Wish Me Dead

by Helen Grant

  After a moment I put the cup down again and went over to the front door. I rattled the handle up and down, checking that I had locked the door behind me when I came in. It was absolutely fast, but I was not reassured. A solid deadbolt might keep out casual thieves and vandals, but it would present no barrier at all to the thing I most feared. I sat down again, with my eyes on the door.

  There is no way that Rote Gertrud is going to walk up to that door, I told myself. It’s broad daylight. We’re not in the woods any more. There are people around.

  I watched the door, the cup of coffee cooling in my hands.

  What about tonight? said a voice at the back of my mind. Bad Münstereifel is deserted after dark. Satan himself could stroll down the Werther Strasse with all his horned minions cavorting around him and nobody would see him.

  I shivered. Oh, God, I wish I didn’t have to stay here alone. My mind kept sliding back to the figure we had seen in the woods – the dark form, the fiery hair.

  You called her, I reminded myself. If she’s walking, it’s your fault.

  I sat there until the coffee, acrid to begin with, was completely undrinkable. Then I limped upstairs to the flat, my ankle aching with the persistence of a rotten tooth. Sitting in the cafe area with windows and glass-fronted doors on all sides was making me jumpy. Every time anyone passed by I found my eyes drawn to them, my flesh creeping: a figure in a long summer dress made of some dark material which fluttered around her calves; a teenage girl with hair dyed a startling shade of red. I would catch a glimpse out of the corner of my eye and feel a sickening lurch in my stomach before realizing that it was just another overdressed tourist, just another schoolkid.

  Upstairs, the flat had an abandoned feel. Plates were piled up in the kitchen sink. I opened the dishwasher and slotted them into the rack. I pressed the button to start the machine and the sound was loud in the silence. In the bathroom, the glass-fronted cabinet still stood open after my mother had frantically emptied out the things she thought my father would need: his razor, his toothbrush, his comb. I pushed the cabinet door shut, but when my reflection slid into view I turned away. I didn’t need to study it to know that I looked terrible.

  I went through into the living room and sat on the overstuffed sofa. There was a copy of Das Goldene Blatt on the coffee table, with the singing star Heino on the cover. I picked it up, hoping to distract myself from the worries running incessantly around inside my head, but when I opened it I found myself looking at a double-page spread about Klara Klein. Hastily I put the magazine down again.

  At half past five my mother telephoned.

  ‘Steffi?’

  Her voice was barely recognizable. She sounded like an old woman of ninety, hoarse and frail. My father was alive – just – but from what my mother said, his grip on life was slowly peeling away, finger by finger, the drop into the void only a faltering heartbeat away. As I listened, guilt descended on me in a smothering cloud. I felt responsible. Had my intent to abandon the bakery contributed to his heart attack? I imagined him worrying about it, fretting while he worked, the anxiety creating just enough additional pressure to make the whole boiler blow up. Suppose he died thinking that the business he had nurtured so lovingly for decades was going to collapse because I wasn’t prepared to take it over?

  I felt as though I had taken a false step on unknown ground and fallen down a well, the darkness closing in on me as I screamed past the encircling walls, the light disappearing to a faint circle overhead. Singing with Julius’s band, studying music, leaving the bakery – all of it seemed like a beguiling chimera that I had utterly failed to resist. If I had been at my father’s bedside at that moment, I really would have taken that cold hand in mine and promised to work at the bakery, carry on at college, consecrate the rest of my existence to Florentiner and cherry streusel, if only he would stay with us, get better, not die.

  ‘Mum?’ I said. ‘I want to come and see him.’ I tried to sound firm but my voice was wavering.

  There was a short silence, during which I heard something on the other end of the line which might have been a sigh.

  ‘Yes,’ she said eventually. ‘I think you should come.’

