On Monday morning I was up before the alarm sounded. Ignoring my father’s suggestion that I eat more slowly and with my mouth closed, I bolted breakfast, slung my Ranzen onto my back, and by eight o’clock sharp I was outside the school gate. I was not disappointed; at two minutes past, Stefan appeared. He looked a little pale, but otherwise perfectly all right.
“Where were you? Did you go up to the Quecken hill? Why didn’t you come over on Saturday like you promised?” Impatiently, I bombarded him with questions.
“I was sick.” He shook his head. “We can’t talk about it here.”
He was right; little groups of children were starting to flow through the entrance to the school courtyard. We adjourned to the girls’ bathroom on the ground floor; Stefan said the boys’ was a better bet, as it was much less often visited, but I absolutely refused to go in there.
Barricaded into a cubicle in the girls’, I immediately demanded, “So? Did you go? Did you see anything?”
Stefan nodded, his face sober.
“Well, what did you see? Was it the huntsman?” In my eagerness to know what had happened, I was almost jumping up and down.
“I’ll tell you,” said Stefan slowly. “But when I’ve told you, I don’t want to talk about it anymore. OK?”
Why not? I nearly blurted out, but with an effort I restrained myself. “All right.”
There was a pause that stretched out for such a long time I started to think Stefan was never going to utter a word. Then suddenly he said, “It was dark up there, very dark.” He folded his arms, rubbing them as though he were chilly. “And cold.”
He looked at me, and I had the eerie sensation that he was not seeing me at all, but looking right through me into another time and place.
“There was something up there, but I don’t know what it was. I went up to the castle just after half past eleven-I know it was then because I heard the bell in the church clock strike twice as I went up the track through the woods.
“The moon was out, so I could just about see where I was going. I didn’t want to put my flashlight on unless I really had to, in case someone saw it. I didn’t see anybody, though. It was dead quiet.
“When I got to that bit where you have to leave the track and go up through the bushes, I did switch the light on. I wanted to go up to the turret because it’s the highest bit, but I was afraid of falling in.”
I knew the place he meant. The turret was the only thing that looked in any way like a proper castle, but even so what was left of it was sunk into the ground, rather than standing out of it, forming a circular pit about four meters deep. I understood Stefan’s cautiousness; if you fell into it you would never get out on your own, not to mention the fact that you would be at the mercy of whoever-or whatever-came along.
“It was horrible going through the bushes-the brambles kept sticking to me like little claws and there was all sorts of stuff underfoot that I couldn’t see, squashy things and dry, hard sticks. It was like walking over a carpet of bones. I could feel them snapping under my feet. I started thinking that maybe it was the bones of the knight who lived there, him and his hounds, and when the clock struck midnight they would somehow gather themselves up in the dark, and make themselves back into the shapes they’d been when they were alive.
“I kept looking around, afraid that I would see the knight suddenly stand up in the undergrowth, with the moonlight shining on his armor, and a clicking sound from all the little pieces knitting together, and underneath the helmet nothing but a skull.”
He shuddered. “Well, I got to where the turret is, and I had to go up that bit on my hands and knees. The mud was all slippery. I got to the top somehow and sat down behind the little tree that grows there, and then the first thing I did was switch the flashlight off. I heard the church clock strike a quarter to midnight. I thought I’d wait until it struck twelve and then I’d come down again.
“I sat there for what seemed like ages. It was cold, and once some stupid bird hooted up in a tree and I nearly jumped out of my skin. But after a while it wasn’t so scary anymore. I didn’t think anything was going to happen.
“Then all of a sudden I heard this noise, a little crackling noise, and I thought my heart was going to leap out of my chest. I had this really clear picture in my head, just as clear as if I’d really seen it, of the bones of a hand lying on the ground among the weeds, and then gathering themselves up, just like someone pulling on the strings of a puppet.”
Stefan stretched out a hand toward me, palm upward, and slowly curled it into a fist. Involuntarily I stepped back.
“I just stayed where I was. I wanted to get down, to run, but I didn’t dare. So I just sat there, with my arm tight around the trunk of the tree, and-and waited.”
Stefan’s voice broke slightly on the last word; with a shock I realized he was close to tears.
“It wasn’t long before I saw them. I think there were four of them, coming up into the old castle ruins the same way I had. I couldn’t see much, just dark shapes moving through the bushes. I’m not even sure they were all standing up, like people. One of them just seemed to be crashing around in the undergrowth like an animal.
“They came really close. I thought they were going to come right up to the turret, where I was sitting. Maybe the one crawling in the undergrowth was tracking me. Perhaps he could smell me, like a hound. But it wasn’t a dog crashing around in there, it was something much bigger. I didn’t want to think what would happen to me if it found me.”
