The Vanishing of Katharina Linden

like a repeating series of Snow Whites, red lips and white, white skin, eyes shut tight as though sleeping.

“Pia? Are you coming?”

“Yes.”

“Look out, there’s no light in there.”

I followed Stefan into the space between the cupboard and the wall. He was standing in the very corner, shining his flashlight into the darkness. Now I could see what he meant about a doorway. With the cupboard masking the corner you would naturally assume that it was just that, a corner, no doubt full of lurking spiders and beetles. In fact, the far wall of the cellar did not quite meet the other wall in the corner; there was a gap wide enough for a person to pass through.

Together we peered inside. With the cupboard blocking out most of the light, it was pitch dark in there. The flashlight beam could illuminate only a little at a time, settling hesitantly here and there like a moth. We could not see to the back of the room. The floor appeared to be made of flagstones, worn smooth with age. Several of them, levered up from some spot outside the weak circle of yellow light, were stacked against the stone wall.

As I leaned into the room I could smell a difference in the air. It was subtle but noticeable, a smell I could not identify but that I thought of as an outside smell, a cool smell.

“I don’t know,” I said doubtfully.

“Don’t know what?” Stefan sounded impatient. “We might as well look now.”

He stepped into the room. Unwillingly, I followed. I found I was shivering a little in my sweater. I wished I had not left my down jacket upstairs. At any rate my dark imaginings of dead girls laid out like medieval ladies on their sarcophagi were not realized; a sweep of the beam showed nothing at all on the stone flags, not a stick of furniture, not so much as a lump of coal.

“What’s that?” I said, touching Stefan’s arm. He swung the flashlight around. Almost in the dead center of the floor was a black patch, a circle like a dark pool.

“Cool,” said Stefan loudly. His voice echoed, giving it a strangely disembodied effect. “I think it’s a well.”

“A well?”

“Yeah. Don’t you remember what Herr Schiller said about it? Ach, Quatsch, you weren’t there that day, were you? He said all the houses in Bad Munstereifel used to have one.”

“I don’t think ours does.”

“No, they sealed them all up after the war, remember?”

Dimly, I recollected something of the sort. I remembered Frau Kessel’s tale about her Great-Aunt Martha’s dog falling into the well in her house and drowning, before the well was capped in the 1940s.

We approached the hole, Stefan brandishing the flashlight like a weapon. I circled it with caution, not wanting to meet the same end as Great-Aunt Martha’s dog. We stood on each side, gazing down. Stefan was right: it was a well. About two meters below us I could see the dark glint of subterranean water. That was what I had sensed when we had entered the room: the cool smell of water flowing.

“Phew,” said Stefan with exaggerated relief.

I looked at him. “What?”

“That’s what the stones were taken up for. I was thinking…” His voice trailed off and he looked at me, his face ghostly in the light. He gave a false-sounding little laugh. “Stupid or what?” He cocked his head. “Don’t look like that. It’s OK. It’s just a well.” He leaned over it, gazing down into the dark waters. “It’s deep, too.”

“Stefan?”

“Hmm…?”

“Can we go?” I could not keep the pleading tone out of my voice. I had tired of playing detective. I was desperate to get out of the house. “I really want to go home.”

“Shut up.”

“Wie, bitte?” I was instantly enraged at his rudeness.

“Shut up.”

“You shut-” But my indignant tirade was cut off short as the flashlight suddenly went off with a click.

“What are you-?” I began, but this time when Stefan’s sharp “Shhhh!” came out of the darkness there was no mistaking the urgency in its tone.

“What are you doing? Put the light back on!” I hissed in a loud whisper. I fumbled for my own, but realized with a sinking feeling that it must be in the pocket of my jacket.

“Shhhh. I can’t.” There was a pause during which I frantically tried to make Stefan out in the darkness. “Be quiet,” ordered his disembodied voice.

“What-?”

“I think there’s somebody there.”

Fright and anger flared up inside me like twin gas jets. “You Blod-mann, don’t try to scare me!”

“I’m not trying to scare you. Listen.”

Fear seemed to have solidified in my chest like a stone, shot through with veins of disbelief. I simply could not believe that someone else was in the house with us, not after the narrow escape with Boris. The very idea made me sick with injustice. The whole universe seemed to be conspiring against us, firing off volleys at our every move. I strained to listen, willing there to be nothing.

“I don’t hear anything,” I whispered. “Put the light back on.”

“No. Just wait.”

The darkness was not quite absolute; a dim rectangle of dark gray showed the gap between the room we were in and the next, but most of the light from the other room was cut off by the cupboard in its corner. On all other sides the dark was absolute. My eyes strained to make out anything in a blackness so complete that it seemed to have a texture of its own. I imagined it as black velvety fur like Pluto’s, black fur that my outstretched fingers could almost have touched as they groped uselessly in the air. It pressed in softly and insistently from all sides, enveloping and choking me.

“Stefan-” I started, and then I heard it. A muffled but very definite thump. It sounded as though someone had tried to bounce one of the heavy balls they had in the school gym. I flailed with my hands in the air, trying to catch hold of Stefan’s shoulder, his sleeve, anything, just as long as I didn’t have to be in the dark all on my own. A moment later I heard a second thump, then a dragging pause, and then the sound was repeated. Thump. My heart seemed to pound in time with it, a sledgehammer threatening to shatter its cage of ribs.

“O Gott. What are we going to do?” I quavered. The sound had to be coming from the cellar we had just passed through-hadn’t it? It must be disorientation from the darkness that made me think it came from somewhere behind me, somewhere in the black depths of the unlit room. Since we could not escape through the cellar we must try to hide ourselves here. But how?

“Stay still,” whispered Stefan.

Stupidly I nodded, forgetting that he could not see me. I swallowed, and it was like swallowing a mouthful of dust. I did my best to stay absolutely motionless, but it was not like playing some sort of children’s game, trying not to blink while someone walked around you looking for involuntary movements. Now my pose felt more like the painful rigidity of a muscle spasm. My right leg was trembling so violently that the sole of my boot made soft sounds on the stone floor. Out of the darkness came a rasping sound like someone clearing their throat. The next second something brushed past my calf with muscular intent. Hot panic seethed through me like acid. With a scream that scoured my throat I lunged away from the unseen thing, and suddenly found myself plunging forward into space. I had stepped over the edge of the well.

Instinctively, I raised my arms to protect myself from the impact against the opposite side. My right forearm hit the stone with such force that pain ricocheted up to my shoulder in a blazing trail, then I felt myself falling backward for what seemed like an interminable time. At last I hit the water.

It was shockingly cold. I went right under, and then struggled my way to the surface, my clothes soaked and heavy, my right arm throbbing with pain. I put my hands out to find the sides of the well and touched nothing. With a titanic effort I lifted my waterlogged arms out of the water, treading water frantically, but I couldn’t feel anything above me either.

A sudden horrible vision streaked across my mind-I had fallen into an enormous subterranean lake, limitless in all directions. I would flail about in it until exhaustion and the weight of my sodden clothes dragged me under. I