The Man By The Fire

Prologue

I opened the door to his room cautiously, with a hidden fear that I didn’t want to show. The orange fire flickered nosily from a dreary corner and I watched the shadows it cast along the floor dance and jeer at my shaking legs. I didn’t like it here, I wished I hadn’t come.

I was about to turn back but I heard him call to me from beside the fire, ‘Dan,’ he cooed in that long silver voice, ‘Where are you going?

I paused, uncertain. ‘Nowhere,’ I lied.

‘Then come over here my boy, come over here so I can see you.’

I reluctantly walked along over the floor, past the shadows that twisted around me and towards the fire that climbed the walls. He sat quite still in his chair, his balding head the only thing that I could see in the lamenting firelight.

‘I’ve been watching you,’ he told me icily, ‘I’ve been watching everything you do.’

‘I know,’ I told him, ‘I came here to see what you wanted with me.’

I felt him smile, a long cold smile that echoed through my bones. His tongue must have stretched with a silent joy inside his mouth, I could hear the pleasure in his voice when he spoke, ‘Tell me,’ he asked, ‘Have you ever seen hell?’

I hesitated, ‘Once,’ I admitted, ‘In the eyes of man so twisted his only joy was pain.’
‘That’s interesting.’

‘Why?’

‘They say it’s something you can never escape, the ones who are saved will never see it.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘It means only the ones destined for hell can ever witness those flames.’
‘Liar.’

He turned his chair around so I could see his face and he looked at me with an eyeless glare, ‘Would I lie to you?’

‘If I go there I’m taking you with me, if I can see those flames so can you.’

I felt him smile, again, ‘But my boy,’ he told me, ‘I have no eyes to see the fire with.’

‘Liar!’

He smiled, ‘No, lying is one thing I could never do. Look at me, I lost my eyes long ago. I’m afraid only one of us will be going to hell tonight.’

I surged forward, I’d kill this man, who was he to condemn me to hell? I grabbed his throat between my fingers and tightened my grasp around his neck. His skin was cold and dry against my hands but soft and smooth like a velvet robe. I was surprised that he didn’t try to stop me.

He smiled again as his soul departed, he had won and with a final pleasure he laughed in my face. ‘Some things are meant to happen,’ he told me as his last breath left his body and his head went limp in my shaking hands.

I wept as I let his lifeless corpse drop to the ground.

Some things are meant to happen





Chapter One



‘I’m telling you Karl, this boy is something else.’

‘I think you’re loosing it Paul, all this war is driving you mad.’

‘No, he knew Karl, he knew.’

‘Perhaps this would be a job more suited towards a religious man.’

‘He asked specifically for you Karl.’

‘I hope you’re not wasting my time then Paul. I am a very busy man.’

‘I assure you, I’m not.’

The two men stopped at the lift and one of them placed his finger on the pad that would bring it to their level.

‘Fine. You can return to your post now. There’s work to be done.’

‘Sir.’

The door to the lift opened silently and one of the men stepped inside. He entered a code into the keypad and pushed the button for sub zero eight. The floor groaned and the lift slowly began its decent. The journey seemed to take forever and the man impatiently began to rub his hands. Eventually the lift stopped and with a jolt the door slid open. The man stepped out with a cautious stride. He observed his white surroundings before picking the path labeled ‘Oberstes Geheimnis’.

From here he didn’t stop moving and long paces helped him glide quickly along the empty corridor. The artificial light gave the basement an eerie glow and the man watched his numerous shadows follow silently behind him. He turned left at the junction and headed towards a steel bolted door guarded by two grey soldiers, lower in rank.

The man slowed as he approached and the soldiers stood tense to attention. He stopped completely two foot from the door and slipped a piece of paper into the hand of the guard on his right hand side. The guard glanced at it and looked back at man before nodding and signaling to his companion to open the door. The second fumbled with the lock before stepping aside to let the man in who pushed briskly past him. The door closed with a bang behind his back.

