One Eye On The Darkness

Chapter Twenty-Two

Frieda was tired, more tired than she could ever remember being before. She felt sapped of energy, drained to the core. The events of the last twenty-four hours had taken a toll that she had no more reserves to meet. And this physical destitution did little to calm her state of mind. At Venner Moor she had been exposed to the raw essence of the evil that until then she had but glimpsed. Wretched and abominable, it had reached into her and tightened its grip around what she felt was her ever-failing sanity.

She picked at the edges of the plaster that Schlüter had stuck over her palm. The wound beneath smarted, but it was a whisper beside the emotional scream that still resounded inside her heated brain.

"Did you know that more people believe in God than they do the devil," she remarked in an almost whimsical tone so that Schluter looked as though he were unsure whether she was inviting a reply. A few seconds later she asked, "Why do you think that is?"

Schluter rammed the gearshift of his Sandero into fifth and accelerated onto the Autobahn. The rain was showing little signs of abating and the wipers were fighting a losing battle against the flood washing over the windscreen.

"Because they're naive," he growled, causing Frieda to look across at him.

"So you believe?" she asked, slightly surprised.

Schluter's profile was set like stone, as though the horror he had gazed upon all these years had touched him irrevocably like Medusa.

"What I believe is that this world is fucked," he spat. "No matter what we do, that won't change. People are shot through with so much crap that even the best of them would rather kick the living shit out of someone rather than lend a helping hand. You don't need the devil with a world as fucked up as that."

Frieda sat in silence. The intensity of the outburst had been like slap in the face.

"Back there," she said finally, with a slight jerk of her head, "was like nothing I've ever felt before. I'd swear it wasn't anything human."

Schluter sighed. "You're tired, Frieda. We both are."

"No, you don't understand. Listen to me!"

"I'm done listening for one day," Schluter returned heavily and turned up the car radio. Frieda just stared hard for a few seconds as a Peter Fox track blared from the speakers, but nothing was loud enough to drown out the horror she had encountered at Venner Moor.

***

Strangely, Frieda felt nothing as she climbed the stairs to her apartment. It was as though she had been tranquilised, rendered incapable even to summon the fears that should have been racing through her mind, and were not. She passed a neighbour on the way up, who could not meet her weary eyes, and made an exaggerated attempt to pull her coat tighter around her body, as if she were trying to avoid a contagion.

Her apartment door was ajar, the wood around the lock broken where Schluter had made his frantic entry. She pushed it open, even here feeling nothing except utter mental and physical exhaustion. The hallway floor was a mess, the pale laminate covered in wood splinters and Schluter's muddy size forty-five prints. But Frieda could not have cared less as she hung up her coat and dragged herself into the living room, crashing onto the sofa with a heavy sigh.

She awoke undramatically. She must have slept for hours because the last dregs of daylight were waning. Her muscles protested as she stretched, but she held the posture. She was emotionally numb and the physical discomfort made her feel alive. The apartment was unexpectedly peaceful. She had not been disturbed before waking at this moment, and she had no reason to believe that whatever had now interrupted her dreamless state had been anything other than the natural end of rest.