Chapter 8

She held the folder up for Schmidt to read. He looked just as lost.

“Wolf Register,” he read aloud. “A register for wolves?”

“Could be related to the lycanthropic virus,” Rachel noted. She flipped the folder open. Just like in the other folder, there was a list of people.  Like the other, there were hundreds of listings, but Rachel soon noticed something starkly different.

Ada Levenberg / J. 18 / 10 Oktober 1933 — 01 Juli 1934 / Schizophrenie

Hans Bauer / J. 21 / 10 Oktober 1933 — 15 April 1934 / Katatonie

Lara Gould / J. 26 / 10 Oktober 1933 — 09 Dezember 1933 / Anorexie

Katrin Krause / J. 46 / 10 Oktober 1933 — 21 Februar 1934 / Schizophrenie

Markus Richter / J. 32/ Dezember 1933 / Hysterie

Gunter Messinger / J. 19 / Dezember 1933 / Hysterie

Maya Blau / J. 21 / Januar 1934 / Hysterie

Eva Schloss / J. 25 / Februar 1934 / Hysterie

The list continued from there. Hundreds of names. But only one condition ‘Hysterie.’. She pointed it out to Schmidt.

“What do you make of it?” Rachel asked.

“Obviously they had pivoted from pulmonary treatment to psychological. But…” He fidgeted uncomfortably. “Either they decided to concentrate all their treatment on one vague disorder, or…”

“Hysteria was a cover for something else entirely,” Rachel completed.

“There’s something else,” Schmidt said, his face darkening. “The previous records contained two dates. Here there is only one date.”

That put a chill down Rachel’s spine.

She stared at the last name on the list. The last patient, or perhaps victim, of this place:

Leah Graf / J. 29 / Februar 1938 — / Hysterie

There was a weighted significance to that name, besides the fact that it was the last name on the list. She was the last to be interred. But when did she leave?

“I don’t know what to make of any of it,” Rachel said.

“I don’t either. But there must be more to discover. Come on.”

He opened another file cabinet and thumbed through the file. It lightened Rachel’s heart to see the once reluctant babysitter finally invested in this investigation.

Nothing else could be garnered by what they found there, but Schmidt nevertheless piled all documents they laid eyes on onto the desk in neat stacks.

Another couple of hours went by as they searched. When there was nothing left of interest in Doctor Fischer’s office, they moved on to another office and continued, leaving whatever they found in careful stacks as they went. Morning turned to afternoon and the sunlight that spilled in from the windows turned from pale silver to dusty gold.

Rachel sat at the desk and pulled out the drawer. From within she found a dossier. She opened it and found a sepia-toned photograph of a young-looking woman wearing horned-rimmed glasses that looked a size too big for her petite, academic face. The woman wore her dark hair tied back into a neat ponytail, and a headband to hold her bangs from covering her eyes. Her eyes were wide and glimmered with the eager curiosity of a young scientist. The name startled her. Doktor Leah Graf.

Beneath the photograph was a short bio, which Rachel read aloud.

“Leah Graf. Born in 1909 in Leipzig, Germany. Studied psychology at the University of Berlin. Received her doctorate in 1933 under Doctor Sabine Fischer. Transferred to Heidelberg University in 1934, where she continued her post-graduate research.”

She looked up at Schmidt. “I saw her name in the Wolf Register.”

“So, she went from doctor to patient. She may be a valuable source of information if she’s still alive.”

“Something tells me she isn’t. But I know a rector that might help us find out.”

Schmidt’s face darkened. “It seems we are on the verge of uncovering some uncomfortable truths.”

“How has none of this come to light before, Herr Schmidt? This was all sitting right here.”

He sighed. “The hands of the party were not completely tied after the war, as it turned out. Many of the trials were a farce. As long as the bigwigs were sufficiently prosecuted, the Allies were willing to look the other way when it came to the small fry. In the rector’s case, I suppose the circle of willing witnesses were… scant.”

“Or non-existent,” Rachel quipped. In any case. Here we are now. The directory indicates that there are laboratories in the basement.”

“Fine, let’s have a look,” Schmidt replied.

