Seize the Night: New Tales of Vampiric Terror (16 page)

“But what about—”

“—the bell jar and books, I know. Hang on, I need a refill.”

“I think I do, too.” Annette held out her glass. The bookseller refilled both, and they drank in an awkward, sad, sudden silence.

T
hey came for us, as they always did, when the sun shone high in the safe daytime sky.

We waited in our majestic trees as the bulldozers and other heavy equipment came toward us. We listened as they broke through the heavy woods and overpowered the shale beneath the hillsides. We readied ourselves as they neared us. We heard the grinding of their gears, the snarl of their gas-powered saws. We stood tall and proud, so we could see them clearly as they arrived. The stench of their smoke and diesel fuel reached us before they and their machines did.

Workmen walked up to us wherever we stood across the surface of the planet, craning their necks to see our glory.

“Damn shame this has to come down,” said one.

“Don’t matter what we think,” replied the second. “We got our orders.”

The first one picked up his ax. “Trees’re supposed to feel things just like a person does, y’know? My grandma told me that. Let’s try to make it quick and clean, huh?”

“I’ve heard enough of that griping from you,” said the second workman, powering up his chain saw. “Bad enough we got to cut down all these trees without you bellyachin’ over every one of ’em. Least they’ll be put to good use. That’s something, anyway.”

They set to work.

Our waiting was over.

Within half an hour, we came crashing down.

This was not death; it was the first stage of our rebirth.

And this time we did scream, but in ecstasy—sweet, all-consuming ecstasy.

The sound of rebirth.

“T
here was a group of occultists,” said the bookseller, “called the Studiengruppe für Germanisches Altertum—‘Study Group for Germanic Antiquity’—but most people know them by the name the Thule Society. The Thules had members like Hans Frank, Rudolf Hess, Heinrich Himmler . . . it was even rumored that Eichmann and Mengele were members. One of the commandants at Gunskirchen Lager, Gruppenführer Joseph Karl Steiner, was a member. I remember as a child huddling down at night in the mud and filth and cold—God, I hope you
never
experience that kind of cold, it almost made you wish for the warmth of a grave. At least then there would have been something above you to hold in the heat and gases as your body disintegrated and putrefied.

“Anyway, there were those nights when Steiner would have other Thule members in his expansive quarters, and the lights would burn, the glow mocking us, and I remember the sounds of their cackling laughter, their murmuring voices; sometimes they would sing drunken, obscene songs . . . there was so much . . .
haughtiness
in their tones. But always—
always
—there came a time during the night when they would send two SS officers out into the camp to select one of the healthier prisoners, a worker, to bring back into the building. I remember that I used to feel envious of those selected to be taken inside—and they were always taken by fellow prisoners. There were Jews in the camps who became . . . well,
collaborators
with the Germans. They were called ‘
kapos
.’ Many did whatever was commanded of them in order to secure more bread, or an extra blanket, or cigarettes. Sometimes the
kapos
did it in order to ensure the safety of a friend or family member. To this day, I cannot find it in my
heart to condemn these poor souls for their actions, even though some of those actions led to the deaths of fellow Jews. But the
kapos
almost always took men. Rumor had it that these men—mostly it was men, sometimes a stronger woman or a younger boy, I never saw them take a young girl . . . but the rumors persisted that those who were selected were fed meat and cheese, given wine, a warm, clean blanket, and treated well. But we never saw them again. They would enter that building, there would be more celebratory noise for a while, and then things would quiet down. There was never silence . . . only an ebbing of sound. I swear to you I could hear the sounds of someone . . . not exactly groaning, there wasn’t enough strength for it to be a groan, but a noise somewhere between a whimper and a grunt. And it would continue for a minute or two at a constant but low level, just low enough that I was never certain if I was actually hearing it or if it was just the cold and sores and hunger making me imagine some unseen depravity going on there. I was six years old, and the images those sounds created in my mind should never have existed in the mind of any truly decent human being.

