by Helen Grant
Gently, I pushed at Stefan’s back. “Let me out.” As he moved forward I stepped out into the room behind him. We stood, side by side, Herr Düster’s presence forgotten. I could hear Stefan panting from the exertion of kicking in the door; he sounded as though he had been running. He was staring about him like a tourist in a cathedral, as though he couldn’t quite take in everything he was seeing. At last he turned to me, with the words on his lips, but I got there first.
“I know this house.”
Chapter Fifty
How can it be?” said Stefan. He looked dazed. “How can we be… here?”
I glanced at Herr Düster, as though being the only adult he might produce a rational explanation. Herr Düster was the only one of us who didn’t look as though he were overwhelmed with surprise. He looked grave and incalculably sorrowful, like a doctor at a deathbed.
“My brother…” He pronounced the words strangely, as though rolling an unfamiliar and bitter taste around his mouth. “My brother’s house,” he said eventually.
“But it can’t be,” I said, as if I were pointing out an obvious fact to the very stupid. “It can’t be Herr Schiller’s house. I mean…”
My voice trailed off. I looked around me again. We were in a narrow hallway, one that I knew. I had stood very close to this spot a hundred times, perhaps more, shrugging my coat off my shoulders so that Herr Schiller could hang it on one of the pegs. I put out a hand and touched the shining dark surface of the hall table. It felt hard and cool under my fingers.
“Did he-you know-” I didn’t want to say the murderer “-I mean, how did he get in here? How could he go through the cellar without Herr Schiller-” I looked from Herr Düster to Stefan, not understanding their expressions “-without Herr Schiller knowing?” I finished.
There was a long silence. The two of them, old man and boy, were staring at each other. Something was passing between them that I didn’t understand.
“He’s gone,” said Stefan in a tight voice.
“Yes,” said Herr Düster, but his lips barely moved, and his voice was very low.
“I’ll look…” said Stefan, and he went to the front door and tried the handle. It opened easily and the door swung open. Stefan leaned out. I could see that a considerable amount of snow had fallen since we entered Herr Düster’s house; everything outside was blanketed with pure white. It was still falling; when Stefan pulled his head back inside, his hair was covered with melting white flakes. He came up to Herr Düster like a foot soldier reporting to his sergeant.
“I couldn’t see him-but there’re tracks.”
Herr Düster nodded, almost absently.
“I’m not sure, but I think they went around the side of the house.”
“The car, yes,” said Herr Düster, almost inaudibly. He seemed sunk in thought.
“What car?” I asked, but no one answered me.
“Do you know where-?” asked Stefan, and I shot him a look of frustration; everyone seemed to be talking in code.
Herr Düster nodded. “I think so. Yes, I think so.”
“What are you going on about?” I was almost hopping with annoyance. “Look, why don’t we wake Herr Schiller up?”
“Pia-”
“We’re in his house, after all.”
“Yes, his house,” said Herr Düster with gentle emphasis. Still I didn’t get it.
“Pia,” said Stefan in a tired voice, “it’s Herr Schiller. Don’t you see?”
“What do you mean?” I stared at him. “What do you mean, it’s Herr Schiller?”
“It’s Herr Schiller who…” Stefan changed tack at the last moment, as though swerving to avoid an obstacle. “It’s him we have to follow,” he said. “He’s the one who’s gone.”
“I don’t understand-” I began, but suddenly I did. A wave of nausea swept over me. I sagged back against the wall with the pattern of foliage on it. “No,” I said in a strangled voice.
Stefan looked at me helplessly. Then he turned back to Herr Düster. “We have to go. We have to go right now.” I was being dismissed.
“Stefan, this is a joke, right?” I said. My voice sounded unconvincing even to my own ears. “Where are we going? Shouldn’t we call the police-if someone-?”
