Page 20 of Geist Fleisch
“You’ve seen what Jacqueline and Robert are. If we wished you harm, you wouldn’t be able to stop us.”
Callum folded his arms and snorted. “So, what do you ‘wish’ then? You want me to leave Berlin? No witnesses? Just disappear? That’s not happening.”
“Yes, Callum. I’m afraid that’s exactly what’s happening.” Frank tilted his head in a way that made Callum feel like a medical specimen. “And there’s not a damn thing you or any of us can do about it.”
He shook his head, getting to his feet at last. “Now, you’re just talking rubbish. So, if I’m not a prisoner, and if you don’t mean me any harm, as you say, I am going to, as you put it, ‘just leave.’ No offence, Mister Bakker, but whatever this is… I’d better not see your like or those bloodsucking freaks again.”
“As you wish,” the man answered, striking a match and lighting a cigarette. “Though at the rate you’re going, I wouldn’t count on anyone being able to see yourlikefor much longer.”
“You are threatening me!”
“On the contrary!” Bakker shot back, standing up and levelling his dark eyes on Callum, cigarette glowing between his fingers as he advanced. “You’ve felt it yourself, as your skin grows just a little thinner each day. A sickly pallor here, a bout of nausea there, ‘Oh my, am I supposed to be seeing that vase behind me in the mirror? I guess I imagined it.’ Well, let me share an insight that might spur you to some co-operation. This is just the beginning.”
“Oy, all right. I’ll be going now.”
“These are the early stages, Callum. It’s going to get worse, and there is no cure. You’ll be able to talk and make noise, just as before. Even wear clothes. Make yourself noticed if you want to cause trouble, but in the end, people will choose not to see even that. Already, you no longer show up in photographs. I’ll wager we could take a hundred shots and not see an inch of your increasingly translucent flesh.”
“You think what you want—”
“I don’t have to ‘think’ about what I already know. But do you know what the worst part will be? The solitude of wandering. Losing Anne. Losing everyone you’ve ever loved. Then, the not knowing? Oh, yes. You’ll look back so fondly on your days in Berlin and wonder what the bloody hell happened. What were those two creatures you saw kill those Nazis? What was that strange friend of Anne’s trying to tell you the night you visited the Institute for Sexual Research? Hell, all you wanted when you came here was the freedom to romance and fuck as many men as you wished. Well, best get to it, Callum, because your days of romancing and fucking are sorely numbered.”
“You’re talking rot!”
“You’re disappearing! Deny the evidence of your own eyes all you want. You’re a walking vanishing act, and it will happen faster than you think. All you can do is be prepared.”
“Is that so? Well thanks very much for your concern. I’ll take my chances.”
“You’d take the chance that it will drive you mad before you’ve made sense of it?”
“Look, who the hell are you?”
“Ah! At last, he asks a sensible question. I was beginning to think you were past all help and of no use to us at all.”
“Of use to you?” he spat out. “That’s a laugh.”
“Do you want answers? About yourself and the things you’ve seen?” Frank snatched up the second photo from the table and held it up to the light. “About him, perhaps? Because that’s all we want, Callum. We’re not in the business of blackmail, nor indentured servitude. We are seekers of the truth, and I think right now, that’s all you want too. After that, perhaps, we can offer you a good deal more.”
He opened his mouth to shoot back some caustic reply, but none came to him.
“How’s your head?” Frank asked, stubbing out his cigarette in a silver ashtray on the table.
Callum grimaced, touching the bandage. “Still hurts.”
Frank called in the direction of the closed door. “Enter.”
Jacqueline and Robert rejoined them, this time with a small, fastidiously dressed black woman at their side.
“Evening,” Callum muttered. “Are you going to introduce us?”
“First things first.”
Callum flinched as Jacqueline reached for his bandage. “What are you doing?”
“Hold still,” she chided. “This won’t take a moment.”
“I know you don’t believe us, Callum. That’s perfectly fair. That disbelief is our best weapon in the modern era, after all.”
“The modern era? What are you talking—Will you stop?”
