The Keep ac-1

by F. Paul Wilson

  "I was saving the officers for last," Oster was saying, almost apologetically.

  Woermann nodded, only half-listening. Could it be? Could Erich Kaempffer have been last night's victim? It was too much to hope for. Woermann had never imagined he could hate another human being as much as he had come to hate Kaempffer in the last day and a half.

  It was with eager anticipation that he began walking toward the rear of the keep. If Kaempffer were dead, not only would the world be a brighter place, but he would again be senior officer and would have his men out of the keep by noon. The einsatzkommandos could come along or stay behind to die until a new SS officer arrived. He had no doubt they would fall in right behind him as he left.

  If, however, Kaempffer still lived, it would be a disappointment, but one with a bright side: For the first time since they had arrived, a night would have passed without the death of a German soldier. And that was good. It would boost morale immeasurably. It would mean there was perhaps a slim hope of overcoming the death curse that blanketed them here like a shroud.

  As Woermann crossed the courtyard with the sergeant hurrying behind him, Oster said, "Do you think the Jews are responsible?"

  "For what?"

  "For nobody dying last night."

  Woermann paused and glanced between Oster and Kaempffer's window almost directly overhead. Oster apparently had no doubt that Kaempffer was still alive.

  "Why do you say that, Sergeant? What could they have done?"

  Oster's brow wrinkled. "I don't know. The men believe it... at least my men—I mean our men—believe it. After all, we lost someone every night except last night. And the Jews arrived last night. Maybe they found something in those books we dug up."

  "Perhaps." He led the way into the rear section of the keep and ran up the steps to the second level.

  Intriguing, but improbable. The old Jew and his daughter could not have come up with anything so soon. Old Jew ... he was beginning to sound like Kaempffer! Awful.

  Woermann was puffing by the time they reached Kaempffer's room. Too much sausage, he told himself again. Too many hours sitting and brooding instead of moving about and burning up that paunch. He was reaching for the latch on Kaempffer's door when it swung open and the major himself appeared.

  "Ah! Klaus!" he said bluffly. "I thought I heard someone out here." Kaempffer adjusted the black leather strap of his officer's belt and holster across his chest. Satisfied that it was secure, he stepped out into the hall.

  "How nice to see you looking so well," Woermann said.

  Kaempffer, struck by the obvious insincerity, glanced at him sharply, then at Oster.

  "Well, Sergeant, who was it this time?"

  "Sir?"

  "Dead! Who died last night? One of mine or one of yours? I want the Jew and his daughter brought over to the corpse, and I want them to—"

  "Pardon, sir," Oster said, "but no one died last night."

  Kaempffer's eyebrows shot up and he turned to Woermann. "No one? Is this true?"

  "If the sergeant says so, that's good enough for me."

  "Then we've done it!" he smacked fist into his palm and puffed himself up, gaining an inch of height in the process. "We've done it!"

  " 'We?' And pray tell, dear Major—just what did 'we' do?"

  "Why, we got through a night without a death! I told you if we held on we could beat this thing!"

  "That you did," Woermann said, choosing his words carefully. He was enjoying this. "But just tell me: What had the desired effect? Exactly what was it that protected us last night? I want to make sure I have this straight so I can see to it that we repeat the process tonight."

  Kaempffer's self-congratulatory elation faded as quickly as it had bloomed. "Let's go see that Jew." He pushed past Oster and Woermann and started for the steps.

  "I thought that would occur to you before too long," Woermann said, following at a slower pace.

  As they reached the courtyard, Woermann thought he heard the faint sound of a woman's voice coming from the cellar. He could not understand the words, but her distress was evident. The sounds became louder, shriller. The woman was shouting in anger and fear.

  He ran over to the cellar entry. The professor's daughter was there—he remembered now that her name was Magda—and she was wedged into the angle formed by the steps and the wall. Her sweater had been torn open, so had the blouse and other garments beneath it, all pulled down over one shoulder, exposing the white globe of a breast. An einsatzkommando had his face buried against that breast while she kicked and raged and beat her fists ineffectively against him.

