Needles & Sins (26 page)

When the voices outside had stilled, she came to me a third time.

“It hurts,” she whispered. “Every time they die, he hurts me.”

“Who?” I whispered. I knew the others might hear. “Who hurts you?”

“The mean man,” she said. Tears flowed down her cheeks and she rubbed her eyes with pudgy unsoiled fists. “I just want to go home. Please let me go home. I can hear momma calling, but I can’t find her.”

“How?” I asked. “Just tell me how.”

She leaned in close, and did. I was resigned, but not at all surprised to find out that it required more blood. My life revolved around death.

The next morning at dawn, Dietz marshaled our little company to march. We headed straight into the thickest line of the enemy. He didn’t care. “The more souls we take early, the faster our wave will grow,” he explained. “Long live the Reich!” he added, and automatically, ten fists rose in the air.

We marched.

It didn’t take long for the screams to start.

There is no way of explaining the horror of the next hour. The act of murder is a terrible, life-altering moment. It was an act we, as soldiers, were conditioned to enact, again and again. Our own lives shivered in the balance each time like hung laundry shaking in the wind. But there is something different in the murder our tiny company brought. The act of combat entails a horrible price, but somehow it is honorable. Both warriors risk death in the support of their side. But we….we didn’t risk anything. We only stood there, gleeful, for the most part, in our assured victory. Meanwhile, our enemy rushed us only to inexplicably slow as victory was in their grasp, stop and finally turn upon themselves. I could see the change in their eyes as the scopes of their battle bloodlust switched from us to their countrymen as targets. A part of their gaze froze, appalled and anguished, as the rest of their faces turned without remorse to fratricide. I turned away after the first men bludgeoned their friends with the stocks of their rifles. Brains joined kidneys on the ground in a broken stew as they beat and stabbed their way into hell.

This was not war. It was a mockery. There were no winners in this scenario. Only evil.

And Dietz’s thin grin grew and grew with every act of maniacal murder. His prophecy about growing power was coming true. Now he merely waved an arm at a group of men and they instantly turned their rifles from us to each other. And the range of his influence grew farther and farther afield, just as its breadth widened. By noon he was leading us across a battle field that had been trenched and dug in by the enemy for months. We had been unable to break the line just days before. But now, within moments of our walking near, there were screams from a mile away and echoes of gunfire that only destroyed brothers. As we walked, untouched through bloody mud while all around us men stabbed and beat and shot each other with insane intensity, my stomach sickened.

It had to end before his power grew any further. It had to end before there would be no one left to fight him. It had to end to set an innocent German girl free. Maybe the first girl who’d ever counted on me.

We walked for miles on that day, and killed hundreds of soldiers just by our mere presence. The devil was on our side, and he took great glee in threshing the weak souls and flesh of men.

“At this rate,” Dietz said, “We will give the Fuhrer all of Europe within the month.”

“We can’t walk from here to the English Channel in a month,” I complained.

“We won’t need to,” he said. “Our power precedes us. Watch this!”

Dietz pointed the horizon, and I shrugged. “Do you see the man?” he asked.

I looked harder, and this time saw the form slinking up and around bushes and trees to keep himself hidden from the German forces. He was but an ant on the farthest field.

“Ahhh, you see him now,” Dietz confirmed. Then he raised his hand and pointed and the black dot suddenly disappeared. Then it reappeared. And then, I heard a faint single retort of a gun. And the black dot disappeared for good. The soldier had shot himself.

Kretz laughed. “Now
that
, is warfare!” he said.

Under my breath, I whispered otherwise. “No,” I said. “That is murder.”

We camped that night under the eerie canopy of the Black Forest yet again. I felt a calming balm in its leafy embrace, and longed for another time. A time when I believed in our war, and believed if I killed the men in uniforms that were not German, that God would support us and keep us strong until we took what was ours. What we wanted.

I don’t think it would ever have been enough. And perhaps I’m kidding myself about ever feeling that way.

