Rising to darkness

by Lucia Guglielminetti

  June 8, 8:00 p.m.

  The time has almost come.

  I'm going to meet this strange character together with Seamus and Cinàed. Sophie wanted to be with us, but I was afraid to put her in danger and ordered her to wait for me here, promising her that I'd tell her everything word for word. She got to know my brothers and they said that, after ten days spent in kennels, her vision was heavenly. They want you to know that you have good taste and that... no, that I refuse to write! That, if you don’t make it, they will take care of her. Personally, it sounds more like a threat, especially for poor Sophie. I'm sorry, I'm tight as a violin string and tend to act like an idiot in these cases, as you know.

  It must run in the family.

  Now, we have to go. See you later.

  June 8, 2:18 a.m.

  I still can't believe it. He has agreed to help us! We're no longer alone. From now on, we'll be supported by one of the most powerful secret service agent in the world. It's wonderful news!

  While Sophie is in the other room celebrating with my brothers, let me tell you everything. At nine o’clock, a grey car arrived at the appointed place. On board, in addition to the driver, there was a man in civilian clothes who introduced himself as the Colonel and showed us his document. We took a hard close look at it in a threatening manner. My brothers had taken my directive to intimidate him very seriously: no colored lenses, no sunglasses, and fangs out so that he would clearly understand with whom he was dealing. On the way to the chosen place for our meeting, Cináed and Seamus kept their eyes always fixed on him and, when I say always, I mean that they didn’t even blink once; yet, the Colonel continued to be as calm as a cucumber. He did everything possible to put me at ease, trying to strike up a friendly conversation; but, all I wanted at that moment was to let him know that we were potentially lethal and on the warpath. In the end, he preferred to keep quiet and wait until we arrived at our destination. During the entire way, we were tailgated by another car: he, himself, had taken some precautions, and I couldn’t blame him. The meeting took place in a building that was being renovated on the outskirts of the city. There was plenty of room to escape in case things went badly and no one around. Ah, by the way, the Colonel didn’t fit the picture I had of him. He is a man in his sixties, not very tall with greying hair which was neither long nor short, and peaceful brown eyes. The only detail that was out of place was the scar that ran diagonally through his left cheek, oddly similar to the mark left by a lycan’s claw. When he smiles, he becomes quite fascinating. If everything goes well, I might decide to pay him a little visit, purely for recreational purposes, of course.

  After the formalities, I wanted to know why he accepted to meet us so quickly; after considering the reactions of the other ’governmental entities,’ he had surprised me. And, this was what he told me...

  ’I am indebted to Atropos, madam. Half of my family died in Auschwitz, in the period in which the commander was a butcher named Schweiger.

  I was just born, we're talking about 1943. A few days before my parents were captured and interned, I was entrusted to some relatives who had managed to flee to the USA. My father managed to survive, but my mother, my grandparents, and my uncle didn't make it. When we managed to rejoin each other, many years later, he told me of the horrors he lived there; and above all, he told me about the Nazi who lead the camp with heinous cruelty. That's when I decided to do this work, in the service of my country, and that the first thing that I’d do was to bring to justice the perpetrators who fled abroad.

  That's when Atropos came into play.

  Even then, people talked about him as a legend. A black legend, to be honest. Those who had seen him told of a handsome young man, angel-like in his appearance, but with features that resemble more like those of the opposite side of heaven. He was reputed to be the greatest Nazi hunter on the market and it was natural to turn to him to solve certain issues. And, I had one pending that wouldn’t let me sleep at night. At the end of the war, Schweiger fled abroad too. The latest sightings put him in Argentina, but you could never be sure of anything.

  I was a young, novice official in the early sixties; thanks to the work of Atropos, there were not many Nazis left. Mine, though, was.

  The man who slaughtered my whole family, who prevented me from having a mother, was still out there somewhere having a ball, protected by nostalgists hiding him, cuddling him, worshiping him as a hero. This poisoned my whole existence, so one night I mustered my courage, stole Atropos' phone number from the archives and called him from the house phone. My hands were shaking, I remember it even now, while I was praying for him to answer and, at the same, praying for him not to. The idea of meeting him in person, knowing the stories that were told about him, terrified me. After several rings, an icy voice answered only with a 'yes,' sounding as if it came from beyond the grave. At that moment, I realized that maybe it was that way: due to the different time zones, I probably had just awoken him up too early. Nice way to gain his services!

  I don’t remember what I said exactly. I just know that, forgetting all rules of confidentiality, I recanted the whole story and then begged him to find the man for me. He let me talk and vent, even cry, without ever interrupting me; in the end, we made an appointment to meet at a café in London. I had to take two days of leave, inventing the most credible excuses, and took the last of my meager savings to buy the airfare from Tel-Aviv to the English capital, never thinking even for a moment of giving up. Atropos was the only one who could find Schweiger and make him pay dearly for his atrocity. The following evening, around eight o'clock, I was sitting in the bar at a table in the back of the room, my heart pounding like crazy. One moment I was alone, in the next a tall, blond man, dressed in black and frighteningly pale, sat in front of me, staring at me with unsettling eyes and an incomprehensible and disturbing expression.

