Jack sat up and looked at him. He had said it with such conviction that Jack almost believed him.
‘What do you mean, it was real? A nightmare is just a dream, Sparks. That’s the definition of a nightmare.’
‘But this really happened.’
‘Men in the woods saying “it was white and it looked like a ghost”, in Polish?’
‘Yes.’
Jack stood up. ‘Come on, Sparks. I think you need to go back to bed, I really do. Just try and think of something else. Count sheep or something. It won’t be even half as scary in the morning. Look – I’ll leave the light on for you, OK? And you can leave your door open, too.’
Sparky reluctantly went back to his bedroom. Jack stood in the middle of the living room for a few moments, not quite sure what to do. He knew that he should go to bed, too, but the visiting card was lying on the table and the phone was lying next to it, and somehow Sparky’s nightmare had made him feel that he needed to call this Maria Wiktoria Koczerska, whoever she was.
He punched out the number and waited. The phone rang and rang with an old-fashioned burring noise. He was about to hang up when a woman’s voice said, querulously, ‘Halo? Sucham. Tak?’
‘Dobry wieczór. Is this Ms Koczerska?’
‘Mrs Koczerska, yes. Who is calling?’
‘Jack Wallace, from the Nostalgia Restaurant on North Clark Street. My manager tells me you came around earlier when I was away.’
‘Ah yes, Mr Wallace, I did. But thank you anyhow for calling. There is something I very much wanted to show you.’
‘You wrote the name of my great-grandfather on the back of your card. Grzegorz Walach.’
‘Tak. I did. Your great-grandfather is disappearing in the war, is that right?’
‘That’s right, yes. He volunteered to help fight the German invasion in 1939, but his family never heard from him again.’
‘Of course. There were many tens of thousands like that, Mr Wallace, who disappeared without trace, and who do not even have a grave marker that their relatives can visit to lay a few flowers. My own great-uncles, the same happened to them.’
‘So what’s this about my great-grandfather?’
‘It is better if I show you, Mr Wallace. Maybe you can come to my apartment?’
‘I’m a very busy man, Mrs Koczerska. I have a restaurant to run, as you know.’
‘Tak, yes, of course. But if I can explain to you the fate that befell Grzegorz Walach – if I can prove to you what happened to him—’
‘You can do that?’
‘Why would I lie to you? Dlaczego miałabym cię okłamywać? What would be the point of it?’
‘OK. I guess I could come tomorrow, around eleven in the morning, if that’s convenient.’
‘That would suit me very well, Mr Wallace. I look forward to it. Dobranoc.’
‘Goodnight, Mrs Koczerska.’
Jack put down the phone. He thought he ought to feel excited but instead he felt strangely apprehensive. Maybe he was just exhausted, and upset by the day’s events. There was something else that unsettled him, though. Something that Sparky had said. ‘There’s a connection between what happened to Malcolm, and our family. That’s why we have to go to Owasippe.’
Jack didn’t know why this should make him feel disturbed, but it was the earnest way that Sparky had said it, and the fact that Mrs Koczerska had turned up at the restaurant on the same day they had gone to the scout reservation to see Malcolm lying dead in that makeshift morgue. He had never believed in fate, and coincidence. He believed that life was what you made of it yourself. It made him feel distinctly uncomfortable to think that Sparky might be right, and that the stars and the planets determine our destiny, whether we like it or not.
Box of Memories
When he drew up outside 4125 West Wellington Avenue in Belmont Gardens it was hammering down with rain. He sat in his car for a short while, to see if it would ease off, but if anything it began to pour down even more heavily. A young woman in a red hooded raincoat scuttled across the road pushing a baby buggy, with a wet, bedraggled spaniel trying to keep up with her.
Jack looked at the detached house in which Mrs Koczerska lived. It was one of several brown brick houses along Wellington Avenue, all with crenellated facades like castles. The windows were covered with ivory lace drapes, although he could see a red-and-green table lamp alight in the second-floor window, and he guessed that was Mrs Koczerska’s living room.
