Shadows & Tall Trees

by Shadows

  Theo felt his throat constrict, his veins swell. He could hear them; the bats calling out, as they did when he was a child. Calling out to him, making him feel as if he belonged amongst them.

  “It sounds like bats flying. Can you hear it?

  “Everybody hears something different. We all see the same thing, though.”

  On the bed; it looked like a man, but there was no substance to him.

  “We all see it,” Jason said, comforting him.

  The ghost on the bed shifted onto his side. His shirt tail hung out; it was crinkled.

  “What I’m going to do now is to help you into a state of deep sleep. This will help us assess your physicality, now that we understand your mentality. It’ll be comfortable, and you’ll wake up with a sense of calm.”

  Theo felt a moment of panic. He looked for cameras, for some evidence that this was weird and wrong.

  “Theo, really. It’s okay. You’ve seen the others; you know it’s okay. You really, absolutely know that. Let go of your fear and allow it to happen.”

  Theo closed his eyes. He thought he could hear the calling of the bats, but he often did. It was a memory. A guiding force. He felt himself slipping into sleep and wondered if this was all he was meant to do.

  He shivered; it was cold. The ghost was gone, though there was a smell in the air of whisky, and aftershave, and soap. It was night outside, and that darkness with the flapping of the fan brought the bats to mind again. He curled up and wept with grief for those bats, lost generations, and for his father, who had killed them, and his grandfather, and for himself, because he had been a child.

  He slept.

  He dreamed his mother was burning the dinner and the smell woke him. There was smoke in the room, it was full of smoke and he could hear sirens and screams and he was hot, now. Flames licked under the door. He wrapped the sheet around his waist and ran to the window. It was bolted shut, double glazed. He found his shoe and hammered the window, coughed, coughed, his eyes streamed and his lungs burnt, he choked and coughed and collapsed, he could not draw breath and he could feel his eyes clouding, feel the heat leaving his body, then all was black.

  He awoke feeling nothing. He wore his own clothing again and he felt cool, as if a breeze washed over him. He curled up, enjoying the comfort of the bed.

  He curled up.

  He had not been able to do that for some time; he felt flexible. He stretched out his arms, lifting them high.

  “How do you feel?” Jason said. Theo had forgotten his existence, had not heard him enter the room, or, even, knew if he’d left.

  “I don’t know,” said Theo. There was no guilt, he did know that. And the grief was gone, the sorrow for the death of the bats. There was room for something else.

  It seemed the ache in his stomach was gone, and his veins didn’t hurt.

  “Give it a few days.”

  “I thought I died. There was a fire . . . did someone put it out? Is everyone all right? What about Cameron, is she okay?”

  “There was a fire,” Jason said. “We discovered that if we trick the body into believing it has died, it will recover from any fatal disease. We’ve had particular success with cancer. So we placed you behind a death’s door, and we physically, in actuality, re-created the death. You DID die. You took some of the suffering of those who have passed before you, especially him.”

  “I feel as if the world must have changed,” Theo said. “I feel so different, the world must have changed.”

  “You are a poetic man. But yes. This will suck the spiritual energy from all surrounds. You’ll notice everyone around will be feeling lethargic for a day or two. We like to complete the process on Sunday evenings best. People pass off their reaction as Mondayitis.”

  Jason handed Theo a wallet with $500. “To get you started. Good luck. I’ve put my card in there. You’re welcome to come back if and when you need to. We don’t encourage debauchery of the body, but . . . well, this gives you the freedom to explore without the concerns others have. You will need to consider the financial element. For each visit we require at least double the last. Obviously, all you possess, but it needs to far exceed the amount you paid this time.”

  He led Theo to the back door.

  “Could I say goodbye? I feel as if I know them all so well. And thank the waiters. They’re so kind. And to Cameron.”

  “Best not,” Jason said. “Not all of them will pass through the door. It’s best for them not to know for sure until . . .”