  ’So, you are the whiner who woke me up last night,’ he said. He spoke in a low, soft voice, so much so that I had to lean forward to hear him, and kept his eyes trained on me in that peculiar way of yours, without ever blinking. Nobody could have ever mistaken him for a human: whoever says otherwise must have some vision problems, but he didn't look uncomfortable, as if he didn't care about being recognized for what he was.

  ’I'm sorry Mr. Atropos, I didn't think about the different time zones... I... thanks for having accepted to meet me. It's an honor, personally, to know the greatest Nazi hunter in history.’

  ’I'm many other things, too, none of which you'd appreciate as much, believe me.’

  He lit a cigarette and offered me one when he noticed that I was staring at it longingly. He looked a bit skeptical, his eyebrows raised and a light smile on his face. I see you're smiling too... it must be a typical expression of his, then, right? I saw it at other times, in fact.

  ’I hope you brought the documents.’

  ’Of course,’ I said and handed him the file I had stolen from the archives.

  ’You're trembling,’ he said, looking at my hand and the file shaking in front of him.

  ’I know. I'm sorry.’

  He dismissed the apology with a shrug and took the envelope, opening and examining it quickly.

  ’My services are quite expensive, you know, don’t you?’

  That was really a sore point.

  At that time, my finances were rather scarce, but I had hoped that... I don't even know what. Maybe to move him enough to pity me, thus inducing him to accept the job for a few hundred dollars. Now that he was in front of me, it was clear that he was not one to take pity on anyone, but I had to grope at anything in order to convince him or the knowledge that that butcher continues to breathe would have destroyed me.

  ’I will pay you, you don't have to worry; I’ll find a way. I have about a thousand dollars...’

  He burst out laughing as if I had said the funniest thing in the world, sending the cigarette smoke down the wrong way. As he laughed, he showed his fangs for a moment, giving me the creeps that intensified my tremor.
/>
  It's true. It's all true, I thought. Vampires exist and there's one at my table cracking up with laughter.

  Suddenly, as he had started, he stopped laughing and I found myself staring closely into his eyes. He was leaning forward on the table and his nose was less than a hand's width from mine. I remember I had to breathe in because of fear and caught a vague scent of smoke, moss, and leather. Since then, when I detect that particular scent, I think about him.

  ’You're kidding.’ It wasn't a question but a statement.

  ’I wouldn’t dare, believe me! I had just started working recently and can’t put much aside. It takes very little for me to live; I will give you the rest, month by month. Please.’

  ’Boy, you're not buying a car. It doesn't work that way. Goodbye. Thank for putting me in a good mood, I could kill you just for the time you made me waste,’ he said and rose from his chair, turning away.

  He was much taller than he seemed at first.

  I tried to find something to say, something quite clever and profound so that he would have been persuaded to stay, but nothing came to mind. A moment later, he was gone and I was dejected once again. My last chance to get some justice seemed to vanish with him. Only when I left the room did I realize that the file on Schweiger was gone. At first, I panicked: losing such confidential documents could result in very serious consequences. I raced back into the cafe and looked under the table, everywhere, but there was no trace of it. That was when a glimmer of hope made its way inside of me: if he had taken it, it could be that he had changed his mind.

  In short, months passed; I was in the Army and tried to bury my obsession in hours and hours of exhausting exercises. In the evenings, I would be so tired that I collapsed in bed immediately with no time to think about Schweiger and his sadistic grin.

  On October 12, 1965, as I was walking the streets of Tel-Aviv in one of my rare moments of rest, I felt a gust of cold air cut me off and stopped abruptly. A moment later, Atropos was at my side and looked at me with the same half amused and half bored look from last time. You can imagine my shock... That son of a bitch loves scaring people to death, doesn't he?

  ’Hi, whiner. You've become a soldier now, very good. I came to give you back your file. You'd better take a look at it, there are some new page additions.’

  I took the envelope from his hand and opened it, reading it carefully. I was shaking again and he didn’t fail to point it out to me, asking if I was suffering from some particular disease or something. In the back, past the last pages that I knew by heart, were some black and white pictures, very crude, depicting a man, or what was left of him anyway, lying in a bathtub full of water. The back wall was splattered with black squirts easily identifiable. The grimace on his face left no doubt that he had spent the last hours of his life regretting being born. It was Schweiger, there was no doubt about it.

  At that point, my legs were trembling too and I crumbled onto the pavement with a thud. Luckily, it was late and there were very few people around. I raised my eyes to him and saw that he was staring at something in the distance, looking thoughtfully. When he realized that I was looking at him, he gave me a little smile.

  ’I had some weeks off last month and decided to take another look at the file of your personal boogeyman. I don't know why nobody ever took care of him. He was really an evil being.’

  ’They couldn't find him.’

  ’Really? Strange. It took me less than a week. I'm afraid, my friend, that there was somebody who wanted to protect him even from here. Anyway, he's history now, like the others.’

  ’Did ... did he suffer?’

