by Vincent Voss
Marie worried her even more. According to Ben, she was constantly on the run from the fly man who would come into her house and wanted to hurt her. But not only her. Marie told Ben that the fly man also wanted to hurt him.
“When did you first meet Marie?” Robert asked.
“I … I don’t know anymore. She just stood there and I slept. Then I woke up.” Ben thought about it.
“She said her name was Marie and that she lived here. And watched us. She wanted to know everything. Where we come from and stuff like that.”
“And what did you ask Marie?” Sabine asked.
“Why she came to me.”
“And why did she come to you?” Robert asked.
“Because she died on that day a long time ago, when she still lived in my room. Before me.”
Sabine couldn’t breathe. Blackness danced before her eyes. Later, she couldn’t remember fainting and falling to the ground.
From then on, they all worried about Sabine, especially Robert, who thought she should take it easy and cut back on all the renovation work and the move.
No one worried about Ben and his new friend Marie anymore. Robert took her to be the seven-year-old’s stress-induced vision and pushed it out of his mind.
Sabine also tried to suppress thoughts of Marie, because she just couldn’t believe the story. Nevertheless, Marie would return to haunt her.
On Saturday, the first day of Advent, Lukas came to Sabine and Robert in the living room, late at night.
“Ben — he’s not doing well.” He sounded upset.
“Did you make him mad at you again?” Robert looked sternly at his offspring. The boys had been quarreling more often lately.
Lukas shook his head.
Robert and Sabine looked at each other. Somehow, they both felt that this was something serious. They followed Lukas.
Ben was sitting on his bed and crying. He had turned on his reading lamp and pulled the blanket up to his nose.
“Ben! Sweetie! What’s wrong?” Sabine sat down and put her arms around him. Robert stood indecisively beside the bed and Lukas hovered near the door, curious.
“I won’t tell!” Ben was stubborn. Sabine snuggled up to him and could feel him trembling.
“Ben, is everything all right?”
“I don’t want to be here anymore, Mom!” he cried and buried his face into her arm.
“What’s wrong, dear? What happened, Ben?”
“Marie …” he gasped, and then couldn’t speak at all.
“Marie!” Robert snorted, and Sabine gave him a stern look. It was clear that Ben was serious about the girl from his dreams.
“What going on with Marie?” she asked Ben.
“Marie is dead because the fly man is coming soon. He … he … he killed her!” he sobbed.
“Ben! There is no Marie. And no fly man either. You’re imagining it all!” Robert rebuked him and the tone of his voice was enough to actually keep the boy from talking back at first.
“But Marie really does exist! And the fly man, too! Marie lived here. Even before we were alive!” He then cried in frustration.
“Ben!” Robert threatened.
“Ben knows where Marie used to live, Dad! Really!” Lukas stood up for his brother.
“Now don’t you start with it too, Lukas!”
“Ben, tell Mom and Dad!” Lukas said and Ben nodded.
“She lived up in the attic over your room when the fly man lived inside her. The fly man crept into her and then she did stupid things. She used to live in Ben’s room. Pretty spooky, huh?” Lukas was still standing in the doorway and now entered the room to escape the darkness behind him.
“Lukas, you don’t really believe in this nonsense,” Robert barked at him.
“Even Marie’s bed is supposed to be there,” Lukas answered quietly. Robert went silent.
“Ok, then tomorrow we can take a look in the attic,” Sabine suggested. Robert agreed and Ben calmed down.
“Can we sleep with you?” Lukas asked and Sabine was happy to hear it.
“Excuse me, would you mind if I closed the window?” Henning interrupts.
“No, no, go ahead.” Henning shuts the window, turns back, looks questioningly at Johanna and inconspicuously rubs his forearm to show that he’s freezing.
Johanna is also cold, more specifically, getting colder since Mrs. Falkner started talking. She can’t tell if it has to do with the story, but she has already taken note of it.
