The Collector of Names (21 page)

*

The receptionist tried to sleep in spite of the noise. He closed his eyes tightly, cursed the pensioners and tried to come up with a plausible excuse to tell the tourists in the morning.

The biker appeared in the doorway, with his eyes bulging, the right corner of his mouth quivering, copious saliva running down his chin. He looked at the sleeping man and started grinding his teeth, as if their every move was tearing a piece of meat from a large joint.

8

"FATHER! FATHER! I'M COMING! FATHER!"

Ana froze. The screams, together with the sound of running feet were coming from the darkness in front of her, and the strangest thing about them was their joyfulness, euphoria. She quickly jumped behind a tree, tripped and rolled into a hollow. A wonderful hiding place, she thought, leant on the soil, pushed herself up and peeped over the edge.

A figure dressed in a short T-shirt and y-fronts ran along the path, waving something in its hands and calling for its father. The apparition had gone past her before she could make out anything else about it. She looked after it in amazement. For the first time, she got a very serious and unpleasant feeling that something was happening which was not a game and which was completely out of her control.

Should she go on? The rumbling from the direction of the village was increasing and for some time now she had known it was from some kind of an engine, probably a tractor or something similar even though she could not think of anything suitable. She let the soil take her down to the bottom of the hollow. She would wait another few minutes and then pluck up the courage to go on.

Moonlight shone on the branches but it was nearly completely dark down there, apart from the very middle of the hollow, about a metre in front of her, which was lit up by a vertical ray of light from the moon.

She became aware of the quiet in the woods, probably because of the shouting earlier.

The first day of her holidays and there she was already alone in the middle of the night (or was it early morning?) among the pine-trees. She remembered her school-friend's advice that she had rejected. No, she would not want to stay up that late every night. The thought reminded her of bed and sleep, which she had not really missed until then, but now she started to. It would be nice to go to sleep in her own bed. But she would make do with the bed at her uncle's, even though it looked very old, with a mattress stuffed with straw, and was probably pretty uncomfortable. Only somebody rested finds it hard to decide between an adventure and rest.

She smiled at the darkness.

A skull nodded in the ray of light, or so it seemed at first glance. Large shining eyes, teeth exposed in a big grin, whilst the rest of the face was covered with something dark, sticky and hard, studded with pine-tree needles.

Ana felt like screaming. Her mouth opened, the air travelled into her lungs, her vocal cords flexed, but her brain read the look on the monster in front of her and told her: if you scream, you are dead.

The being made no threatening moves, it just stared at her. Ana did not scream, she believed her inner voice.

"Why are you trembling so much? Are you cold?" asked Alfonz.

*

Raf saw the light in the woods and in between sobs, little seeds of doubt started emerging: were those really signs of madness? They looked so realistic. But then, that is the definition of madness.

He felt his forehead, took a quick breath in and got up. No, his hope was false: his neck was completely stiff, his body was drenched in sweat and he could feel his stomach somewhere deep in his groin. All the signs of an imminent catastrophe.

He looked towards the campsite. The child came out of the smallest tent and started paying attention to the motorbike. The slaughter had started. Raf surprised himself with his cold indifference and a feeling of superiority - all that had nothing to do with him anymore. He was already dead and buried. The only thing that bothered him at all was the slight envy he felt when he thought about the destiny of the tourists within those tents. He felt ashamed and he turned away from the boy who was now looking towards the light above the woods.

Raf put his hand on his heart and it gave him a fright. The madness was growing. His organs were working more and more irregularly, the visions and noises were becoming clearer and clearer.

Oooooooooooooooohhh!

He wrinkled his forehead. Was that possible? The creature was looking at the light above the trees and it seemed to Raf that it was standing there, listening. If it was seeing and hearing the same things as him, than it could not all be just his imagination.