  The air outside smelt good; someone was cooking onions. He suddenly felt hungry. “A hamburger,” he said to himself. “No, a steak.”

  He felt better the next day, and the next, then he saw his doctor.

  “I’d call it a miracle if I believed in them,” said the doctor. “But I don’t. Good luck. Make the most of your second chance.”

  Theo did. He met and married a recovering drug addict who never needed another drink or another drug. He didn’t invite any of his family to the wedding; as far as they were concerned he had disappeared.

  He didn’t miss them.

  There were times, though, when a spinning fan made a light flicker, or when his ears picked up conversations he shouldn’t hear, that he thought of the bat cave and its cold comfort and he did miss that, with an ache he could not ease.

  THE GOLEM OF LEOPOLDSTADT

  TARA ISABELLA BURTON

  Into the clay she pressed her loneliness. She made a man in the image of her father, whom she did not love, and used a needle to poke letters into his back. She hollowed out his cheeks so that they were as hard and wolf-like as her father’s; with her nails she made crosses in the eyes. Clara stretched the clay and pummeled it; she feasted on her tears and ignored Cornelius when he knocked.

  “Papa’s awake.” He was dying.

  She slipped the figure into her apron pocket and went downstairs.

  They sat as they always sat: in silence. Papa, wheezing, up on the pillows. Cornelius in glory at their father’s right hand. Mama twisting her fingers in her lap, trembling. Clara in darkness at the other end of the room. The shutters were closed; the electricity flickered. Cobwebs trailed up and down the bedposts. Clara could not breathe.

  Papa reared up; Mama flinched. Papa kissed Cornelius on both cheeks and whispered a blessing Clara could not hear as she hollowed out her father’s heart with her thumbs.

  Cornelius was the anointed one; he was the hope of Leopoldstadt. He was the branch of David and he was the remnant. He was the child who had been born in darkness, and he was the boy who had survived. Women often stopped in the streets to gather him into their arms and weep, because he reminded him of the ones they had lost. In the brightness of his eyes he bore the promise of renewal. He was studying to be a rabbi. God had spared him. God had chosen him.

  Papa had told them the story over and over again, the story of the childless officer’s wife over whom the toddler Cornelius had once tripped in the Prater, who had poured out the fervent instincts of her motherly heart, and when the calamity had started had used her influence to spare the whole family from those railway cars. It was a miracle of God in a time without miracles, for God had singled Cornelius out as the rod and as its flower, to feed on curds and honey, and to survive.

  God had not chosen Clara, who had been born three years after it was all over, colicky and pale, and raised in silent, spinsterish seclusion in her father’s house. She was unfavoured; she polished the picture-frames. She turned away visitors at the door—Papa refused to face the ones who came to call. She cooked dinner; she helped Frau Moritz with the silver. She crept out at lunchtime, volumes of Papa’s Talmud hidden in her satchel, and sat alone among the roses of the Volksgarten to read them, ecstatic with the thrill of transgression. She received Papa’s curses with downcast eyes, and when he blessed Cornelius she turned away, swallowed, and reflected on the darkness outside God’s wings.

 
God’s hands had saved Cornelius, but Clara’s hands worked in her lap, kneading as they had kneaded for nineteen years. Clay was the only thing she was good at. Twenty or thirty copies of her father lined her bedroom wall. Forty or sixty crossed and unloving eyes stared down at her when she went to sleep at night. She did not complain. She did not make a fuss. She only kneaded the clay, and leavened it with her hate.

  “My son,” Papa closed his eyes. “You have the voice of an angel. You have the mind of a scholar. You are beautiful and you have never suffered.” His hands shook as he raised his fingers to the paintings. “You see what belongs to you. You see what you must do. You see what you will take from me when I am gone.”

  The paintings glared down at them. These were Papa’s favourites, the ones Clara was not permitted to touch, the few Papa had not sold when he closed his gallery. The greatest collection in Vienna, Papa had said. They were Papa’s legacy; they were Cornelius’ inheritance.

