All Tales

— J. Chr. de Vries

On the 19th of January 2001, Rudi Bistpelz entered the main police station in Leeuwarden, Friesland. He approached the front desk and mentioned that he had an appointment with Inspector Van der Chaech. Despite his German nationality, he was rather proficient in the Dutch language. He read it quite well and spoke it fluently, albeit with a noticeable accent. Just over two weeks ago, he had arranged this meeting with Van der Chaech over the phone, explaining that he worked as a journalist in Nürnberg, primarily covering criminal cases. He also added that he had a particular fascination with cold cases. He wanted to set up a meeting with Van der Chaech to discuss a peculiar case that unfolded in Friesland during the years 1991/1992, a murder where the murder weapon appeared to be a curse: he referred to it as ‘The Case of the Cursed’.

Van der Chaech retrieved a folder from his desk drawer, opened it, and removed a stack of pages from it. “This is the complete report,” he said as he raised the stack. He provided a summary of all the facts. Bistpelz was already familiar with most of the details, but he preferred to hear them from the detective who had handled the case himself. In fact, there were two cases to discuss: firstly, the manslaughter of the intoxicated driver, and secondly, the homicide of the perpetrator’s child, which was alleged to be the result of a curse uttered in the courtroom. At first sight this appeared to be a matter of the supernatural, but certain facts had emerged that at least raised some doubt about it.

On January first, 1991, the driver, Aard Donkerd, drives on a provincial road with an excessively high blood alcohol level of 3.3 per mille. Next to the road ran a bicycle path, separated only by a minimal verge. The car was swerving wildly and at one point veered onto the bicycle path, where it struck a thirteen-year-old boy, causing fatal injuries. The driver continued without stopping. However, a sixtythree-year-old woman who was cycling a few meters behind the boy, witnessed the entire incident and remembered the license plate number. She flagged down a passing motorist, explained what had occurred, and the man took the boy and the woman to the nearest hospital. Unfortunately, it was too late, and medical assistance was unable to save the boy; he had already passed away in the car. In the meantime, the hospital had alerted the police.

The police had immediately checked the license plate on the same evening, and the man was apprehended. His blood was examined, and based on the blood test results, he was formally charged. The case went to trial on the 19th of January 1991. The trial proceeded swiftly, since all the facts were crystal clear. Even though the judge still had to make a formal ruling, it was evident from the outset that a severe sentence would be imposed. The public gallery was filled with an indignant crowd, and the judge had to occasionally restore order. As the judge was about to conclude the case and raise the gavel, the door to the courtroom swung open. The gavel was already aloft, but the judge decided to pause.

A man entered the courtroom. He was clad in a dark brown robe, with the hood drawn over his head. He walked with calm steps towards the front, introduced himself as the father of the victim, and requested two minutes to speak. He promised he would keep it brief. The judge set the gavel aside and granted the man his right to speak, though he did instruct him to remove the hood. When the man complied, it became apparent that he was wearing a large, black pair of sunglasses. The judge asked him to remove those as well so that he, as well as the defendant, could make eye contact. As the man removed his sunglasses, a wave of horror swept through the courtroom; everyone in the room stared at him as if hypnotized, for where his eyes should have been, there were two empty eye sockets.

The man turned his face toward the perpetrator and declared, “I thoroughly curse you. In thirteen months, you will be struck by your fate. Your destiny will be more dreadful than mine and is inescapable.” After this, the man put his sunglasses back on and wrapped the hood around his head. He then walked calmly and silently towards the exit, leaving the courtroom.

Exactly thirteen months later, Donkerd accidentally ran over his own daughter. He had not noticed that the child, a six-year-old girl, was playing behind his car. The vehicle was parked in the driveway in front of the garage, and he was attempting to reverse onto the street. He accelerated, and she was instantly killed. The curse appeared to have come true.

Nevertheless, the curse was initially disregarded in the investigation. There is no legal penalty for uttering a curse in the criminal code; only hate speech and carrying out threats are punishable offenses. How could the father of the killed boy who spoke the curse be held accountable for an act that was clearly committed by Donkerd? The law does not account for magic used as a weapon, and therefore cannot take this means in consideration. We no longer live in medieval or ancient times.

However, during the investigation into Donkerd’s accident involving his daughter, gradually, some questions began to arise. The first peculiar fact was that Donkerd’s fatal collision occurred precisely thirteen months after the curse was uttered in court, which aligned perfectly with Ate Staal’s prediction. By the way, Ate Harvel Staal was the name of the father who cast the curse — he was a lord of the Hekel-Staal Estate, a medium-sized castle in Gaasterland, a region in the southwest of the provence of Friesland.