The room he entered was not a large one, measuring four meters each side and with only a single bulb to light it in the centre of the white ceiling. The walls were tall and seemed to stretch upwards, like desperate shoots clawing relentlessly for the sky. Protruding from one corner was a plain black four poster bed with a thin mattress and white sheets skewed across its small surface. In the opposite corner was a small black chair with thin winding legs. Apart from this there was nothing else in the room, nothing with the exception of the small boy who sat calmly on the edge of the chair. He was young and fair and had eyes that glittered slowly as he watched the man who entered his lair. He was a very thin boy, his skin was pale and he almost blended in with his background. He wore only a single white garment and much of his face was hidden by his untidy mess of hair.

The man observed all this in an instant and quickly assessed the child. He then smiled coldly and stepped forward. The child watched him intently but did not move from his seat. The man crouched down so his eyes were level with the child’s and he began to speak.

‘Hello Christian, it’s very nice to meet you. Are you O.K?’

The child didn’t reply, he remained still and regarded the intruder with an unwelcoming stare. Sensing hostility the man rethought his tactics and tried again:

‘I heard you’re a very smart boy Christian, they said you could tell me all sorts of things. I wanted to come and see for myself, I wanted to see just how smart you are.’

The boy continued his blank stare and the man began to grow impatient. He decided to try one more time; if he didn’t speak he would be free to go.

‘I’m sorry, it’s very rude of me not to introduce myself. My name is…’

The boy interrupted, ‘You’re Major Karl Schneider of the forth battalion.’

The man paused, intrigued, but not put off. His smile broadened, ‘How ever did you know that?’

The boy took a moment to consider the question, ‘He told me.’

‘Who told you?’

‘The man by the fire.’

‘The man by the fire? And what fire is this?’

The boy twitched uncomfortably, ‘The fire. He always sits by it.’

‘Is it a big fire?’

‘No. Just a normal one – in a fireplace. He sits by it in his arm chair and you never see his face.’

‘Never?’

The boy shook his head, ‘Never.’

‘Where does he live?’

‘In a village. It’s got lots of old buildings – and a church. And it’s always dark.

‘Where?’

‘I don’t know.’

The man paused. He was irritated by the child’s lack of useful answers and was already growing bored with the concept of the man. But curiosity convinced him to ask more questions and he found that he had a strange sense that the child would tell him something that he needed to know.

‘How old are you Christian?’

‘I’m ten years old.’

‘And do you have any parents?’

‘A father.’

‘And where is he?’

‘I don’t know, he went to the town when the Germans were coming. He left me with all the other children in the park and he said he’d come back for me.’

‘But he didn’t, we found you.’

‘No.’

‘When we found you, where you waiting for him?’

‘No.’

‘Then who were you waiting for?’

‘The soldiers.’

‘Why?’

‘Because he told me they would take me to you.’

‘Who did?’

‘The man by the fire.’

The man stopped; annoyed that he had been drawn to the same conclusion. He considered the answers given to him by the child and reluctantly decided that he should find out more.

‘Who is this man by the fire Christian?’

‘I don’t know. He comes to me when I sleep but I never see his face. He tells me things I don’t want to know and shows me things that scare me. But I always have to do what he says, if I don’t bad things will happen.’

‘Bad things?’

The child leaned forward and his eyes widened, ‘He is a very bad man.’

The man paused again and evaluated the information he had gathered before asking his next question, ‘Why did you want to see me Christian?’

‘I have a message to give to you.’

‘And you couldn’t have passed it on through any of the soldiers?’

‘He told me to give it to you.’

‘What is it then?’

The child paused, looked up, smiled and bit his lip. He kicked his legs playfully beneath the chair gently revealed his whiter than white teeth. ‘He said, “Watch out for the car, the roads a dangerous place for small boys.”’

‘Really? And whatever did he mean by that?’

