And I remember how it made me feel. The horror, the disbelief, the fear, the desperation, the panic, the unreality of it, the disconnectedness. The adrenalin rush. The sick excitement. The power.
Looking back now I realise that having taken that step, I was damned forever. I had passed the point of no return. There was no going back. There would be no forgiveness. No redemption. From that moment on, although I tried to fight it, my fate was already sealed.
Once the first steps are taken along that dark path, there is no going back.
Dieter Heydrich was there to witness the cold-blooded murder of Anselm Fleischer when the witch hunters executed the lunatic for the sacrilegious crimes committed by the Corpse Taker.
The execution took place on the one night of the year, above all others, when anyone who valued their life or their sanity stayed at home. It was the night when dark things were abroad within the world. It was the Night of Mystery. Geheimnisnacht.
In certain remote villages and hamlets across the Empire, where people more readily suffered the predations of the servants of darker powers, the populace would bar themselves in until the sun rose on the first day of Nachgeheim, for fear of what might be abroad on that night.
This Geheimnisnacht was an uncomfortable, sweltering night. The day had been the same, the atmosphere oppressive, ever promising thunder but the weather never delivering on that promise. The oppressive atmosphere remained as night fell, as did the humid heat.
The bells of the Temple of Sigmar chimed nine o’ clock. Both moons hung in the light-leeched sky, full and threatening, directly above the pyre constructed outside the temple in the Göttenplatz. The fissured face of green-hazed Morrslieb even appeared to be smiling like a feral predator.
Although people knew better than to be out on Geheimnisnacht, they had still come in their droves to see the Corpse Taker burn at the stake, the bogeyman of their nightmares laid to rest at last.
The crowd pointed at the two moons and muttered amongst themselves, making the sign of the holy hammer or touching iron to guard against evil. But still they had come.
The capture of the Corpse Taker had been the talk of the town for the last week, so much so that even Dieter, hiding away in his garret study, had come to hear of it. He had heard how the lunatic had been captured by a cadre of Sigmarites, led by Brother-Captain Krieger himself, the madman having attacked the town’s sextons, who tended the graves for Father Hulbert in the garden of Morr, following his escape from the Temple of Shallya. Krieger had not been as understanding as either the physicians’ guild or the Sisters of Shallya. Dieter had heard that Anselm Fleischer had been subjected to the torturers’ ministrations following which he had confessed to being the Corpse Taker and of having committed all the crimes of which he’d been accused, and more still.
His death had been inevitable, not only from that point when he had admitted to every accusation the witch hunters made against him, Dieter thought, but from the moment he had been seized by the Order of Sigmar; perhaps from the moment he had broken free from the infirmary to escape Dieter’s interrogation. Surely his death warrant had been written from the moment his will had been turned by the malevolent Doktor Drakus, working away behind the scenes of this morality play all along—seemingly directing everything that was happening to Dieter even. That was the way fate worked.
It had been Brother-Captain Ernst Krieger and not fate, however, who had decided that the Corpse Taker should be put to death on Geheimnisnacht. Many, even among the Church of Sigmar, riled at the idea. Krieger was as superstitious and as fearful as the next man, it was the message that he was giving that was important. The fact that the fiend who had terrorised Bögenhafen for the best part of nine months would perish on Geheimnisnacht would be a sign to all other malefactors and evildoers that they would have no power over Sigmar-fearing men, even on the treacherous Night of Mystery.
Dieter hung back at the edge of the square, cloaked and hooded despite the warm night. Moving from foot to foot he could see what was taking place on the other side of the Göttenplatz.
Anselm Fleischer wasn’t the only one to suffer the judgement of the witch hunters that night. Two others were to be put to the torch: an overweight merchant and his unnatural youthful lover. Their unholy lascivious union had been declared an act of dedication to the blasphemous Prince of Pleasure.
The dignitaries of the faith of the Heldenhammer were also there. The citizens of Bögenhafen who were in attendance were from all walks of life and all levels of society, including members of the town council as well as representatives of the guilds, to see that Sigmar’s will was done.
