The Vanishing of Katharina Linden

by Helen Grant

  “Doch,” said Frau Kessel curtly, irritated at being contradicted. “But how poor Heinrich came to have a brother like that, I cannot imagine.” She sniffed. “No wonder he changed his name.”

  So it was Herr Schiller who had changed his name? I was opening my mouth to ask another question when my mother cut me off. “I don’t think this is a suitable topic for Pia,” she said firmly. Before I could protest, she said, “Can you go into the kitchen and make sure Sebastian is all right, please, Pia?”

  I slouched off reluctantly to find that Sebastian had got into one of the food cupboards and torn open a packet of asparagus soup; he was now sitting in the middle of a little snowdrift of the stuff, drawing squiggles in it with a wet finger, which he occasionally inserted into his mouth. By the time I had extricated him I could hear my mother talking to Frau Kessel in the hall, and then the front door closed firmly behind the old woman.

  “Thank God for that,” said my mother with a sigh. I was disappointed, however. There was so much more I would have liked to ask Frau Kessel, but now she had sailed off like a little ship laden with Pandora’s boxes of other people’s secrets. My mother saw me looking wistfully at the door.

  “Pia,” she said sternly, “I don’t want to hear you repeating any of that to anyone, understand?”

  “Why not?”

  “Because we don’t know if any of it is true.”

  “Do you think Frau Kessel was lying?” I asked doubtfully.

  “Not exactly,” said my mother, and I had to be content with that.

  Chapter Seventeen

  On Monday morning I was up before the alarm sounded. Ignoring my father’s suggestion that I eat more slowly and with my mouth closed, I bolted breakfast, slung my Ranzen onto my back, and by eight o’clock sharp I was outside the school gate. I was not disappointed; at two minutes past, Stefan appeared. He looked a little pale, but otherwise perfectly all right.

  “Where were you? Did you go up to the Quecken hill? Why didn’t you come over on Saturday like you promised?” Impatiently, I bombarded him with questions.

  “I was sick.” He shook his head. “We can’t talk about it here.”

  He was right; little groups of children were starting to flow through the entrance to the school courtyard. We adjourned to the girls’ bathroom on the ground floor; Stefan said the boys’ was a better bet, as it was much less often visited, but I absolutely refused to go in there.

  Barricaded into a cubicle in the girls’, I immediately demanded, “So? Did you go? Did you see anything?”

  Stefan nodded, his face sober.

  “Well, what did you see? Was it the huntsman?” In my eagerness to know what had happened, I was almost jumping up and down.

  “I’ll tell you,” said Stefan slowly. “But when I’ve told you, I don’t want to talk about it anymore. OK?”

  Why not? I nearly blurted out, but with an effort I restrained myself. “All right.”

  There was a pause that stretched out for such a long time I started to think Stefan was never going to utter a word. Then suddenly he said, “It was dark up there, very dark.” He folded his arms, rubbing them as though he were chilly. “And cold.”

  He looked at me, and I had the eerie sensation that he was not seeing me at all, but looking right through me into another time and place.

  “There was something up there, but I don’t know what it was. I went up to the castle just after half past eleven-I know it was then because I heard the bell in the church clock strike twice as I went up the track through the woods.

  “The moon was out, so I could just about see where I was going. I didn’t want to put my flashlight on unless I really had to, in case someone saw it. I didn’t see anybody, though. It was dead quiet.

  “When I got to that bit where you have to leave the track and go up through the bushes, I did switch the light on. I wanted to go up to the turret because it’s the highest bit, but I was afraid of falling in.”

  I knew the place he meant. The turret was the only thing that looked in any way like a proper castle, but even so what was left of it was sunk into the ground, rather than standing out of it, forming a circular pit about four meters deep. I understood Stefan’s cautiousness; if you fell into it you would never get out on your own, not to mention the fact that you would be at the mercy of whoever-or whatever-came along.

