Strange Passage, Part Three

In which the supernatural starts to get bothersome.

A few years ago, I wrote two newsletters which were intended to be the first of a series. As I was concluding the second newsletter, it occurred to me I’d forgotten some of the stranger incidents that year. Those newsletters merely described some of the sillier things that happened to me on certain train journeys; and frankly, I recommend them to anyone who enjoys my newsletters because — as always — they happen to be true, and also because I was arrested on the Polish border for doing absolutely nothing wrong. And somehow, I will always think that matters.

You can go back and read them later, after this one, if you like. I’m not sure if the chronology matters because — well, you can guess that the Poles released me from jail in time for the events that I’m about to describe. But if you’d like to read them first, here they are:

So again, the Polish border guards released me from lock-up, and my companions and I took a train to Brandenburg. I don’t quite remember why we went to Brandenburg, but I suppose it was because we’d heard they had some famous gates there, and we wanted to see what all the fuss was about.

Now, in Part Two, I broke off just before I encountered the ghost, because that seemed to me like a rather unpleasant rabbit hole to venture into. Even today, I don’t much like to think about it, which probably explains why four years have passed since I last wrote about it. But lately, I’ve been thinking about it — the ghost, I mean — and somehow feel that I won’t be able to stop thinking about it until I write it all down.

Actually, there were a few encounters with spirits that year. The first wasn’t terribly dramatic and I wouldn’t bother telling you about it had it been a one-off, but frankly, it was the first of three similar (and decidedly more worrying) encounters.

Before I start, it’s worth remembering this all happened to my younger self, which therefore obliges me to tell you what I was like back then. Which is uncomfortable because when a man reflects back upon his younger self, he is rarely impressed; and if he is, then this just means he’s done zero personal development whatsoever. But I suppose you might have guessed that, in my early twenties, I was even more difficult than I am today.

I was also confident to a fault. In fairness, I somehow felt I had raised myself, all by myself, and without much supervision or guidance. I also had something of an anger problem, which was entirely directed towards the males of our species. In other words, I was prone to fighting and argument with any man that could be found in the general vicinity. But women, I somehow think, might remember me with more fondness, because I was a substantially different animal with them. And in any given week, I was probably in love with at least two of them. In a particularly good week, I might have been in love with three.

It was silly, but generally speaking, I was pretty happy-go-lucky. Of course, if I had ever spoken to a therapist — which, I think, would probably have required the use of force — then they would have no doubt been alarmed by my inability to form close attachments to men. A male therapist would have found me belligerent and mocking; a female — well, I’d have fallen in love with her. I was very wholesome, in that regard.

But of course, to be fair to myself, toxic masculinity was somewhat the norm where I grew up and it seemed to me, at least, that all the men I happened to know in my earliest years were, at best, knuckle-dragging morons, so the chip on my shoulder made sense to me, at least. Today, people romanticize the 1980s, but I remember it being a terrible time to be different. Or smart, or curious and inquisitive, or interested in reading, or in any way artistic. And heaven help you if you were gay. Not that I was (gay, I mean), though I did often tell my father I was, just to see if it would give him an aneurysm. I guess that’s the sort of kid I was. Also, sometimes at school I told kids I was gay, just to give them an excuse to throw the first punch at me.

In summary, the 1980s were wild. And I certainly had an attitude problem, but why wouldn’t I? Also, one glorious day, when I was eleven, I actually wore a dress to school. Do you have any idea how dangerous that was, in a small town in Australia? Then later, in my twenties, I sometimes told other guys I was gay, so they wouldn’t mind letting me hang out with their girlfriends when they weren’t there. Also, Reader? They really should not have let me hang out with their girlfriends.

Which brings us back to the story. By the time I met Zoya and Byron, I was learning how to be a better person. And they really were a good, positive influence on me and I happen to know I’m a far better person for knowing them. But again, in this story, we have traveled back in time to when I was still an over-confident lout, primarily interested in picking fights or falling in love with beautiful women. And as much as I will, today, retrospectively cringe at my antics, I can still sheepishly admit I was having a lot of fun being Kris St. Gabriel at age twenty-four.

So, we were in the German city of Brandenburg, and the evening was winding down. I’m with my dear friend Zoya, as well as Byron — who I will always consider a close personal friend, you know, of Zoya’s — and he has become sick of me teasing him and set off on foot, alone, back to the hostel.

Zoya is a petite woman of five-foot-two, which means she has no business drinking more than a single glass of wine. That evening, she drank a bottle, so I had to carry her back to the hostel over my shoulder. This was something of a routine procedure in my life, in those days. After her second glass of wine, Zoya also likes to wave her fist around and declaim against the evils of National Socialism. I sympathized, naturally, but we were surrounded by Germans and I’d already been arrested by Poles the evening before, and I wasn’t looking for a funny, thematically related sequel to that story.

Arriving back at the hostel, I put Zoya down on a bench and we rested for a while there, below this huge, sprawling tree in the garden. It was one of those fantastic nights in one’s life in which time flies by, and you laugh and talk a lot of nonsense, and never want it to end. Zoya was fun to be around, and Byron? Well, characteristically, Byron was upstairs asleep, missing out on everything, as he generally likes to do.

