The Vanishing of Katharina Linden

by Helen Grant

  “‘The Fiery Man! The Fiery Man!’ screamed one of the lads at last, and they took to their heels and ran for their lives. At length they crowded into a barn and with shaking hands barricaded the door, then flung themselves down in the darkness, trembling and sweating like horses that had been driven too hard.

  “For a little while all was black and silent, and then their eyes began to distinguish thin lines of white light in the darkness. It was the light of the Fiery Man, showing through the cracks between the door planks. Closer and closer he came, until the thin white lines were surrounded by a corona of dazzling light and the crackling of the fire could be heard right outside the door.

  “Then a great voice called out, ‘The Fettmännchen, the Fettmännchen you promised me!’ and there was a mighty blow upon the door. No one dared move, much less open up. They lay on the floor of the barn, petrified and shivering, cursing the lad who had made the stupid boast, and praying to the holy saints for rescue.

  “Then the Fiery Man gave a roar of fury, and laid both of his blazing palms on the door, intending to burn right through it. The door began to smoke and blacken, and the smell of charred wood pervaded the barn, the flames licking around the planks throwing an ugly orange light. Seeing this, the young men became desperate and told the lad who had made the boast that he must open the door and give the Fiery Man the coin he had promised.

  “White with fear, he refused to go, so they laid hands on him and prepared to drag him to the door, but he fought them tooth and nail.

  “‘Don’t put me outside!’ he screamed. ‘I don’t have the Fettmännchen, I have no money at all, and he will kill me!’

  “‘You fool,’ said one of the others. ‘You offered him a coin, and you didn’t even have it?’ He would have struck the lad, but another youth stopped him.

  “‘That’s no use,’ he said. ‘Turn out your pockets and find a coin, or we are all done for.’

  “So they went through their pockets in desperation, and at last someone found a coin. Now there was no escape for the foolish young man who had made the boast in the first place; the others pushed the coin into his hand and then they stood behind him and thrust him toward the door with a strength born of terror.

  “‘Here is your Fettmännchen!’ shouted one of them, and opened the door. Instantly the barn was lit up so brightly that they had to close their eyes-but they could still feel the heat on their faces; it was like leaning into a baker’s oven. The young man with the coin stood trembling like a rabbit, the Fettmännchen in his outstretched palm.

  “‘The Fettmännchen you promised me,’ said the great voice that crackled as though the lips and the larynx and the lungs forming the words were themselves on fire.

  “Then the young man felt a terrible heat and a searing pain in his hand, as though he had thrust it into the hottest part of the blacksmith’s furnace. He made a choking sound in his throat, and then he fell senseless to the floor, so that he did not see the Fiery Man striding away and the darkness closing in. They carried him home to his mother and put him to bed, where he lay like the dead until the next morning.

  “Perhaps it was as well for him. The hand the Fiery Man had touched was charred right down to the bones, the crumbling and blackened ends of which protruded through the stumps of incinerated flesh. And that,” concluded Herr Schiller, “is the tale of the Fiery Man of the Hirnberg, and the consequences of speaking without thinking first.” He looked at me, unblinking.

  “That,” I said, not without admiration, “was very horrible.”

  “Bitte schän,” said Herr Schiller drily, inclining his head.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  They found a shoe,” said Stefan.

  We were standing on the cobblestones outside the Gymnasium savoring the autumn sunshine. Winter is bitter in the Eifel; you have to enjoy the warmer months while you can.

  “A shoe?” I repeated, uncomprehending.

  “Marion Voss’s shoe,” said Stefan with a trace of impatience.

  I gaped at him. “Marion Voss’s shoe?”

  He nodded.

  “Where?”

  “Somewhere in the woods. I’m not sure where. Maybe up near the chapel at Decke Tönnes. It was somewhere like that.”

  “Who found it?”

  “Some kids out walking with their mom, that’s what I heard.”