  “May you be righteous, my son.” Papa coughed up spittle and blood. “May you be wise. You will redeem us all.”

  When she did not know better and her father had not told her better, Clara had wanted to be righteous, to be wise. She’d wanted to trace her fingers along the great scrolls, and to read the signs of holiness in the seasons, and to press beneath her palms the name of God. But God had chosen Cornelius, and Papa had chosen Cornelius. God had been stolen from her. God did not want her, and so she hated Him as she hated her father, and her brother, and this too she twisted into her clay.

  Cornelius knelt before their father and received the blessing; Mama sobbed roughly into her handkerchief, and Clara worked her clay in silence. Her father did not call for her, and she did not answer him. She rose and went to her room, and when Cornelius knocked an hour later to tell her that her father was dead she did not reply.

  “You’re a fool.” He quoted to her verses about fishhooks, about cows of Bashan about his God who was a vengeful God. He blazed with the righteousness of prophets and called her names of faithless women. His voice was high like a eunuch’s and his cheeks were bright with his kingship and he did not even lower himself to cross her threshold. He named her adulteries and his words brought color to her cheeks. She listened to it all without blinking, and when he had finished she calmly put her figurine on the shelf to dry.

  “That’s it?” Cornelius leaned against the doorframe, and his hair gleamed golden in the lamplight.

  “That’s it.” She did not look at him.

  “Three friends, said the Rabbis, has man. God, his father, and his mother.” He smoothed the sleeves of his coat, as he always did when quoting the Talmud, and Clara imagined clawing out its many-colored thread.

  “I have no friends.” Her blasphemy thrilled her. Her father was dead, and with him God had vanished from the stars outside the window. The streets of Vienna were empty of shadows, of signs and words of holiness.

  When he had gone Clara locked the door and put her head in her hands. She did not cry—she would not cry. She would be stronger than Cornelius, stronger than God who had chosen him, stronger than the justice which she despised as injustice, stronger still than Papa who had cast her out, stronger than the dead. She would rage against God; she would fight His angel and win.

  The idea appeared to her. She would seize hold of her birthright—she would smash open her father’s desk and grab handfuls of schillings, grab the books which she was not allowed to read, overturn the paintings and fling wide the doors of the house onto Czerninplatz and invite the neighbors into their dark and festering halls. She would pack her suitcase full of clay men and sacred books, and then she would take the train to Budapest, and onwards to Jerusalem, and there she would stare into the face of God until she made Him listen to her, until He quelled her rage, until He brought her justice.

  Mama was still wailing, and Cornelius was reciting the mourners’ prayers, but she would not listen to them now. She forced her way past the cobwebs, through the dust, into her father’s study where the mould crept at the wallpaper and the termites nipped at the wood.

  Clara sat at her father’s desk. Her palms trembled as she pressed them to the handles. She forced them still and then she pulled open the drawers, one by one, flinging them back, delving deep into them, overturning papers, snatching at documents, at coins and paper notes, at anything of value that she could use to buy a ticket, a night in a hotel room, a way out. She threw the drawers on the floor; she slid open the hidden compartments; she plunged her hand up to the wrist in her father’s secrets.

  She had trespassed; it was delicious. Papa could not stop her now—Cornelius could not stop her now! God Himself could not stop her!

  She sliced her thumb open on a stack of papers; she sucked the blood from her fingers, and in that pause she caught sight of the contents.

  It was an appraisal of Werner Kronenberg’s David. She’d heard of it before, of course. It was one of the paintings that had hung in the Siebermayer ballroom before the war. Every Jew or Gentile of note in Vienna had danced there in the last days of the Hapsburg Empire. But the house was abandoned now, and the Siebermayers were all dead, and the painting—like all the rest—had been taken.

  She tore through the papers. Each one was like the last—a receipt, an appraisal, bearing the dates that made her flinch. 1939. 1943. Her father’s careful signature. Valuations, analysis, details about paintings that had been taken, information invaluable to those who held them. Information worth several thousand German reichsmarks—or a little boy’s life.

