Shivers 7 (29 page)

“And here,” I began, after showing them the workstation, and the wine racks “Is something I’m especially proud of. A sub-cellar I built entirely alone…” My voice trailed off. I had begun to hear it. It had been inevitable, of course.

The low, steady thump-thump of my wife’s tell-tale heart coming from the floorboards above. My voice cracked, my head swooning. This was where it ended, I thought. This must be the ending to the story.

But it wasn’t, for then a high-pitched scream of agony erupted from the trapdoor I had opened for the police. It was Charles, still alive and shrieking. My mind fluttered. Oh, God, my torments have arisen!

A shatter of glass came from behind us—I knew at once a force had broken the cellar window inward. I spun crazily to see the cat—
the very cat I had murdered the night before
—leaping through the window, snarling at me. Immediately following the wretched beast were birds—scores and scores of ravens, fluttering and flittering through the burst glass. They flocked upon me, pecking at me, each and every one screaming
Nevermore! Nevermore!, Nevermore!

“Get thee back!” I howled! “Get thee back into the tempest!” They paid no mind, beating me to the floor of the cellar, and I lay screaming “I did it!” Shrieking, spewing forth my guilt and admittance, anything to stop the scourge of ravens!

The police lunged at me and dragged me up, rescuing me from the rats that had begun streaming up from the sub-cellar. The rats with their sharp, rodent teeth—hurrying at me in troops, wanting to gnaw and bite. The rats and the ravens and the cat, oh dear God!

It was then I fainted, and awoke in this place, sitting in a corner, wrapped in a tight vest that allows me no movement.

* * *

And still I am here, still am sitting,
still
am sitting, listening to the clanging of bells somewhere outside of my room. Surely you must not think me mad, but the people here do. They have begun to move the walls in on me, and I know that soon they will send me hurtling into the pit I cannot yet see. But they may have their torments, for I am become Poe, and I will just sit, just sit, and listen to the bells outside the walls of my room. They toll for my death, you see.

Bells, bells, bells.

Bells, bells, bells.

Arbeit Macht Frei

Del James

When David Bradshaw’s parents told him about the month long vacation they were giving him as a graduation present, the seventeen year old almost felt like an adult. All of the hard work he’d done to bring his grades up so that colleges would consider his application, working two part-time jobs to make his car payments, and enduring all the drama that came with his final year of high school seemed worth the effort. His first trip overseas included London, Paris, Berlin, Rome, Barcelona, and a few other spectacular destinations.

The catch— his parents planned on chaperoning.

David couldn’t believe they were tagging along. Talk about losing one’s erection. Going to Europe with his folks seemed like the equivalent of being given a motorcycle with training wheels. So much for the coming of age adventure-- the road trip that includes meeting exotic young women in exotic places before travelling to the next city or country. Now, with his cock-blocking mom and dad along he wouldn’t even need to program a ‘European Hookups’ playlist for his iPod.

If David had his iPod handy, “Teenage Lament” by Alice Cooper might be the most appropriate song for his feelings toward the month of July. Seriously, why call it a present if it had stipulations attached? This trip wasn’t a gift to him. It was a family vacation for them. If they thought he couldn’t see the reality of the situation they were wrong.

Nothing was ever quite as it seemed and behind their upwardly middle-class appearance, the Bradshaw family was mired in fiscal turmoil. Mom and dad declared strong annual incomes but they were heavily taxed and lived way above their means. When they weren’t fighting over bills they squabbled about who spent more. To David it seemed as if they enjoyed arguing over money more than anything else they did together. Certainly more than whatever they were supposed to be doing behind closed bedroom doors.

For the duration of this so-called vacation where the Bradshaws would get cozy in one room, David would have to try his damndest to smile his way through boring sight-seeing tours and tune out his parent’s constant bickering. Hence, the iPod must always be charged.

Big Ben is a big clock.

The Eiffel Tower is tall.

The Berlin wall isn’t much of a wall anymore.

The Mona Lisa is ugly.

The Salvador Dali museum is bugged out.

English food is bland.

French food is not bland and not good.

Germans make great schnitzel.

Italian food is fantastic.

Spanish food is better than Italian food.

Wi-Fi rarely works well in Europe.

The subway system is manageable.

Tits on topless beaches are rarely tits that a young man wants to see.

No matter what language it was broadcast in, European television sucks ass.

Toward the end of the Bradshaw family vacation, mom and dad decided that instead of visiting Athens they would check out Krakow instead. Greece teetered on the verge of economic collapse and David’s great grandfather was Polish so Mom felt a connection. Dad became sold on the idea when he learned how inexpensive Poland was.

