Breach

by W. L. Goodwater

  “Give the order,” he said, nodding. “Move ahead.”

  Yet there was something here. Now away from the crackle of the Wall and the chaos of failing magic, it twisted deep in his chest. Glancing over, he saw that Kirill felt it too: a queerness in the air, like a scent that defied identification, alternating between the sublime and the putrid.

  What did you do in your darkest hour, Germany? What did you summon?

  Krauss waddled along at the rear of the column. The colonel had not wished to bring him, but he could still prove useful. They were marching into the unknown and he would use any advantage he could, even the unpleasant German magician.

  He heard it before the others, he and Leonid. The rest were too young to recognize it, being fresh-faced veterans of a war without battles. But for him, it was unmistakable: the echo of German boots on asphalt.

  “Hold!” he ordered, too late. The road ahead was suddenly full of gray and black—German soldiers, not East German or West German, but German men of the Reich. Their frantic shouts and the rattle of their guns echoed back a decade, stripping away years of his life just as bullets began to tug at his clothes.

  Leonid tackled him and pulled him to cover before returning fire. The others were doing the same, except for a few who were already down, bleeding out silently in the road.

  “What is this?” he asked Leonid with a voice that sounded far away.

  Leonid reloaded his rifle with casual, automatic movements. “I do not know, sir,” he said. “But I know how to kill Nazis.”

  It lasted only a few minutes. His troops were fresh, well trained, and well armed. Kirill’s magic had played a part as well, breaking apart the Germans’ paltry defenses with mystic fire. They lost four men, but that had been in those first confused moments. Once the soldiers of the USSR brought their strength to bear, few could withstand it.

  The colonel walked among the enemy dead. His boots crunched on broken asphalt and scattered empty shell casings. The soldiers’ uniforms were tattered, not by time but by hard conflict. The insignia on their collars had not been worn by anyone since Berlin had fallen. Their weapons too were years out of date, though looked new. The war had never ended, not for these men. He had thought they were entering a lost district, but he saw now they were in a lost time.

  “What do we do, sir?” Leonid asked.

  He knew he should answer. He had to answer. But what was there to say? This was not magic; this was madness.

  “Sir?” Leonid gripped his arm. “Orders?”

  “Send out the scouts again,” he said, regaining himself. He nudged a nearby body with his foot, rolling the man over. Blood had dripped into the man’s now-empty eyes. “And tell them to do their jobs this time. If there are more of the enemy about, we cannot blunder into them at every turn.”

  Now the air smelled of war: iron and black powder. His skin trembled with drying sweat and fading adrenaline. As he moved away from the enemy bodies he realized that in the exchange, he had not fired a single shot.

  How was it still not morning? He reached into his pocket and fumbled with his watch. But when he got it open, he saw that it had stopped. He tapped its face, tried to wind it, to no avail. It lay in his palm like a dead songbird: inert, profane.

  What sort of place was this? What sort of magic had they come for?

  He had seen his death in those Germans’ faces. Only Leonid’s quick action saved him. When had he become such a fragile old man? If this truly was the war of his youth summoned back to life like an avenging spirit, would he have the strength now to withstand it? Or was he destined to end up like those young men bleeding in the street—

  Gone. They were gone. His own dead remained, but the Germans were gone: bodies, rifles, casings. All gone. It was not possible. Had he imagined them? No, of course not. They had fought. Men had died, just moments before.

  “What did you do?” he demanded of Leonid.

  “Sir?”

  “The Germans,” he said. “Why did you order them moved? And when?”

  Leonid’s brow creased. “Sir, I do not—”

  “There,” the colonel said, pointing to the empty ground. “Where are they?”

  This time, Leonid said nothing.

  They turned to the sound of running feet. One of the scouts appeared from the way the Germans had come. He ran straight to them, panting.

  “They are coming back,” he said between gasps.

  “More Germans?” the colonel said.

  “No,” the scout said. “I mean, yes, sir. But no.”

