The blonde man willingly offered himself up for solitary confinement as punishment for refusing to help the administrators control the spiraling situation in the camp. The cells were hardly wide enough to spread your arms out.
The faintest hints of light crept through the tiny window in the wall, but once the sun inched its way across the sky, the light would fade and the cell would slip into near-total darkness. His bed was as comfortable and the dry, Kazakh ground and may as well have just been a flat rock to sleep on.
This kind of dark isolation would’ve driven anyone else mad. It would’ve made them rip the hair from their heads by the handful and scream at the walls. For him, the dark void was all too familiar.
For days, he paid close attention to the sounds outside, sitting calmly in his cell and biding his time. Even in solitary, he wore a content and calm expression on his face as he listened to the arguments, the shouts, and the warning shots that grew increasingly more prevalent as each day passed.
One day, Johan came to visit him. He opened the small, metal slot on his son’s cell door and peeked through it, spotting him sitting with his back against the cold, wooden wall.
“My boy?” Johan whispered. “Are you still alive?”
“Alive and well.” the blonde man responded.
“What were you thinking? Why would you be so stupid as to challenge the administrator? We can’t get you out of here now that you’re in solitary. I had to beg him to let you go in return for the service you’ve provided for him. All he said was that he’d consider it. He has far too many things on his mind right now and your release is not one of them.”
The blonde man smiled. “Johan, what’s been going on out there in the past few days?”
“Fights between guards and prisoners, even infighting amongst the prisoners themselves. There was an incident last night. Some of the prisoners attempted to break the wall dividing the males and females. Some of them were shot and killed. The administrator thinks they’re trying to link the two divided populations together so they can oust the guards from the camp.”
“I see. So it’s already starting.”
“Did you…expect this?”
“The prisoners have organized. Many of the former members of the Organization of Ukranian Nationalists have formed a chain of command. They’re gearing up for what’s coming next. This has been in the works for quite some time. The punitive treatment from the guards and the assassination of Ukranian prisoners have led to this.”
Johan’s heart nearly jumped out of his mouth. His son’s words were contradictory to what he had told the administrator.
“But…why?” Johan asked. “Why did you do this? All those people are going to get themselves killed, and for what?”
“Those people are closing their eyes and letting fate guide their next step. What greater freedom is there? They’re abandoning their numbers and taking back their names, breaking down their walls and taking back their humanity. It’s a fitting end to this whole charade, don’t you think?”
“Answer me! Why did you go and put everyone’s lives in peril?”
The blonde man stood on his feet and walked towards the cell door. “The administrator thinks he’s punishing me, but I’m here by my design. You should find a safe place too. You wouldn’t want to get hit by the ricochet.”
Johan’s legs wouldn’t stop shaking. More than anything, he feared that his son’s predictions would actually come true, that the men, women, and children living in the camp would take that blind step into the minefield and let fate guide them. His fear was well-founded.
The next few days of the blonde man’s memories were spent locked inside that box, insulated from the disaster unfolding outside. He slept soundly through the crackle of bullets and thunderstorm of screams until, one day, the bullet stopped and the screams turned into cheers. After four days in solitary confinement, the blonde man awoke to the sound of his cell door creaking open.
He was greeted by the smiling faces of his fellow prisoners, the dirt-caked faces of men and women that had just won their freedom. Had they known that he was the man responsible for engineering the conflict and the bloodshed necessary for the uprising to take place, they would’ve thought twice about releasing him.
Had they known he created every incident, enabled every beating, and helped in every assassination, they would’ve shot him right then and there. But on that day, the prisoners rescued the man who had doomed them. Their hard-fought peace was only temporary, their freedom rented but not owned.
The blonde man stepped outside his prison cell and walked out of the solitary ward with his fellow prisoners raving and cheering beside him, his hands behind his back. After four days of darkness, he stepped out into the Kazakh sunrise and saw the camp overflowing with prisoners throwing their caps and jackets into the air. Men and women mingled together and children were reunited with their parents after years of separation.
