“Ed, we’ll go to Treblinka in the morning, okay?” said Bill. “Maybe we’ll find some answers there.”
He just nodded and said goodnight, storming up the steps and into his bedroom without another word. Part of him wanted to punch the walls, but he knew that the sturdy Krakus House would win that fight and he’d be no closer to finding out what happened to Addey. It would be smart to stay in the proprietors’ good graces.
Later that night, and slightly unnerved by the silence, Edmund got up and went to the bathroom. The room below was still, but he could hear the faint sound of the small television behind the bar. Their mess had been cleaned up on the table. As Edmund sat on the toilet he thumbed through his list of messages—his girlfriend, his dad and little sister. He sent placating replies to them all, the expected notes that he was having fun, wished they were here, blah, blah, blah.
He was still looking at his phone when he opened the bathroom door to walk out and there in his path stood the old woman, looking positively spectral, almost like a ghost herself. Her hair was as white as the snow piling on the windowsills and one eye matched, turned to the ground and filled with milk. Stroke evidence was clearer upon closer inspection, as the right side of her face hung loose, like a latex Halloween mask trying to fit over too small a head. But the one eye was piercing green, so if Edmund thought she was invalid, that she was unaware of the world and her surroundings, that notion was quickly squashed as she zeroed in on him.
“Towel,” she said in a rough voice. It took him a moment to understand what she meant until he looked down and saw a stack of neatly folded towels in her outstretched arms.
It was also the first time he really noticed that she was standing—that she wasn’t wheelchair bound—and that she’d trudged up the steps to make the delivery. Edmund simply took them from her and then, without even a curt nod, she turned on her heels and walked off with far less trouble than he would have ever guessed.
“You speak English?” he called after her, just as she placed a shaky hand upon the railing to go down the steps.
She half-turned, fixed him with her good eye, and said, “perhaps,” before disappearing.
***
After breakfast the next morning, their Fiat was navigating east and they quickly entered the town of Poniatowo. From there they headed south, into a lightly wooded area where traffic was stalled by large work trucks. Most of the vehicles on this highway ran straight into Belarus, but the new world and the old crossed paths as farmers, sometimes pulling carts by horse, slowed all lanes to a crawl.
Like most everything they’d seen outside of Warsaw, this part of Poland was equal parts large, open farmland and thick, dense forest. The road grew progressively worse the further south they got, but the scenery improved. Last night’s snow was still on the ground, but it was also in the skeletal branches of the chestnut trees that lined the road.
Out in the fields were several small fires where farmers were burning dried potato vines. Occasionally white-thatched cottages broke the monotony, and out here old, Catholic churches outnumbered the synagogues.
Edmund had seen many photos of the modern-day memorial, so when the car passed beneath a stone arch and onto a dirt path that looked like a logging road, he knew they were close. The forest sprouted up again, the same forest that was used to conceal the Nazis’ crimes almost eighty years ago. Sophie pulled the car over at a small building at the edge of the memorial grounds.
Despite last night’s snow, the air wasn’t chilly. Edmund shed his jacket and pulled out his phone to take photos. He didn’t think they would find much evidence here to support what happened to Addey, but it was still a once-in-a-lifetime visit. Not every day did you see the place where almost a million people were exterminated.
They walked the path in silence, in awe by the serenity of the forest. This place was probably just as calm and quiet back then because the Nazis worked hard to keep the site hidden, and in order to do that, they had to maintain order.
Past another building and a parking lot was the sign that read Treblinka. Beneath it, carved into the rock, was a map of the camp as it existed in the 40s. The camp was large, spanning around twenty-two acres, and now massive, stone pillars marked the boundaries of the once secretive place.
“Do you see those?” asked Edmund pointing to a series of stone rectangles leading off toward the memorial.
Sophie said, “They look like . . .”
“Railroad ties,” finished Bill. “Symbolic.”
“Right,” said Edmund. “It’s part of the spur line. They lead right up to where the train station sat, where the Germans unloaded their prisoners to be rushed straight to the gas chambers.”
They followed the symbolic track up to a stone platform, noting the quiet and solitude of the memorial. It reminded Edmund of his trip to Washington D.C., and how despite the Lincoln Memorial being crowded with hundreds of people, a calm hush fell across the building. But here, they were the only ones out—the memorial didn’t even seem to be open.
“Imagine it,” said Edmund, stepping up to the stone platform. “You’re in a train and you’ve been stuck for three or four days. Finally, you come into the forest and the trees are close enough to grab through the windows. You stop here, at a train station. All is well because it looks like a real station. There’s a board showing all the stops the train makes after this one!”
“Wait, they made up a fake list of train stops?” asked Sophie, always in such disbelief.
Edmund nodded. “They even had a fake wall clock. It was painted on the wood. Anyway, Jews got off and were greeted by doctors. But the awful thing is that there were no doctors. Treblinka didn’t have any medical facilities. It was all to keep order.”
He turned around, started walking into the woods where Sophie and Bill followed behind.