  Leonid grabbed the man. “Speak sense, soldier.”

  “They are coming. A German patrol. The same German patrol. I saw their faces, sir, and their uniforms. It is the same men. The same men!”

  No. None of this was as expected. None of this was possible.

  Then the scout looked past the colonel and saw that the bodies had vanished; all sanity fled. “Holy God. This is hell. Sir, you have brought us into hell.”

  The colonel could not refute him.

  FIFTY-ONE

  Two blocks east, they heard the voices again. Louder this time, though still indistinct, and not just voices: boots, moving in near unison, crunching across broken concrete. Soldiers.

  “Soviets?” Karen mouthed to Ehle, who frowned in reply. She hadn’t known what they’d find in Auttenberg, though most of her fears were abstract: a shadow looming across the wall, an unspeakable terror lingering in the dark. But the Soviets were very tangible. And very dangerous. Her skin crawled in the cool air. She tried not to think about what they’d done to Jim and to Dennis, and tried not to decide which fate would be worse.

  They hugged the buildings and tried to move away from the sound, but it grew inexorably louder. Karen was about to decide if it was time to fight or run when Ehle stopped and nodded across the street. There was a figure there, huddled in the doorway of a slouching apartment structure: a woman, beckoning to them with thin fingers. With a glance back down the street toward the approaching sounds, they quickly crossed over to her. As they neared, she waved more furiously, gesturing into the building behind her, whispering rapidly in hoarse German.

  “She says it is not safe out here,” Ehle said.

  The woman spoke again, and then disappeared inside, leaving the door open for them to follow. The building’s interior was dark. It reminded Karen of staring into the tunnel under the Wall, a memory she had no interest in reliving.

  “Who is she?” Karen asked. “Who is left in Auttenberg?”

  Ehle shook his head. “I cannot say. No one who entered after the war ever returned.”

  “Because some ghost woman lured them to their doom?”

  Ehle was looking down the empty street ahead of them. “We cannot afford to be caught by the Soviets.”

  “If they’re already inside Auttenberg, we can’t afford to hide,” Karen said. “We need to get to that book.”

  “Our French friends are behind us,” Ehle said. He nodded in the direction of the soldiers. “And they are ahead of us. We cannot go farther until they move on.”

  “Fine,” Karen said. “Let’s wait for them to pass inside the creepy haunted death house.”

  They found the woman down a hall and through a broken door. It was a large room, its original purpose unknowable. Smashed remains of furniture were scattered across the floor or stacked against a wall. The windows were mostly cracked or shattered and boarded over with wooden slats crudely nailed into the frames. An anemic fire struggled in a small fireplace, painting weird shadows along the ground.

  The woman who had invited them wasn’t alone. There were four of them in all: two women, a young boy, and an old man. The women couldn’t be anything but sisters, with the same angular nose and wide-set eyes. The boy, quiet and fair, huddled around their skirts, a handful of the simple fabric gripped tight in a small fist. The old man s
tood away from the others, staring eastward. Their clothes were dark with dirt and ash, nearly torn to rags.

  Ehle greeted them in German and they responded. When Karen gave him a questioning look, he held out a hand for his leather satchel, which Karen wore over her shoulder. She passed it to him, all the while keeping an eye on the shadowed Auttenberg residents. Ehle shuffled through the bag’s contents, eventually retrieving a ring of tightly wound copper and silver wire, about the size of his palm. Karen inspected the ring in the faint light: it appeared mundane, but she could feel the enchantment stored within, thrumming like a plucked violin string.

  “Hold it to your ear, like this,” Ehle said quietly. Karen put it in place and he instructed her on an invocation. She said the words, but nothing happened. She was about to complain when suddenly there was a crackle and then her ear was flooded with noise: a rush of unidentifiable sound, like a thousand voices whispering a hundred languages at the same time.

  “It will improve,” Ehle said by way of apology. “Give it a moment.”

