Chapter 35
THIRTY-FIVE
CURRENT DAY
Gliwice, Poland
A rusty chain snakes along the ground in front of the double wooden doors.
I yank on the dangling handle, hoping it gives me enough leverage to wedge my fingers around the edge and pry it open.
Metal whines against metal as I slowly force the gap wider, trying to minimize the sound.
I shove my shoe into the opening and brace my shoulder against the warped wood until the left side of the door jerks inward.
I lift the chain from the floor and hook it around the door frame to keep it from closing me inside.
I don’t know what the building was once used for, but the corridor stretched out in front of me feels older than the schoolhouse.
Exposed pipes run along the ceiling, crusted with rust. Water dribbles between connecting pipes into small puddles rotting into the cracked cement.
It smells like sewage and cold stone, pungent and burning the back of my throat. It’s colder in here than it is outside.
Each step echoes too loudly as I move farther down the corridor, the sound bouncing back at me until I reach the first room on the right.
Rusty cot frames line the walls, their thin metal rails bent and bowing.
Dark stains climb the plaster behind them.
Old blood layered over old blood—or so it appears.
The windows are sealed with rough wooden slabs, but the narrow corridor window throws in just enough gray light to cut a slight path into the room.
A moan carries down the corridor from another room, startling me still. I swallow hard and turn back for the corridor, listening for another sound. A weak cough follows, jolting my heart into my throat.
I guardedly peek around the threshold of the next door. The sight is abhorrent. Bodies, scattered along the ground, some perched against the walls. All of them in German uniforms. Prisoners.
“Help,” someone groans through a ragged breath. The sound makes my stomach knot, but I force myself forward.
The room smells like rot and sickness. With a closer look, the bodies on the ground shift weakly, dragging breaths in and out.
A hand twitches as I pass.
“Noah?” I cry out in a whisper.
I’m standing between a roomful of dying men who all wanted me dead. If any one of them is strong enough to take me out, they can. I have nothing to protect myself. But I need to know if Noah is here, has been left behind.
I clutch the pile of clothes and blankets tightly to my chest as if it’s holding me up. A boot scrapes against the ground from behind me. “Water.” His voice fights through the strain.
I swallow so hard I hear it between my ears, but I keep taking small steps forward. “Noah?” His name burns through my lungs.
The farther I walk into this large room, the darker it grows with the light completely behind me now.
“Cel—” a cough breaks the word—or my name… “Celin—a.” I twist around, knowing I can’t see much at all, but a movement within the shallow light catches my attention. I move slow, scared, unsure, following a sound.
The nightmare returns—I reach for him, feeling a burn against my fingers when I touch the uniform. He pushes me backward, one step at a time. I shake my head, pleading with him to stop, grasping his sleeves. “It’s me. Don’t you know me? I’m your wife. It’s me, Celina.”
My toe hits a body part.
“Cel—”
The sound is closer. Coming from the limp arm disturbing the light.
I lean in, waiting for my eyes to adjust to the darkness.
I drop the bundle of clothes beside him as his hand reaches for me again, this time catching on my leg.
His hand is ice-cold, the arctic freeze breaking through my thin layer.
“Noah?” I whisper again.
His arm slips from my leg, inviting a slight glow from the light to slice across his face from the left side of his chin to the right side of his forehead. The arc of freckles on his nose—the one I’ve traced a thousand times before.
Close enough to watch his eyes flutter, he struggles to focus on my face. His hand lifts again but falls against my knee.
“Ce—li—na,” my name floats on a breath.
A sob breaks loose from my throat before I can stop it and I reach my fingers for the side of his face—cold, marble-like, and bone.
“I’m here,” I whisper. “I’m here.”
His body shivers violently, not from a cry but from the cold he’s been a prisoner of. I scoop my arm beneath his neck, trying to sit him up, but I can hardly move him.
“Celina?” Christoph’s voice echoes from the corridor. And a flashlight beam strikes through the doorway, silhouetting Christoph between the frame.
I can’t see Christoph behind the light, but the light isn’t moving.
“My God,” he utters.
Noah’s arms drop to his side and he struggles to move, but only collapses against my arm heavier, despite his weight being unrecognizably frail.
“We have to get him out of here,” I cry out in a whisper.
“I’ll take him—” Christoph moves toward us just as an indecipherable shout rips through the corridor. Russian. Another voice follows that one. Boots with sticky soles charge closer.
Christoph whips his head toward the door. “They’re coming.”
The thud of boots grows louder.
“He can’t walk. He can’t lift his head.”
Christoph kneels beside us, the beam of his flashlight shaking as he pinches it under his armpit. “Noah,” he whimpers quietly.
Noah’s eyes find Christoph’s face, a struggle weighing on his eyelids.
“Chris—” Noah exhales, his name hardly begins or ends.
Another shout thunders through the corridor. There’s no time left.
“We must hide him. Help me,” I say, gripping Noah’s arm.
“No, no. It’s too late for that.” He’s watching the door. I’m watching him, waiting for him to think faster than me.
He turns back to us, and the look on his face tells me everything without saying anything more than, “Stay down.”
“No—what—what are you doing?” I whisper harshly.
“Celina,” he mutters. “Stop.”
The light from another flashlight breaks through the room. “I told you no talking, no moving, no nothing!” a Soviet guard shouts into the room, gliding his light-beam across the bodies.
Christoph steps toward the doorway before the soldier can react. “I’m not a German prisoner—”
The soldier lifts his rifle.
A shot blasts through the room, the blow deafening us within the enclosed room.
“What are you—” another Soviet shouts. “He’s not a prisoner!”
“I—he—” the two battle through words.
“Christoph…” I scream, reaching for him just as he collapses by my side, his head landing on another person’s leg. He’s holding his hand over his chest, breathing slow and shallow. “Christoph, no!”
“His—his pa—pers. My—my pock—et.” His eyes widen, but his chest is still moving up and down slowly. He swallows hard. “You—you found him,” he whispers. “That—that’s what—what matt—ers.”
“No. No. That’s not—you matter. You matter too. Please, no…” I cry, my throat tightening. “You’re our family. You know that. You called me your sister at our wedding. Remember?” The words pinch out of me, hardly decipherable.
“Yes,” he croaks, “and I—should have—protected you before.” His eyes clench, face wincing. “I’m—doing it…now…”