At last, when the rain showed no signs of relenting, he climbed out of his car and hurried up the concrete pathway to Mrs Koczerska’s front porch. He pressed the bell marked Apt #2 and waited. Eventually, Mrs Koczerska’s voice said, ‘Mr Wallace? Is that you?’
‘It’s me all right.’
She pressed the buzzer and he stepped into a gloomy, marble-floored hallway that smelled of disinfectant and burned cheese. On the left-hand side stood a tall mahogany coat and umbrella stand with a small dark mirror in it. He saw his own face in the mirror as he passed it, and he thought he looked like a sepia photograph of somebody from the 1930s.
‘Up here, Mr Wallace!’ called Mrs Koczerska, leaning over the banister at the top of the stairs. ‘Is it still raining? I wanted to hang out my sheets!’
‘Yes, still raining, and I don’t think it’s going to be stopping any time soon.’
Jack reached the landing and Mrs Koczerska held out her hands to him, as if he were an old friend she hadn’t seen in years. He gave her three pecks on the cheek, and said, ‘Pleasure to meet you.’
His manager Tomasz had been right. Once upon a time Mrs Koczerska must have been very pretty. He would have guessed her age around mid- to late-seventies, with steel-gray hair cut into a sharp five-point bob. She had high cheekbones, with a short, straight nose, and a clearly defined chin. She was very small, not much more than five feet two, and her shoulders stooped slightly, but she was immaculately dressed in a long gray cardigan and a white blouse and a pleated gray skirt. Around her neck she wore a triple-stranded necklace of Polish amber beads.
Jack recognized her perfume at once: the distinctive jasmine and orange-blossom fragrance of Chanel No. 5.
‘Come in,’ she said, and Jack followed her into her apartment.
In many ways, it reminded him of his own apartment. The four armchairs and the couch were heavy and old-fashioned, with lion’s-claw feet, like those he had inherited from his grandparents. The drapes on either side of the window were thick brown velvet, with braided silk cords and tassels to tie them back. The side tables were covered with brown velveteen tablecloths, which themselves were covered with elaborate lace overlays. And on every wall, there was a collection of faded photographs of long-dead relatives, some in their wedding finery, some standing in groups in front of houses that had been probably been bombed, in gardens which must have gone to seed decades ago.
‘Please, sit down,’ said Mrs Koczerska. ‘And you must call me Maria, because our families knew each other very well, back in Poland before the war. For all I know, you and I could be related!’
‘I can’t say I ever heard my grandparents mention any Raczkowskis,’ said Jack, sitting down beside the window.
‘My family name is Kusociński. Originally from Lublin.’
Jack said, ‘No. They never mentioned any Kusocińkis, either. But then they never liked to talk about the old days very much. It used to get my grandma too upset. She would start to cry and you could never get her to stop.’
Maria went through to the kitchenette and came back with a plate of pierniki gingerbread cookies covered with dark bitter chocolate.
‘I can get you coffee, maybe?’ she asked him. ‘Is it too early in the day for vodka?’
‘I’m good, thanks,’ Jack told her. ‘I spent over an hour this morning tasting rum babas.’
‘Ah, yes,’ said Maria. ‘I have never tried your restaurant but I have heard good things about it. My neighbors have eaten there.’
‘Well, you’re welcome to come try it
, any time, my treat. Just give me a call and I’ll reserve you a table.’
Maria turned to the side table beside her and picked up a black metal box. It was scratched and dented and the lid didn’t fit properly. Although a small brass padlock still dangled from the hasp, it was thickly corroded and somebody had sawed right through the shackle – recently, by the look of it, because the cut was still bright.
‘This box was sent to me last week by a friend of mine. Her name is Krystyna Zawadka and she is an assistant professor at the Institute of History at Warsaw University.
Jack said nothing, but watched as Maria opened the lid of the box and took out a bundle of yellowed paper and a small book bound in maroon leather.
‘The box was found about a year ago by a team of historical archeologists who were combing through the Kampinos Forest. They were looking for any traces of human remains that earlier exhumation parties might have missed.’
