The Mill
By Stefan Kiesbye
The mill on the Droste stood north of Hemmersmoor. Fir trees made it hard to spot the hunched building until you stood right in front of it, and Hein Lucht swore that on Walpurgisnacht, the mill went up in flames without being devoured, and devils and witches had a go at each other. Other rumors made it worth our while visiting the Droste Mill. It was said that the miller had lived in the same spot for over 300 years. He’d lost his wife and six children, and no one remembered where his grave was located, or if he had ever died at all.
In the Thirty Years’ War, Swedish troops had used the mill’s mossy wheel to torture their prisoners and make them betray their compatriots and give up the secret locations of food and jewelry. They had also tortured and killed the miller’s family, and only spared the miller, badly cut and with a crack in his skull.
In another version of the miller’s story, young men masquerading as soldiers had assaulted the family and killed his apprentices. The miller had known the truth, though, and sought revenge. Half dead, he had sold his soul to the devil and gained great powers, and whenever a village youth came to the mill, he was lured in by witchcraft and forced to work until his death. His apprentices had been spotted around Hemmersmoor in the shape of cattle or deer. The only way to kill them, the old people taught us, was to club them. Every third blow had to strike the ground, or else the witch or wizard would not die.
***
In the summers, we re-enacted the war, and we strapped prisoners to the wheel and made them ride high into the air and downwards into the Droste’s dark waters. If you knew how to hold your breath, it wasn’t too dangerous to ride the wheel, but playing prisoner was nevertheless a punishment. After four or five full turns of the wheel, we’d beg to be released and we were all too happy to show the Swedes where we’d hidden ham, bread, and our young daughters.
At first, we went quietly about our business, trying not to disturb the miller, should his ghost still haunt the place. Hemmersmoor had long built its own mill south of the village, closer toward the lake, and while nobody had ever seen a customer on the grounds, the Droste Mill was said to be in working order. On every visit, we found heaps of finely ground grain near the hatches.
Yet after a few long summer days, during which nothing stirred inside the building, we grew bolder and louder. Maybe the old ghost was deaf. Maybe the Droste Miller had left the area for good or finally died; he never came out to confront us. At first we might scare a girl by shouting, “The miller, the miller is coming,” but they soon learned not to listen to our cries.
As we got older, the last part of our war game became more important. Karin and Heike Brodersen, and sometimes Sabine Westerholt agreed to stay hidden in the woods behind the mill, where the Miller had hidden family and belongings.
Then the Swedish Soldiers among us would arrest the Miller as he was about to do his work. After the torture, the Soldiers followed the Miller to his hideout, and the troops raped the women.
No one wanted to play the Droste Miller, because of course he couldn’t take part in the rapings. He could only watch and wish to have better luck with the draw the next time.
We were thirteen and fourteen when we raped Karin, Heike, and Sabine. They giggled when they saw our penises. We spanked their behinds, sometimes whipped them with willow twigs, and on a lucky day might be allowed to fondle their breasts while jerking off.
“How do you kill a witch?” Alex would shout, his voice rising over the mayhem.
“You club her,” Bernhard shouted back. He was in love with Sabine, and took this love out on the girl’s white back. “Every third blow must strike the ground, or she’ll never die.” Sabine always died under his hands.
Sometimes we kissed and got entangled and all bunched up, and we came in our pants while the girls were panting. Other days the girls tortured us, pinched our balls, beat us with sticks, burned our asses with cigarettes, or tied us to trees and showed us everything we weren’t allowed to touch.
One day in July, after Holger, Alex, and I had reaped the benefits of playing Soldiers and still lay in the girls’ arms, their soft hair tickling our lips and faces, their warmth heating us up again, we noticed that we’d lost our Miller, Bernhard.
It was important for the Miller to stick around, and we’d never violated that rule before. It was good to be with the girls, still it was better to be watched while doling out or receiving punishment. It was painful for the Miller to stand by, unable to participate, but we endured that role whenever we had to play it, for the sake of our pleasure the next time.
So when Bernhard was found missing, we others were enraged. Pulling on our pants, we stumbled out of the woods. He couldn’t be far. We shouted, roared, we threatened to break every bone in his body. He didn’t show.
It was on that day, after returning to Hemmersmoor and not finding Bernhard at home and not being able to pummel him, that we asked ourselves who exactly was living inside the Droste Mill. Bernhard did not come home, not this day nor the next, and by the end of the summer his parents had given up hope. The moor was treacherous and had claimed many lives, and after search parties did not find a single trace of their son, they stopped mentioning his name.