“I don’t understand…” Osamu said. “He was due to leave this place and be assigned to Hungary. Why did he go through the trouble of starting an uprising here?”
“Unlike you, he probably believed in freedom.” Taeko answered. “Maybe he didn’t want to leave, knowing the people he grew up with would be subjugated and punished.”
“No, you’re wrong.” Osamu said. “Look around. There are hardly any bodies in the camp. We heard gunshots from his cell on the night the uprising took place. There was clearly a fight, and yet there’s not very many guards lying around.”
Taeko instantly put the pieces together in her head, her eyes widening in horror as she watched a smile bloom on the blonde man’s face. “The garrison wasn’t defeated. It was a strategic retreat…”
Osamu nodded his head. “Yeah. What do you think is going to happen next, Taeko?”
The blonde man’s memories flashed forward. Life within the camp changed drastically over the next two weeks. The prisoners formed a multinational, multiethnic government and elected a for Red Army lieutenant colonel as their commander. Different departments were created and tasked with essential, day-to-day activities such as repairs for the camp, food rationing, and internal security.
People learned each other’s names, Ukrainians joined hands with Kurds and Kurds with Japanese, and beautiful, dark-haired Ukrainian girls sang hymns in organized choirs. Seamstresses put their needles to work, mending clothes and shoes for their fellow prisoners. Former painters went back to creating works of art and baristas energized the camp by serving up delicious cups of coffee.
But after life improved so drastically for the prisoners, the blonde man vanished from the camp one night. He sauntered beneath the Kazakh moon with his hands behind his back and the wind combing through his angelic, blonde hair. He climbed to the top of the quarry, where the camp administrator and four Soviet Army officials stood in wait for him.
“Did everything work out the way you wanted?” the administrator asked as he stomped his cigar into the dirt.
The blonde man smiled as he closed his eyes. “All that and more. We all have much to discuss. Guard positions, shifts, names of the leaders, I’ve seen it all.”
“There’s just one thing I want to ask you, boy.” the administrator said. “What do you get out of this?”
The blonde man pondered the question for a moment, then opened his eyes to answer. “I am going to do what only the likes of Jesus and Lazarus have done. I’m going to die here…and be reborn anew.”
As the days dragged on and negotiations between Soviet officials and the prisoners went nowhere, the military slowly gathered its strength. Nearly two-thousand soldiers were stationed in Kengir in preparation to retake the camp. The military gathered all the tractors they could and kept their engines running so that the prisoners couldn’t hear the Soviet Army tanks being rolled into the area.
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One day before the army was due to retake the camp, the blonde man made a two-part suggestion. He advised the military to make an announcement to the prisoners, that a member of the Central Committee had agreed to meet with the camp leadership. The military followed his advice to the letter.
As a result, the prisoners felt much more at ease and less hostile towards the camp officials. They had hoped a member of the Central Committee could grant their demands for better treatment, food, and wages, and get that agreement in formal writing.
Little did they know that the blonde man was simply playing with their hopes and prayers. The second part of his suggestion was to launch an assault on the camp the morning after the announcement was made. The blonde man got himself all cleaned up and dressed up, as if he were going to have dinner at the Kremlin or see the queen of England.
He ditched his worn out prisoner jacket and wore a white, wool overcoat and a black turtleneck beneath. White, snakeskin shoes contrasted with his black jeans and buckle belt. He set up a bedside table and a lawn chair at the top of the quarry at three in the morning, a steaming cup of tea resting in his hands. The raven sky enjoyed its last hours of darkness before the sun was due to rise in the east.
The blonde man had a front-row seat to the slaughter to come. He sat and waited as his tea steeped in the water, a smile on his face as the military moved its troops, dogs, and tanks into position.
“Oh, father…” the blonde man said. “I can’t wait to see the look on your face once it’s over.”
