Three months. It has been three months since his discovery, three months since the truth became so clear to him, three months since all his mother's warnings made sense to him. He did not want to accept it at first, he denied it for so long that he almost made himself believe that it was all a dream, that there was still a chance he was alive somewhere but reality slowly crushed the life from those dreams and his hope with them. Now here he, Ralf Lemmer, the mighty Commandant of Auschwitz and loving husband and father, sits alone in the house his dear family once occupied months earlier, only to leave when his son, Bruno, went missing. Many weeks were spent searching the local area, hoping he would turn up in the forest or at least be found close enough to home that he could rest easy.
Unfortunately, a few weeks after his wife and daughter returned home, he discovered a portion of the fence around the camp was loose and the hole it opened into was big enough for a small boy to squeeze through. That was when he put the details together himself. His son had slipped into the camp and he disappeared the day they gassed all the Jews in the camp to make room for overflow being sent from other smaller camps. Since that day, Ralf felt himself slowly crumble away from the inside out, shirking his duties of managing the camp and soon turning to drinking to wane the pain and guilt away. But no matter how much he drank, the horrible images of his son's death haunted his mind during the day and his dreams through the night. They escalated to a point where not even an entire bottle of scotch was enough to make him forget the next morning and Ralf could not take it anymore.
Now here he sits in his office with half a bottle of scotch on his desk and his polished Astra 300 in his hands. He always imagined the day he would use this weapon against the Russian soldiers if they ever breached the Eastern front but instead it was shimmering before him, like a gift from the gods to ease his pain once and for all. No amount of alcohol could ever numb the pain in his heart but a single shot of lead would do the job much quicker and reunite him with his son that suffered a fate too cruel for words. Looking at his own reflection in the polished barrel, he sees what once was his own reflection was now only the image of a monster he denied he was for years and only now realized he truly was. He was a murderer and had done to so many other young boys what fate had done to his own son and he could not live with the guilt of it all. So many lives lost over so many weeks and he never cared for any of them until his own boy was among them, among the faces locked away in a metal box and left to suffer as their lungs burned and their screams turned to chokes and gargles, among the bodies thrown in a hole in the ground and buried with not even a marker to say where they rest. All those boys he once thought were of a lesser class now conjured thoughts of his own boy, of Bruno, and his life before they left Berlin.
Bruno was such a carefree boy, always so loving and always courteous. He had a love for adventure that every boy would have at his age, even Ralf himself, but it was that endearing spirit to wander that lead him to his end.
Ralf wished he had paid more attention and had realized Bruno was wandering off. He wished he knew that his boy was interacting with one of the boys from the camp to stop it sooner. He wished one of his men had noticed the loose fencing before so that they could search the camp for Bruno. If he had realized any of this sooner then maybe his boy would not be gone but nothing could be changed about it now. Bruno was gone, his wife and daughter were home in Berlin, and he was here contemplating the worth of his life with the blood of others on his hands including his own sons. It was worth no more than the bodies buried in the very concentration camp his son died in.
He lifts the pistol to his head, pressing the barrel against his temple hard enough to cause a bruise. He is but a finger twitch away from ending his suffering when a ghostly voice calls to him. He looks around to find the source of the voice but notices no one else in his office. He hears the voice coming from behind him and turns, spotting something in the distance from the large window. Through the trees of the forest behind the house, Ralf notices a white figure walking between the trees, wearing a black, hooded cloak and a fancy, white dress that drags behind it. He sets his Astra on his desk as he stands and walks to the window, opening it to hear the voice that was muffled by the glass. The voice was female, sweet and soft, almost like a mother lulling her baby to sleep. He watches the figure continue through the forest as the voice softly echoes in the room.
"Come little children, I'll take thee away
into a land of enchantment
Come little children, the times come to play
here in my garden of shadows"
The figure disappears in the trees and Ralf can only stand there and stare out the window, wondering if the figure he just saw was. Did his guilt-ridden mind create a sort of illusion to divert his suicide effort or did he truly see someone wandering through the forest? If they were a real person, why were they venturing out so late in the night and why were they singing? Despite the small bit of logic that nags him to remain in the house, Ralf decides to grab his coat and investigate who it was. If anything, it may be an Allied spy coming to scout out the camp for a possible ambush troop and he was not going to risk that after his neglect of the camp so far. When he steps outside to begin searching, the soft singing of a woman he heard before echoes through the air, seeming to lure him into the forest like a melodic spell.
