by Marc Raabe
CUT
MARC
RAABE
CONTENTS
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Thanks
About the Author
Copyright
‘We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell.’
OSCAR WILDE
Prologue
West Berlin – 13 October, 11.09 p.m.
Gabriel stood in the doorway and stared. The light from the hall fell down the cellar stairs and was swallowed by the brick walls.
He hated the cellar, particularly at night. Not that it would’ve made any difference whether it was light or dark outside. It was always night in the cellar. Then again, during the day, you could always run out into the garden, out into the light. At night, on the other hand, it was dark everywhere, even outside, and ghosts lurked in every corner. Ghosts that no grown-up could see. Ghosts that were just waiting to sink their claws into the neck of an eleven-year-old boy.
Still, he just couldn’t help but stare, entranced, down into the far end of the cellar where the light faded away.
The door!
It was open!
There was a gaping black opening between the dark green wall and the door. And behind it was the lab, dark like Darth Vader’s Death Star.
His heart beat in his throat. Gabriel wiped his clammy, trembling hands on his pyjamas – his favourite pyjamas with Luke Skywalker on the front.
The long, dark crack of the door drew him in as if by magic. He slowly placed his bare foot on the first step. The wood of the cellar stairs felt rough and creaked as if it were trying to give him away. But he knew that they wouldn’t hear him. Not as long as they were fighting behind the closed kitchen door. It was a bad one. Worse than normal. And it frightened him. Good that David wasn’t there, he thought. Good that he’d taken him out of harm’s way. His little brother would’ve cried.
Then again, it would’ve been nice not to be alone right now in this cellar with the ghosts. Gabriel swallowed. The opening stared back at him like the gates of hell.
Go look! That’s what Luke would do.
Dad would be furious if he could see him now. The lab was Dad’s secret and it was secured like a fortress with a metal door and a shiny black peephole. No one else had ever seen the lab. Not even Mum.
Gabriel’s feet touched the bare concrete floor of the cellar and he shuddered. First the warm wooden steps and now the cold stone.
Now or never!
Suddenly, a rumbling came through the cellar ceiling. Gabriel flinched. The noise came from the kitchen above him. It sounded like the table had been scraped across the tiles. For a moment, he considered whether he should go upstairs. Mum was up there all alone with him and Gabriel knew how angry he could get.
His eyes darted back to the door, glimmering in the dark. Such an opportunity might never come again.
He had stood there once before, about two years ago. That time, Dad had forgotten to lock the upper cellar door. Gabriel was nine. He had stood in the hall for a while and peered down. In the end, curiosity triumphed. That time, he had also crept down into the cellar, entirely afraid of the ghosts, but still in complete darkness because he didn’t dare turn on the light.
The peephole had glowed red like the eye of a monster.
In a mad rush, he had fled back up the stairs, back to David in their room, and crawled into his bed.
Now he was eleven. Now he stood there downstairs again and the monster eye wasn’t glowing. Still, the peephole stared at him, cold and black like a dead eye. The only things reflecting in it were the dim light on the cellar stairs and him. The closer he got, the larger his face grew.
And why did it smell so disgusting?
He groped out in front of him with his bare feet and stepped in something wet and mushy. Puke. It was puke! That’s why it smelled so disgusting. But why was there puke here in the first place?
He choked down his disgust and rubbed his foot clean on a dry area of the concrete floor. Some was still stuck between his toes. He would’ve liked a towel or a wet cloth right about now, but the lab was more important. He reached out his hand, placed it on the knob, pulled the heavy metal door open a bit more, and pressed on into the darkness. An unnatural silence enveloped him.
A deathly silence.
A sharp chemical smell crept into his nose like at the film lab where his father had once taken him after one of his days of shooting.
His heart was pounding. Much too fast, much too loud. He wished he were somewhere else, maybe with David, under the covers.
Luke Skywalker would never hide under the covers.
The trembling fingers on his left hand searched for the light switch, always expecting to find something else entirely. What if the ghosts were here? If they grabbed his arm? If he accidently reached into one’s mouth and it snapped its teeth shut?
There! Cool plastic.
He flipped the switch. Three red lights lit up and bathed the room in front of him in a strange red glow. Red, like in the belly of a monster.
A chill ran up his spine all the way to the roots of his hair. He stopped at the threshold to the lab; somehow, there was a sort of invisible border that he didn’t want to cross. He squinted and tried to make out the details.
The lab was larger than he had thought, a narrow space about three metres wide and seven metres deep. A heavy black curtain hung directly beside him. Someone had hastily pushed it aside.
Clothes lines were strung under the concrete ceiling with photos hanging from them. Some had been torn down and lay on the floor.
On the left stood a photo enlarger. On the right, a shelf spanned the entire wall, crammed with pieces of equipment. Gabriel’s eyes widened. He recognised most of them immediately: Arri, Beaulieu, Leicina, with other, smaller cameras in between. The trade magazines that were piled up in Dad’s study on the first floor were full of them. Whenever one of those magazines wound up in the bin, Gabriel fished it out, stuck it under his pillow, and read it under the covers by torchlight until his eyelids were too heavy to keep open.
