BOOK SYNOPSIS

The Holocaust Opera is a collection of dark tales. The book contains the novella, The Holocaust Opera, plus seven short stories. What follows is a brief synopsis of some of the stories in the collection.
The Holocaust Opera: A Nazi war criminal returns from the dead in order to exact his unique brand of genocide upon an unsuspecting world.
The Rain after a dry season: A drifter has been brutally murdered in the Landers’ barn, and when they begin to suspect their own little girl of the crime, they must come to grips with the true nature of the child and the extent of her influence over all their lives.
BugShot: A man who fears wasps buys a new brand of insect spray in an attempt to rid his overrun barn of them, but discovers that he likes the taste of the BugShot as much as the wasps do.
The Nest: Babies are disappearing from their cribs at night. Alden is convinced that the disappearances are connected to that eagle’s nest over on the island. His wife thinks he’s crazy, until their own child disappears.
The Comfort of a Stranger: Danielle is drawn to the ruins of an ancient cathedral where she meets a stranger who helps her to see the truth of her existence and offers a dark kind of deliverance from her sins.
I hope you enjoy reading my dark tales as much as I enjoyed writing them. I love feedback, so if you read the book, please let me know what you think of it.

As a bonus I have added below in its entirety THE COMFORT OF A STRANGER (one of the stories in the collection) I hope you enjoy it!

The Comfort of a Stranger
By Mark Edward Hall

They met at the ruins of Saint Michael’s Cathedral. The city was razing it to make room for a new subway station. The police had roped the area off and posted guards along its perimeter, hoping to keep the curious away. It hadn’t done much good. The news of the crypt’s discovery had spread fast in the neighborhood and there had been an influx of pedestrians throughout the day. Most had gone away disappointed, however. The authorities were adamant in their protection of the site and maddeningly clandestine about what had been discovered there. Rumor was that they had uncovered a strange breed of humanoids, long dead and forgotten, buried beneath the cathedral.
Danielle knew that such rumors were easily fabricated and just as easily dispelled; nevertheless she had been perversely drawn to the demolition. She’d gone there that evening after reading a short piece in the morning paper. An earlier rain had ceased and the streets were streaked with silvery puddles. It was late October and a cool wet wind blew around her bare legs. She pulled her wool coat around her and stood staring into the ruins shivering. The site was now deserted. There were no guards, and the excavated catacombs all appeared empty. Sadly she had come too late for any sort of glimpse.
“A pity, don’t you think?”
She started and whirled. A tall, thin man in a gray trench coat stood beside her at the barricade staring into the empty catacombs. His age was hard to determine. His features were fine, almost feminine, and curiously unlined. If not for the timbre of his voice, and the slight gray stubble on his chin, he might have been a woman.
He had not been there the moment before, Danielle was sure of it. Unless she’d simply spaced out again. It was a reasonable diagnosis, she knew. Her grief, coupled with the medication, had recently brought on strange blank spaces, long hours of depression, and spats of daydreaming.
“A pity?” she asked.
“That we didn’t get to see the strange beings before they carted them all off.” The man smiled.
“You heard the rumors,” Danielle said.
“Oh yes. Hard to miss.”
“And you believed them?”
“Why does that surprise you?”
“I don’t know.”
“You didn’t?”
Danielle gave a small, nervous laugh. “No, not really.”
The man had turned to face her, his hand extended. “Decker,” he said. “John Decker.” His eyes were small and pale, their color indefinable. Danielle took his hand, even though she did not want to. It was cold, as she’d expected.
“Danielle Gray,” she said, pulling her hand back and tucking it into the sleeve of her overcoat, hoping she could warm it again.
“Pleasure,” Decker said. “What I meant was—”
“You believe, right?” Danielle interrupted. “That’s all that counts.” She turned back toward the ruins, as if to dismiss him.
“I think there are so many things about this life that we don’t yet understand. Don’t you?”
“Yeah, I suppose so.”
“You don’t sound very convinced.”
“I have my own beliefs.”
The stranger watched Danielle for a long moment. She could feel his cold, colorless eyes on her.
“Exactly what were the rumors?” he asked. “Do you know?”
Danielle shivered hugging her arms to her bosom. “Freaks of some kind. The paper called them humanoids. Supposedly they were all small, like children, and not properly decomposed. Something to do with the lack of oxygen beneath the church.”
“I see,” said Decker. “Do you suppose it's possible that they were children?”
Danielle shrugged. “Supposedly their physiology was . . . different.”
