Wölfin

She sat up on the side of the bed and stared groggily at the gray glow of the window, wondering if all that had happened last night was just a dream. She often wondered if she was in a dream. She never really knew for certain that she wasn't. Regardless, the only way forward was to put one foot in front of the other.

The Odenwald sanatorium was well-known to any who even dabbled in the world of medical research. Once, it was a famous clinic for tuberculosis patients, having served a rather important role in the research of the disease. Eventually, the tuberculosis patients were supplanted by those suffering from hysteria, schizophrenia, and other mental conditions. In the late nineteen thirties, before the Third Reich unleashed its military might on Europe, the facility closed, citing lack of funding.

Rachel remembered Schmidt's stern insistence that she inform him of every aspect of her investigation. But in light of recent events, she wasn't sure she could trust him to keep this secret. She did not feel compelled to keep her end of the bargain. So, she proceeded to Odenwald alone and with no intention of informing him of anything.

Connected in its history with Heidelberg University, the Odenwald Sanatorium was nestled in a monastically secluded location near the summit of the Königstuhl mountain beyond the far side of the city. It was also on the opposite side of the city from Rachel's small flat, but Heidelberg was a small city. The walk to get there wasn't long.

The city ended abruptly at the base of the mountain. The stone city abruptly made way for a thick autumn forest where a path steeply zigzagged between chestnut and maple trees. The leaves were a brilliant palette of golden, red, and brown. The forest path was thick with dead wet leaves that gave off a strong, sweet aroma of autumn decay. The sky cleared as the sun rose about the mountaintops, but the morning crispness remained. The mix of the sun's heat, and the chill of the air bit Rachel's skin in a way that was rejuvenating.

There were a few people on the path. Some were out for their morning walk. A woman and her son were digging through the broad brown chestnut leaves for fallen chestnuts. A man in a wool coat and a felt mountain hat tossed a stick while his dog romped through the deep leaves after it. An elderly man sitting on a simple wooden bench smoked a pipe. He looked to be either reminiscing or trying to forget. Rachel certainly seemed out of place here, hiking up the mountain wearing a blue wool coat and carrying a leather case and a polio cane. None would know that the strange red-headed woman was on her way to an abandoned sanatorium with the hopes of solving a double homicide. As strange as she appeared, they would be sure that she was just another enjoyer of a crisp autumn morning.

Crows gathered in the sky above the mountain, a hundred black dots swarming like a tempest, cawing incessantly. Rachel recollected that such a gathering of crows was an omen of death. She also recollected that such a gathering was in fact, likely a funeral of sorts according to the leading crow behaviorists. They gathered to honor their newly deceased friend, or, more likely, to pass on knowledge of what it was that killed their friend.

In not more than a half-an-hour, Rachel reached the gates of the sanatorium at the top of the mountain, finding before her, a large metal gate locked with thick rusted chains and a heavy padlock. The padlock looked impossible to tamper with, so, she walked around the outside of the tall wrought-iron fence of the sanatorium grounds for an alternative means of entering, but finding none, she took out an ampoule of her magicka salve and crushed it in her hand. The familiar feeling of arcanic energy immediately began to course through her and her cane reverberated excitedly in response, its imbued arcana resonating with hers. She lifted the cane above her head, and through the arcanic resonation, compelled the cane to levitate. The cane submitted to her will and rose, taking her along with it. It hoisted her gently over to the other side of the fence and lowered her onto the ground. When she found her footing, she adjusted her coat, then returned the cane to its original purpose to stroll towards the sanatorium, the arcanic resonation still humming between them.

The sanatorium was adorned with a beautiful baroque façade. On the chapeau of its seafoam-tinted dome sat a small statue, once perhaps an angel that posed with welcoming arms, worn by time and weather into a gargoyle that reflected the sordid shape of the building. Parts of the building's roof had collapsed under the wet weight of moss, and the windows were shattered, likely on account of youngsters that had come here daringly and tossed stones into them, and the rust stains that ran down the façade like long tears. A building made rotten by history, but in its rot, there was a sort of beauty. A beauty in its insistence on standing upright. At least, that was what Rachel tried to tell herself. In truth, she could not help but feel something else entirely. A foreboding.

A sudden voice behind her made her jump.

"Guten Morgen, Frau Doktor."

