The book 'Helter Skelter' by Arun D Ellis

Descent 11


"Okay Adolf, you canny old bastard."

Louis was at his book shelves, rummaging. He had taken to referring to Hitler by his Christian name ever since his dream, feeling as if he'd been given permission. He was also speaking out loud, something he had been doing more and more, "Let's just check out your racial theories, shall we? I know just the place to start, Jesse Owens. Let's see, you wouldn't shake the black man's hand, or so legend has it..."

He stopped abruptly, scowling, then his glance fell to the piles of books on the floor, seeing them as if for the first time. He knelt down and continued rummaging, "now... 1936 Olympics, got to be here somewhere."

He sat back, dispirited.

He did have rather a lot of books; some he'd accumulated over several years, a few had come in courtesy of Dave, still more had been coming in the door fast and furiously over recent weeks. He had not disposed of the packaging that the new ones had come in and this added to the general disorder. "I'll have to alpha sort this lot one day, but not now..."

He reached for his phone and speed dialled Jenna.

"Hi babe," he spoke over her excited cries, "have you seen my Nazi Olympics book?"

"What?" Her voice was instantly frosty.

"My Nazi Olympics book." Her icy tone had not registered.

"I heard you, Louis but seriously, that's the first thing you say to me?"

"What's wrong?" He leaned over to dig about in one of his stacks, "Who's upset you?"

"Louis, we haven't seen each other for a week, doesn't that mean anything to you?"

He stood up, she had his attention, "Sorry Jenna, I've just been so busy studying."

"Rubbish Louis, you're still researching your great-grandfather's folder."

'Oops,' thought Louis, 'busted.'

"Louis?"

"Yeah," said Louis, not realising he had been expected to say more.

"LOUIS!"

"Sorry, I know it's been ages," he spoke hastily, fearing a visit, "but I've been studying babe, honest. I changed my thesis, combined the two...look, I'll try and get to see you tonight...."

"Oh, don't trouble yourself, not for my sake," said Jenna, trap laid. She waited for the protestations, the promise to turn up come hell or high water.

Louis was about to do exactly that but he spotted the book he had been seeking, 'YES!'

"Well?" pressed Jenna.

"Cheers babe," said Louis, a smile on his face, as he hung up.

He grabbed the book and stumbled over to his desk, searching the index for Jesse Owens, found the bit he wanted page 227 item 17 and read through the paragraph, 'Owens was the recipient of more adulation than any other athlete had received from the German crowds.' And what's this? Jesse Owens claimed that 'When I passed the Chancellor he arose, waved his hand at me, and I waved back at him. I think the writers showed bad taste in criticizing the man of the hour in Germany'.

"No, fuck!" wailed Louis, "FUCK!"

His head drooped, he waited a few seconds then turned the page, it went on, 'Hitler had congratulated several German and Finnish winners on the first day but as the day ended he left early and didn't shake the hands of the American high jumpers, two of whom were black.' "Hmm, now I have you Adolf, you lying bastard, that's more like the racist we know." He read on, 'Count Baillet-Latour, president of the International Olympic Committee, sent a message to Hitler that he was only a guest of honour and should either congratulate all of the winners or none, so Hitler chose none. So it is unclear whether he would've shaken Jesse Owens' hand or not.'

Louis dropped the book, "You're a right dodgy bastard Adolf, kept everything under a shroud of mystery. Would you or wouldn't you have shaken Jesse Owens' hand? Damn you."

He got up and paced, telling the room, "And, as if that wasn't enough, Owens returned to segregation and poverty in the US, forced to earn a living racing horses." He sighed heavily, said, "A country where they were still lynching blacks not to mention keeping the Indians on reservations. Fuck, this is so messed up."

His phone buzzed, he checked, it was Jenna. He ignored it, he had bigger fish to fry. 

∞

Louis tossed and turned unable to sleep. Hitler was trampling through his thoughts; so many questions and no way of gaining any answers.

He kicked off the duvet and rolled out of bed. No point trying to sleep; he might as well get back to his research. He reached for his jacket and pulled out a small packet of pills. This time he had insisted on paying Dave. He popped one into his mouth and dry swallowed.

He waited until the immediate and familiar buzzing had quietened down, waited for the surge of creative energy, the second stage of the process that came when the chemicals fully hit his bloodstream.
He'd noticed a slight lag in the timing of the surge, a longer period of the angry buzzing, and was wondering if he'd got a bad batch. It was more likely that he was growing impatient.

While he waited he stared at the ceiling, his thoughts wandering back to a time in his early teens, when he had struggled with the meaning of life. The circularity of these thoughts had thrown him into mental turmoil. He had little recollection of that time in his life but for the residual feeling of frantic panic.
The chaos he was feeling now was reminiscent of the confusion he had experienced in those dark days.

