1
W
henever the bombers came sweeping over the city to carpet the streets with shelled death, Josef Amsel would indulge in the strangest of the many strange rituals with which he filled his solitary existence: he would saunter outside of his narrow boarding house and wander amidst the raining bombs, contemplating his destiny.
The first time he’d gone out for one of these perilous strolls was during a particularly low point in his life. He’d been plagued by feelings of isolation, of loneliness, and his financial situation was dire. During that inaugural Blitz-time saunter, Josef would have welcomed annihilation, and was in all likelihood
courting
it. But in the fourteen months since that fiery night when Josef returned to his room breathless, basted in sweat, and almost drunk from the dangers he’d faced, he’d made several positive changes in his life.
Some fortuitous hands of poker had enabled Josef to pay off a fair sum of his debt (he retired from gambling before his luck could sour again), and although he was still a bachelor, he was now content to remain so. Thus, his wartime walks were now more rooted in what Josef called “Communicating with the Fates” than in suicidal tendencies.
So, on the night of October 7, Josef giddily flung back his bedcovers the instant he felt the familiar rumble rock his home. He hurriedly dressed to the music of the encroaching explosions. Just before exiting his room, he inserted the earplugs he’d fashioned for himself out of an old washing sponge. These he wore not to soften the noise of the bombs, but to mute the cries from his neighbours or from any soldiers he would encounter.
“Go home, you damned fool!” they would shout. “Are you mad? Run for cover, you idiot!” But he refused to heed them, opting instead to listen to the guiding voices inside his head. It instructed him to veer left or go straight. It directed him to the various treasures that lay buried under all that broken stone.
Josef liked to believe that these voices belonged to spirits, and that the destroyed cities were Halls of the Dead. Such games reminded him of the tales his mother had told in order to decorate his childhood; stories of Fairyland, of child-munching witches, of Cruel Frederick giddily maiming his pets.
Cherishing these gifts as he did, Josef also carried another remnant of his mother, one that was not quite so prosaic. It had been an errant wish of hers, one she’d fervently harboured since she was a girl: “I would very much like to meet the Devil in person,” she used to tell her son in whisper. “I believe . . . yes, I truly believe that He would be the most fascinating creature one could ever know.”
Josef’s mother had perished from influenza when he was only twelve, and he was still saddened by the fact that she had died with her grandest desire unfulfilled. She had been right: of this Josef was certain. Surely none would be more fascinating.
The sky was an embankment of tomb-grey clouds, occasionally backlit by bomb-fire; a sight Josef found rather pretty in its own way. He wondered if there were shrieked pleas coming from behind curtained windows, beyond bolted doors.
He rounded a corner onto Münsterstraße just as a building lost its form in a mushroom of flame and smoke. Josef lifted an arm to shield himself from any flying glass, for although he was a confirmed bachelor, he was still fond of his appearance. When gravity coasted the last of the debris earthward, Josef carried on his way.
By the time he neared the end of the sloping road he was afraid that the Blitz had already begun to drift further east, making tonight’s Communication very scant indeed. Why, he’d scarcely had time to contemplate his future before the bomber planes departed.
Wishing to wring the night of every ounce of inspiration, Josef negotiated the ruins in search of casualties; a practice that always gave him a renewed appreciation for life. Whenever he managed to come upon a broken, lifeless person lying amidst the steaming rubble, his mind would race with so many theories and impressions that he could scarcely keep track.
The dominant theme of such meditations, Josef had discovered, was mulling over whether or not the soul was a measurable substance. This theory had leapt to the forefront of his mind after he’d come upon the cadaver of a neighbour late one night. The explosion had been so extreme that the man was scarcely recognizable. It was quite startling. In fact, Josef had to bite his tongue to keep from cursing the dead wretch after he’d nearly tripped over him in an alley. Poor pale fool; all broken and gaunt. Josef remembered how his neighbour’s face was distinctly saggy, as though the life-force that had once animated it had been leaked out like air from a balloon, leaving a withered husk in its place.
He hoped to find a similar treasure tonight. What Josef encountered instead was more of the uncanny than the charnel, but it captivated him nonetheless.
Frothing up out of the halved foundation of a destroyed building were lurid flowers. The petals were vivid caricatures of stars; ivory, lavender, arterial red.
Grinning, Josef bent to smell what, if any, fragrance the determined flora might offer. But as he crouched, Josef discovered that the vine-like thing had merely been placed in the crack rather than planted there. It toppled to one side, revealing its broken stem.
Rescuing it from the ruins, Josef placed the flower under his nose. He smelled nothing, but he did discover many other specimens of the same bright flowers scattered over the leavings of furniture and the nuggets of window glass. The petals and bristly vines formed a colourful trail over the wreckage before ending at a vacant doorframe.
The doorway and a portion of the brick wall it had been built into were the only standing remnants of the structure. Eyeing the flowers and the open door, Josef thought back to the fairy stories of his boyhood; of navigational trails of breadcrumbs left by wood-folk, or bewitched honeycakes used to tempt curious children.
With such dark delights bubbling in his mind, Josef was hardly surprised when the figure stepped out of the doorframe and into moonlit view.
The creature was worthy of a Black Forest fable. It was stout and wild-eyed. The skin of its head was pallid and pocked. Long tufts of wiry hair framed the supremely ugly face, and twin horns of what to Josef’s eye looked to be dirty bone hooked outward from the large brow.
These horns were the head’s sole feature, for it bore neither eyes nor nose, neither ears nor mouth. It was a lumpy mass of skin, the complexion of which was an ill stew of greys and beiges and whites. Most of the body was secreted in a length of grubby, fibrous material.
The thing’s fingers were ropy, mottled things. In their clutches was a great bouquet of the star petals and the stiff emerald vines.
Josef almost wept with joy. ‘If only mama was with me,’ he thought, ‘if only she could see Him . . .’
When the monstrous figure extended its arms, Josef assumed he was being invited to accept the flowers. He stepped forward, his feet worrying upon the unstable terrain. He was disoriented, due of course to the strangeness of this encounter, but also to his loss of hearing because of the earplugs. Josef plucked the sponges from his ears and immediately heard the screaming.
The cries were feminine and seemed to be emanating from somewhere to his right. Turning, Josef discovered a young woman of about seventeen lying pinned beneath a toppled brick wall. Her features were paled by brick dust, and there were two distinct rivulets of blood creeping down her cheeks. Her shrieks were hoarse. Josef wondered how long she’d been crying out for his help while he’d been standing deaf and Devil-awed.
Josef snapped his head around, just in time to watch the creature slipping back into the doorway's dimness. His heart plunged to his stomach. He raced off in pursuit of what he was certain was his destiny.
After so many bomb-laden treks, Josef had at last found his purpose.
“Where are you going?” shrieked the pinioned girl. “Help me! Please!”
Torn as to what to do next, Josef ultimately opted for the Devil, but one glimpse of the half-house revealed that the horned thing was no longer there.
Cursing, crushed, Josef hung his head and almost wept.
Not knowing what else to do, Josef turned his attention to the poor girl. His conviction softened (slightly) when his eyes met with hers.
“Free me!” she whimpered. “Please. I think my leg is broken.”
With one last regretful look to the vacant doorframe across the lot, Josef made his way to the girl, muttering “All right, all right, I’ll try.”
Before heaving the first chunk, Josef wondered how effective his spindly arms would be in this task. He quickly gathered a few of the flowers from the ground and placed them gently in his coat pocket.
He assured the young woman that she would be all right.