by Amir Lane
“I wish one of you could tell me,” he said, more to himself than to the hallucinations. “I wish… I wish one of you were him.”
That wasn’t entirely true. He didn’t want Zven’s spirit here. Assuming that spirits were real, and that these were spirits. It was a cruel thing to want. He wanted every part of Zven to be here. He wanted them to both be back in Berlin, squished together in one of their tiny beds under the too-thin blankets, trying to keep warm through the winter. God, he never thought he’d miss the feeling of Zven’s too-warm toes against his leg. The hot summers that were too hot for them to spend in the same bed didn’t compare to knowing he would never see him again.
He sniffed, forcing a smile.
“I’m never going to get through these, am I? Why do we still have all of this stuff, anyway?”
Watching the mirages blurring in and out of focus, he grabbed another dress. He leaned back, lifting it into his lap. Something heavy fell out of the fabric and hit his foot. A dull pain caught him off guard, and he swore loudly.
“Ekkehardt?”
“I’m fine, Mama! Something fell!”
He felt along the floor between his feet for what had fallen. A book. No, a journal. A worn, leather journal.
“It might have been in her journal, if she kept one.”
His heart began to race. He rubbed his chest to soothe the muscles with one hand and unbound the journal with the other. Would it have been too much of a coincidence for this to be Nina Kruspe’s journal? How many journals would be wrapped in a dress in their attic? It had to be the journal. The journal that maybe talked about the spirits she saw, if she really did see them. But if she did, no matter what a small if it was, then maybe she wrote about what they looked like. And if they looked like water on the road, then…
Then maybe one of these was Zven. And if one of these was Zven, then maybe…
Then maybe what? What was he going to do if Zven was lingering? Find a way to send him to whatever there was after this? Keep him here?
“You’re being ridiculous. Spirits aren’t real. Uncle Godfrey was right, she was just… traumatized.”
Wasn’t he, too? Getting shot. Losing the love of his life. Maybe dying himself.
He licked his lips and opened the journal to the first page.
Property of Nina Kruspe
Do not read
Nina must have been young when she’d started writing in this journal. How many more had she kept over the years?
September 13, 1942
Mama and I went to the market today. I saw Ludwig again working with Herr Keiner selling apples. I couldn’t talk to him. Mama doesn’t know that we see each other after school. It would break her heart if she knew I was dating a merchant boy but I don’t care. It isn’t up to her to decide who I love.
Ekkehardt smiled to himself. So Nina had been hiding a relationship from her parents, too. He liked her already.
11
That first paragraph was all it took to become engrossed in Nina Kruspe’s journal. He took it everywhere, carrying it in his book bag when he went out, even sleeping with it under his pillow. It was maybe a little obsessive, but he didn’t want to risk his parents finding it and taking it away. He didn’t think they would — they’d never taken anything from him before — but he didn’t want to chance it. Something about his parents’ avoidance of talking about family made the topic feel off limits. He was sure they’d answer anything he asked, but it was so uncomfortable that he never did. Most of their family was dead, and the ones who weren’t were scattered to the wind. This journal might have had answers that nobody else did.
So far, the only thing he’d found was a family recipe for a cake he’d never heard of, something that could be made with only a few ingredients and apparently still tasted like a proper cake. He wondered if Hida knew it. He folded down the corner of the page for future reference.
The next entry was three months after the cake recipe. Ekkehardt frowned, flipping between the two pages. Had he missed something? No pages were ripped out; Nina just… hadn’t written in three months.
January 7, 1943
The doctor says I can go outside again when it becomes warm if I don’t get worse. But I finally have the strength to sit up and write, and I can see. I hope spring comes soon. I haven’t seen Ludwig since the fever started. I was afraid I never would. Him or anything else.
She’d been blind. Typhoid, maybe? He had heard of some people going blind from it if the fever got high enough.
The next few paragraphs were of her missing Ludwig and describing things she’d never thought to pay attention to. It was something he’d never thought of before. What it would be like to never be able to see anything. To wake up one morning and never be able to see his mother’s face, or the garden, or the cat that liked to sleep under the porch again. He shuddered at the thought.
He skimmed the page for something interesting.
died
Woah.
Who died? What?
He backtracked to the start of the paragraph.
They didn’t think I would make it through the fever. The truth, though they won’t say it, is that I didn’t. I know I died. I felt it. I closed my eyes that day, and I knew I wouldn’t wake up again. I wasn’t supposed to wake up. I wished and wished that I could have said goodbye to Ludwig and my parents but I knew this was it. I was in so much pain, always burning. It was a relief to have it stop.
I don’t know how or why I woke up. I couldn’t see, and I could barely move, but I was alive, and the burning was gone. At first, I thought I imagined it. Everyone was so terrified, though. Mama and Papa kept fussing over me and thanking God.
Ekkehardt’s chest hurt again. It was sharp, stabbing into the closing wound next to his heart.
She’d died. Nina Kruspe had died, just like he had. If it had been the same for her as it had been for him, the spirits — hallucinations — must start on the next page. He forced himself not to rush forward, though. He didn’t want to miss anything.