“They used this path,” he said, pointing to a graveled road that was lined with little headstones bearing names. “The SS called this the ‘road to heaven’ because it led straight to the gas chambers. Men and women were brought here for undressing.” He pointed to the right and then the left.
Toward the middle of the camp was the largest memorial structure. It was a stone around twenty-five feet high with a Menorah carved into the top. Along the center was a crack running the entire length which belied the artist’s intent and appeared broken. Around the giant stone was a sea of smaller, jagged rocks, each with a name written on it. Edmund had read that there were close to twenty-thousand of them, and each was inscribed with Jewish villages and communities in Poland that were obliterated by the Nazis. One stone stood out, much larger, as if overseeing the rest, like a protective mother. This one belonged to Warsaw, where the Germans nearly wiped the Jewish culture from the map.
“That’s where the gas chambers sat,” said Edmund, pointing up to the massive stone memorial. Sophie and Bill quietly followed behind, holding hands and listening to the history lesson that Edmund had researched in great detail.
“The Jews would come up the path, naked, and then were told they were getting a shower before moving on. But they were packed into the chambers so tightly that after they were all dead, they still stood upright until the Germans carried them out. It’s even said that some people would release their last breath after being moved.”
“Cyanide?” Sophie asked, wincing. “I remember reading that in school. They used the same chemical that our country used in prison gas chambers.”
Edmund shook his head. “Some of the work camps that were converted into death camps used cyanide, but not Treblinka. This place had all of German ingenuity behind it. When it was built, it was built for one purpose: to kill Jews efficiently. They learned from all the other camps. So the gas chambers didn’t use cyanide which was expensive and dangerous to transport. They used exhaust from giant diesel engines.
“And over there is where they piled the bodies.” He pointed to the large ditches, simulated firepits where the Germans burned the corpses in troves. Now, the memorial h
ad ‘mock pyres’ with fake bodies wrapped in swaddling to represent humans.
Sophie said, “I’m still amazed that such a thing could happen. How the Germans could trick so many people to march unknowingly to their deaths.”
“Wouldn’t you do whatever it took for your family to have a better life?” asked Edmund. “If your sister needed a life-saving operation and the only way she could get it was for you to commit to living in Russia for a year to pay it off? Would you do that?”
She silently nodded.
“That’s the position all these people were in. They were promised a better life. It wasn’t ideal, but people chased those trains. They wanted to ride because—” Edmund’s voice trailed off when he remembered the paper from the gas station.
People followed the Ghost Train.
“Ed?” said Bill. “Ya alright, bud?”
He just nodded. “Sorry, lost my train of thought. Anyway, let’s look around, shall we?”
The rest of the afternoon was filled looking over the various memorials spread across the seven-acre viewable area of the camp. Edmund tried to imagine it—imagine the pure evil that lived in wooden shacks while the indentured workers slept in cold bunkhouses. For every stone in Treblinka, there was a name scribbled upon it. Much of what the public learned of the camp was from survivor stories, and those only totaled sixty-seven. The Germans were quick to tear down the camp to hide their crimes, but the Soviets couldn’t help but find human remains in the pyres’ pits. Human teeth, jawbones. It was hard to make so many deaths simply vanish.
After their visit, they walked past the car and up the dirt path, through the arch and near the main road where large work trucks still trundled by. There were tracks, but Edmund wasn’t sure if they were the original ones that brought the train near the camp before running off the spur line. Although they didn’t realize it, they were standing in the same spot where, almost eighty years ago, a small child touched a supernatural being, sending it into a panic and rushing back to its lair.
Edmund looked over into the woods, where the hill shot up with jagged rocks and a clean, albeit rough, path. Had he thought to walk twenty yards up the hill, he’d find, half buried in dirt, a railroad spike that should have been removed eighty years ago . . .
Treblinka
January 6th, 1943
Otto Herzog was a much worse man than Klaus Wagner had ever been. Both were among the first to arrive in Poland on that oddly chilly September morning four years ago but while Klaus was busy fulfilling his whoring and drinking vices, Otto was learning the enemy. He was watching them, listening to their pleas, understanding how they saw their overseers. And when the time came to drop the axe, Otto was one of the first to lend his aggression. The Entity knew an uprising was brewing in Warsaw—he was privy to the human spirit of rebellion—but if Otto were still there, in command, those unwashed animals in the ghetto would be too afraid to start trouble.
No matter. It was all coming to an end. War, strife, death, the camps. All of it. What the Entity needed to do now was become a bear, and store what he could for the long, horrendous winter. Unfortunately his stores were no more.
Otto had killed all of them with very little coaxing. After the first train, he emerged bloodied and downtrodden, hysteria running down the trainset like a virus. He’d killed before, but this was different. Even the Entity knew it wasn’t the same, but he didn’t care. This was food—and after that first car fed him, he couldn’t wait for the rest to follow.
“They’re not even fighting back,” said Otto to himself. “Not a single one raised a hand to stop me.” The alligator wrench was steadily dripping blood onto the tunnel floor.
Because every man, woman, and child accept fate for what it is. Just as you do.
“I suppose,” he said, in a singsong voice.
Back to work.