  Woermann recoiled for an instant at the sight, then he was racing down the steps. So intent was the soldier on Magda's breast that he did not seem to hear Woermann's approach. Clenching his teeth, Woermann kicked the soldier in the right flank with all the force he could muster. It felt good—good to hurt one of these bastards. With difficulty he resisted the urge to go on kicking him.

  The SS trooper grunted with pain and reared up, ready to charge at whoever had struck the blow. When he saw that he faced an officer, it was still apparent in his eyes that he was debating whether or not to lash out anyway.

  For a few heartbeats, Woermann almost wished the private would do just that. He waited for the slightest sign of a forward rush, his hand ready to draw his Luger. He would never have imagined himself capable of shooting another German soldier, but something inside him hungered to kill this man, to strike out through him at everything that was wrong with the Fatherland, the army, his career.

  The soldier backed off. Woermann felt himself relax.

  What was happening to him? He had never hated before. He had killed in battle, at long range and face to face, but never with hatred. It was an uncomfortable, disorienting sensation, as if a stranger had taken up residence unbidden in his home and he could not find a way to make him leave.

  As the soldier stood and straightened his black uniform, Woermann glanced at Magda. She had her clothes closed and rearranged, and was rising from a crouch on the steps. Without a hint of warning, she spun and slapped the palm of her hand across her tormentor's face with stinging force, rocking his head back and sending him reeling off the bottom step in surprise. Only an outflung hand against the stone wall prevented him from going over onto his back.

  She spat something in Romanian, her tone and facial expression conveying whatever meaning her words did not, and walked past Woermann, retrieving her half-spilled waterpot as she moved.

  It required all of Woermann's Prussian reserve to keep from applauding her. Instead, he turned back to the soldier who was plainly torn between standing at attention in the presence of an officer, and taking reprisal on the girl.

  Girl ... why did he think of her as a girl? She was perhaps a dozen years younger than he, but easily a decade older than his son, Kurt, and he considered Kurt a man. Perhaps it was because of a certain unsullied freshness about her, a certain innocence. Something there that was precious, to be preserved, protected.

  "What's your name, soldier?"

  "Private Leeb, sir. Einsatzkommandos."

  "Is it customary for you to attempt rape while on duty?"

  No reply.

  "Was what I just saw part of your assigned duties here in the cellar?"

  "She's only a Jew, sir."

  The man's tone implied that this particular fact was sufficient explanation for anything he might have done to her.

  "You did not answer my question, soldier!" His temper was nearing the breaking point. "Was attempted rape part of your duty here?"

  "No, sir." The reply was as reluctant as it was defiant.

  Woermann stepped down and snatched Private Leeb's Schmeisser from his shoulder. "You are confined to quarters, Private—"

  "But sir!"

  Woermann noted that the plea was not directed to him but to someone above and behind him. He did not have to turn and look to know who it was, so he continued speaking without missing a beat.

  "—for des
erting your post. Sergeant Oster will decide on a suitable disciplinary action for you"—he paused and looked up to the head of the stairs, directly into Kaempffer's eyes—"unless, of course, the major has a particular punishment in mind."

  It was technically within Kaempffer's rights to interfere at this point, since their commands were separate and they answered to different authority; and Kaempffer was here at the behest of the High Command to which all the uniformed forces must ultimately answer. He was also the senior officer. But Kaempffer could do nothing here. To let Private Leeb off would be to condone desertion of an assigned post. No officer could allow that. Kaempffer was trapped. Woermann knew it and intended to take full advantage.

  The major spoke stiffly. "Take him away, Sergeant. I will deal with him later."

  Woermann tossed the Schmeisser to Oster, who marched the crestfallen einsatzkommando up the stairs.

  "In the future," Kaempffer said acidly when the sergeant and the private were out of earshot, "you will not discipline or give orders to my men. They are not under your command, they are under mine!"

