Cut by Marc Raabe

Author:Marc Raabe [Raabe, Marc]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781786580061
Publisher: Bonnier Publishing Fiction
Published: 2016-03-24T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 33

Berlin – 19 September, 4.25 p.m.

Val’s call pushed Gabriel over the edge. He hadn’t realised he was standing so close to the abyss. And now he was in a free fall.

The effect was shocking, like an overdose of cocaine. His heart raced as quickly as his thoughts. Again and again, violent trembling ran through him, as if he had a fever and his overwrought body were crying out for sleep.

He marshalled his last reserves like a drug addict on the hunt for one more hit and bought a packet of sleeping pills.

Then he slept like the dead.

When he awoke, he was wearing the pyjamas. He wondered why they still fit him. Luke Skywalker hung loosely over his eleven-year-old chest, as flames climbed into the blood-red night sky. The house was ablaze, but he knew that it was no use to keep waiting. He had to go in. Barefoot, he ran across the scorching pavement, the fingers of his right hand clutching the hem of his pyjama top.

The front door was open, its frame entirely in flames, and just behind it was the cellar stairs. He climbed down, step by step, amidst the scorching heat. The walls whipped red tongues of fire at him and the stairs seemed endless, even after a thousand steps. He looked around and was shocked to see that the front door was still right behind him. Now there was a fireman standing in the doorway – or was it a police officer? – offering him a hand. He recognised the police officer’s face, but he didn’t want to take his hand and instead slapped it away, ran further down the never-ending stairs and fell with a crash. When he got up, he was suddenly in the lab and started to panic. No one was allowed to know about Dad’s lab. Not even the police!

All of a sudden, the dream ends, like a rubber band that has been stretched too far and then snapped. Gabriel sits up, bathed in sweat.

It is 4.27 p.m. He has slept for almost sixteen hours. His legs are like jelly, but they carried him. He stares at the strange man in the mirror and tries his best to wash him away with cold water.

What was that last thing Val said? Carpe noctem? It didn’t make the least bit of sense.

He tries to slowly organise the chaos in his head. The fact that Val had mentioned the Luke Skywalker pyjamas was terrifying. The pyjamas were the only things that he and David could save from their former life. The bloodstain on the hem was a mark left behind by the horror of that night. And even if Gabriel had no recollection at all about when and how it had got there, at least he knew that it had not been there before.

Val’s voice echoed in his thoughts. On the hem of your pyjama top, you had a bloody handprint. You clung to it when you went into the cellar.

The cellar. So, he had not only dreamt it, but actually had gone down into the cellar that night.

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