He had been told by his mother that he had sat staring at the walls for weeks on end, so desperate had he been to resolve the issue of where life had come from and how it had evolved. He knew he had been 'referred' for treatment with a Dr Stephanovich and with that recollection came the memory of his 'therapeutic friend' the one that Dr Stephanovich had conjured for him to help break the cycle, the friend that was meant to bring him back from the depths of his mind.

Louis shuddered at the memory; it had worked but there had been consequences.

Where Dr Stephanovich had created a pleasant cuddly Koala Bear figure and called it Milo Louis' mind had turned it into a ghoulish zombie-like creature that wanted to kill his parents. It had taken a suicide attempt to bring him out of that and he certainly had no desire to return.

He stared at the wall and tried to conjure Hitler's image. Nothing. He tried again, nothing.

He flopped down and swiped his tablet into life and started interrogating the internet for more revisionist videos. On the wall of his living room he now had three pictures of Hitler in various poses.
That was another reason he didn't want anyone round his flat; he'd have a hard job explaining them away. He'd spent so much time studying them and
Hitler that he now more or less knew every expression that the man had, or at least every televised version.

"This is insane," moaned Louis, as he finished another video showing how the holocaust could not have happened, "how could this be?"

"You just have to look, Louis," said Gampy Jaggs.

Louis woke with a start, although he couldn't be certain he'd been asleep. The video was still showing the credits but he was sure he'd heard Gampy's voice.

It was all getting too much for him; he was researched out, he knew everything there was to know about the revisionist claims, he knew all the revisionists' names, all their theories. He knew all the counteracting arguments.

His mind was awash with numbers and stats and Zyklon B and camp names and Poland and who declared war on who and when and what this leader and that leader meant by this or that but it was all a jumbled mess and none of it seemed to help him to a satisfactory conclusion.

He got his coat and walked out of the flat; fresh air would clear his mind.

He stopped, he was in the middle of the cereal aisle in a supermarket. He frowned, he had no memory of going in the shop, of the roads leading to it.

"Psst!"

He looked around, the aisle was empty but people were walking past at the bottom. He looked over to the nearest shelf, there was a picture of Hitler on a cornflakes box. He squinted, got up very close. 'Really? Hitler? On a box of cornflakes?'

"Cakes," said the face on the box. It sounded like a demand.

Louis slapped his cheeks, hard. Christ, he was hallucinating.

"Cakes," the demand came again.

"What are you doing here? How did you get here? Just go, before people see you," said Louis, waving him away, "are you even here? Am I here? Is this another dream?"

Just then two small children ran past, their mum close behind. She tossed some cereal boxes in her trolley, smiled at Louis and marched on.

Louis swallowed, looked back at the cornflakes box, no Hitler, he gulped, wiped his sweaty brow and made his way to the cake aisle.

He woke to find he was back in his flat. Or perhaps he had never left? He was holding a book, no longer reading the words, they were a blur.

It struck him that no matter what he read or where he looked he couldn't actually find any factual evidence that the holocaust as described ever happened. Of course, there were plenty of pictures of Jews with their suitcases, having their names written down at desks, getting onto over-crowded freight trains. There were pictures of gaunt people in rags, starving and probably dying of typhus which, although horrible in itself, was not proof of gas chambers.

"Fucking hell Gampy! Why couldn't you have been normal? Why did you have to saddle me with this?"

His voice sounded odd to his own ears, as if he was in a large, empty space.

"I need you to understand Louis," said Gampy.

"Yeah of course," said Louis, without thinking.

"It did not happen and I want you to be the one to tell the world."

Louis went over it again in his mind, desperately trying to be fair.

There was plenty of witness testimony and hearsay but never of the gas chambers only of the treatment that individual Jews had received from their prison guards. Whenever it came to the gas chambers themselves the so called witnesses always said something along the lines of "And of course they were sent to the gas chambers," and then, when pressed on the details, they said, "Well I never actually saw them go in myself but we never saw them again and the flames were always burning at the top of the crematoria." If he did find a witness testimony it was so outrageous that it would surely have been inadmissible in any court of law.

"No-one will listen," said Louis, still conversing happily with his dead Gampy, "All the revisionists are ruined; if they're not in prison for denying the holocaust then their careers are well and truly fucked."

"But I need you to be brave, Louis, like we were."

"You hid it from me, and from the world, you weren't brave," snapped Louis.

He waited several minutes, then, "Gampy?"
Silence.

"Gampy?"

Cheers


Arun

amazon.co.uk
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Helter-Skelt...

amazon.com
https://www.amazon.com/Helter-Skelter...