But then, after about an hour or so, Zoya was yawning, and her happy, emotional rants about dealing with the fascists once-and-for-all came to an end, and she abruptly fell asleep. I nudged her a few times and tried to wake her, and she just yawned and muttered something like “Stinking Nazis,” and let out a soft snore.

I was sitting there, thinking precisely this: Couldn’t you have just walked up two flights of stairs, first? Then, I noticed we were being watched.

Someone was in the branches of the tree above us, I could feel it. I stared up but could see nothing. Still, it was there, menacing and filled with absolute hatred for me. It was intensely disconcerting.

I had been in an incredibly good mood, but then — unexpectedly — I felt enormous antagonism directed against me, from the branches above. It felt strangely witch-like and feminine, and filled with an absolutely irrational level of malice. Carefully, I hoisted Zoya over my shoulder and backed away from the tree. The invisible thing descended from the branches and onto the bench. I could somehow sense it hovering there. I had the notion, somehow, that it was laughing at me in a remarkably unpleasant manner.

So, you see, I was, in that period of my life, remarkably self-assured, and not at all the sort to be easily rattled. But I had, of course, felt similar things before, elsewhere, and more times than I could count, though they’d never felt evil. Growing up, I had become accustomed to feeling presences occasionally, looking in on me from time to time. They were interested and maternal and kindly. Sometimes, it was unsettling, but it was never menacing, and I could always just tell myself I was imagining it anyway. In any case, I never much liked to think about it.

My parents had encounters with ghosts; I believe their stories, and may write them down one day. Also, when I was seven we lived in a house in which heavy footsteps would make their way down the hall, late at night — when nobody was there. You could be alone in the house, and the footsteps would walk right by you. Nonetheless, and while I was open to the existence of general weirdness, I had never encountered any feeling of animosity or hostility. But whatever was under that tree felt unnatural and wicked, and no matter how confident I was in myself, I had no desire to be anywhere near it.

I backed away with Zoya over my shoulder and brought her to the front door of the hostel. Inside, I remember, all the lights were out, and it was eerily dark. I found my way to the stairs and took her up to our room. There was Byron, asleep on his bed, of course. I lay Zoya down on her bed. Our room was in an attic, with one small window in the gable. I went and looked out at the full moon. And that evil presence came right up to the glass and looked in at me.

It was not good. I stepped away, and nervously tapped Byron on the foot, but he would not wake up. Part of me wanted to kick him — part of me always wants to kick Byron — but the menacing presence at the window was so unnerving that I lost all interest in being anything, suddenly, other than a very, very good person. It stayed there for a while, gazing in at me. It felt a bit demented. Then, after a few minutes, it drifted away and was gone. Everything around me went back to normal. I lay down on my bed and waited, but it did not return.

The next morning, Zoya and Byron didn’t seem to remember anything strange happening. And for me, by light of day, none of it seemed too serious. So, we walked over to the station, climbed aboard a random train, and went off to a town called Thale, in the Harz Mountains. I’d never heard of it before, and I think that if I’d known in advance that the town was noteworthy for being the location of the Hexentanzplatz — literally, the Witches’ Dance Floor — then I might not have agreed to go with them.

It was Sunday afternoon, which in Germany means absolutely nothing is open. No restaurants or grocery stores. We wandered up to a hotel, but there were no vacancies. So, we walked back to the station to discover the final train departing Thale that day was just about to leave. Zoya and I rushed onto a carriage. Byron stood behind, lingering thoughtfully on the platform.

“Byron! Get on the train!” we yelled.

Now, the thing about Byron is, he really doesn’t like being told what to do. I mean, I don’t either, and neither does Zoya, and — now I think about it — nobody with much common sense enjoys being told what to do. But Byron is a special breed of dissident, and once you tell him to do something, he will instantly become incapable of doing that precise thing. Which is, by the way, why he stood there, wavering and uncertain and feeling lost.

“Byron,” I repeated, “if you don’t get on this train, you’re going to be spending the night, not in a hotel, but in a forest which, according to this guidebook, is rumored to be haunted by the ghosts of witches. So, maybe you ought to get aboard this train.”

Byron looked at me and hesitated. Then the doors closed. Byron gazed haplessly at me through the glass. The train pulled away and Zoya cried with laughter. And so you know, Byron went to sleep that night, hungry, alongside some railway tracks in a haunted forest. But if any ghosts came over to check on him, Byron somehow managed to sleep through it. In many respects, life can be a little unfair at times.

Zoya and I took the train to Magdeburg and arrived quite late at night. From the station, Zoya called various hotels and found a vacancy. A few minutes later, a hotelier picked us up in his station wagon, and there was a dog on the back seat! We befriended the dog, checked into the hotel, and stayed up late as usual. The next morning, after breakfast, we took a train to a town called Wolfenbüttel (pronounced ‘voffen-budel’). We had no idea where Byron was, and Zoya was worried about him. It was not good, in her view, to leave him unattended in the vicinity of a haunted forest. She was incredibly relieved when he turned up a few days later. And I think if he had been kidnapped by ghost witches, she’d have felt pretty bad about it in general.