  Woermann started up the stairs. When he came abreast of Kaempffer, he wheeled on him. "Then keep them on their leashes!"

  The major paled, startled by the unexpected outburst.

  "Listen, Herr SS officer," Woermann continued, letting all his anger and disgust rise to the surface, "and listen well. I don't know what I can say to get this through to you. I'd try reason but I think you're immune to it. So I'll try to appeal to your instinct for self-preservation—we both know how well developed that is. Think: Nobody died last night. And the only thing different about last night from all the other nights was the presence of the two Jews from Bucharest. There has to be a connection. Therefore, if for no other reason than the chance that they may be able to come up with an answer to the killings and a way to stop them, you must keep your animals away from them!"

  He did not wait for a reply, fearing he might try to throttle Kaempffer if he did not move away immediately. He turned and walked toward the watchtower. After a few steps, he heard Kaempffer begin to follow him. He went to the door of the first-level suite, knocked, but did not wait for a reply before entering. Courtesy was one thing, but he intended to maintain an indisputable position of authority in the eyes of these two civilians.

  The professor merely glared at the two Germans as they entered. He was alone in the front room, sipping at water in a tin cup, still seated in his wheelchair before the book-laden table, just as they had left him the night before. Woermann wondered if he had moved at all during the night. His gaze strayed to the books, then darted away. He remembered the excerpt he had seen in one of them last night... about preparing sacrifices for some deity whose name was an unpronounceable string of consonants. He shuddered even now at the memory of what was to be sacrificed, and of how it was prepared. How anyone could sit and read that and not get sick...

  He scanned the rest of the room. The girl wasn't there—probably in the back. This room seemed smaller than his own, two stories up ... maybe it was just an impression created by the clutter of the books and the luggage.

  "Is this morning an example of what we must face to get drinking water?" the waxy masked old man said through his tiny mouth, his voice dry, scaly. "Is my daughter to be assaulted every time she leaves the room?"

  "That has been taken care of," Woermann told him. "The man will be punished." He stared at Kaempffer, who had sauntered to the other side of the room. "I can assure you it will not happen again."

  "I hope not," Cuza replied. "It is difficult enough trying to find any useful information in these texts under the best conditions. But to labor under the threat of physical abuse at any moment... the mind rebels."

  "It had better not rebel, Jew!" Kaempffer said. "It had better do as it is told!"

  "It's just that it's impossible for me to concentrate on these texts when I'm worried about my daughter's safety. That should not be too hard to grasp."

  Woermann sensed that the professor was aiming an appeal at him but he was not sure what it was.

  "It's unavoidable, I'm afraid," he told the old man. "She is the only woman on what is essentially an army base. I don't like it any more than you. A woman doesn't belong here. Unless..." A thought struck him. He glanced at Kaempffer. "We'll put her up in the inn. She could take a couple of the books with her and study them on her own, and come back to confer with her father."

  "Out of the question!" Kaempffer said. "She stays here where we can keep an eye on her." He approached Cuza at the table. "Right now I'm interested in what you learned last night that kept us all alive!"

  "I don't understand..."

  "No one died last night," Woermann said. He watched for reaction in the old man's face; it was difficult, perhaps impossible, to discern a change of expression in that tight, immobile skin. But he thought he saw the eyes widen almost imperceptibly in surprise.

  "Magda!" he called. "Come here!"

  The door to the rear room opened and the girl appeared. She looked composed after the incident on the cellar steps, but he saw that her hand trembled as it rested on the doorframe.

  "Yes, Papa?"

  "There were no deaths last night!" Cuza said. "It must have been one of those incantations I was reading!"

  "Last night?" the girl's expression betrayed an instant of confusion, and something else: a fleeting horror at the mention of last night. She locked eyes with her father and a signal seemed to pass between them, perhaps the tiniest nod from the old man, then her face lit up.

  "Wonderful! I wonder which incantation?"

