“Good luck with that,” Kelly said mournfully, and loped away.
* * *
Rifkin found no bodies when he combed the woods, though he did find several small piles of fine grey ash. He thought about Schiller’s comments about Wunderwaffe or wonder weapons, and shuddered, and had the guards on the site doubled.
Work continued. Men fell, and were replaced. Schiller visited with increasing frequency, demanding more and faster work until Rifkin nearly threw him off the site. Men complained of seeing and hearing things — dead-eyed ghosts in SS uniforms with strange insignia staring out from the trees, whispering voices that spoke neither English nor German but filled listeners with unspeakable dread, and a bone-chilling cold that settled over the entire operation, even when it was fifteen degrees warmer on the other side of the hill.
Rifkin, once he’d calmed down, mentioned these to Schiller. Schiller responded by telling him it would be nothing to worry about if he finished the damned project — less complaining, more construction.
And so it rose. An outer ring of fake stones, towering thirty feet in the air and covered in delicate, unreadable script. An inner ring of smaller ones, unadorned but aligned precisely according to Schiller’s directions so that the setting sun lit a peculiar path through the ring. A central fire pit, a dozen feet across and ten feet deep, ringed with a circle of precisely laid out black sand. Next was the final piece of the puzzle, a mock up of a titanic stone table, grooved around the edges with iron rings set into the corners.
It made Rifkin feel uneasy just to look at it.
When it was finished — the last coat of paint dried and the last fake rock artfully arranged, he sent word to Schiller that it was done. A half an hour later, the man himself was standing next to him, inspecting the site.
“It will do, I suppose,” were the first words Schiller said. “The third stone in the inner ring is two centimetres to the left of where it should be. The grooves down the centre of the table should be straighter. And the — no, never mind. It will have to do.”
“We’re halfway up a hill and fifty feet away,” Rifkin said incredulously. “You mean to tell me you can pick those details out from here? A lot of men I know back home would call that hooey, the sort of thing you say to keep from paying a man once he’s done a job for you.”
“A lot of men you know back home are idiots, Captain,” Schiller retorted. “I had not thought you were one as well.”
Rifkin opened his mouth to reply, but Schiller waved him off. “No, no, better you do not speak. Now listen to me. You and your men are now barred from this place. It is off limits. My own people will guard it. Stay on your side of the hill, no matter what you see or hear, and do not return unless I call for you.”
“Which you won’t, I’m guessing.”
Schiller cocked his head. “And once again the Captain makes me think he is clever. We are done here, you and I. Go back to your tent. Play your American records loud and harbour no dreams of heroics. Your work here is done.”
“Major, I —”
“Dismissed, Captain. That will be all.”
Snapping off a salute, Rifkin turned and marched away. Behind him, he could hear Schiller muttering things under his breath. And if he were honest, he could hear something answering.
* * *
It was raining when Kelly woke him, a hard, heavy rain shot through with lightning that was a little too thick and a little too red to feel quite natural. “Captain,” Kelly said, as he shook him awake. “You’ve got to hear this, Cap.”
“Wha..?” Rifkin sat up, the t-shirt he’d been sleeping in damp with sweat. He hadn’t been more than half asleep to begin with, the rock in his gut and the thunder in his ears conspiring to keep him from dropping off for more than a few minutes at a time. “Kelly. What’s the scoop?”
Kelly put his finger to his lips, shushing him. “Just listen for a minute.”
Rubbing his eyes, Rifkin listened. At first there was nothing but the steady thrum of the rain, with the gurgle of water running down through the camp as a sodden counterpoint. Occasional rumbles of thunder, distressingly close, cut through the water sounds with deafening impact.
But after a moment, he picked up on something else, something low and ugly underneath the sounds of the rain. Something that sounded like chanting.
“What the hell is that?” he asked, though from the look on Kelly’s face, he didn’t know, either. “It’s not English, it’s not French, it’s not German, I’m pretty damn sure it’s not Japanese.”
