Flowers over the Inferno, page 21
Even this nighttime trip to the police station didn’t seem to have alarmed them unduly. It was almost two o’clock in the morning, but there wasn’t the slightest trace of sleepiness on their faces. Hugo Knauss had made them a cup of cocoa each and left a bowl of treats on the table. Almost half the sweets were already gone, which Teresa took as a good sign.
They responded timidly to her greeting. She sat on the table, ignoring the chairs, and dangled her legs over the side. With her eyes, she signalled at Marini to sit on the floor. He seemed surprised at first, but quickly obeyed, sitting cross-legged.
Teresa had thought for a long time about which words to choose, but in the end she’d decided that honesty was the only way she could earn their trust.
“I need your help,” she told them. “I have to find the person who hurt your parents and took Mathias’s little brother.”
The children were watching her closely. They weren’t used to seeing an adult needing their help.
“And you don’t know what to do?” Lucia asked her.
“No, I have no idea.”
“And that makes you scared?”
“Very.”
The girl glanced at her friends. Teresa could tell what she was looking for: their reassurance that she could keep going.
“I used to be scared, too,” she blurted out.
Mathias looked at her, and she went quiet. There wasn’t anything aggressive about his glance, something that might discourage her—it was just a look, nothing more. But it was the look of a leader, and that was enough.
Teresa acted like she hadn’t noticed.
“And now you’re not anymore?” she asked the girl.
She shook her head, her eyes now fixed on a piece of candy in the palm of her hand, but she didn’t reply. She was following an order after all.
“I want to find the person who did these horrible things,” Teresa went on. “But most of all, Mathias, I want to find your brother.”
He held her gaze without saying a word.
“Don’t you want him to come home?” she asked.
The boy’s lips were trembling now.
“Maybe he’s better off out there,” she heard him say.
Teresa noticed Marini’s body stiffen and hoped that he, too, would heed the boy’s unspoken command and remain quiet.
“Why would you think that?” she asked.
He was chewing on his fingernails now and seemed agitated. He didn’t want to talk to Teresa about it.
“I know you want to protect him, but he’s too little to be away from his mother for so long,” she explained. “And away from you. He needs you.”
Teresa didn’t mention their father. She had noticed the marks on the boy’s neck that he kept touching without even realizing it; his shirt collar couldn’t hide them. They were bruises, just like those his mother had on her arms.
But the boy was showing no signs of opening up, and Teresa could understand why: she was nothing but a stranger, and yet she somehow expected him to admit to his biggest, most painful secret. She felt selfish and tactless.
“There was once a person who hurt me,” she began, without giving too much thought to Marini.
The children were all looking at her now.
“It was someone I loved very much,” she continued. “Every time he did it, I would ask myself what I could have done to make him so angry.”
“And what had you done?” Lucia asked. She was definitely the bravest of her friends.
“Nothing,” Teresa answered. “There is nothing we can do—no matter how bad—that would justify someone hurting us. But it took me a while to figure that out.”
“Then what did you do?” Oliver asked.
“I got rid of him.”
“Did you kick him?”
Teresa laughed.
“I would have loved to do that,” she admitted.
“I would have kicked him.”
Teresa ruffled the boy’s hair.
“It’s not necessary that we stay away from those we love in order to protect them,” she said, looking at Mathias. “But we do have to let people help us so that we can fend off those who want to harm us.”
She waited in silence for the boy to react. Mathias was biting his lower lip, as if to hold his words in.
“Can Markus come home to just me and Mom?” he finally said, his eyes shining with tears. He was asking for her protection—for himself, for his brother, for his mother.
“Yes, I promise.”
Mathias looked at his friends. Teresa could clearly sense the silent communication taking place among them; these kids were each other’s family, and that was why they were guarding their secret. Loyalty was so important to children their age and so surprisingly fragile in adults. They had learned how to protect themselves without losing the enchantment of childhood. They had remained pure even when the world around them was anything but.
Amid that awesome landscape, those silent, fairy-tale peaks, the insides of people’s homes in Travenì harbored unspeakable secrets. Teresa was disturbed by how many she’d already encountered. It was a startling disjunction.
Like looking for God and finding Satan and his horns, she thought.
But more than the sins themselves, what upset her most was the effort the community put into covering up for the sinners, leaving their victims at the mercy of their tormentors, and all for the sake of preserving the unity of the village against the outside world. She thought bitterly of the pamphlets strewn around town, calling for a popular uprising against the new ski slope. There was so much activism against the “invasion,” yet nobody had lifted a finger to help these kids.
Lucia pulled at Teresa’s trousers to draw her attention.
“We’re not scared because we’re together. We meet in the forest almost every day,” she said, glad to be able to talk to her new friend. “You should try, too, if you’re scared.”
Teresa smiled.
“I should talk to a friend about it?”
“Yes.”
“Like you all do?”
The girl nodded.
