Being alone didn’t bother Jim, typically. But on this particular night it did; as it had been for the past fifty-four years. He should have been at work. But he couldn’t get up the drive to go in, and called off early, feigning illness. He sat in the middle of the couch, arms stretched out along the back, lost in thought. In front of him on the coffee table was a bottle of whisky he’d taken from the nightclub the night before, two-thirds gone. The cap was off, set to the side of the bottle, which had been full that morning.
He leaned his head back and closed his eyes, his mouth moving but his brain not registering what he was saying. He knew that night he would have nightmares about them. His wife…his daughter…both gone now. He lifted his head up and looked ahead, and swore he saw an apparition of his wife. He reached for her…and then she was gone, just like that.
He leaned forward, burying his face in his hands and wept. “Es ist alles meine schuld. Ich hätte sie beschützen sollen.”* His brain pulled up the memory of that night, and played it for him, focusing especially on the faces of his wife and child…and the intruders.
It was summer, 1963 and his daughter Christina had just been put to bed. The house was new, and they’d just recently unpacked. He and Anna were spending time together alone, when tragedy struck. He’d heard glass breaking from the back of the house, and went to investigate. He’d only found a broken window and the back door wide open, but no one in sight.
Returning to where he’d left his wife, he found a group of three men surrounding her, pushing her back and forth between them like it was some kind of game. They laughed at her terrified antics, and his attempts to get her were met with playful violence. He looked around for anything he could use as a weapon, yelling and swearing at them in German the entire time.
He wasn’t hurting them very much, so they put up with him until he got too annoying. He was warned once to stop, and when he didn’t, he was forced to the floor, one man pinning his arms behind his back and kneeled on his back to keep him in place. He was forced to watch as the remaing two tore at his wife, raping her before ripping her throat open and drinking her blood.
From the stairs, a child’s scream came. He yelled for her to run, but one of the men ran and easily caught her.
“Such a pretty child.” one of them had said. “Would be a shame if something happened to her.”
Jim screamed and pleaded for them to let her go, but they just laughed. From behind, he was hit on the head and he blacked out. When he awoke, his wife was dead and his daughter was missing. Police came and took the body away, and the blood was left for him to clean up. It seemed no matter how much he scrubbed, it would never come off.
His daughter’s body was found three days later, naked and half buried. He had to go identify her body – it was the hardest thing he’d ever had to do. Ultimately, he sold the house to the city, and they built the Historical Society over it and some neighboring properties. Over the years, he’s lived different places within the city, under different identities. Presently, it was a ground level apartment.
He’d gone to their graves earlier and laid some flowers, apologizing to them like he did every year. He sighed and got up, collecting the photo albums and put them away, then drunkenly stumbled to his bedroom, where he promptly fell on the bed and passed out.
*”It’s all my fault. I should have protected them.”