The Master's Apprentice - Oliver Potzsch Page 0,77

overpowered him.

When he woke, the sun was high in the sky.

Johann blinked a few times, then shot up as if waking from a long bad dream. He was cold—colder than he’d ever been. His toes and fingers were blue, and his limbs ached, shivering so badly that he struggled to gain control of his movements. Only now did he notice that he still wore the knife around his neck. It was all he had left.

While he slowly rose from his bed among the leaves, images of the previous night returned. He had a pounding headache and struggled to tell the difference between real and imagined memories. He hadn’t been able to think straight since Tonio and Poitou had given him the black potion. Father Antonius had told Johann about such drinks. They contained henbane, devil’s trumpet, deadly nightshade, and other intoxicants that gave the user the impression of soaring high in the air or brought on hallucinations like lewd, buxom women.

Drink too much of it, though, and you’d go straight to hell.

Father Antonius once told Johann that older boys and girls from remote villages sometimes used those plants to cook up a brew that helped them escape the prisons of their drab lives for a short while. And witches concocted similar potions to mate with the devil. They smeared their broomsticks with the potions for the so-called witches’ sabbath and soared up into the thunderclouds. Back then, those stories had seemed like old wives’ tales to Johann.

But now he wasn’t so sure.

If he wasn’t mistaken, Tonio and Poitou had invoked some kind of evil creature in the clearing—perhaps even the devil himself. Evidently they were Satanists, followers of Lucifer who practiced horrific rituals. Had all the women who had kissed, licked, and mounted him really existed? And the large, soft creature that had lowered herself on him?

Had it been a witch? Or something much worse?

Johann looked down at himself. His private parts were sticky, and there were leaves all through his pubic hair. Then he thought of the bloody, whimpering bundles in the trees, and a wave of nausea overcame him.

He broke down and vomited, gasping. He had nothing left but green bile. Nonetheless, he felt a little better afterward. He looked around, his teeth chattering. If he didn’t want to freeze to death, he needed to find clothes. Tall fir trees stood all around him, blocking out the sunlight almost completely. He had no idea where he was or what direction he ought to take. He decided to follow a narrow game path, so at least he didn’t have to battle the thorny undergrowth.

Trembling and keeping low like a frightened deer, Johann made his way through the forest. He was still terrified of Tonio finding him. The master wasn’t someone who gave up in a hurry. Johann started to notice dozens of small wounds on his body. At first he thought they were scratches from running through the trees, but when he looked more closely, he saw that the marks seemed to have been made by long fingernails. Some of the cuts formed symbols he couldn’t read.

What in God’s name happened last night?

A terrible suspicion sprouted in his mind. What if Tonio hadn’t invoked the devil, but if instead . . . The thought was so awful that Johann didn’t even want to think it through.

What if Tonio is the devil himself?

Johann remembered that he’d heard Margarethe’s laughter through his delirium. Margarethe had saved him—she had opened his eyes. If he hadn’t thrown up the potion in the last moment, he’d never have been able to run away from Tonio. Perhaps he’d be hanging in the branches of a dead oak by now, gutted like those poor little creatures; Johann still didn’t know whether they had been real or a figment of his imagination.

Johann hoped—prayed—that he’d only imagined them. But then he remembered all the missing children. He thought of Martin, his little brother.

Small, whimpering bundles . . .

He forced the thought aside and banished it to a deep, dark place.

After another hour of aimless wandering, he spotted a column of smoke rising up above the firs about an arrow’s shot away. Cautiously, he headed toward it and soon reached the edge of a clearing with a solid two-story log cabin. The clearing was covered in charred tree stumps, and the ground in between them had also been burned. A little way off, a charcoal pile smoldered steadily, filling the air with biting smoke.

Ducking behind a dew-covered blackberry bush,