"Follow sweet children, I'll show thee the way
through all the pain and the sorrows
Weep not poor children, for life is this way
murdering beauty and passions"
He quickly runs into the forest, trying to follow the voice as it flows through the trees and seems to surround him at each turn. Every time he seems close to the source, it moves further away in a split second. Each flash of white he follows behind a tree vanishes without a trace, every turn seems to lead to the same place, and no matter how far he ventures into the forest he never finds the other side. The voice was leading him to some unknown goal on a path he had yet to see yet he willingly let it do so, because it was his only guide that night as his mind has failed him weeks ago.
"Hush now dear children, it must be this way
too weary of life and deception
Rest now my children, for soon we'll away
into the calm and the quiet"
The voice soon leads Ralf out of the forest as he stumbles out of the brush and finds himself staring at the tall fence that wrapped around Auschwitz. Why was he led to this place when the forest was so expansive? Looking to his right, he realizes he was very far from the house and when he looks to his left he spots the white figure he saw before. It emerges from the forest, walks up to the fence, and stops just feet away then looks to the sky. Ralf quietly approaches the figure, the curves of its body slowly forming the closer he draws though its face remains hidden behind the shadow of its hood. When he is just a few feet away, he stops, realizing the form before him is a woman. Her fine, white dress glitters in the moonlight, contrasting the pitch black shadow under the hood of her equally dark cloak, which he notices is made of silk and has a silver emblem on the right shoulder that holds the cloak on her shoulders. The emblem appears to be a rose of sorts and shines brightly like polished metal.
The woman lifts her hand, which is as white as her dress, and pulls back her hood. Night black locks of long, wavy hair cascade down her back and over her shoulders. Her face is as pale as the moon and radiates in the moonlight but the feature of this unknown beauty that stands out the most to the Commandant are her bright, blue eyes. They are the only bit of color in her sheer white face framed so perfectly by long, dark waves that extend further to draw one's eyes to the appealing neckline of the women's dress, which only reveals a small bit of the woman's chest and part of a gray scar on her left breast. She runs her fingers through her hair and closes her eyes, as if trying to sense something or someone, then smiles and looks to the sky again as she begins to sing.
"Come little children, I'll take thee away
into a land of enchantment
Come little children, the times come to play
here in my garden of shadows"
She kneels as she reaches under her cloak and pulls out a silver rose. She carefully weaves the stem through the grating of the fence then stands again as the rose entwines itself into the fence, as if trying to become a part of the man-made structure. She turns so her back is to Ralf as she stares at the full moon above. Ralf attempts to slowly approach her again.
"It's a sad night, is it not?"
Ralf stops mid step, hastily looking around to find who the woman may be talking to but is surprised as she calmly turns to face him, her bright eyes meeting his darker pair. She softly chuckles at his confusion then brushes a strand of hair from her face.
"Did you think I was talking to someone else, Ralf?" She states then chuckles again when Ralf steps back in fright. How did she know his name, where did she come from, and why was she here when she obviously did not belong? "I suppose you have many questions running rampant in your mind right now and I can understand that. I can answer most of them if you are willing to listen and believe. I promise you that I'm not a product of your scotch-drowned mind nor am I a part of your guilt-ridden conscious. I'm as much a distinct part of your life as this camp is." She explains, motioning to the fence beside her. "I know this place brings you such sorrow and that is why I'm here." She walks towards Ralf, maintaining eye contact with him until she is only a few feet away then turns her gaze to the fence. "The suffering of many souls from this place has lured me here but the suffering within you is one I have sensed for quite some time and I know the reason for it." She returns her gaze to Ralf then begins floating towards him, which causes Ralf to stumble back in fright. "I know what plagues your mind day and night, what horrors haunt you in your dreams, and of the chains of guilt that squeeze your soul so much that it's nearly turned you against yourself." She stops when she is eye height with Ralf, her ocean blue eyes full of concern and empathy, emotions Ralf could hardly recognize in that moment. "I know your son's undeserved fate haunts you and that is why I have remained here."
"What exactly are you?" Ralf hesitantly asks. "You're clearly not human by any means."
"You're correct." The woman sighs, her eyes falling as she speaks. "I've not been human for a very long time but I'm no normal spirit either. I'm cursed to walk this plane of existence to help the souls of the suffering that cannot save their selves. I've seen many fall to their own hand, racked by so much pain and guilt that they can no longer stand to think or even breath, and you were about to join them."
"But you stopped me. I heard your song just as I was about to take my own life." Ralf murmurs. The woman slowly looks back at him. "You meant to stop me."
"For you own good." She murmurs. "The afterlife is not pleasing to those who take their own life. I know that better than anyone."
"What do you mean? How would you know?"