“How so?”
Danielle turned back to the stranger. “Their faces were distorted in some strange way ... I don't know. Like they were all screaming or something. Whenever things like this happen people make up stories.”
“So you think it was all a fabrication?”
Danielle frowned. “The authorities aren’t talking. Do you have business here?”
“No. Just a curious citizen, like you. These dead . . . humanoids. Where do you suppose they took them?”
“The morgue, I imagine. Look, I told you, I don’t believe the rumors. And I really have to get going. I’m not sure why I came here.” She turned to leave.
“You were searching for something,” the stranger said, freezing Danielle in her tracks. She reluctantly turned back to him and his colorless eyes held hers.
“What are you talking about?”
“Something . . . terrible has happened, some catastrophe. And you were hoping to find answers here.”
Danielle gave a short nervous little laugh. “That’s ridiculous . . .”
“Is it?”
Danielle lowered her head. “I haven’t been well.”
“Would you like to talk about it?”
“No.”
“No?”
Her eyes were drawn back to his. “I don’t know who you are.”
“Does it matter?”
Since the deaths and the recent breakdown she’d been staying at the boarding house in Jackson Heights. It was a room, a place to lay her head down and hang her clothes until she could get back on her feet. Nothing more. These days her expectations were low.
She’d found a job at the homeless shelter. It only paid minimum wage twenty hours a week but it covered the rent and she got her meals there.
She’d surprised herself by telling the stranger to come later. She knew that most of the other residents—all of them elderly—turned in early. She’d told him to be discreet, however, that a few of the more restless had taken to wandering the corridors in the night and she wasn’t sure how they’d react if they saw a strange man. She told him she’d be waiting at the back door. She paced restlessly, smoking a cigarette, wondering if he’d come, decidedly edgy with anticipation. At quarter past ten there came a soft knock. She opened it and let him in.
They’d gone immediately to her room and had made love. Or rather the stranger had. Danielle had felt nothing. His body, pressed against hers, was cold. Like embracing an emptiness. When he was done he rolled off her. She lay on her back for a long time, silently staring up at the ceiling. After a while she reached for the pack of cigarettes on the bedside stand, thumped one into her hand, placed it between her lips, and lit it with a plastic lighter. She inhaled deeply letting the smoke trickle slowly from her nostrils. The encounter had been her first in more than a year. After what had happened she’d been unsure if she could ever have sex again. She looked over at the stranger. Even though she felt no sexual attraction, something about his soft, almost feminine features and his coldness attracted her.
“Was it all right?” he asked her.
“It was okay,” she admitted, wondering if he would take offense at her candor.
The stranger frowned. “Why did you do it?” he asked. “I’m just curious, you understand.”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. Just to see if I could. It’s been a while.”
“I see.”
“You’re hurt.”
“No.”
She took one last drag on her cigarette and stabbed it out in the ashtray. She rolled over and propped herself up on one elbow facing him. “How about you? Did you enjoy it?”
“Yes, Danielle,” he replied. “I enjoyed it very much.”
Danielle stared into his colorless eyes, blank and featureless. She was shivering. “Back at the ruins,” she said. “You mentioned some catastrophe. You said that I’d gone there in search of answers.”
“Ah.”
Decker nodded sagely.
“How did you know that?”
“It was a lonely place,” he replied. “You were alone. What other conclusion might I have drawn?”
She stared at him. “No. It was more than that. Somehow you knew.”
He was staring at her breasts as if he was trying to read something from them. Feeling cold and self conscious she pulled the sheet up to cover herself.
“You’ve had children,” Decker said.
“It’s that obvious, huh?”
“A woman’s breasts tell a lot about her. How many have you had?”
“Three,” she said, and began to weep.
“That’s what you were doing at the cathedral ruins,” Decker said. “Searching for your lost children.”
Danielle stared at Decker in awe. How could he know such a thing? How could a complete stranger know the secret heart of another? He was right, of course, but until this very moment even Danielle had been unaware of why she’d been drawn to those ruins. What could that place possibly tell her about her children? Decker shifted his weight and the sheet fell away from his body. He was white and thin, androgynous. His ribs shown through stretched skin. His shrunken penis and miniscule sack lay limp against the paleness of his flesh.
“How did they die, Danielle?”
“I left them at home with a babysitter to go out for the evening. There was a . . . fire. It was nobody’s fault. Something with the wiring. The babysitter had fallen asleep.”
