In the Shadow of His Wings (3 page)

About three years after Christine ran away Gerhard got a phone call at work. It was Christine! He recognized her voice instantly although she sounded weak and scared.

“Gerhard, please help me.” She was calling from Toronto and she was in trouble, could he come? Christine begged him not to tell their mother, Gerhard told Hilda he was going to the city on business and expected to return late that night. During the hour and a half drive to Toronto he thought about how he would deal with Christine. After three years of listening to his mother’s ravings there was no way he was going to let his sister go. She had to come home with him. Even if he had to force her into the car, that is what he would do. He had gone so far as to purchase a chain and lock, willing to do whatever it took to get his sister back home. As he drove he began to smile in anticipation. He thought of the look on his mother’s face when he would walk in the door with Christine.

Finally, all the screaming would stop. Perhaps his mother would find some joy in life again and even return to the happy person he remembered from his childhood.

It took some effort to find the address that Christine had given him. He was shocked and disgusted to see the house his sister was living in. How could this possibly be the correct address? The location was definitely not what one would call ‘the nicer part of the city’. Gerhard looked around nervously as he got out of his car, checking twice to be sure it was locked. He looked at the address again, stunned at the thought of his sister living there. The dilapidated house looked might have been a nice home at one time. In its current condition it could only be classified as a hovel. All of the windows were either cracked or boarded up. The front door hung by its hinges, the porch sagged with dry rot and paint was peeling. Garbage littered the ground and steps leading up to the door. Gerhard cautiously made his way to the entrance telling himself there had to be some mistake. His sister couldn’t possibly be living in these conditions. He looked back at his car, making sure that no one was in the process of stealing it. He cautiously knocked on the door. There was no answer so he knocked a little harder, and still no answer. Gerhard, feeling a sense of frustration at having driven so far and getting his hopes up at bringing his sister home, banged on the door and yelled for Christine. This time he heard a faint voice call his name.

As he entered the house the stench of the place hit him like a physical slap in the face. From just inside the front door he could see to the right, into the kitchen and what Gerhard saw sickened him. Fast food containers covered every surface. Moldy scraps of food left behind on the counter. To the left was the living room and like the kitchen every piece of furniture was covered in more garbage. The cardboard covered windows darkened the room. He didn’t see her until he heard her call out his name once more.

Christine was curled up on the couch. Gerhard hurried over to her, repulsed at the person he saw.

“Christine? What on earth happened to you?”

Before him lay an emaciated, shadow of the sister he once knew. This was not the healthy young girl that left home three years ago. When Christine saw Gerhard she began to cry, softly at first then the tears changed to sobs.

“Talk to me Christine; tell me why are you are here in this awful house?” But she couldn’t even get the words out she was crying so hard. Gerhard picked up his sister and carried her out to his car. He gently placed her in the front seat, forgetting all about the chain and lock, only wanting to get away from there as quickly as possible.

As they drove away, Christine slowly began to tell Gerhard about the past three years of her life. She came to Toronto with dreams of being a great actress but found that dream to be quickly shattered. The money she had saved had been stolen from her. She soon found herself out on the street with no one to turn to and no where to go. She was scared and didn’t know what to do until she met a young man who promised to help her.

He seemed so nice, at first. He bought her food and gave her a place to stay. He even promised to introduce her to some people that could get her some auditions for television commercials. But he was NOT the nice man he appeared to be. He gradually introduced her to drugs until she was addicted. He got her involved in other things that she couldn’t bring herself to tell her brother. Gerhard assured his sister that it would be ok now and that he would take care of everything. Christine was relieved to see her brother, she had missed him dreadfully. Feeling reassured she fell asleep for awhile and Gerhard continued the drive towards home. At one point during the drive Christine awoke with a start and demanded to know where Gerhard was taking her.

“It’s alright Christine; just go back to sleep you need to rest. I’m taking you home where you can get clean clothes and some decent food into you”.

Christine flew into a rage and insisted she would rather go back to her life in Toronto than home to her mother. She tried to jump out of the car in the middle of the highway. Gerhard grabbed hold of Christine’s wrist and hung on to her as he carefully maneuvered the car off the road. He yelled at her for her foolishness, he took the lock and chain out of his pocket and secured her to the armrest of the car door.

“How dare you lock me up, undo this chain right now!” shrieked Christine, with tears streaming. The weak girl Gerhard found on the couch in Toronto, was now filled with a rush of adrenaline, tried to hit and scratch at Gerhard demanding the keys. Gerhard tried to calm her down as best he could.

“Christine, I can’t take you back, that place you were living in, I can’t even call it a house, was horrible! What would you do if I did take you back? You called me, remember? You want some help so I’m going to give it to you. You need some descent food and no doubt a thorough check-up with our doctor. Trust me, it will be ok.

I’ll get you home soon; you can have a nice hot shower and get into some clean clothes while I fix you something to eat.”

Christine argued some more but realized it was pointless. Gerhard had his mind set and his sister chained to the car. She calmed down and sat still as she thought about what she had to do.

Gerhard became aware that his gas tank was nearly empty. He pulled into the nearest service center. Before exiting the car he sternly told Christine to behave herself and be quiet or she would be sorry she ever called him. He paid for the gas, picked up some sandwiches and drinks. All he could think about was how pleased his mother would be when he brought Christine home. Hilda would stop yelling and crying all the time. Life would be so much better. There was no way he was going to let her go. When he returned he found Christine unconscious with an empty pill bottle in her hand. He almost screamed in frustration! His foolish sister would rather overdose on pills than return home. He should have checked her pockets for drugs! What was he thinking? He tried desperately to wake her. Gerhard wasn’t sure what to do. He slapped her, first on the face, yelling at her to wake up. He then slapped her back, even sticking his finger down her throat, hoping to make her throw up, but with no success. Finally Gerhard got behind the wheel of the car knowing he had no choice but to rush her to the nearest hospital. As he drove he thought of his mother’s reaction to all this and how she would no doubt find a way to blame him. He cringed at the thought.