“May I continue?” Mrs. Falkner asks, as Henning is just sitting back down. She seems rushed, Johanna notes. As if she doesn’t have much more time and wants to tell her story to the end. Henning nods and Johanna keeps writing.
The next morning, Ben woke up first and demanded that Sabine keep her promise. The four of them entered the huge attic, which extended over the entire house. Three staircases led up there, and one of them was almost completely piled with furniture and boxes that they still hadn’t unpacked. Here, there was a small skylight, while further back, over the former stables, where the possessions of the previous owners had been left behind, it was darker. The objects mostly looked like furniture, but there were also things that Sabine couldn’t identify in the early morning light.
“Wow!” Lukas marveled. Ben held Sabine’s hand tightly.
“Where did Marie have her room?” Robert asked.
“Back there,” Ben answered and pointed to the collection of antique furniture. Robert turned on a flashlight, stepped between the piles of their moving boxes and lit the way. Everything really looked as if it came from another world, from the past.
Even Robert was amazed. “Funny that we didn’t notice all of this junk up until now — even though we dragged all the moving boxes up here.
Sabine didn’t answer. She was too busy processing their discovery. On top of that, she could feel the fear again. The same fear she’d felt when no one was standing behind Ben’s door.
She forced herself to suppress the fear. After all, she wasn’t alone this time. Ben walked ahead and called her to him. Behind a couple of wardrobes that had been pushed together, they discovered a separate area. Wood panels had been put up to make walls, forming a partition.
“There’s a door,” Robert whispered, and lit up a massive, white wooden panel that somehow looked fake in the dark.
“This is her room,” Ben said, and hid behind her. Robert went ahead, Lukas followed him, and she and Ben stayed behind. She suddenly heard chains rattling and was frightened.
“You won’t believe it, Sabine — someone put chains here … so they could not only shut the door, but also secure it,” Robert called out from inside the makeshift room. She could only see the beam from the flashlight jumping up and down.
“Robert, please be careful!” she called to him.
“Wait, Lukas. Now!” There was a crunching sound. Lukas and Robert had opened the door; the beam of light disappeared, Ben’s hand squeezed hers.
“Everything is all right, Ben. Come, we’ll go after Dad,” she told him.
“Dad! What is that?” Lukas’s voice trembled. Since Robert didn’t answer right away, she got scared and ran after them, but Robert was just standing stunned in the room. It looked like a child’s room. Wooden horses and dolls sat and stood on a shelf on the wall. In the middle, there was a bed.
“A child’s room! Ben was right!” she breathed, but Robert just shook his head.
“Lukas, Ben, you get out of here. Now!” The tone in his voice made Lukas grab Ben’s hand. They went out.
“What is it?” she asked him.
“Sabine, this isn’t a child’s room,” Robert answered, “it’s a prison.” He shone the flashlight on the metal bed frame, on the chains that fastened it to the wall, on the chains and handcuffs meant to bind someone who had lain in the bed.
Sabine was speechless. She pressed her hand to her mouth to keep from sobbing.
Robert lit up a spot at the front of the bed. The wooden panels were splintered as if someone
had smashed through them with a ton of force and torn them apart. The metal shackles on the bed were bent.
“Someone tried to break free. With great force,” Robert whispered.
“What could have such force, Robert?” she asked.
“Mom? Dad? Who were the chains for?” She heard Lukas ask from the door.
She and Robert looked at each other and shook their heads at the same time.
“A large animal was likely trapped here. Probably a dog,” Robert said.
“The poor dog,” Lukas said. He loved animals. Maybe the made-up story hadn’t actually been a good idea. But now it was too late.
“Maybe he had rabies,” Sabine joined in with the lie. Now they were allies. She looked at Robert and simultaneously felt as if the house were looking at them.
The house — or something else.
The next day, they tore down the little prison while Lukas and Ben played in the yard. They didn’t say another word about it in front of the children.