“Hell if I know, Cap. I’m not sure it’s even human.” Kelly ducked out the front of the tent, out into the rain. A flash of lightning illuminated his face, showing lines of worry and fatigue that hadn’t been there when they’d started this damned project. “But I do know where it’s coming from.”
Rifkin knew the answer before he asked it. “Where?”
“The work site.”
“Son of a —” He shrugged into his shirt, slid feet into his boots and secured his sidearm in his holster. “Maybe we should go down there and see what the hell’s going on?”
Before Kelly could respond, another bolt of lightning stabbed down from the clouds. A blast of thunder powerful enough to knock Rifkin off his feet followed a millisecond later as the bolt smashed into the ground on the other side of the hill.
“Did it hit?” Rifkin shouted as he staggered back to his feet.
“It hit the site, yeah!” Kelly bellowed like a newly deaf man in a bar fight. “Went right for it, past the trees and the hill and everything!”
Rifkin threw on a rain slicker and ducked out of the tent. “We should see if there’s anything left. C’mon!” With that, he took off into the night. After a second’s hesitation, Kelly followed.
It wasn’t until they reached the top of the hill that Kelly caught up to the captain, and then only because Rifkin had stopped dead in his tracks. From where he stood, a natural break in the trees showed the scene in the valley below. What he saw there chilled him to the core.
There was a fire in the fire pit his men had built. He could see that now, great tongues of flame reaching up in defiance of the rain. A ring of chanting, hooded figures stood around the central firepit, casting long shadows across the inner ring of ‘stones’ Rifkin’s men had so laboriously created. The long, low slab next to the flames that had been joking called the altar was being used as exactly that. A woman in a tattered white robe lay upon it, bound hand and foot and screaming in German. Shadows danced against the edge of the clearing, not always in time with the leaping of the flames. And at the centre of it all, dressed in robes as red as blood and holding an ancient-looking dagger, stood Schiller. He held the blade up to the heavens, chanting something in harsh gutturals which cut through the rain and howling wind. As he shouted, bolts of lightning leapt up from the dagger into the sky, where they traced outlines of unspeakable faces into the roiling clouds. In the distance, across the river, similar bolts arced from ground to sky and back again, a matched set of impossibilities.
“Holy shit,” said Kelly. “You seeing what I’m seeing, Cap’n?”
“I’m more worried about what we’re going to see next,” Rifkin replied. “The way our buddy Schiller’s waving that thing around, I don’t like that lady’s chances.”
Kelly shook his head. “I’ve seen things like this before. Some of the more decadent buyers back in New York liked to dabble in pretend occult nonsense. Summon the spirits to make an opening go well, crap like that. But this? I’m hinking it’s the real deal. Which means that fräulein down there’s not set dressing.”
Rifkin nodded. “She’s a sacrifice. Or will be, if we don’t stop them.”
Kelly gave a grin, a small one. “Been waiting for you to say that since we started working with Major Schiller there. He never rubbed me the right way, and seeing what he had us do? Making us a part of this? I’m all for putting a wrench in his gears.”
The captain answered Kelly’s smile with a tight one of
his own. “I’m not thrilled with having ordered you to put this little slice of hell together. Whatever’s supposed to happen here, I want no part of it on my conscience. So let’s go make sure it doesn’t happen.”
Kelly pulled his sidearm, tucking it under his body to protect it from the rain. “Captain, I thought you’d never ask.”
Side by side, the two crept from under the shadow of the trees. Schiller was still chanting, his acolytes interrupting him now and then to echo his words or bellow out a response. The blade of the dagger was reversed now, pointing down at the woman spread-eagled on the sacrificial stone. She’d gone past words now and was simply screaming, pure wordless terror as she strained against her bonds.
Rifkin reached the base of the largest of the fake monoliths his men had built and tucked himself inside its shadow. A second later, Kelly emerged beside him, grim-faced.
“What’s the plan, Cap’n?”
“Around the outside until we’re closest to Schiller. Then we fire a few rounds, which should scatter those jokers in the bathrobes. None of ‘em look like they’re armed.”