  Karen winced against the cacophony, but it did begin to die down. It was soon replaced with a metallic buzz, and then a softer murmur. She blinked hard, her head still spinning. She heard Ehle speaking, but it sounded far away. He was saying something in German, something . . .

  “. . . for taking us into your home.” The words sounded right, but wrong somehow, like through a strange accent.

  “We must help one another, in these dark days.” The woman was speaking, still in German, but somehow Karen understood.

  “We were not certain who we would find remaining here,” Ehle said.

  “Where would we go?” the woman’s sister asked. “How could we leave? This is our home.”

  The woman said something else directed at Karen, but she could only catch every other word, the sentence lost in a Teutonic muddle. The woman produced a rag from her apron, dipped it in a bucket of dust-covered water, and held it out to Karen.

  “For your face,” she said, motioning.

  Karen took the cloth and tried to smile. She had forgotten the dried blood that still caked her cheeks and mouth. She must look frightful to them. The rag was coarse, but the cool water felt good on her hot skin. They hadn’t known what they’d find inside Auttenberg, but Karen certainly hadn’t expected hospitality.

  “The soldiers outside,” Ehle was saying. “Are they Soviets?”

  “No, no,” the woman said, shaking her head. “Not yet. They are coming, but not yet.”

  Ehle’s frown cast dark lines over his face. “Then who did we hear?”

  “Those are the brave sons of the Reich,” the woman’s sister said, gaunt face beaming. “The Soviets will come, but our sons will keep us safe, even now. They have to.”

  “Ehle . . .” Karen started to say, but he raised a hand to stop her.

  “How soon,” he asked, “before the Soviets arrive?”

  “The radio broadcasts have stopped, so we cannot know. A matter of days, perhaps,” the woman said. “Maybe hours. The shelling, at least, has stopped for now, but we no longer know if that is a good omen or ill.”

  “Dark days,” her sister repeated.

  Ehle turned to Karen and she saw her own suspicions written across his brow. “Are they talking about the war?” she asked him in a whisper. “How is that possible?”

  “The world moved on,” he said, as if in a trance. “But not here. This place has been stuck in that same day ever since. This is the day. The day Voelker used the book.”

  At the sound of that name, the old man at last turned toward them. His faraway eyes suddenly became lucid and he raised a finger toward Ehle. But before he could speak, one of the women came forward, blocking him. “Come and sit by the fire,” she said, gesturing for them to approach. “We have little left, but we will share.”

  Karen reluctantly moved deeper into the room. As she neared, the little boy looked up at her and rattled off a flurry of words while Ehle’s magic struggled to keep up. She smiled at him, but he did not return the expression. Karen thought he looked very sad.

  While the women prepared a meal from their meager supplies, they sat by the weak fire on unsteady stools. Karen caught Ehle’s eye. She spoke softly so the others didn’t hear her speak English. “You didn’t tell me this book could stop time.”

  “It cannot,” Ehle said. “Nothing can.”

  “And yet . . .” Karen motioned to the Germans and their ruined home.

  “The book’s magic,” Ehle said, “or at least the part Voelker understood, manipulated reality. Unmade existence. What it could do was never meant to be.” He nodded toward the women. “There were bound to be . . . consequences.”

  “Like distortions in time.”

  “Like distortions in perception.”

  “And you still want to keep going?” Karen asked.

  “More than ever,” he said.

  She couldn’t argue. Ehle had never tried to hide the fact that something was wrong in Auttenberg, something worth hiding away. And in fact, she’d actually expected worse. As long as bombs didn’t start falling from the sky.

  “This,” she said, tapping the metal ring, “is remarkable magic.”

  Ehle flushed at the compliment. “It took me years to create,” he said. “And it is far from perfect. In the end, translation from German proved rather simple. To German, on the other hand . . .” He shrugged. “I was never able to master its linguistic subtleties.”

  “You said you made these enchantments as a young man,” Karen said. “How old were you when you created this? I know magicians back home who’d be satisfied with something like this as their life’s work.”