“You say it was nobody’s fault, yet you blame yourself?”
Danielle nodded, unable to reply. Tears coursed down her cheeks. She wondered where they were coming from. She thought she’d lost the capacity to shed them.
Decker looked at her with concern. “It must have been a very traumatic experience,” he said.
“Yes. Yes it was.”
“Please, tell me exactly what happened.”
“I don’t really know many of the details. The entire episode is rather sketchy in my mind. They tell me I had some sort of breakdown. It took me months to convalesce. Upon my release I was handed an urn of ashes. I was told that the fire burned so hot that individual bodies were unidentifiable. The ashes of what I was told were my babies were buried in a single grave in the old Cross Cemetery at Arlington Heights. I go there as often as I can and put flowers on it.”
“I see,” said Decker. “You’ll have to take me there sometime, show me.”
“What on earth for?”
“I like places of death,” he said. “I always have. Cemeteries have their own kind of charm, don’t you think? Some of the finest properties have been used to bury the dead. Tombs, mausoleums, some of the finest architecture. That says something about man’s reverence for the lost.”
Danielle did not know how to reply. She wasn’t sure she shared the stranger’s enthusiasm for death.
“What were you doing the night your children died, Danielle?”
“I told you, I was out for the evening.”
Decker nodded. “Yes, that’s right, you did. But what were you doing?”
Danielle stared at Decker for a long moment, understanding somehow that he already knew the answer to his own question. “Who are you, Mr. Decker?”
“Please, call me John. Now that we’re intimate . . . well . . . I think it would be appropriate. Don’t you?”
“I’m not sure what you’re getting at.”
“I think you are, Danielle. Come now, confessions can sometimes be good for the soul.” The stranger smiled, and for the first time Danielle got a good look at his teeth. They seemed very small, like those in the mouth of a fish. Danielle was suddenly repulsed.
“I’ve done enough confessing for one night,” Danielle said, getting out of bed. “I don’t think I’m up for any more. Please, I’d like you to leave now.”
The stranger got out of bed and dressed in silence. Danielle, the sheet still wrapped around her, watched him. After he left she felt sick, and ran into the bathroom to throw up.
It began to rain lightly again before dawn. Unable to sleep, Danielle got out of bed, dressed and went outside.
She drifted uneasily along the rain-slicked sidewalks, depressed by the drab storefronts and apartment blocks that flanked the street. All the buildings seemed empty, windows blanked out against dark, silent rooms. As dawn rose, cold white light engulfed the city, washing away all other colors.
Danielle was mildly surprised to find herself back at the ruins of St. Michael’s. She’d had no real destination in mind when she’d left her room. Nothing had changed here, she saw. The workmen had not yet returned. The catacombs still appeared as empty as they had been the night before.
Danielle closed her eyes and remembered walking aimlessly away from the police station the morning after her children had perished. The city had been hidden under a soft veil of mist. Much like today. She’d gone to the park and had sat on a bench wet with dew, feeling the rain run through her hair and down her cheeks like tears. She’d never felt so vacant. She’d left the bench and had walked into the deepest part of the park. Glistening leaves left wet smears on her skin as she wandered aimlessly through the undergrowth. The silence was like the city holding its breath. Everything seemed empty, nothing alive. She came to a small lake and began walking into it, feeling nothing, wondering how long it would take for them to find her body.
She’d come awake in a hospital. A passer-by had found her floating and had saved her life. Months of therapy and rehabilitation followed.
In time she’d been informed that she was healing well and could return to a normal life whenever she felt capable. A normal life? That was a laugh. How could anything about her life ever again be normal?
Turning her attention back to the ruins she decided to duck under the rope and go in for a closer inspection of the empty catacombs. The mist had begun to abate and she knew that at any moment workmen would begin arriving and her chance would be missed. There was something else here besides her. An emptiness that felt somehow alive. She could sense it. Behind her . . . or just ahead. She couldn’t quite see it but she knew that it was here, nevertheless. Danielle stood gazing into the empty crypts, concentrating, aching, knowing.
“You feel them, don’t you, Danielle?”
Danielle was not surprised at the sound of the stranger’s voice. She supposed that some part of her had been expecting him to show up.
“What am I supposed to be . . . feeling?”
“Something,” said the stranger. “Anything. It’s been so long since you’ve allowed yourself to feel.”
Danielle turned to the stranger. “What’s going on? How do you know what I feel or don’t feel? Who are you?