“We don’t have time.” His voice was cool, but he was not trying to be unpleasant. He was stating a fact: if there were even the remotest chance of finding the owner of the boot before it was too late we had to leave now. If we waited we would lose any chance of catching-him. The one who had taken all those girls. The one who had left me in the well to drown among the wallowing horrors. I could only think of him as the one, not as Herr Schiller. It was impossible.
“Pia, you stay here.”
“No! No way, no…” I was stuttering in outrage. “No, you’re not leaving me here! I’m coming with you.”
“Pia.” Herr Düster sounded remarkably calm, although he must have been as aware as Stefan was of the seconds ticking by, the minutes trickling away, snowflakes twirling lazily down from the black sky and blanketing the tracks in snow. “You are soaked through. You can’t go out in the snow. You’ll freeze to death.”
“You said a car,” I pointed out sulkily.
“His car,” said Stefan.
“Yes, but you can’t follow him unless you go in one too,” I retorted. I glared at Stefan. He regarded me for a moment and then turned to Herr Düster.
“We have to go.”
Herr Düster looked at me for a long moment. If he were any other adult in the world I think he would have insisted that I stay inside in the warm. But either Herr Düster had been out of the company of other adults so long that he had forgotten the way things were supposed to be done, or he was one of those rare people who do not treat children as though they are completely incapable. He nodded sharply to me and said, “Pia, you may come with us, but you must stay in the car. Verstanden?”
“Yes.” I was breathless in my gratitude.
“Stay here, both of you, while I fetch the car.”
“But-” I started, but he cut me off.
“He’s not coming back. Not for a while, anyway. You’re quite safe here.”
I shut my mouth but I felt uneasy. My objection to staying in the house was not that I was afraid of Herr Schiller coming back, but that it gave Herr Düster the opportunity to go off without us. All the same, I could see the logic of his plan when he opened Herr Schiller’s front door: the icy draft on my wet jeans was so glacially cold that the skin of my legs felt as though it were burning off. I hugged the down jacket around me. My teeth were chattering.
“This is crazy,” said Stefan, not unkindly. “You should stay here, Pia. You’re going to freeze to death.”
“No way,” I said, clamping my mouth shut to try to stop the chattering.
“I wonder how he knows where-you know, where he went?” said Stefan.
“Um.” I couldn’t think of any reply. That Herr Schiller should have had any involvement at all in the disappearances of my schoolmates was terrifying enough; to try to imagine where he might have gone to and for what reason was completely beyond me. I still had the feeling that I might wake up and discover the whole thing was some kind of outlandish dream.
For what seemed like ages Stefan and I stood in the hallway of our friend’s home and waited for Herr Düster to arrive with the car. There was a feeling of subdued expectancy about the situation, as though we were the survivors of some bloody accident, waiting for the ambulance to arrive. I could not think of anything to say and it seemed that neither could Stefan, so for a long time we stood there in silence.
I was starting to wonder whether Herr Düster had gone off without us, when I suddenly heard a slight sound behind me. It was a soft sound, the sound of a velvet curtain brushing the floor, but it struck me cold. I do not know whether it is true that at such times the hair on the back of one’s neck stands up, but I felt as though an icy hand had been placed there. Before I could turn around or say anything, the soft slithering
was followed by a sound like someone clearing their throat.
“Ste-fan…” I thought I might faint or be sick.
“What?”
“There’s something…” I forced myself to turn around.
There in the cellar doorway sat Pluto, regarding us balefully with his great yellow eyes. As I watched, his mouth yawned open, revealing a pink tongue and needle-sharp teeth, and he spat again. Then he turned with sinuous swiftness and disappeared down the spiral stairs.
Stefan exhaled slowly at my shoulder. “Verdammter cat.”
I nodded, swallowing.
“Are you all right? Did he scare you?”
“Not really. I just thought…” But I was not sure what I had thought. Useless to try to describe the grotesque ideas that had flitted through my brain when I heard that soft whispering noise and the rasping sound. I had stepped into trolldom that night, and now nothing was too horrible to be true. The monsters are loose, I thought, and my mind skidded neatly around the memory of what I had seen in the well.