  “The hypothesis came to me as a student in university,” he said, “though I did not finalize the design until . . .” His voice died, as did the brief glimmer of pride in his eyes.

  Karen’s head began to hurt. “Ravensbrück,” she said as she lowered the ring.

  Ehle’s face had gone sour, but he took her hand and returned it to her ear. “Please. No one was harmed in its making,” he said. “It is the product of my idle time, not my work for the Reich.”

  That distinction didn’t really seem to matter, but before she could reply, the women appeared with cups of steaming watery coffee and a tin of crumbled stale bread. Karen took what was offered her, but did not eat.

  “What was your service to the Fatherland in this awful conflict?” the woman asked Ehle as they sipped. Karen felt sick as the magic translated the words; she could not look at her companion as he replied.

  “I served on the eastern front,” he said softly.

  “Are you a soldier?” asked the boy.

  “Of a sort,” Ehle said. Karen’s mouth tightened at the too- familiar lie.

  “My father is a soldier too,” the boy said. “He is out there now fighting our enemies, but he will be home soon.”

  “Quiet, child,” the woman said. There was something in her voice, something nearly lost in the arcane translation, but Karen still heard it: the woman did not share the boy’s optimism about the return of his father. Whatever these people were—ghosts, echoes, or souls trapped by Auttenberg’s magic—they were German. The end of the war carried no joy for them.

  “Just a soldier?” The old man spoke at last. His voice, low and weak, made the ring’s magic hiss and spit. “Surely you do yourself a disservice. A man such as you must have done great things for the Fatherland.”

  Ehle shifted uncomfortably. “We have all done our part, every man, woman, and child.”

  The old man shuffled a step closer. His wet eyes gleamed in the firelight. “Yes,” he said, “we have all served. But not all of us have earned the German Silver Cross for our service.”

  “Who are you?” Ehle said sharply. “How do you know me?”

  The old man laughed. The sound rattled in Karen’s head. “We
are dear friends, you and I,” he said. “Have you forgotten already?”

  Ehle stood. “Karen,” he said in English, “it is time to go.”

  But the women were there, somehow behind them now, blocking their way out. When the woman who’d invited them inside spoke, it was not with her own voice, but with another’s: masculine, deep, cold.

  “Leaving so soon, Erwin?”

  Ehle replied, but the words were breaking up, the letters of English and German smashing together like a car wreck. Karen tightened her grip on the translation ring, but could feel its imbued magic failing.

  “Why are . . . here?” the old man asked. “. . . nothing . . . Auttenberg now, except death.” Then the magic was gone, the ring silent.

  Karen looked to Ehle. He met her eyes, then glanced at the door they’d come in, and then to another on the far side of the room.

  “What is going on here?” Karen said, standing at Ehle’s shoulder, but he said nothing. “How do these people know you?”

  The sister pushed the other woman aside, laughing, and barked out a challenge in that same strange voice. Her careworn face folded into a creased sneer as someone else’s words poured out of her.

  “What is this?” Karen said, voice shaking with the first hints of panic.

  “It is him,” Ehle said. “Voelker.”

  “What are they—what is he saying?”

  “He welcomes us to Auttenberg,” Ehle said. “He is pleased I have come to his domain so that I might see him wipe Germany’s enemies from the earth.”

  Now it was the boy speaking with a voice far too old. The women came behind. They were all speaking now, the same jeering, boasting words coming out of three strange mouths. “How is he doing this? How is he speaking through them?”

  “I can feel it now,” Ehle said. “Can you not? Such power . . .”

  Karen did feel something, but she could not name it. The quiet of Auttenberg was gone; maybe it had never been. Now there was a murmur, a growing rumble like the ocean made mad by the wind, permeating everything. And the unmistakable, undeniable sense that there were eyes everywhere: in every shadowed alleyway, behind every empty window, in the night sky that still refused to give way to the sun.