  “My father is a betrayer.” She whispered it aloud; it gave her strength. “I was born because my father is a betrayer.”

  The miracle of the officer’s wife—the miracle of Cornelius’s bright blue eyes—the etiology of their salvation—all nothing more than stories—

  “Cornelius is alive because my father is a betrayer.”

  This was Cornelius’s birthright. This was Cornelius’s inheritance. This was the shame that shuttered their windows; this was the stain that kept visitors from the door. Everything around them was ash, and bone, and after, and their father had picked at the carrion of Israel like a vulture. He had crouched at the door of his brothers and waited for them to be dragged out, one by one, and watched their houses as they burned. He had saved his only son.

  She knew she should weep. But Clara could not weep. There was only joy.

  “Because my father is a betrayer. Cornelius was not chosen by God.

  “God has not chosen him.”

  God had not forgotten her. God had not cast her out. God had folded His wings around her; God had set His hand on her hand, and she was the first-born of Israel, and the hope of Leopoldstadt. She was the daughter of God who was forged in the very beginning, and would be there in the end, and she rejoiced in the whole world.

  She was wild with joy; she breathed the breath of God. She flung open the shutters, drew in the moon; she aired the house of its shame.

  Then came the rage.

  She thought of her tears, and of the hatred she had nursed at her breast, of the darkness that was the darkness of her father, and the stain that was the birthright of her brother, of the times she’d felt God’s wrath crawling up and down her skin and longed to tear it off in strips, with fishhooks, until she was clean again.

  She returned to her room and took down another hunk of unformed clay. She kneaded another pair of arms, another pair of legs, another square, flat head with crosses for the eyes. She stretched and pressed the clay; she clawed at its limbs, and as she worked she murmured the secret name of God.

  “Let there be truth.” Her lips swelled with whispers. “Let there be truth.”

  She carved the letters into its back, the aleph, mem, tav which signified truth, and which God Himself had bound to life.

  “Let there be justice. Let there be truth.”

  She closed her eyes and felt it stir beneath her fingers. She listened for the hum
of life in her hands.

  Clara knew what would happen next. She had read the words of the rabbis. She knew that God had formed man, and man had formed mud, and from that mud once in Prague there had risen a defender, who had shaken the evildoers like grain in a sieve, and that this defender could rise again, formed by the palms of those whom God had blessed.

  She heard its first, wordless cry and she knew what she had done.

  She rose quickly; she left suddenly. She swallowed down the beating of her heart and from across the Czerninplatz she saw the shadow that hulked through the house, and saw the first explosion, and the first few flames.

  She understood. She understood why a voice, crying out in the wilderness, would cry out for the justice of the Lord. She understood the wail of Babylon, and the demand for scorched earth, for a reckoning. Her God was a vengeful God, and he punished unto generations.

  Behind her, the hope of Leopoldstadt blazed and gave light to the first spike of morning. She walked onwards to the Danube, and from there to Jerusalem.

