CONTENTS

  THE SINS OF THE POOR

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  SNEAK PEEK: The Waiting

  Chapter 1

  Join the author’s newsletter!

  More stories by Bjorn J. P. Peeters

  Thanks for reading!

  Title page

  THE SINS OF THE POOR

  CASE: KG11-589-01

  Chapter 1

  The chilling wind that blew under the door made his bare ankles cold.

  Every now and then Henry turned around when he heard the wind howl. Each time he mumbled something about the terrible condition of the house. Then he wearily turned his head back to the front and stared at the tattered old corkboard that hung on the kitchen wall.

  There was one note on it, pinned down with a pushpin

  It read: ‘Saturday at seven—Lily’

  There was nothing else on the little piece of paper.

  His oldest daughter had never been a girl of many words.

  Henry wondered what she was doing right now. Putting the kids to bed, probably. Or maybe she had already done that and was sitting downstairs on the couch. In that beautiful house of hers. That big house where there was a room for him. Well, there was a room, in any case. Henry realized that it was only he who considered that room his. He’d never seen it, the room. Because he’d never gotten past the doorstep of that beautiful house of hers. But it was there, the extra room. And in all reasonableness it belonged to him. Or who knows… maybe not.

  Outside the wind howled so mournfully it made Henry shiver.

  It was almost as if the wind better expressed his bad memories than he himself could.

  For a long while he sat lost in thoughts in his cold kitchen. His arms folded in front of him on the rotting table. He stopped paying attention to the wind that gnawed at his ankles. Until suddenly he awoke from his sad memories with a start, and turned his head to the chair on his right.

  “Do you remember when our Rosa had only just died…” he mumbled.

  Then he realized that the chair next to him was empty, and he was speaking to himself.

  “Oh yeah…” he mumbled. “You have also deserted me, you ungrateful creature.”

  Rosa, his daughter. Dead. Sickness of the lungs. Amelia, his wife. Dead. Sickness of the lungs, but also malnutrition. Lily, his oldest daughter. Fled from the house when she was seventeen. Married a rich guy and never came back home. Angry. Angry at him for all the things he should’ve done, but hadn’t.

  Like working, for decent pay.

  Insisting, until somebody helped them.

  Stealing, whatever they really couldn’t afford.

  Survive.

  Henry turned his eyes back at the little piece of paper on the corkboard, and hoped it was true, what was written on it. That this time she really felt sorry for him. That she would come. And that she would bring something for him. Something to eat. A few cents to buy new lamps. So that he didn’t have to go and stand in line so often at the poorhouse. Nobody should have to beg for light. Not even a wretch like himself, who had lost the love and respect of his family.

  Light; they should grant him that much dignity.

  A man could suffer hunger, but he could not sit in the dark.

  Henry lowered his eyes to the big lamp standing on the kitchen table.

  It didn’t flicker. But he didn’t have much faith in it. Lamps that were passed out to the poor didn’t have the best reputation. There were stories about lamps that suddenly burst and left the poor sucker who trusted in them in darkness. Abandoned to his fate. Alone in the dark with the countless horrors that came forth from it. All alone, for not a living soul ever cared about the poor.

  Not really.

  Just enough to hand them some cheap lamps.

  And something to eat. But all that wasn’t much, not much at all.

  Every single lamp in the kitchen was a gift from the poorhouse, so Henry didn’t trust any of them to keep him safe from darkness and deep shadows. But it was all he had. All he had in this ramshackle old house, of which he could only light the kitchen and the tiny bathroom. The other rooms. The living room and the two bedrooms on the first floor. He couldn’t come there. In there, darkness ruled. The doors and windows were shuttered with many wooden boards.

  Henry often heard footsteps.

  Voices in the darkness.

  He knew nothing of the history of the house. The sins that had been committed there. So he had no idea what sort of horrors could come forward from the shadows, once darkness fell. One didn’t ask those kinds of questions if one was offered a house. Not if the choice was between sleeping out on the street during freezing winter nights, or nod off in a lighted kitchen. And sleep on a mattress, with the lights burning bright all around you. Even if the lamps all came from the poorhouse.