Much to David’s surprise, Poland was one of the most beautiful countries they visited. Other than its role as a punching bag in World War II and as a punch line for tasteless jokes, the teen knew very little about Poland. He learned that that Krakus founded a stone-age settlement on Wawel Hill. The settlement stood above a cave occupied by a dragon and would eventually become Poland’s second largest and second most important city, Krakow. Many works of Polish Renaissance arts and architecture were created in Krakow during the 15
th
and 16
th
Century- Poland’s Golden Age. Wawel Castle is the city’s centerpiece and a must-see but most visitors are drawn to the Old Town. With its soaring Gothic churches and gargantuan Rynek Glowny, it is the largest market square in the nation.

Blue eyes trying to absorb it all, there was always something captivating to see in Krakow, especially the babes.

Polish girls are stunning. Drop dead gorgeous; even the average ones could pass for models—pale with high cheekbones, seductive eyes, long legs, and bouncy breasts. Judging from the looks of things Polish girls liked to drink beer and meet foreigners but other than observing, David never had the opportunity to find out. His parents never let him out of their sight. He even offered to give them some “alone time” back at the hotel but neither took the hint.

The day before flying back to God Bless America his parents booked a daytrip to Auschwitz. To David it seemed really strange that a place with such a vile history could somehow be a tourist destination but every year over a million people visited the concentration camp. For thirty euros per person, a company called Visit Auschwitz picked them up at their hotel and took them in an air-conditioned minibus to Auschwitz. Headsets and an English-speaking tour guide were included as part of the fee. Besides visiting the main camp at Auschwitz, the three-hour visit also featured a trip to the Birkenau death camp.

As they travelled along the quaint Polish countryside, a strange sensation began to slowly seep in. These roads were the same roads that the Nazis conquered. This was the exact same route that many soon-to-be exterminated Jews travelled. Dark history had been written here. Dark history inspired dark lyrics. Dark lyrics made for a fitting soundtrack. Fortunately David brought his iPod for the forty-five mile journey. Besides blocking out his parents and the other tourists, mandatory listening for the ride called for “Angel of Death” by Slayer.

When they arrived, the sky shone bright blue with plenty of billowy white clouds. Healthy trees stood in full bloom and the grass a vibrant green. Instead of some malevolent shadow hanging over the grounds, Auschwitz appeared surprisingly serene. If not for the diabolical history, this picturesque location could be where picnickers spent a relaxing afternoon.

The minibus parked in a lot with other vehicles from other tour groups like Escape2Poland and Never Forget Tours. Guides led hundreds of people from every ethnicity into the camp. The irony of being herded into a concentration camp was not lost upon David. It wasn’t too difficult to mentally substitute the tour guide’s casual attire for an SS uniform or add cloth stars to the summer clothing of the tourists. Maybe throw in a few snarling German Shepherds to keep everyone in line.

Everywhere he looked he saw men, women, and children lining up. Jews, Catholics, Slovaks, Germans, Latinos, and Asians… everyone had a different reason for visiting. Some people seemed quite affected by their surroundings. Others were posing for Facebook photos.

A dirt road cratered with rocks. A black and white gate, like a tollbooth, was raised. Steel and barbwire fences surrounded certain locations. Watchtowers with loud speakers, wooden signs with a skull and cross bones warned HALT! STOJ!

The tourists each wore transmitter radios around their necks and headphones to be able to listen to their tour guide. As David and the others entered the grounds, a Polish-accented voice in his headphones declared; “Konzentrationslager Auschwitz was a network of extermination camps built and operated by the Third Reich after the invasion of Poland during World War II. These were the largest of the German concentration camps, consisting of Auschwitz I, the Stammlager or base camp; Auschwitz II–Birkenau, the Vernichtungslager or Extermination camp, and forty-five satellite camps. In the years 1940 through 1945, the Nazis deported at least 1,300,000 people to Auschwitz. 1,100,000 were Jews. Most of them were murdered in the gas chambers as part of Hitler’s Final Solution. Those not killed in the gas chambers died of starvation, forced labor, infectious disease, individual executions, and medical experiments. Everybody follow me and stay together please.”

The group did as instructed and walked toward the infamous sign that greeted all arrivals to Auschwitz.

“Arbeit Macht Frei is a German phrase, ‘labor makes you free’ meaning work sets you free,” the tour guide explained. “The expression comes from the 1873 title of a novel by Lorenz Diefenbach in which gamblers and fraudsters find the path to virtue through labor. The slogan was placed over the entrances to a number of Nazi concentration camps including Dachau, Gross-Rosen concentration camp, and Auschwitz I. Prisoners with metalwork skills made the sign above your heads and it was erected in June 1940. The phrase Arbeit Macht Frei seems not to have been intended as a mockery, nor as a false promise that those who worked to exhaustion would eventually be released, but rather as a kind of mystical declaration that self-sacrifice in the form of endless labor does in itself bring a kind of spiritual freedom.”

