Forest Ghost (8 page)

In many ways, it reminded him of his own apartment. The four armchairs and the couch were heavy and old-fashioned, with lion’s-claw feet, like those he had inherited from his grandparents. The drapes on either side of the window were thick brown velvet, with braided silk cords and tassels to tie them back. The side tables were covered with brown velveteen tablecloths, which themselves were covered with elaborate lace overlays. And on every wall, there was a collection of faded photographs of long-dead relatives, some in their wedding finery, some standing in groups in front of houses that had been probably been bombed, in gardens which must have gone to seed decades ago.

‘Please, sit down,’ said Mrs Koczerska. ‘And you must call me Maria, because our families knew each other very well, back in Poland before the war. For all I know, you and I could be related!’

‘I can’t say I ever heard my grandparents mention any Raczkowskis,’ said Jack, sitting down beside the window.

‘My family name is Kusoci
ń
ski. Originally from Lublin.’

Jack said, ‘No. They never mentioned any Kusoci
ń
kis, either. But then they never liked to talk about the old days very much. It used to get my grandma too upset. She would start to cry and you could never get her to stop.’

Maria went through to the kitchenette and came back with a plate of
pierniki
gingerbread cookies covered with dark bitter chocolate.

‘I can get you coffee, maybe?’ she asked him. ‘Is it too early in the day for vodka?’

‘I’m good, thanks,’ Jack told her. ‘I spent over an hour this morning tasting rum babas.’

‘Ah, yes,’ said Maria. ‘I have never tried your restaurant but I have heard good things about it. My neighbors have eaten there.’

‘Well, you’re welcome to come try it, any time, my treat. Just give me a call and I’ll reserve you a table.’

Maria turned to the side table beside her and picked up a black metal box. It was scratched and dented and the lid didn’t fit properly. Although a small brass padlock still dangled from the hasp, it was thickly corroded and somebody had sawed right through the shackle – recently, by the look of it, because the cut was still bright.

‘This box was sent to me last week by a friend of mine. Her name is Krystyna Zawadka and she is an assistant professor at the Institute of History at Warsaw University.

Jack said nothing, but watched as Maria opened the lid of the box and took out a bundle of yellowed paper and a small book bound in maroon leather.

‘The box was found about a year ago by a team of historical archeologists who were combing through the Kampinos Forest. They were looking for any traces of human remains that earlier exhumation parties might have missed.’

Jack knew all about the Kampinos Forest. It lay about fourteen kilometers northwest of Warsaw. In the spring and summer of 1940, a special squad of German soldiers known as AB-Aktion had arrested at least seven thousand Polish aristocrats, politicians, journalists, teachers, judges, priests and social workers – anybody who might be capable of organizing resistance to German rule. They had been interned, tortured, and then driven out blindfold to a clearing at Palmiry, most of them thinking that they were being transported to another camp. They had then been lined up and machine-gunned. Over two thousand of them, maybe more.

Jack said, ‘There’s a museum there, isn’t there, as well as a cemetery? My mother and father went there once, but I never had the time.’

‘You should make time, on your next visit to Poland,’ said Maria. ‘It is a very moving place. All of those crosses … and the tall trees … and the wind blowing through the forest.’

‘So what did they find in this box?’ asked Jack, nodding toward it. ‘Something about my great-grandfather?’

‘Yes, Mr Wallace, they did. They found my great-uncle Andrzej’s diary, with many mentions of his friend Grzegorz Walach, your great-grandfather, and it explains how both of them died. It was not the Germans who killed them, according to him. Your great-grandfather was never captured by the Germans, and as far as we know the Germans did not have him on their list for what they called their
Intelligenzaktion
– eliminating all of the Polish intelligentsia. It appears that they were not aware that your great-grandfather was in Poland at all, otherwise he certainly would have been.’

‘Go on,’ said Jack, frowning. ‘If the Germans didn’t kill him, who did?

Maria leaned forward and offered Jack a gingerbread cookie. ‘No – no thanks,’ he told her. That was so Polish – never letting your guests go hungry.

