One of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do was help my father and grandfather move my great-grandfather into an old folks’ home. He was an old-school, greatest generation-type, staunchly independent veteran, and after the fifth time he fell at home, my family decided he couldn’t live on his own anymore.
The house was purchased shortly after he returned from Europe after the cessation of World War II and had housed him and my great-grandmother for longer than I’ve even been a thought in my father’s head. Getting him to leave, of course, was much harder than merely packing up all of his belongings. If he wasn’t in a wheelchair, I’m sure he would’ve tried to literally fight us off.
“I didn’t raise you to act like this!” He’d protested to my grandfather, who ignored him.
My father was his next victim. “You just want the house, don’t you?” My great-grandfather growled as another box was packed for storage.
I guess I was too young for him to blame, at the time, so however challenging the situation was for the rest of the men in my family, I was just pleased to spend more time with him. He was an artist, painting well into his old age, and every room of his house seemed to be packed with still life and portraiture done in confident oils. After my great-grandmother passed, he’d hardly leave his art studio. My job was to sort through stacks and stacks of paintings, and sort them to decide which ones were kept, and which ones would be sold.
My great-grandfather exclusively painted from life, so it was baffling to me when I came to the bottom of a stack and found a painting that was decidedly not. It was old, much older than the rest of his work, and the sealant had already started to yellow and crack. The brushwork was rough, further from realism than his more skillful renditions of bowls of fruit and paintings of his children. He must’ve completed it as a much younger man.
The subject matter was vastly different than anything I’ve seen him create. A sneering old man, beckoning to the viewer, with a snarling, wolf-like animal hovering above the sinister figure. It was disturbing. As far as I’d known, my grandfather had come away from his combat shockingly well-adjusted. Not perfect, but he hadn’t ever indicated anything dark about his psyche in the same way this painting did.
Other members of my family were nowhere to be found, so it was the perfect opportunity to ask my great-grandfather about the work myself. Usually, my father would discourage me from bothering him, but my great-grandfather loved to spin a good yarn. How could I have known this would be any different?
I slunk out of the art room, careful not to be spotted, and presented my great-grandfather with the canvas.
“Where did you find this?” He asked, a hint of something in his voice that I couldn’t place. Tension, or weariness.
Nothing I’d experienced in my life at that point had given me the tools to identify when someone was confronted with what I now recognize to be trauma.
I was a teenager, but I suddenly found myself feeling like a scolded child. “It was with the other paintings,” I replied sheepishly. “I wanted to know why it’s so different from the others.”
The man gave a heavy sigh, sinking deeper into his chair and looking frail for perhaps the first time in his entire life.
“Did you know I went home before the end of the war?” His eyes were piercing, but his voice was soft.
I shook my head. This was the first time he’d ever mentioned it to me.
“I was a radio operator aboard a B-24 bomber. Towards the end there were only eight of us on the crew. There should’ve been ten. One of our waist gunners was laid up with some kind of pneumonia, and the nose gunner was killed by enemy fire. He wasn’t even there long enough for me to learn his name.
This sounds callous, but I don’t think it would’ve mattered much one way or another anyways, because we were shot down over German territory in 1943. Only four of us managed to bail out and make it to the ground alive.
The krauts rounded us up right away. Blindfolded us, loaded us up in the back of a truck. I thought we were going to a prisoner of war camp. Instead, when they finally took the blindfold off, I found myself in a room that looked like a doctor’s office. They had me strapped down in a wooden chair with leather straps- real medieval stuff.
An older man with round glasses and a thick German accent told me they were going to conduct some testing. I was shitting my pants. I was still a teenager, for Christ’s sake, and here I was in some Nazi laboratory, convinced they were going to infect me with every disease known to man.
It must’ve been pretty apparent how scared I was, because the man patted me on the cheek and said, ‘Don’t worry. It won’t hurt a bit.’ His tone was soft, and the words had a slight whistle to them, which might’ve made him seem downright meek in any other context. The man wore a long labcoat that looked oversized on his diminutive frame.
Every hair on my body stood on end after he got close to me. Even the German soldiers keeping guard seemed to shrink away from him. I couldn’t blame them. There was a hint of decay around the man; a raw, meaty smell. Cloying. My stomach shriveled when I smelled it on his breath.
Testing started without much of a warning. The overhead lights shut off, and I was instructed to focus on a red pin light on the ceiling directly above the chair and visualize a deck of cards. The next test involved closing my eyes and drawing a picture of a room. Then I had to follow a flashing light as I repeated a list of words my captor dictated to me. Many of them weren’t in English, or even German. To this day, I don’t know what language it was.
