had stopped and stared at the ceiling in the video.

  Literally.

  Directly above the toilet, a cover panel had slipped to the side, which until now he had always assumed was the casing for the service box of the water thermostat.

  Not the first mistake he had made since moving in.

  He clambered on to the toilet lid, on which his boots had already left prints, and pushed against the cover above his head. In his hurry he had left the torch in the bedroom, but the bathroom light was enough to illuminate the start of the chimney-like shaft and the rungs leading upwards.

  Everything was exactly as he had seen it on the video, with one exception: the piano playing had stopped. While before he had been able to hear the soft but unmistakable sounds of Tareski’s scale practice on the film’s audio, now nothing but silence came out of the newly discovered exit.

  A deathly silence, he thought as he grabbed the first rung above him.

  He was tired and weak, and no wonder, for it seemed he had spent the last few hours doing anything but sleeping. The cold, hard edge of the rung didn’t trigger his memory as he grabbed it, nor did the musty smell of mould as he struggled his way upwards, but such recollections would have been highly unusual anyway.

  Like most sleepwalkers, Leon couldn’t remember his nocturnal activities. For that reason he wasn’t surprised that the narrow shaft, which was becoming darker over his head by the second, seemed so unfamiliar.

  Quickly. Hurry. Don’t lose any time. He drove himself on in his head.

  Halfway, shortly before the light shining up from below threatened to be extinguished, plunging the bricked walls into darkness, the fingers of his right hand unexpectedly touched a scrap of material.

  Leon groped around his knee and found the corresponding rip in his trousers. So far he hadn’t noticed that he must have caught his right leg on a sharp edge of the ladder in his sleep. But ruined clothing was the least of his worries; right now it was a matter of life and death.

  What have I done?

  Unlike when he ended up in Ivana Helsing’s apartment, this shaft didn’t lead into a bathroom, but a small chamber. The windowless room into which Leon had crept – through an already open floor panel – was in complete darkness, so he could hardly see his hand in front of his face. From the video recording, he knew the room had a square layout and was utterly empty.

  Crawling on all fours, he groped around the wooden floor until he found the head camera. He had clearly lost it on his way back.

  Leon switched on the camera’s lamp and shone it at the path to the door.

  He knew he had to go to the right. And he knew he didn’t need to be quiet. Tareski wouldn’t wake up even if a bomb went off in his apartment.

  Leon hung the headband of the camera around his neck and ran along the corridor, flinging the door to the living room open.

  ‘No!’ he screamed, as he met the sight before him.

  It had looked unreal on the video; not as gruesome, more like an illusion that could be erased simply by deleting the recording. But Tareski’s bulging eyes, his foaming mouth and bloated, blue-violet face could not be made to disappear at the touch of a button. The sight of the chemist lying lifelessly in front of his piano on the carpet would haunt Leon for the rest of his life, he was sure of that.

  He looked around and noticed a pair of scissors on a side table near the window. He reached out for them, even though they probably wouldn’t be of much use now.

  On the recording he had crept up behind Tareski as he sat there unsuspectingly at his piano. The chemist’s eyes had been closed in concentration, as could be seen in the reflection of the polished, black lacquered surface of the piano. Somewhere between the chamber and the living room, Leon must have loosened his shoelace. A few steps later he had lurched forward swiftly and wrapped it around his victim’s neck.

  Tareski had gasped for air. His eyes, now dull and lifeless, had been wide open. In reaction he had tried to get his fingers under the noose Leon was using to choke off his air supply. At the same time he had reared up, forcing them away from the piano bench, and tried to turn to see his treacherous attacker, but when he couldn’t he concentrated on mere survival, directing all his efforts towards finding a way to breathe again.

  At some point, after Leon had tied a knot in the lace and left Tareski to choke in front of his piano, the chemist had managed to get a thumb under the noose. Clearly Leon had only tightened it half-heartedly or – which would be even worse – intentionally left a little leeway so the death throes lasted longer.