Alex, Holger and I, though, kept searching. We had followed our fathers across the peat bog, we had looked at every inch of the moor, but no one had bothered to search the Droste Mill. We’d kept our secret. Often, we went to the mill, looking for a way in. We searched for a broken window, for an unlocked door, yet the windows were shuttered, the doors wouldn’t move an inch. And each time we found fresh grain on the ground, and each time we waited, hoping Bernhard might appear, might come stumbling out of the woods, having been trapped in a fairy tale slumber. After dark, we returned, our conscience sanded down by our efforts. We had tried.
As the days grew shorter and colder, Alex and Holger lost interest in the mill. Bernhard, Holger said, had left Hemmersmoor of his own accord. “Maybe carnies picked him up,” he mused, “or circus people. Maybe he went to Bremen as a beggar or a musician. He did play the flute.”
Alex chuckled at such ideas. “He’s dead. Couldn’t stand watching us with Sabine, ran off, stepped into the swamp and whoosh! In a hundred years the peat cutters will dig him up, as fresh as the day he died.”
I wasn’t convinced by either theory, making the half-hour trip to the mill by myself. What I expected to find in the end I never asked myself, and even if I had, I wouldn’t have been able to answer that question. Perhaps I wanted to find Bernhard and carry him home like a treasure chest. Maybe the legends of the mill brought me back. Slowly, the mill became more important than ice-skating with Heike Brodersen. I still dreamt of our afternoons with the girls, still wished to be near them and crawl under their skirts, but as soon as I saw one of them in the village, the spell was broken. We talked for a minute or two, nodded, and went our own ways.
***
After Christmas that year, I walked through the fresh snow toward the Droste Mill. School was out, Holger and Alex were going steady with the Brodersen girls. The forest was quiet, and even though the skies were overcast, it seemed bright like our town hall when decorated for a dance. The snow had robbed the woods of all the dark corners. My steps and breath filled my ears.
Where the mill had to be, thin smoke rose over the tops of the trees, and I quickened my pace, gripping my walking stick tightly. Yet before I reached the river, a cat jumped out onto the path in front of me. It was a housecat, but so large was she that I took two steps backward. Her fur was black, her tail as lively as a serpent, and her face large and round. She cocked her head as if to say, “You’re here again, Markus. I’ve seen you before.”
I remembered the tales of witches and wizards taking on the shape of animals and haunting villagers, but I had never seen one before. “Who are you?” I stammered.
The cat kept silent, but stepped ahead, her big paws sinking deep into the snow. I had trouble keeping up with her. On reaching the mill, the large wheel lay quiet, bound by ice. Only in the middle of the Droste there remained a tiny sliver of open water, like a cut that wouldn’t heal. If I should vanish from this spot, who would come and look for me?
When I took my eyes off the thin column of smoke coming from the chimney, the cat was gone. Her steps ended at the front door. Alex, Holger, and I had tried many times to force it open, and had found it solidly locked every time. Now it stood ajar, tempting me. I pushed it fully open with my stick and entered.
The first room was the kitchen, with an oaken table and eight wooden chairs set around it. The pots hanging above the fireplace were old and dented and impeccably clean. A fire groaned and hissed and after staring at this strange scene for long seconds, I felt the need to take off my coat. Then I shut the door to the outside.
Soon I stood in the miller’s bedroom, with two large and two small beds freshly made. “Who lives here?” I asked aloud, my voice high and tense, ready to snap.
“Why, the miller and his two youngest daughters,” the cat said from the door.
“Where is he?” I asked.
“He’s out and won’t be back before midnight,” the cat said and disappeared.
I followed her shadow along a hallway, up a creaky wooden ladder and into a small room with several beds, all freshly made but otherwise empty, as if the apprentices might return any moment from work.
“Where are they?” I asked.
“They’re gone with the miller. They left me behind,” the cat said, then led me into the mill room, the large stone sleeping, a fine, cold dust hanging in the air. Sacks of flour, out of breath and tied at the top, filled the far corner. The cat appeared even bigger than it had out in the woods, seemed to have grown to the size of a calf.
“Where is Bernhard?” I asked.
She seemed to weigh that question, but without an answer shifted her weight, ready to pounce on me.
I swung my walking stick and hit the cat in the face. The second blow cracked its spine. The cat shrieked, curling up. “How do you kill a witch?” I shouted, remembering what we had learned as children.
My third blow hit the ground, my fourth one the cat’s skull, the fifth broke a hind leg. “How do you kill a witch?” I screamed again, searching for courage.
“You club her,” Bernhard said, curled up on the ground, bleeding from his wounds. “Every third blow must strike the ground, or she’ll never die.”
So I did.
Find more on Stefan Kiesbye at http://www.skiesbye.com