  “It was horrible going through the bushes-the brambles kept sticking to me like little claws and there was all sorts of stuff underfoot that I couldn’t see, squashy things and dry, hard sticks. It was like walking over a carpet of bones. I could feel them snapping under my feet. I started thinking that maybe it was the bones of the knight who lived there, him and his hounds, and when the clock struck midnight they would somehow gather themselves up in the dark, and make themselves back into the shapes they’d been when they were alive.

  “I kept looking around, afraid that I would see the knight suddenly stand up in the undergrowth, with the moonlight shining on his armor, and a clicking sound from all the little pieces knitting together, and underneath the helmet nothing but a skull.”

  He shuddered. “Well, I got to where the turret is, and I had to go up that bit on my hands and knees. The mud was all slippery. I got to the top somehow and sat down behind the little tree that grows there, and then the first thing I did was switch the flashlight off. I heard the church clock strike a quarter to midnight. I thought I’d wait until it struck twelve and then I’d come down again.

  “I sat there for what seemed like ages. It was cold, and once some stupid bird hooted up in a tree and I nearly jumped out of my skin. But after a while it wasn’t so scary anymore. I didn’t think anything was going to happen.

  “Then all of a sudden I heard this noise, a little crackling noise, and I thought my heart was going to leap out of my chest. I had this really clear picture in my head, just as clear as if I’d really seen it, of the bones of a hand lying on the ground among the weeds, and then gathering themselves up, just like someone pulling on the strings of a puppet.”

  Stefan stretched out a hand toward me, palm upward, and slowly curled it into a fist. Involuntarily I stepped back.

  “I just stayed where I was. I wanted to get down, to run, but I didn’t dare. So I just sat there, with my arm tight around the trunk of the tree, and-and waited.”

  Stefan’s voice broke slightly on the last word; with a shock I realized he was close to tears.

  “It wasn’t long before I saw them. I think there were four of them, coming up into the old castle ruins the same way I had. I couldn’t see much, just dark shapes moving through the bushes. I’m not even sure they were all standing up, like people. One of them just seemed to be crashing around in the undergrowth like an animal.

  “They came really close. I thought they were going to come right up to the turret, where I was sitting. Maybe the one crawling in the undergrowth was tracking me. Perhaps he could smell me, like a hound. But it wasn’t a dog crashing around in there, it was something much bigger. I didn’t want to think what would happen to me if it found me.”

  Stefan put his hands over his face, as though trying to shut out the sight. He said something muffled; it sounded like Gott.

  “Stefan-”

  I was not sure what to do, whether to try to put an arm around him.

  “What if they’d found me?” he blurted out suddenly. He thrust out an arm toward me. “Look! Just look! I dug my fingers so hard into the tree trunk, they’re still covered in green stuff-I can’t get it out. I shut my eyes-I thought it was the end. I just knew that whatever it was lumbering about in the bushes would find me.

  “After a minute or two I thought the noise was not so loud, so I opened my eyes again and the dark shapes had moved farther away. I suppose they hadn’t smelled me at all.”

  I said nothing. The thought of sitting up there in the dark, praying that I would not be discovered-or smelled out-was too horrible to contemplate.

  Stefan raked a hand through his dirty blo
nd hair and then went on. “I think they went downhill a bit. I could hear a crackling sound-but I couldn’t see much. I didn’t dare come down from the turret in case they heard me. And then-then I heard voices. I think they were whispering.” He turned a pale face to me. “Maybe that’s the sound someone makes when they talk if-if they’re just a-a skeleton.”

  Quatsch, I wanted to say, but nothing came out. My mouth was dry.

  “It seemed to go on forever. I couldn’t hear what they were saying. I didn’t want to hear it. I stuck my fingers in my ears-but then I took them out again, because I thought, Supposing they come up here and I don’t hear them coming?

  “And then-then I saw a light. It was little at first, then it got bigger-or else it was coming closer, I don’t know. It was yellow. I always thought the light around the huntsman would be green and glowing, but…”

  Stefan’s voice trailed off.

