The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

The Wire
by Kathleen McCluskey

The old man stood alone before the rusted fence, his cane sinking into the soft, damp earth. Tourists wandered the memorial behind him, speaking in hushed voices. Fifty years had weathered the camp. The guard towers had become exhibits. The barracks had become part of history. Only the barbed wire looked unchanged.

   He removed his leather glove and wrapped his fingers around it. “I came back,” he whispered.

   The wire was cold. Then it tightened, not around his hand but around his memory. The summer of 1944 crashed into him with such force that his knees buckled. Smoke rolled across the camp, carrying that unforgettable scent. He smelled coal, sweat and something far worse that he had spent a lifetime trying to forget.

   He opened his eyes and found the memorial gone.

   The guard tower stood whole again. The barracks were full. Hundreds of prisoners shuffled through the mud in striped uniforms. Their faces were hollow. Their eyes fixed on the ground. Nothing was broken. Nothing was burned. Nothing was preserved, the camp was exactly how he remembered it.

   “No,” the old man breathed. “This can’t be real.”

   He released the wire but the vision did not end. His cane had vanished. His expensive coat had become the gray wool of an SS officer. His hands were young again, free of wrinkles and liver spots. 

   He turned toward the gate. It stood open, revealing the road he had walked for three years. Someone was approaching. At first he thought it was another guard, but then he saw the stripes.

   Children.

   Dozens of them walked in perfect silence. Some held hands. Others carried ragdolls missing their button eyes. Their shaved heads caught the pale morning light as they stopped a few feet away.

   He recognized every face. Not their names, he never cared to learn those.

   “I…I didn’t choose who…” he said, his voice shaking.

   They didn’t answer.

   Instead, the little girl in the front slowly lifted one finger and pointed toward the railroad tracks. The other parted without a sound, their black eyes never leaving him. A whistle pierced the air before another answered farther down the line. Steel screamed against steel as a freight train emerged from the mist. Its wheels ground over the rails with dreadful familiarity. One boxcar became ten, became twenty, then more than he could count. 

   Tiny fists hammered against the walls. Mothers begged for water until their voices broke. Men shouted promises that they couldn’t possibly keep while children cried in frightened confusion. He had spent his lifetime convincing himself that those sounds had faded with time. They hadn’t. They had only been awaiting his return.

   The first boxcar shuddered to a halt, its heavy door sliding open with a metal groan. Families spilled out onto the platform carrying battered suitcases and blankets, each face etched with fear and exhaustion. Mothers cradled sleeping infants while fathers held trembling children by the hand. They followed the path toward the low concrete building, disappearing behind the steel doors of the gas chamber.

   The doors slammed shut.

   For a moment there was only silence, then the pounding began. Thousands of fists hammered the steel doors from within as screams erupted through the walls, rising into one terrible chorus that drowned out the whistles and the barking dogs. The sound continued until it ended all at once, leaving the camp with a deafening silence that smothered his ears.

   Across the yard, the crematorium awakened.

   Black smoke belched out of the stack, covering him in soot and ash.

   Its great iron doors creaked open on their own, revealing not brick furnaces but an abyss alive with fire. Flames climbed from impossible depths, casting a red glow across the camp. The heat struck his face though he stood yards away, carrying with it the unmistakable stench of burning human flesh.

   A voice rolled from the flames, deep enough to shake the ground. “You delivered them to death.”

   “I…I was following orders.”

   The fire surged higher. “Orders? Orders?” The voice bellowed. “Now, they deliver you.”

   The children slowly stepped aside.

   Beyond the crematorium door there were no ovens. No chimneys, no walls. There was only the endless black landscape enclosed by towering barbed wire. Silent figures shuffled beyond the fence. None reached for him. None spoke. They simply watched as the flames parted across the threshold, leaving him only one path.

   The trains had brought them here.

   The crematorium would take him the rest of the way.

Fiction © Copyright Kathleen McCluskey
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com 

More from Kathleen McCluskey:

The Long Fall: Book 1: The Inception of Horror

Lucifer always cunning and intelligent challenges father to a battle of wits. Being the angel of light he casts a judgemental eye upon mankind. He begins a war with his fellow archangels and God. Michael, along with his siblings defend their home and mankind from their deranged brother. Broad swords and hand to hand combat drench heaven in blood. The four apocalyptic steeds are released, each having their own destructive power. Betrayal and lust are at biblical levels. Understand the very creation of evil and the consequenses that transpire in the first of THE LONG FALL series.

Available on Amazon!