“Uri would hold me close to him on these nights and hum soft songs in my ear. One of his favorites was ‘Over There.’ He always hummed it off-key. It made me laugh. He was taken away one morning for a burial detail, and he never came back. I prayed that he had gotten away somehow.

“The last time our dear
Gruppenführer
held a Thule gathering in his quarters, the SS officers came out and took nearly a dozen men, women, and young boys into the
Gruppenführer
’s quarters. That night, there was no mistaking the screams; children begging for their lives, women pleading that
they
be tortured instead of the children, men weeping and wailing. We saw blood spatter on the inside of the windows. We saw shadows jerking back and forth, some of them flipping, fluttering, but always there was the blood, and the wailing, and the screaming . . . and then the not-quite-silence, the
muffled noise of many throats releasing something between a whimper and a grunt.

“That was late April 1945. The Germans had received word that the Americans were coming. You have to understand, rumors that the war was ending soon—was perhaps even over—had been whispered for weeks, but that night was the first time that I allowed myself to think that maybe, just maybe, the end was finally here. If that meant my death, then so be it. I was so hungry and sick by then that I almost didn’t care.

“The next morning all of the Germans left the camp but made certain to lock the gates so none of us could escape, as if any of us had that much strength or hope left. They gave us what they called a ‘generous’ amount of food—one cube of sugar to each person, and one loaf of moldy bread for every seven people. There were nearly as many of us dead as there were still alive, if you can call what we were ‘alive.’ Men, women, children so drawn and weak and starving they could barely walk, but that didn’t stop them from trying when the Americans arrived. The Seventy-First Infantry Division shot through the locks and entered Gunskirchen on the morning of May 1, 1945. By then we’d been trapped in the abandoned camp for over a week. What little rancid food we’d been left was gone, and we had been without water for several days even before that. I can still hear the cries from the throats of those who could still speak, calling out, ‘
Wasser!
’ and ‘
Ich habe Hunger!
’ One child whose legs had been broken and were now blackened with infection used her elbows to pull herself through the mud toward an American soldier. I saw her die in his arms as he gave her a drink from his canteen. All around me, skeletons crawled or shuffled through stinking, ankle-deep mud and human excrement. I saw the decayed bodies of horses and dogs that lined the road, carcasses that had been torn into by the teeth of the starving as they wandered from the camp days before, after the Germans had abandoned it; physicians, lawyers, people of education,
men of letters, rabbis, women and children . . . all reduced to chewing on rotting animal intestines like beasts.

“It was then I felt a hand on my shoulder and looked up to see my friend Uri, still alive and standing. I hadn’t seen him in months and had assumed that he was dead. He smiled at me—his teeth were rotted, many of them missing, but it was still one of the most beautiful smiles I had ever seen. I hugged him and wept. As the Americans moved into the camp, many of the prisoners lined the way, hands outstretched to touch the sleeves of our saviors. Uri took my hand and led me through the throng toward the
Gruppenführer
’s quarters. The Americans were too concerned with ministering to the prisoners to bother then with going through the buildings. I did not want to see whatever it was that waited in there, but I was too weak to resist, and—I hate admitting this—a part of me wanted to know if there had been any truth to the hideous, perverted images that the sounds had helped put into my head. If there were horrors waiting in there that were worse than those I had imagined, then perhaps my soul wasn’t forever tainted. Perhaps God had given me a glimpse of something horrible to prepare me for something even worse. In such ways is spiritual strength tested and achieved.”

He fell silent after this for a few moments as he finished up ministering to Annette’s wounds. He completed what could only be called an expert job of bandaging her hand, turning it first to the left, then to the right. “Does it still hurt?”

“Not in the least. Thank you for being so kind.”

The bookseller gave a tight smile that contained no joy in it whatsoever and nodded his head. “I am truly sorry this happened.”

Annette shook her head. “I shouldn’t have taken the book from under the bell jar.”