  “But what?” I prompted him impatiently.

  He shook his head. “I don’t know what I was seeing. I felt strange-sort of dizzy, and I had this horrible feeling in my stomach, the way you feel if you look out the top window in a very high building. I kept looking at this light, getting bigger and bigger, and thinking that if I didn’t get away soon I never would, and the whole town would be looking for me next.

  “In the end I crawled down the bank at the side of the turret, and crept off through the bushes, as quietly as I could. It seemed to take forever, and I cut my hands to pieces because I was on my hands and knees most of the time, and the ground is covered in sticks and stones and brambles.”

  Instinctively I glanced at Stefan’s hands and saw that they were covered in half-healed scabs and scratches.

  “The whole time there was still this whispering. It sounded-sort of like it was something important. Something-I don’t know-urgent.

  “I nearly got back to the path, and then I put my knee on something, a piece of tree bark I think, and it made a really loud snap. I thought I was going to die. Now they have to have heard me, I thought. Any minute the one who had been floundering around in the bushes would come crashing toward me. I wondered what the last thing I saw would be. I kept thinking of something with hair and teeth, like a hound, but not a hound.

  “I just went on staring into the dark, straining my eyes, trying to see if anything was coming for me. After what seemed like ages, I realized they hadn’t heard me at all. The voices were going on just the same as before, and that light was flickering among the trees.

  “I couldn’t stand it there a second longer, so I risked it and stood up, and just ran for the track. Somehow I didn’t bump into anything or fall over. Once I was on the track, I just ran and ran until I was at the bottom of the hill. I didn’t even look around.

  “But, Pia, that’s not all. Just as I was standing up to run for the track, I heard something else. Not whispering. I can’t say what it was exactly. It was a kind of-a beating sound.”

  I stared at him. “O Gott,” I breathed with a sudden cold flash of realization.

  “What?” said Stefan, his face puckered with alarm. “You know what it was?” I said, and the rising feeling of dread within me curdled into horror. “It was hoofbeats.”

  There was no more time for discussion. The bell had rung several minutes before; we were already late for the first class. We slunk upstairs to be greeted with a telling-off from Frau Eichen, and then had to sit through two periods of math before we could talk any more. I sneaked a few sidelong glances at Stefan. He still looked pale; I wondered if he was ill.

  As soon as the bell rang for the Pause, I leaned over and said, “So why didn’t you come over on Saturday?”

  Stefan waited for the others to pack up their things and leave the table, then he said very quietly, without looking at me, “I was sick.”

  “Sick?”

  “Doch.” He sounded almost angry.

  “Well, what was the matter with you?”

  “I ran all the way down from the Quecken hill, and when I got home I was really ill. That’s why I couldn’t come over.”

  “What, you ran so much that you were sick?”

  “No,” said Stefan. This time he did look up, and his eyes were full of anger. “I was scared, all right? I was scared.”

  I looked at him for a long time, while various responses to this ran through my head. How could you be so scared that you were sick? Were you really and truly sick?-did you throw up? What did your mother say when you came back so late? But in the end what I said was: “You’ve got to go back up there with me.”

  “No way,” said Stefan. “Absolutely no way.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Of course, he did go back there with me, though it took two whole days of persuading, nagging, and flagrant bribery-I’ll give you my pocket money for the next three weeks-before he agreed to do it. Even then it was only on the condition that we went in broad daylight. Stefan was not going to risk being caught up there at night again.

  As luck would have it, Wednesday was always a light day for homework, so we were able to meet relatively early in the afternoon. I told my mother that we were going to the Schleidtal to play mini-golf; Stefan merely told his mother he was going out.

  As we toiled up the footpath that led to the castle, I tried questioning Stefan about Walpurgis Night again, but he was not forthcoming. He had been so frightened by what he saw, and he had thrashed himself so hard running down the hill afterward, that he had simply been ill. That was all the explanation he could give.