He stopped to think for a moment, to try and see things for himself before failing and accepting defeat. ‘I don’t know,’ he admitted, ‘I could feel him smiling when he said it. There was a little boy - in a bed - and a woman - his mother - she was crying. And there was a man standing behind her, he said it wasn’t supposed to happen.’

‘What do you mean?’

The boy frowned, tried to explain something that he himself didn’t understand, ‘There was a mistake, something went wrong. It wasn’t supposed to happen.’

‘And what was?’

He took another pause and shook his head, ‘I don’t know.’

‘Right…’ The man had had enough. He stood up straight and looked at his watch. ‘Well, I think that will be all for today Christian. Thank you for talking to me. Make sure you get a good night’s sleep, I’ll see you again soon.’

The boy nodded and the man turned around and walked towards the door. Then he heard the boy call behind him.

‘Wait.’

‘What is it Christian?’

The boy looked at him from that distance between them that was both not long and so very far away, and although he sat and the Major stood you could have almost believed he was looking down on him, with pity, like the pity a child has when he looks down at a dog he is told has to be slaughtered.

‘There’s another man,’ he said, ‘He’s tall and he wears a long black robe. He carries a small briefcase and has a silver cross around his neck. He told me I should tell you his name – it was Gabriel. He said he would like to come and see you.’

‘Well then, if you see him again Christian, tell him I’d like that very much.’

The man banged on the door and after a moment of clicking it swung open and he pushed out through the small exit. He walked back up the white corridor and turned right towards the lift. He waited as the indicator showed the lift descending and he began to think what a waste of time it had been talking to the boy. He couldn’t believe how naïve his staff had been when jumping to their conclusions and he was annoyed that they had bothered to bring him into such an unimportant case. The boy was strange, certainly, but he was by no means magical. There was no need to bother him with weird children when there were operations to run and war to fight. He thought about this all the way to his dormitory and all the time whilst he prepared for dinner. His thoughts were only disturbed whilst he was fixing his collar by a knock at his door.

‘Karl, Karl it’s me.’

‘Just a minute Paul,’ he shot himself a look in the mirror and went to open the door, ‘How are you?’

‘I’m O.K. thanks. You ready for dinner?’

The man sighed, ‘Just about, what is it tonight?’

‘Lobster. Plundered from the finest restaurants in all of Par-ee.’

‘I hate sea food.’

Paul smiled, ‘More for me then eh? Ah it’s much better than what any of the troopers get anyway.’

Karl nodded unconvincingly, ‘Still, you would of thought they would have managed to find some half decent grub in the whole of Western Europe.’

‘Yeah.’

There was a moment of awkward silence, then, ‘Hey, Karl, did you speak to that boy?’

‘Yes.’

‘And?’

‘Load of dog shite. We’ll talk about it over a bottle of whisky if you want to.’
Paul nodded and they started walking towards the dinning hall. Once in they were seated around a large table with members of rank and prestige, infamously known for their poor company and menial chatter. The meal passed slowly with bad jokes and fake laughs and at the end of it Karl was in a worse mood than he was before. On a slightly queasy stomach he headed over to the bar and ordered a glass of gin. Paul begrudgingly followed his friend over and ordered the same and waited for the right moment to start his own interrogation.

‘So?’

‘So what Paul?’

‘So what did the boy say?’

‘Nout. I can’t believe you thought he was ‘gifted’, he’s just some random head case. You’re a load of gypsies the lot of you.’

Paul looked at him uneasily, ‘He didn’t say anything…unexpected, weird?’
No. Just a load of crap. - Well, he knew my name – but he could easily have gotten that from one of you guys.’

‘I think you’re under estimating him Karl.’

Karl laughed, ‘I don’t think so. He’s just another screwed up kid in this stupid war.’
‘No,’ Paul’s eyes narrowed and he shook his head, ‘Karl, this kid told me how my wife died, like he’d seen it, like he’d been there – standing at the back of the room or something. When he spoke about it he took me back to the night when it happened, it felt like I was there, standing over her again, in that poxy little room. He told me how old she was and the exact time she died. He even knew that her favourite colour was red and that if you tickle her behind her ears she giggles and her eyes light up. He described to me how she lost her grip around my hand as she fell deep into that final sleep, how her cheeks lost their colour and how her eyes slowly shut. And how would he know that Karl, how would he know that? This kid’s more than strange, I’m not the only one who thinks it.’