She spun quickly. She slumped her shoulders when she saw it was Schmidt standing at the gate. A stern expression on his face. Condensation puffed rapidly in front of his face, indicating he had made a quick pace up the mountain trail to catch her.

"Herr Schmidt, what are you doing here?" Rachel said, feeling both disappointed and slightly impressed that he had tracked her here without her knowing.

"One may ask you the same question. How did you get in?"

"Magicka," Rachel answered.

Schmidt raised an eyebrow.

"I see... and why are you here?"

"I'm following a lead."

"A lead you were meant to inform me of first?"

Rachel shook her head. "It was a hunch," she lied. "I didn't want to waste your time unless I found something substantive."

"What was the hunch?"

"The murdered men were collaborators of Doctor Fischer, correct?"

Schmidt nodded slowly.

"And they all once worked at this sanatorium, did they not?"

Schmidt nodded again.

Rachel smiled. "Then my hunch is that we might find clues to the murders here."

Schmidt narrowed his eyes.

"Is Doctor Fischer a suspect?"

"Why wouldn't she be?"

Schmidt looked skeptical.  But he could not deny that he had nothing to suggest otherwise.

"You should have told me you were coming here."

"Forgive me. I didn't know you were required to hold my hand every step of the way. Now I do. In any case, will you allow me to conduct this investigation? Or am I hamstrung on account of a misguided formality?"

Schmidt thinned his lips. He loosened his tie begrudgingly as he joined her side.

"Let us see where your hunch takes us," he said.

"Brilliant."

They faced the building for a moment of shared anxiousness. It threatened them with its empty silence.

The crows had moved their funeral to right above the sanatorium. Their caw, restless.

Rachel went to open the front door and tried opening it. It was jammed shut. She pressed against it and tried twisting the door handle, but it held firm, and the door handle was rust-frozen.

Schmidt motioned for her to step aside, then tried slamming his shoulder into it to budge it open. It did not budge. He tried again harder. Dust shook free from the frame, but otherwise, the door stood as solid as an oak.

Rachel looked around for an alternative means of entry but did not see one. There were plenty of windows, but all the windows on the lower levels were barred. The ones higher up, however, were not. One that was broken seemed large enough for her to fly safely through.

While Schmidt strained against the door, Rachel said, "If you'll allow me, investigator Schmidt, I think I know a way in."

Schmidt followed Rachel's eyes to the broken window high above them.

He then gave her the reluctant expression of one who had followed her logic through and though was not excited to see another demonstration of a magic that could only come from a demon-pact, he acknowledged with a nod.

She raised her cane above her head and allowed it to lift her like before.

Schmidt uttered a stifled grunt of shock to see Rachel begin to levitate. Otherwise, he said nothing.

The window was large enough to fit her entire body without effort. She found her footing on the frame and stepped into an office.

The light was gray inside. The office was coated with a fine layer of gray dust. Untouched for a decade or more.

Scanning the office, she noticed a disorderly condition. Drawers turned down. Paper strewn everywhere beneath the dust coat on the parquet floor.

Rachel peeled one leaf of paper off the ground. It left a clean silhouette on the wood beneath it. She blew the dust off the paper and squinted to try to make out the faint printed words. A patient's medical record.

The water-stained wallpaper was peeling. On top of a bookshelf was a bird's nest. A nest that had long been abandoned. On the far side of the office, a chestnut tree had broken through the window. Its branches had left a mound of dead leaves and chestnut husks on the floor.

As tempting as it was to start her investigation right away, she knew it would not go over well to leave Schmidt waiting. Besides, an extra set of eyes was not the worst thing to have.

She went down the stairs to the bare and dusty lobby and there discovered the reason the door would not budge. It was barricaded from the inside with every piece of furniture it seemed. Whoever was last here certainly did not want to make it easy for anyone to get in. With her arcana-empowered cane, she moved the furniture aside telekinetically, one piece at a time. It was much easier than doing it by hand, but still exhausting work. The arcana required to move the mass burned her energy quickly. By the time she moved the last chair, she was sweating profusely, and breathing hard, and her power flickered. She didn't anticipate an immediate need to use her cane now, so she refrained from applying more magicka. Sam would be proud.

She opened the door. Schmidt stepped in, looking impressed at the result of her handiwork -- the heavy furniture strewn across the lobby.

"Very curious that they would barricade an abandoned sanatorium," Rachel remarked.

