Nothing in the life of the protagonist in Nadja Dietrich’s novel Emperor’s Eyrie is as it was when he passes a hunting lodge on a walk through the woods one evening. Something terrible seems to be going on inside.
On my evening walks through the forest, I frequently passed a hunting lodge. Since the lodge was at the intersection of several paths, it was almost impossible to avoid it. I would have had to go through the undergrowth to get round it. But then I would have run the risk of getting lost in the dark.
Moreover, I could have got into trouble with the hunters if they had caught me off the hiking trails. In this case, I might even have ended up the victim of a „hunting accident“.
Most of the time, though, the shutters of the lodge were closed anyway, and the den of the human predators only appeared as a silhouette that immediately sank back into the darkness. Only rarely did I notice any life in the hut. This, however, could often be heard from afar. Apparently, the lodge was mainly used by the hunters to celebrate past prey and to warm up for future prey.
Actually, men who rely on the potency prostheses of guns should be rather meek. Strangely enough, however, the opposite is usually the case – especially when the prosthesis wearers are encouraged in their pride of their potency surrogates in the company of others. Then they feel completely unbeatable and are all the more willing to demonstrate their irresistible male power to those who no longer enjoy the support of the primeval horde.
So on the days when the lodge was full of life, I sometimes had to think of Esther’s warnings after all. Involuntarily, I then quickened my pace and tried to avoid the piercing gaze of the brightly lit windows. However, the men were far too preoccupied with themselves to look out for people walking past their lodge – which rarely happened at night anyway.
Over time, the hunters‘ den therefore lost its threatening character for me. Although my heart still began to beat faster when the unmistakable melange of booze rumbling, turgid male chants and gents‘ jokes reached my ears, I paid no further attention to all of this and simply walked straight past the hut.
But then came the evening when everything changed. The evening on which I took the path that led me to this chamber. The evening that changed everything: my life, myself, the others, the whole world …
At first, all I could hear was the usual cheering, albeit perhaps a little louder, a little more insistent than usual. The pistoleros are probably already on their second bottle, I thought to myself. Perhaps they had a special reason to celebrate.
I was already halfway past the lodge when I suddenly had the impression of hearing another noise that stood out clearly from the rest of the rumbling. Something like a desperate whimper, the wailing of a wounded animal.
My first reaction was to convince myself that I must have heard wrong. In the darkness, I told myself, my senses were probably over-sensitive to every sound and, due to the lack of a real equivalent, distorted it into a dream image that had nothing to do with reality.
Shortly afterwards, however – I had already left the lodge behind me –, the whimpering suddenly swelled into a muffled scream. Now I could no longer ignore the perception. Something terrible was going on in the hut. Could these hunters be a special kind of animal abusers who were living out their sadistic tendencies here, under the double protection of the forest and the night?
No, I couldn’t just turn a blind eye to this. I had to find out what was going on inside the lodge. Carefully, I stalked towards the dark wooden palace, now a hunter myself. I crouched down under one of the windows, consciously controlling every movement of my muscles, just like in the tai chi workshop I had once attended for Esther’s sake.
The window was tilted so that I could easily hear what was being said inside. The panes were steamed up from the men’s breath. This meant that I couldn’t easily be spotted when I peeked inside the lodge. At the same time, however, the figures inside were only vaguely recognisable to me.
Cautiously, I lifted my head and peered through the window. There was hardly anything visible through the steamed-up panes. Only at the bottom edge a small gap had remained free due to a plant standing in front of it. Behind the forest of leaves and stalks, I could see a few men forming a circle in the centre of the room. They seemed to have gathered around something that was hidden by their bodies.
What was I supposed to do? Just knock and see what was going on in the hut? Or call the police? But what if the men were just celebrating some kind of extraordinary party?
Helplessly, I remained huddled in front of the window – until the moment came that divided my entire life into a before and an after.
Image: ThankYouFantasyPictures: Hut in the Forest (Pixabay)
Planet Literature 
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