"I know because I'm one of those souls." The woman sadly sighs. "I lost my own son many years ago and blamed myself for it each day though I had three other children to care for. I was so lost in my guilt and pain that I never realized how much they were suffering as well. I ended my life to end my suffering but it only continued for them. I was cursed to walk the world of the living since and I've done so for hundreds of years, dedicating my afterlife to saving those suffering from the same pain as I from falling into the same pitfall." She floats to the fence, grabbing the grating as she continues. "I've failed many times before but the few I've managed to save have always been thankful for it and it changed their lives for the better. These past few years have been the worst for me though, all this war and conflict and misery have caused many to suffer my pain, including you, Ralf." She turns to the Commandant as she brushes her hair from her face, her tears sparkling like diamonds in the moonlight. "Though you have caused the suffering of many others, you know of the pain they endured, you understand and deserve a chance as all others do."
"I'm deserving of nothing." Ralf sighs. "My whole life I've only focused on myself, on my dreams and my rewards, never caring about the ones I hurt along my way. I never realized how much of a monster I was in the years I served…until I lost Bruno." He falls to his knees and continues as tears stream down his face. "I never realized how cruel I have been, how much of a monster I truly was until my own son became a victim of the machine I was taught to use against what I was told were lesser beings. I never knew how far I skewed off the path of morality until I began seeing him in the face of every boy that walked into the camp, every boy that was sent to the gas chambers, and every boy that was buried in the mass graves among the dead. And when I finally realized all I had done wrong, it was too late to change anything. I always thought I was following the right cause for all these years and now I'm questioning my own morals because the path I chose is the reason my son's now dead!"
The ghostly woman floats to Ralf's side, comforting the Commandant as she speaks. "It's alright, Ralf, no human can be completely without flaws. You understand that, you've known that for a long time now, and that is why you deserve a chance to right the wrongs you've done in this place. You may not have been able to save your son, just as I was unable to save mine, but that does not mean your life is completely pointless. I've been able to save hundreds of people and they've made differences in history no one else even realizes they made. The purpose of a soul does not have to end with the death of another." She gently forces the Commandant to look at her as she wipes the evidence of tears with her cloak. "You can still change things in this world that you can never change in the afterlife, Ralf. You have a family to return to, a daughter to raise and care for. You can't give up on her as I did on my three children. I want you to be able to return to her and see her off as a young woman ready for the world with your own eyes. To do that, you need to survive this war and survive this guilt that plagues you. There's not much I can do about the conflicts of this world but I can at least help you to conquer the conflicts within your heart."
She carefully helps Ralf to his feet then reaches under her cloak and pulls out a silver rose. "Here," She carefully sets the stem of the rose in Ralf's hand then slowly closes his hand around the stem. "This will be the first of twelve-a dozen silver roses for this life and a dozen more for the next. When that dozen will be complete will depend of you. I'll be watching over you, Ralf, but I want you to promise me that you'll return home to your family, that you'll take care of them and protect them as you've meant to from the start."
"I promise." Ralf murmurs. "I promise I will."
The ghostly woman smiles and gently hugs the Commandant around his neck. "I must go. The sun will soon rise and a new day will dawn upon you, Ralf. Face it with the courage and will I know you have within you and you will never be led astray again. Your path from this point forward is your own to make and I'll be following you with each step you take until you receive your final silver rose on your deathbed. From that point on, you'll awake in a new world that will appear strange and foreign to you but you'll know what to do once you awake." She floats away and pulls up her hood, a smiles ghosting her pale lips. "Farewell, Ralf, until we meet again and I hope it will not be too soon." She floats to the forest and lands at the edge, glancing towards the moon before continuing into the forest.
Ralf sighs under his breath then looks at the silver rose in his hand. The stem is black and without thorns, its leaves are smooth in shape and profound in size. The blooming head of the flower is as mysterious as it is alluring-a bushel of petals planted perfectly in place and they glitter with a silver sheen of perfection in the moonlight. His gaze shifts to the sky and he realizes that the moon was beginning to set and the sky was slowly shedding its navy blue coat to reveal the light blue skin beneath it. He turns and discovers the yellow and orange glow of the sun on the horizon and looks back at the rose in his hand. He smiles softly then starts his way along the fence to the house, which he can now see is a dozen meters away in the distance. As he walks, he can hear the sweet, soft voice of his ghostly guardian as the wind gently brushes by him and rustles the leaves of the trees overhead. He closes his eyes and allows the voice to guide him the rest of the way, knowing things truly have begun to change.
"The years now before you
Fearful and unknown
You never imagined
You'd face them on your own
May these thousand days and nights
Casually pass you by
They love you, They miss you
No more shall they cry
May all your dreams be sweet and bright
Safe behind the veil of moonlight
And know not of sadness, pain, or despair
And when you pass, I'll fly your way and meet you there
Go…"