‘You probably know that it was not only the Germans who used the Kampinos Forest,’ said Maria. ‘Many refugees fled from Warsaw to hide there, and the guerrillas of the Home Army went into the forest to regroup.

‘My great-uncle Andrzej and your great-grandfather were two of those guerrillas. They went deep into the forest with maybe thirty or forty other men. That was in August of 1940. They had a very daring plan to assassinate Hans Frank, the German commander of the General Government.’

‘So what happened? How did they die?’

‘The Germans of course were hunting through the forest for them, but several times they managed to escape and once they ambushed a German patrol and killed at least twelve of them.

She turned the pages of the little diary. Jack could see that the pages were crowded with tiny, crabbed writing, some of it blotchy with damp.

‘How is your Polish?’ she asked him.

‘Pretty rusty, to tell you the truth.’

‘OK. In that case, I translate for you. “Now we have been in the forest for nearly two months, we are beginning to become aware that there is something else here which is much more frightening than the Germans. It appears that even the Germans are frightened of it, too, because we have heard them shouting to each other to watch out for what they called
Der Waldgeist
, the Forest Ghost. Also we have sometimes seen them spitting on their fingertips three times, which is supposed to be a way to defend yourself against evil spirits.”

‘This entry is dated October seventeenth, 1940,’ Maria went on. ‘But now listen to this, from November eleventh. “Now we are sure that we are being watched and followed by something terrible. Very early in the morning, even before the sun comes up, we have seen it behind the trees. Also when it begins to grow dark. We are not sure what it is. Some of the men believe that it might be a wild animal – an albino elk, maybe. But we all are agreed that it is white, and that it gives us a feeling of dread much worse than any of us have ever experienced before, although we find it hard to explain why. I think that it could be inspired by us being alone in this vast forest, but maybe it is more than that. I believe that I have glimpsed it myself. It is white, and it looks like a ghost.”’

Jack felt a prickling sensation on the backs of his hands. ‘Read that to me in Polish,’ he said. ‘Read it to me the way it’s written down there.’

Maria frowned at the diary and said, ‘“
Był bialy. Wygl
ą
dał jak duch.
”’

‘Have you ever read that out loud to anybody else, apart from me?’

Maria looked puzzled. ‘Of course not. Why should I? You are the first.’

‘My son said those exact words, only last night. He said he had a nightmare that he was in a forest, and he could smell a campfire, and that a man said “
Był bialy. Wygl
ą
dał jak duch.
”’

‘Your son speaks Polish?’

‘He used to be fluent. His mother always spoke Polish to him, when he was little. Now – well, I’m afraid I don’t bother so much as she did, and like I say, I’ve gotten pretty rusty myself.’

‘Your wife is no longer with you?’

Jack gave her a quick grimace. ‘She, ah … she passed away two years ago. Cancer.’

‘Oh, I apologize. I was wondering why she did not come today. I did not know. I am so sorry for your loss. There is never a way to fill the space which a person we loved used to occupy. The world is crowded with empty shapes, where people once were. But – your son spoke those very same words? How do you think he could have known them? It could hardly be a coincidence, could it? “It is white, and it looks like a ghost.” Who else would say such words?’

‘I don’t know, Maria. I can’t even guess. My son is into star charts and astrology and all that kind of thing, and he’s told quite a few fortunes for people which have turned out pretty accurate.’

He told her about the suicides at Owasippe, and what he and Sparky thought they had seen there, flickering behind the trees. He also told her that Sparky thought there was a connection between the Wallace family and Owasippe, although he hadn’t been able to explain what it was.

‘Perhaps the white thing that haunts the woods at this scout camp is the same as the white thing that haunts the Kampinos Forest,’ Maria suggested. ‘Perhaps
that
is the connection.’

‘But Owasippe and Palmiry are thousands of miles apart. They’re in totally different countries, in completely different cultures. I think that what we saw at Owasippe was probably an animal, like a cougar, and you don’t find too many cougars in Poland.’

Maria held up the diary. ‘On the other hand, Mr Wallace, there is another similarity which is very hard to explain.’

‘Oh yes, and what’s that?’

