10 MILES FROM THE AUSCHWITZ EXPERIMENTATION CAMP
1943
A strange darkness settled over the ransacked village. True, some of the thatched roofs still smoked, and some soldiers patrolled, laughing about their conquests. They did not heed the fearful whisper of the village people left alive; they were not aware of the danger. Just beyond the small community lay a great forest that seemed the spread on for miles and miles. The men-under orders of their superstitious general-had travelled around the thick foliage and had found this small clearing where they sate their hunger for food, water and women.
Private Niclaus Metzger watched the ominous forest from his post and could not shake the feeling of unease that had settled in the pit of his stomach since they'd reached the god-forsaken village. Whilst the other men let loose their most inner demons on the defenceless village people, Niclaus watched the forest ceaselessly for the last 3 hours that they had been there, and had refused to be relieved.
"Niclaus!" his comrade called out to him in a rough accent, "Was versuchen sie zu finden?"
What are you trying to find?
Niclaus didn't know what he was looking for, he just knew that there was something in that forest; something that did not like them being here; that did not like they way his comrades raped and murdered whoever they pleased. He wanted to keep moving. He wanted to get away.
"Gehen zurück zu Ihrem Getränk, Kamerad," he replied scathingly, "Laß mich in Ruhe."
Go back to your drinking, Comrade. Let me be.
The fellow foot soldier glared at the stubborn boy, but took his advice literally and joined the drinking cohorts around a burning hut where they had trapped children inside.
Disgusting, Private Metzger thought vehemently. He did not join the army to torture people; he joined it so that he may better himself and his country. The future that Herr Fuhrer had depicted had seemed honourable and glorious. Herr Fuhrer had told them about the great rewards they would achieve and about the monsters that were the US army. But the only monster Niclaus saw were the ones that his brothers in arms became when they were let loose on the countryside.
He never wrote to his mother about the atrocities that he had witnessed and had not stopped. He was not proud of himself, and he didn't want to lie to make his mother proud either. But he could not leave. Adolf Hitler was not the type of man to let one of his precious soldiers leave without due consequence.
There! The rustle in the trees he had been looking for. The soft, sudden movement that proved to him that something was watching him. Watching them. He was not any less unsettled at being proven right.
He stood up from his haunches and waved his broken torch light at the tree line.
There it was again! A swift movement away from the bright light. A flash of yellow and green eyes. He took a step forward, his morbid curiosity overcoming his intense fear.
Unbeknownst to him, one young woman huddled against the corner of the last standing hut and watched the man walked towards the dark forest. She knew what happened in those forests. Men would go in, searching for lost children, trying to prove their worth-so many reasons, those men would go in, but they never came out. They never came back. They left their wives and daughters. She could hear their screams even with her head buried deep in her mother's embrace. She watched in horror as the young man with blonde hair and blue eyes stepped closer and closer to the tree line.
"Bitte!" she screamed out, "Nicht in den Wald gehen! Ich bitte dich! Bitte!"
Please. Do not go into the forest! I beg of you! Please.
Niclaus snapped his head to look at her and stood back as she threw herself at his feet, her dark matted hair bloodying up his boots. She looked up at him, the one side of her face swollen with bruises, but he could still see her stormy blue eyes looking at him in fear.
He could not get a word in over her babbling.
"Der Teufel!" she kept shrieking at him. "Der Teufel liegt im Inneren."
The Devil. The Devil lies within.
He looked over to the tree line again-he was not even two feet away from the edge of the clearing-when he saw it again. The swift, sudden movement, the rustle in the trees, and the eyes. One yellow and one green, set against a pitch black face.
Der Teufel.
He was so shocked to be face to face with the demon that he didn't realise until too late when it shoved its dagger-like tail into his back, severing his spinal cord. He dropped to a heap on the ground and tried to call out to his unsuspecting brothers. He watched helpless as the demon jump from the trees, knocking him as it ran across the ground, silent as a shadow and quicker than a bullet.
The demon jumped from man to man, ripping apart their bodies like autumn leaves, cutting open their delicate throats with its wicked black claws. He saw it flap its mighty wings and haul up the running, screaming soldiers. It circled, barely visible in the sky, like a hawk searching for its prey. The tail sliced through the air and Niclaus watched on, unable to close his eyes to the carnage.
He felt himself weaken as the demon's venom injected into him by its tail enveloped his entire body.
He could no longer feel the mud beneath his hands. He could no longer smell the blood soaked air. He could no longer taste the bile in his throat. And then he felt his heart stop beating all together.
The last thing he saw was the woman who tried to warn him drop down in front of him with the same dead look in her eyes as he had in his. He died staring into her eyes.
And when the demon had killed every last Nazi soldier, she watched the terrified villagers come out of their hiding spots and whisper, 'Teufel'.
She walked out of the village again dragging two bodies back into her woods. They, like everyone else, would never be heard of again. She would make sure.
"Teufel!" the villagers screamed at the monster.
Devil.