Hidden Away by J. W. Kilhey Read Free Book Online Page B

he whispers. I don’t know what he’s asking me not to do. Speak to him? Tell him I know he’s German? Tell the university he’s touching their instruments?
When he raises his head, I can see his face at last, but the look on it is so heartbreaking that I instantly feel my thoughts about him have to be wrong. A Nazi couldn’t look so distressed and sad. They were all arrogant pricks. But this man… this man is the opposite of it.
He looks like he could weep at any moment.
    “Hey,” I begin, wanting nothing more than to make him a little more comfortable now. “I just wanted to know who you are. I didn’t mean to frighten you.”
“I must leave now.”
    But the blond man with sad blue eyes does not make a move for the exit. He stands there, as if he’s waiting for me to dismiss him. Slowly his right arm moves across his body.
    His bottom lip is just slightly sucked in and he’s worrying it with his teeth. When I drop my eyes and focus on his hands and arms, I see his right hand scratching at his left forearm. The inside of his arm is covered with a scar.
    He’s scratching at it while staring at me. Probably doesn’t know he’s doing it. “That’s quite a scar,” I say, nodding toward him.
    His eyes grow wide and in a jerky motion, his right hand flies away from his left arm, the sleeve of his coveralls hiding the healed wound once more.
    Feeling confident this man is not the Nazi I mistook him for, I take a half-step forward and extend my hand. Being this close, I notice I am not much taller than he, but his slumped shoulders give him the look of a shorter man. Again, I give him my name. “I’m John Oakes.”
    When he doesn’t take my offered hand, I release it back to my side. He is not going to give me his name. So the mystery lingers on. His unease is palpable, and I am suddenly struck with sympathy. I’ve misjudged him from nearly the first time I saw him.
With a slight nod, I say, “Please don’t let me keep you.”
    It is all he needs to begin to move to the door, but not without remembering courtesy first. He lowers his head, bending his neck in a parting gesture. He is thanking me for giving him leave to go. He moves quickly to the exit. I follow at a leisurely pace. I don’t want him to be aware that I’m trailing him.
    He makes his way into another building as the sun disappears. I stay outside behind a tree until he comes back out about a half hour later. He stands on the curb, still in his coveralls, but now with a hat on his head and a banged up metal lunchbox in his hands.
    He stands there as if the wind is not blowing a seasonable chill right into him. I feel nearly frozen as I brace against the tree. It is a half hour wait before a car pulls up. I decide that I’ll never make it to my car in time to follow them, so instead I squint to make out the driver. It is Professor Fournier, the German custodian’s French “brother.”
    I sulk for a moment about the missed opportunity to follow them, but it is too cold to linger for long.
    T
HE dream changes again tonight. The bodies, the fear, the repulsion are all the same, but tonight I find the janitor as nothing more than skin and bones, lying in a heap of dead bodies inside the crematorium. I grab his hands and try to pull him out, but other corpses are lying on top. I pull and pull and pull some more until my hands slip and I tumble backward.
I land against the oven doors, still burning hot.
    When I make my way back to the pile of humans, the janitor’s eyes are open, staring at me. I grab at him, under his arms, pulling with all my might. My rifle strap slips down my arm until it’s resting in the crook of it. The stock bangs against my knee.
    I bring up one foot and brace it against a head with dark hair. I fight the nausea by trying to remind myself the corpse feels nothing. Slowly, I’m able to pull the German free, but I fall and he lands on top of me. He weighs nothing. His cold cheek presses against my chest. It is as if I’m