  ’Oh, yes...’ he said with a wistful gaze and cruel amusement in his eyes. Even though I was extremely grateful, at that moment, I felt like running away. Instead, I stood up on shaky legs and hugged him by impulse, without really knowing what I was doing. I felt him wince as if I had just shocked him, and felt the chill of his skin even through the shirt he was wearing. God, that was something really unnatural, more than all the rest.

  ’Thank you,’ I mumbled for I don’t know how many times. I felt like a huge weight had just fallen off my shoulders. For the first time, I could really breathe. He pulled away and looked at me in exasperation.

  ’I have put some more money aside, I will send it to you tomorrow, to start. I promise I will pay you back, Mr. Atropos, you don’t have the slightest idea what you’ve done means to me.’

  ’You will pay me back, but not with your money. You owe me, period. When you become a big shot and I get in trouble, you'll remember this debt.’

  Both things seemed quite improbable and I told him so, but he shrugged his shoulders and said he was in no hurry, that the possibility would present itself sooner or later. Therefore, as you see, dear madam, when you called me yesterday and asked for my help to help Atropos, you actually did me the biggest favor ever. Forty years have passed since then, I was afraid I would die without being able to pay off my debt and the idea didn't go down so easily.’

  His tale had affected us all. We were silent for a while, each lost in his own thoughts. He was the first to recover and, in a practical tone, asked me to tell him everything I knew. In the end, he was the one pale, overwhelmed by the gravity of my revelations.

  ’We will move immediately, but I can’t hide from you the fact that this is a hopeless mission, having so few clues to go by. This lab could be anywhere. My God, Islamic terrorists that are half vampire and half werewolf... only a lunatic could contrive such a scheme.’

  ’We want to come with you. We could be useful, given our...talents. Maybe, I'll be able to sense him when we're close enough.’

  ’I'm afraid that’s impossible, even though I'm very tempted to accept your proposal. I’m afraid that you will have to get used to waiting, just as I had done.’

  ’You must hurry, then, fifteen days have already passed. Who knows what they have already managed to do to him...’

  ’For your health of mind, it'd be better that you don’t think too much about it. Thank you, madam, I'll keep in touch and keep you informed of our progress. May I ask you something?’

  ’Yes, of course.’

  ’What's Atropos' real name? It’s been forty years that I've been thinking about it.’

  I couldn't help but smile at him.

  ’Raistan. His name is Raistan Van Hoeck and he's three hundred and seven years old.’

  He smiled, too, then he gave me a curt salute and turned away, walking at a fast pace towards the exit of the building, escorted by his men.

  You're in good hands, my love. I don't know if he'll be able to find you, but he will definitely try with all his might. My work is over for the moment. I'll disclose the latest developments to Skinner and his team, then I'm afraid we'll have to do what Sharinsky said: wait.

  London, June 15

  Still no news from the Colonel.

  Sometimes, I feel like I'm going crazy. I'm in my apartment with my brothers and we are doing nothing but getting on one another’s nerves. Occasionally, Sophie comes by to pay us a visit and to spend some time with us. When she arrived yesterday, she was furious. She's reading the last part of your story and has just stumbled on the section where you recount your rendezvous with the assistant at the clothes shop. The episode was very hard for her to swallow and she didn’t receive much sympathy from us: my brothers were in stitches from laughing so hard and I dismissed the matter off with a shrug. She just stared at us, determined that we were all crazy.

  ’Don’t tell me that even this is one of your vampire stuff, too! To screw the first one that comes your way, regardless of gender, is not vampire stuff. It's perverted, reserved for pigs!’

  My brothers were almost rolling on the floor with hysterics.

  ’Do you think it's funny? It's... disgusting! What about you?!’ - she directed at me -’How stupid could I be... I thought he was faithful to me... God, I can't even think about it. And it wasn’t the first time, that fucking piece of shit!’

 
More howls from my brothers, it’s been a while since they’ve had so much fun.

  ’I don't understand what it is that upsets you: the fact that he had sex with someone else, or that this someone else was a man.’

  ’Both, damn it! Doesn't it bother you?’

  ’No, why should it? He wanted to relax a bit. I’m sorry to break it to you, but vampires tend to be rather promiscuous.’

  ’Here we go again with the vampire stuff that I was talking about before! So, in your opinion, should I act as if there's nothing wrong the next time we see each other? Or, perhaps, should I ask him for more details?’

  ’I still don’t understand what the problem is, dear. He has chosen you, hasn’t he?’

  Yes, of course. He chose me, but he chose you, too; indeed, every time you see each other, you end up in bed or in the tub together. But, he also chose the shop assistant and God only knows how many others. What the fuck!’

  ’You're adorable when you get angry. Would you like a glass of wine?’

  She looked at me dismayed and then flopped on the sofa."

  ’I think I would,’ she said.

  We talked for hours about morality, jealousy, possession, and love. When she left, she was still mad at you; but, even if she doesn’t accept it, perhaps she understood your point of view, which is also ours, on the matter a little bit better. It is difficult for a human to understand that having sex or killing someone is almost the same in terms of emotions for us. At home, the mood was a little more serene. Anyway, being able to think of something else for a few hours was a real blessing.