  “Oh.” I could not help feeling disappointed. Why did other people have to make the discoveries? Why couldn’t it have been me who fell over Marion Voss’s shoe while out walking? “Who told you?”

  “Nobody told me,” said Stefan. “I overheard Boris and his Dummkopf friends talking about it.” He didn’t say where he had been when he overheard the conversation, and I didn’t ask. “You know what?” he added. “They sounded shit scared.”

  “What’ve they got to be scared of?” I asked. “So far, whoever it is has only taken girls.”

  “So far,” said Stefan meaningfully. He scuffed the toe of his sneaker along the ground, thinking. “Next time it might not be.”

  “Yes, but…” I frowned. “Who’s going to attack Boris and his friends? They’d have to be crazy.”

  “Maybe he is, whoever’s doing it,” said Stefan.

  I was not convinced. Even a maniac (and here I imagined the cannibal Thilo Koch had described, crunching bloody bones between his discolored fangs) would hardly choose Boris as a victim when there were so many smaller kids who would be much easier targets. Not to mention the repulsive idea of eating Boris, who had the unhealthy look of someone marinating in the effluent of his own sebaceous glands.

  Still, I reflected uneasily, it was worrying when even the likes of Boris were afraid.

  “Shall we go and see Herr Schiller after school?” asked Stefan, breaking in on my thoughts.

  “I can’t just go, I have to check it with my mother first,” I pointed out. The curfew had relaxed a little since the summer vacation had passed without any more disappearances, but all the same my mother insisted on knowing where I was virtually every minute of the day, much to my disgust.

  “I can,” Stefan said. He brushed dirty blond strands of hair back from his forehead. “Sure you can’t?”

  “Yes,” I replied gloomily. “But I’ll walk as far as the door with you. I can just go home that way.”

  “OK.”

  The school bell rang. We went into the courtyard together, but then I stopped on the pretext of doing up my shoelace. I wanted to wait until the crowds of children were inside before I went in. I would rather be late than risk the nudges and whispers that meant someone had noticed it was Pia Kolvenbach-wasn’t she the girl who-? Didn’t her grandmother-?

  I watched Stefan run up the steps and sighed. Me and StinkStefan. It was always me and StinkStefan. Together forever, like Batman and Robin, only not so cool.

  • • •

  “It’s Pluto,” said Stefan in astonishment. He leaned closer to the window, peering into the gloom beyond. Then he glanced at me. “It’s Pluto. It is. It’s definitely him.”

  “Let me see.” I pushed Stefan’s shoulder, trying to get him out of the way so that I could look. Then I pressed my nose to the glass.

  Herr Schiller’s house was dark inside; there was not a single light on anywhere. It took my eyes awhile to get used to the dimness within, then gradually I was able to pick out the pieces of furniture, the bulk of Herr Schiller’s old-fashioned radio squatting on the sideboard, the outlines of the pictures on the walls.

  “I don’t see Pluto.”

  “On Herr Schiller’s chair.”

  I strained my eyes, then caught my breath. Stefan was perfectly right: there, on Herr Schiller’s favorite armchair, was the sleek and muscular form of Pluto, curled into a comfortable ball. As I looked, his head suddenly came up, as though he had sensed that he was being watched, and I saw the twin gleam of his yellow eyes, then the flash of white fangs as he gave a languorous yawn.

  “What’s he doing in there?”

  “I don’t know,
” said Stefan. “But Herr Schiller’s going to go mad if he comes back and finds him there.”

  We looked at each other. I was not much concerned for Pluto’s welfare; he could look after himself, as a number of small dogs in Bad Münstereifel could have testified. But I wondered how Herr Schiller would cope with the discovery. I envisioned him having a heart attack, theatrically, like they did in the movies, clutching his chest and then plummeting to the floor taking small tables and china ornaments with him.

  “Where is Herr Schiller, anyway?” said Stefan suddenly.