“Except Schiller.”
“Gun beats knife.”
“Yeah, but does gun beat knife that shoots lighting?”
“I guess we’ll find out.” Still crouched, Rifkin headed to his right, timing his advances in the dark between lightning strikes. Kelly followed a few feet behind, until they stood at the head of the circle. Schiller’s back was to them as he concentrated on his task, while the hooded men chanted in frenzied rhythm, none looking away from the altar.
“Now?” asked Kelly.
“As good a time as any,” said Rifkin, and fired his pistol into the air as he charged into the ring. “Alright Major, show’s over. Put the knife down and step away from the girl.”
Schiller whirled, dagger still in hand. Past him, the other hooded figures turned as well, faltering mid-chant as they did so. On the altar, the victim twisted and contorted against the ropes. “Thank God, thank God,” she said in a thick German accent. “They’re going to kill me!”
“No they’re not,” Rifkin stepped forward, the pistol levelled at Schiller’s head. “You. Major. You’re gonna use that fancy knife of yours and cut her loose, or I’m going to introduce your guts to some high-velocity lead.”
“Idiot,” Schiller hissed. “You have no idea what’s going on here. What you are risking by interrupting.”
“Seems pretty obvious to me. Kelly. Since the Major here’s not interested in cooperating, go grab his pigsticker.”
“Roger that Cap’n.” Kelly stepped out from behind him and took two long strides toward where Schiller stood.
“Captain, you do not understand! If you stop us now, the war is lost!” Schiller’s face was ashen, whether from fury or fear Rifkin couldn’t tell. What he could see was the dagger, gleaming ever brighter in the ruddy light from the fire. And behind him in the long distance, the lightning was still pouring down in time with the ragged chanting of the few hooded men still on point.
The rest, the ones who weren’t muttering ancient nonsense syllables, were edging toward Schiller, and, by extension, Kelly.
“I don’t see us losing the war by taking a slice out of some local dame, Major,” Kelly said as he got close. “Tell your boys to stay back and put your hands in the air, or a bunch of folks’ll get perforated.” His pistol was in his fist, and he bumped Schiller’s belly with the muzzle to emphasize his point.
And that’s when Rifkin saw the thing that froze his blood cold.
Schiller smiled. “If that is what you wish,” he said, and raised his hands to the heavens in a mockery of the pose of surrender.
“Kelly!” Rifkin screamed, but it was too late. Even as Schiller stretched upward, the clouds reached down to him. A spiky rope of lightning punched down, homing in on the outstretched dagger before redirecting into a blast of pure energy that punched Kelly backwards a dozen yards. He skidded to a stop, unmoving, at the base of one of the fake menhirs.
Rifkin fired.
The woman on the altar screamed.
And the bullet hit the tip of the dagger and was vaporized by another burst of blue-white light.
“This is too important to waste time trying to convince you, Captain. Put down your gun and run. Or deal with the consequences. But you will not, you cannot stop what is happening here tonight.”
“Like hell I can’t,” Rifkin shouted, and fired again.
Somehow, he missed.
Schiller did not, whirling and bringing the dagger down into the chest of the captive. Her dying shriek was lost in the roar of the suddenly surging fire, which rose in a bloody pillar towards the electrified clouds. A bellow of thunder exploded directly overhead, so loud the hooded chanters fell to their knees, clutching their heads and moaning. Fountains of blood jetted up from the altar, scribing impossible lines in the air, symbols that made Rifkin’s head throb just to see them.
He squeezed the trigger again.
And the lightning came for him.
* * *
The first thing Rifkin discovered when he woke up was that it had stopped raining. The second was that he had apparently been tied to a tree, and the third was that his head hurt like hell. He blinked a few times, and realized he was bound to one of the trees on the edge of the clearing where he’d witnessed….whatever the hell he’d witnessed the night before. With that, everything came flooding back — the storm, the knife, the blood — and he found himself bellowing. “Schiller! Where are you, you bastard?!”