She talked again and again about what it was like to see properly after so many months of thinking she would never be able to leave her bed. Never having children.
The entry ended abruptly, as if she’d been interrupted and never got around to finishing it. The next few were the same. A page of what she’d done that day that ended mid-sentence. He would have worried, but she always picked up her pen a few days later. There never seemed to be any rhyme or reason to it, and she never explained the sudden disappearances.
“What kept pulling you away?” he whispered.
He should have gone to sleep hours ago but he needed to know what kept making her stop.
March 3, 1943
I went to the doctor today. He says that my vision is perfect and that I’m in better health than he could have hoped. I should be relieved. But if my eyes are fine, how can I explain what I’ve been seeing? I haven’t dared tell anybody. I haven’t even dared write it until now. I’d hoped that it was my eyes. This is worse. This means that what I’ve been seeing is either in my head or it’s real. I almost hope that they’re real.
I don’t know how to describe what I’ve been seeing. At first, I thought they were something from the fever. But the fever faded, and they were still there. They look like fog, only condensed into a small space. Some of them are only small circles like from breathing on glass. Some of them almost look human. Those are the ones that frighten me.
Ekkehardt covered his mouth to muffle his shout. There was no movement down the hall. Nobody had heard him.
He didn’t want to let himself believe in spirits. If spirits were real, somebody would have proved it by now. But there was something in the back of his mind reminding him that if spirits were real, then Zven might not really be gone. It was a pitiful hope he should have known better than to listen to.
He read the words again, and again, and again. Fog or mirage, it seemed like they saw the same thing. They’d both died and they’d both woken, seeing…
something. There was still the question of whether they were real or not but didn’t seem to matter as much anymore. What mattered most was that he wasn’t alone in this. Nina Kruspe had seen things, too. She might have been long dead, but she understood. She understood, and maybe her journal had answers. He wasn’t alone in this anymore.
12
The next few weeks of entries didn’t amount to much. Ekkehardt had hoped for answers, more information on what these things were, but all he got was confusion and fawning over Ludwig. It was easy to forget that Nina had been a teenager when she’d written these entries. But she was younger than him — one of the entries talked about her 17th birthday — and just as lost in all of this.
Even when he wasn't reading it, he still spent every waking moment thinking about Nina’s journal. She talked about seeing more figures more frequently, but he hadn't noticed any change in his own. Then again, Nina noticed them more in some places than others, and Ekkehardt largely confined himself to the small house. Maybe there were more outside. They seemed harmless enough, if not distracting, but he wasn't sure he wanted to see more. He also wasn’t sure he wanted to spend the rest of his life inside.
As the dates progressed, the entries grew darker and shorter, and it appeared the increase in spirits wasn’t because of her abilities growing. They were rounding people up and killing them. Soon, the entries became a list of people she knew who disappeared or were confirmed dead.
The pain in Ekkehardt’s stomach grew with each entry. He almost couldn’t keep reading them, but he had to. It didn’t feel fair to only read the parts he wanted to. These were people Nina had known and cared about. They deserved better than to be skimmed over. Pages and pages of names in bullet lists with a few words of who they were so they wouldn’t be forgotten. Even if it was only two words — bakery girl or happy blonde — it was something. He had to stop more than once to wipe tears and pretend the pain in his chest was from the bullet wound. So many people… too many had died for nothing. He tried to picture some of them from the descriptions, but that was too much for him. He flipped the page and sighed in relief when it wasn’t a list. His eyes skimmed the first line, though, and his blood froze in his veins and his intestines twisted into knots.
They killed Ludwig.
He couldn’t breathe. When had— He flipped back as far back as the beginning of the journal to find when he’d been taken, but there was nothing. Nina had never mentioned it. Had she even known?
Ekkehardt covered his eyes with one hand, sobbing over a man he’d never even met. A man who’d stopped existing before he was born. But he was a man his aunt loved and, God, if he didn’t know exactly how she felt. He could feel her pain, the numbness when she’d heard the news. And then how her heart had broken when she’d realized what it meant. When she’d realized they were never going to have that quaint little home in the country with kids and a dog running around the yard. That they were never going to grow old together. Never going to— to— to anything because it was all gone. Not just gone, but taken! Everything he wanted in life had been taken, and Zven was buried in an unmarked, shallow grave like a criminal!
He screamed and threw the journal across the room. It hit the wall with a satisfying thud.
“Ekkehardt?” Otto called, running into his room. “Ekkehardt, are you all right? Do you need me to call the doctor?”
Ekkehardt tried to shake his head from his position curled up on his bedroom floor, unable to speak through the tears or the choked sobs. He couldn’t keep pretending this pain was from anything other than what had been ripped from him. Otto rubbed circles on his back as if he were a child. It took several long, painful minutes, but his breathing did even out. The pain in his heart didn’t lessen, though.
“I miss him,” he whimpered, not sitting up from his position. “I really miss him, Dad.”