“We talk about bad things that scare us,” said Oliver. “Then they become less scarible.”
“That’s not a real word,” Lucia told him.
“Yes, it is!”
“Do you talk about bad things, too, Mathias?” Teresa asked the boy.
He nodded.
“But I’m not afraid for myself,” he said.
“You only talk about your fears for your brother, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“That’s very noble of you,” Teresa told him. “The strong must always look out for the weak.”
He smiled, feeling gratified by her praise. He looked at Lucia and nodded.
“We have a secret spot, down in the gorge, just past the cave. It’s near the waterfall,” the girl revealed.
“Is it fun?” Teresa asked.
“R-really f-fun. We always h-have a n-nice t-time.”
Diego, too, had decided to trust her.
“And is it just you, down there?”
The kids looked at each other.
“That man was spying on us,” Mathias explained. “I noticed him.”
“Me, too,” said Oliver.
“Which man?” Teresa asked.
“The man who came to us when Lucia found her mom. We got scared and we screamed, but then we realized he just wanted to play.”
“Play?”
“Yes, he had painted his face like a clown.”
Lucia looked at Teresa.
“I told them he’s a ghost, but they won’t believe me,” she said.
“It w-wasn’t a gh-ghost!”
“What game did he want to play?” Teresa asked.
“He was walking on his knees, like he was a kid, too,” Oliver explained. “But we had seen him before, moving around like an old person. He was outside the school, wearing a cape like a wizard in a fairy tale.”
“Did he talk to you? Did he ask you to do anything?” she asked, feigning calm.
“No. He doesn’t know how to talk. And we haven’t seen him since,” Mathias told her.
“I wasn’t there when he came,” said Lucia. “But he left this for me at home.”
She unzipped her jacket and took out a rag doll with berries for eyes.
Teresa glanced at Marini. She had what she needed.
“Thank you,” she told them. “I feel a lot better now. I’m not scared anymore.”
“I told you it works!” said Lucia.
Teresa stroked the girl’s hair.
“Go on, finish your cocoa and we’ll take you home.”
“Will you put the sirens on?” asked Oliver.
“For sure!”
Teresa took Marini aside. She tried to ignore his inquisitive look; he was wondering whether the story she’d told the kids was real or made up. He didn’t yet have the perceptiveness, or perhaps the experience, to know that it wasn’t possible to trick children. They had an infallible instinct for rooting out lies, and when they did, their trust was lost forever.
“He avenges the children,” she whispered.
“He eavesdropped on their confessions.”
“Yes. And he punished the grown-ups who hurt them. They each had someone in their life who was making them suffer. For Diego, an emasculating, emotionally distant father. For Lucia, a drug-addled, absent mother. For Oliver, a sadistic janitor.” Teresa’s gaze sought out the fourth child. “And finally, a violent parent for Mathias. The skinned animal left outside the girl’s house wasn’t a threat. It was a gift. We feed those we love.”
“But he didn’t punish Mathias’s father, he kidnapped his brother,” Marini objected.
Teresa didn’t get a chance to respond.
“The man from the forest brought us gifts,” Oliver interrupted. “Would you like to see them?”
-57-
The Sliva gorge was a black abyss between the village and the old train station, a trench that cut more than three hundred feet into the forest. That night, the path that threaded its way through the woods and down to the gorge was dotted with police flashlights, twinkling pinpricks bobbing in the dark like fireflies in winter, zigzagging their way to the bottom in single file.
The kids led the way, followed by Teresa and Marini, who were in turn followed by the rest of the squad and Hugo Knauss’s men.
Lucia, Mathias, and Diego were skipping down the path like mountain goats, never losing their footing even on that precarious surface. But Oliver had chosen to grab hold of Teresa’s hand, and would not let go. She stored up on the warmth and tenderness of that contact, such a stark contrast to the frigid landscape that surrounded them. The gorge was a steep fissure that led to a rocky riverbed, where the water had now almost stilled; it was so cold that even the stream had slowed down, and slabs of ice clung to the banks. Mist floated and curled over the water. Wind-carved stalactites hung from boulders and tree branches. It was like coming across the ruins of a world long gone. Teresa felt as if theirs were the only hearts beating down there. It was a disquieting, haunting sensation that made her understand, for the first time in her life, what claustrophobia might feel like.
The children led the way across rope bridges and down slippery steps. They moved with absolute confidence and no trace of fear. The night had no power over their minds; they were in communion with the wild landscape and had not yet become domesticated enough to fear it.
Teresa watched them face darkness and death, on that grimmest of nights, and saw a calm strength in them that was a testament to their spirit. She followed them trustingly, and though she kept watch over every step they took, she knew she was the one who needed to tread with caution, not them.
She thought of the worries that had besieged her in recent days, and all of a sudden they did not seem so insurmountable. It was up to her to decide how to live the rest of her life, and there were two ways to do it: by gradually fading away or standing up to it undeterred.