He looked towards the camp again eagerly but the boy was not there anymore. Raf turned his head around in panic, his eyes cutting the air. Finally, he noticed the boy near the campsite entrance, walking up the hill slowly. There was somebody at the reception door with his back towards him, but the completely confused Raf was not interested in him. Pull yourself together, he told himself, what did actually happen earlier?

Aco fell and Raf looked on. In the meantime the boy turned towards Raf and asked for his name, he remembered that very clearly, but everything after that became blurred. He must have answered, because the boy went off and left him as if he had finished his assignment.

"Too late, too late, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus!"

That was all he had said, nothing else. He had repeated the name of the Saviour and NO!

-NO!-

it had saved him. He had directed all his attention to Aco's fall and that had helped him to lie. Not deliberately, that was not possible. He told the name collector a name he surely had already? So what happened with other people's names and duplicates? Was Jesus a self-sufficient name, which did not need a person behind it? Was that why many doubted it ever did have a person behind it?

He's saved me, thought Raf. Saved me! Jesus has saved me.

Suddenly, he found himself in the middle of the world again. He was not an inseparable part of it - that was impossible after his close experience of death - it was more a case of a temporary coexistence and responsibility.

I have fucked everything up, well and truly. God saved me that time I didn't go to play on the trains and God lent me his name tonight and saved me again. There is a task I have to carry out. If there is a goal, than God does exist. This time I won't fuck up. I'll be cool and collected, just like Aco. I'll do everything right and try to atone for my sins.

You'll hear them as soon as they start off and they'll come with a noise.

That was what Aco had said. Raf repeated the sentence a few more times and suddenly he recognised the sound coming through the darkness.

The tank. They were coming in the tank!

The child was at the bottom of the hill.

He had promised Aco to warn them and explain to them who their enemy was and what he looked like. He ran over to the spear and pulled it out of the ground. He wanted to run after the boy and attack him again. He changed his mind, remembering the boy's powers and his own clumsiness. There was one move which would do both at once: he must run along the slope across the wood and not on the windy road so that he overtook the boy, which should not be difficult as the boy seemed to be moon-walking. The rescuers on the tank were sure to have weapons with them and when the creature appeared in front of them, they could shoot him without coming within the reach of his powers. The solution had never seemed so simple and so near. A ripe promise of the end of the nightmare. He looked towards the campsite where there was nothing to do anymore. The boy had already completed his task there and the mad slaughter would begin any moment.

Over the hill, then. Clutching the spear he ran like never before.

*

The reception door opened noisily and the biker jumped into the room, transformed into a wild and merciless monster. The receptionist jumped up, picked up the tourist by his collar, gave his head two good blows, one from the left and one from the right, kicked him over to the built-in cupboard, opened it and hurled his attacker in and then closed and locked the door.

"There!"

He brushed his hand on his trousers and sat back on his chair, which had not even begun to cool down. Good job he had been expecting an attack ever since he had started his shift that evening, when he had looked through the personal details of all the guests and seen that one of them was a writer. He had never met one in his life, but knew very well what sort of people they were. They came to the seaside, got pissed out of their heads and then caused havoc, having fights all night. His assumptions proved correct and the receptionist smiled smugly and shouted towards the cupboard, without feeling any need to open his eyes:

"You just keep growling and scratching at the door (
spitting on the floor)
- fucking writer! We know your sort very well here!"

*

"We’re half way there now, boys, so let’s be a bit more careful from now on!" Luka said into the microphone. He was still half way out of the turret, leaning on the heavy Browning machine-gun on his left.

Bruno asked: "Luka, may I lower the seat?"

"You think it’ll be dangerous straight away?"

"No, it’s just that there’s quite a cool breeze and my rheumatism"

"OK, lower it and drive more slowly!"

From where he was, Luka could not see the driver looking out of the tank just beneath the turret, right next to the barrel. His seat was lowered and the lid was closed.

"Miro, are you ready?"

"Yes."

Miro was really an artillery-man, but had now taken Luka’s place at the second machine gun.

"Give Adriano down there a kick, just to make sure he’s not asleep."

"What if he starts going on again?"

