The Vanishing of Katharina Linden

“I don’t think my parents believe in them,” I pointed out.

“Probably not,” agreed Herr Schiller equably.

“I just thought…” I paused. Would I be putting my foot in it again if I mentioned Katharina Linden? “I really want to help find Katharina,” I ventured.

Herr Schiller followed this somewhat crooked line of logic perfectly. “And you think, Fraulein Pia, that there is something unholy going on? And that is why the little girl disappeared?”

“She was weggezaubert,” I said; spirited away.

“Ach, so,” said Herr Schiller thoughtfully. He didn’t laugh at me, or tell me to stop talking nonsense.

Emboldened, I went on: “I want to see if I can find out what happened, that’s why I wanted to ask you about the weird things that have happened in the town, in case there was a clue.”

We looked at each other.

“What do you think?” I asked him cautiously.

“I think, Fraulein Pia, that you have discovered an angle that the police will not be covering in their investigation,” said Herr Schiller drily.

“Do you think so?” I asked eagerly.

“Yes, I think so.”

“Then will you help me?”

Herr Schiller studied me for a few moments; his expression was unreadable, but his eyes twinkled. Then he lifted his gnarled hands. “I am a very old man, Pia. Too old for running all over this town looking for clues-or ghosts.”

“Oh, you needn’t do any of that,” I assured him enthusiastically. “I’ll do that-and Stefan,” I added as an afterthought.

“Then how can I help you?” inquired Herr Schiller.

“Well, can you keep telling us the old stories?”

“Sicher.”

“And we’ll come and tell you what we find, and you can help us work it out.”

“I should be delighted.”

There was no time for further dialogue because my mother put her head around the living-room door, and said, “I’m terribly sorry, Herr Schiller, would you like a cup of coffee?”

“No, thank you, Frau Kolvenbach,” said Herr Schiller. He rose from the armchair and stood there for a moment, his hat in his hand, beaming down at me. “And thank you, Fraulein Pia.”

My mother looked at him quizzically; what was there to thank me for? She was somewhat mollified on the subject of the offense I had given Herr Schiller, since he had obviously come to offer an olive branch, but she was still not convinced that I was not “bothering that poor old man.” In the end she settled for, “I hope you thanked Herr Schiller for the flowers, Pia.”

“Thank you, Herr Schiller,” I parroted obediently.

Herr Schiller extended one wrinkled hand toward me, and for once in my life I was happy to shake hands with an adult: it was not like being nagged into it by Oma Kristel; it felt more like we were co-conspirators.

“Auf Wiedersehen, Pia.”

“Wiedersehen, Herr Schiller.”

Chapter Fourteen

The end of the spring term that year was a relief; three whole months of being the class pariah and unwilling consort of StinkStefan had worn me down. As March turned into April, the parental curfews slackened a little, and we were allowed to go off to the big park in the Schleidtal, or to the swimming pool, or even to take a train and go to the cinema in Euskirchen. In between, we went to Herr Schiller’s.

We listened to his tales with a renewed interest, now that the town seemed to have passed into a story all of its own-the story of the little girl dressed as Snow White, who stepped out of her life and into nothingness right in the middle of a Karneval parade. I puzzled over the details of what Herr Schiller told us, trying to fit the events of the past few months into the pattern, as though I were trying to complete a huge and complicated jigsaw puzzle without being able to see the picture on the lid of the box. Judging by Herr Schiller’s stories, Bad Munstereifel had to be one of the most haunted places in Germany, if not the whole world; monsters and ghosts and skeletons seemed to pop up in every corner.

Stefan, whose parents did not police his television viewing as strictly as mine did, had seen numerous horror films, and not just the ancient version of Nosferatu that periodically appeared on television; he had even seen Poltergeist and The Shining. As a result, his views on the subject were more developed than mine; he thought there was some evil influence working out its purpose in the town. He postulated all sorts of theories: the Lindens’ house was built on an old graveyard where the bodies of plague victims had been buried; Katharina had meddled with occult powers she did not understand, and had been carried off by them; the Linden family were under some sort of terrible curse, which led to the early demise of the eldest child in every generation.

“Herr Linden is an oldest child,” I pointed out when Stefan expounded the last of those theories. “He’s the oldest of two; Frau Holzheim is his sister. So how come he didn’t disappear when he was a kid?”

“Maybe the curse skips a generation,” suggested Stefan, undaunted.

I was not convinced, and appealed to Herr Schiller on our next visit.

“Are there any stories about curses on people?”

Herr Schiller pondered this, taking slow sips of coffee from a delicate-looking cup with yellow and gray roses on it.

“There was the knight who lived in the Alte Burg on the Quecken hill,” he suggested eventually.

“I’ve heard that one,” I said, disappointed.

“I haven’t,” Stefan pointed out. He looked eagerly at Herr Schiller; really, for someone who seemed to make himself so objectionable to his classmates, he could look wonderfully appealing to adults. Herr Schiller could not help but retell the story, in spite of my discontented expression.

“The old castle on the Quecken hill was built before the castle in the town, over one thousand years ago,” began Herr Schiller. “In the castle there lived a knight, with his wife and only son. The old knight was an avid hunter and his son shared his love of hunting; there was nothing he loved more than to ride with his hounds through the woods.

“In due course the old knight died, and without his father’s guidance the young man began to neglect his other duties in order to indulge his lust for the chase. Every day he rode forth from the castle, mounted on a fine black stallion, with his hounds baying as they streamed through the gates, and spent many hours hunting. At last, he even usurped the Lord’s Day for his pursuits.

“His mother, the old knight’s Lady, was a devout woman, and her son’s behavior wounded her very deeply. At first she tried to remonstrate with him, pointing out that if he would only fulfill his duty to God first by attending church on Sunday morning, there would still be plenty of time left for hunting afterward. But her prayers fell on deaf ears.

“At last, one Sunday morning the mother could contain herself no longer. As soon as the sun was up, her son was out in the castle courtyard preparing for the hunt. A young squire was holding on to the reins of the black stallion, who pawed the ground and blew out hard through his nose, with almost as much eagerness for the chase as his master. The hunting dogs were already baying and straining at the iron chains that held them. The young man was stalking about the courtyard impatiently, berating his servants for their tardiness.

“As he did so, a window opened above him, and his mother leaned out, to beg her son one more time to come to church. ‘The day is long enough for hunting afterward,’ she cried. But once again her son refused to listen. Swinging himself into the saddle of his great black horse, he signaled to the gatekeeper to open the gates. The