‘Bollocks.’

‘Trust me Karl. He freaked out a whole unit, sent them mad. They said he made the men they killed come back to haunt them, plague their dreams. Tell me that’s not weird, a whole unit… You need to keep an eye on him.’

‘Bullshit. That boy hasn’t got any powers, he hasn’t got any gifts, he doesn’t see ghosts. All he is is a waste of my bloody time. We’ve got a war to fight and I can’t waste any more resources babysitting some stupid kid. I’m telling you Paul, you’re wrong.’

Paul starred at Karl with disbelief, undecided as to whether he was just stubborn or plain stupid. He placed his glass back on the table and gripped the chair with his hand, annoyed, shaking his head slowly from side to side, ‘No Karl, you’re wrong.’ He rose from his seat and swiftly paced out of the bar.

Karl wasn’t bothered though, he saw it as a chance to finally get some peace and enjoy a drink. He was annoyed when he was disturbed again by a young soldier not long after.

‘Major Schneider?’

Karl turned in his chair and glared fiercely at the youth, ‘Yes, yes, what is it?’

The boy stuttered, ‘There’s a man at the gate. He says you’re expecting him?’

Karl looked perplexed, ‘What, a man? I have made no prior arrangements to meet with anyone this evening… Send him away.’ He turned back to his drink.

The solider hesitated for a moment before persisting, ‘He says it’s important, Sir. He says you would be doing yourself a wrong by turning him away.’

Karl sighed, ‘I’m very sure I would be but I have no time for men who wait at gates for meetings they never arranged. Did he even tell you his name?’

‘Just Gabriel Sir, he said he had no surname. I told him you were busy but he insisted that you would want to see him.’

‘Who the…’ Karl broke off. His eyes narrowed and he stood up. ‘I’ll be in my quarters,’ he told the soldier, ‘Tell him he can speak to me there.’

*

Karl looked out of the window beside his bed. It was a cold night and the rain dripped down from his window sill towards the broken ground beneath him. The clouds hid the stars and the moon so it was very dark outside but in the bushes below he could just make out the faint shudders of moving shadows.

There was a knock at his door, once, twice. Karl hesitated; he cautiously walked over to the door and slowly pulled back the latch to reveal his visitor. He was a very tall man, dressed in a flowing black robe. He carried a black brief case and had a small silver cross around his neck. Karl recognised him as a holy man and he wondered how on Earth he had come to him.

‘Hello Karl,’ the man said in a deep but gentle voice.

Karl smiled sarcastically, ‘Evening, Mr. Gabriel. How very nice of you to come and see me on this dark night.’

‘Indeed, I trust you received my message then?

‘I did.’

‘I’m glad, would you mind if I came in?’

‘No, not at all,’ Karl moved aside and fetched a chair, then mockingly, ‘Can I get you a drink?

‘Just a glass of water please. I’m not much of a drinker.’

‘Please, have a seat.’

The priest sat down and placed his briefcase by his side. He held his hands still in his lap and watched Karl scurry around before he joined him.

‘Have you come from far Gabriel – it was Gabriel wasn’t it?’

‘Gabriel, yes. And no, not very far. I’ve been around the area a lot recently.’

‘Is that so? Well tell me then Gabriel, what is the nature of this visit?’

‘I’ve come to warn you Karl.’

Karl’s smile grew across his face, ‘Warn me eh? Whatever would you need to do that for?’

The man’s face remained still, lacking time and patience for Karl’s childish games. An onlooker could have believed he was a waxwork, a product of some genius perversely good at his craft. Not a muscle moved on his face apart from his mouth, not a twitch or scratch or slip of composure. It was difficult to even pin point whether or not the man was blinking.