It took all day to kill so many. Otto rested quite a bit because bringing down an alligator wrench on a skull was hard work, sometimes because it got wedged in squishy membrane and he had to put a boot on their shoulder to wrestle it free. But Otto also needed rest because, despite the Entity’s influence, he still had reservations about such systematic killing.
Your people have been doing this for a year, the Entity whispered into his mind.
“The train was supposed to go to the camp,” he said, not for the first time. This was the loop in which his brain was stuck.
And they would’ve already been dead. You have done worse than this.
“I have,” said Otto, flicking the blood off his wrench as he stepped into the next cart. He slid the door shut in order to keep the killing contained. “There were those children in Munich.”
That’s right, the Munich children. So this should be no problem at all.
Otto, fresh out of Wehrmacht, was stationed in Munich at a fuel depot. One day a pair of children who lived in a house just up the road came looking for their mother. Every soldier in the depot knew Agnes Seiden, the vixen of Brower Street. She danced at a local pub and gained notoriety. Since she lived so close, she often ventured to the depot in hopes of subsidizing her nightlife with a little coin on the side. The soldiers often took her up on this offer, taking turns with her in a supply building just a few feet from the depot.
One day, she came down the road after a morning of drinking, insisted on seeing her favorite soldier, then proceeded to vandalize the depot when she was told he wasn’t there. It happened at the worst possible time—when word came down that a field officer was on his way to inspect the depot. Not about to let some harlot be their undoing, the soldiers dragged her to the supply closet and tied her up until the visit was over. Unfortunately, she fell out of her chair, still bound, and asphyxiated. Otto was helping to drag her out and down to the river—
—when the children happened by. He looked at the other soldier who was helping move the body, then to the dirty kids. And then, without even thinking, drew his gun and shot them both dead. He’d never batted an eye over that, nor did the other soldier. They simply gathered up all three and dumped them into the river. No one ever mentioned it again.
“I guess I’m a very bad man,” said Otto, jumping out of the dead train, wiping his sleeve across his bloody face.
That you are. But there is strength in being bad. Bad is the rightful state of the world. Goodness merely passes through.
That thought was probably too profound for Otto, but it worked. He went back to killing, bashing skulls, shoving bodies aside, cleaning blood from his eyes. The Entity simply followed behind, letting the sweet smell of death permeate in the air before sucking it all in.
For two days Otto killed, in the end racking up a death bill, while not as impressive as the commanders in the death camps, was still noteworthy. The Entity had consumed over four-thousand lives in just forty-eight hours and still he was hungry. It would have to do for now. Otto was covered in blood, and the man had been pushed so far beyond his natural limit that the Entity didn’t think he would be of much service now. Still, he would find a job for him before the end.
Drifting further into the lair, the Entity discovered a series of rooms that had been widened and supported by whoever laid plans for this place. At first he wasn’t interested—there was nothing here to kill, no morsels of life that he could turn into morsels of death. He was just about to float away when the far room caught his eye, and in it, a glimmer of hope. Most of it was smashed beyond repair—a few empty vials here, a microscope there. This place had potential. It was hidden and forgotten, and with that in mind, the Entity began to plan.
We have more work to do, he told Otto who had seated himself back in the engine. It was the only clean place left. The bald man nodded and stood.
Bring the wrench.
***
For the next two nights, Otto worked alone, outside the tunnel’s entrance. In an agonizingly slow process, he used the wrench to pull up the railroad spikes, then dump them in a bucket. For half a mile—all the way to the junction where the spur lin
e merged with the main line, Otto began to erase all evidence of the track.
If not for finding rats and drinking water from the reservoir in the engine, Otto would’ve died days ago, for the Entity pushed his body to the limits. Luckily the rails were segmented, and although they were each two meters of solid steel, the burly man used every ounce of his strength to lift them, then drag them into a pile inside the cave. After the tracks, he carried in the wooden ballasts which were equally as heavy and in far greater numbers. He brought in all evidence of track—the fish bolts, the spikes (except for one), the sleeper plates, all of it. And after this work was finished, he used a rake and broom to get rid of the ballast pattern in the dirt that told that a track once cut through the woods and into a cave.
And after all was done and the Entity was sure the place would remain hidden until he could put it to use, he allowed Otto to come back inside and sit in the engine. The man was tired, defeated, his body and mind near broken. Upon a closer look, the man’s heart was going to fail in a few days, but the Entity was sure he’d be dead before then. Otto looked through the window, to the track that was no longer there.
“I’m hungry,” he said. Two mangy, uncooked rats were not enough to sustain such a large man.
No, you’re not.
“No, I’m not,” Otto echoed.
The Entity wasn’t sure if it was thirst, hunger, too much brain suggestion, or the heart like he’d originally suspected, but Otto died the next day, slumping over the controls as if he were merely sleeping. And as the creature that had existed for millennia sucked out the last bit of death he’d taste for at least a few weeks, he wondered how his plans would ever come to fruition, especially if he were confined to the cave.
It would take time, he thought. Perhaps I just need to sleep like before. And when I wake up, the world will be sick, and I will be strong.
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