” “You came here in search of answers,” Decker replied. “I’m just trying to offer a little comfort.” He raised his arm and pointed into the ruins. “They’re here, you know. You just have to go in and find them.”
Danielle shook her head, backing away. “No!” she said. “You’re crazy.”
“Are you absolutely sure that everything happened the way you think it happened, Danielle?”
Danielle turned and hurried away from the stranger, not looking back, but she heard his laughter, like the sound of breaking glass.
She’d made it only halfway down the block before curiosity got hold of her and she stopped and glanced back. The stranger was still standing in the midst of the ruins staring at something she couldn’t see. She tried to see the expression on his face. She thought for a moment that he was screaming, but the city had come to life and with its noise she couldn’t be sure. Everything seemed so twisted, so uncertain.
She looked at her watch, surprised to see that she was late for work. What the hell would she tell them? Oh bullshit! Who cared what they did. They could fire her. She hated the job anyway.
A Lincoln Town Car pulled up to the curb and Danielle recognized the man sitting behind the wheel. He kept glancing at her through the window, a look of astonishment on his face. She tried to ignore him and kept walking, but the car kept pace.
“Hey, Danielle,” the man called through the open window. “Is that you? Jesus, I thought you were dead. What happened? Where have you been?”
“Working at the homeless shelter.”
“What? Are you kidding me?”
Danielle shook her head.
“Well, when are you coming back to work for me, girl?” The man’s voice sounded hurt, almost pleading.
“When Hell freezes over.”
“Oh, don’t be that way, Danielle. You were one of my best girls. One of my best money makers.”
“I don’t give a shit about you or your money, Jimmy. I have a new life now. So fuck off.”
Jimmy laughed. “Life?” he said, his voice filled with incredulity. “I haven’t seen you in months and now you tell me you’re working at a homeless shelter. I’m finding this really hard to believe.” The car stopped abruptly. Jimmy got out and swiftly approached Danielle. “You better not be holding out on me, girl—”
Danielle pulled a hand gun out of her coat pocket and pressed the muzzle against Jimmy’s forehead, cocking the hammer with her thumb. “I paid with the lives of my children because of the things I did for you, asshole.”
Jimmy backed away, his hands in the air. “That fire was an accident, Danielle. Jesus Christ, it wasn’t my fault.”
“If I’d been at home with my children instead of out with one of your perverted tricks, they might still be alive.”
Jimmy’s face crumbled. “You’ll pay for this, you bitch,” he said, his voice filled with hate.
“What will you do, asshole, kill me?” Danielle laughed. “If you try you’d better make it good. I’ve got mental problems now, you know. I’m certified. I could blow your ass away and walk within a year. So, if you’re smart you’ll get back in that piece of shit pimpmobile of yours and get the fuck out of here.”
Jimmy did as he was told, stumbling toward the driver’s door, his face purple with rage. Danielle’s trembling hands held the revolver pointed at him. “You’re dead, girl!” he screamed. “Dead! Dead! Dead! Do you hear me?” The sound of his voice was like syncopated hammer blows in Danielle’s ears.
Danielle went back to her room. She paced back and forth across the floor, unsure what to do. She lit a cigarette, hands shaking. There was a small cubby at the foot of the bed, too small to be considered a closet. She opened the door and pulled out a small cardboard box. She sat the box on the bed looking at it for a long time, waiting, thinking. She dropped the lit cigarette onto the floor and crushed it out beneath her shoe. She sat down on the bed and opened the box. Inside there were drawings her children had done and given her. They were the only things salvaged from her other life. The only evidence her children had ever existed. It had been more than a year since she’d looked at them. She carefully lifted the sheets of paper out of the box smoothing them with her fingers as she did so. One by one she put the sheets to her lips and began kissing them as though she could taste her children on them. She pressed them against her face, hearing the noise her eyelashes made as they scratched against the paper. Tears flowed from her eyes and onto the drawings. But the wetness from her tears seemed to be distorting the images. What once had been happy moon-faces with wide smiles and bright eyes now looked like demons with black gaping mouths. Each nose had become a jagged red gash; the eyes were dark sinkholes of despair. And the twisted faces seemed to be screaming in abject agony. The more Danielle wept the more the images morphed into visions of despair. Danielle could almost hear their shrieking voices. She began pulling more sheets from the box, looking at them, spilling tears on them. Now they were all the same. Tortured faces with gaping mouths and abysmal eyes. Was this some new pathos she would have to endure, or had the images been this way from the beginning? Had she just refused to see the truth?