Jack knew all about the Kampinos Forest. It lay about fourteen kilometers northwest of Warsaw. In the spring and summer of 1940, a special squad of German soldiers known as AB-Aktion had arrested at least seven thousand Polish aristocrats, politicians, journalists, teachers, judges, priests and social workers – anybody who might be capable of organizing resistance to German rule. They had been interned, tortured, and then driven out blindfold to a clearing at Palmiry, most of them thinking that they were being transported to another camp. They had then been lined up and machine-gunned. Over two thousand of them, maybe more.
Jack said, ‘There’s a museum there, isn’t there, as well as a cemetery? My mother and father went there once, but I never had the time.’
‘You should make time, on your next visit to Poland,’ said Maria. ‘It is a very moving place. All of those crosses … and the tall trees … and the wind blowing through the forest.’
‘So what did they find in this box?’ asked Jack, nodding toward it. ‘Something about my great-grandfather?’
‘Yes, Mr Wallace, they did. They found my great-uncle Andrzej’s diary, with many mentions of his friend Grzegorz Walach, your great-grandfather, and it explains how both of them died. It was not the Germans who killed them, according to him. Your great-grandfather was never captured by the Germans, and as far as we know the Germans did not have him on their list for what they called their Intelligenzaktion – eliminating all of the Polish intelligentsia. It appears that they were not aware that your great-grandfather was in Poland at all, otherwise he certainly would have been.’
‘Go on,’ said Jack, frowning. ‘If the Germans didn’t kill him, who did?
Maria leaned forward and offered Jack a gingerbread cookie. ‘No – no thanks,’ he told her. That was so Polish – never letting your guests go hungry.
‘You probably know that it was not only the Germans who used the Kampinos Forest,’ said Maria. ‘Many refugees fled from Warsaw to hide there, and the guerrillas of the Home Army went into the forest to regroup.
‘My great-uncle Andrzej and your great-grandfather were two of those guerrillas. They went deep into the forest with maybe thirty or forty other men. That was in August of 1940. They had a very daring plan to assassinate Hans Frank, the German commander of the General Government.’
‘So what happened? How did they die?’
‘The Germans of course were hunting through the forest for them, but several times they managed to escape and once they ambushed a German patrol and killed at least twelve of them.
She turned the pages of the little diary. Jack could see that the pages were crowded with tiny, crabbed writing, some of it blotchy with damp.
‘How is your Polish?’ she asked him.
‘Pretty rusty, to tell you the truth.’
‘OK. In that case, I translate for you. “Now we have been in the forest for nearly two months, we are beginning to become aware that there is something else here which is much more frightening than the Germans. It appears that even the Germans are frightened of it, too, because we have heard them shouting to each other to watch out for what they called Der Waldgeist, the Forest Ghost. Also we have sometimes seen them spitting on their fingertips three times, which is supposed to be a way to defend yourself against evil spirits.”
‘This entry is dated October seventeenth, 1940,’ Maria went on. ‘But now listen to this, from November eleventh. “Now we are sure that we are being watched and followed by something terrible. Very early in the morning, even before the sun comes up, we have seen it behind the trees. Also when it begins to grow dark. We are not sure what it is. Some of the men believe that it might be a wild animal – an albino elk, maybe. But we all are agreed that it is white, and that it gives us a feeling of dread much worse than any of us have ever experienced before, although we find it hard to explain why. I think that it could be inspired by us being alone in this vast forest, but maybe it is more than that. I believe that I have glimpsed it myself. It is white, and it looks like a ghost.”’
Jack felt a prickling sensation on the backs of his hands. ‘Read that to me in Polish,’ he said. ‘Read it to me the way it’s written down there.’
Maria frowned at the diary and said, ‘“Był bialy. Wyglądał jak duch.”’
‘Have you ever read that out loud to anybody else, apart from me?’
Maria looked puzzled. ‘Of course not. Why should I? You are the first.’
‘My son said those exact words, only last night. He said he had a nightmare that he was in a forest, and he could smell a campfire, and that a man said “Był bialy. Wyglądał jak duch.”’
