Josef Herzog descended the stairs from the library to the lower floors. Though he seemed to be in the house alone, he was surrounded by a bone-numbing cold, a dread made palpable by the darkness and the midnight stillness. He felt them; felt their inexorable movement up the stairs, toward the library, drawn to the music as it blared from Karl’s small, expensive acoustic speakers; felt their need to lay hands on an earthly avatar of their suffering. They were not souls, exactly; merely the shadows of souls. Sad remains and nothing more. There would not even be rest in Karl’s end for them, merely a sort of closure. A sense of coming full circle at last.
And who knew, as the Requiem was recorded and released abroad, perhaps they might find their way to other needful listeners, other old fugitives with false names and forgotten pasts, suddenly overwhelmed by the power of a single composition; a piece of music whose sole purpose was to sicken the heart with grief, to terrify, to humiliate, and finally, to draw all meaning to its chaotic end. The common listener would feel some measure of this discomfort. Perhaps the disc wouldn’t sell very well because of it.
But the common listener would be spared the true nature of the song which Josef Herzog had been condemned to transcribe and orchestrate. He would bear the weight of those summoned soul-shades, and when his hour and end arrived, they would, no doubt, be there to greet him, and welcome him into their number.
But there was no avoiding it. It was a necessary reckoning, however costly.
Upstairs, he heard Karl floudering across the hardwood floor. Furniture pitched over and clattered across the room. A bookcase creaked and tumbled with a thunderous crash.
Rest in peace, Moshe Dureski.
At the foot of the stairs, Josef stopped. The only light came from the open door to the library upstairs, and from the streetlights outside. The lower floor of Karl’s house was dark and silent, a veil of night between the bright chamber above and the dimly lit avenue beyond the foyer and front entryway.
But there in the doorway stood a small, slight form. It was a child, no more than ten years old, and horribly underfed. Large ears stood out from his small, square head. The darkness swallowed the child’s features, but in the half-light, Josef thought he saw the long bridge of a nose, two eyes glittering, set deep in the child’s skull-like face. His paper uniform hung on him loosely, whispering the slightest in the wind that slithered through the open front door.
The child blocked Josef’s exit. He stood in the doorway, staring, silent, waiting for Josef’s next move.
Upstairs, Karl howled, the cries of a dying, maddened animal awaiting oblivion’s salvation.
Josef stared at the child, afraid to approach, even to slip past him.
The child offered one skeletal hand.
For a long time, Josef waited, staring at that outstretched, skeletal little hand. In the darkness it was a thing composed of ash and soot and smoky shadows. Then, because he knew that there was no other choice, he reached out and took the child’s hand in his. It was cold and dry, like a woodland deadfall in winter before the snow.
Hand in hand, the child led Josef Herzog into the night, Karl’s screams fading behind them.