  “Maybe it was shock,” I suggested as we left the footpath and started up onto the uneven ground that had once been a defensive castle. A mulch of last year’s leaves squelched underfoot, but new green shoots were everywhere.

  Stefan wasn’t listening. He had paused, and was looking from side to side as though trying to orient himself. Then he pointed.

  “Let’s go up to the turret. Then I can work out which way the light was coming from.”

  We scrambled up the steep bank to the edge of the ruined turret. Stefan went around the side and squatted on the mossy hump that had once been part of the battlements. I scrambled up and sat beside him, and for a while we sat there in silence like a pair of owls on a branch.

  “That way,” said Stefan eventually, pointing. He got up and started following the line of the wall. I trailed behind, picking my way over the broken chunks of masonry that stuck up from the earth like a ragged line of teeth.

  Glancing around, it was hard to imagine what the castle must have been like when its battlements and turrets were still intact. All that could be seen now were the crumbling traces of walls, worn almost down to ground level, the stones picked out in vivid green moss.

  It was a scene not only of desolation but of desolation wreaked long ago. It was impossible to imagine the castle ever having been inhabited. Even the ghost of the eternal huntsman should have worn away to nothingness after ten centuries.

  We came to the vague outline of a corner and stopped. “Around here somewhere,” said Stefan, looking about him. We climbed down onto the mulchy ground. I glanced at him expectantly. I wondered if he would suddenly be struck with a strong sense of an uncanny presence, whether he would go horribly pale or sick or faint.

  Disappointingly, he actually looked relaxed, relieved even; daylight seemed to have vanquished his fears. He kicked his way through the tangle of undergrowth with apparent nonchalance, and I followed dispiritedly behind him. I wished I had been allowed out the night Stefan had kept watch at the turret; I wished I had seen the mysterious light and heard the insistent whispering. It would have been good to be the girl who helped solve the Katharina Linden case, instead of the girl whose grandmother had exploded at the family Advent dinner. I wasn’t greedy; it needn’t have been Katharina’s actual corpse that we found; a severed hand-a finger-or even a piece of her clothing would have been enough; the little red bow from her hair, perhaps.

  I imagined being thanked by the police; receiving some sort of prize from Herr Wac
htmeister Tondorf; Frau Redemann calling the whole school together and telling them that Pia Kolvenbach (with some assistance from Stefan Breuer, I conceded generously) had been instrumental in solving the mystery; Thilo Koch nearly dying of jealousy because it wasn’t him who did it; me retelling the story to an enthralled circle of my classmates while Thilo jumped up and down at the back, trying in vain to hear what I was saying. It was a pleasing image. So pleasing, in fact, that when Stefan stopped short I ran straight into the back of him.

  “Look.”

  I looked, and at first I was not sure what I was seeing. Chunks of masonry, just like all the other ones littering the site. But then the shattered stones coalesced into a shape, and I realized that I was looking at a circle. A perfect ring of stones, arranged with precise order and neatness.

  We approached it carefully and stood looking down at the stones.

  “Na, und?” I said. “It’s just a circle. It’s probably the bottom of another turret, or maybe it was a fireplace or something.”

  “No, it wasn’t,” said Stefan with conviction. “Look: there’s no moss on any of the stones.” He was right; there wasn’t. “If it had been there since who knows when, there would be moss all over it, right?”

  “Right,” I conceded, impressed with his deductive skills. I moved to step into the circle, but he put out an arm to stop me.

  “I don’t think we should go in.”

  “Why not?”

  “It might be-you know, black magic.”

  I stepped back hastily. “What’s that thing in the middle?” I asked. We both craned forward, trying to look more closely without actually entering the circle. It was a little pile of stones, with a larger, flat stone balanced on top of them. On top of the flat stone was a little heap of something burned.

  “Hair,” I said, shuddering with disgust.

  “It’s not hair,” said Stefan. “Look, it’s sort of crumbly. It looks like herbs or something. Maybe tobacco-or other stuff.”