‘Your son speaks Polish?’
‘He used to be fluent. His mother always spoke Polish to him, when he was little. Now – well, I’m afraid I don’t bother so much as she did, and like I say, I’ve gotten pretty rusty myself.’
‘Your wife is no longer with you?’
Jack gave her a quick grimace. ‘She, ah … she passed away two years ago. Cancer.’
‘Oh, I apologize. I was wondering why she did not come today. I did not know. I am so sorry for your loss. There is never a way to fill the space which a person we loved used to occupy. The world is crowded with empty shapes, where people once were. But – your son spoke those very same words? How do you think he could have known them? It could hardly be a coincidence, could it? “It is white, and it looks like a ghost.” Who else would say such words?’
‘I don’t know, Maria. I can’t even guess. My son is into star charts and astrology and all that kind of thing, and he’s told quite a few fortunes for people which have turned out pretty accurate.’
He told her about the suicides at Owasippe, and what he and Sparky thought they had seen there, flickering behind the trees. He also told her that Sparky thought there was a connection between the Wallace family and Owasippe, although he hadn’t been able to explain what it was.
‘Perhaps the white thing that haunts the woods at this scout camp is the same as the white thing that haunts the Kampinos Forest,’ Maria suggested. ‘Perhaps that is the connection.’
‘But Owasippe and Palmiry are thousands of miles apart. They’re in totally different countries, in completely different cultures. I think that what we saw at Owasippe was probably an animal, like a cougar, and you don’t find too many cougars in Poland.’
Maria held up the diary. ‘On the other hand, Mr Wallace, there is another similarity which is very hard to explain.’
‘Oh yes, and what’s that?’
‘The way in which those boy scouts died, and the way in which your great-grandfather died. Listen to this – November nineteenth, 1940. “We are all now feeling such terror that some of us can barely speak. The Germans must be feeling it, too, because a patrol came within fifty meters of our hiding place, stopped for a while, and then suddenly rushed away. We could hear three or four of them screaming out loud. Then we heard several shots.
‘“Grzegorz and I ventured out as it began to grow dark, even though we were still gripped by such inexplicable fear that we could barely speak. We fou
nd the bodies of five young German soldiers lying amongst the trees. Three of them had been shot in the head, but all three of these were clutching their own pistols. The other two had obviously faced each other and shot each other in the mouth with their respective rifles. One of them was still holding to his lips the muzzle of his fellow’s Gewehr 98. We could only conclude that this had been a suicide pact between the two of them. They had all killed themselves, rather than face whatever it is that haunts this forest.”’
Jack said nothing, but waited for Maria to finish. She turned over three more pages in the diary, and then she read, ‘November twenty-fourth, 1940. “It is no use. It is no use fighting this panic any longer. We have seen the white thing again and again, behind the trees. Yesterday we tried to get away and after five hours of walking we almost managed to reach the village of Truskaw. Somehow, however, the dread was so strong that I could hardly breathe, and Grzegorz was so terrified that he could speak no sense whatsoever, gibbering like a lunatic.”’
Maria paused, and then she said, ‘This, on the same page, is the very last entry. “It is hopeless. We no longer fear that the Germans will find us. In fact, we almost wish that they would, to bring a swift end to this indescribable terror. However now it seems that the Germans are too frightened themselves to come into the forest this far. There is no escape from the white thing, whatever it is – a human being, an animal, or a Forest Ghost. Grzegorz and I have talked and we have decided that there is only one course of action that we can take. We will follow the example of those two German soldiers, and together seek the most honorable death that we can. May God save those we have abandoned, and may Our Lady treat us with compassion and forgiveness.”’
Maria closed the diary and placed it back in the metal box.
‘That is all,’ she said, simply. ‘The diary ends there. All the rest of these papers are letters from various members of the resistance – orders to go into hiding, mostly, and what targets they might consider striking against. Krystyna said that the Institute of History has made copies of all of them, including this diary, but they believed that as the last surviving member of my family I ought to have the originals.
Forest Ghost: A Novel of Horror and Suicide in America and Poland Page 6
