Chapter Text
Siegfried Engels peered through the window, deciding whether or not he should open it so as to let the fresh air sweep in and sterilize the room’s straggling odor of burnt wood and charred paper. The fire’s stink had lingered there for some time, even after two days of cleaning and scrubbing that the poor housemaid had to put up with. It was not just smoke that irritated his nostrils, but he always hated the smell of burnt rubber and illicit material. But he couldn’t lift a thing unless he wanted the boy outside to hear what his mother had to say about him.
She sat in the corner, retreating deeper inside her bushy fur coat as if cold winds assailed her. Her mind was still ravaged with whatever it was that made her set the house on fire that night. Her makeup was all but gone and left nothing but leathery skin to show.
Her son, five years of age, stood outside, staring at the passing automobiles and watching the world go by as it always did.
“...You’ll have to see somebody.” He broke the smoldering silence finally, acting as hopeful as he could be. “I can arrange for an appointment with one of my colleagues. He’s a good doctor, he–”
“I don’t want any doctors, Siegfried.” She reached for a cigarette, lighting it herself with trembling fingers. “Just keep that damn mongrel away from me.”
“Hilda!” He hissed. “That’s your son!”
She took a drag, blew a puff of smoke that made the lingering odor of sulfur thicken, then relaxed herself on the chair like a sullen cat.
“He’s my ghost.” She said dreamfully, “I still see him, Siegfried. When I sleep. When the lamp is on, he torments me because he’s the most pettiest man I had ever met–and I was stupid enough to let him put a child in me.”
“What are you talking about?” He blazed.
“The boy’s a curse.” She coughed. “A damned curse was put on me because he never wanted that child and thought it was fine to put him with me instead! That coward!”
Engel couldn’t find a word to say. His sister was never that much of a noble person, that was well known, but this… it made him afraid. Of her and for her, and more terribly afraid for her son whom she regarded with such explicit malice.
“You…” He stammered, teetering on the edge of berating her for such a thought. He bit down his words and swallowed. A shouting match was no use, especially with the boy just outside.
“Give it time, please. You can’t really feel that way.”
Hilda laughed.
“You think I haven’t given it time? How dense are you?!” She snapped. “Seven years I put up with this hell! I was supposed to be a wife for George, but that fucking boy scared him off! No matter how many times I hit him, Eckhard never stops tormenting me! I never wanted him but you and mother forced me to!”
“Hilda, you’re entrusting me with an enormous preposition! I’m not a father!”
“What are you then? Not my brother?! Save me then! Save me by taking that child away far from here!”
“I cannot just–”
“TAKE HIM. NOW.”
When he was young, whenever his older sister had become like this, he always threw himself into the corners of the house, afraid and scared. But he was nearly a man now, with success on his doorstep and studying in the higher ranks of academia. He didn’t need this. He could tear himself away from all of this, Hilda, Father, her son. He could talk back, and perhaps even put her into her place.
Instead, Siegfried grunted and turned away from her. He needed to think.
The thought of fatherhood wouldn’t have happened till he was 40. He planned it that way. And now she was dropping this on him? He wanted to say no, he needed to, but something in him couldn’t dare to leave that child with her. He knew what it was like to live with someone like her, no matter how many times he called her sister.
“Siegfried, look at me. I just need him away from me.”
He turned back around. Hilda sat in a resounding calmness now, as if all her senses were dulled and a wave of serenity pulled itself over her like a veil. She gazed at a blank space on the ceiling.
She took one last drag from her cigarette.
“Use a pillow if he’s too much of a burden even for you.”
o0o
Siegfried exited the home and closed the door as if he had shut the doors away from the abyss of hell itself. She had mellowed out after he threatened to get the authorities on her for such a thought and soon enough she retracted it and made good conversation from there. But there was absolutely no convincing her to take back the boy. Even the slightest mention of her child was met with a glare and a venomous tone.
After some time, she was a little more honest with him. She wanted to go back to George, abandon whatever she began with Eckhart and start anew. Truth be told, a part of him knew she would’ve abandoned him whether or not the boy “haunted” her. She’d have had to wait until he was old enough to be kicked out but this was a perfect remedy for her reasoning. He never understood his sister’s heart, or maybe he just refused to admit that it was like that and nothing else.
Isaac Albrecht Kohler looked up at him, a blank expression on his face. His eyes could barely be seen under his cap.
He approached the boy hesitantly, not wanting to scare him or make him nervous. He was probably still shaken about that night. From what he heard from the maid, his mother’s screams were so loud that Isaac said his ears were ringing, and he had also developed a small twitch in his fingers as well. Was he a sensitive one? Did he even know that he had an uncle? What were the right words so as to not make him afraid again?
“Is my mom alright?” He asked quietly.
Siegfried was almost perturbed at how calm he actually looked. A good part of his face reminded him of Hilda, sharp and gaunt. Her button nose was there as well. But that’s where the similarities ended, and for the first time he had a good idea of what Eckhardt had looked like before the war. Round eyes of a brown color that carried a certain thoughtfulness behind them.
“She…” He stopped. He took off his hat, sighing, mulling over his words. What could he say? That his mother abandoned him? That she saw him as an offspring of satan?
Before he could even say anything else, the boy spoke up again.
“...She said she saw shadows and ghosts.” He replied, ignoring Siegfried’s subtle jump at his words and pointing at the house. “Papa had a gun in the cabinet. I could’ve shot them with it if I hadn’t slept early.”
“Oh er… that wouldn’t be necessary. You didn’t need to do anything.”
He was about to have him just follow him to the car and by some miracle they’d make conversation on the road right then and there before he noticed Isaac’s twitching fingers fiddling with something.
When he nodded towards it, the boy showed him a small grainy photo of someone.
“She wanted to make him disappear.”
Siegfried inched forward for a closer look. It was Isaac's father, in his gray war uniform out in the field somewhere between 1917-1918. It didn’t even look like he knew somebody had taken a photo of him. A mangled field lay behind him while he was in the middle of marching over a muddy path to nowhere. The top half of his face was hidden in darkness, his mug caught in a manner that told you he was not in the best of moods. Miserable, down, defeated like every other man in the photo. It was the only piece of remembrance of his father that he had with him. He wondered if Isaac knew about half of his face missing and having to walk around the streets with a plastic mask. That his father was a weak, frail, morose version of what he once was, who spoke in short croaks when asked about something simple. That he left because he himself could bear his life being a burden on his own family.
It would shatter the boy’s world if he told him. He’d have to one day.
Isaac snapped Siegfried out of his train of thought with a question. “Should I burn it so the ghosts will stop?”
He swallowed a lump in his throat.
He considered himself a decent scholar, with a few degrees that backed his ego. He won awards for astute knowledge of literacy and was smart enough to open his own business. A single question from a boy that he never wanted was enough to make him question his own mind. Math equations, ethics, riddles, he knew his way around. But for the first time, he didn’t know what to say.
“I… I don’t know, Isaac.”