Beside the cameras lay a dozen lenses, some as long as gun barrels; next to them, small cameras, cases to absorb camera operating sounds, 8- and 16-mm film cartridges, a stack of three VCRs with four monitors, and finally, two b
rand-new camcorders. Dad always scoffed at the things. In one of the magazines, he had read that you could film for almost two hours with the new video technology without having to change the cassette – absolutely unbelievable! On top of that, the plastic bombers didn’t rattle like film cameras, but ran silently.
Gabriel’s shining eyes wandered over the treasures. He wished he could show all of this to David. He immediately felt guilty. After all, this was dangerous, so it was best that he didn’t get David involved. Besides, his brother had already fallen asleep. He was right to have locked the door to their room.
Suddenly, there was a loud crash. He spun around. There was no one there. No parents, no ghost. His parents were probably still quarrelling up in the kitchen.
He looked back into the lab at all of the treasures. Come closer, they seemed to whisper. But he was still standing on the threshold next to the curtain. Fear rose in him. He could still turn back. He had now seen the lab; he didn’t have to go all the way in.
Eleven! You’re eleven! Come on, don’t be a chicken!
How old was Luke?
Gabriel reluctantly took two steps into the room.
What were those photos? He bent down, picked one up from the floor, and stared at the faded grainy image. A sudden feeling of disgust and a strange excitement spread through his stomach. He looked up at the photos on the clothes line. The photo directly above him attracted his eyes like a magnet. His face was hot and red, like everything else around him. He also felt a bit sick. It looked so real, so . . . or were they actors? It looked like in the movie! The columns, the walls, like in the Middle Ages, and the black clothes . . .
He tore himself away and his eyes jumped over the jumbled storage and the shelf, and finally rested on the modern VCRs with their glittering little JVC logos. The lowest one was switched on. Numbers and characters were illuminated in its shining display. Like in Star Wars in the cockpit of a spaceship, he thought.
As if of its own accord, Gabriel’s index finger approached the buttons and pushed one. A loud click inside the device made him jump. Twice, three times, then the hum of a motor. A cassette! There was a cassette in the VCR! His cheeks burned. He feverishly pushed another button. The JVC responded with a rattle. Interference lines flashed across the monitor beside the VCRs. The image wobbled for a moment, and then it was there. Diffuse with flickering colour, unreal, like a window to another world.
Gabriel had been leaning forward without knowing it – and now he jerked back. His mouth went totally dry. It was the same image as in the photo! The same place, the same columns, the same people, only now they were moving. He wanted to look away, but it was impossible. He sucked the stifling air in through his gaping mouth, and then held his breath without realising it.
The images pummelled him like the popping of flashbulbs; he couldn’t help but watch, mesmerised.
The cut through the black fabric of the dress.
The pale triangle on the still paler skin.
The long, tangled blond hair.
The chaos.
And then another cut – a sharp, angry motion that spread into Gabriel’s guts. He suddenly felt sick and everything was spinning. The television stared at him viciously. Trembling, he found the button and switched it off.
The image collapsed with a dull thud, as if there were a black hole inside the monitor, just like in outer space. The noise was awful, but reassuring at the same time. He stared at the dark screen and the reflection of his own bright red face. A ghost stared back, eyes wide with fear.
Don’t think about it! Just don’t think about it . . . He stared at the photos, at the whole mess, anything but the monitor.
What you can’t see isn’t there!
But it was there. Somewhere in the monitor, deep inside the black hole. The VCR made a soft grinding noise. He wanted to squeeze his eyes shut and wake up somewhere else. Anywhere. Anywhere but here. He was still crouched in front of his ghostly reflection in the monitors.
Suddenly, Gabriel was overcome by the desperate desire to see something pleasant, or even just something different. As if it had a will of its own, his finger drifted towards the other monitors.
Thud. Thud. The two upper monitors flashed on. Two washed-out images crystallised, casting their steel-blue glimmer into the red light of the lab. One image showed the hall and the open cellar door; the stairs were swallowed up by darkness. The second image showed the kitchen. The kitchen – and his parents. His father’s voice rasped from the speaker.
Gabriel’s eyes widened.
No! Please, no!
His father shoved the kitchen table. The table legs scraped loudly across the floor. The noise carried through the ceiling, and Gabriel winced. His father threw open a drawer, reached inside and his hand re-emerged.
Gabriel stared at the monitor in horror. Blinking, he wished he were blind. Blind and deaf.
But he wasn’t.
His eyes flooded with tears. The chemical smell of the lab combined with the vomit outside the door made him gag. He wished someone would come and hug him and talk it all away.
But no one would come. He was alone.
The realisation hit him with a crushing blow. Someone had to do something. And now he was the only one who could do anything.