Dieter saw Professor Theodrus there too, keen to show he condoned the action taken against Anselm Fleischer, and thereby disassociating himself and the guild from the madman’s crimes. Dieter pulled the hood of his cloak further over his face, just in case somehow, amidst the sea of faces, Theodrus was able to pick him out.
Krieger stood proudly next to the much less impressive figure of the Lector of Sigmar, a blazing brand in his leather-gloved hand, ready to set the fires of divine retribution himself. Before Sigmar’s will was enacted, the lector mumbled something spiritual to the condemned and blessed the masses observing the whole perverse ritual.
The three heretic criminals did not accept their fate with good grace, accepting their sins and seeing this as an opportunity to be cleansed of their wickedness. Anselm thrashed and riled against the ropes that bound him, calling on the secret masters of the undead and even grinning Morrslieb to deliver him. His madness had utterly consumed him at last.
Hearing his poisonous blasphemies the crowd responded in kind, calling to the witch hunter captain to finish his work here and send the Corpse Taker to join the Dark Powers he venerated in the world beyond.
The younger of the other two heretics sobbed and wailed hysterically. The merchant said nothing: the ordeals he had endured to extract his confession having practically killed him already. He sagged limply in his bindings, his chin hanging down on his chest, either unconscious or catatonic.
And then something happened that chilled Dieter’s blood and made his heart skip a beat.
It seemed to Dieter that of all the hundreds of people thronging the Göttenplatz, Anselm, tied to the stake atop the pyre, fixed him with his mad-eyed gaze. The madman’s words echoed from the temple buildings crowding the square, and over the heads of the people gathered there, as though he were speaking directly to him.
“Physician, heal thyself!”
They were the last words Anselm Fleischer ever spoke.
Dieter was sure that Anselm Fleischer could not be the Corpse Taker. How could he have carried out all the morbid things the Corpse Taker was accused of when he had been kept a virtual prisoner in a cell within the Temple of Shallya, watched day and night by the priestesses who served there? And it certainly hadn’t been Anselm Fleischer who Dieter had watched performing some unspeakable rite in the vault under the house in Apothekar Allee.
As Dieter watched Anselm burn and listened to his inhuman screams, the physician’s apprentice felt numb, as though a part of himself had died. But better that Anselm die, a wretched insane fool with nothing to live for, than Dieter Heydrich.
The effete Chaos-worshipper cried out for pity as the flames rose until the spark-blown smoke choked his lungs. Greasy black smoke eventually obscured the victims of Krieger’s brutal justice. The flames crackled and spat as the bodies crisped and blackened. The stink of over-cooked spit-roast meat which assaulted his nostrils made Dieter gag involuntarily.
The execution over, the crowd quickly dispersed, the townsfolk reasoning that it was not wise to tempt fate any longer on the night of Geheimnisnacht, and set off for home. Dieter did the same although his motivations were more inspired by not wanting to attract the attentions of Brother-Captain Krieger. If the witch hunter had a mind to, it would not be difficult for him to connect Dieter to the wrongly executed Anselm Fleischer.
Dieter reached Frau Keele
r’s lodging house as the temple bells were chiming ten. In the darkness his foot brushed against something furred and damp. Dieter paused and took a step back.
The eerie luminescence of the twin moons illuminated even the gloom of Dunst Strasse, the monotone light bleeding all colour from the object, but it was unmistakable nonetheless.
Erich’s cat lay dead in the road. Its lank body was distended unnaturally. Sticky black blood matted its spiked ginger fur where a cartwheel had crushed its body.
Seeing such an incongruous sight distracted Dieter for a moment from his own preoccupations and concerns. Erich would be distraught. For some inexplicable reason he doted on the mangy stray.
Dieter bent down and gathered up the animal’s body in his cloak. The rank acrid smell of the dead cat assaulted his nostrils more sharply than the smell of burning pig-fat had in the square.