"Indeed," Schmidt replied.

"Here's to hoping we find out."

Schmidt nodded.

"Now, where do you suppose Doctor Fischer's old office is?" Rachel asked. "Perhaps we should start there."

Schmidt went to a directory on the wall and he scanned it. "Third floor. Room C-300" he said.

They went up the stairwell to the third floor. The stairs creaked beneath our footsteps. The sound echoed through the building. Above, the skittering sounds of mice or rats, frightened, no doubt, by the unusual sound of human footsteps in a place long abandoned by humans.

The first and second floors were patients' rooms. On the third floor, they came upon a long corridor. More paper scattered on the floor. The doors were all shut. The room numbers etched into the door read C-310. The next one down was C-309. Doctor Fischer's office must be at the end of the corridor. They proceeded to head there.

Unlike the rest of the sanatorium, Doctor Fischer the office was very orderly, as if Doctor Fischer had only gone on holiday. File cabinets lined the walls. And shelves full of medical references.

"What now, Doctor Blake?"

"You're an investigator, are you not, Herr Schmidt? We investigate."

"I do not know what I'm looking for," Schmidt replied.

A fair remark. Rachel did not know what she was looking for either. To avoid looking silly while not giving away the plot, she offered a suggestion that sounded like she thought this through beforehand.

"I'm looking for a list of names. Patients, staff members, and the like. Medical records are of particular interest, as are any records or correspondence that might connect a patient to our murdered doctors."

"You think they were murdered by a former patient?"

"Yes. Or someone who worked here. In either case, someone who may not have particularly liked what Rauschenberg and Schulz did while they were staffed here."

"Ach so." Schmidt nodded approvingly. Rachel felt rather pleased with herself at coming up with that on the fly. She had long been so accustomed to using her potions as a crutch that she feared she had lost her detective instincts. Knocking off the rust was easy, as it turned out.

She went to a filing cabinet and opened up a drawer at random. She pulled out a file and began to thumb through it. Schmidt did the same.

They searched thoroughly. Cabinet by cabinet. Schmidt started on the right side of the room. Rachel on the left. They spoke sparsely as they worked, speaking only when they found something of vague interest to share.

But finding very little to go off of, Rachel became more and more unsure. It wasn't until she was rifling through her very last cabinet, after more than an hour of searching, that something substantial finally came up. It was Schmidt who found it. He beckoned Rachel to come over, a manila folder splayed open in his hands. Pages had been ripped out, but small bits of pages remained, and on these bits, texts that might provide clues. She examined the text carefully.

On one piece, she read, "Practices in the Treatment of Hysteria in Ancient Cultures".

On another sheet, a messy scribble in the margins --"...if not for the ethical considerations, it would be worth pursuing."

The word 'ethical' was underlined several times with weighted strokes.

In another folder, a single page remained intact. The printed text on the page was dense and full of medical jargon Rachel could hardly comprehend. Medication and their dosages. Prophylactic antibodies. Analgesics typically administered to relieve postoperative pain. Standard stuff that did not seem to indicate anything particularly unethical. Schmidt flipped through the folder. Erudite, yet prosaic descriptions of treatments performed, medications administered, and observations of their effects. Nothing quite stood out. All quite typical of the sort of stuff a layman might find in a psychiatric research clinic. But just as she was about to prod Schmidt to tell her what it was that he found so particularly interesting about this folder, he pointed to the text he wanted to show her: ...priority must be to isolate the Lycanthropic virus.

"Lycanthropic virus?"

Schmidt looked just as confused as she was.

"A viral outbreak?" Schmidt offered.

"Could be. But I never heard of a lycanthropic virus before."

There was nothing else in the sparse pages that clarified the meaning, nor any mention of the term elsewhere.

"Not sure what the word 'lycanthropic' means," Schmidt remarked. "Do you?"

"I believe it refers to the delusion that one is a wolf."

A flashback to Rauschenberg's memory unsettled her. The white fur. Large claws flaying Rauschenberg's heaving chest. Certainly lycanthropic, the memory.

"I have never heard of such a virus."

Rachel suspected a connection with Rauschenberg's memory. Perhaps he had contracted this virus. Memories can retain such psychoses.

"Where did you find this folder?" Rachel asked.