Anyway, a month later, we were back in Bremen, where Zoya and Byron were students at the university. It was summer, and about five o’clock in the afternoon, and Zoya wanted to go out to buy cigarettes. We were walking along a path together, not saying much, when I thought I heard somebody walking up behind us. I glanced over my shoulder, but nobody was there. But as we walked, I began to have a very sinister feeling. It was as if someone, or some thing, was walking quite close to us. And whatever it was, was creepy and strangely threatening.

Odd as it sounds, this time I felt it was a masculine presence, and it seemed slightly different from the witch-like thing in Brandenburg. To me, it felt like a seven-foot tall werewolf — or something — which happened also to hate us with every fiber of its being. Again, it felt like an intensely sinister presence.

And once more bear in mind that it was still mid-afternoon, roughly five o’clock on a summer’s day. I was so taken aback by the weird hostility that seemed to be emanating from behind me that I didn’t even think to mention it to Zoya. I simply decided I was imagining it; that felt a lot better than believing it might be real.

Then, within perhaps five seconds, Zoya said: “Kris, something is walking behind us.”

“Yes,” I said, simply.

Then she said: “We need to get out of here.”

It was not a good feeling, to know that Zoya could somehow sense it as well. On the one hand, it was good to know I wasn’t losing my mind. On the other, what the actual hell was following us? And how could an invisible thing emanate such palpable menace and hatred? And besides, what the hell had we ever done to it? We tend to think of evil as a fairly abstract idea, which makes it all the more bewildering to encounter what appears to be a disembodied consciousness made entirely from the stuff.

Zoya was uncharacteristically rattled. Our trip to the store was over; she had turned and was walking in a direct line towards the front doors of her apartment building. We passed into the entryway and the thing — whatever it was that was following us — seemed to stay outside. Somewhat reluctantly, Zoya bought cigarettes from a vending machine there in the foyer (Europe has cigarette vending machines just about everywhere). They were not her favorite brand, I guess, but she wasn’t going back outside in search of anything better. So, we headed upstairs to her tiny apartment and sat down together in a state of mild shock.

Again, it was still daylight outside. If it had been evening, we might have assumed we were just imagining it, or something. People were walking by, outside. The apartment complex was bustling with the energy of people getting started on cooking dinner. How did we feel? Like we’d almost been mugged, or had narrowly avoided being hit by a car. We felt weird and strange, and a bit jittery.

We didn’t even speak about it much; just enough to acknowledge how vaguely frightening it had been out there. Because it was strange, after all, to feel oneself being followed by some sort of invisible monster — in broad daylight! Neither of us wanted to talk about it.

Zoya was finishing her cigarette, and I was flicking distractedly through a guidebook to Germany, when the evil presence drifted through the door into the apartment. I stared at the book, woodenly, and said nothing. I could feel it towering over there, about three meters from where I was sitting. It felt like it was laughing at us, in some nasty way. It felt both real and deeply unpleasant.

And again, I said nothing to Zoya. But she knew; the very moment I felt it enter, Zoya turned her head, looked at me, and said, very quietly, “Kris, it just entered the room.”

I nodded, almost in defeat. “Yes, I know.”

“It’s standing right there, by the door.”

“Yeah, I — yes, it is. I know.”

“It sucks,” she whispered.

It was sinister and mean-spirited. It emanated cruel mockery. I think I felt a little vindicated by something because, after all, that time in Brandenburg, I had somewhat experienced something similar, alone. We couldn’t see this creature, either, but both Zoya and I could still point to where it stood.

The being, or thing — whatever it was — remained there for about a minute or a minute-and-a-half, then evidently grew bored of us and drifted out. And of course, the very instant I felt it leave, Zoya said, immediately: “Alright, it’s gone now.”

Everything felt perfectly normal once more, just like that. Next door, people were talking loudly and cooking dinner. It was a strange experience to live through. What had it felt like? Imagine you’ve watched a particularly scary film, and now you head off to use the bathroom. You turn on the light, enter the room, and suddenly get a creepy feeling of “what if something is in here with me?”

Well, whatever visited us in Germany gave us that feeling, but multiplied by ten. And it came upon us while we were walking outdoors in the sunshine. And it made us want to hide, indoors.

We never really spoke about it much afterwards. But a few years later, Zoya and I were talking about that apartment building to my wife — that is, the woman I would marry only a few years later. Zoya was talking about the parties we used to have there. My future wife had lived in the building earlier on, before I arrived in Germany, though on a different side of the building, and on a different floor.

“I never liked that building,” she told Zoya, thinking back on it. “I’ve never told anybody this, but one night when I was going to bed, this — really awful ghost-like thing came into the room with me. It was awful — I couldn’t see it, but it was horrible...”

Zoya and I almost leaped out of our chairs. But you know something? When we all look back at it now, the unpleasant truth is that that ghost, that sinister apparition or whatever it was, wasn’t even actually the creepiest encounter we had that year.

To be continued.