F. Paul Wilson - The Keep

An instant's confusion: What day was it? And what time? Magda glanced at the clock. Five minutes to five. Impossible! She had already been up for fifteen or twenty minutes. It must have stopped during the night. Yet when she picked it up she could feel the mechanism ticking away within. Strange...

Two quick steps took her to the window on the other side of the dresser. A peek behind the heavy shade revealed a dark and quiet Bucharest, still asleep.

Magda looked down at herself and saw she was still in her nightgown, the blue flannel one, tight at the throat and sleeves and loose all the way down to the floor. Her breasts, although not large, jutted out shamelessly under the soft, warm, heavy fabric, free of the tight undergarments that imprisoned them during the day. She quickly folded her arms over them.

Magda was a mystery to the community. Despite her soft, even features, her smooth, pale skin and wide brown eyes, at thirty-one she remained unmarried. Magda the scholar, the devoted daughter, the nursemaid. Magda the spinster. Yet many a younger woman who was married would have envied the shape and texture of those breasts: fresh, unmarred, unsuckled, untouched by any hand but her own. Magda felt no desire to alter that.

Her father's voice broke through her reverie.

"Magda! What are you doing?"

She glanced at the half-filled suitcase on the bed and the words sprang unbidden to her mind. "Packing us some warm clothes, Papa!"

After a brief pause her father said, "Come in here so I don't wake up the rest of the building with my shouting."

Magda made her way quickly through the dark to where her father lay. It took but a few steps. Their street-level apartment consisted of four rooms—two bedrooms side by side, a tiny kitchen with a wood-burning stove, and a slightly larger front room that served as foyer, living room, dining room, and study. She sorely missed their old house, but they had had to move in here six months ago to make the most of their savings, selling off the furniture that didn't fit. They had affixed the family mezuzah to the inside of the apartment's doorpost instead of the outside. Considering the temper of the times, that seemed wise.

One of her father's Gypsy friends had carved a small patrin circle on the outer surface of the door. It meant "friend."

The tiny lamp on the nightstand to the right of her father's bed was lit; a high-backed wooden wheelchair sat empty to the left. Pressed between the white covers of his bed like a wilted flower folded into the pages of a scrapbook lay her father. He raised a twisted hand, gloved in cotton as always, and beckoned, wincing at the pain the simple gesture caused him. Magda grasped the hand as she sat down beside him, massaging the fingers, hiding her own pain at seeing him fade away a little each day.

"What's this about packing?" he asked, his eyes bright in the tight, sallow glow of his face. He squinted at her. His glasses lay on the nightstand and he was virtually blind without them. "You never told me about leaving."

"We're both going," she replied, smiling.

"Where?"

Magda felt her smile falter as confusion came over her again. Where were they going? She realized she had no firm idea, only a vague impression of snowy peaks and chill winds.

"The Alps, Papa."

Her father's lips parted in a toothy smile that threatened to crack the parchment-like skin stretched so tightly over his facial bones.

"You must have been dreaming, my dear. We're going nowhere. I certainly won't be traveling far—ever again. It was a dream. A nice dream, but that's all. Forget it and go back to sleep."

Magda frowned at the crushed resignation in her father's voice. He had always been such a fighter. His illness was sapping more than his strength. But now was no time to argue with him. She patted the back of his hand and reached for the string on the bedside lamp.

"I guess you're right. It was a dream." She kissed him on the forehead and turned out the light, leaving him in darkness.

Back in her room, Magda studied the partially packed suitcase waiting on the bed. Of course it had been a dream that had made her think they were going somewhere. What else could it be? A trip anywhere was out of the question.

Yet the feeling remained ... such a dead certainty that they were going somewhere north, and soon. Dreams weren't supposed to leave such definite impressions. It gave her an odd, uncomfortable feeling ... like tiny cold fingers running lightly along the skin of her arms.

She couldn't shake the certainty. And so she closed the suitcase and shoved it under the bed, leaving the straps unfastened and the clothes inside ... warm clothes... it was still cold in the Alps this time of year.

SIX

The Keep

Wednesday, 23 April

0622 hours

It was hours before Woermann could sit with Sergeant Oster and have a cup of coffee in the mess. Private Grunstadt had been carried to a room and left alone there. He had been placed in his bedroll after being stripped and washed by two of his fellow privates. He had apparently wet and soiled his clothes before going into his delirium.

"As near as I can figure it," Oster was saying, "the wall collapsed and one of those big blocks of stone must have landed on the back of his neck and torn his head off."

Woermann sensed that Oster was trying to sound very calm and analytical, but inside was as confused and shocked as everybody else.

"As good an explanation as any, I suppose, barring a medical examination. But it still doesn't tell us what they were up to down there, and it doesn't explain Grunstadt's condition."

"Shock."

Woermann shook his head. "That man has been through battle. I know he's seen worse. I can't accept shock as the whole answer. There's something else."

He had arrived at his own reconstruction of the events of the preceding night. The stone block with its vandalized cross of gold and silver, the belt around Lutz's ankle, the shaft into the wall ... it all indicated that Lutz had crawled into the shaft expecting to find more gold and silver at its end. But all that was there was a small, empty, blind cubicle ... like a tiny prison cell... or hiding place. He could think of no good reason why there should be any space there at all.

"They must have upset the balance of the stones in the wall by removing that one at the bottom," Oster said. "That's what caused the collapse."

"I doubt that," Woermann replied, sipping his coffee for warmth as well as for stimulation. "The cellar floor, yes: That weakened and fell into the subcellar. But the corridor wall..." He remembered the way the stones had been scattered about the corridor, as if blown out by an explosion. He could not explain that. He set his coffee cup down. Explanations would have to wait.

"Come. Work to do." He headed for his quarters while Oster went to make the twice daily radio call to the Ploiesti defense garrison. The sergeant was instructed to report the casualty as an accidental death.

The sky was light as Woermann stood at the rear window of his quarters and looked down on the courtyard, still in shadow. The keep had changed. There was an unease about it. Yesterday the keep had been nothing more than an old stone building. Now it was more. Each shadow seemed deeper and darker than before, and sinister in some unfathomable way.

He blamed it on predawn malaise and on the shock of death so near at hand. Yet as the sun finally conquered the mountaintops on the far side of the pass, chasing the shadows and warming the stone walls of the keep, Woermann had the feeling that the light could not banish what was wrong. It could only drive it beneath the surface for a while.

The men felt it, too. He could see that. But he was determined to keep their spirits up. When Alexandra arrived this morning, he would send him back immediately for a cartload of lumber. There were cots and tables to be made. Soon the keep would be filled with the healthy sound of hammers in strong hands driving good nails into seasoned wood. He walked to the window facing the causeway. Yes, there was Alexandra and his two boys now. Everything was going to be all right.