What would Luke do?
Quietly, he crept up the cellar stairs, his bare feet no longer able to feel the cold floor. The red room behind him glowed like hell.
If only he had a lightsabre! And then, very suddenly, he thought of something much, much better than a sabre.
Chapter 1
29 Years Later
Berlin – 1 September, 11.04 p.m.
The photo hovers like a threat in the windowless cellar. Outside, the rain is raging. The old roof of the mansion groans beneath the mass of water, and there is a dim red light rotating above the front door on the half-timbered facade, lighting up the house at brief intervals.
The torch beam darts about the dark cellar hall, revealing the slashed black fabric of a sparkling dress, which dangles from a hanger. The photo pinned onto the dress looks like a piece of wallpaper from a distance; a pale, rough scrap that has absorbed the ink from the printer, leaving the colours dull, fading away.
The dress and the photo are still swaying back and forth, as if only just hung up, and the swinging makes them seem like a decorative mobile; moving but lifeless.
The photo shows a young, very thin, heartbreakingly beautiful woman. She is slender, almost boyish, her breasts are small and flat, her face frozen, expressionless.
Her very long and very blond hair is like a crumpled yellow sheet beneath her head. She is wearing the dress to which this photo is now pinned. It seems tailor-made for her; it resembles her: flowing, extravagant, useless and costly. And the front is slashed open all the way down, as if it had an open zipper.
Beneath the dress, her skin is also slashed open – with one sharp incision starting between her legs, over her pubis and up to her chest. The abdominal wall is agape, the fleshy red of the innards veiled in merciful darkness. The black dress engulfs the body like death itself. A perfect symbol, just like the place where the dress is now hanging, waiting for him to find it: Kadettenweg 107.
The torchlight is again pointed at the bulky grey box on the wall and the tarnished lock. The key fit, but was difficult to turn, as if it couldn’t remember what it was supposed to do at first. Inside, there is a row of little red light bulbs. Three are broken, and they glow at irregular intervals. The tungsten filaments have corroded over the years. But that doesn’t matter. The necessary bulb is glowing.
The torchlight hastily gropes its way back to the cellar stairs and up the steps. There are footprints in the beam of light, and that’s a good thing. When he returns, they will guide him down the cellar stairs to the black dress. And to the photo.
All at once, he will remember. The hairs on the back of his neck will rise, and he will say to himself: this is impossible.
And yet: it is true. He wi
ll know it. Because of the cellar alone – even if it wasn’t this cellar or this woman. And of course, it will be a different woman. His woman.
And on her birthday, too. A lovely detail!
But the best part is the way it all comes full circle. Everything started in a cellar, and it would end in a cellar.
Cellars are the vestibules of hell. And who should know that better than someone who has been burning in hell for an eternity.
Chapter 2
Berlin – 1 September, 11.11 p.m.
The alarm has already been going off for nine minutes. Anyone else would have reached for his weapon on the way to the car – at least for a moment, to feel if it was where it was supposed to be, just in case: in its holster, right on his hip.
Gabriel doesn’t reach for it; he doesn’t carry a weapon. For as long as he can remember, guns have made him profoundly uneasy. Quite apart from the fact that the German authorities would probably never issue him a gun licence.
By the time he reaches the car, rain is already trickling down his collar. Gabriel presses the button for the power locks, and the lights flare orange in the darkness. He throws himself into the driver’s seat and slams the door. Water splashes in his face from the rubber seal on the door. It’s pouring as if the heavens were putting out a wildfire. Gabriel stares into the rear-view mirror, where his eyes hover in front of the windscreen.
He knows he should start the engine right away, but something stops him; a warning tingle flows beneath his skin like an electric current. Something is wrong here. And today of all days. Now of all times.
Fuck it, Luke. What are you waiting for? It’s not because of her, is it? an urgent voice whispers in his head.
I promised her I’d be back just after twelve, Gabriel thinks.
You didn’t promise her. That’s just how she took it. It’s not your problem if she’s going to get so stroppy about it.
Shit, he mumbles.
Shit? Why? Don’t you see what she’s doing to you? The moment you let someone in, you turn into a weakling. As if you don’t know how dangerous that is! Better to worry about the alarm.
Gabriel grits his teeth. Damn alarm. He’s been working at Python for twenty years and spent most of his time with alarm systems or personal security. Up until a few months ago, he even lived on the fenced-in grounds of the security company in two sparsely furnished rooms right by the gate to the street. His boss Yuri had taken him under his wing and given him some stability. Martial arts training in the mornings, night school from 6 p.m. and Python every other free minute of the day. The problem was the weekends. When there wasn’t much to do, his memories would tear him apart. That is, until he discovered the wrecked car in Yuri’s garage – an old Mercedes SL. Yuri gave him the run-down cabriolet, and Gabriel, who had never so much as changed his own oil, dove into the repairs as if he were restoring his soul.