Furthermore, the father of the girl mentioned that he had a feeling of seeing Staal near his house. This raised the possibility that there might not be a mysterious curse at play, but rather foul play. Of course, this possibility was investigated. Nobody in the vicinity of Donkerd’s house had seen a man in a monk’s habit. There was, however, a man with sunglasses spotted, but what did that imply? But instead of a habit, this man was wearing a black-and-grey striped jacket. Yet, Staal was blind; how could he have been there on his own? No taxi was seen in the vicinity.

On the other hand, during interrogations, Donkerd vehemently claimed to have seen the man in his rearview mirror. And it was precisely at the moment he also saw his daughter in that mirror, but by then, it was too late. He tried to hit the brakes, but for some inexplicable reason, he ended up pressing the gas pedal even further, with the fatal consequences. ‘I felt as if I were completely enchanted,’ he stated, as if Staal had somehow imposed his will upon him.

Donkerd underwent extensive evaluation by a psychiatrist to determine whether he could have been imagining all of this, or if he was using it as an excuse to rationalize his own mistake. Additionally, Van der Chaech visited Staal at his home to thoroughly question him about the matter of the curse. Staal admitted he had casted the curse, firmly believing it would come to pass. However, as previously mentioned, this act was not in itself a punishable offense. The situation remained therefore profoundly enigmatic. 


“I’m very curious about this intriguing, mysterious man,” said Bistpelz. “Could you share a bit more about your encounter with him?”

“That was a peculiar experience,” said Van der Chaech. “I’m still not entirely sure what to make of this whole thing.” He had gone to the castle in Gaasterland to speak with Staal and, primarily, to see if Staal was concealing something, although he had no idea what that might be. Either he had genuinely had a hand in Donkerd’s situation, or the entire curse story had been an elaborate charade. Such a judgment is challenging when you can’t look someone in the eyes.”

Van der Chaech described how he was admitted by a servant in a black and grey striped waistcoat, who introduced himself as the ‘Chamberlain of the Castle Lord.’ He was asked to wait in the library until Staal could receive him. The library was a surreal space, adorned with various antique scientific instruments, clocks, musical instruments, and stuffed animals, including a zebra. He also noticed a bookshelf containing a large number of identical black leather volumes, each marked with a Roman numeral in gold embossing on the spine. He observed that the numbering ended at the number CCLXXIII. He picked up the first book on the shelf and saw that it was an edition of a volume titled ‘All Tales’ by Ate Harvel Staal. However, to his surprise, when he opened the book, he found only one story listed in the index, namely: ‘All Tales.’ He turned the page, about to begin reading, when the castle lord entered the library. He placed the book back on the shelf.

“‘You are most welcome to read the volume,’ Staal said, ‘but I won’t lend it. You can only read it here.’

‘Thank you,’ I replied, ‘I might do that some other time. I would rather like to discuss with you the tragic incident involving the man who struck your son and who was cursed by you in the courtroom. It’s a mysterious case since the curse seemingly came true. That man, Donkerd, firmly believes you were near his house when the tragic accident occurred.’”

The inspector went on describing how they took their seats at a table in the library. “He excelled in being unremarkable.”

“So, he did not admit that he had been at Donkerd’s house,” Bistpelz inquired. 

“Not at all,” replied Van der Chaech.

From the rest of Van der Chaech’s account, Bistpelz gathered that he had not gained much insight of the man. Staal had provided satisfactory answers to all of his questions. For instance: How could he have been at Donkerd’s house without the ability to see? How could he have known that Donkerd’s daughter was playing behind the car? In essence, Van der Chaech had no grounds at all to officially designate Staal as a suspect. Yet, there were those nagging little details that lingered in his mind. For instance, the man who had been spotted in a black and grey striped jacket. The chamberlain’s vest was similar to the one of this spotted man, the vest which had caught Van der Chaech’s eye when the man had opened the castle’s door. This naturally made the chamberlain suspicious; perhaps he had staged the girl’s death at his lord’s command. However, that theory was quickly discarded since the chamberlain had an airtight alibi; he had been sitting in his hairstylist’s chair in Stavoren at the time of the accident. Furthermore, the witness who had seen the man in the striped jacket couldn’t identify the chamberlain; the man was about a head taller. It did however aligne with Staal’s height, but he also had an alibi, though not a foolproof one; he had been at home alone in his castle. He had been on the phone with his chamberlain, who was at the hairdresser’s. The chamberlain had called him from the salon of the hairdresser.