  ‘I strangled him,’ whispered Leon in devastation, kneeling. Tears rolled down his face, and he felt such intense guilt that for the first time he understood why people took their own lives. He put the scissors at the knot, accidentally knicking Tareski’s skin. And it was lucky he did, for otherwise there would have been no pain reflex. Tareski’s upper lip trembled slightly, but it was still a sign of life.

  Without wasting time feeling for a pulse, Leon began to resuscitate Tareski. He turned the chemist on to his back, applied both hands in pressure-point massage above the heart, and . . .

  Three . . . two . . . one.

  Nothing!

  ‘Come on!’ he shouted, starting over again.

  Three . . . two . . . one.

  Leon flexed Tareski’s neck and pressed his lips on to the chemist’s open mouth. Fired by the hope that it might not be too late after all, he expelled the air from his lungs into Tareski’s; felt how his upper body swelled and sank down again.

  ‘Come on. Please . . .’

  Leon switched back to heart massage, feeling like all his movements were in slow motion. Whenever he rammed down on Tareski’s ribs, thoughts shot into his mind like lightning bolts.

  Three . . .

  It’s not just about Natalie. Or Tareski. I’m connected to all the apartments, I can spy on all the neighbours.

  Two . . .

  I’m a fan of the architect’s work, I studied von Boy ten.

  One . . .

  We didn’t choose this apartment. It chose us.

  Zero.

  At the end of the fourth interval, Leon was physically forced backwards. Tareski reared up beneath him, vomiting and wheezing at the same time. And then came the spasms.

  Thank God!

  Tareski’s distorted body shook in a vicious fit of coughing. Leon feared the brought-back-to-life chemist still wasn’t getting enough oxygen. Then, between two convulsive attacks, Tareski managed to suck in a stream of air, and the whistling breaths accompanying it were like music to Leon’s ears.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Leon, knowing how inadequate the apology was for what he had done, even if he had been in a state in which he wasn’t cri
minally responsible. Even if his attack hadn’t caused any lasting physical damage – from this day on his neighbour would never feel safe again. Not when he went for a walk in the evening. Not when he sat in his car and looked in the rear-view mirror. And certainly not in his apartment, where he had been attacked completely out of the blue.

  ‘I’ll fetch help,’ said Leon, pretty sure he wasn’t getting through to Tareski at all. The poor man may not be fighting for his life any more, but he was still struggling for air, incapable of registering anything. Perhaps he could taste the blood in his mouth from his chewed-up tongue, possibly he could hear his own choking and wheezing, maybe the epileptic pumping of his heart and the blood crashing against his eardrums with the force of a water cannon. But certainly Tareski didn’t hear the sound that cut Leon to the quick as he was looking around for a telephone.

  That’s impossible.

  Leon turned back to the piano, in front of which the chemist was still cowering in a fetal posture. He stared at the keys, before which sat no one but which were still moving regardless – creating exactly the notes he had heard so often in the past few months.

  But how . . .?

  Leon took a step closer and saw the thin cable concealed on the side of the piano and running past his feet, presumably to a power point in the wall.

  Bewildered, he looked between the chemist and the electric piano, which had clearly been programmed. The rhythm of the scales was halting and sounded unpractised, and now and again, seemingly by coincidence, there was a discord, as if someone had played a wrong note.

  But none of this makes any sense.

  Leon leaned over the keys, studying the open sheet music, then looked at Tareski, who by now had struggled up on to all fours and was coughing like a dog – and at that moment he realised, with painful clarity, the code that would open the secret door in the labyrinth.

  32

  Going back to the labyrinth through Tareski’s chamber wasn’t an option.

  Leon wanted to return, which theoretically would have been possible as soon as he got back to his own apartment. But the secret door in his bedroom was blocked to him now that he could no longer move the wardrobe. This was probably due to the depth of Leon’s exhaustion, and his dwindling strength. He would fall asleep again in a matter of seconds if he allowed himself even a moment’s rest – but then again his inability to move the wardrobe was just as inexplicable as everything else that had happened to him so far on his search for Natalie, a search that was increasingly becoming a search for himself.