Chapter Seven #5
Sound echoed and broke against the pain like waves crashing at the rocks of his consciousness.
Victor did not remember how he had risen and crossed the street.
He did not remember climbing the stairs and lying down in bed.
He found himself under warm covers that smelled of dust and mothballs.
Bandages were tight around his torso and chest; a makeshift cast held his arm in place.
Parts of his face hurt—not where the creature had clawed him, but where his father had hit him.
The ghost of Wolfgang’s knuckles made Victor’s face ache.
Carefully, he raised his good hand and traced it over his cheekbone and jaw, hissing as the pain flared and trickled down his temple. His forehead was bandaged; his fingers dug into the gauze and tangled in his sweat-drenched hair.
Water. He remembered water washing over his body, dirt and blood running down in black rivulets, and his face slammed against a tiled wall.
Something had scraped up and down his face…
something soft and wet, pulling at the flesh as if skinning it.
Victor shivered at the memory—at how alive his skin had felt, moving and reshaping.
Salt oozed into his mouth, mingling with the water.
He gulped it down greedily, suddenly desperate for the taste.
A hand pressed against the back of his neck and pulled, wrenching him away from the wall.
His legs gave way beneath him; he reached out, searching for balance, grabbing onto something—or someone.
“Oh, you’re awake,” a voice brought Victor back into the present, into this foreign room and bed.
A shadow flickered at the edge of his vision before it quickly disappeared.
He heard doors open and close. The mattress sank under the weight of another body, and a shadow reached towards Victor’s face.
Instinctively, he swatted at it and tried to move back, his head and shoulders sunk into the pillows.
The room lay in darkness: either the windows had been boarded over or the curtains had been drawn closed, as if they were enough to shield the inhabitants and muffle the bombing outside.
Bombs. Tobias.
Victor’s body jerked upwards, his feet tangled in the covers as he tried to get up. Someone pushed him back.
“Easy,” the voice seemed to spill into Victor’s very mind; a hand clasped his shoulder and eased him against the bedframe and the sheets. “You are safe. Wounded, but safe.”
The man’s German was tinged by a slight accent, giving it a touch of a lilt, almost a singsong quality.
Panic pumped into Victor’s heart and he inhaled sharply.
His nostrils filled with the smell of blood and iodine, but also the smell of death and rot from somewhere within the building.
The man let go of him and stood up, momentarily vanishing into the darkness.
He fumbled with something near the bed, the room suddenly bursting with so much light Victor hissed and tried to cover his face.
“It is only a candle,” the man explained, and tilting it so the wax could drip onto a nearby dresser, made a small puddle for a makeshift candle holder. “There. Now you can see.”
Victor frowned in the direction of the voice, forcing his eyes to focus and make out the shape, its back turned to the candle.
The light was small, but it cast more shadows into the room, crowning the stranger with a horrid halo.
Something scurried outside, in the corridor.
The floorboards groaned under the weight.
No, look at me. Look at me, Tobias, a voice cooed and bubbled in his head like the running of a mountain stream.
Victor turned his head to the stranger. The man looked younger than Victor, anchored in the late twenties: too young to be wearing such a uniform.
Yet hadn’t the war claimed so many children and rushed them to the Front?
This theatre of war: a playground ripe with bodies and loud toys.
In the light of the candle the man’s skin was honey-coloured, suggesting he had spent his days stretched out on the sand, basking in the sun.
His hair was black and short. It was not a regulation cut, not like Victor’s undercut.
It seemed too tousled and uneven in places, as if a barber had done a poor job when cutting it.
The lines on his face were defined, no wrinkles or scars; he looked almost ethereal.
As for his clothes—Victor had never liked the sight of that black uniform.
But it looked definitely wrong on this man.
The stranger allowed the silence to stretch, unbothered by Victor’s wordless scrutiny.
He walked back to the bed and gathered the scattered bandages and bottles into a box.
A metal tray lay by the bedside, full of bloodied strips of cloth and cotton wool.