  Incantation? Woermann thought. He would have laughed at this conversation last Monday.

  It smacked of a belief in spells and black magic. But now ...he would accept anything that got them all through the night alive. Anything.

  "Let me see this incantation," Kaempffer said, interest lighting his eyes.

  "Certainly." Cuza pulled over a weighty tome. "This is De Vermis Mysteriis by Ludwig Prinn. It's in Latin." He glanced up. "Do you read Latin, Major?"

  A tightening of the lips was Kaempffer's only reply.

  "A shame," the professor said. "Then I shall translate for—"

  "You're lying to me, aren't you, Jew?" Kaempffer said softly.

  But Cuza was not to be intimidated, and Woermann had to admire him for his courage. "The answer is here!" he cried, pointing to the pile of books before him. "Last night proves it. I still don't know what haunts the keep, but with a little time, a little peace, and fewer interruptions, I'm sure I can find out. Now, good day, gentlemen!"

  He adjusted his thick glasses and pulled the book closer. Woermann hid a smile at Kaempffer's impotent rage and spoke before the major could do anything rash.

  "I think it would be in our best interests to leave the professor to the task he was brought here for, don't you, Major?"

  Kaempffer clasped his hands behind him and strode through the door. Woermann took one last look at the professor and his daughter before following. They were hiding something, those two. Whether about the keep itself or the murderous entity that stalked its corridors at night, he could not say. And right now it really didn't matter. As long as no more of his men died in the night, they were welcome to their secret. He was not sure he ever wanted to know. But should the deaths begin again, he would demand a full accounting.

  Professor Cuza pushed the book away from him as soon as the door closed behind the captain. He rubbed the fingers of his hands one at a time, each in turn.

  Mornings were the worst. That was when everything hurt, especially the hands. Each knuckle was like a rusted hinge on the door to an abandoned woodshed, protesting with pain and noise at the slightest disturbance, fiercely resisting any change in position. But it wasn't just his hands. All his joints hurt. Awakening, rising, and getting into the wheelchair that circumscribed his life was a chorus of agony from the hips, the knees, the wrists, the elbows, and the shoulders. Only by midmorning, after two separate doses of aspir
in and perhaps some codeine when he had it, did the pain in his inflamed connective tissues subside to a tolerable level. He no longer thought of his body as flesh and blood; he saw it as a piece of clockwork that had been left out in the rain and was now irreparably damaged.

  Then there was the dry mouth which never let up. The doctors had told him it was "not uncommon for scleroderma patients to experience a marked decrease in the volume of salivary secretions." They said it so matter-of-factly, but there was nothing matter-of-fact about living with a tongue that always tasted like plaster of Paris. He tried to keep some water at hand at all times; if he didn't sip occasionally his voice began to sound like old shoes dragging across a sandy floor.

  Swallowing, too, was a chore. Even the water had trouble going down. And food—he had to chew everything until his jaw muscles cramped and then hope it wouldn't get stuck halfway to his stomach.

  It was no way to live, and he had more than once considered putting an end to the whole charade. But he had never made the attempt. Possibly because he lacked the courage; possibly because he still possessed enough courage to face life on whatever terms he was offered. He wasn't sure which.

  "You all right, Papa?"

  He looked up at Magda. She stood near the fireplace with her arms crossed tightly over her chest, shivering. It wasn't from the cold. He knew she had been badly shaken by their visitor last night and had hardly slept. Neither had he. But then to be assaulted not thirty feet from her sleeping quarters...

  Savages! What he would give to see them all dead—not just the ones here, but every stinking Nazi who stepped outside his border! And those still inside the German border as well. He wished for a way to exterminate them before they could exterminate him. But what could he do? A crippled scholar who looked half again his real age, who could not even defend his own daughter—what could he do?

  Nothing. He wanted to scream, to break something, to bring down the walls as Samson had done. He wanted to cry. He cried too easily of late, despite his lack of tears. That wasn't manly. But then, he wasn't much of a man anymore.