“What—?” It was a flashlight.
“You will need this.”
Cuza switched it on. It was German Army issue. The lens was cracked. He wondered who—
“Follow me.”
Molasar sure-footedly led the way down the winding steps that clung to the inner surface of the tower wall. He did not seem to need any light to find his way. Cuza did. He stayed close behind Molasar, keeping the flashlight beam trained on the steps before him. He wished he could take a moment to look around. For such a long time he had wanted to explore the base of the tower; until now he’d had to do so vicariously through Magda. But there was no time to drink in the details. When all this was over he promised himself to return here and do a thorough inspection on his own.
After a while they came to a narrow opening in the wall. He followed Molasar through and found himself in the subcellar. Molasar quickened his pace and Cuza had to strain to keep up. But he voiced no complaint, so thankful was he to be able to walk at all, to brave the cold without his hands losing their circulation or his arthritic joints seizing up on him. He was actually working up a sweat! Wonderful!
Off to his right he saw light filtering down the stairway up to the cellar. He flashed his lamp to the left. The corpses were gone. The Germans must have shipped them out. Strange, their leaving the shrouds in a pile there.
Over the sound of his hurried footsteps Cuza began to hear another noise. A faint scraping. As he followed Molasar out of the large cavern that made up the subcellar and into a narrower, tunnel-like passage, the sound became progressively louder. He trailed Molasar through various turns until, after one particularly sharp left, Molasar stopped and beckoned Cuza to his side. The scraping sound was loud, echoing all about them.
“Prepare yourself,” Molasar said, his expression unreadable. “I have made certain use of the remains of the dead soldiers. What you see next may offend you, but it was necessary to retrieve my talisman. I could have found another way, but I found this convenient…and fitting.”
Cuza doubted there was much Molasar could do with the bodies of German soldiers that would offend him.
He then followed him into a large hemispherical chamber with a roof of icy living rock and a dirt floor. A deep excavation had been sunk into the middle of that floor. And still the scraping. Louder. Where was it coming from?
Cuza looked about, the beam from his flashlight reflecting off the glistening walls and ceiling, diffusing a glow throughout the chamber.
He noticed movement near his feet and all around the periphery of the excavation. Small movements. He gasped. Rats! Hundreds of rats surrounded the pit, squirming and jostling one another, agitated…expectant…
Cuza saw something much larger than a rat crawling up the wall of the excavation. He stepped forward and pointed the flashlight directly into the pit—and almost dropped it. It was like looking into one of the outer rings of Hell. Feeling suddenly weak, he lurched away from the edge and pressed his shoulder against the nearest wall to keep from toppling over. He closed his eyes and panted like a dog on a stifling August day, trying to calm himself, trying to hold down his rising gorge, trying to accept what he had seen.
Dead men…in the pit…ten of them, all in German uniforms of either gray or black, all moving about—even the one without the head!
Cuza opened his eyes again. In the hellish half light that suffused the chamber he watched one of the corpses crawl crablike up the side of the pit and throw an armful of dirt over the far edge, then slide back down to the bottom.
Cuza pushed himself away from the wall and staggered to the edge for another look.
They appeared not to need their eyes, for they never looked at their hands as they dug in the cold hard earth. Their dead joints moved stiffly, awkwardly, as if resisting the power that impelled them, yet they worked tirelessly, in utter silence, surprisingly efficient despite their ataxic movements. The scuffling and shuffling of their boots, the scraping of their bare hands on the near frozen soil as they deepened and widened the excavation…the noise rose and echoed off the walls and ceiling of the chamber, eerily amplified.
Suddenly, the noise stopped, gone as if it had never been. They had all halted their movements and now stood perfectly still.
Molasar spoke beside him. “My talisman lies buried beneath the last few inches of soil. You must remove it from the earth.”
“Can’t they—?” Cuza’s stomach turned at the thought of going down there.
“They are too clumsy.”
Looking pleadingly at Molasar, he asked, “Couldn’t you unearth it yourself? I’ll take it anywhere you want me to after that.”