The bookseller held up a hand in protest. “No, that was my fault. I should have taken the book as soon as it appeared. At the very least, I should have made sure the
CLOSED
sign was in place and the
door locked.” He looked once again toward the two books at the end of the counter: the new one under the bell jar, and the volume of Fitzgerald whose pages had so cut Annette’s fingers and hand.

She leaned forward and touched the bookseller’s arm. “What was in there? What did you and Uri see?”

The bookseller nodded toward the bell jar. “That. It was on a lovely oak table in the corner of Steiner’s office. There was a book inside, in Arabic. The paper was old, thick, and stiff. Neither Uri nor I ever knew what the book was. It was filled with symbols and writings in verse that Uri thought might be incantations. It
felt
like something evil that was being imprisoned under glass. And it was the only book there.

“The floors of the
Gruppenführer
’s quarters were littered with the bodies of those prisoners who had been taken there the night before the Nazis fled. They were not only decomposed, they were . . . deflated. Their flesh was gray, drained of any moisture. I remember how Uri knelt down next to several of the bodies and shook, pointing to their wounds. Hundreds,
thousands
of tiny cuts—paper cuts. And not a single drop of blood anywhere. I think Uri knew then what unholy rites the
Gruppenführer
and his Thule had been practicing on those nights of singing and soft glowing lights. But I couldn’t grasp it. I felt sick and dizzy and more afraid at that moment than I had been during the years I’d been in the camp. I tried to turn and run out, to find an American who would give me a drink or a taste of his K-rations, but as soon as I turned around the world went black.

“I awoke in a makeshift hospital, inside a massive tent. The Americans had established a camp just outside Lambach, not that far from Gunskirchen itself. I opened my eyes and saw glass bottles hanging next to me, saw clear tubes running into my arms. I turned my head and saw Uri sitting on the floor next to my bed. He was sleeping, his head resting on his bended knees. I reached out and touched the top of his head. He shuddered, made a terrible wet
sound, but then lifted his head and blinked his eyes. I could see that he had been in the midst of a nightmare, and the phantom images of it still reflected in his eyes told me how horrible it must have been. I never asked him to recount any part of it.

“He gave me a sad and tired smile—his teeth were now gone, having been removed by an American dentist; what an old man he looked like! But I loved seeing that old-man smile. Did I mention that Uri was only nineteen? He looked fifty, and stayed that way until the day he died.

“He took hold of my hand and kissed the palm, then held it against his cheek. ‘I have secured the evil vessel,’ he whispered to me. ‘It can harm no one ever again.’

“I asked him how he’d done this, how did he know it was evil, and several other questions that seemed to confuse him as much as they did me. He told me that an American soldier had helped him to remove the bodies of the prisoners and give them a decent burial, and that this ‘Yank’—that’s what Uri called the Americans—had helped him to find a crate and blankets and secure the bell jar and its contents. ‘The Yank will help me send it to what family remains to me in the States,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what the Yanks did when they saw the interior of the quarters. If it ever was reported, I never heard anything about it. In my letter I will ask my family to not open the crate, and I know they will honor my wishes.’ He then squeezed my arm. ‘When we get to the States, my friend, you will be with me. I have told them that we are brothers, and we are—if not by blood, then by choice, by loyalty, by our having survived this madness, by our love and friendship.’

“ ‘Brother,’ I said to him. ‘My brother. Thank you.’ ”

“How could Uri have had such strength when he found you? Didn’t you think it was odd that—?” Annette cut off her words before the question could be completed. Looking at the bookseller’s expression, she knew the answer.

“Yes,” whispered the bookseller. “Uri had become a
kapo
. He did so in order to ensure that I would not be harmed. He never told me what acts he participated in, and I never asked.

“He never left my side after that day in the hospital. I remember when I awoke, it was V-E Day. The war was at last over. I felt almost reborn.” The bookseller looked up at the clock on the wall. “My goodness, I’ve been talking your ears off for a while, haven’t I.”

“I don’t mind,” said Annette.