  I peered into the room again. “I can’t see-”

  “Ha-llo!” bawled someone behind us. I almost jumped out of my skin. I turned to see Hilde Koch, grandmother of the repulsive Thilo, waving at us energetically from her doorstep farther up the street. I looked at Stefan, but he didn’t look as though he knew what was going on any more than I did. We didn’t move.

  Frau Koch lumbered down off her doorstep and began to stump along the street toward us. The effect was somewhat like a bull walrus flopping over an ice floe. Her flabby dewlaps undulated alarmingly as she approached.

  “Ha-llo!” she bawled again, this time waving a mottled finger at us. She wiped her hands on the immense floral overall that shrouded her bulky figure, then put them on her hips.

  “Get away from there, you Quälgeister! What do you think you’re doing?”

  Neither of us said anything. We stood in silence and watched Frau Koch’s elephantine approach.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” she demanded again when she was within a few meters of us.

  “We came to visit Herr Schiller,” answered Stefan in an amazingly calm voice.

  It was one of those things that always made me wonder about Stefan; he could be so good with adults, but he was such a disaster with kids his own age. Now he was looking at Frau Koch as though she was not the nearest thing we had seen to a fat and bewhiskered walrus in this town, almost smiling at her in fact, and she was looking back at him, already slightly mollified.

  “Hmph,” she said skeptically. “You kids.” She eyed us narrowly. “Who pulled all the flowers out of my window box, that’s what I’d like to know? Don’t think I don’t know these things.”

  “That’s…” I began, intending to say, that’s terrible, but one glance from those basilisk eyes and I was struck dumb.

  “What are you doing bothering poor Herr Schiller, anyway?” demanded the relentless Frau Koch.

  “We weren’t bothering him, Frau Koch,” said Stefan politely. “We visit him quite often.”

  “He’s our friend,” I tried daringly, and was rewarded with another terrifyingly disapproving glance.

  “If he’s your friend, Fräulein,” retorted Frau Koch with withering irony, “you should know that he isn’t there, shouldn’t you? And don’t think this is your opportunity for some Blödsinn, because I’m watching you.”

  “Of course not,” said Stefan.

  “You kids,” grumbled Frau Koch again. “It’s bad enough, all that’s happened with Herr Düster, though who cares about him, um Gottes Willen, but you don’t need to start on Herr Schiller. No sense of respect these days, none at all.”

  Stefan looked at me. He was as transparent as a fish tank; you could almost see the thoughts swimming back and forth.

  “Frau Koch?” he said. The look he got in return would have scorched paint but he didn’t flinch. “What has happened to Herr Düster?”

  “As if you don’t know,” she grunted back at him. All the same, she could not resist the temptation to retail a bit of interesting gossip. “Someone’s been leaving things on his doorstep, haven’t they?”

  “Things?” I stared at her, my imagination running riot, conjuring up poison-pen letters, giblets from the butcher’s, a fat dog turd… “What sort of things?”

  Frau Koch was never one to admit there was something she didn’t know. “Never you mind,” she said brusquely. “I don’t want you getting ideas.” She glanced at Herr Schiller’s house. “And you get away from that window before I call the police.”

  “Yes, Frau Koch,” said Stefan, pulling me away. I let him drag me a few paces up the street and then I stopped and turned to see whether Frau Koch was still watching us. She was, standing with arms akimbo and her hands on her massive floral hips. Hastily, I turned away and followed Stefan.

  It was not until we had rounded the corner by the bookshop that I realized we had gone the wrong way; at any rate, we had taken the long way around from Herr Schiller’s. I looked at my watch, wondering whether I would be late home.

  “She’s made us late,” I complained to Stefan. “My mother’s going to be mad.”

  He didn’t answer. I glanced at him and saw that he was staring down the Marktstrasse. I followed his gaze and saw the familiar green-and-white livery of a police car; it was parked directly outside the Grundschule. While we watched, the driver’s door opened and Herr Wachtmeister Tondorf climbed out. A moment later someone got out on the passenger side: I recognized the stony-faced policeman who had been at the school after Marion Voss had vanished.

