The War in the Dark

by Nick Setchfield

  Scholz grunted, conjuring only a swill of phlegm in reply. He realised he had teeth missing.

  ‘My name’s Hart, by the way. I know we’ll only be briefly acquainted but I think there’s always a place for manners, whatever the arena.’

  The Englishman dumped the bag on the floor and unzipped it. Scholz glimpsed a flash of something cold and silver, piled upon neat white cotton.

  ‘I can only apologise for the methodology of my colleagues,’ Hart continued, airily. ‘I’m forever embarrassed by their lack of subtlety. There’s really no reason why the exchange of information should be quite so messy. Such unpleasantries are always avoidable, don’t you think?’

  Scholz replied through cracked teeth. ‘Go to hell.’

  Hart considered these words. ‘All in good time, old boy.’

  The Englishman approached the chair. Scholz felt a hand seize his jaw, tilting his head towards the best available light. Hart was scrutinising his wounds with the detached air of a surgeon. A finger lifted the half-shuttered lid of his left eye, breaking a crusted seal of blood.

  ‘Yes, this is a pretty vulgar job,’ Hart declared. ‘But then I imagine they did try asking you nicely.’

  Scholz stared into the man’s clear eyes. His charm was clearly part of the interrogation process, a calculated bid to unsettle and confuse. A clever, theatrical Englishness. No doubt he would soon be offering him tea and sandwiches. At least a fist in the face had an honesty to it.

  Hart gave another, tighter smile. ‘I’ll ask nicely too, then, just in case it saves us some bother. Where is the Tall God’s Cave?’

  Scholz heard those words again, the ones that his interrogators had pounded into his skull over the past two days. Once more he kept his face composed.

  ‘I have no idea what you mean,’ he muttered, tiredly. He let his head sink against his shoulder, making a show of willing himself back into sleep.

  Hart lifted his jaw again and leaned closer, only a breath away from his face. The Englishman’s skin carried the scent of lavender water. There was sand in his hair, Scholz saw, and a vein like a fine blue line of ink on his brow.

  ‘We are adepts, you and I,’ said Hart.

  His voice was hushed now, as though these were private words, exchanged between equals, not interrogator and victim. ‘We have a certain bond. A higher loyalty. One that places us beyond nations. Beyond this conflict. We should, I think, answer only to knowledge. And so I’ll ask you again, in the dear spirit of knowledge, and in the ancient and darling name of magic… where is the Tall God’s Cave?’

  Scholz met the man’s eyes, unimpressed.

  ‘You’re chasing devils, Herr Hart. Why do you bother? You’re clearly halfway to being such a damned creature yourself.’

  Hart’s pupils flitted from side to side. For a second Scholz imagined he saw vulnerability there, a fleeting trace of what could have been guilt or fear. He had caught that look in the eyes of other occultists, the ones who knew the price of the path they had chosen but whose commitment remained absolute, their craving for the blood-rush of magic too deep, too embedded.

  The Englishman turned away. Dropping to his knees he rummaged inside the holdall.

  ‘Here. Take a gander at this.’

  He had a rolled parchment in his hand. Dispensing with a knot of ribbon he flung it at the floor of the tent. The parchment uncurled with a sigh of air. It was brittle and faded, stained with age. Scholz saw that it was a map of the world, the names of the nations inscribed in antique calligraphy.

  Hart pressed a brogue to the edge of the map, keeping it from scrolling back upon itself.

  ‘It’s a little old, I know, but it’s beautifully done, don’t you think? So much character.’

  He dipped into the bag once more. This time he retrieved a small rectangular casket, roughly the size of a book. It was an ornate object, showily so, its silver panels inlaid with intricate dragonfly swirls of blue, green and red enamel.

  As Scholz looked on the English warlock fished in the left-hand pocket of his jacket. His fingers plucked a tiny silver key from the rumpled linen. It looked as though it belonged to a music box. He placed the key in the casket and turned it. The lid slid open to reveal a glimpse of scarlet lining.

  Hart turned the glittering box upside down. And then he shook it, impatiently, as if trying to dislodge its contents.

  ‘Come along, Antonia.’

