Page 23 of Geist Fleisch
“Callum? Will you give me a hand, please?”
He was out of the car faster than Frank had been. His companion lifted what looked like several canvases sealed up with metal from the car and handed them to him. Then, with his bag in one hand and a photographer’s tripod in the other, he closed up the small door at the back of the car and tapped the window above it twice. The car was gone before Callum could ask any more questions.
They strode up to the door, where Frank knocked with the side of his boot.
A second later, Brigitte answered. “You’re late.”
“You’d have me rush, or worse, forget something?”
The woman rolled her eyes and shut the door behind them.
“How long until they know we’re here?” asked Callum.
“I told you to relax,” said Frank, setting his bag down with a smile. “Suzi is well aware of what we’re doing, and is enjoying a night off with a generous fee for use of her establishment. She might also be in the company of a very nice young lady, but I didn’t pry.”
Callum looked at the skeletal frames and stands Brigitte had already set up around the bar. As the pair busied themselves setting up canvas sheets, lights, cameras, and electrical meters, it began to look more like a film set than a drinking establishment.
“You’re sure you don’t want help?” he asked.
“Do you know how any of this equipment works?” Brigitte’s tone was kind, but dismissive.
“We appreciate the offer, Callum. But don’t worry. You’ll be doing the heavy lifting soon enough.” Frank hoisted another stand and hung a canvas screen off of it.
Brigitte adjusted the angle of one of the lights so it bounced off the mirror behind the bar.
It seemed pointless to interrupt their work for explanations he wouldn’t understand, but… “What do you mean by that?”
“Making contact,” Frank answered. “You’re the only flesh and blood being who to our knowledge has met these spirits.”
“If that’s all you need, you could come with me to the toilets right now.”
“Why, Callum! Buy a fellow a drink, at least.” Frank grinned, tightening a hook on one of the stands. “Passing to their side is one thing, but we need to be able to monitor you. This equipment will record an approximation of what you’re seeing. A shadow, if you will. Perhaps we’ll even hear them. Wouldn’t that be something?”
“In theory, no mortal should be able to pass to their side.” Brigitte fiddled with some radio-like instrument behind the bar. “I don’t know how you managed it, but these war-dead bars are a rare enough phenomenon. We don’t need to tempt fate with dumb mistakes.”
“War-dead?” Callum swallowed as it clicked into place. From the scars on each and every man to Ernst’s instant dislike for him as an Englishman, it made perfect sense.
Frank set up the last of the stands. “We’ve looked for their kind in London, Paris, and other cities in countries that sustained significant losses. Only in Berlin do the dead congregate in the way you’ve seen. And you, my friend, may bethe only living man to have seen them, much less spoken with them.”
“Why only Berlin?” he asked. “And why me?”
“Both are good questions. The first is more open to conjecture, but the Shapers—um, wizards and witches, to you—”
“Hi,” Brigitte muttered as if she resented the terms.
“They found a unique energy of division running through this city like a ribbon. We don’t know if it comes from the past, the future, or even local fears about what’s to come. There are so many variables when one is talking about supernal energies, and just as many ways they can manifest. But it offers one explanation for why there are more shades of grey here, between life and death. Such places may well exist in Paris or London, but if they do, the veil there is too thick for the living to penetrate. As for you, my friend, I suspect it’s your very nature that allows you to slip through.”
“My nature?”
“As a Cloak Walker. Forgive me, that is the preferred term for what you are. As you become more of a phantom in our physical world, it’s possible that you become more real in theirs.”
He nodded, this at last making some sense to him. “Like…Fleisch.”
“Exactly.”
“So, I’m dying, then?”
Frank put a hand on his shoulder. “My dear fellow, improbable as it may seem now, you’ve only just begun to live. Are we ready, Brigitte?”