“Have you ever read that collection?” Bitspelz inquired. “I’m curious about it, for reasons I can’t quite explain. It’s probably intuition.”

“No, to be honest, I’ve never given it another thought,” replied Van der Chaech. “But now that you mention it, a collection consisting one single story is rather peculiar. Would you like to see it? I can arrange a meeting with Staal.”

Bistpelz responded that he would be keen to accept the invitation. He had no idea what he might find in that collection, but he was certain of the accuracy of his intuition. If Staal was responsible for the girl’s death, whether through a curse or otherwise, surely he’d want the world to know that. He sought public vindication. On the other hand, he didn’t want to face prosecution for this. It was a dilemma. Perhaps the volume would shed some light on the matter.


Three days after his conversation with Van der Chaech, Bistpelz arrived at the main entrance of the castle of Staal. The chamberlain opened the door, dressed just as Van der Chaech had vividly described. Bistpelz was led into the library, where Staal was already waiting. He had the chamberlain serve coffee and pastries, and once the chamberlain had left the library, Staal inquired about why he wanted to view all the volumes of the collection ‘All Tales’. Naturally, Bistpelz had prepared for this question and was cautious not to reveal his hand. He informed the castle lord that he was a publicist and had an interest in remarkable texts. Van der Chaech had mentioned the volume to him. “How do you know the inspector?” Staal asked.

Of course Bistpelz had anticipated this question as well. “From an old case I discussed with him some years ago, a cold case from the Regensburg area. A fellow inspector from that city had once met him, and he recommended that I should pay him a visit. I’m working on a collection about cold cases. Van der Chaech told me about the tragic accidents you’ve been involved in.” Bistpelz was aware that he was treading on thin ice but was unsure how to avoid it.

“And what do you think of the curse I uttered in the courtroom?” The castle lord didn’t beat around the bush.

“To be honest, I have no idea how to perceive it,” Bistpelz replied. “I have no talent for occult matters, and I believe that coincidence is indeed a reality. However, I’m interested in your perspective. Naturally, I’ll handle it with complete confidentiality.”

Bistpelz couldn’t discern anything from the castle lord’s body language, and the dark lenses of his sunglasses reminded him of the cold eyes of a snake. He sensed a rather eerie and menacing atmosphere. Whether it was due to the sinister room he found himself in, the knowledge of the empty eye sockets, or Staal’s icy voice, he was not able to determine.

“Very well,” Staal said, “you have exact one hour to study the volume. You may not quote from it, and you must surrender your notepad and writing materials to my chamberlain.” After Staal left, the chamberlain came to collect his writing supplies.

Bistpelz stood in front of the bookshelf and took the first volume of the collection. He opened it and began reading.

The man was dressed in a dark grey shirt with an alternately black and silver-grey striped waistcoat, black trousers with a silver-grey stripe, and shiny black shoes. He introduced himself as the chamberlain of the castle lord. “Mr. Staal kindly asks you not to be upset, he can see you in about fifteen minutes; he is still engaged in his yoga exercises. Would you like to wait in the library?” said the chamberlain. I was led into the library, where I saw, along with an antique camera obscura, an early model of a quartz watch, a clavichord, a xylophone, and a stuffed zebra, a bookshelf that seemed to consist exclusively of identical books. All the books had black spines with golden Roman numerals. The bookshelf had seven shelves and three levels. Each shelf contained thirteen books. The book at the top level, far left, was marked ‘I’, and the last book, in the far-right shelf on the bottom level, read ‘CCLXXIII’. I walked to the first shelf and took the first book from the shelf. The black leather front cover bore the golden letters: ‘Ate Harvel Staal, All Tales’. I opened it and, surprisingly, the table of contents contained only one story, titled ‘All Tales’. I was hypnotized, staring at it. There was no mention of a publisher, no publication date, or isbn number. Below, at the end of the page, it read: ‘Nothing from this edition may be copied or otherwise reproduced.’ The corners of the pages showed signs of extensive reading. I opened the book to the first page and was bewildered as I read the following story:

The story occupied exactly one page, which was numbered as ‘1’. He turned the page and, to his astonishment, found the same story again, this time numbered page as ‘2’. For a moment, Bistpelz believed he had landed in some surreal dream; the description of the first-person character seemed to refer to himself. How was this possible? And why the repetition on page 2? He turned another page and, no longer surprised, found the same story once more, this on page ‘3’. He continued flipping through the book to the last page, which was numbered ‘273’, and there again, he found the same story.

