Page 46 of Geist Fleisch
“When did it happen?” asked Callum, staring through nothingness where his hands should have been.
“A bit before Hanover, I think,” Jacqueline answered, not unkindly.
“Thanks for not telling me. I could have gone tomorrow and saved us the ticket.”
“He can’t have looked too closely,” Robert said, pointing to Callum’s legs. “You’re still making an indent in the seat.
Callum chuckled at that. “Wait, he couldn’t see my clothes?”
Jacqueline smiled. “Or the little gift tucked inside them. You’ll have to learn to obscure them yourself, soon enough. I’m told it’s quite the mental effort. For now, you needn’t worry.”
The train ride continued in silence before Robert spoke again. “So, where will you go, mystery man? Want to join us in Chicago? Los Angeles?”
“With all those Yanks?” he muttered.
“Ah, yes, probably best you don’t. Back to Nottingham, perhaps?”
Callum gazed out the window as factories on the outskirts of Cologne whipped by. The day was clear, and he could just make out the spires of the famous cathedral looming over the darkened city. “I was thinking Australia.”
“Australia?” Robert laughed. “You’re serious?”
“I think I am.”
Jacqueline nodded with approval. “Then perhaps one day we’ll see… or rather, meet you there?”
Callum shrugged. “Will you know me, if you do?”
“My memory’s not that feeble,” boasted Robert, his grin flashing a careless hint of fang.
Callum turned his gaze to Jacqueline, but there was no point in asking. The serum released into Callum’s blood had already begun taking Robert’s memories, and Jacqueline’s would soon follow. Within the hour, or perhaps less, their memories of Callum, Frank’s secret cabal of supernatural research, and those last days in Berlin, as well as Max, and a hidden club for the spirits of fallen men who loved men, would be Callum’s secrets alone. Jacqueline had already forgotten her promise to share more details on the train, though Callum had all the information he needed. Arcadia. Hardly a word he would soon forget. He allowed himself to fade from his companions’ conversation, just as he had their sight, until they stopped looking at him completely. Then, when the train disappeared into the darkness of the next tunnel, he took his leave.
EPILOGUE
The freight ferry journey to Folkestone had been hell on God’s dark earth, but Callum had managed to sleep through most of it, evading prying eyes until there, on the platform at London Bridge, he spied a man reading a white book with ARCADIA written across its cover in bold blue letters. The vampires were as good as their word. The trust, the apartment… Callum had no idea what to do with so much money, but it was just one more thing he’d yet to master.
His wealth, combined with his now permanent invisibility offered him remarkable freedom, yet the awkwardness of paying for items as an unseen man had often made petty theft an easier option. Not every day-to-day task could be handled by mail or telephone.
Unlikely assistance arrived one night in the summer of 1934, when an ambitious eighteen-year-old burglar named Alex Harper sprained his ankle attempting to score some fast loot from Callum’s ‘vacant’ apartment. Spooked as he was, the youth was also blessed with an open mind and a vivid imagination, so it had not taken him long to decide that a fair wage in the service of his unseen mark was better than prison time, and after four months of loyal service, Callum invited Alex Harper to stay.
The pair lived, cooked, and ate together, though it had taken Callum some time to get used to eating in front of another person, and Alex some time to get used to watching an unseen person eat. They explored and studied tomes of the supernatural—much easier to source now Callum had a visible colleague—and occasionally thieved together from those who could afford it, just to keep in practice. Another month passed before Callum first felt Alex in his bed, where the young man continued to spend his nights. By the time the pair fled to Dorset to escape the bombs they’d both known would come to London, Callum’s was a one-bedroom household once more.
Callum’s growing talents kept Alex from the draft, though extending his condition to envelop another person took a physical and mental effort that laid him out for days each time. He couldn’t resent it. While memories of Max prevented Alex from entering Callum’s heart as easily as he had his flat, the young rogue had given him a family, of sorts, to replace the one he would never see again.
He never even saw Anne again.
One by one, headlines promising peace brought jubilation to the streets. Germany surrenders. Japan surrenders after… Callum read the headlines with horror, remembering all that Heinrich had shown him. The camps. The bombs. Images filled with death. They’d stopped it though, or stopped it from getting worse, at least, or from lasting forever. Hadn’t they?
Yes. Together with Max and the others, hehadstopped things from being much, much worse.
Another headline late in the year promised passage to Australia from Tilbury for just ten pounds. When Alex wouldn’t take ‘no’ for an answer, Callum knew he was out of excuses. They shared a good laugh at the irony of two petty thieves voluntarilyemigrating to Australia, then spent the rest of the morning making love.
Alex Harper died of a lung infection twelve years later at the age of forty-one, having never seen the face of the man he’d loved. Buried in Waverley Cemetery in a modest plot overlooking the sea, he left a sizable estate and a large Paddington home to a trust administered by his ‘brother,’ one Kelvin Harper. This brother remained quite unseen, and those who made the attempt found no photographs or formal records beyond confirmation that the man existed. With no living family to mount a legal challenge, the property sat empty until the winter of 1981, when neighbours noticed lights on in the house once more. Some speculated the place had been bought by the local diocese as a nun’s cloister. Sarah Tucci of 19 Glenmore Road was adamant that she had spoken to a young nun coming out of the place who she described as “the rudest cow who ever ignored someone.” Others claimed the house had fallen to more sinister uses, believing they’d heard strange chants or seen unusual lights behind the often-drawn curtains. More outlandish tales of black goats being delivered in the dead of night, or backyard orgies around a bonfire were met with good-natured chuckles which discouraged closer scrutiny.
Kelvin—as he now called himself, for the ruse had stuck—enjoyed having the company of a female friend again, tough as she was. Alex’s death had hardened him too, though not so much that he’d failed to recognise that gleam of curiosity in the woman’s eye that had once belonged to Frank Bakker.
He thought many times of going back to Berlin. He read about the building of the wall in all the papers, then aboutOssiskilled by Communist bullets for daring to cross it. He sat alone in a darkened cinema, watching Liza Minnelli strut her way aroundthe screen with a devil-may-care bravado that reminded him of Anne. Then, decades later, he sat glued to the television, unseen tears in his eyes as rejoicing Berliners smashed that damned death wall down. What had become of his friends? Had they danced, drank, and celebrated through it all, hidden and shielded within the place that had once been Suzi’s? Yes. Once his work with Patricia Bakker was done, and he’d fulfilled his promise to Frank, he’d fulfil his promise to Max and return.
He’d never expected to greet the new millennium. He remained fit, startlingly so for a man of his years. How long could a Cloak Walker expect to live? Some texts claimed a century, some two. How long would Max wait? Would he recognise the cynical bastard hisGeist Flesichhad become?
He watched over Bakker as she befriended and recruited others, including an idealistic young Italian who for reasons he couldn’t fathom, believed in Bakker’s mission more than Kelvin now did himself. The privilege of youth. In a world of such strange serendipity, how cynical could one old man be?
When he did return to Berlin, he would be as changed as the city was. Changed by Max, changed by Alex, changed by Australia, changed by Bakker… and as sure as he’d vanished from human sight, he acknowledged the one truth he’d felt that day on the platform at London Bridge, spying the stranger with the odd book titled ARCADIA.
He’d only just begun to live.