Seven flares were shot into the sky, providing light for the Soviet snipers lying down in the dry grass. They swiftly shot the sentries stationed on the rooftops in the camp, then blew their whistles to signal the tanks were clear to move. Nine tanks rolled across the Kazakh steppes, kicking up a storm of dirt and soil behind them.
The prisoners sounded their alarms and retreated from their battlements along the camp’s perimeter fences before the tanks came crashing through, clearing the way for the infantry to storm the area. The tanks continued to drive into buildings and barracks, crashing through walls and crushing the prisoners hiding inside.
Some of the prisoners threw sulfur bombs at the tanks as they ran for their lives, setting one of the tanks on fire. Bricks, bottles, and improvised explosives were thrown at the Soviet infantry, bludgeoning, cutting, and burning some of them as they made their advance into the camp. While the Soviet tanks fired blank rounds to break the morale of the prisoners, the infantry shot live rounds into the fleeing crowd.
Fleeing prisoners suddenly went limp and fell to the ground as bullets passed through their backs. Some tried to get up and crawl away, only to collapse onto the ground again as they bled out. Coffee evaporated beneath the heat of tank tracks. The hymns of the beautiful, Ukrainian singers turned into terrified screams before gunshots silenced them. For every molotov cocktail and sulfur bomb thrown, the Soviet military replied with bullets and hand grenades.
The commanders behind the uprising were captured alive, combatants killed, and those in hiding persuaded to come out. The blonde man watched it all from a distance, sipping from his tea as the sky slowly turned dark blue. For sixty days, the prisoners enjoyed their freedom. In a single morning, it was taken away from them, the devil behind their demise watching with glee.
Now that Osamu and Taeko had seen the climax of the blonde man’s machinations, they were left to wonder why he had bothered with any of it. What was the point? How did engineering the deaths of the people he grew up with result in a rebirth for him? Did it all really have a point, or was it just the catastrophic design of a madman?
Osamu and Taeko paid close attention to the next memory. The blonde man walked through the ruins of the camp as clouds suffocated the sky, casting a dark, gray shade over the land. He walked with a red umbrella over his head, shielding him from the rain. Rubble, embers, and bodies surrounded him as he walked through the charred ruins of his birthplace.
He saw the pale faces of teachers he once knew, guards he once despised, and vampires he sat alongside at Johan’s many speeches. All of them lied dead at his feet, a direct consequence of his manipulative puppeteering. He closed his eyes as he took each slow, deliberate step, barely managing to avoid stepping on the necks and faces of the dead.
The smell of petrichor, metal, and gunpowder filled the air and seeped into the very fabric of his clothes. It was hell on earth, and he felt right at home. His umbrella threw a veil of red shade over his upper body and face as he lifted his head and took in the aroma of the ruined camp.
The sound of footsteps splashing through the blood and mud made the blonde man stop in his tracks. He slowly turned his head and saw Johan standing in the rain, soaked to the bone. Johan glared at his son with wide-opened eyes as large as golf balls and a face as pale as the clouds above.
Johan surveyed the destruction around him, the limp arms sticking out from the rubble of the barracks, the dismembered feet and hands lying besides rain-soaked corpses.
“You killed them. Everyone.” Johan said.
The blonde man smiled. “I couldn’t have done it without you, Johan.”
Johan stared gazed into his son’s eyes, searching for the slightest hint of remorse or sadness. All he found was an all-consuming, blue void. Locking eyes with his son was like sinking towards the bottom of the ocean. The blonde man was a walking void, a black hole that sucked away all life and matter around him. Never in Johan’s entire life had he ever experienced such terror just from looking at a person.
“A peaceful end to vampiric existence. Isn’t that what we strived for?” Johan said. “Wasn’t that what we both wanted?”
“It is. I’d argue I want it even more than you do.”
“Then you would’ve never led our people to their deaths!”
“That’s just like you. You always close your eyes to the bigger picture. It’s no wonder you became Germany’s plaything. The people here weren’t worth saving. They were never going to survive this camp. They were never going to have the freedom to live and die of their own accord.