Molasar’s eyes blazed with impatience. “It is part of your task! A simple one! With so much at stake do you balk now at dirtying your hands?”
“No! No, of course not! It’s just…” He glanced again at the corpses.
Molasar followed his gaze. Although he said nothing, made no signal, the corpses began to move, turning simultaneously and crawling out of the pit. When they were all out, they stood in a ring along its edge. The rats crawled around and over their feet. Molasar’s eyes swung back to Cuza.
Without waiting to be told again, Cuza eased himself over the edge and slid along the damp dirt to the bottom. He balanced the flashlight on a rock and began to scrape away the loose earth at the nadir point of the conical pit. The cold and the filth didn’t bother his hands. After the initial revulsion at digging in the same spot as the corpses, he found he actually enjoyed being able to work with his hands again, even at so menial a task as this. And he owed it all to Molasar. It was good to sink his fingers into the earth and feel the soil come away in chunks. It exhilarated him and he increased his pace, working feverishly.
His hands soon contacted something other than dirt. He pulled at it and unearthed a square packet, perhaps a foot long on each side and a few inches thick. And heavy—very heavy. He pulled off the half-rotted cloth wrapper and then unfolded the coarse fabric that made up the inner packing.
Something bright, metallic, and heavy lay within. Cuza caught his breath—at first he thought it was a cross. But that couldn’t be. It was an almost-cross, designed along the same eccentric lines as the thousands laid into the walls of the keep. Yet none of those could compare with this one. For here was the original, an inch thick all around, the template on which all the others had been modeled. The upright was rounded, almost cylindrical and, except for a deep slot in its top, appeared to be of solid gold. The crosspiece looked like silver. He studied it briefly through the lower lenses of his bifocals but could find no designs or inscriptions.
Molasar’s talisman—the key to his power. It stirred Cuza with awe. There was power in it—he could feel a strange energy surge into his hands as he held it. He lifted it for Molasar to see and thought he detected a glow around it—or was that merely a reflection of the flashlight beam off its bright surface?
“I’ve found it!”
He could not see Molasar above but noticed the animated corpses backing away as he lifted the crosslike object over his head.
“Molasar! Do you hear me?”
“Yes.” The voice seemed to come from somewhere back in the tunnel. “My power now resides in your hands. Guard it carefully until you have hidden it where no one will find it.”
Exhilarated, Cuza tightened his grip on the talisman. “When do I leave? And how?”
“Within the hour—as soon as I have finished with the German interlopers. They must all pay now for invading my keep.”
The pounding on the door was accompanied by someone’s calling his name. It sounded like Sergeant Oster’s voice…on the verge of hysteria. But Major Kaempffer was taking no chances. As he shook himself out of his bedroll, he grabbed his Luger.
“Who is it?” He let his annoyance show in his tone.
This was the second time tonight he had been disturbed. The first for that fruitless sortie across the causeway with the Jew, and now this. He glanced at his watch: almost
four o’clock! It would be light soon. What could anyone want at this hour? Unless—someone else had been killed.
“It’s Sergeant Oster, sir.”
“What is it this time?” Kaempffer said, opening the door. One look at the sergeant’s white face and he knew something was terribly wrong. More than just another death.
“It’s the captain, sir…Captain Woermann—”
“It got him?”
Woermann? Murdered? An officer?
“He killed himself, sir.”
Kaempffer stared at the sergeant in mute shock, recovering only with great effort.
“Wait here.”
Kaempffer closed the door and hurriedly pulled on his trousers, slipped into his boots, and threw his uniform jacket over his undershirt without bothering to button it. Then he returned to the door.
“Take me to him.”
As he followed Oster through the disassembled portions of the keep, Kaempffer realized that the thought of Klaus Woermann killing himself disturbed him more than if he had been murdered like all the rest. It wasn’t in Woermann’s makeup. People do change, but Kaempffer could not imagine the teenager who had singlehandedly sent a company of British soldiers running in the last war to become a man who would take his own life in this war, no matter what the circumstances.