  ROAD DEAD

  F. BRETT COX

  There was no cell service in our town. The nearest tower was in the next county. The closest place we could get a signal was the cemetery north of town. Danny needed to make a call and the rest of us didn’t have anything better to do. Jake drove and Danny called shotgun. Rob and I were in the back. Before the turn to the cemetery there was a turn onto a dead end road and at the turn there was a sign that said Private Road Dead End. It had been there ever since I could remember. But there were smudges over the Private and the End like someone had tried to erase them and if you just looked quick it looked like the sign said Road Dead. Well hell Jake said and turned onto the road. What the fuck I got to make my call Danny said. Sorry man got to check this out Jake said. Goddammit I got to make this call make it quick Danny said. Good luck with that Rob said. I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been on this road. Jake kept driving. It hadn’t rained in forever and the car kicked up a lot of dust. The sky was overcast though and you couldn’t see the sun. There were plenty of clouds. It just wouldn’t rain. We got to the end of the road and there was a log cabin. That prefab shit Rob said. No this one looks old I said. And it did. The wood was so worn it was almost shiny and there were patches on it where it looked like someone had tried to chop the house down. Jake pulled over on the far side of the road from the house and cut the motor. He rolled his window down and we could hear music coming from the house. Classical music like the teacher played in humanities unit. It sounded familiar and before I knew it I said Bach. Danny turned around and looked at me. Lah de dah Professor he said. Rob snorted like it was funny. Then Danny said to Jake now what? Don’t know Jake said. Make up your fucking mind I still got to make my call Danny said. Jake looked at Danny and said well fuck all right then. Jake got out of the car and started walking towards the house. Dumb shit always got to be chasing something Danny said. Then he started checking his phone. God damn this sorry remote ass place he said. Rob snorted again. Fucking Bach he said. Jake walked up at an angle to the front door and moved toward the side of the house. He put his elbows out to the side and got up on tiptoe and made a big deal out of creeping up to the house like he was one of the Three Stooges. When he got up to the side of the house he made another big deal of peering into what I guess was a window and then he kind of shook and went forward like he had tripped and then he wasn’t there anymore. You couldn’t tell if he had tripped and fallen in through the window or if he’d been pulled inside. Fuck Rob said. Danny was still fooling with his phone. What happened he said. Goddammit I said and got out of the car and walked across the road over to where Jake had been. There was a window all right but it was closed. I looked inside. They didn’t have any lights on and it was hard to see much but there were a bunch of people. More than you would have thought would have been inside such a small place. Some were men and some were women and they all wore regular clothes. I didn’t see Jake. One of the men was lying on some sort of table. He was strapped down to the table and it didn’t look like he had any clothes on. He was shaking. Not like he was cold but like he was riding down a rough road. A couple of times he seemed about ready to jump off the table but the straps held him down. Some of the people were holding things but I couldn’t tell what they were. You could hear the music like the window was open. There was another window on the other side of the room that looked like it was covered in plastic until you realized the whole wall was covered in plastic and the plastic had dark stains all over it. I looked again at the man on the table and for a second I thought I knew him but then the one standing closest to him looked up. It was a woman. I don’t know if she saw me or not but she stared like she was looking at something. I backed away from the window and into someone standing right behind me. I yelled and spun around. It was Danny. He and Rob had gotten out of the car and followed me over to the window. Fuck fuck fuck I said and ran for the car. Danny beat me there and got in and started it up. Rob and I piled in and we took off. We hauled down the road and turned and headed back up the main road towards the cemetery. What about Jake Rob said. I don’t know I said. Danny didn’t say a word but when we got up to the cemetery he pulled in and started driving up the path. The fuck you doing Rob said. Danny kept on as fast as he had been going on the main road. A loose rock flew up off the dirt and cracked the windshield. When we got to the very back past all the tombstones he stopped the car. The fuck you doing Rob said. Rob’s right what about Jake we’ve got to go back I said. You looked through that fucking window fuck Jake it’s his own goddamn fault Danny said. Then what are we doing here why don’t we go I said. Danny looked at his phone and then looked and us. I’ve got a signal he said and got out of the car. It was Jake’s fucking idea he said and walked away. Rob and I stayed in the car. I turned around and looked back at the main road. The tombstones ran down to the road in neat rows. One near the car had fallen over. Danny was standing by it talking into his phone low like he was trying to keep a secret but I could hear him. Hello? he said. Hello? I looked at Rob. Now what I said but now he was looking back at the main road so I turned back around. A car was pulling into the cemetery with another right behind it. About halfway up the path the first car stopped and then the second. The first car turned its lights on bright and the driver got out and then the rest of them. And Jake. Jake got out of the second car and started moving towards Danny but Danny didn’t notice. He was still talking into his phone but now he was shouting. Hello? he kept saying. Hello? Hello?