The end of the spring term that year was a relief; three whole months of being the class pariah and unwilling consort of StinkStefan had worn me down. As March turned into April, the parental curfews slackened a little, and we were allowed to go off to the big park in the Schleidtal, or to the swimming pool, or even to take a train and go to the cinema in Euskirchen. In between, we went to Herr Schiller’s.
We listened to his tales with a renewed interest, now that the town seemed to have passed into a story all of its own-the story of the little girl dressed as Snow White, who stepped out of her life and into nothingness right in the middle of a Karneval parade. I puzzled over the details of what Herr Schiller told us, trying to fit the events of the past few months into the pattern, as though I were trying to complete a huge and complicated jigsaw puzzle without being able to see the picture on the lid of the box. Judging by Herr Schiller’s stories, Bad Münstereifel had to be one of the most haunted places in Germany, if not the whole world; monsters and ghosts and skeletons seemed to pop up in every corner.
Stefan, whose parents did not police his television viewing as strictly as mine did, had seen numerous horror films, and not just the ancient version of Nosferatu that periodically appeared on television; he had even seen Poltergeist and The Shining. As a result, his views on the subject were more developed than mine; he thought there was some evil influence working out its purpose in the town. He postulated all sorts of theories: the Lindens’ house was built on an old graveyard where the bodies of plague victims had been buried; Katharina had meddled with occult powers she did not understand, and had been carried off by them; the Linden family were under some sort of terrible curse, which led to the early demise of the eldest child in every generation.
“Herr Linden is an oldest child,” I pointed out when Stefan expounded the last of those theories. “He’s the oldest of two; Frau Holzheim is his sister. So how come he didn’t disappear when he was a kid?”
“Maybe the curse skips a generation,” suggested Stefan, undaunted.
I was not convinced, and appealed to Herr Schiller on our next visit.
“Are there any stories about curses on people?”
Herr Schiller pondered this, taking slow sips of coffee from a delicate-looking cup with yellow and gray roses on it.
“There was the knight who lived in the Alte Burg on the Quecken hill,” he suggested eventually.
“I’ve heard that one,” I said, disappointed.
“I haven’t,” Stefan pointed out. He looked eagerly at Herr Schiller; really, for someone who seemed to make himself so objectionable to his classmates, he could look wonderfully appealing to adults. Herr Schiller could not help but retell the story, in spite of my discontented expression.
“The old castle on the Quecken hill was built before the castle in the town, over one thousand years ago,” began Herr Schiller. “In the castle there lived a knight, with his wife and only son. The old knight was an avid hunter and his son shared his love of hunting; there was nothing he loved more than to ride with his hounds through the woods.
“In due course the old knight died, and without his father’s guidance the young man began to neglect his other duties in order to indulge his lust for the chase. Every day he rode forth from the castle, mounted on a fine black stallion, with his hounds baying as they streamed through the gates, and spent many hours hunting. At last, he even usurped the Lord’s Day for his pursuits.
“His mother, the old knight’s Lady, was a devout woman, and her son’s behavior wounded her very deeply. At first she tried to remonstrate with him, pointing out that if he would only fulfill his duty to God first by attending church on Sunday morning, there would still be plenty of time left for hunting afterward. But her prayers fell on deaf ears.
“At last, one Sunday morning the mother could contain herself no longer. As soon as the sun was up, her son was out in the castle courtyard preparing for the hunt. A young squire was holding on to the reins of the black stallion, who pawed the ground and blew out hard through his nose, with almost as much eagerness for the chase as his master. The hunting dogs were already baying and straining at the iron chains that held them. The young man was stalking about the courtyard impatiently, berating his servants for their tardiness.
“As he did so, a window opened above him, and his mother leaned out, to beg her son one more time to come to church. ‘The day is long enough for hunting afterward,’ she cried. But once again her son refused to listen. Swinging himself into the saddle of his great black horse, he signaled to the gatekeeper to open the gates. The hounds were loosed, and with a cacophony of howls and the strident note of a hunting horn the hunt sallied forth. The Lady, her heart overflowing with the bitterest pain, cried out after him, ‘I wish you may hunt forever!’
“The day passed, evening came, and at last night fell, and there was neither sight nor sound of the young man, nor of his great stallion and his pack of savage hunting dogs. A week passed, then a month, and at last a year had turned around, and still the young man did not come back.
“When the old mother died, the castle fell into ruins, and in the course of time it became as it is now, a heap of moss-covered stones, overgrown with weeds, with trees thrusting up through its former courts and halls. But the huntsman’s soul knew no rest; it was condemned to roam forevermore in the woods and chases where it rode to hounds in life.”
Herr Schiller leaned a little closer. “They say that he still rides out of the old castle on moonlit nights. Poor tattered soul, not knowing or remembering why he is there or what he seeks, restlessly roaming the forests-forever-”
“He’s still there?” interrupted Stefan. “Has anyone seen him?”
“In some of those lonely houses at the edge of the forest, people have lain in bed at night shivering, listening to the sound of hoofbeats and the howling of dogs as the hunt passes by,” said Herr Schiller. “But none would dare go out to meet him.”
“They didn’t look?” interrupted Stefan. He shook his head. “Angsthasen. I would’ve looked.”
I could see what he was thinking, and what my mother would have to say about it: No, you may not sit up until midnight on the Quecken hill; what are you thinking of, when we still don’t know what happened to poor Katharina Linden? And you’d be fit for nothing in the morning…
With a sigh I picked up my cup and took a sip of cold coffee. The spectral huntsman was cursed to roam the woods for all eternity; it seemed I was cursed to be haunted by StinkStefan for at least as long. And much though I enjoyed Herr Schiller’s storytelling, it did not seem as though we were getting any closer to the truth about Katharina’s disappearance.
I looked at Stefan and Herr Schiller, who were deep in a discussion about the likely route the eternal huntsman would have taken, Stefan drawing it out on the coffee table with his finger. They seemed to have temporarily forgotten me, which only added to the sum of my woes. Summer seemed a long, long time away.