We found another small village on the edge of the forest that night, and stayed in a tiny, broken down inn. I don’t think anyone other than us had stayed there in weeks. The owners seemed pleased to help us. Unusally so.

The owner was a fat, greasy man who bowed after every sentence. You would have thought he was from the Orient, but he was just another sycophant, who would suck up to any coin. And it looked like it had been awhile since he’d hosted paying guests.

His daughter pranced about the rough planked dining room, pigtails flying like nascent wings. She seemed a happy thing for one living in such obvious poverty. The soup her father served was barely more than water and salt.

Dietz watched the girl, and I could see the ideas blooming beneath that pallid evil skin. It didn’t take long for them to crystallize.

“We need another sacrifice,” he said as the girl ran up to him and he ruffled her hair with cold fingers.

“I think we made several hundred today,” I pointed out.

“No, not kills,” he corrected. “A sacrifice. Innocent blood.”

Again he smiled at the little girl.

“Our allegiance to Satan must constantly be re-stated. Soldiers would likely be his at the end of their lives anyway, we’re just sending them early. But children… They make him very pleased.”

“May I show you something,” Dietz asked the little girl, Emmie, after dinner. Her father grinned at us from the kitchen. He was probably used to any strangers making a fuss over his little daughter. And soldiers were no doubt lonely for their families back home. She would remind them of a kid sister. He thought nothing of the advance. But I knew.

One by one we faded from the table and followed the two up hard plank stairs to our rooms. Dietz took the girl to the corner where our gear was stowed. She giggled as he showed her his rifle, and jumped up and down when he offered to take the weapon apart. She giggled more as he poured bullets into her hand, and then loosed the stabbing knife from the gun’s tip.

“This is for Germany,” he whispered for our benefit, and motioned for us to gather around. Then he said some ancient words as Kretz stroked the girl’s head. She rolled the bullets in her hand like marbles, ignorant of her plight, and Schuster and I stepped in to close the dark circle.

“Do we really have to…” Lichtmann said, and the look Dietz gave him could have curdled milk.

“Do you want to win the war for our fatherland?” he hissed. “This is the only way. Our borders have fallen, our troops collapsed and retreated. Der Fuhrer is in hiding and our Reich is in ruins. This is for Germany,” he repeated, and raised the knife.

“Cover her eyes at least,” I begged. Dietz nodded, and Kretz pulled out a hankerchief.

“Let’s play a game,” Dietz said, and the girl grinned, cheeks blushing in excitement, eyes alight with energy. We may have been the first guests to play with her in weeks. She couldn’t restrain her happiness. And we were here to kill her.

“First we close your eyes,” Dietz said, honey oozing lightly through his tone. “Then we lay you here on the bed…”

She followed his instruction like a lamb, and my eyes teared as I saw her straw-bright hair spread out across the pillow. Killing men sworn to war is hard, but acceptable. We all donned our uniforms knowing the price was life—ours or our enemy’s. It’s a very different thing to take the life of a child who lays down to play a game.

Again Dietz spoke in an ancient tongue and raised the knife.

He may have had the power of Satan, but that did not include omniscience. He looked very surprised when the blood suddenly exploded like a cloud from his chest, and the report of my pistol echoed like God’s own fury through the tiny inn. From down below, I heard the fat innkeeper calling Emmie’s name in panic.

“
This
is for Germany…” I said, and shot him again as he raised a hand to hex me. This time his head disintegrated in a spray of blood and eyes and bone to paint the room in a gruesome spatter.

“…the Germany I once loved,” I whispered, as the hands of Kretz and Schuster grabbed me and began to beat me down to the ground in hatred.

“What have you done?” Kretz screamed just as the innkeeper burst through the door and ran, stepping over the fallen remains of Dietz to lift his daughter from the bed. His eyes went wide as he saw the blood and the body and the men battering me with fists and rifle stocks. But when his baby was in his arms, tiny hands clinging to his neck, he left us to our own disintegration and ran from the room. His departure gave me the chance I needed, and I rolled away from the beating. Just then, Lichtmann opened fire on Kretz and Schuster. Blood sprayed from their chests and faces, and in that moment time suspended, and the air was filled with suspended wet rubies.