They returned to the bottom floor and looked all around for the stairs to the basement level but, after searching every nook and cranny, could not find any. They doubled around, then went back to the directory to make sure they did not misread it, but sure enough, ‘-01 floor’ was where the laboratories were supposed to be.

“This is perplexing,” Rachel professed, scratching her head. “Mislabeled, perhaps.”

“It doesn’t make sense,” Schmidt agreed. “All such buildings have cellars.”

“Well, maybe this one –“

Then she saw it. The wallpaper in one particular location, which she noticed because the sunlight hit it a certain way, was not like the wallpaper elsewhere. It was slightly less water-stained. A neat rectangle the size of a door. The pattern, slightly incongruent with the rest.

She went to the rectangle in the wallpaper. Pressed her ear against the wall and rapped her knuckles against it. Then she did the same at another part of the wall, and to her excitement, found that the knocking sounded different. Whatever was behind the neat rectangle of incongruent wallpaper was made of a different material.

She glanced, eyes wide at Schmidt. The size of his eyes told her he had come to the same realization. The cellar had been sealed in. Hidden from view. Surely it was the laboratory. Surely not meant to be entered.

Rachel dug her fingernails into the wallpaper and tore away at it. It came apart little by little at first, but once she had purchase on a strong enough piece, she gingerly began to peel it back. Schmidt joined her, and they peeled the wallpaper back until a wooden frame containing neatly stacked cinder blocks appeared.

“Well, Doctor Blake, I suppose you are fully invested in discovering what terrible thing hides behind the bricks.”

“Aren’t you?” Rachel asked. Schmidt didn’t respond. He didn’t need to respond. She could see in his eyes that he was afraid but nonetheless compelled by fascination if not by duty to discover the same.

Rachel began, “You don’t suppose we could find a sledgehammer or a…”

Before she could finish her sentence, Schmidt proceeded with his solution. He front-kicked the cinderblock wall as hard as he could, causing one of the cinderblocks to budge back slightly. A fissure formed in the cement. He kicked again, punching the budging cinder block back further. And again until the cinderblock fell backwards into the hollow corridor behind. The other cinder blocks began to topple.

“A shoddy job,” Schmidt observed.

“A quick job. Let us see why,” Rachel remarked, squeezing through the hole.

On the other side, Rachel found herself staring into a stairwell abyss beyond the reach of sunlight. The stench that wafted up was strong. Mildew and wet concrete and something more fecal and mammalian. Rats. Schmidt followed closely behind and turned his flashlight on. She did not have a flashlight herself. What she did have was her cat-eye elixir. She pulled it out of her briefcase and took a swig of the vile-tasting liquid. The arcanic energy trickled upward into her head, and into her eyes, and as if to switch on a flashlight, the night shone as day. Cat-eye did not work in pitch blackness. Rather, it amplified whatever sparse light there was from every corner of the room. The light in this case spilled forth from Schmidt’s flashlight. The scenery before her appeared in a bleach-washed gray.

The beams of Schmidt’s flashlight danced ghoulishly on the walls. The sounds in the cellar were cold and sparse. Small sounds were amplified by the stillness that reverberated in the shadows. Water dripping. Groanings of the derelict structure. The skittering of little claws on the concrete behind walls. A lot of skittering. Too much skittering for Rachel’s liking.

They came to a long corridor at the bottom of the stairs, which was strewn with overturned medical equipment, and other such accoutrement. The stench was stronger here. Different. Something besides the mildew, cement, and rats. Rachel recognized it immediately. She knew it very well. Very advanced stages of corpse rot. The calcium scent of bonemeal.

Metal doors lined the corridors. They were rusted at the bolts. The rust stain looked no different than aged blood. Many of the doors were padlocked. Some were cracked open, and inside these doors, once white and sterile tiled floors were strewn with broken medical and laboratory equipment. Metal tables inhabited the very center of each room. Surgical tables. Unlike most modern surgical tables, on top of these tables were gurneys with thick leather straps and metal shackles indicating that perhaps at least some procedures were done sans anesthesia.

“It is not a very happy place,” Schmidt whispered.

