Descendant

“How many of them?”

“Two. A German called Pelz and a Romanian called Duca.”

“Is Duca the dead one?”

“Dead? What do you mean? He’s not dead.”

“What I’m asking you is — is Duca strigoi vii or strigoi mort?”

“I still don’t understand what you mean.”

Corporal Little said, “Sounds like this guy doesn’t even know half of what he was getting himself into.”

“Oh, I think he has the general idea. It’s just that they didn’t fill him in on all the gory details. They promised you that you’d live forever, didn’t they? That’s what they said. They said you were going to be a hero, and turn back the tide of the war. I’ll bet they offered to pay your family a fortune, too. Take care of your folks and your girlfriend.”

“What are you going to do now?” asked the Screecher.

“What do you think I’m going to do now?”

“You said you could give me back the life I had before.”

“Did I? Did I really say that?”

“You promised me that if I told you where my friends were, you would let me go.”

“Well, that was very stupid of me, wouldn’t you say? Because I have no way of checking if your friends are really where you say they are, or not.”

“I swear that I am telling you the truth. Seventy-one Schilderstraat. Fourth floor, in the attic.”

“What’s your name?” I asked him.

“Ernst. Ernst. Hauser,” he said, almost as if he could barely remember.

“Where do you come from?”

“Drensteinfurt. It’s a village near Munster, in West-falen. Why?”

“After the war, I want to write your family, and tell them where you died. I think they deserve that much. Not how you died, of course. They wouldn’t want to know that. But where.”

“You’re really going to kill me, aren’t you?”

I nodded. “It’s what I do, Ernst. It’s what I came here for.”

Corporal Little handed me the mallet and one of the nails. I positioned the nail so that the point was only a half-inch away from the Screecher’s eyeball.

“I can’t tell you that I regret doing this,” I told him. “The plain truth is that I don’t.”

The Stations of the Cross

Father Antonius opened the small garden door at the side of Sint Paulus Kirk, on the corner of Veemarkt and Zwartzusterstraat, and the hinges shuddered as if they were in pain. Father Antonius was bald and almost comically ugly, with enormous ears and drooping jowls, so that he looked as if he were distantly related to Frank.

“I didn’t expect you so soon, Captain,” he told me, in a thick, phlegmy voice. “In fact, to be truthful, I didn’t expect you at all.”

“Well, God was on our side and we caught up with one of them at the Zoo.”

“You’ve —?” asked Father Antonius, making a cutthroat gesture with his finger.

“We have his body in the back of the Jeep. Is it OK to bring it in?”

Father Antonius didn’t look at all happy, but he said, “Yes, we agreed. So, yes. I will make sure that we bury it right away.”

Corporal Little and I went back to the Jeep. Between us, we lifted the rough hessian sack off the backseat and carried it through the gates and into the Calvary Garden. At this time of the night, the garden was a deeply unsettling place to visit, not only because of its Gothic arches and its dark shadowy corners, but because it was crowded with sixty-three life-sized statues depicting Christ’s journey to the cross, culminating in a crucifixion on top of a stone mound. The figures stared at us blindly as we shuffled between them like a pair of grave-robbers. The sack in which we had tied up the Screecher’s body swung heavily between us, and my end of it was soaked in blood.

Up above us, searchlights flicked nervously across the sky, although the night was unusually quiet, and there was no sound of bomber engines or artillery fire.

“Here,” said Father Antonius, pointing to an open area of grass. “If you leave him here, we will do the rest.”

“Thank you, Father.” I lowered my end of the sack and wiped my hands on my handkerchief. “There may be two more. We’ve been given an address but we’re not yet sure if it’s genuine.”

Father Antonius crossed himself. “I wish you God’s protection in your work. I don’t pretend to understand what you are doing. I don’t even know if I believe in such things. But these have been terrible days, and anything which can help to bring them to an end. ”

A bitter wind was blowing across the Calvary Garden as we walked back between the silent stone figures, and dead leaves rattled against the walls. Corporal Little said, “When are we going after the other two, sir?”

“Not until it gets light. If they’re hiding where Ernst said they were hiding, I don’t think that they’ll have tried to make a break for it yet. They’re probably still waiting for poor old Ernst to come back.”

We closed the garden gate behind us and climbed in the Jeep. On the floor in front of the backseats was a cardboard box which had originally contained cans of condensed milk. One corner of the box was stained dark brown.

“Let’s just make sure that he never can come back, shall we?”

Frank barked and shook his head so that his ears made a flapping noise.

Ground Zero

I slept until well past oh-seven-hundred hours, which I hadn’t done for months. Most nights I had terrifying dreams about shadows chasing after me, and I woke up with a jolt while it was still dark. One of the hotel maids tapped on my door and came in with a pot of coffee and two bread rolls with red plum preserve. She was a shy young girl, plump, with a pattern of moles on her cheek.

“What’s your name?” I asked her. I could see myself in the closet mirror and my hair was sticking up like a cockatoo.

“Hilda,” she whispered.

“Well, Hilda, maybe you could open the drapes for me so that I can see what kind of a day it is.”

“It’s raining, sir. It’s a bad-luck day.”

“A bad-luck day? What makes you say that?”

“It’s Friday the thirteenth.”

“You’re not superstitious, are you?”

She shook her head, but then she said, “One of the girls downstairs thinks that you’re a tovenaar.”

Tovenaar is Flemish for a black magician. The girl must have seen my Bibles and my crucifixes and all the paraphernalia of Screecher-hunting.

“No, I’m not a tovenaar. Tell her I’m a goochelaar.” A goochelaar is a conjuror, the kind who pulls rabbits out of opera hats and strings of colored bunting out of his ears.

“Yes, sir.” She tugged back the heavy velvet curtains and she was right. The sky was gloomy and the window was speckled with raindrops. “You should be careful today, sir.”

“I’m always careful. Here.” I reached over to the ashtray on my night-table and fished out a couple of francs