The little girl bent down from heaven to kiss my lips with ghostly warmth. In my ear she whispered one thing as Lichtmann continued to fire again and again into the jerking, jittering corpses of the Devil’s Trinity. My face and hands warmed with the splatter of their death.

“Thank you,” the waif whispered. “I won’t forget you. I found momma.”

Before the bodies had fully stilled on the planks, Lichtmann dropped the smoking gun and ran for the door. I was quick to follow, but by the time I rolled from the floor, leapt down the stairs and passed the cowering innkeeper in the dining room on my way out, the private was already lost in the fog. I looked around for him a bit, hoping to thank him for saving my life, and then stumbled myself into the black shadows of the forest once more.

I lived on berries and streamwater for days. I don’t know where Lichtmann went. I didn’t stick around to thank him, I only knew I had to get as far from Dietz and the devil as I could. When I finally found my way back to a tiny village five days later, I learned that Der Fuhrer had shot himself. Five days before.

The Reich was done. The troops retreating faster than ever. Ironically, Dietz, and the devil, had apparently been our only hope. Thanks to me, thanks to my weak heart, Germany was now, without any doubt, losing the war.

But I couldn’t believe that winning a war was worth the life of a child. I pray to God that he agrees. And I pray that he’ll forgive me for my moment of desperation.

The devil was on our side. And I never want to stand next to him again. Every night I kneel and pray, as the Germany I once knew collapses all around me. I know they’ll never talk about the hundreds of Allied troops who for a couple days, near the dark entrance to the Black Forest, slaughtered each other mercilessly. Nobody will ever talk about the week that Germany almost turned the war around in a fit of blackest magic.

But now I wonder…what if God was the one on our side, and wanted Hitler to win? How could God have forsaken us so badly that our only hope was Satan? All I can do is pray. Pray that he’ll forgive me for helping to kill the girl. Pray that he’ll forgive me for murdering Dietz. But sometimes, I’m not sure which of my actions to apologize for. The girl is still dead, and despite her sacrifice, and because of Dietz’s, Germany now falls.

All I can do now is hide here, in the sheltering valleys of endless trees. Perhaps the Lorelei will call to me, at last. Until then, I kneel, and pray.

“Oh my God, I am heartily sorry, for having offended thee…”

— | — | —

Here we are.

Be patient. Wait a moment, and it will all become clear to you.

It’s 6:30 p.m. and the golden glow of kitchen lights are clicking off one by one as the men are slipping home after long days at the stockyards and the insurance companies and the morgues. Those long days at work are heaven compared to the long nights at home.

The sweet perfume of burning flesh slinks in a fog through the heavy summer air, accompanied by the clatter of pots and the ringing tinkle of crashing glass. The casual walker might traverse this street thinking he heard and smelled the echoes of dinner in the wind.

Of course, any casual walker here would likely never taste dinner again.

On the west side of the street, a washing machine repairman staggers drunkenly forward, tool kit dipping dangerously close to the earth with each step. As he teeters onto the roadway, a Dodge Neon revs around the corner and clips him on the hip with its ever-smiling headlights (“Hi,” it seems to say). He cries out, just a despairing bark, really, and spins like a top on the curb before moving on once again, this time back in the direction he’d just left.

He nears the bend at Mrs. Jacob’s house and trips on the folded slabs of topsy turvy sidewalk there. The gnarled elm has dredged the concrete up from the earth in its own scrabbling attempt to remain upright—or perhaps it moves the walkway to escape the rotting bodies festering beneath its trunk. But despite the desperate nails of its roots against the cement, its upper limbs remain bent low, and scrape painfully on the ground. Deep in the night, you can hear it clearly behind any of the windows facing the street…
screeeach, scraaatch, screeeach, scraaatch.