  Conscience pricked me. ‘Mum, I don’t know who’s going to look after the bakery. Bianca and Doris came in today, but they might not … I mean, I’m not sure I can get them to come back tomorrow. And Achim … ’

  My voice trailed off. I was not sure what I wanted to say about Achim.

  ‘Tell Achim not to come in tomorrow,’ said my mother’s voice, and the tightness in it was audible even over the telephone line. I thought she was trying to stop herself crying. She coughed a little. ‘We’ll close the bakery for … a day or two.’

  My God, I thought. He’s really dying.

  I said goodbye and hung up the phone. I would have to make some calls, find someone who would drive me over to Mechernich hospital, pack myself a few things in case I was there all night. I ought to get moving, but still I sat there with my hand on the telephone receiver, gazing into space.

  I wished I didn’t have to stay here alone, I thought. And now I don’t.

  At last I put my head in my hands and wept.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  When I was done with crying, I picked up the telephone again and called Max. In truth, bold ebullient Max was the last person I felt like seeing, but I could think of no one else. I imagined that Hanna was at home by now, standing with her head down like someone walking through a storm, listening to her father ranting and raving about her having taken his Mercedes. Possibly he wouldn’t let me speak to her if I did ring up. Even if I had felt like relying on our past closeness, there was no point phoning Timo as he didn’t have a car, and nor did Izabela.

  Oddly, I found myself thinking of Julius. I knew he would come if I asked him. I knew he was not just interested in me as a stopgap for his band. I could call him and he would come round as soon as I gave the word, with that quizzical look on his face, the one that said there was something here that he found deeply interesting, something hidden that was worth trying to draw out.

  But Julius didn’t have a car either. He went around on foot or on a bicycle so disreputable-looking that it was a wonder it hadn’t already fallen to pieces. The band’s equipment was carried around by someone who had a van, but I didn’t know him at all, didn’t even know his name.

  In the end Max was the only option. I would just have to trust that the seriousness of the situation would put a temporary stop to his requests for me to wish things. I steeled myself and dialled his number.

  ‘Steffi,’ he said with relish, and I heard that syrupy innuendo in his voice again.

  ‘Can you drive me to Mechernich hospital?’ I said, and all of a sudden I was crying. ‘Max, I think my father is dying.’

  For once even Max was shocked into seriousness. I listened to him changing gear, slipping into concerned mode, promising to be at the bakery within twenty minutes. I thanked him briefly and put down the phone.

  I was outside the bakery a full ten minutes before Max arrived in the ageing Opel that had taken us on our previous excursions to the Eschweiler Tal. As I went to open the passenger door, it occurred to me that if anyone – Frau Kessel, for example – were watching, they would be treated to the sight of Steffi Nett with yet another young man. But Frau Kessel wasn’t watching, was she? Frau Kessel was dead. I got into the car.

  As we drove out of the town, I caught Max looking at me speculatively. I glared at him, but said nothing. What was there to say? I did not know what specific charges Kai had laid against me, but I had no desire to refute them one by one. Max’s gaze shifted back to the road.

  For a while we drove in silence. We passed the car park near the Hirnberg, where a track led into the woods and over the hill to the Eschweiler Tal. I was as acutely aware of the location as if it had been a lighthouse blinking its light into the darkness of a storm. Perhaps the same thoughts were passing through Max’s mind, because suddenly he said, �
�Why don’t you wish for your father to recover?’

  I stared at Max with my mouth open. It was so blindingly obvious that I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of it myself. Why shouldn’t it work? I thought. Everything else I had asked for had happened, apart from the removal of Achim Zimmer, and it was still early days for that. I had a vague feeling that perhaps asking for benevolent things, such as the healing of a loved one, would not be as successful as asking for malign ones, but if my father were close to death I had nothing to lose by trying. I thought too that asking for his survival might somehow even the balance, which was currently tipped right down in favour of death and disappearance. I didn’t like to see myself as some kind of lens refracting the dark forces all about me, spreading their black rot across everything. If I really did have some sort of power, I wanted it to be for good.