After a few hours of testing, all in the same vein, the man must’ve gotten whatever result he wanted, because he said something to the guards, and they let me out.
He smiled at me, thin and lipless. ‘Congratulations. You get to move on to Phase Two.’
I don’t know what would’ve happened if I hadn’t passed. I just know that I never heard from anyone else who was captured that day again.
I was given food and water, and then blindfolded again. I could tell I was on some sort of aircraft, at one point, but they kept me so disoriented that I couldn’t make out up from down. The next time they let me go, it was into an iron cell with a few other American men. They informed me that I was now a guest on the POW ship known as the Eisvogel.
I’m sure it had some official name, but that’s just what they called it in front of us. I’m sure they didn’t want us reporting their top-secret boat to any official channels on our end on the off chance that we found our way out.
They kept us way down in the belly of the ship. It was nauseating; the boat rocked constantly, and without a porthole or window it was easy to get so wrapped up in the feeling that you vomited.
I couldn’t tell you how it was laid out, or how many people were on board, or even what it looked like, before it got cracked in half. I just know there were about six cells down where I was, a mix of Americans, British, and Russian prisoners. Each cell was clearly supposed to house two men, but we were packed in groups of four or five.
Except one.
Every morning, the guards would come by and feed everyone. Sometimes they’d taunt us, putting loaves of bread through the bars and yanking it back before we could grab it. Real childish stuff.
‘Bist du hungrig?’ They’d laugh. ‘Hungeeeeerst du?’
We wouldn’t react. Especially after we’d been down there for a while. There wasn’t a point, and the taunting slowly stopped. But not for the cell at the end of the hall.
There was one man in there. He’d react every time, pleading and crying. Wailing like a toddler. Strangest part, though, was that he was clearly German. Not fluent because he had a German grandma, like my cellmate Weber, but a bona fide German man. Didn’t speak a lick of English when we’d tried to tell him to shut up, and the Russians got what seemed to be a similar response.
Weber said that the Germans wouldn’t even refer to him by name, they’d just call him ‘Hungry.’ Not that they called any of us by name, mind you, but we were all ‘du’ or ‘Häftling’ to them. No nicknames for the rest of us.
Maybe it made the experiments easier. After we ate in the mornings, a scientist would come down, flanked by guards, and pick one of us out from each cell. Sometimes it was the odd little man from ‘Phase One’ choosing, and sometimes it was a thinner, tall man with a mustache. They’d never choose Hungry. Just some of us regular prisoners. We’d then be blindfolded and taken to separate rooms, somewhere up a flight of stairs.
My tasks basically always followed the same pattern. I was told there was a box in another room, and I had to draw what I believed would be in the box. If I took too long coming up with an idea, they’d dump ice water on me, or take turns hitting me with a thin switch of wood. I’d resisted a couple of times, but the whole thing seemed so moronic, it was easier to just make something up.
At the end of this portion, a light would either flash red or orange. I remember one time, I drew a portrait of a woman, and the light flashed green. I got to leave early that day and get a whole afternoon to myself in my cell.
After the drawing portion, I put headphones on, connected to a radio tuned into nothing. I was told to listen for coordinates in the static. So I’d rattle off numbers and they’d write them down. This would happen for hours. After a while, my mind would play tricks on me. Make me think there really were numbers, or coordinates, or voices. I’d repeat it to them, but it was meaningless. Hours and hours of meaningless hallucinations.
Not all of us were doing the same things. None of the other men were artists, so none of them had the drawing portion that I had. Some were told to focus on making a lightbulb turn on. One man, a British guy, Thomas or something, said he was hooked up to a bunch of electrodes and then injected with something that made him fall asleep. Swore that the Krauts were recording his dreams on a little tv in there.
At first, we were all afraid to talk about it with each other, but eventually, we realized they didn’t care. This was worse, I think. Means they didn’t plan on letting us go.
They only took Hungry out in the evening, once every couple of weeks. I was shocked, when I got a look at him. Just some old man they had locked up in there. Pathetic, really, the way he sniveled and whined.
Weber would translate for us. ‘Can’t you just give me a bite?’ Hungry would say. ‘It hurts. It hurts!’
‘Shut up,’ they told him. Sometimes they’d smack him around a little.
He’d always come back a couple of days later. He’d be quiet for a little bit, before starting up again. ‘Ich sterbe, ich verhungere!’ Going on and on about he was starving and dying and it was so cruel to treat one of their elders like this, he’ll show them! Ridiculous.
We started treating Hungry kind of like a joke. We’d make fun of him, too. Copy what he’d say. It wasn’t right, but we figured he was some criminal anyways, and it’s not like we had a lot to do. Sometimes the guards would even laugh.