  Something dropped from the casket. At first Scholz thought it was an animal. A bird, perhaps, or a sizable insect. And then he saw that it was the bones of a human hand.

  Hart smiled. ‘Oh, don’t be bashful, dear girl.’

  The skeletal fist crouched upon the parchment. The bones were young and white and intact, still stitched together by ligaments and gristly with sinew. The hand had a shudder of life to it, Scholz saw. It quivered, almost shyly, on the painted coast of Asia.

  ‘Are you familiar with bone magic, by any chance?’

  Scholz made no reply. Perspiring, he kept his gaze on the bones, watching as the knuckles hunched above the contours of the old map.

  ‘I’ve made quite a study of it,’ Hart continued. ‘Some claim it’s the oldest magic on earth. I think that’s very possible. Bones are potent things, after all. The symbol of our own death, buried from birth within our flesh. Just imagine those ignorant Neanderthals, watching as the bodies of their elders crumbled and peeled away. What power there was in that process. The great, long, silent levelling. It would have awed them. I mean, gosh, what’s the discovery of fire compared to the discovery of death?’

  The bones squatted like a cornered spider.

  ‘And then of course there’s blood magic. I’ve always seen it as a close relation to the craft of the bone. A little more romantic, perhaps. More passionate, you might say. Certainly a great deal messier.’

  Hart had extracted a small knife from his pocket. He closed in on Scholz and tugged at the rope that bound the German’s wrists, exposing raw red weals where the knot had been. Scholz struggled but his strength was gone, his muscles fatigued by the beatings.

  ‘The beauty of it is, of course, that as parallel branches of body magic they’re completely compatible.’

  Hart made a swift and precise strike with the blade. It sliced an arterial vein on Scholz’s right wrist, an inch above the rope. In seconds blood began to jet from the wound.

  ‘I want you to think of your little secret. The one you’re trying so hard to keep from me. Let it flow in you. Let it run in your veins.’

  Scholz’s blood spattered the bones. The cadaverous fingers twitched and flexed, christened by the bright red spray.

  A nerve began to drum on Hart’s brow. ‘Go on, Antonia. Be a sweetheart. Show me where the Tall God’s Cave is.’

  For a moment the hand spun like a maddened compass. And then it skittered across the parchment, trailing smears of blood. The bones navigated the map as if chasing a scent, scurrying across coastlines and continents, click-clacking over oceans. Finally they settled.

  Hart clapped, the knife between his palms. ‘Oh, she’s very good, isn’t she? Such a clever girl.’

  Jürgen Scholz’s vision darkened. The last thing he saw was the bone hand, sat on the map. The forefinger rose, trembled and tapped twice on the coast of Africa.

  23

  Schweigenbach felt entombed by forest.

  The tiny village lay deep in the dense green heart of Bavaria, encircled by towering firs. The shadows of the trees made it curiously sunless and there was a hush you could almost weigh. Winter estimated that they were some twenty miles from Haselbach but this place seemed to defy maps and compasses and signposts. It felt half buried, hidden from the world like a stone under moss.

  It seemed to be outside of time, too. Certainly it was hard to imagine that the war had come anywhere near here. Winter could almost sense the clocks turning more slowly around him, keeping to their own private rhythm. No, he corrected himself – Schweigenbach wasn’t outside time. It was heavy with it.
There was history here, a sense of a much older country surviving among the cobbles and shuttered windows of the cramped, curving lanes.

  They had arrived late that morning, the engine of their hired Daimler the loudest sound in the village. There were more cats than people on the streets, observing them from doorways and walls, at first curious and then indifferent. Finally the cats had ignored the two strangers entirely, content to lick their fur in the weak noon sun or return to their secret paths between the clutter of houses.

  The people were altogether warier. Eye contact was brief, a smile even more rare. They were old people, Winter noted, every last one of them. Where were the young people of Schweigenbach? Little wonder the place was so quiet, he thought. The noise and energy of Berlin seemed a world away.

  They soon found a tavern in the heart of the village. It was oak-gloomy inside, decorated with dull brass. It had a charred smell, as if haunted by a past fire. Winter and Karina sat in a corner and shared a dark and treacly local beer before asking the landlord for directions to Schattenturm.