It took Gerhard some time to find a hospital, fighting through the busy traffic towards Niagara Falls. He quickly pulled into a parking spot and then turned to his sister.

She looked very pale. He felt for her pulse, there was none. Was she dead? Gerhard sat in the car staring at his sister. The girl he had searched for for three years. She didn’t look much like the young woman he remembered. Her cheeks were sunken in; her hair was dirty and stringy. Her face was white, so white. Gerhard didn’t want to believe it but she was really dead. The thought of this was slowly starting to sink in. Gerhard’s thoughts went to his mother. How would she react? Of course she would blame Gerhard.

“Murderer, you killed your sister!” Hilda would yell at him. Gerhard cringed at the thought. If the last three years had been bad he knew that the years following would be much worse. All the blame would rest on his shoulders. He couldn’t let his mother find out.

Gerhard quickly looked outside the car to see if anyone had noticed him sitting there with a dead girl in the front seat. People were walking by, going about their own business and even if they had seen Christine, would probably have thought she was sleeping. Gerhard started up the car and cautiously pulled out of the parking lot. His mind raced, now what should he do?

Gerhard drove back towards Toronto thinking all the time that it would be better to dispose of his sister’s body in busy place. Someplace where the police might find dead homeless, drug addicts every day. The body of a young girl wouldn’t make the news. As Gerhard drove the skies grew darker which suited him quite nicely. It’s would be much easier to get rid of a body under the cover of night. He decided to dispose of Christine’s body in the water at the harbor. With any luck the body would be in the water for several days before it would be discovered, making identification more difficult, if not impossible. Gerhard found an isolated area, undid the chain on his sister and gently carried her body over to the docks. Tears began to roll down his face as he lowered Christine’s body into the water. He watched her sink slowly beneath the surface and then turned and walked away.

“I’m sorry Christine” he cried, “This is not how I wanted it to be.” His shoulders shook with great sobs. He thought of the young girl who used to do puppet shows with him and he cried harder. Slowly he pulled his car away and began the long drive home.

To say that the years following Christine’s death were difficult would be a gross understatement. Gerhard often had nightmares of the night she died. In his nightmares Christine was still alive when he lowered her into the water and he watched in horror as she gasped for air, calling his name before she slowly sank. Gerhard would wake up in a cold sweat; certain he could hear his mother’s voice screaming at him, “Murderer, you killed her!” He had this nightmare so often that a small part of his mind began to believe it might have happened that way and he began to accept the thought that he was responsible for his sister’s death.

Hilda however, having no idea that her daughter was dead, insisted her son go searching for the girl. She would wake Gerhard up in the middle of the night to go looking for Christine but with the passing of time she became more bitter and angry over the situation, sometimes waking Gerhard up with a vicious slap across the face. Gerhard, in his self induced guilt, would receive her abuse in silence. Hilda never gave up hope that Christine would come home again. She kept Christine’s room clean and ready for her return, although she did move all of Christine’s things to a room in the basement.

She reasoned that if Christine came back it might not be willingly at first. After all, she was a stubborn girl! So she set up the basement for a resistant Christine. Hilda planned, together with Gerhard, how they would get Christine to come home and stay with them.

Since Gerhard knew this could never happen, he felt there was no harm in helping his mother plan as they set up the perfect living quarters. As Gerhard contemplated, he could not help but think of his sister in this prison.

When Gerhard entered the Niagara Falls church that Sunday, three weeks ago he had come looking for some sense of peace. In the thirty years since his sister had died, his guilt had not eased but had grown inside him like a malignant tumor. His mother didn’t wake him in the middle of the night any more. She had finally given up on that. She had turned into a miserable, bitter old woman and the verbal abuse was relentless. Gerhard had been driving down the road one day when he saw a simple cross with the words below it “God Loves You”. It made him think, was there a possibility of a God who might actually care about the misery he was going through? So he decided that Sunday he would see what it would be like to sit in a church service. If God were indeed real, then just maybe He could make Himself known to him and give him some peace.

As he looked around he didn’t expect to come face to face with his dead sister. He knew that Laura Reid was really not Christine but she looked exactly like what he thought Christine would look like today, if she were still alive. God really did care! He must have led Gerhard to this particular church for just this reason. His mind worked quickly on a plan to get this “Christine” home to his mother. He was glad he thought fast enough to give Laura and her husband his middle name William, instead of his first one. It was a shame that her husband actually saw his face but it was too late for that.

Hopefully he had already forgotten what Gerhard looked like and would never make the connection between his missing wife and the stranger in church. If he did, well, he would deal with that situation when it came up. Laura had told him she was the church secretary. That was a handy fact to know. Before he could do anything in regards to Laura, he had some serious work to do in Christine’s room at home. He took three weeks off work telling his staff he was going on vacation and then got busy making the preparations.

Chapter 3

Monday morning and Jim was already in the bathroom when Laura’s alarm clock went off at 7:30. Lacey was getting ready for school while Laura prepared for her morning at work. Monday’s were busy. She only worked at the church until noon, but then she had her usual Monday errands to run. Banking and postal errands for the church, groceries, and whatever else for home.

“Um, dear are you planning on doing much shopping today?” asked Jim as he came into the kitchen.

“I don’t know. I might do some, why?” Laura responded, her shoulders starting to tense up.

“I just want you to remember we have bills to pay and you have a tendency to spend more than we earn.” Jim came back with a sarcastic reply.

“Have you seen my running shoes?” asked Lacey, as she ran back down the stairs with a piece of toast in one hand and a glass of juice in the other.