“That’s how he got into Herr Schiller’s house,” said Stefan suddenly. He touched my arm. “You remember, that time he made us jump?” He had conveniently forgotten that it was he who had jumped, he who had screamed the place down. Still, I couldn’t be bothered to correct him. I nodded. Stefan was still looking at the doorway where the cat had been. At last he gave a low whistle.
“No wonder Herr Schiller went mad when he saw him. He must have known Pluto came through the cellar. He probably didn’t shut the door properly.” He shook his head disbelievingly. “I bet he thought Pluto had given the whole game away.”
I wasn’t listening. I was thinking of the moment before I fell into the well, of the sounds I had heard and the thing that had brushed against my leg and made me panic so that I sprang forward into nothingness. Pluto. I was thinking that if I ever got hold of him I would like to put my hands around that furry throat and strangle him.
Chapter Fifty-one
Lights outside the front door and the low purr of an engine announced the arrival of Herr Düster and the car. I yanked on the zip of my down jacket, trying to ensure maximum protection from the cold, and then Stefan and I stepped outside. It was dark in the street and snowflakes were still falling, whirling down so thickly that it was difficult to make anything out, but still we were impressed when we saw the car.
“Wow,” said Stefan.
Herr Düster leaned over and pushed open the passenger side door a little. “Get in,” he shouted. Stefan slid into the front passenger seat; I had to make do with the backseat. Herr Düster did not wait for Stefan to finish doing up his seat belt; he had already started moving forward.
“We need to get the car warm,” he said, glancing back over his shoulder at me.
“I’m all right,” I said, hugging myself.
“This is an amazing car.” Stefan was looking at the interior as though studying the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. “What is it?”
“A Mercedes 230 Heckflosse,” said Herr Düster without turning his head. He was peering at the street ahead through a screen of swirling snowflakes.
“Is it really yours?”
Now Herr Düster did give him a look. “Natürlich. I am not in the habit of stealing cars.”
“It’s just… I’ve never seen it before.”
“I don’t take it out very often,” said Herr Düster. He patted the steering wheel. “That is why it took me a little time to fetch it. I had to move a few things, and get the cover off.”
“If I had a car like this,” said Stefan, “I would drive it everywhere.”
“Then you would need a very large bank balance,” said Herr Düster drily.
I stared out of the window at the darkened street. We were turning right, toward the Klosterplatz, where the bonfire had been on St. Martin’s Eve, and where Frau Mahlberg had shaken me until my teeth chattered, screaming for her lost daughter. The muffled white shapes of a few snow-covered cars were visible, snowflakes tumbling down around them. I leaned too close to the glass and the window was suddenly opaque.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“The Eschweiler Tal,” said Herr Düster. His voice was cool and precise.
I sat up. “Why the Eschweiler Tal? How do you know he’s going there?”
Herr Düster did not reply. We had crossed the Klosterplatz and were traveling down the street toward the Protestant church. In a few moments we would have passed underneath the arch in the town walls. Herr Düster was driving as fast as he dared, but the road surface was treacherous. I could feel the old Mercedes gliding on the snow and ice.
“Herr Düster?” I had the uncomfortable feeling that I was being rude, but I couldn’t bear not to ask the question. “How do you know he’s going to the Eschweiler Tal?”
“I don’t,” said Herr Düster grimly.
“Then why-?”
“He is my brother,” said Herr Düster, “and I know him.”
I recognized the uncompromising tone in his voice and sat back, not daring to ask any more questions, though my brain was seething with them. How could he say he knew Herr Schiller when he never spoke to him? How could he be so sure where Herr Schiller was going?
Once out of the town walls, Herr Düster turned toward the railway station and the north end of the town. There was no one about. Small Eifel towns like Bad Münstereifel are always pretty dead by midnight, but tonight the cold and snow had driven even the taxi drivers and the bored street-corner youths back indoors.
