To this day, Setrakian still felt it in him, every time fear took hold—whether crossing a dark street, closing his shop at night, or upon waking from the nightmares—the tatters of his memories revived. Himself kneeling, naked, praying. In his dreams he could feel the mouth of the gun pressing against his neck.

Extermination camps had no function other than killing. Treblinka was disguised to look like a train station, with travel posters and timetables, and greenery woven into the barbed wire. He arrived there in September 1942 and spent all of his time working. “Earning his breath,” he called it. He was a quiet man, young but well raised, full of wisdom and compassion. He helped as many prisoners as he could and prayed in silence all the time. Even with the atrocities he witnessed daily, he believed that God was watching over all men.

But one winter night, in the eyes of a dead thing, Abraham saw the devil. And understood the ways of the world to be different from what he’d thought.

It was past midnight and the camp was as quiet as Setrakian ever saw it. The forest murmur had quieted down and the cold air was splitting his bones. He shifted quietly in his bunk and gazed blindly at the darkness surrounding him. And then he heard it—

Pick-pick-pick.

Exactly as his bubbeh had said…it sounded exactly as she’d said…and for some reason that made it all the more frightful…

His breath vanished and he felt in his heart the burning hole. In a corner of the barracks, the darkness moved. A Thing, a towering gaunt figure peeled off from the inky depths and glided over his sleeping comrades.

Pick-pick-pick.

Sardu. Or a Thing that once had been him. Its skin was shriveled and dark, blending with the fold of its dark, loose robes. Much like an animated blotch of ink. The Thing moved effortlessly, a weightless phantom gliding across the floor. Its talonlike toenails scraped the wood ever so softly.

But—it couldn’t be. The world was real—evil was real, and surrounding him all the time—but this could not be real. This was a bubbeh meiseh. A bubbeh—

Pick-pick-pick…

In a matter of seconds, the long-dead Thing reached the bunk across from Setrakian. Abraham could smell it now: dried leaves and earth and mold. He could see hints of its blackened face as it emerged from the bundled darkness of the body—and leaned forward, smelling the neck of Zadawski, a young Pole, a hard worker. The Thing stood the height of the barracks, its head among the beams above, breathing hard and hollowly, excited, hungry. It moved along to the next bunk, where its face was briefly outlined by the light of a nearby window.