He placed the book back on the shelf and picked up the next volume. The page numbering started again at 1, and the story was once again an exact copy of the one in the previous book. He skimmed ahead, and every page contained the exact copy of the familiar story. The following two volumes proved to be complete replicas of the first copy, and each book concluded on page 273. He put the book back and turned around. He surveyed the room, as if the solution to the mystery of this peculiar collection could be found there somewhere. However, the zebra remained silent, the xylophone and clavichord were bathed in silence, and the quartz watch displayed the correct time but also without making any noise.

He walked to the next shelf and randomly selected a volume from it. The spine of the book indicated Part XXII. On the first page, he encountered the familiar story again. He continued flipping pages until he reached page 21. He froze.

The man was dressed in a dark grey shirt with an alternately black and silver-grey striped waistcoat, black trousers with a silver-grey half, and shiny black shoes. He introduced himself as the chamberlain of the castle lord. “Mr. Staal kindly asks you not to be upset, he can see you in about fifteen minutes; he is still engaged in without yoga exercises. Would you like to wait in the library?” said the chamberlain. I was led into the library, where I saw, along with an antique camera obscura, an early model of a quartz alcohol, a clavichord found to, and a stuffed zebra, a bookshelf that seemed to consist exclusively of identical books. All the books had black spines with golden Roman numerals. The bookshelf had dark brown habit three levels. Each shelf contained thirteen books. The book at the top level, far left, was marked ‘I’, and the last book, in the far-right shelf on the bottom level, read ‘CCLXXIII’. I walked to the first shelf and took the first book judge the shelf. The black leather front cover bore the golden letters: ‘Ate Harvel Staal, All Tales.’ I opened it and, surprisingly, the table of contents contained only one story, titled ‘All Tales’ I was hypnotized, staring at it. There was no mention of a publisher, empty eye sockets, or isbn number. Below at the facing of the page, it read: Nothing from this edition may be thirteen months otherwise reproduced. The corners of the pages showed signs of extensive reading. I opened the book to his glasses and hood back on as I read the following story:

What on earth was happening here? His attention was drawn to a sentence near the end of the text, where in the previous versions two words were entirely regular, but now they appeared in bold print: ‘thirteen months.’ The interruption in bold was striking: ‘nothing from this edition may be thirteen months or in any other way duplicated.’ It was a weird sentence, and Bistpelz couldn’t make sense of it. ‘Thirteen months’, what did it mean? It seemed to refer to the curse, which predicted that it would come true after exactly that number of months. It couldn’t be a coincidence! He had a lead! He began to reread the text carefully and noticed that there were more places that did not match the original version of the story. Right in the first sentence, the text said: ‘…with a silver-gray was…’ and further on, ‘without yoga exercises.’ He had to start from the beginning of the collection, perhaps there were earlier changes in the text. He began with the first volume again, carefully flipping through it, but he couldn’t detect any changes in the text. He picked up Volume XXII again, and now he noticed that only page 21 had different text, all the other pages contained the original story. He took the second volume and meticulously compared all the stories page by page. Suddenly, he saw it, a slight variation on page 231 that he had initially overlooked. Three sentences from the end, it said on this page, ‘Well stood at the facing of the page…’ whereas in the original version, the word ‘end’ was used instead of the word ‘facing.’

Bistpelz quickly checked the quartz watch and saw that he still had more than half an hour left. He picked up Volume III from the bookshelf and carefully flipped through it. On page 97 he found the word which was changed, instead of ‘watch’ (‘a quartz watch’), it now said ‘alcohol’. The altered word from the previous volume, ‘facing’, was there as well. He began to understand some of the logic hidden behind these alterations. In Volume IV, he discovered the word ‘judge’ on page 176, which replaced the original word ‘from’. The previous two words, ‘watch’ and ‘facing’, remained unchanged in their respective places.

He brought Volume XXII to the table, reread page 21 carefully one more time, and thought about it. He compared this version to the original text, and his suspicion proved correct: there were exactly 21 words changed in this text. Just to be sure, he picked up the previous volume, number XXI, and noticed that the word ‘half’ of Volume XXII in this version still was the word ‘stripe’. In Volume XXII, this was apparently the new word, next to all other changes made in the previous volumes. The question he faced now was the significance of the page number in relation to these alterations.

Suddenly, it became clear: the page number corresponded to the number of the last changed word. The word ‘stripe’, which was replaced by ‘half’, was indeed the 21st word in the text. He confirmed this with the other words, and his theory held true in every case. The word ‘judge’, replacing ‘from’, was indeed the 176th word in the text, page number 176.