“It makes me wonder why you spent all these years here. Germany, Italy, and Japan were defeated. You were a free man. So why didn’t you spread your message where it would’ve mattered? If you knew our people created a settlement in Yakutsk, why didn’t you leave Kengir?”
Johan struggled to find the words. He tucked in his lips and fought back tears as his eyes darted across the hellish scene before him.
“Answer me.” the blonde man demanded.
“I couldn’t leave my son here to die.” Johan cried. “Your life was precious to me. I stayed here to raise you. I tried my best, but you turned into this…devil. The person I’m looking at right now isn’t my son. He’s a liar, a serpent. He’s everything the Abwehr and Kenpeitai wanted him to be.”
“I’m thankful to you, father.” the blonde man said. “Your failure is why I exist. It’s all because you had a child, knowing full-well he’d be doomed to suffer in this world. That’s all your life is, isn’t it? A never-ending series of failures and contradictions.
“You once told me that you had failed. You developed Sommerism, and yet you betrayed it. You knew the world would never accept a hypocrite like yourself as a leader. That night, you told me that I could become the next Johan Sommers, that I could lead our people down the right path and save our race.”
“I wanted to give you a purpose to live.” Johan said. “I wanted you to yearn for more than just a meal inside these perimeter fences. I thought I could correct my mistake. I was…so terribly wrong. This was the only true way to right this wrong.”
Johan reached behind his back, pulling out a pistol from his waistband. He aimed it at his son’s head and hovered his finger over the trigger. “I can’t let you leave here alive. I can’t let them unleash you into the world!”
His right hand holding his umbrella and his left hand stuffed into his pocket, the blonde man stood defenseless, yet completely unafraid. “Are you going to shoot me? Will you shoot your own son?”
Johan gritted his teeth, struggling to squeeze the trigger. Overcome with grief and rage at the scale of his son’s atrocity, he tried hard to think of him not as his child, but as the product of Project Nirvana, an experiment planned by some of the most fascistic and oppressive governments that ever existed. He was a walking disaster waiting to replicate the manipulation he displayed in Kengir on a global stage.
“It’s my fault!” Johan raged. “I should’ve never brought you into this world. My hypocrisy is what killed these people. I can still atone for it! I’ll kill you here and then kill myself!”
“If that’s what you want, you are very welcome to shoot. After all, I came here to die and be reborn.”
The rain pelted harder against the ground and the blonde man’s umbrella as Johan tried to make sense of what his son was telling him.
“How long do you think Yakutsk will last if the Soviet Union discovers the vampires living there? It’s safe to say that once the government finds out about Carmilla and the vampires, they’ll move to exterminate them. It will make what happened here look like child’s play.
“The world needs a true Johan Sommers, a man capable of dismantling the Soviet Union before it sinks its fangs into Yakutsk. Once it’s safe, that man can guide the vampires off the path of nationalism. Becoming you will be the greatest ruse I’ve ever pulled off, and destroying this place will erase any proof of who I was today. The stage will be set for the new Johan Sommers to save the last of his kind. You can fade into blissful oblivion and taste that sweet freedom you’ve promised us for so long.
“Am I truly so horrible for wanting to save our people?” the blonde man asked. “The true horror is that I was brought into this world. Didn’t you say so yourself, that to bring a child into the world, knowing that only suffering awaited them, was an act of evil?
“My life was worth nothing. None of our lives are. If only you had truly believed it yourself, you wouldn’t have become such a pathetic hypocrite. You can’t save our people. You can’t save anyone, not even yourself. But I can do what you couldn’t. The nameless, blonde man dies here today. Tomorrow, he becomes the new Johan Sommers.”
Johan let out a vicious scream as he fought every nerve in his body telling him to put the gun down. His finger coiled around the trigger as he gazed into his son’s calm face. The rain slammed against his face, growing louder with each passing second, the wind screaming at him in rage. Finally, he pulled the trigger. In an instant, the blonde man’s memories went black, marking the end of the Kengir uprising and the end of his life as a nameless prisoner.