Dieter entered the quiet house and ascended the stairs to the attic room. The garret was in darkness other than for the penetrating glow of the Geheimnisnacht moons that permeated everywhere. The door to Erich’s room was closed. An empty wine bottle and glass stood on the table in the central living space of the apartment.
Erich had not joined Dieter to watch the execution of the Corpse Taker for he knew as well as Dieter that the real villain was still at large, and probably still somewhere within the town. He had become even more of a recluse than Dieter, spending most of his time locked away inside his room, only venturing out to rummage for scraps and eat the leftovers of Dieter’s meals. When he did go out, Dieter knew that he drank even harder than he had when they had first met.
Dieter’s first thought was to take the dead cat to Erich and let him know the fate of his pet.
But then another thought slithered in to his mind, from out of the darkness in which his mind was locked.
Dieter turned instead towards his own door, the cat’s corpse still held in the folds of his cloak. He entered his room, where the stub of a candle still flickered fitfully, and laid the cat carefully down on his workbench, clearing a space amidst all the papers and dissection instruments.
He removed his cloak and sat down in the chair at the bench, his eyes never once moving from the mangled remains of the cat. The indistinct darkness that lingered at the corners of the room thickened, the shadows pressing in more closely towards him. Despite what he was intending to do, Dieter’s pulse remained steady, and his breathing remained calm.
Since the night in Apothekar Allee he had not been able to shake the feeling that something within him had changed. It was as if something had been woken within him, a strange power that now longed to be unleashed.
The aftermath of what he had witnessed that night surrounded him now, recorded in notebooks and on disorganised scraps of paper; even in the dissections he had continued with under the guidance of Leichemann’s Anatomy. But he tried to ignore all that now, pushing it to one side.
He closed his eyes and concentrated on clearing his mind. There he found images of Anselm Fleischer’s corpse burning at the stake with the other heretics, the pox-ridden face of Doktor Drakus that haunted his dreams, and memories of all that had changed in his life since he had come to Bögenhafen.
And steadily the images faded until his mind was a dark and empty void. There, at the heart of the darkness, something writhed and uncoiled, something even blacker and darker still. An unknown, untold power. A previously unrealised ability. An affinity for the oblivion of death and all the dead places of the world.
Other memories returned, unfolding in his mind. He felt a rush of excitement but tempered it with anxious anticipation. He didn’t want to lose hold of what was awakening inside him. He let it come naturally. By not concentrating on trying to recall the words and gestures Doktor Drakus had used as he had called on the powers that dwelt beyond the veil of mortality, those remembrances came all the more readily. Images from the pages of the books he had stolen from the doktor’s library took on three-dimensional form in his mind’s eye.
An anatomical rendering of a human skull. The arteries and veins extruded from a man’s arm. A frog dissection, the amphibian’s organs pinned out on the board beside it.
Subconsciously Dieter stretched out his flattened palms, fingers splayed, over the prone body of the cat and began to mimic the gestures Drakus had made, shaping the air with his hands. He heard the words of Drakus’ invocation. His lips moved in imitation of the sounds, and then he was saying them, his voice low and barely audible, not understanding their meaning but fully understanding their purpose.
And now he could hear another sound. An insect sound; an insistent susurration. Voices whispering in another room. He could feel the skeletal fingers of a breeze ruffling his unkempt, uncut hair. He kept his eyes closed, in case by opening them he might somehow dispel the power he was now invoking. He breathed deeply and inhaled a curious scent, borne on the unseen wind. The smell of leaf-mulch, of mould, of damp earth. Of the grave.
The liquefying candle fizzled and blew out, as the blast of another esoteric squall gusted through the shadow-clad room. The wind felt cold. Dieter was sweating, but he knew that it was more than simply the warmth of the night that was producing such a physiological response. In fact there was a distinct chill in the air. There were supernatural forces at work in this place now.
Dieter could feel the change within him even more strongly now, and he welcomed it. He had never felt like this before in his life as the painfully shy, insecure, downtrodden and victimised underdog. So charged, so energised, so in control. So powerful.