"Kick him!"

"EH? WHAT? WHAT SORT OF BEHAVIOUR IS THIS, YOU’RE NOT ON A BUS OVER ON THE MAINLAND!"

"Alright, it’s alright. Just like I said, be careful now, boys!"

The tank struggled on up the road and it was another five-minute drive up to the junction at the top of the hill.

*

Raf stood in the middle of the road and the lights were already penetrating through the trees. The child was nowhere to be seen.

"Victory!" he said, while catching his breath and then he waited for the arrival of the rescuers.

"FATHER! FATHER!" Raf heard behind him, at first quietly from a fair distance, but then it got louder and he knew it was coming nearer.

"Oh, no! Max!"

He looked around quickly and hid behind some pine-trees at the side of the road. He could not afford to be seen by Max, it was not the right time to be kissed by him, he needed his mouth empty so that he could speak to the pensioners.

Lights appeared in the middle of the road: the one a few metres above the ground was so strong that it blinded Raf whereas the two lower down, in a triangular shape, were much weaker. He could only hear the mass of iron behind them but not actually see it.

Max sped down the road, shouting and running towards the tank.

*

That was Father’s look! So full of light that it blinded everybody, especially his nameless son. Max could feel his Father’s strength, he could hear his rumble and he knew that they were getting closer and closer, another moment and they would be united in an inseparable embrace. The earth trembled when his Father walked, so he could not be mistaken.

Max waved the strips of jeans he had been tied with in the air. Let his Father see how his worthless son had freed himself from them and was now bringing them to show.

FATHER!

*

Max ran towards the centre of the light, waving his arms in the air and shouting. His words lost their meaning and became one long howl, an orgasm of euphoric vocal cords.

Raf was hiding behind a tree and could not take his eyes off the scene in front of him.

Luka suddenly noticed the screaming boy, waving something long and flexible above his head and grabbed for the Browning. He was not as quick as he used to be and for a moment he thought that he was finished, the terrorist would throw his explosives before they managed to stop him.

What was Adriano doing? Why wasn’t he firing, he was the head machine-gunner! Was he now blind as well as deaf? Adriano!

The machine gun at the front went off, a moment later Miro joined in and Luka finally managed to aim his barel in the right direction and press the trigger. That was more like it! Fire at the end of the barrel and after every ten loads the fire extended into a long ray of light, which helped him aim. A spider’s web in the darkness.

Max did not seem to be harmed at first and then his right arm came off at the elbow and flew in a long arch into the darkness. The end and devastation happened in a moment: an explosion of stones, soil, pine-trees, blood, flesh and bones fused into a cloud which first flew up into the air, then smashed onto the ground, rolling here and there under the shower of bullets which just would not stop.

Luka let go of the trigger, but the machine-gun would not stop firing. He started hitting the mechanism until it finally stopped.

"STOP!" he shouted.

Miro stopped immediately, whilst Adriano needed another kick, but this time Luka did not have to order it.

"FUCKING HELL!" Adriano’s shouting came through the earphones. "LUKA, FUCK YOU. YOU STICK THAT FUCKING LABEL OF YOURS ON MY MACHINE-GUN AND YOU WRITE ON IT: MACHINE-GUN M 19119A4 AND I CAN TAKE THAT. BUT THEN YOU PUT ANOTHER FUCKING LABEL ON THE FUCKING TRIGGER, SAYING MACHINE-GUN’S M19119A4 TRIGGER! HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO FUCKING FIRE WHEN I HAVE TO SCRATCH THE FUCKING PAPER OFF THE TRIGGER, EH?"

"ADRIANO, SHUT UP!"

"I FUCKING WILL NOT! SOON YOU’LL BE STICKING A FUCKING LABEL ON EVERY FUCKING BULLET. MACHINE-GUN’S M19119A4 BULLET. AND THEN I’LL HAVE TO SCRATCH OFF EACH FUCKING ONE BEFORE I FIRE IT!"