  Maybe Lily wanted to help him light the rest of the house.

  But that was probably a vain hope.

  Henry stood up from his old kitchen chair and uncertainly, stumbling, shuffled toward the shelf to the right of the table. The bottles that stood there shoulder to shoulder had not come from the poorhouse. He had stolen them off a truck that had ended up in the little creek.

  The guy driving the truck hadn’t needed them anymore.

  A pretty girl in a long pale nightgown had come forth out of the darkness as soon as the truck left the road, and when it ended up in the creek she had joined it there. A thin girl, with arms as brittle-looking as twigs from a dead tree. She had dragged the poor man from his van. Taken him to the deep part of the water. And drowned him there. Cursing, all the time cursing while she held the struggling driver underwater. Such horrible things she had said while she drowned him. Pure hatred, that’s what it was. For people who hadn’t been alive for her to hate in a long, long time.

  And now for every living soul that crossed her path.

  But for Henry it had been an opportunity.

  While she was drowning that man, he had taken a crate from the van.

  With sixteen bottles of rum. Bottles that had since then proven very useful to him.

  Henry took one of the bottles from the shelf and inspected the others.

  All of them were empty. In his hands, he held the last full bottle.

  That realization hit him hard.

  He remembered the days he’d sat in this little kitchen without anything to drink. The voices in the other room had been much harder to ignore. It had been so much harder not to picture who they were, or what they might do to the living when they crossed their path. If they ever crossed their path. Hopefully that never happened. Hopefully the lights kept burning. It was so much easier not to think of such things if he had the burning liquid to give him silence.

  That dull silence that shut out the pain.

  How was it that his dad had described it? The medicine that didn’t heal!

  That suits me fine, Henry thought. There’s nothing that can repair the wreckage of my life.

  He sat back down on his chair and put the bottle to his lips. He drank the burning liquid with long swallows that hurt his throat and almost made him feel like he was drowning. Soon he sat dizzy on his chair, with a half-empty bottle in hand. He stared for long minutes at the little note on the corkboard before something drew his attention.

  Inside the fuse box flickered a bright red light.

  “What the hell is that now?” mumbled Henry, and he stumbled toward it.

  The heavy metal cage contained all the fuses from the lights in his kitchen and bathroom. Because it was legally required to have all electrical equipment concerning lights protected, the fuse box was hung up on the wall in this sturdy metal cage. Those who owned their own house could open such a cage with a key in case it was necessary for whatever reason. Henry did not have the key. The house was and stayed property of the director of the poorhouse. And they didn’t hand out the keys. Did they think he would do something wrong? As if he didn’t know what he was doing.

  First he had to discover why the red light flickered.

  Maybe one of the fuses needed replacing?

  Could mean something else as well.

  Because the metal cage was in the way, Henry couldn’t read the small text that was written under the flickering light. Could also be because his sight was blurry. The letters were dancing annoyingly up and down. Threefold the text floated in front of his eyes. Still he didn’t manage to read it! Because those damn letters kept moving, the little assholes! And they scrambled themselves up, which confused him. Inflamed nut sack and burning piss! He had to know why that light was flickering. What if later on the lights went out, and he was left to sit in the dark. He had no desire to end up like that driver.

  “Lets open it up, then!” Henry mumbled.

  He rattled the metal cage.

  No luck.

  Henry looked around and stumbled toward a bit of stone wreckage in the corner of the kitchen, where part of the wall between the kitchen and the tiny bathroom had collapsed. He fell and landed with his chin on one of the loose stones on the floor. Cursing and bleeding from his mouth he scrambled to his feet again. He picked up a rock from the floor. Then stumbled with it in hand to the half-empty bottle that stood on the table. He put the rock on the rotting surface, and took the bottle.

  “First something for the pain…” he said, and took long swigs.

  With the pain numbed and most of the blood spit out, he carefully stumbled back to the fuse box. It was strictly forbidden to