“Psychiatric wards typically aren’t,” Rachel answered. But she nonetheless felt the same unease that he felt. There was a nefarious heaviness here like cursed souls still lingered here. She was sure that if she took her henbane now, she would see these souls. But she would be very hesitant to take henbane. Any soul that still lingered would not take to her kindly. Their malefic energy would overwhelm her.

The farther they plumbed the depths of the secret laboratory, the more anxious Rachel became. Schmidt’s flashlight darted nervously. Every object the beam touched cast anxious shadows from unfamiliar objects. A cart with empty vials. Bedpans. Tall hangers slung with empty IV bags that looked like shriveled organs on meat hooks.

They plied forward. Rachel’s imagination started to become colorful. She imagined the patients on the gurneys screaming out in pain, their screams echoing through the corridors. What unwilling torture must they have endured here?

Finally, they reached the end of the corridor, where they met a large double door and a sign above it that read: ‘Operationssaal’

“The operating theater,” Schmidt translated.

“I suppose this is where they performed operations,” Rachel responded. Schmidt frowned at her pitiful attempt at humor.

The air grew thick and wet. The sound of rats grew loud. It came from behind the door. The sound of countless writhing little bodies and their countless little shrieks and their claws scratching the damp ground.

“I hate rats,” Schmidt said.

“I hate hordes of rats,” Rachel replied. “But we must see what’s on the other side of this door. Besides the inevitable rat horde, of course.”

She put her hand on the doorknob. She hesitated to open it, bracing herself for what would come from the other side. She glanced at Schmidt to make sure he was ready, and when she received the nod, she turned the knob.

The door burst open unexpectedly. A powerful gush of hot air came rushing out, knocking them both to the floor. Before Rachel could get to her feet, she felt them. A deluge of writhing rats scrambling over her body. Thousands of them. An endless river of warm, wriggling, screeching little bodies. Their little claws skittering all over her.

“Oh God!” she cried, squirming, jerking around on the floor, madly brushing away at the rats.

Schmidt, already managing to get up, grabbed her hand, yanked her to her feet, and held her close to him as the river of screaming rats ran around their ankles.

When the stampede finally died down, Schmidt released her.

“Are you alright?” he asked as the stragglers skittered into the darkness.

She brushed off her coat. When she was nearly fully recollected, she made a mental note to later ask Schmidt for a good dry cleaner.

Schmidt said, “Methane. The ventilation here must be very poor.”

“Right,” Rachel breathed as she finished brushing off her coat. She was dying for a cigarette. “Now, shall we?”

Whatever grim scene they might have guessed, based on all the evidence presented up to that point, had not prepared them for what awaited them on the other side of the door.

The chamber was large and circular. An amphitheater in the style of an operations theater that seemed more appropriate in the 18th century. Stone walls, stone floors. A large chandelier of antlers hanging over the center stage of the amphitheater. On every stone column, disturbingly, Nazi flags. But not even the flags, hanging as if in a staunch rebellion against the tide of fate, came close to the level of disturbing presented by the monstrous thing that hung from rusted chains in the center of the stage.  

“What. The hell. Is that?” Rachel croaked.

Strung on a large wooden crossbeam between two columns hung a corpse, crucifixion style. The skin was shriveled and taut like cellophane against what appeared at first glance to be a humanoid corpse. But it was not human. It had a lupine head. A lupine snout with canines the size of daggers. A large, shriveled tongue that lolled out of its mouth. Its empty eyes were cold obsidian marbles. Wiry ashen black hair flowered out like thin tendrils over the body. The legs were long, muscular haunches. The claws on long thin fingers were as sharp as spear points. The creature was female on account of the anatomically familiar features it possessed, namely, breasts and a vagina.

Schmidt’s jaws clenched tightly. His face had paled. As overwhelming as it was for Rachel, who has had plenty of experience with the occult, it must have been more so for Schmidt. It must have been a profound shock.

Finally, hardly able to control the tremor of terror in his voice, Schmidt said, “C-could they have been grafting humans with animal parts? I-I’ve heard rumors but…”

“This must be someone’s sick idea of a hoax,” Rachel answered quietly, though those words came out more as a habitual attempt to maintain the good practice of skepticism rather than an actual belief. Nothing of this horror spoke hoax.