The Russians were more superstitious. He didn’t speak much English, but when we’d start up the Russian in my cell would try to discourage us. ‘None of that,’ he’d say. The guy would be gloomy, in the corner, sitting away from us. Clearly didn’t want us messing with Hungry, or provoking him, for whatever reason. Think maybe that would’ve been for the best, in retrospect.
I don’t know for sure how long I was stuck there. Close to nine months, most likely, but without a solid way to tell when night turns to day, it’s basically impossible to tell when day turns to week, week turns to month. It was a void. I stopped existing.
The last day I was there, the last night of the Eisvogel, Weber and I were shooting the shit. There was clearly a storm happening, rocking the floor beneath our feet, so we were telling stories from back home to get through it without losing the only meal we had that day.
Then we saw Thomas return from testing. The Germans on either side of him had to prop him up from under his arms, because he was so weak. His nose was bleeding.
‘I don’t…. my-… my head hurts,’ he moaned.
One of the men left him in the arms of the other, as he went to open to cell. A third stood watch, armed, in case we tried to make a break for it. Not that there was anywhere to go.
While this was happening, a wave surged beneath the ship, making the dim lighting flash and everyone wobble. This was unfortunate for Thomas, who was unable to stand.
The guard holding him dropped him, and the man went flying towards the cell at the end of the block. Hungry’s cell.
A weathered hand reached through the bars. ‘Lass mich dir helfen,’ a quiet voice said. Let me help you.
The guards were getting their bearings, and one was calling on a radio. Hungry pulled Thomas up and held him tight against the bars.
‘Geschmeidig,’ he said. So supple.
I heard a wild animal’s snarl rip across the cell. Thomas thrashed and scrambled against the bars. I was shocked by how much he was moving, given his condition, until I realized the movement wasn’t from him trying to escape. It was because he was being torn apart.
The guard didn’t even bother shutting our cell. In fact, he flung it open, and in stuttering English, yelled, ‘Get out of here!’
Someone was firing a gun into Hungry’s cell, which was answered only by a throaty, ugly sort of laugh. I didn’t bother to turn around and look at what has happening, I just took the guard’s advice and ran like I’ve never ran before.
The level of the ship we were in turned out to consist of the single cellblock, a locked staircase, a storage room, and an emergency hatch to the deck. This hatch, however, was on the other side of the room. Which means we would have to pass Hungry’s cell to get there.
I decided my best bet would be hiding in the storage room. One of the Russian men came with me, whispering what I assumed to be a prayer under his breath. Weber wanted to see if he could get any of the other cells open before whatever was happening killed them too. He asked me to help. I told him no.
‘You’re a coward,’ he told me. And maybe I am. But it saved my life. I pressed myself between boxes of various shipping supplies, and the Russian with me did the same.
The boat rocked again, and the lights flickered off again. This time, they stayed out. The only time I could see was through flashes of gunfire. Blood and fire. Crushed bones and crushed iron. Maybe I was praying, too.
Something howled. Men yelled in German and English and Russian and whatever the fuck it was I was speaking when they had me do that first experiments, way back when I was captured.
‘Ich bin so hungrig,’ a voice rumbled, so low and deep I heard it through the chaos. I shrunk further back into the cave of boxes. My eyes were closed, my hands were pressed tight over my ears. ‘Geschmeidig. Weich.’
Another wave sent the Eisvogel nearly onto its side, and the storage room fell apart around me. Containers burst open against the wall, spilling first aid kits and life jackets and God knows what else. Something heavy landed against the Russian man and he stopped speaking.
My arm was pinned underneath a large metal cylinder, and I felt my fingers seize up as they lost blood. I didn’t dare move. The hall had become silent.
The air smelled like copper and wet dog. Something snuffled at the entrance to the storage room, which was mostly blocked by fallen boxes.
‘Are you hungry?’ It asked me.
I tried to pull away as quietly as possible, but it must’ve heard me, because a hand curled around a gap in the doorframe. I couldn’t see it, but I felt the hot breath of the beast, and heard how impossibly large the hand was as it dug into the walls of the ship.
At the other end of the room, the hatch creaked open. For a moment, rain and light flooded in, and in that gap, I saw it. The Hungry thing.
It saw me, too, with its hateful little eyes. Glittering, intelligent, ancient eyes.
‘Au revoir,’ it told me. It loped towards the hatch, where it exited into the storm that raged above.
At some point, I had stopped breathing. I caught my breath, and wrenched my arm out from where it was trapped, leaving behind a few strips of skin that stung dearly where they were missed.
The open hatch provided me with a way to see, lit by moonlight and an emergency light that had flicked on at some point. A siren was keening, people were running.