Still…Woermann was dead. The only man who could point to him and say “Coward!” had been rendered forever mute.
That was worth everything Kaempffer had endured since his arrival at this charnel house. And there was a special satisfaction to be gained from the manner of Woermann’s death. The final report would hide nothing: Captain Klaus Woermann would go down on record as a suicide. A disgraceful death, worse than desertion. Kaempffer would give much to see the look on the faces of the wife and the two boys Woermann had been so proud of—what would they think of their father, their hero, when they heard the news?
Instead of leading him across the courtyard to Woermann’s quarters, Oster made a sharp right turn that led Kaempffer down the corridor to where he had imprisoned the villagers on the night of his arrival. The area had been partially dismantled during the past few days. They made the final turn and there was Woermann.
He hung by a thick rope, his body swaying gently as if in a breeze; but the air was still. The rope had been thrown over an exposed ceiling beam and tied to it. Kaempffer saw no stool and wondered how Woermann had got himself up there. Perhaps he had stood on one of the piles of stone block here and there…
…the eyes. Woermann’s eyes bulged in their sockets. For an instant Kaempffer had the impression that the eyes shifted as he approached, then realized it was just a trick of the light from the bulbs along the ceiling.
He stopped before the dangling form of his fellow officer. Woermann’s belt buckle swung two inches in front of Kaempffer’s nose. He looked up at the engorged, puffed face, purple with stagnant blood.
…the eyes again. They seemed to be looking down at him. He glanced away and saw Woermann’s shadow on the wall. Its outline was the same—exactly the same—as the shadow of the hanging corpse he had seen in Woermann’s painting.
A chill ran over his skin.
Precognition? Had Woermann foreseen his death? Or had suicide been in the back of his mind all along?
Kaempffer’s exultation began to die as he realized he was now the only officer in the keep. All the responsibility from this moment on rested solely on him. In fact, he himself might be marked for death next. What was he to—?
Gunfire sounded from the courtyard.
Startled, Kaempffer wheeled, saw Oster look down the corridor, then back to him. But the questioning look on the sergeant’s face turned to one of wide-eyed horror as his gaze rose to a point above Kaempffer. The SS major was turning to see what could cause such a reaction when he felt thick, stone-cold fingers slip around his throat and begin to squeeze.
Kaempffer tried to leap away, tried to kick backward at whoever it was, but his feet struck only air. He opened his mouth to scream but no more than a strangled gurgle escaped. Pulling, clawing at the fingers that were inexorably cutting off his life, he twisted frantically to see who was attacking him. He already knew—in a horror-dimmed corner of his mind he knew. But he had to see! He twisted further, saw his attacker’s sleeve, gray, regular army gray, and he followed the sleeve back…up…to Woermann.
But he’s dead!
In desperate terror, Kaempffer began to writhe and claw at the dead hands. To no avail. He was being lifted into the air by his neck, slowly, steadily, until only his toes were touching the floor. Soon even they did not reach. He flung his arms out to Oster but the sergeant was useless. His face a mask of horror, Oster had flattened himself against the wall and was slowly inching himself away—away!—from him. He gave no sign that he even saw Kaempffer. His gaze was fixed higher, on his former commanding officer…dead…but committing murder.
Disjointed images flashed through Kaempffer’s mind, a parade of sights and sounds becoming more blurred and garbled with each thump of his slowing heart.
…gunfire continuing to echo from the courtyard, mixing with screams of pain and terror…Oster inching away down the corridor, not seeing the two walking dead men rounding the corner, one of them recognizable as einsatzkommando Private Flick, dead since his first night in the keep…Oster seeing them too late and not knowing which way to run…more shooting from without, barrages of bullets…shooting from within as Oster emptied his Schmeisser at the approaching corpses, ripping up their uniforms, rocking them backward, but doing little to impede their progress…screams from Oster as each of the corpses grabbed one of his arms to swing him headfirst toward the stone wall…the screams ending with a sickening thud as his skull cracked like an egg…
Kaempffer’s vision dimmed…sounds became muted…a prayer formed in his mind:
Oh, God! Please let me live! I’ll do anything you ask if you’ll just let me live!