“There is no need to shout,” came a voice from behind him, and then Schiller stepped out of the shadows. In his left hand was a knife; not the one Rifkin had seen him with before, but a short, utilitarian blade that gleamed in the morning’s weak light.
Rifkin lunged for him, completely forgetting that he was tied up, and succeeded only in rubbing his arms raw against the bark of the tree. “What did you do? Where’s Kelly? Let me go, you son of a bitch!”
“Which first?” Schiller cocked his head for a moment, as if he were hearing a sound beyond human range. “Would you like answers or your freedom? I suspect if I give you the latter, you won’t stay around long enough for the former.”
“Fine. Tell me what happened and then why I shouldn’t call the MPs and get your skinny butt arrested?”
Schiller smiled, showing all of his very white teeth. “I do not think your military policemen would be able to get here in time to arrest me, or to help you if I chose to do you harm. Which I did not, despite your blundering into the middle of things last night.”
“You killed that girl!”
“She was an informant for the Gestapo, used to infiltrate resistance groups and betray them to the gun or the gas chamber. Will you weep for her, or for the many she betrayed to muddy unmarked graves?”
“Nobody deserves to die like that,” Rifkin growled. “Not even a spy.”
Schiller sighed. “In the midst of the greatest slaughter the world has ever known, you rage over the sacrifice of one woman, though her death helped save millions? Are you truly that noble or just a fool?”
Rifkin gaped. “Millions?”
“Millions. What you saw last night — what little you saw — was part of something much, much greater. The Order of the Black Sun, they have studied more than just science. They have followed paths of dark power, walking with open eyes into places of horror that they might turn and bring that nightmare to us all. The second light across the valley — you remember it, yes?”
Grudgingly, Rifkin nodded. “That was, for lack of a better word, a ritual. An invitation, sealed in blood, to a thing from outside of space and time. Calling it to our world so that it might feast on the weak flesh of the Allied armies and halt their advance.”
“That’s insane.” Rifkin spat on the ground, tasting blood and rainwater. “First of all, a summoning? What is this, a Murnau flick? Second, even if you’re not lying about that, a few rounds from a Pershing and —”
“A
nd nothing. There is no power on earth that could stop such a thing once it was loosed, a terror that walks from world to world sowing madness and reaping death. The only way to defeat it was to prevent it from ever setting foot — if such a thing can be said to have a foot — here in the first place.”
“Is that why you had us build…this? Whatever this is?”
Schiller nodded, elegantly trimming his nails with the knife as he spoke. “Indeed. The plans you worked from? Stolen, at great cost, from the heart of Wewelsburg Castle, in order to create a precise replica of their summoning circle. The site, the ritual, the sacrifice — all had to be identical and simultaneous, to confuse the great beast and trap it between portals. Had you stopped us, or even delayed the stroke of the knife —”
Despite himself, Rifkin shuddered. “Or damaged one of the props? Jesus.” It was impossible of course, and completely insane, but there was something terrifying in the way Schiller casually discussed monsters from outer space that chilled Rifkin’s blood. Because it was very clear that Schiller believed, and that he would have done anything — anything at all — to protect his mission.
“Or damaged one of the pieces of the set, yes. Your men did masterful work, Captain. They helped save the world, not that the world will ever know. You should be proud.”
“My men…where’s Kelly? What did you do to Kelly?”
“He is back at your camp, largely unharmed. I simply felt that this was a talk we should have alone.” Schiller coughed, twice. “It really is magnificent, what your men did. Such a shame it will have to be destroyed.”
“Destroyed?” Rifkin thought for a moment. “To keep anyone else from using it to summon this…thing?”
Ever so slightly, Schiller smiled. “Ach, you begin to understand. Everything here has been touched by what you might call a great evil. It would not take much to draw it forth again, and so this must all be destroyed utterly. No pictures. No souvenirs. No remembrances and no pilgrimages here after the war is over. Do you understand me, Captain Rifkin?”
Rifkin met his eyes. “It’ll burn today.”
Dark Tales From the Secret War Page 11