The Eisvogel passed over another wave, and I wiggled out of the room where items had shifted to clear the doorway. I took a life vest with me. Water was pouring in at a steadily increasing rate, even leaking through the locked doorway to the staircase, and some part of me knew it was my only chance for survival.
I resolved to make it to the hatch before the water level rose to the point that I’d drown down here. It was very likely I’d drown out there, but at least if I made it out, I’d die a free man. I pulled the life vest on and sprinted towards the hatch, slipping on warm meat and cold rain as I went. I managed to stay on my feet, though, and grabbed the ladder. Pulling myself up sent electric pain through my shoulder and spine, but I pressed on.
The deck was in similar shape to the prison level of the ship, gorestreaked and vile. But people were alive. Someone was herding people into a lifeboat, until a dark shape wrenched the man away and threw him into the roiling sea.
I had my life vest. I had my plan. I ran past the others still in the lifeboat and threw myself over the railing.
My throat sealed shut the minute I hit the freezing water. I couldn’t even cough; all I could do was suffocate. My body acted on autopilot and somehow I managed to put several yards between myself and the Eisvogel before I could breathe again.
I was so cold I was burning but I managed to turn my stiff muscles and look, just the once, at the prison-ship that had been my home. It was sinking. Men were screaming. It was larger than I could have even guessed.
There was blood in the water.
I kept swimming. I moved away from that damned place until my mind and body shut down from exhaustion.
And don’t you know it, I managed to wake up inside of an American helicopter.
They had lots of questions for me, but they were kind enough to let me rest first. Asked me if I could remember what they made me do, and if I could remember anybody on board.
I don’t know why, but I lied to them. Told them it was all a blur. They seemed disappointed, but the shrink in the room said it was a ‘trauma reaction,’ and that if I ever recalled anything, please give them a call.
Had a real funny feeling about the whole thing. Nobody knew I was there. Nobody knew I was alive. Wouldn’t it be easy, to go from one survivor to no survivors?
I just wanted to go home. Eventually, I did.”
My great-grandfather pulled out the photo album that was sitting near his wheelchair, opening to a page of him and my great-grandmother, holding a newborn baby. They both looked so happy.
“First thing we did when I got back was make your great-Aunt Cindy, there,” he winked.
I cringed. “Gross, Pops!”
“Such a prude,” he said with a chuckle. “Just like that no good grandson of mine. At least you cared enough to look through my paintings.” The man took another look at the painting I had brought him. “That one never did turn out right. Couldn’t ever get the face to match.”
He licked his lip absentmindedly, and then continued, “Son, did you know the first serial killer was a German man?
Way back in the 1580s, animals in a village near Bedburg, Germany were turning up dead. Sheep, goats, lambs. Ripped to shreds. Then hunters started going missing. Women and children. Pregnant women had their unborn babies torn from the womb. The victims were so brutally murdered that at first the townspeople blamed a wolf.
But a man confessed. Peter Stumpf. 25 years before he was captured, he claimed, he’d made a deal with the devil. He could take the form of a wild beast, cursed with terrible hunger and power. In exchange, he’d been instructed to torture the innocent. Babies and children. Those beyond Satan’s grasp.”
I bit my lip, trying to process what my great-grandfather was saying. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Look,” he replied. He had flipped to a different page in the photo album. There was a sepia-toned photo of a group of WWI-era German soldiers. His finger jabbed at one in particular- a short, bald man with round glasses.
“Men have always done terrible things for power.” He tapped on a small article in the album, just beneath the photo of the soldiers. It was clearly clipped from a German newspaper, and although I couldn’t read it, I understood why it was there. In the accompanying photo, there was a group of scientists. Among them, the bald man.
He flipped to the next page. The first photograph was of a room full of computers, being attended to by a variety of men and women. A date scrawled in the corner read ‘1951.’ At a computer in the far corner, partially obscured, was the same man.
“I don’t know what they were testing for, back then. What the lights and screens meant. I don’t know why I heard your great-grandmother’s voice in the static. I don’t think I ever will.”
The next photo was clearly more recent, two men in spacesuits surrounded by a group of grinning men in lab coats. A short man near the front had a thin-lipped smile, not wearing the same round spectacles, but wearing glasses, nonetheless. It was him, again.
“I don’t think it was just the Germans, looking for answers. Messing with things best left alone. And I don’t think anyone has stopped.”
The last photo. This one was very recent, bright colors, celebrating a ribbon-cutting at a new NASA office in 2018. The man was there. Unassuming, unaged since his first appearance in the album.
“I think,” my grandfather breathed deeply. “I think. Mankind will always do terrible things for power. We yearn for it. We’re hungry for it.
And somewhere along the line, we made a deal with the devil.”