Are you absolutely sure that everything happened the way you think it happened, Danielle?
She quickly put the images back in the box and buried it beneath some old clothes in the closet. She sat on the bed smoking cigarettes until nearly all the light had drained out of the day.
She kept thinking about herself and the stranger, how his cold body had pressed against hers, feeling like an emptiness. They were like two dead things floating on the surface of a lake.

Danielle knew she had to find her children.
Twilight came on the heels of a cold, dry wind and clear skies. The dampness had moved on across the Atlantic Ocean to settle into someone else’s bones. She approached the ruins just as evening’s shadows began to descend over them. She stopped at the rope, gazing into the heart of the razed cathedral. It was as if the workmen had totally abandoned the project. Everything seemed exactly as it had earlier, abysmal, depressing, an emptiness unto itself. She ducked under the barricade making her way toward the heart of the crypt. Footsteps followed her, keeping a short distance. She did not turn to identify her pursuer, confident as she was in his identity. She stopped where the catacombs began. There were square indentations in the earth where bodies had once lain. She stared into them.
What sort of bodies had they been? Human? Something else?
In the darkness just beyond the catacombs she saw three small standing forms, unmoving. She could see no individual features, however. They were just ghosts, shadows cast by the very same darkness that had plagued her life for so long. “Why?” she asked.
“You needed comfort,” said the stranger.
“And you were the one sent to give it to me.”
“You needed to see what you have refused all along to see.”
“That my children are dead?”
“No, Danielle. You’ve always accepted that.”
“What then?”
“Remember the day at the park, the morning after your children . . . well.”
“Yes, the day I walked into the lake . . . a man came along and . . . saved . . . me.” She stared at the stranger, studying him. God, why had she not recognized him sooner? She’d felt it in his coldness, seen it in the paleness of his flesh, in his thin, nearly emaciated body. And she’d heard it in his words. Yes, every one had been a clue, but she hadn’t had the sense to pick up on it. “It was you.”
Decker gave a short bow. “At your service, Danielle.”
“But you didn’t save me,” Danielle said. “You didn’t even try. In fact you dragged me under. Why, for God’s sake?” “I was sent to give you comfort.”
“Comfort?”
“From the moment your children died you were wracked with grief. You blamed yourself. You wanted death. It is why you walked into the lake, is it not?”
“But I lived.”
“Are you absolutely sure about that, Danielle?”
“Who are you?”
The stranger stared.
“No,” Danielle said, backing away. “I don’t believe you.” She closed her eyes, now not wanting to see. She wondered what she would find if she returned to her room. Would there be a lock on the door? A sign that said vacancy? Would there be a box filled with children’s drawings hidden under a stack of clothing in a cubby that wasn’t large enough to be a closet? Had everything that had happened in the past year been some colossal and twisted nightmare?
“Open your eyes, Danielle. See the wonders.”
Danielle obeyed the stranger. She opened her eyes and stared. The ruins were filled with death, she saw, dozens, perhaps hundreds of small creatures occupied the vast space there. There were black gaping mouths and sunken eye sockets. Each nose was a jagged red gash; the eyes were dark sinkholes of despair. And the twisted faces seemed to be screaming in abject agony. Just like in the pictures her children had drawn and left for her to discover and shed tears over. Had they somehow known about this? Had they known that this is where they would end up?
“The children have gathered here for centuries,” Decker said.
“Why didn’t you just tell me?”
“You needed to see for yourself. Now, sadly they are being disturbed and they need a guardian to show them the way.”
“But I don’t know . . . how.”
“I think you do, Danielle.”
Danielle stared into the ruins, at the carnival of wickedness that had gathered there. It was a veritable festival of rot and suffering, absurdly beautiful in its grotesquery. Her children were there among them, of course, the architects of her demise, all three of them, standing at the forefront, waiting to be taken home.
“There, see what you’ve been missing,” Decker said.
“Yes, I see,” Danielle replied. “Life only allows us a partial glimpse of what actually exists, doesn’t it?”
“Ah, now you believe.”
“I have finally found my children. That’s all that counts.”
The stranger nodded and gave a slight smile. He was death, of course, his business here finished, at least for the moment. But death would soon again beckon in all its myriad complexities and peculiarities, and he’d be off to usher it forth. It was the way of life, after all. Why had it taken her so long to see this simple truth? Danielle took hold of the stranger’s cold hand and together they moved into the heart of the ruins toward the shadows that awaited them on the other side.

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