Even wearing sunglasses, the bright sun forced David to squint. Clouds rolling by overhead, he stood utterly captivated by wrought iron and the power of the slogan. It was the first time he’d ever stood on a threshold.

Staring up at the sixteen-foot long sign while other visitors took photographs, he could relate to why five men tried to steal it a few years ago.
According to the News, the ninety-pound sign had been half-unscrewed and half-torn off from above the death camp’s gate.
The thieves carried the sign to an opening in a concrete wall. Four metal bars that blocked the opening had been cut and the sign was loaded onto a vehicle and driven to a safe house.
Before the thieves could sell the infamous sign, a countrywide search led to its recovery. The sign had been cut into three pieces but soon Arbeit Macht Frei was repaired and put back where it belonged.

Dressed in a black t-shirt with the Monster Energy Drink neon green logo, baggy camouflage pants, and hi-top sneakers, David walked under the sign and entered the death camp with a mission.

He wanted to steal a piece of history.

Obviously the sign was out of the question but there had to be something else he could swipe. A keepsake… a memento of some sort. Everything about Auschwitz held some sort of sinister history. Fuck bringing home a piece of the Berlin wall! Imagine what his friends would think if he brought home a tile or a piece of wood from Hell on Earth?

Tour groups shuffled in and out of various creepy red brick buildings. Square wooden signs, black with white numbers, denoted different blocks- BLOCK 5 or BLOCK 11, etc. David’s tour group learned that prisoners who committed minor behavior infractions were sent to “The Dark Cell”, a series of small jail cells in the basement of block 11, nicknamed “The Death Block.” These small cells were entirely deprived of light and poorly ventilated. Prisoners served out the hours or days of their sentence in utter blackness, and often suffocated from lack of air. Although a trip to The Dark Cell did not mean certain death, it meant misery and possible death in the loneliest, most terrifying environment possible.

For major infractions of camp rules, the worst type of specialty cell in the basement of Block 11 was utilized. “The Starvation Cell” was very simple - prisoners were thrown into an empty cell, the door was locked, and they were left inside until they starved to death. Depending on the condition of the prisoner, this could take a day or a week; all while the captives of nearby cells heard their screams and pleas for food. Following the escape of one prisoner from Auschwitz in 1943, ten prisoners were put into starvation cells to die, as an example to others.

As if on cue, either mom’s or dad’s stomach made a gurgling sound.

Inside different buildings were different exhibits. Large signs explained what atrocities had occurred and included staggering historical facts. Encased behind glass were ceramic models of prisoners packed in trains and inside the gas chambers. David also examined train ticket stubs, record books, photographs, and a large mound of empty Zyklon B canisters.

“Judged by their physical appearance, people were selected as they exited the trains. Those to be gassed were assured that they were going to take a bath. Dummy showers were fixed to the wall. Menaced by attack dogs and beaten into formation, two thousand victims were crammed into the 210 square meter chamber. The chamber door was locked and the Zyklon B was poured. After fifteen minutes, the chamber was opened. Corpses were stripped of gold teeth, hair, earrings, rings, and anything else of value. Each day 10 kilos of gold were removed from the mouths of the dead. The victims’ personal documents were destroyed.”

As they moved further through the building, David couldn’t believe the mountain of human hair on display. It stood forty feet in length and taller than he.
Then he observed a mountain of eyeglasses…. A mountain of prosthetic limbs and crutches…. A mountain of leather suitcases bearing the names of their previous owners… A mountain of toy dolls…. A mountain of shoes.

An entire hallway displayed framed photographs of prisoners in their striped prisoner outfits. Like mug shots, these photographs contained the prisoners’ name and their identification number. The tour guide explained that Auschwitz was the only camp to tattoo numbers on prisoners. A bottle of ink that had been used to tattoo thousands of prisoners was also on display.

Several bronze statues showed emaciated Jews in various poses. Unlike the statues David had seen all over Europe that tried to immortalize beauty, these somber statues were riddled with strife. Bony limbs and sallow eyes seemed to plead for mercy while tourists snapped photos on their smart phones.

Instead of taking a picture, David stroked the statue trying to feel whatever energy it contained.

The long face with sunken eyes stared back at him.

Next the tour group was taken outside of BLOCK 21. A bullet riddled wall known as “The Death Wall” served as a somber reminder that most of the executions took place at this spot.

“For serious infractions like insubordination or refusing to work, the Nazis would shoot a bullet into the back of the head of a kneeling victim,” the tour guide said in a neutral tone. “These executions were carried out in full view of other prisoners, to set a horrifying example, but at least it was one of the quicker ways to die at Auschwitz. Okay people follow me.”