*
Mrs. Falkner pauses, considers her words. Then she flinches and looks at Johanna and Henning.
“Did you hear that?”
“What?” Henning asks. Johanna leans forward and listens. Mrs. Falkner turns to the door.
“That,” she whispers. “Someone came up the stairs.”
Johanna and Henning exchange glances, as neither of them has heard anything. Is this a sign of mental illness?
Mrs. Falkner turns back round, quickly gulps down more water.
“We have to hurry,” she says conspiratorially and puts her hands inside her purse.
“Did Marie appear to your son again?” Henning asks.
“Excuse me? No. No, not after that, not anymore. And Robert and I took it as a good sign. The sounds also stopped, the flies disappeared. It was as if someone sensed that we were worried about our children and were thinking about giving up the house. And whoever it was wanted to avoid exactly that. Since actually, he was still not even … there. Do you understand what I mean? He or it was still not there, but had just made itself known. It was only in the time before Christmas that it was really there. Lukas, Ben, and Robert must have somehow awoken it.” She winces and looks behind her at the door again.
“Sorry,” she whispers and composes herself.
A cold draft also passes over Johanna and Henning. Johanna makes a note of the phenomenon.
“It’s nothing,” Henning says comfortingly. “With what you have to tell, it’s no wonder you’re hearing things.” He nods at her, encouraging her to continue.
*
She had just returned from a shopping trip. Christmas gifts. With her packages, Sabine tiptoed from the car into the house, and it was only after she had hidden everything in the room under the stairs that she noticed the quiet.
My boys are probably outside, she thought, and began to wrap gifts.
It was only when it started getting dark and she could see the moon rising, from the kitchen window, that she began to worry, cleared everything away, and went looking for them.
At that very moment, she heard a noise coming from the yard. She immediately ran. She had a good view out from the living room window.
Suddenly, the initial noise turned into screams. Ben’s and Robert’s screams! She saw her husband carrying Lukas out of the forest. It looked as if Lukas were … dead. His arms dangled down, his head hung limp in Robert’s arms. Ben stumbled out of the forest beside them. Screaming and crying.
Sabine threw open the door and rushed barefoot through the snow. Somehow, it was as if time had stopped. Robert collapsed, still holding Lukas in his arms. There was pain in Robert’s face, but also something else that she still couldn’t make out.
Ben was completely frantic with worry for his big brother.
“What’s happened to him? Tell me! Say something right now!” she screamed at Robert. She tore Lukas from his arms and pulled him close.
“Lukas,” she whispered again. “Lukas!”
Suddenly, he coughed. Lukas was alive! She could feel the tears of relief streaming down her cheeks.
“Give him to me. He’s too heavy for you,” Robert said.
But she didn’t give him Lukas. She held him tight, as if she never wanted to let go.
*
They had been playing in the woods. At a well. Somehow, the cover slid out of place and broke to pieces. Lukas fell into the well and nearly drowned.
At the last moment, Robert got him out by climbing down a rope into the well.
Robert had saved Lukas.
The last sentence seems to have a secret message in it. Mrs. Falkner leans forward and whispers: “But you know what? I think that Lukas didn’t just fall into the well.” Her body is tense, her gaze flitting around. Johanna and Henning unconsciously also lean in closer.
“Something from the well had pulled him in,” she whispers and nods.
“He was pulled in?” Henning asks.
“Ben saw it, but we didn’t want to believe him. We were happy that the thing with Marie was all over and now he was starting again. He had seen the fly man grab Lukas. Ben said he had also seen how he gave Lukas a kiss down in the well. We scolded Ben. He was to stop telling those made-up stories. We talked to him for so long and so insistently, until all he did was cry. But later, Robert and I went …”
Without warning, the window swings open, and then the door does too. A gust of wind outside pulls at the treetops, sweeps through the witch archive, and slams the window and door shut again with a bang. The coldness remains.
Mrs. Falkner jumps up, her hands gripping a childless figure of the Virgin Mary that she has pulled out of her bag and is now holding protectively to her chest.