And now he did open his eyes. A small part of him was surprised that the room was not in total darkness. A pallid luminescence bathed the workbench and the broken body of the cat in its wan grey light. It seemed to Dieter that the source of this strange light was not merely the moons, visible clearly now through the dormer window. It seemed to suffuse the very air around him and shimmer from his hands. The strange light created sinister flickering shadows so that he did not at first register the spasm of movement on the desk beneath his outstretched hands. But he heard the spitting hiss quite clearly and knew immediately what it was.
In a flurry of scratching claws and bared, glistening teeth, the cat returned to hissing life. The spitting stray pushed itself up on its front legs and turned narrowed, burning red eyes on Dieter. He felt a thrill of fearful excitement sizzle through him. But at the same time he dared not lose concentration; he kept his mind focused.
The cat’s back legs kicked, unsheathed claws scratching splinters from the surface of the bench. Its tail lashed angrily. It was unable to stand. Dieter might have managed to return the creature to life but he had not repaired its body first. The cat’s back was still broken, its midriff still a mess of mashed flesh and pulped internal entrails.
The cat began to yowl, a hollow, menacing sound, rising from within its shattered ribcage to become a wailing scream. Its ears lay flat against its head, its matted bloody fur standing on end.
What he was witnessing before him defied belief. A creature that had been properly dead had been brought back to life. Admittedly it was a demented, pain-wracked, hate-filled form of life, but it was life nonetheless. And Dieter was the one who had brought it about. He knew that the blasphemous truth was that it was his will alone that was keeping the cat alive.
At the edges of his mind he saw flashes of mortality made flesh. The maggot-eaten carcass of a magpie. The deathcap fungus grown bulbous on the stump of a dead elm. Kittens drowned in a millpond. Old Gelda tied to the fence post, bundles of sticks piled at her feet.
The door to his room banged open. Dieter’s concentration was broken. The cat gave one last fading yowl as its lungs deflated and slumped back down onto the tabletop.
Dieter sat back in his chair, only then realising how tense his body had been as he channelled the eldritch powers that had brought a semblance of life where there should have been none. Every muscle ached. He was sweating even more heavily now. His skin felt cold and clammy and he was left
with a nauseous headache.
He slowly turned his head and saw Erich standing in the doorway, open-mouthed shock painted on the horrified canvas of his face. For a moment neither of them said anything. Dieter was too busy panting for breath. Erich was simply too appalled to speak.
Dieter’s roommate did not need to explain what he was doing there. If anyone needed to explain anything it was Dieter. But nonetheless it was Erich, still standing at the threshold to Dieter’s room, not daring to cross it, who first spoke.
“I-I heard the cat. It was howling. I-I wondered what had happened to it.”
Dieter looked back at the body on his desk. The front of the ginger stray hung limply over the edge of the table.
“Well, now you know,” he said.
Erich looked from Dieter to the cat and back again, the same appalled expression of horror etched on his features. “H-How?” was all he could manage.
“I don’t rightly know…” Dieter admitted, mystified by the experience himself. He could feel the former power he had enjoyed ebbing from him now, leaving behind it feelings of exhaustion, confusion and emptiness.
Other thoughts began to fill the gaping hole, such as how Erich would be feeling about the death of his cat, what he now thought of the naive country boy and whether he would give Dieter up to the witch hunters.
And then Erich made a declaration that Dieter certainly hadn’t been expecting.
“Then you must find out how.”
“What?”
“It is clear you have a talent, a gift. You cannot waste it. You should use it.”
“Do you know what you’re saying?” Now it was Dieter who was the one who sounded appalled.
“J-Just think about it.” The horrified expression was fast becoming a rictus of manic excitement. A mad gleam had entered Erich’s eyes. “Ever since I met you, you have been driven by a passion, an all-consuming desire to help people, to heal them, to save them from the merciless hand of fate. And now you have developed a gift that could help you accomplish your dream. Just think, with such a talent you could help the ailing better than anybody else. You could conquer death itself. Nobody would have to suffer the loss you did, as a child, when your mother died.”
Necromancer Page 14