They crept through another gap in the rocks, and in that damp, musty blackness, Teresa saw her life suspended. Oliver’s hand in hers squeezed harder.
“Don’t be scared,” she heard him say, his voice amplified in the tunnel.
“I won’t be,” she replied, and those words seemed to apply to so much more than what was happening in that moment.
At the other end of the passageway, they found Lucia, Mathias, and Diego waiting for them beneath a waterfall of ice. The children pointed to a crevice behind the frozen jets of water.
Teresa let go of Oliver’s hand and approached the aperture with Marini. They pointed their flashlights at the moss. Ensconced in that natural pillow was a square-shaped object glinting in the light. Marini reached for it. It was a metal box. The design on its lid had begun to fade, but they could still make out a drawing of white rabbits riding bicycles.
“You can open it,” said Lucia.
Marini lifted the lid and it was as if he had turned back time. He looked at Teresa, but even she wasn’t sure how to react. Inside the box was another incongruous detail in a story that was about to take an entirely unexpected turn.
-58-
16 September 1993
Subject Alpha is active and conscious of his own existence. However, it is difficult to guess how he might perceive himself. I wonder if he is aware of the passage of time, and consequently of the concept of “future,” by which I mean the image, the projection of himself onto a moment that has yet to come. I wonder if he is curious about who might be on the other side of the wall, handing him the provisions necessary for survival. As I have never revealed myself to him as anything other than a pair of gloved hands giving him food and clothing, I doubt he is cognizant of my presence. His whole world is inside that room. The Alpha has known no life other than the one I have given him, yet seems able to adapt painlessly to its considerable restrictions. I have asked myself time and again how a living being could possibly survive these conditions; the answer is that his inner world must be so rich and profound that it makes up for a lack of outside experience. His life force is entirely self-sufficient.
On the other hand, the Omega is wholly dependent upon the Alpha, the “Father.” This subject is passive and would let himself starve to death. He spends all his time curled up in the corner he has chosen as his lair, and seems to exist exclusively as a function of the Alpha. I believe that in his mind, he is convinced he is no more than an extension of the “Father.” He is alive because the Alpha is alive.
A few weeks ago, I introduced certain exercises aimed at developing their language skills, in order to investigate whether or not these skills are innate, and whether the developmental delays they both exhibit are permanent or can be recouped. As expected, the Alpha has proven the more gifted of the two, and more predisposed to learning.
I am intrigued by the insights this particular angle might reveal, but considering the age of both subjects, I have begun to wonder whether it is appropriate to keep the experiment going, and if it is not, what might be the best way to terminate it.
-59-
The tin box lay on the table in the center of the room, its lid open and its contents visible to all those present. Nobody seemed able to look away from what was inside.
Teresa put on a pair of latex gloves and extracted the two objects. She placed the smaller one on the palm of her hand. It was a medal, gleaming beneath the neon lights. She turned it around: there was a carving on the back.
“W. Wallner,” Teresa read out. It had a date, too: 01/09/1936.
No one inside the meeting room of the police station in Travenì seemed prepared to say anything more. Even Hugo Knauss had lost the congenial expression that was his trademark.
“Are they meant for some kind of Satanic ritual?” said Parisi, frowning and running his hands over his bearded chin. He always fiddled with his goatee when he was nervous.
Teresa let slip a smile.
“No. This is the seal of Hippocrates, combined with the Rod of Asclepius. It’s the symbol of doctors,” she explained, pointing out the snake wrapped around a staff.
“Wallner,” Marini mused. “I feel like I’ve heard that name before.”
“It’s a fairly common surname in German-speaking countries,” she said. “But I doubt that finding the original owner would be of much help.”
Why give an object like this to the children? she wondered as she slipped the medal inside a plastic bag.
“What about the other one?” Parisi asked. “Is that a symbol, too?”
Teresa studied the second object. She wanted to believe it was completely innocuous, but could sense that that wasn’t the case. She couldn’t quite tell what it was for.
It was a simple white hood, a cone of cotton fabric with two holes for eyes covered by a thin mesh. It was dirty, and some of the stitches had come undone. It looked a little like the headgear that worshippers sometimes wore during Easter celebrations in certain villages in southern Italy. Or like the hoods of the Ku Klux Klan.
That particular association made the object seem all the more disturbing.
The elements that made up the killer’s portrait were becoming increasingly hazy. Teresa had never come across a psychological profile so full of contradictions, not in any case study, nor in her own career. The level of sadistic aggression in his attacks didn’t match his motivations for choosing his victims. He protected children, but at the same time he destroyed their families. It was likely that he felt some degree of guilt, which would explain why he had shown up at Lucia’s house with something belonging to her mother, and why he had brought the little girl a gift. It was also the reason why he had arranged the first victim’s body so carefully, let Melania Kravina go, and put Abramo Viesel’s clothes back on as if to hide that he’d skinned him alive.