I saw a police car parked outside the station: at first I thought there was no one in it but then the windshield wipers lurched into life and cleared an arc of snow away. Herr Düster hesitated and I felt the car slow, but then he suddenly accelerated and the car lurched forward. Before I could see who was inside the police car, we had passed it and were heading out of town. The interior of the car was warming up; soon my wet clothes would be steaming.
“Can we get into the Eschweiler Tal in the snow?” asked Stefan.
Herr Düster said nothing.
It took another five minutes to reach the track leading into the Eschweiler Tal, during which time we saw not one other car. On the last stretch of asphalt road the tracks of another vehicle stood out like ruts in the deepening snow. There was a factory there at the end of the road, with a parking lot in front of it and a security gate at the side, but the tracks went straight past it and into the Tal. My skin prickled as I saw them, leaning over Stefan’s shoulder to peer through the windshield.
There are a couple of houses in the Eschweiler Tal, but I knew whoever had driven through here before us was not an honest householder on his way home. It was far too dark, too cold, and too late for that.
The road rose very slightly where the asphalt ran out and the track began. For a moment I thought the old Mercedes wouldn’t manage the slope, but Herr Düster knew what he was doing. He accelerated just enough to get the right momentum without skidding. Whoever had been before us had not been so lucky, judging by the wild sweeps of the tracks in the snow ahead of us.
“Where is he?” hissed Stefan.
Herr Düster said nothing. We traveled in silence along the valley. He dropped a gear and the car successfully crested the slight rise by the old quarry. There is a right turn there uphill toward the village of Eschweiler, where the young men were supposed to have been sitting when they saw the unholy light of the Fiery Man of the Hirnberg coming toward them, but it must have been impassable in the snow. In any event, the fishtailing tracks ahead of us went right past it and deeper into the Tal.
“He can’t have got away,” said Stefan, but it was a question, not a statement. Still we had not seen any sign of the vehicle ahead, only the tracks. If we failed to catch up with the car ahead, they were about as much use to us as archaeological relics. I racked my brains to think where the track ended. I had been in the Tal dozens of times, either with the school or with my parents, but we had always entered it from the end by the factory or from the fo
otpath leading down from the Hirnberg. I wasn’t sure where the main track itself ended. If it came out on a main road somewhere, then the car we were following would have vanished untraceably by the time we reached the end of the Tal.
“There,” said Stefan suddenly, and Herr Düster must have jumped, because the car lurched and I bumped my forehead painfully on the window.
“Where?” I said.
He pointed. Herr Düster brought the car to a careful standstill as we all gazed out through windshield. Less than a hundred meters ahead of us was an intersection where the track went straight ahead up the Tal or sharply left over a stone bridge toward the tree-covered hillside. Parked by the bridge was a dark-colored car with the driver’s door open. I say parked, but it looked as though the tail end of the car had slewed around and struck the stone wall of the bridge. The yawning door gave the car an abandoned look. There was no sign of anyone near it.
There was a creak as Herr Düster applied the hand brake. He turned the ignition off and as the purr of the engine died he leaned forward as though he were praying, until his forehead was almost touching the steering wheel. He was motionless for a few moments, thinking. Stefan began fumbling at the passenger door, but a gnarled hand reached out and grasped him firmly but gently by the shoulder.
“No,” said Herr Düster, turning his face to him. There was a weariness about the gesture that made me think of Sebastian when he had cried himself out. “Stay here. I’ll go.”
“I want to come too,” said Stefan stubbornly.
“No.” Herr Düster shook his head. “This is for me.” He paused. “You have to stay here and take care of Pia.”
I was outraged by that, and started to say that I wasn’t a baby, and didn’t need taking care of by anyone, but Herr Düster simply said, “If anyone comes… it’s safer with two.” He opened the door of the Mercedes and climbed out. The sound of the car door shutting was immediately echoed by the thump of Stefan’s clenched fist on the upholstery.
“Scheisse-Mist-!” His rage filled the inside of the car like a fly buzzing inside a bottle.