‘The way in which those boy scouts died, and the way in which your great-grandfather died. Listen to this – November nineteenth, 1940. “We are all now feeling such terror that some of us can barely speak. The Germans must be feeling it, too, because a patrol came within fifty meters of our hiding place, stopped for a while, and then suddenly rushed away. We could hear three or four of them screaming out loud. Then we heard several shots.

‘“Grzegorz and I ventured out as it began to grow dark, even though we were still gripped by such inexplicable fear that we could barely speak. We found the bodies of five young German soldiers lying amongst the trees. Three of them had been shot in the head, but all three of these were clutching their own pistols. The other two had obviously faced each other and shot each other in the mouth with their respective rifles. One of them was still holding to his lips the muzzle of his fellow’s Gewehr 98. We could only conclude that this had been a suicide pact between the two of them. They had all killed themselves, rather than face whatever it is that haunts this forest.”’

Jack said nothing, but waited for Maria to finish. She turned over three more pages in the diary, and then she read, ‘November twenty-fourth, 1940. “It is no use. It is no use fighting this panic any longer. We have seen the white thing again and again, behind the trees. Yesterday we tried to get away and after five hours of walking we almost managed to reach the village of Truskaw. Somehow, however, the dread was so strong that I could hardly breathe, and Grzegorz was so terrified that he could speak no sense whatsoever, gibbering like a lunatic.”’

Maria paused, and then she said, ‘This, on the same page, is the very last entry. “It is hopeless. We no longer fear that the Germans will find us. In fact, we almost wish that they would, to bring a swift end to this indescribable terror. However now it seems that the Germans are too frightened themselves to come into the forest this far. There is no escape from the white thing, whatever it is – a human being, an animal, or a Forest Ghost. Grzegorz and I have talked and we have decided that there is only one course of action that we can take. We will follow the example of those two German soldiers, and together seek the most honorable death that we can. May God save those we have abandoned, and may Our Lady treat us with compassion and forgiveness.”’

Maria closed the diary and placed it back in the metal box.

‘That is all,’ she said, simply. ‘The diary ends there. All the rest of these papers are letters from various members of the resistance – orders to go into hiding, mostly, and what targets they might consider striking against. Krystyna said that the Institute of History has made copies of all of them, including this diary, but they believed that as the last surviving member of my family I ought to have the originals.

She lifted the box up and held it close to her face and deeply inhaled. ‘It smells,’ she said. ‘After all these years, it still smells of forest.’

Jack said nothing for a long time. The rain kept up a soft, persistent pattering, and through the ivory net curtains he could see the drops shuddering down the window pane. Maria closed the box with a squeak and put it back on the side table.

‘So that was how they died?’ Jack asked her, at last. ‘Your great-uncle Andrzej and my great-grandfather Grzegorz?’

Maria nodded. ‘As far as we can tell, because their bodies have never been found. They did not want to kill themselves, because they thought that was cowardly, so they planned to kill each other. In effect, though, like your poor little boy scouts, it seems more than likely that they committed suicide.’

N
ext day, Sparky went back to school, although Jack did offer him another day off, if he wanted it. Jack guessed that he was eager to tell his classmates about how they had gone to Owasippe to identify Malcolm’s body, and what they had found in the woods. After all, the scouts’ suicides had been headline news on almost every TV station.

He was sitting in his office going through the previous night’s takings when Sally knocked at his open door. It was warm outside and she was wearing a sleeveless white blouse and khaki slacks and very shiny scarlet lip gloss.

‘Hey, Jack the Polack,’ she said. ‘How’s it going in
goł
ą
bki
world?’

‘Pretty damn good, as a matter of fact,’ he told her. ‘We’ve been turning people away almost every night this week. So when did you get back from Muskegon?’

‘About two hours ago. I’m bushed, to tell you the truth.’

He pointed to the chair on the other side of his desk. ‘Take a load off,’ he told her. ‘How about a soda? Mountain Dew? Fanta?’

Sally unslung her beige leather purse and opened it up. She took out several folded sheets of paper and said, ‘Those two people you found in the pool. The Headless Woman and her Tattooed Companion. We identified them.’