“I know. It’s hard to lose someone you loved.”
“I still love him. And he— he loved me, too. But he’s gone now and I— I— I don’t know what to do.”
Otto didn’t say anything, just kept silently rubbing Ekkehardt’s back until the hitches in his breath disappeared. Ekkehardt closed his eyes against the burn, and when he opened them again, he was in his bed with the journal tucked into his hand. It was still light outside. He sniffed and reopened it to the page he’d been on. He had to. Nina understood. She knew exactly how he felt. She raged for pages with hatred for the people who had done this to the man she loved. Not just pages, but for days. Three, four, five entries were about her anger. She swore revenge, and he didn’t blame her for a heartbeat. His eyes, still dry and bloodshot, drifted over the words, only focusing so much until he came to the last words of a September entry:
I am going to bring him back.
* * *
Ekkehardt stared at that last line for what must have been hours.
I am going to bring him back.
It could have meant anything. It could have meant that Nina was going to retrieve Ludwig’s body. It could have been a desperate, heartbrokenly optimistic declaration. It could have been nothing.
Or it could have been exactly what he was looking for.
He couldn't turn the page. If Nina had only meant bringing back his body, not bringing him back to life, Ekkehardt wasn't sure he could handle the disappointment. And if she hadn't, if she’d meant resurrection, that might have been worse.
“I must be going crazy,” he said to himself with a sarcastic laugh. “We're both crazy, Nina. You can't bring someone back to life.”
He wanted to believe, though. Despite all logic, he wanted to believe he could have Zven back in any form. His insistence was becoming weak, and it didn't stop him from hoping as he finally took a deep breath and turned the page.
“I don’t understand,” he said, his brow furrowed in confusion.
It was a grocery list. Wine, aloe, saffron… Opium? What the hell kind of grocery list was this? Why had she written it in her journal? There were no other shopping lists in here, and no pages had been torn out to suggest she had ever used her journal for one before.
The next page was covered in symbols he’d never seen before and words that looked German, but he didn't understand. He traced each with a finger, feeling a low electricity run through his skin that made him shiver. Something heavy settled in the pit of Ekkehardt’s stomach. There was something… wrong with these symbols. The next page was no better: odd diagrams of bodies in various positions, some with those sigils drawn on them, some without. There was nothing graphic or sexual about them, but they filled him with something akin to dread. The room closed in around him, smothering him, suffocating him. Darkness began to creep into the edges of his vision.
He threw the journal onto his bedroom floor, gasping for air. He pulled his knees to his chest and pressed his forehead to them, eyes squeezed shut. The weight receded, and he found he could breathe again.
What the hell was wrong with him? Everything seemed to set him off these days.
He lifted his head. The air in front of him was distorted into the shape of a face. It leaned over him, so close he could almost feel it. It was cold. Its hand came up, creeping closer to his face in what felt like a silent threat, its body contorting unnaturally with the motion.
Ekkehardt inhaled sharply and kicked at it. It felt like he'd stuck his foot in a bucket of ice. He jerked back, nearly falling off the other end of his bed in the process, and rubbed his foot. No frostbite and the apparition was gone. He laughed, somewhere between breathless and hysterical.
“Nina,” he said, “you might have been out of your goddamn mind, but you were onto something.”
13
Convincing his parents to let him move back to Berlin for was easier said than done. He’d thought waiting until after Hanukkah would make it easier. Even insisting that he had to go back for the winter semester to continue his Master’s was met with resistance. They were worried about him collapsing, or getting ‘robbed’ again. He wasn't sure if it would have been
better or worse if they'd known the truth. It was finally pulling Otto aside and admitting that he wanted to be close to Zven that made them give in.
Liese and Jakob met him at the train station in Berlin. Liese pulled him into the tightest hug he'd ever received, and Jakob somehow beat her for it.
“It's good to have you home,” he said. “The house has been too empty without you.”
The silent, ‘and Zven’ hung heavy between them.
His room had been fairly undisturbed. His closet had been rummaged through when his mother had packed his clothes, he suspected. Zven’s room, on the other hand, looked exactly the same.
“We couldn't go in there,” Liese explained. “It just felt wrong.”
Ekkehardt didn't blame her. There was an unnatural stillness to Zven’s room. It knew that Zven was never coming back. It was cold, colder than the rest of the house. Was it ridiculous to think Zven had taken all the warmth with him?
He stood in the doorway for a long time, reluctant to disturb the stillness, before entering. All of Zven’s things were still here. His parents hadn't wanted anything that belonged to a traitor. Just the thought sent a stab of pain through Ekkehardt’s heart. He was getting used to those. Warmth ran through his right forearm and for a moment, he thought it was Zven’s hand.
He sat at the edge of Zven’s bed. Zven had made it before leaving. The sheets were tucked under the mattress, giving it an unlived-in feeling. It had never bothered Ekkehardt before today.
“If you're here, I just want you to know that I haven't given up on you.” His words only seemed to travel a few inches before the weight of the room snuffed them out. “I can fix all of this. If— If it works.”