  ‘I could drive you up there,’ offered Max.

  I looked at him sharply, wondering whether he was going to add a little codicil: I’ll drive you if you wish this one thing for me … But he was looking innocently at the road ahead.

  ‘OK,’ I said, and lapsed into silence.

  At the hospital Max settled himself in the waiting area in Reception, while I went to the ward where my father lay. My mother was sitting by the bed. I was aware of her standing up as I approached, but I only had eyes for my father. Under all the tubes and wires he seemed somehow diminished, as though his body were a contraption almost too rickety to continue functioning, which I supposed in fact it was. The hands which had kneaded a thousand loaves and pressed cherries into the tops of his beloved Florentiner biscuits were limp and still. His eyes were closed.

  I felt my mother’s hand on my shoulder. Silently I turned to her and she put her arms around me. I had thought she meant to comfort me, but after a while I felt her shaking with silent tears and realized that she was the one who needed comforting. I looked over her shoulder at the silent figure in the bed and felt a misery so vast that it was numbing; it was like drowning.

  ‘Steffi,’ said my mother close to my ear. ‘Don’t leave the bakery. Promise you won’t leave. Your father needs you.’

  The silence in the room was so intense that it sounded in my ear like the inaudible scream of a bat. Then I heard the slow painful rasp of my father taking a breath.

  ‘I promise,’ I said.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  They wouldn’t let me stay at the hospital overnight. My mother would have to leave for a while too, to change her clothes and snatch some sleep, but she had a friend who lived in Mechernich who had offered to let her stay there rather than going back to Bad Münstereifel. I knew that when my mother accepted the offer she was thinking that it would be best if she were close by, so that if the call came, the one that said that my father was leaving us, she might be there in time to bid him farewell.

  When I went back to Reception, Max was still waiting for me. He was leafing through a motorcycle magazine that looked as though it had been printed in 1970, but when he saw me coming he dropped it on the seat beside him and stood up.

  I was afraid that he would try to embrace me, so I stood a little distance away, holding myself stiffly as though waiting for an attack.

  ‘Will you take me home, please?’ I said.

  I was fighting the urge to burst into tears. I saw him step towards me and I brushed past him, heading for the door.

  When we got to the car I huddled in the passenger seat, with the side of my face pressed to the cool window, keeping myself as far away from Max as possible. I squeezed my eyes shut, but tears were leaking out of the corners.

  For a while Max said nothing. I guessed there was nothing he could say. Virtually nothing ever emerged from his lips that was not loud, confident or facetious. Asking him to come up with something quiet and comforting was like expecting someone to play a minuet on the bagpipes.

  I was silent for a while too, but eventually I couldn’t help it. The crying burst out in a sharp sound like a stifled cough, but then I simply wailed through bared teeth, resting my head on the glass.

  ‘Steffi … ’ began Max, but I shook my head blindly.

  It was late by now and the evening traffic had thinned out. It didn’t take long to drive back to Bad Münstereifel. As we headed down the steep hill which led into the east side of the town, I felt as though I were being sucked down into the depths of a pit. I wondered if I would ever see my father again. I wondered if he would live long enough to see me fulfil the promise I had made. I wondered how I would keep that promise if Achim weren’t there to help. But I dreaded even one more day alone with him in the kitchen; I lacked the strength for the fight.

  I forced myself to stop crying. In truth, that numb feeling was coming over me again, a sense of dislocation that was worse than actual unhappiness.

  When the car pulled up outside the bakery Max got out with me.

  ‘We can go to the Tal tomorrow if you want,’ he said, and I thought I could detect a note of eagerness in his voice.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’ll phone.’

  I fumbled for my keys in my pocket. Dropping them on the cobbles, I cursed and reached down for them. Max was quicker. He scooped them up and handed them to me.

  ‘Do you want me to come in?’ he said.