It reeked of surgical spirit. Once inhaled, the smell haunted Victor, upsetting him.
When he had finished tidying, the man came and straightened the sheets, shifting piles of clothing and newspapers aside.
He perched on the edge of the bed, wise enough not to sit too close, but near enough to lean in and inspect his handiwork.
He brushed his fingers against the bandages around Victor’s ribs.
Victor hissed and again made to swat at the hand, but pain shot through his shoulder and he clutched at the sheets, grinding his teeth.
“Bones are harder to heal,” the man told him. “Of all your injuries, your face was the easiest to fix.”
He tapped a finger against Victor’s splint, eyes narrowed as he examined it.
“Who are you? Why is the Schutz—?”
“I am your friend, Tobias,” the man’s whisper was no more than a trickle. “You know me.”
Shivers ran down Victor’s body. A pair of hands brushed at his neck, touching, prepping the wounds and bandages on his chest, pulled at the cast, ensuring his arm could not slip free and cause the bone to heal wrong.
The hands caressed his face, brushed back his hair; fingers touched the bruises under his eyes and nose.
The man pulled up Victor’s blankets, tucking him into a cocoon of confusion and warmth.
Victor stared into the man’s face and could not recall where they had met.
Perhaps during the training, perhaps the same regiment.
Or had they worked together in the office?
The way the man gazed down at Victor—his whole face open, mouth set in a faint, empathic smile—he looked like one of the lads from The Secretariat. The day before the funeral, before…
The man’s irises were so dark, they seemed to consume the pupils. The longer that gaze held him, the calmer Victor felt. The shadows in the room shivered, trembling like the wings of insects.
Yes, he knew this man.
If only he could remember his name.
Victor drifted in and out of the wails of the sirens.
The furniture, the whole world, juddered with each bomb that found its mark; each scream, each crash that reverberated through the fragile windows.
If he woke up during the day, a jug with water and a plate of stale bread were laid out on a makeshift tray. There was no sign of the man.
When the sirens woke him with a sudden jolt and he found himself alone, Victor thought he had dreamt it all—his mysterious saviour who had addressed Victor by a dead man’s name.
He did not know what day it was or how many days had passed since Tobias’ funeral.
Were they looking for him? Would the Werwolf still have use for him when they found out how he had run? Like a coward, a deserter?
Of course they would. They were mobilising everyone.
Propping himself up against the pillows, Victor looked around the room.
It lay in a chaotic disarray. A wardrobe had fallen over, spilling its contents like entrails made of silk and wool.
Once upon a time a vanity table with a large mirror had stood across the bed.
Now only its ghostly outline marked the wall, while shards of glass sprinkled over the floor, crushed to sand by many boots, like flour on a baker’s board.
Even the curtains had taken some kind of damage: they were torn and scorched, a patchwork of mismatched fabrics.
But they held the world, and the light, at bay.
Victor must have dozed off because the next time he came to consciousness, the tray had been cleared and his bandages changed.
The man was in the room, moving in the dark.
It was the sound of glassware that woke Victor; the gentle clicking of glasses, like champagne flutes making a toast. When his eyes adjusted to the darkness, Victor saw the man at the dresser, his shirtsleeves rolled up.
It was cold in the room, however he was standing in nothing but his trousers and shirt.
As if sensing that his patient was awake, the man turned and walked over to the bed. He had thrown his heavy greatcoat on top of the blankets, using it as a makeshift quilt to keep Victor warm as he slept.
“Drink while it is still hot.” The man offered Victor a tiny cup.
“What is it?”
“Medicine.”
As if it could be anything but. Victor accepted the cup and looked at the dark, blood-red liquid and gently swayed the cup, swilling the contents across the porcelain walls.
The liquid was thick as broth. And yet he wanted it; the faint smell made him hungry.
It tasted raw, the salt of it enough to make him gag, but he forced it down, ran his tongue over his teeth and lips, desperate for more.
“A thimbleful at a time,” the man said, as if reading Victor’s mind, and took back the cup.