Skrak

Katie Belle sat on the edge of the bed listening in something like a trance as Herr Casselberger told his tale. His hand still shook as he put inside his breast pocket the box (painted wood, she now saw, and not marble) in which he had just concealed the jagged jewels.

“These things which I have rendered for the moment safe, they are called skraks. This I knew from the moment I first saw them, gleaming sharply from the filth and dung of No Man’s Land, though I know not how I knew. I felt their fierce glee at the carnage.

“I will not bore you with war stories.” His face twisted as he tried to hold onto his sophisticated top-hatted European air but Katie Belle understood that was a defense against some personal darkness. She understood also that he had made the little box and that he was in his heart a craftsman, perhaps a carpenter or a leather maker. Her romantic heart pounded hard against its wise-cracking shell.

“Suffice it to say,” he told her, “that I was separated from all my fellows, crawling on aching hands and knees, numb with horror.”

His accent grew stronger as he remembered. “Und then … my hand touched them, buried in the mud. Even through my misery I yanked back my hand, and screamed.”

He closed his eyes. “Had they been blasted from some concealed den by a grenade blast? Never will I know. But I saw the horror I most dreaded, as you did.”

His one good eye met hers and she realized only in that moment that he must have lost the other eye in the war. “Herr Murnau’s film had not yet been made, so I thought not of vampires. I thought of my mother’s tales of Der Erlkönig

with his crown and tail and his whispered soft promises which would steal a child away. And so that is what I saw.”

He was sweating now. “As the thin figure came towards me, gleaming through the mists, and pouring off poisonous vapors of its own, I thought, this cannot be real.” His trembling voice became self mocking. “How silly it now sounds, to be proud of knowing that gleaming figure pouring off evil mists could not be real.

“But in the ghastly red light of star shells and with a very real white hand sticking out of the mud in front of me, it was a triumph to hold onto what was real. I clutched that dead hand even though the skin came away in my grip.”

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Katie Belle swallowed hard and reminded herself that she had asked for this truth. “I held onto that cold decaying hand and told myself, ‘This, it is real. That vision is but a lie.’ I felt the presence of evil so powerfully that wished I could faint, but it did not touch me. In the extremity of my fear, I struck at my own eye rather than see that thing and the vision of myself like the ErlKing, gliding pale and slender through the night. At last I awakened with blood running down my cheek, still in No Man’s Land. I was feverish, sick, able to see from only one eye –but I was alone.”

Suddenly self conscious, he stammered “Well, the war ground on until at last the Armistice came, bleak and dreary for my side. I was grateful, even though the terms of surrender dictated by the winners were cruel, I hope you will not mind my saying.” Katie Belle, as innocent of politics at that point in her life as a butterfly is of tigers, waved a dismissive hand, not sure whether she was apologizing or sympathizing.

“When I had recovered and could do something other than shake, when I had learned navigate a world with no depth, I tried to learn what I could of these skraks

. Were they the product of dark magic? Were they sent from another world to ours as punishment? I do not know. The presence of wood seems to mute their power, as does the sense of home

; they thrive on lonely, desolate places.

“There is a stretch of forest near my town which everyone avoids. Sensible people laugh and say it is just old and full of broken branches that can pierce your heart and put out your eye. But everyone avoids it just the same and mothers get their kinder

to quiet down by telling them the ErlKing will come to get them from that wood. Perhaps they came first from there? I know I shall take these which you have given me to that place and seal them up there. I can only hope there are no more, and that these never break free in the presence of a soul they can use.”

Katie Belle, fascinated, said, “They were given to me by a gentleman in exchange for….” She hesitated, then looked him boldly in the eye. “I am certain, sir, that I needn’t tell you in exchange for what. But they’ve never done me a day’s harm until the minute you showed up. Now why would that be, if they’re as evil as you say?” By the time she finished, her eyes blazed at him so that he shrank back.

“I have never known them to do ought but evil. This man who gave them to you, what was he like?”

“A creep, an utter creep. I’m very sorry to announce the things I’ve had to do in this —”

“But don’t you see!” His voice got high with excitement. “If he himself was an evil man, the things gave him his

worst fear: a smart, powerful lady. For if I miss not my guess, you, what is the expression, gave it to him with both barrels

?”

Katie Belle stared at Hendrik with wide eyes. Then she threw back her head and laughed until tears ran down her face.

Then she took his hand, having made up her agile mind. “You don’t need to rush right back to that forest and seal up those skrak

things this very minute, do you?”