by Gary Kittle
needed supplies were delivered infrequently. As they entered a van was reversing towards them.
‘He sure is an odd character, your Dr. Asperger,’ Long commented. ‘You know when he was describing those subjects of his it sounded like a pretty good description of himself.’
But Ernst Falke was not listening. He could almost smell his prize. A prize for five years of waiting and praying and daring to dream that his youngest son had somehow survived deportation and the random visits of the gas wagons designed to continue the eugenics programme abroad when dissent became too strident for even the Fuhrer to ignore at home.
The back of the van opened slowly, the interior mainly filled with crates but to the rear there was a bed, a chair and two standing figures: a female nurse and a child. The child looked taller than he remembered, more grown up. You fool, he scolded himself, that’s because he’s nearly thirteen now.
‘He was in a clinic in Linz the whole time, Ernst. The wagon just never got round to visiting.’
The boy saw his father, and shrieked with excitement, clapping his hands furiously. The boy, Otto, had a shaven head and his skin looked discoloured and desiccated, like paper dried in an oven. His arms flapped like fins, as delicate and incongruous as a swan’s neck on a china cup. Ernst ran across the loading bay, tears bursting from his eyes.
‘Erik!’ he cried, and saw in that moment, in that sometimes vacant, sometimes irascible moon of a face everything that made Nazism wrong. The boy responded with a flurry of clapping, never to speak, never to dance, but oh! a son born to be loved.
‘My boy!’
On the Level
This ought to be fun, exciting, Rob mused as he freewheeled down the leafy country lane. And up until last weekend, it had been. Then the bad dreams began. Bloody, violent nightmares that eclipsed any scene from a horror film. And every one of them featured Ed exacting a terrible revenge against Rob and his - Ed’s - wife.
Rebecca’s cycle pulled alongside Rob’s, her face crimson with exertion. ‘You’re very quiet, Rob. What’s eating you?’
He’d been itching to get it off his chest, but could he really tell her? This was only an affair, a fling, after all, even though he would quite like it to mean something more. That she didn’t she’d made perfectly clear right from the start, precluding everything but physical intimacy, and plenty of it. Nevertheless, he felt the urge to offload like a full bladder on a cold night.
‘It’s just that I feel so – I don’t know (yes you do, cheap, but you can hardly tell her that) – uncomfortable with all this sloping about behind his back.’ The lonely country lane meandered left, then right, the warm sunlight scattering leafy patterns across the tarmac. ‘He’ll find out eventually.’
‘He’d better not. You haven’t known him as long as I have,’ Rebecca shouted. ‘He has a history.’
‘Of what? Violence, mental instability, alcohol abuse?’
‘Yes.’
‘Which?’ he called back, narrowly avoiding a bumble bee heading for his nose.
‘All of them. If I told him he’d flip. God knows what he’d do.’
‘But we’ll have to tell him one day, won’t we?’
‘Just today, all right? Now ride on, worry guts. There’s a lovely wood coming up soon and it’s very impenetrable.’
Rob pulled away on his faster bike. What made him think that this could be anything but a physical relationship, anyway; apart from wishful thinking? Or did believing one day that he and Becs would live together simply make him feel better about sleeping with his manager’s wife?
The lane turned into a hill with a level crossing at the bottom. ‘Race you!’ Rob shouted, trying not to be the wet blanket. At the crossing the lights started flashing just as Rob’s wheels clattered over the submerged rails. He stopped on the other side as the barriers started to descend. Rebecca, however, was in trouble. She had stopped about fifty metres shy of the crossing because her chain had come off. It dangled pathetically just above the ground. Rebecca looked up at him shrugging her shoulders as the barriers came to rest in their housings.
‘Don’t worry. I’ll fix it after the train’s passed.’
‘My hero!’ she called back, propping the bike up against the barrier. The wind blew softly through the treetops, making Rob shiver unexpectedly. He noticed that his heartbeat had not yet decreased and there was a churning sensation in his stomach.
‘You still look miserable!’ Rebecca laughed, but her words were lost in the approaching rumble of a train.
Rob told himself to get a grip on his nerves; tried to laugh it off. But just before the train swept through, he saw a hooded figure emerge from the bushes just behind where Rebecca was standing. Rob’s eyes bulged. The figure had its arms extended towards Rebecca’s neck and was striding towards her. The last thing Rob saw as the train rattled angrily past was the figure look up and grin at him.