  ‘There’s nothing there,’ he told them, collecting their dimpled glasses and placing them on a copper tray.

  ‘But I imagine it’s still there,’ Karina countered, glancing up. ‘Schattenturm itself?’

  ‘The tower? An ugly thing. Empty now. You are historians? Researchers?’

  ‘Just tourists,’ Winter smiled, wiping a froth of beer from his lips.

  ‘We rarely get tourists. Even more rarely in this season.’

  ‘We heard it was beautiful in autumn. Didn’t we, darling?’

  Karina shot him a sharp look. ‘We did. Darling.’

  The landlord took a charcoal pencil from his bib and sketched directions on a paper napkin, smudging the map with the edge of his hand as he drew. ‘There’s nothing there,’ he stressed again, handing the napkin to Winter. Karina gave the man a handful of Deutsche marks for his trouble and he pocketed them with a grudging but appreciative smile.

  Winter excused himself from the table and went in search of the toilets. He found the gents at the rear of the tavern, at the end of a thin corridor lined with a series of commemorative plates. They were garish tourist kitsch, each plate depicting an eighteenth-century hunting scene in bright, sickly oils. There were slain boars and snarling dogs and red-cheeked men with muskets in their hands. Even the blood looked as cheery as an oompah band.

  The toilet itself was poky. A crookedly aligned wooden door opened to a windowless space with a modern, chemical smell, at odds with the tavern’s attempt at authentic Bavarian charm. Winter heard water gurgle in the brass pipes that crept from the cisterns to the ceiling. There was a small, boxy radio fixed upon the wall, and a dull, folky song half crooned, half crackled from its grille.

  Winter used the urinal. As he did so the light in the room dimmed, faintly. He glanced up at the lone light bulb that hung from a frayed cord attached to the ceiling. There was an odd darkness in the glass, almost as if a shadow was growing inside it. The sound of the radio also faded, the song decaying into splutters and hisses. The signal was dying. Winter was convinced he could hear a competing signal, growing stronger. A man’s voice, guttural and rasping. It made sounds that might have been words. Moments later the song returned, still faint and interrupted by pops and clicks of interference.

  Winter soaped his hands. He let the water pour from the old taps until it was nearly scalding. Curiously, he began to feel colder, even as the steam rose in the sink, clouding the edges of the mirror. He knew his circulation was terrible but this was something different. The temperature in the room had changed, dropped by degrees.

  A chill fell like a breath on the nape of his neck. His flesh prickled, almost warningly. He had spent so much time in the field that sometimes he could sense somebody else’s presence by bodily intuition. But no, he was alone in the room. The cubicle door was open. And yet his senses were cautioning him.

  He took stock of himself in the mirror. It was a stark light and an unflattering angle and he winced at how drained he looked, how pummelled by the madness of the past few weeks. He felt sure there were new lines on his face.

  The light went. The room turned black. The mirror gleamed in the sudden shock of darkness, the glass silver-bright. Winter stared into it and saw a skull where his face should have been. It was as if his flesh had been ripped away, exposing the bone beneath. He saw his eyes reflected as sockets, two hollows that gazed back, sightless as death.

  The song was gone. The man’s voice was back, louder and even more animalistic than before. The sounds that tore from his throat broke into static as they roared through the radio’s grille. For a second Winter sensed another figure in the mirror, a shape struggling to wrestle itself out of the glass. A bare-chested man, wounded and smeared in blood…

  And then the light bulb flared into life again. The song returned to the radio, the signal clean and clear. Water swilled in the pipes. Winter found himself clutching the sink, his fingers tight around its porcelain edges. His breathing was urgent.

  The door to the toilet opened. A man came in. Portly, fifties, dressed in a hacking jacket. Hint of ex-Luftwaffe. Winter had seen him at the bar with his wife. The two men nodded to each other. Guten Tag.

  Winter dried his hands with a paper towel. He resolved to say nothing of this to Karina.