  Herr Wachtmeister Tondorf glanced around him quickly and almost furtively; the other policeman stared up at the facade of the school without apparent emotion. Then they circled around the end of the chained fence that ran along the front of the building and disappeared through the archway leading to the school.

  “Did you see that?” breathed Stefan, turning to me. “Police.”

  I nodded.

  “They must have found something,” he went on. We both stared up the street toward the spot where the police car was parked, as though it could somehow tell us something. “I wonder what they’ve found,” said Stefan, almost to himself. “I wonder what they’ve found.”

  Chapter Thirty

  Mama, are we going to stay in Germany forever?”

  The question had been simmering in my mind ever since I returned from England. For three whole weeks I had resisted the temptation to ask my parents about it, but finally the desire to know the answer had overcome my anxiety about somehow getting into trouble with Aunt Liz. I was sitting at the table with a plate of spaghetti Bolognese cooling in front of me when the question just tumbled out. To my surprise my mother didn’t react at all. I gathered my courage and asked again, a little more loudly.

  “Mama, are we going to stay in Germany forever?”

  This time my father’s head came up, and he shot my mother a glance that was heavy with meaning. My mother didn’t see it, or chose not to; she was looking at Sebastian, and busying herself wiping his chin, which was liberally smeared with sauce. When she had cleaned him up so thoroughly that not one atom of the sauce was perceptible, she put down the napkin she had been using and picked up her glass of water. I was just about to ask the question a third time when she forestalled me.

  “That’s an odd question, Pia.”

  She sipped the water, then put the glass slowly down. Then she said, “Why do you ask?”

  “Well… I just wondered,” I said in the end. “I mean, you were born in England, and then you came here.”

  “Yes, I did, didn’t I,” said my mother. She sounded as though she were talking to herself, not to me. Then she looked at me and this time she gave me a broad smile. “You never know,” she said. “People do move. One day you might live in England.”

  “You mean, when I’m grown up?” I asked.

  “Yes,” cut in my father. He was looking at my mother again, with a significant expression on his face. She shrugged.

  “Well,” she said. She picked up her fork and made a tentative stab at the spaghetti.

  “We have been through this before,” said my father in an ominous tone.

  “I didn’t say anything,” said my mother. She sketched a quick bright smile on her face. “Eat up, Sebastian.”

  “You didn’t need to say anything,” pursued my father. “I can see it in your face.”

  “Oh, so now I have to watch how I look?” T
he smile dropped from my mother’s features. “What are you, the bloody Thought Police?” she said in English.

  “We are not moving,” said my father; he had been holding a glass of beer and now he put it down on the table a little too hard.

  “So you say,” said my mother. She rotated the fork, gathering swirls of spaghetti. “But people do move.” She looked at him evenly. “The Petersons are moving. I saw Sandra in the supermarket. They’re going after Christmas. Tom’s got a new job in London.”

  My father looked shocked. “But they are happy here.”

  “Seems not,” said my mother.

  “They said they would never go back to England.” My father sounded as though they had personally let him down. “And they have children in the school here.”

  “Ah, that’s just it,” said my mother. “Children in the school here.” She took a mouthful of spaghetti and chewed it, her eyes still on him.

  My father sat back in his chair, as though he had just received a shocking piece of news. Then suddenly he sat forward again.

  “Of course, Tom is British.”

  “So?”

  “So it is quite natural for him to take a new job in England.”

  “Sandra works too,” my mother pointed out. “And she’ll have to give up her job when they move.”

  “Well…” said my father dismissively.

  My mother pounced like a hawk. “Well what?”

  “Well, she has the children.”

  There was a clatter as my mother’s fork dropped to the edge of her plate. “I don’t believe I’m hearing this.” She put the palms of her hands on the tabletop in front of her, as though she were going to push away the table and all of us with it. “Look,” she said, “apart from the unbelievable chauvinism of what you just said, you’ve totally missed the point.”