‘Something’s gone wrong Karl,’ he told him, ‘Something’s gone dreadfully wrong. I don’t how but a mistake has been made. And it’s your fault Karl, you’re to blame. And this mistake has annoyed some very powerful people, in particular an individual who I can assure you is best not upset. And he’s angry Karl, you have no idea.’

Karl’s amusement of the man seemed to grow, ‘Oh yes?’ he asked him, ‘And who would this individual be then?’

‘I think you know Karl, you’ve already been told.’

‘Who?’

‘The man by the fire.’

The smile was wiped clean from Karl’s face, ‘What?’ he demanded, ‘Who is this man by the fire? Is it some sort of riddle?’

‘It’s whatever you want it to be. The man has no name, it suits him better. I suppose you might call him mysterious, even strange, but he’s very smart Karl, very smart indeed.

‘He’s going to try to trick you, try to fool you into doing all sorts of terrible things. When the time comes you mustn’t listen to him Karl, no, you mustn’t listen.’

‘Why are you telling me this?’

‘Everyman lives on borrowed time, but still, when his time is up he complains and argues. Who is man to question the nature of fate or the sands of time? Do the ants question the world they live in? Do they ask the leaders and the politicians about the ways they rule? No. Nor should man question a world that he does not understand. I give you fair warning Karl, after tonight do complain about the road where your actions will take you.’

‘I am no ant Gabriel.’

‘No. You’re a man, and that’s exactly my point.’

‘What? What do you mean?’

‘You head towards a world that’s beyond you, one you will not understand. There are no countries, no famine, no war. But there’s still hate and lies and murder. Men cannot comprehend the reasoning of the infinities Karl, just as ants cannot comprehend the world of men. They live in the same world as you but they do not even realise it. They breathe the same air as you but they do not even know that you exist. They do not laugh and they do not cry. They do not understand love and hate, pain and joy. They think their queen is the ultimate in wealth and prosperity, but what is an ant to a general or a king? They will never have authority and they will never understand. To you they are stupid, they are simple, they are worthless. Their world and very existence is irrelevant.

‘But to the ants the nest will always be the centre and most important part of the universe and they will not give a thought to the world outside it, to neither the failing ways of man nor the complex arts of nature. And when man sees that a house should be built upon their nest they will not question him - they will just accept it - and they will get on the best they can for as long as they can in the circumstances they are given. For the world belongs to men and men belong to the Gods. Life is not yours Karl, do not try and change what has been done. When you crush an ant between your fingers and his brother sees he will not question why, it is not his place, and nor is it yours.’

Karl sat there unconvinced. He grabbed the bottle of whisky from the table and drank from it carelessly, ‘Who the hell are you Gabriel? What’re you doing here?’

The priest maintained his stone like countenance, ‘I told you Karl, I came here to warn you. Do not mess in things you do not understand or the consequences will be catastrophic. He’ll out smart you, he’s no fool, you can’t win.’

‘Who?’

‘The man by the fire Karl, the man by the fire.’

The priest rose from his seat and headed towards the door. Karl called after him, ‘Off already?’

The priest turned and threw Karl a look of disgust, ‘I’ve said what I needed to say, there’s much work to be done this evening.’

‘You won’t stay for a drink?
’
‘No. I already said, I’m not much of a drinker.’

‘You have a service to attend to, father?

The priest paused and turned back to look at Karl with the same pity that Christian had shown him before, ‘You are my service Karl.’

‘Well then, Gabriel, I think I’ll be off to bed. It’s been a long day and I’m very tired you know.’

The priest shook his head, ‘I doubt that very much, you have the longest night of your life ahead of you… But I really should be going now. Mark my words though, you’ll regret not listening to me after your phone call.’

‘What phone call?’ but the priest had already left. Karl ran to the door to chase him but when he looked outside he was no where no be seen. He returned to his chair defeated and he cursed the man under his breath. Then there was another knock at the door.