“Go!” she gasps into the room, abruptly turning. “I have to leave you now. Immediately!” She grabs her bag and rushes out of the door.
“Mrs. Falkner! Stay!” Henning jumps up and runs after her. Johanna follows, but they can already hear Mrs. Falkner running down the stairs and closing the heavy door to the institute on the first floor.
“What was that?” Henning pants. He is not out of breath merely from running.
“I don’t know, but I’m sure I felt something. Something …” Johanna is at a loss for words to describe it.
“I know what you mean.” Henning nods. They go back. Johanna turns off the recorder. There is a dead fly on her desk.
*
Two Days Later
Mrs. Falkner couldn’t be reached. But the Kreuziger Farm actually exists in Naherfurth, they’ve found out that much.
Johanna and Henning are at a “bad taste” college party at the main auditorium on campus, watching the partygoers. They’re not really part of that crowd anymore — or at least that’s how they feel. The music pounds away, Henning puts down his beer.
“Do you want to stay long? Otherwise, I’m ready to go home,” he calls to Johanna. A cloud of pot smoke hits them as Vincent walks past their table. The only person from their department who remembers them, because he’s still studying.
“No!”
Henning notices the smell more than he notices his former classmate.
“Maybe we can stop by the jungle again,” he suggests. Johanna pulls him to the door, where it’s more pleasant to converse.
“I’m through with partying today. And I’m definitely not into smoking pot.”
“Got it,” he replies. Both of them fall quiet. The music doesn’t get any better.
“You know, it’s still really eating away at me,” Johanna admits.
“Jo, we’ve got time off. Two weeks of vacation. You shouldn’t burden yourself with that.”
“And what about you? How do you explain the whole thing?”
“I don’t try. I’m a follower of Böckelmann. If I can’t explain something scientifically, I store it in the attic and throw away the key.” He lights a cigarette, and adds, “But you know what? I’ve actually wanted to smoke pot lately.”
“That’s too easy, Henning. And you kn
ow it,” Johanna counters. “You know what I’m going to do now?”
“Tell me.”
“I’m going to go to the institute and start the transcription.” She looks at him.
“You’re nuts.”
Johanna shakes her head as the two approach their parked bicycles. “You coming?”
“Seriously, you’re crazy, Jo!” He watches as she unlocks her bike but reluctantly follows her.
Before the computer is fully booted up, Johanna hears the hiss of the coffee machine from the kitchen. She pushes the chairs together, prepares everything. Just listening to the interview once through — that will be enough for her. She can put off the transcription until after her vacation.
Henning puts the coffee on the table, opens the windows, and lights a cigarette. Johanna needs to press PLAY, but she hesitates.
“Are you nervous?” she asks Henning. He makes a dismissive gesture, blowing smoke into the humid night, and shrugs. A delayed confession.
“Well, yeah. A little.”
“Me too,” Johanna presses the button.
They listen attentively to the interview. Henning smokes another cigarette at the window. This case has nothing in common with any of their previous callers or visitors. The case seems threatening. Johanna presses STOP at the point when Mrs. Falkner describes the discovery of Marie’s partitioned space in the attic.
“Do you think it could be a fake?” Henning inhales deeply.
“I wish it were.”
Johanna rubs her temples and leans back.
“Yeah, me too. But I feel like something is really wrong here. The cold, the gust of wind. And even the flies.”
“Mrs. Falkner could have left them behind without us noticing it in all the excitement,” Henning points out.
“Yeah, I already thought about that. But we were both cold. You weren’t just saying it, right? That you were cold?”
Henning shook his head. “No. No, I was cold and I also can’t explain all this shit. I guess we finally have one of those cases that we’ve always wished for, Jo. Where all the phenomena go beyond the scientific paradigm. But you know what? I don’t want that anymore!” He flicks the cigarette out of the window and sits back at the table.