  He might have been genuinely concerned for my well-being, but I didn’t wait to find out.

  ‘No,’ I said, sliding the key into the lock. The door opened. ‘I’m fine,’ I lied, then slipped inside and closed the door in his face.

  There was no need to set the alarm clock that night. The bakery would be closed tomorrow and all the regular customers would be buying their breakfast rolls and taking their morning coffee in the cafe up the street. I phoned Achim Zimmer and told him not to come in. To my relief the call was brief and businesslike. Perhaps even his troll’s conscience was stirred by the imminence of death, though I didn’t stay on the line to find out.

  I hadn’t had any dinner, but I didn’t really feel hungry. I checked all the doors and windows one last time, then went to bed. I had been up early for the morning shift in the bakery and had not slept since. Now it was like falling into a black and soundless void. I was aware of nothing at all until 2.03 a.m., when I awoke with a start.

  The illuminated numerals on my alarm clock floated in the darkness. Still night; nowhere near time to get up. What had woken me? I lay in bed listening, my body tense. Although all was silent, I had the impression that it was a sound that had startled me and that it had come from nearby. For a long time I stared into the darkness, until at last I began to relax, my body’s craving for sleep taking over. I had almost drifted off again when I heard it.

  A sharp, metallic clank. It might have been the sound of a utensil striking one of the metal surfaces in the bakery kitchen, or of someone stumbling into one of the big dough-mixing machines. The kitchen was directly below my room and I was pretty sure the sound had come from there. In fact, I was 100 per cent sure; the certainty ran through me with the thumping of my heart and the quickening of my breath.

  There’s someone downstairs.

  Could Achim possibly have come in anyway? I didn’t think so. I had spoken to him personally and he knew he wasn’t wanted. Besides, he was not due in for another half-hour even on his earliest shift.

  I sat up, pushing the duvet aside, even before I had started considering what I should do. Then I listened again. For about a minute there was nothing at all. Then I heard a slapping sound, as though a gate were swinging shut in the wind.

  The kitchen window.

  But I checked it.

  I slid out of bed and stood there in my nightdress in the middle of the darkened room, my heart thudding.

  Who’s down there?

  Unbidden, an image came into my mind. A dark cloak, the hem trailing on the tiled floor. A long slim hand, white as milk, touching the smooth metal work surface, savouring the coolness of it. A bright fall of copper-coloured hair covering the face and then the head turning, slowly, very slowly,
until suddenly I could see –

  No.

  I put my hands to my face, as though I could somehow shield myself from the thought.

  It can’t be Gertrud Vorn down there. It can’t be. That’s impossible.

  Suddenly I couldn’t bear the darkness a moment longer. I flew to the bedside table and switched on the lamp, filling the room with golden light. Then I slid open a drawer, fumbled for a T-shirt, grabbed my jeans from the chair. I wasn’t going to confront the witch of Schönau – if she really was down there – dressed in a cotton jersey nightdress with a rabbit embroidered on the front of it.

  This is insane, I thought as I pulled on my clothes. All the same, I had to do something. The thought of sitting there alone in my room, waiting for the stealthy tread on the stairs outside the flat, the rattle of the door handle turning slowly from the outside, the pad of soft feet outside my room – it was too horrible to contemplate.

  I didn’t put shoes on. My only ally was silence, so I opted for bare feet, but it wasn’t the coldness of the tiles in the hallway that made me shiver as I made my way carefully to the door of the flat, pulling my cardigan tightly around my body. I stood there for a while listening. I could hear no further sounds from the kitchens below. I leaned close to the door and pressed my ear to the wood.

  All I could hear was the rushing of blood in my ear. Otherwise there was silence.

  Where is she?

  Before the thought had even half crossed my mind I was seized with the conviction that Rote Gertrud was on the other side of the door, as close to the panels as I was, standing still and quiet on the little landing, waiting. Only a few centimetres of flimsy wood separated us.