“I’ll say this for the French; they know how to make a road accessible. I’ll also say I wish we could have taken the roads that night, but that wasn’t an option. Instead of taking the easiest route, we took the safest route and that meant a lot of climbing and hauling our meager supplies over some damned ugly surfaces. Springer, the boy from New York, had the worst time of it. He kept trying to get where he needed to be and falling, sliding halfway down the hills. He never was very graceful as I recall, but he was damned strong.
“There was one point when we were climbing up the side of a cliff that seemed to go on for miles. Oh, I reckon it wasn’t much more than a few hundred feet, nothing we hadn’t at least learned how to do in basic training, but it was dark and the ground was wet with dew and it was maybe the most scared I’ve ever been when I wasn’t looking at someone who was trying to blow my head off my shoulders. The only ones who made it look easy were Toby and Crowley.
“Well, we were doing our best to get up there, and had made it most of the way, when Springer slipped and started falling. He’d have surely fallen and split his skull wide if Crowley hadn’t showed a little initiative and snatched him. I know it sounds like a lie, and I still have days when I doubt that I saw it, but as Springer started to fall, Crowley grabbed hold of him with one hand and held him in the air. Springer wet himself right then and there, and I can’t say as I blamed him for it. He opened his mouth to scream and Crowley yanked him closer, until they were face to face. I was about ten feet below them, looking up and ready to do some screaming myself because the rock that man was planted on was starting to crumble. I figured if it went, I could pretty much call my life over unless it decided to float away. From where I was standing it was a sure thing that slab of stone would crush me like a bug.
“Crowley smiled brightly as he looked Springer in the face. His mouth was wide in a grin big enough to just about reach ear to ear. ‘Make one God damned sound, boy, and I’ll let you fall. Do you understand me?’ Those were his exact words. I can still hear them and I can still hear the pleasure he got out of saying them. Springer nodded so hard I though his head was just gonna fall off. Crowley brought him even closer to his face, like he was looking deep into that New Yorker’s eyes and studying him. He had a look like that, Crowley did, and most times I figured he didn’t much like what he saw. ‘I ought to drop you right now. I ought to let you fall and break and bleed. But I won’t. You might make too much noise.’ I think Springer would have cried right then, but he was too afraid. Crowley kept a hand on his jacket the rest of the way up the cliff and I think more often than not he actually carried the Yankee rather than risk him slipping again.
“It seemed like an eternity that climb to the top, but it wasn’t much more than maybe an hour. Crowley barely even looked at the rest of us. He just headed towards that big stone building like a man on a mission from God Himself. What else could I do? Let him go in alone? I followed him, cursing under my breath the entire way.
“Well, eventually we made it to the château. It must have been a beauty in its heyday, but there really wasn’t much worth looking at anymore. The Germans had already been through the place and taken anything worth having. What they left behind was a lot of broken furniture and lots of bare stone walls. They’d been very thorough in their search of the place. I wish I knew what they’d been after. I suspect that they found it.
“Crowley led the way again. There was something about him that made you not want to argue about who was in charge. And something that inspired confidence, though I can’t for the life of me say exactly why. Maybe it was because he never seemed scared of anything. He seemed more like he was waiting to hear the punch line to a joke, or maybe waiting to tell it.
“Whatever else I can say about the man, good or bad, he knew how to move without making a sound. I felt like an elephant waltzing through tin cans in comparison. But I guess I was quiet enough walking through those dark halls. We never ran across a guard or even a mouse. I kept waiting for them around the next corner, and Crowley just kept leading me through the maze of rooms and corridors like there was nothing to worry about.”
My grandfather looked at me for a moment. His eyes glittered in the faint light of his cigarette. Almost against my will, I looked away and went inside for another beer. I brought out a full six pack, and then I stole another of his cigarettes. When he started talking again, his voice was subdued and sounded… weaker than I’d ever heard it sound before. “That should maybe have been my first hint, in hindsight. I’d heard Crowley whistle in the middle of artillery fire, like there wasn’t the least little thing to worry about. And here he was, just gliding along and leading me into a darkened building. I wouldn’t have been too surprised if he’d started singing.
“Well, sir. We finally got where we were going. We found where the Nazis were, and we saw what they were doing. But I have to be honest; to this day I don’t really understand it all.
“There was this huge chamber down in the lower levels of the château, and I figure the Krauts must have torn down all the walls they could without actually making the foundation give away, just so they could set up everything they needed.
“There were all sorts of machines lining the walls of the room we found them in. Machines like I’d never seen before and don’t want to ever see again. They made noises like you’d expect from a power plant, that deep hum that rattles your teeth and sets your hair standing on end. I hadn’t even heard it until we were almost in the room, because the walls down there were solid stone. They had a sort of operating station in the center of the place, with seven separate tables. Each of these had a man on it, or what had once been a man, at any rate.
“Not one of them much looked human anymore. They looked like nightmares. Their skin was pale and bloodless, their faces drawn and withered, like those pictures you see of mummies, but with a little moisture left to them. Each and every one of them was strapped to the table while men worked on their bodies with scalpels and other tools, the sort you don’t really expect to see used on a person. There were places where the ones they’d been working on the longest were covered in metal, like armor almost, but actually bolted into their skin. I could see the way the metal cut into their soft flesh and could see the blood that welled around the rivets they’d used to drive the metal in. I could almost imagine the pain they must have been feeling, as surely as I can imagine the Nazis used the bones of their victims as anchors for those steel plates. Just like the studs in a wall, Eddie, they’d drive those bolts into skin and muscle and then down into the bone. Worst of all, there wasn’t one of those poor bastards that weren’t awake and screaming.”
My grandfather looked at me again; his eyes seeming to wander in my general direction, unfocused until he settled on me. I have seldom seen a man look so haunted, and that was unsettling for me, especially after looking in the mirror for the last two weeks. He reached over and popped a beer, drinking half of it down before he continued.
“Every last one of them was awake, and in all my years I have never heard screams like those before, or since. They weren’t the screams of the dying, or even the seriously wounded. They were the screams of men having their souls ripped out. I don’t know just why or how the machinery managed to do such a thing, but I’m pretty sure that’s what happened.
“I stared down there like I was looking past the opened gates of Hell. And I watched as one of those poor bastards was dragged from his table and set down in a glass cage. Crowley stood right next to me, his eyes narrowed down to slits, his whole body tensed and waiting to see what would happen next. I saw him out of the corner of my eye, Eddie. I turned away from the sight of that torn and bloodied prisoner and I saw him smiling as he watched the Germans flip their damned switches and read whatever devices they had to understand for what they were doing.