Stefan put his hands over his face, as though trying to shut out the sight. He said something muffled; it sounded like Gott.
“Stefan-”
I was not sure what to do, whether to try to put an arm around him.
“What if they’d found me?” he blurted out suddenly. He thrust out an arm toward me. “Look! Just look! I dug my fingers so hard into the tree trunk, they’re still covered in green stuff-I can’t get it out. I shut my eyes-I thought it was the end. I just knew that whatever it was lumbering about in the bushes would find me.
“After a minute or two I thought the noise was not so loud, so I opened my eyes again and the dark shapes had moved farther away. I suppose they hadn’t smelled me at all.”
I said nothing. The thought of sitting up there in the dark, praying that I would not be discovered-or smelled out-was too horrible to contemplate.
Stefan raked a hand through his dirty blond hair and then went on. “I think they went downhill a bit. I could hear a crackling sound-but I couldn’t see much. I didn’t dare come down from the turret in case they heard me. And then-then I heard voices. I think they were whispering.” He turned a pale face to me. “Maybe that’s the sound someone makes when they talk if-if they’re just a-a skeleton.”
Quatsch, I wanted to say, but nothing came out. My mouth was dry.
“It seemed to go on forever. I couldn’t hear what they were saying. I didn’t want to hear it. I stuck my fingers in my ears-but then I took them out again, because I thought, Supposing they come up here and I don’t hear them coming?
“And then-then I saw a light. It was little at first, then it got bigger-or else it was coming closer, I don’t know. It was yellow. I always thought the light around the huntsman would be green and glowing, but…”
Stefan’s voice trailed off.
“But what?” I prompted him impatiently.
He shook his head. “I don’t know what I was seeing. I felt strange-sort of dizzy, and I had this horrible feeling in my stomach, the way you feel if you look out the top window in a very high building. I kept looking at this light, getting bigger and bigger, and thinking that if I didn’t get away soon I never would, and the whole town would be looking for me next.
“In the end I crawled down the bank at the side of the turret, and crept off through the bushes, as quietly as I could. It seemed to take forever, and I cut my hands to pieces because I was on my hands and knees most of the time, and the ground is covered in sticks and stones and brambles.”
Instinctively I glanced at Stefan’s hands and saw that they were covered in half-healed scabs and scratches.
“The whole time there was still this whispering. It sounded-sort of like it was something important. Something-I don’t know-urgent.
“I nearly got back to the path, and then I put my knee on something, a piece of tree bark I think, and it made a really loud snap. I thought I was going to die. Now they have to have heard me, I thought. Any minute the one who had been floundering around in the bushes would come crashing toward me. I wondered what the last thing I saw would be. I kept thinking of something with hair and teeth, like a hound, but not a hound.
“I just went on staring into the dark, straining my eyes, trying to see if anything was coming for me. After what seemed like ages, I realized they hadn’t heard me at all. The voices were going on just the same as before, and that light was flickering among the trees.
“I couldn’t stand it there a second longer, so I risked it and stood up, and just ran for the track. Somehow I didn’t bump into anything or fall over. Once I was on the track, I just ran and ran until I was at the bottom of the hill. I didn’t even look around.
“But, Pia, that’s not all. Just as I was standing up to run for the track, I heard something else. Not whispering. I can’t say what it was exactly. It was a kind of-a beating sound.”
I stared at him. “O Gott,” I breathed with a sudden cold flash of realization.
“What?” said Stefan, his face puckered with alarm. “You know what it was?” I said, and the rising feeling of dread within me curdled into horror. “It was hoofbeats.”
There was no more time for discussion. The bell had rung several minutes before; we were already late for the first class. We slunk upstairs to be greeted with a telling-off from Frau Eichen, and then had to sit through two periods of math before we could talk any more. I sneaked a few sidelong glances at Stefan. He still looked pale; I wondered if he was ill.
As soon as the bell rang for the Pause, I leaned over and said, “So why didn’t you come over on Saturday?”
Stefan waited for the others to pack up their things and leave the table, then he said very quietly, without looking at me, “I was sick.”
“Sick?”
“Doch.” He sounded almost angry.
“Well, what was the matter with you?”
“I ran all the way down from the Quecken hill, and when I got home I was really ill. That’s why I couldn’t come over.”
“What, you ran so much that you were sick?”
“No,” said Stefan. This time he did look up, and his eyes were full of anger. “I was scared, all right? I was scared.”
I looked at him for a long time, while various responses to this ran through my head. How could you be so scared that you were sick? Were you really and truly sick?-did you throw up? What did your mother say when you came back so late? But in the end what I said was: “You’ve got to go back up there with me.”
“No way,” said Stefan. “Absolutely no way.”