Schmidt pointed to the filing cabinet. It was mostly empty. But a few files were left in the bottom drawer of the cabinet. Whoever abandoned this sanatorium did so to leave it bare of records, but the haste with which it was abandoned meant some remained behind. Why the hurry? Rachel wondered.

She fished out a file at random and opened it to find a listing of patients that had come through the doors, going back until 1905, along with the dates of their internment, and their afflictions. She scanned the list.

Ulrich Stein / J. 32 / 02 September 1905 -- 30 März 1906 / Tuberkulose

Sieglinde Biermann / J. 45 / 10 Dezember 1905 -- 10 Juli 1910 / Tuberkulose

Wendelin Dreyer / J. 23 / 06 April 1906 -- 15 April 1908 / Asthma

Rolf Warner / J. 50 / 30 April 1906 -- 08 Oktober 1907 / Tuberkulose

The list went on and on. There were hundreds of names. Most had tuberculosis. Some asthma or rheumatism. All diseases of the lung. Nothing out of the ordinary for an early 20th-century sanatorium.

From 1914 to 1919 there was a gap in the records. The First World War. Likely, the sanatorium had served as a hospice for wounded soldiers during those years. Also not out of the ordinary. From 1919 onwards, the list continued, again mostly pulmonary diseases. Mostly tuberculosis.

She shut the folder and pulled out another. This one had a curious title."Wölferegister"

"Strange," Rachel muttered.

She held the folder up for Schmidt to read. He looked just as lost.

"Wolf Register," he read aloud. "A register for wolves?"

"Could be related to the lycanthropic virus," Rachel noted. She flipped the folder open. Just like in the other folder, there was a list of people.  Like the other, there were hundreds of listings, but Rachel soon noticed something starkly different.

Ada Levenberg / J. 18 / 10 Oktober 1933 -- 01 Juli 1934 / Schizophrenie

Hans Bauer / J. 21 / 10 Oktober 1933 -- 15 April 1934 / Katatonie

Lara Gould / J. 26 / 10 Oktober 1933 -- 09 Dezember 1933 / Anorexie

Katrin Krause / J. 46 / 10 Oktober 1933 -- 21 Februar 1934 / Schizophrenie

Markus Richter / J. 32/ Dezember 1933 / Hysterie

Gunter Messinger / J. 19 / Dezember 1933 / Hysterie

Maya Blau / J. 21 / Januar 1934 / Hysterie

Eva Schloss / J. 25 / Februar 1934 / Hysterie

The list continued from there. Hundreds of names. But only one condition 'Hysterie.'. She pointed it out to Schmidt.

"Hmm."

He tapped his chin.

"What do you make of it?" Rachel asked.

"Obviously they had pivoted from pulmonary treatment to psychological. But..." He fidgeted uncomfortably. "Either they decided to concentrate all their treatment on one vague disorder, or..."

"Hysteria was a cover for something else entirely," Rachel completed.

"There's something else," Schmidt said, his face darkening. "The previous records contained two dates. Here there is only one date."

That put a chill down Rachel's spine.

She stared at the last name on the list. The last patient, or perhaps victim, of this place:

Leah Graf / J. 29 / Februar 1938 -- / Hysterie

There was a weighted significance to that name, besides the fact that it was the last name on the list. She was the last to be interred. But when did she leave?

"I don't know what to make of any of it," Rachel said.

"I don't either. But there must be more to discover. Come on."

He opened another file cabinet and thumbed through the file. It lightened Rachel's heart to see the once reluctant babysitter finally invested in this investigation.

Nothing else could be garnered by what they found there, but Schmidt nevertheless piled all documents they laid eyes on onto the desk in neat stacks.

Another couple of hours went by as they searched. When there was nothing left of interest in Doctor Fischer's office, they moved on to another office and continued, leaving whatever they found in careful stacks as they went. Morning turned to afternoon and the sunlight that spilled in from the windows turned from pale silver to dusty gold.

Rachel sat at the desk and pulled out the drawer. From within she found a dossier. She opened it and found a sepia-toned photograph of a young-looking woman wearing horned-rimmed glasses that looked a size too big for her petite, academic face. The woman wore her dark hair tied back into a neat ponytail, and a headband to hold her bangs from covering her eyes. Her eyes were wide and glimmered with the eager curiosity of a young scientist. The name startled her. Doktor Leah Graf.

Beneath the photograph was a short bio, which Rachel read aloud.