Crossed that line?
A vague notion she could still leave floated in her mind, even as they were hurrying up the staircase, this one well-lit and wide, to the hall. At the top was a large, ornate arched door. At least the end was here. It was nearly over… Then she would go back to the house and collect her things. Whatever the Order wanted her to do, she would not do it but instead flee and take her chances. They would never find her. She would cross oceans.
After three knocks, a door a foot thick and studded with iron was opened from within. A waft of air escaped from the great hall, and even before she stepped inside, she knew it would have a high vaulted ceiling, that there would be tiers like a theatre gallery for onlookers to survey the scene below, and that she would be the only one on stage.
She stepped inside.
Entirely unexpected was the sheer number of silent observers – at least a hundred, maybe more – filling every candlelit tier along the galleries. All were dressed in white robes like herself, except they wore animal heads, the scene disturbingly macabre as they stared down into the pit where she stood alone in the dark.
Behind, the door to the staircase clunked heavily shut.
Swallowing hard, a light sweat broke onto the surface of her skin.
“Stand in the circle, in the centre, Fräulein Heller.”
Still damp and shivering, she jumped at the sound of the disembodied voice from behind, or was it to the left or the right? Disorientated, she looked down at her bare feet. A large circle had been marked on the floor, two large X’s inscribed inside.
The Order has been at the root of everything, right from the start; it was them at the satanic ritual, everything… all pre-planned…
Frantically she looked around the hall, at the circular opera house–style building with its walls of mirrors. Not a single door. No way out.
“Fräulein Heller! Into the circle, please.”
Within the circle was an inverted pentagram, and outside of it four triangles had been drawn. At each of the four ‘watchtowers’, a large black pillar candle burned, and every segment of the pentagram contained a different symbol.
She stepped into the eye of the circle onto a symbol of the black sun at the very centre. Immediately a power-wave of alarm bolted through her.
This came from the depths of hell.
The disembodied voice, one from behind a mask, one she recognised, spoke into the silent hall.
“Listen to the instructions. You will now take the life of another human being.”
The words slowly filtered through.
“Immediately afterwards, you will drink the adrenalin-filled blood from the chalice given to you. After you have completed this, the ultimate test of obedience, you will become a member of der Orden der schwarzen Sonne. Hand her the sword.”
So it was obedience after all, not trust… blind, forced obedience! She had lost her will, her autocracy, her freedom as a human spirit. Sold, in other words.
Are you rich now, Mutter? Were you paid for this?
And you, Heinrich, you lying, cheating bastard pig!
A thrashing, screaming innocent was dragged across the floor in a sackcloth, the odour of stale alcohol and street filth assailing Lenka’s nostrils.
Rage blinded her, and her hands shook as she took the gleaming sword. Only, however, for a second. As soon as she had hold of it, every scar, every infliction of pain, every lie, betrayal, trick and violation replayed. Hate surged through her veins. And as if it were someone else’s hand, not her own, she watched as it rose in the air, then plunged with a passion over and over and over into the living, breathing flesh of another human being.
That was for Heinrich.
And that was for Sophia.
And that was for Uncle Toby the rapist.
And that was for her mother.
After a dozen or more stabs, someone came forward to retrieve the sword, but the grip of fury had not left her yet. Repeatedly she stabbed the now silent, inert victim until a pool of ruby-red froth ebbed across the floor.
“Enough now!”
A chalice was thrust into her hands. Blood-spattered, she finally dropped the sword, took the cup and drank from it before raising the chalice to the galleries.
Removing their masks one by one, they began to clap.
Now she understood why none of them had a soul or a heart or a readable mind. They had all crossed the line, and there was no way back. Every single one of them was bound to the Order, and in time she would know them all, their faces made infamous in newspapers across the globe.
“Hail the Dark Lord!”
“Hail the Dark Lord!”
“Hail the Dark Lord!”
Part Three: Eva Hart
‘The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new lands, but seeing with new eyes.’
‘If you know the truth, the truth will make you free. Ignorance is a slave, knowledge is freedom.’
Chapter Twenty-Five
Lenka’s story cut off as abruptly as a power cut two days before my sixteenth birthday. I woke up with a hammering heart, shocked and breathing hard, having known the enormity of extinguishing someone else’s life.
For eight years I had lived every detail of her existence as if it were my own – felt the passion, crushing disappointments, horror and betrayals. But after the murder and initiation into the Order, there was nothing more. A lifeline severed. What happened to Heinrich? Had he really been married to Sophia all along? Believe me, Lenka had shown me everything – and that man had loved her, had held her in his arms so tenderly and desired her so intensely, it was unbelievably difficult to believe it hadn’t been real. I endured the heartbreak every bit as much as she did, the pain of illusion stripped away, and the desolation of abandonment. There were so many questions.
Perhaps the most pressing of those questions was – how come I hadn’t fallen ill on receipt of the poppet eight years ago?
But of course, at that point I hadn’t known we must turn sixteen.
From beyond the grave, Baba Lenka waited, I believe, until I was no longer a child before she lifted the veil of protection and handed over the full force of the demonic alliance. Until then her presence had been a constant in my dreams and thoughts, as if we were one and the same person. But on the day I turned sixteen she cut the cord, leaving only sporadic memories. I was, it seemed, now on my own.
She had been a thorough teacher, though, illuminating the path ahead with a depth of emotions and experience now deeply enmeshed. It was not a fairy tale. It had happened. And she had been right about hiding from the world who we really are. Psychiatrists, it seemed, were not in the main to be trusted, nor doctors, church officials, anyone paid by the government, or members of the aristocracy. They would, and did, have people like us locked inside institutions, labelled as nuts and consigned to history. Snapshots of German and Austrian psychiatric hospitals, where barbaric punishments awaited should she not comply with what the Order wanted, were frequently flashed into my mind lest I forgot – a Belisha beacon of warning whenever I came close to revealing the level of dark knowledge a girl my age shouldn’t have.
My path was mirroring hers, although I was almost to lose sight of that. And just as it had for Lenka, my family betrayed me, too. Heartachingly so.