‘Oh, my God!’
The train seemed to have at least fifty carriages, and all the while Rob was screaming at the top of his voice. Through the gap below the passing train Rob saw two sets of legs twisting and turning as if in some uncoordinated waltz. When the train was gone, however, Rebecca was still standing alone by the barrier, unharmed, and the hooded figure had vanished.
‘What is it now, Rob? What the hell is wrong with you?’
Rob scanned the bushes, running his hands nervously through his hair. The light breeze stroked the wall of leaves as the sun disappeared behind a cloud. There was no one there – except in his imagination. Rob let out an edgy guffaw.
‘Nothing. I just thought I...’ he called over. ‘Listen, Becs, what if he already knows? Have you considered that? What if he’s been following us?’
‘What? Ed doesn’t suspect anything! He’s too vain to believe I could fancy anyone but him. And besides, if he did know something I think he’d have made that clear by now. Do you know what I mean?’
Don’t you get it yet? You’re just her toy, her bit of rough, for her occasional pleasure. But that wouldn’t mollify Ed when he found out. Thinking back Rob remembered moments when Ed had nearly lost his temper on nights out. Rob had put it down to alcohol. But what if the alcohol was merely an accelerant to a tinder-dry rage? Perhaps his nightmares were even mild compared with what would happen during a real confrontation. And shouldn’t these blasted barriers be up by now? Just then he heard the approach of a second train, this time travelling in the opposite direction.
Rob looked over at Rebecca, meaning to tell her to keep her wits about her, but his words froze in his throat. Standing behind Becs once again, arms reaching forward, was the hooded figure. Only this time the grinning, enraged face could not be mistaken for anyone else’s but Ed’s. The second train thundered past.
This train was shorter, but Rob still had to look on helplessly as those four shins resumed their fierce dance and ended with Rebecca’s going suddenly limp and being dragged away towards the undergrowth.
When the train had gone Rob stared at the unattended bike leaning against the barrier and a terrified whimper escaped him. This is what the bad dreams have been leading up to. They weren’t nightmares at all – they were omens. He should have heeded their message. Now it’s too late. Rob pulled out his mobile phone in a panic, and dialled quickly with trembling fingers, the light breeze, now chillier, still shaking the bushes.
The dialled number rang half a dozen times then automatically switched to a messaging service. Rob started gabbling over the bleep.
‘Ed? Ed, listen. Don’t do anything rash, all right? I know you’re angry and it’s a shock and everything, but the truth is... the truth is… (she likes it rough) we’re in love. Don’t hurt her, Ed. I’m begging you. If you want to take it out on someone, hurt me...It’s not Rebecca’s fault!’
Still the barriers refused to go back up, the lights continued to flash and Rebecca’s bike chain jangled uselessly in the wind. Rob groaned at the sound of yet another train’s approach and pocketed his mobile. By now the last of Rebecca’s
breath would have been squeezed from her lifeless body. The truth is we’re in love. He took a sharp intake of breath. No, a voice in his head mocked, the truth is you’re in love.
The last train turned out to be the longest and slowest. When it finally disappeared into the distance he found Rebecca standing miraculously next to her bike as if nothing had happened. Alive, unharmed and still for the taking in that wood she’d mentioned. But still something nagged at him, stopping him from feeling any relief. His mobile started to buzz from inside his jacket.
‘Rob you look dreadful,’ she shouted from the other side of the crossing. ‘You’re starting to scare me now. Stop it!’
As the lights went out and the barriers clanked back into their upright position like guillotine blades, Rob pulled out his phone, knowing whose name would be displayed on the miniature screen. It seemed pointless to fight against Fate, he decided, and ignoring Rebecca’s badgering he put the phone to his ear.
‘Rob? Is that you? It’s Ed. Listen, what’s this message you’ve left on my phone? What do you mean you’re in love with my missus?’
Rebecca was pushing her bike towards him, speaking as she walked, but Rob was only conscious of the snarling voice in his ear.
‘What the hell’s going on, Rob? Rob!’
If Bricks Should Burn
Malcolm Zimmerman still recalled his shock when, as an eight year old, he walked into the bathroom to