  * * *

  They left the tavern and followed the route that led to the forest, climbing up and out of the village on a narrow, twisting trail. The streets of Schweigenbach soon faded behind them. They didn’t attempt conversation and the silence thickened as they walked. Even the sounds of nature seemed muted in this place. There were none of the usual scratches and cries of the countryside, no sense of life moving among the leaves and hedges.

  Winter glanced up, his gaze caught by a sudden flap of wings. He saw ravens circling high in a pale, pebble-coloured sky. The birds, too, kept their distance here. He watched as they spiralled above the brooding woodland and the stillness of the meadows beyond. In the distance he could see the snow-topped peak of the Great Arber, rising above the treeline.

  A stone-strewn path took them to a bridge over a brook. As they approached the crossing Winter stopped, astonished by what he saw.

  The bridge was wreathed in ladybirds. They dotted every available inch of wood, as bright as blood. Some of them crawled by themselves, others pulsed together in clumps, like a single organism. Karina saw them too but she continued walking. As she crossed the bridge the insects shifted in a haze of tiny wings, scattering around her.

  Winter followed her across, batting away the mist of ladybirds. The old wood of the bridge creaked beneath his shoes. He looked over the side. The water below was almost motionless. Thickets of weed sprouted among mustard-coloured rocks.

  Beyond the bridge lay a path that led deeper into the forest. The trees were like a shroud now, the vast branches of the evergreens obscuring the sky, greying the light. Their huge, serpentine roots erupted out of the soil. The air had the smell of autumn, of things withering, turning dry.

  The path narrowed as it took them under the trees. They found themselves pushing through clusters of brambles that swarmed at either side. The ragged plants coiled like snares, studded with thorns. Tattered remains of cobwebs drifted from their branches.

  Winter realised that the hush of the forest was now absolute. There had been clouds of flies before but their background drone only truly registered now that it was gone. He listened to his own breath. It was impossibly loud. The silence felt like another presence in the woodland, close as a person.

  ‘God, it’s here,’ said Karina.

  The tower was taller than the trees. It rose above them, old and soot-dark and nearly windowless. Great green vines encircled the base, wrapping themselves around the structure as if trying to wrest it back to earth. A lone turret speared the sky. It all belonged in a picture book, thought Winter. Some childhood tale of witches and giants.

  ‘Schattenturm,’ murmured Karina, almost
to herself.

  He stole a glance at her, watching as her eyes widened and darted. She was gazing at the tower with something close to awe. No, not awe. She was altogether too cool for that. It was a kind of satisfaction. This was clearly a moment she had anticipated for a long time. He was almost tempted to smile on her behalf.

  They stepped into the tower’s shadow, the October air becoming marginally colder around them. There was a formidable wooden door set into the stonework, medieval in its plain, functional design. A heavy brass lock was bolted onto it, flaking with rust. Karina dipped inside her bag and retrieved the equally rusted key, the one the Reliquarists had traded with her. It matched the look of the lock precisely. They belonged together.

  She thrust the key into the keyhole, sliding its teeth into the waiting aperture. There was a scrape and a rattle of metal. She was about to twist the key when she paused. She placed a hand against the brass plate. And then she pushed, gingerly at first and then more purposefully. The door opened with a grinding of old hinges. It was unlocked.

  Winter frowned. ‘What the hell did we need a key for?’

  Karina peered into the shadowed doorway. ‘Clearly it wasn’t the key we needed, Christopher. Just the name on the key.’

  ‘I thought this was meant to be a prison tower.’

  ‘Not for some time, it seems.’

  They entered, pushing the old door as wide as its age would allow. The light inside was sepulchral, barely illuminating the leaden dark of the tower’s interior. Winter felt his senses sharpen in the cool gloom.

  ‘Let’s take this carefully,’ he said.

  ‘Of course.’

  Nature had crept into this place. It had found the cracks and the gaps. Moss grew between the flagstones and pale, sun-starved weeds clung to the walls. There was a distinct smell of mushrooms too, rich and woody. Winter squinted into the dark and saw oily fists of fungi in the far corners.

  They moved forward, pushing past a waist-high metal grille that had clearly been some kind of security gate. There was a wooden desk behind it, its surface stained with ink and pitted with holes. Beyond that was the start of a staircase, narrow and spindling.