Stefan Kiesbye - Your House Is on Fire, Your Children All Gone

The carnival had closed at midnight, and we were safe from the gazes of adults. Only the carnies were still milling around the tents, and they didn’t look at us twice. What did they care about Hemmersmoor’s children?

Rico’s Journey Through Hell seemed to be deserted, the entrance locked, but after my third shout, Rico appeared from the darkness and smiled. “I didn’t say you should bring them.” He pointed at my friends. “Are you scared?” he asked me.

“I’m not scared,” I said. “I want to see the souls.”

“Of course you do,” he answered. “But first you have to earn your journey through hell.”

“How?” Alex said.

“Not you,” Rico said. “Only this one here.”

“That’s not fair,” Alex said. “I want to see hell too.”

“You don’t have anything I want,” Rico told him. His eyes opened wider, their white color as sharp as steel. Alex shrank back.

“What do you want?” I asked.

Rico was tall, taller than my dad, taller than Jens Jensen. He was also thinner than anyone in Hemmersmoor. He still wore his brown suit, and I thought I could hear his bones clatter under the rough cloth.

“That’s between the two of us,” he said.

“We want to know,” Martin insisted.

Rico looked at him for a second, and then, with a graceful bow, pulled off his right shoe. Alex and Martin ran. They abandoned me in front of Rico’s Journey Through Hell. The air now smelled of sulfur, and Rico’s eyes quieted down. He put his shoe back on, to conceal his hoof.

“You’re not running?” he said.

“I want to see hell.”

“I’ll promise I’ll show you. But first bring me the soul of your sister.”

“How do I do that?”

Rico stooped and put a glass vial in my hand. “You steal into your sister’s room and sit down on her bed. You say the words I’m going to tell you, and when her soul appears on her lips, you catch it for me.” He pressed his lips to my ear and whispered the nine words it took to call the soul.

“Why didn’t you want the souls of Alex’s and Martin’s sisters?” I asked before we parted.

“They are coarse. Their souls don’t give any light. Your sister, now, she’s different. Your sister’s soul will shine.”

“Young one,” he called me back.

“Yes?”

“You have to do it tomorrow night. We’ll meet here, and you shall see hell.”

I feigned sickness the next day and stayed undisturbed in my room. In the afternoon Alex came to visit me. “What did he want?” he asked. He was ashamed of running off the night before. I could see it. But his curiosity was stronger.

“Where is Martin?” I asked him.

“He’s at Anke’s house. He plays with her and Linde’s dolls,” he sneered. “What a coward. He’s a girl himself.” He sneered once again. “So, what did Rico want?”

“Nothing,” I said.

“Do you have to sell your soul?” Alex asked.

“No.”

“He is the devil, isn’t he?”

“Of course,” I said.

“I knew it. I knew it. This morning Old Frieda found two of her roosters dead. They had turned black, inside and out, and she said it was a sign.”

“Of course,” I said again.

“And Jens Jensen was found in a ditch, unconscious, and he claimed he’d fought with the devil, who’d come to take him.”

“Of course,” I repeated.

“They’re trying to shut Rico’s tent down, but some say they won’t take it up with the devil. They say they won’t touch him.”

“They won’t,” I said.

They didn’t. Rico’s tent stayed open, and everyone went to see hell’s wonders. As for me, I waited until Ingrid had gone to bed. At eleven I stood by her side. Cautiously I leaned over her face and listened to her breathing. Her eyelids fluttered from time to time, but she remained silent. I took my mother’s empty laundry bag and pulled it slowly over Ingrid’s face. Then I felt for her nose, pinched it shut and put my hand over her mouth. Ingrid awoke with a start and froze for a moment. Then she thrashed about. Her legs kicked out, her fingers tore into my face and scratched my cheeks. Ingrid pulled my hair and punched my nose. She twisted and turned, and I sat down on her chest and wouldn’t let her escape. Her body jerked a few times, then her fingers fell away and she lay motionless in her bed. I pulled the bag, which was made from oilskin, off her face and tied it carefully shut. Whatever it was Rico wanted from me, I had caught it in this bag.

My sister’s eyes stood open, but they remained without expression, dark, and without the faintest shimmer. I put an ear over her mouth, smoothed out her hair, and pulled the comforter over her body. But her right leg stuck out from underneath, and her foot seemed icy and green like spoiled milk. I took her big toe between my lips and sucked on it. Then I also stuffed her other toes into my mouth. I stuck my head under the comforter and under Ingrid’s nightgown. I lay on top of her body, as though I could warm her, put my head on her breast and kissed her neck. Nothing seemed enough.

When it was time to leave, I stuffed the laundry bag under my jacket and hurried out of the room. Then I climbed once again through my window and into the garden, full of fear that I might lose Ingrid’s soul.

Rico awaited me behind his tent. “Yes, you have come back. I knew,” he said.

“Of course,” I said.

“You caught it,” he said, but it sounded like a question.

“Of course.” I patted my pants’ pocket, in which I carried the empty vial. “Now show me everything.”

“I want to see it,” he demanded.

“Later,” I said.

He nodded, but couldn’t take his eyes off me. Then he shook his head and pushed open the entrance.

The walls were covered with paintings of the different chambers of hell. In one you could see sinners being stripped of their colorful clothes and pushed into vats of hot oil. Another picture showed naked sinners being cut open by hordes of devils and being hung from sharp hooks and roasted above great fires.

“Are you scared?” Rico asked.

“No,” I said. “Show me.”

He led me to several shelves of vials just like the one he had given me to capture Ingrid’s soul. They shone faintly in the relative dark of the tent. “These I keep before I toss them into my eternal flames,” Rico whispered hoarsely.

“What else have you got?” I asked.

Rico led me to a heap of bones, the remains of sinners who had died in hell’s fires. The bones were charred, blackened.

“What else?”

He took me into the farthest corner of his tent. “Here,” he said. “You can look directly into hell.” He pulled the large black cloth off a barrel and had me look inside. “It sits right above hell’s entrance,” Rico said. “Hell’s entrance is in Hemmersmoor.”

Fog and steam rose from the barrel, and as soon as I pushed my face over its opening, I could hear voices coming from deep below. The voices were mourning, lamenting their deaths, screaming in agony. “That’s hell,” Rico said. “Now you’ve seen it.”

“Yes,” I answered.

“I kept my promise,” he said. He flipped a switch and hell stopped moaning. No more steam rose from the barrel. The glass vials on the shelves stopped flickering.

“I kept mine.” I pulled the glass vial out of my pocket and handed it to him.

He stared at it intently. “It’s empty,” he said. “Didn’t you use the nine words I gave you?” His voice was coarse.

“Of course not.” I unbuttoned my jacket and handed him the laundry bag. “Words are not enough.”

His hands started to shake when he took the bag from me. “What is this?” he asked. Slowly he began to untie it.