Hidden Away by J. W. Kilhey

not wearing my warm jacket. The freeze of his body seeps into me.
    My heart races and I panic. I push at the dead body, struggling to get out from under the nothingness. It is not heavy and yet it pins me down.
    When I am free, the body is next to me, and I look at it. “Please don’t,” I hear, echoing. The sound of the disembodied voice tears at me. I close my eyes, but I feel hands on me. Breath on my face. It is all I can do to push myself up off the cold floor and propel myself away from the death.
    Outside is no better. Each rotting corpse has his eyes now. My rifle is in my hands as I run back to my brothers. They have men in German uniforms lined up, and someone shouts, “They’re getting away!”
    After that, a blur of noise and motion makes me blind, deaf, and dumb. I follow the lead, my rifle raised. I shoot anything in the uniform I’ve grown to hate. It doesn’t matter if it is moving or standing stock-still.
    The piercing blue eyes of the dead janitor are still burning at me, and I want to make someone pay for reducing him to nothing more than another body in the pile.
I awake with a start, sweaty again, but I don’t vomit. Coffee and cigarettes are thankfully enough.
    The next few nights I begin my new routine of following the janitor on campus, but I don’t interrupt him again. I hide behind the stacks of books as he sits with the professor in the restricted room. I peer around corners as he cleans room after room in the evening. On the fourth night, I wait in my truck. I’d parked it near the curb where he waits every night for the Frenchman to pick him up.
    When he is in the blue Chevy Bel Air, I follow them at a safe distance. The drive takes me past my house. The winding road takes us closer to Tilden Park, but not quite there. The car turns off into a drive that leads up a hill. The house is partially hidden behind trees and shrubbery. I know this area. Behind the house is Selby Trail. What I can see of the house looks fairly modern. Modern and expensive.
    They may not live far from me, but it’s obvious the professor had more money to spend when purchasing a home.
    I keep driving as they turn off. So Charles isn’t wrong after all. They d o live together, and that does make it a bit scandalous.
    I return home with more questions than ever. Now that my gut tells me he isn’t a Nazi soldier, or perhaps even a soldier at all, my mind works at all the little details. His manner of standing when he thinks he is alone verses the way he stands when acutely aware of my presence. The long, flat scar on the inside of his arm. His musical ability, and the fact that he didn’t play that night in the auditorium. The nervous way he avoids looking me in the eye. That he refused to give me his name or shake my hand.
    They are all pieces of the puzzle, but no matter how hard I work at them, they don’t seem to add up to any understandable picture.
    I am avoiding sleep. I don’t want any more dreams of death and living skeletons. I don’t want to wake up with an itchy trigger finger or the feeling of dread deep in my bones.
    But sleep is unavoidable. I fall into unconsciousness with the vow that I will find out more about the man who has captured my thoughts as soon as I can. Somehow he holds the key to unlocking my anguish. Unlocking myself. I wish to be free. I wish for a pardon—something to absolve me.
    I don’t know why I believe he can offer it to me, but there is no denying that I am pulled to him. There is a yearning within me to understand him, and a deep knowledge that beyond wanting to understand, there is a need to know.
Chapter 4
     
Vienna, Austria
1941
    I
DECLINED Peter Waldenheim’s invitations to go out with the group for the next four rehearsals. Each night was the same. He’d ask, I’d say no, then he’d ask me to reconsider. Each time he’d say, “I promise, we’ll take care of you.”
    In my heart, I wanted to go, but in my head, I knew I shouldn’t. These were dangerous