A snap…a sudden fall to the floor…the hangman’s rope had broken under the weight of two bodies…but no break in the pressure on his throat…a great lethargy settled upon him…in the fading light he saw Sergeant Oster’s bloody-headed corpse rise and follow his two murderers out to the courtyard…and at the very end, in his terminal spasms, Kaempffer caught sight of Woermann’s distorted features…
…and saw a smile.
Chaos in the courtyard.
The walking corpses were everywhere, ravaging soldiers in their beds, at their posts. Bullets couldn’t kill them—they were already dead. Their horrified former comrades pumped round after round into them but the dead kept coming. And worse—as soon as one of the living was killed, the fresh corpse rose to its feet and joined the ranks of the attackers.
Two desperate, black-uniformed soldiers pulled the bar from the gate and began to swing it open; but before they could squeeze through to safety, they were caught from behind and dragged to the ground. A moment later they were standing again, arrayed with other corpses before the open gate, making sure that none of their live comrades passed through.
Abruptly all the lights went out as a wild burst of 9mm slugs slammed into the generators.
An SS corporal leaped into a jeep and started it up, hoping to ram his way to freedom; but when he slipped the clutch too quickly, the cold engine stalled. He was pulled from the seat and strangled before he could get it started again.
A private, quaking and shivering under his cot, was smothered with his bedroll by the headless corpse he had once known as Lutz.
The gunfire soon began to die off. From a continuous barrage of overlapping fusillades it diminished to random bursts, then to isolated shots. The men’s screaming faded to a lone voice wailing in the barracks. Then that, too, was cut off.
Finally, silence. All quiet as the cadavers, fresh and old, stood scattered about the courtyard, motionless, as if waiting.
Suddenly, soundlessly, all but two of them fell to the courtyard floor and lay still. The remaining pair began to move, shuffling t
hrough the entry to the cellar, leaving a tall, dark figure standing alone in the center of the courtyard, undisputed master of the keep at last.
As the fog swirled in through the open gates, inching across the stone, layering the courtyard and the inert cadavers with an undulating carpet of haze, he turned and made his way down to the subcellar.
TWENTY-EIGHT
Magda awoke with a start at the sound of gunfire from the keep. At first she feared the Germans had learned of Papa’s complicity and were executing him. But that hideous thought lasted only an instant. This was not the orderly sound of firing on command. This was the chaotic sound of a battle.
A brief battle.
Huddled on the damp ground, Magda noted that the stars had faded in the graying sky. The echoes of gunfire were soon swallowed by the chill, predawn air. Someone or something had emerged victorious over there. Magda felt sure it was Molasar.
She rose and went to Glenn’s side. His face was beaded with sweat and he was breathing rapidly. As she pulled back the blanket to check his wounds, a small cry escaped her: His body was bathed completely in the blue glow from the blade. Cautiously, she touched him. The glow didn’t burn, but it did make her hand tingle with warmth. Within the torn fabric of Glenn’s shirt she felt something hard, heavy, thimblelike. She pulled it out.
In the dim light it took her a moment to recognize the object that rolled about in her palm. It was made of lead. A bullet.
Magda ran her hands over Glenn again. She found more of them—all over him. And his wounds—there weren’t nearly so many now. The majority had disappeared, leaving only dimpled scars instead of gaping finger holes. She pulled the ripped and bloody shirt away from his abdomen to expose an area where she felt a lump beneath his skin. There to the right of the blade he clutched so tightly to his chest was an open wound with a hard lump just beneath its surface. As she watched, the lump broke through—another bullet, slowly, painfully extruding from the wound. It was as wonderful as it was terrifying: The sword blade and its glow were drawing the bullets from Glenn’s body and healing his wounds! Magda watched in awe.