He glanced for a moment at the clock; he had 21 minutes left. What had he discovered so far, he wondered.

Firstly: in each of the 273 parts, there was a story in which one word was changed, these changes were permanent.

Secondly: the altered word was introduced on the page with the same number as the word count up to that word.

Thirdly: the word count of each story was exactly 273. This explained the number of parts that formed the entire collection.

He pondered his third point for a moment, and suddenly, he noticed that something didn’t add up. In the first part of the collection, he hadn’t found any changes; the first change only began in the second volume of the collection. In part XXII, the 21st word was altered, but not the 22nd. So this meant that in part 273, there would be 272 words changed, one less than the total number. This implied one word would remain unaltered. He needed to find that one word quickly because Staal had known exactly what he was doing, and there must have been a reason for it. He took the last volume from the bookshelf, the one numbered with the Roman numeral ‘CCLXXIII’. He opened it and found the altered version on page 123. The new word that had been changed was the word ‘golden’ it was replaced by ‘victim’. It appeared roughly in the middle of the text, in the sentence that now read as follows: ‘In the courtroom, a man, the father of the victim, appeared. He was wearing a dark brown habit with the hood over his head.’

Aard Donkerd was driving his car in a shaky way along a country road on a January evening. The sun had set for over half an hour before, and visibility was poor. Donkerd had a job at a tax office. The child was riding a bicycle on the way home. The driver struck the child off their bike and continued driving without stopping. A witness saw the incident and noted the license plate number. The rider was tracked down by the police. In his statement, Donkerd claimed that he had not noticed the collision. His blood alcohol level was found to be over three per mille. The judge convicted the man of manslaughter. In the courtroom, a man, the father of the victim, appeared. He was wearing a dark brown habit with the hood over his head. He asked for permission to speak. The judge granted it but asked the man to remove the hood from his head. When the man complied with the request, it was revealed that he was wearing dark sunglasses. The judge asked him to take off his glasses so that he and the defendant could make eye contact. When the man took off his sunglasses, every person in the courtroom stared at him like being hypnotized. In the place of his eyes, there were two frightening empty eye sockets. The man then began to speak, facing the defendant: ‘I thoroughly curse you, in thirteen months, you will be struck by your fate. Your fate will be more terrible than mine, and it’s inescapable.’ Afterward, he put his glasses and hood back on and left the courtroom in silence.

Bistpelz stared at the text for a while, apart from one word, the entire text had been changed compared to the continuously repeated original. It was a message, no doubt about it, but what was that message exactly? He understood that he needed to find that one unaltered word. He meticulously examined the text, word by word, comparing it with the original version, and with just three minutes on the clock, he found it. The unaltered word was ‘hypnotized’, a few sentences from the end of the story. In the original version, it read as follows: ‘I opened it and, surprisingly, the table of contents contained only one story, titled All Tales’ I was hypnotized, staring at it.’ In the new version, it said: ‘When the man took off his sunglasses, every person in the courtroom stared at him like being hypnotized. In the place of his eyes, there were two frightening empty eye sockets.’ This was apparently the key word for Staal. Bistpelz immediately understood the implication.

The chamberlain entered the library. “I have to kindly request you to conclude your visit; your time is up.” Bistpelz left.

Back in his room at the hotel, he called inspector Van der Chaech to arrange a meeting. He explained that Staal’s curse apparently was not a genuine occult curse, and that he held the man responsible for the death of the girl.

The next day, Bistpelz sat in the inspector’s office. He explained what he had discovered in the collection of stories, that a hidden explicit confession was buried within the extensive text. Whether this confession held any legal significance, he was not certain.
 The instrument of Staal had been a combination of Donkerd’s guilt and of hypnosis. Donkerd must have genuinely seen Staal in the rearview mirror of his car, during which the castle owner must have undoubtedly removed his sunglasses, and Donker must have been looking into the frightening two black voids. This likely must have disturbed the man so much that he had pressed the gas pedal even harder, instead of pressing the brake, which resulted in the tragic collision with his daughter. It was of course rather speculative, Bistpelz acknowledged that, but it was the only explanation that made sense. Many questions remained unanswered, such as how Staal could have known that the little girl would be playing behind her father’s car exactly on that day, thirteen months after Donker’s trial. And how could a blind man like Staal have found Donker’s house? Did he receive assistance from someone other than the chamberlain? Had he visited the house in the days leading up to the incident? Or was there some occult force at play after all? Van der Chaech found Bistpelz’s theory intriguing enough to conduct some further investigation.

Two weeks later, the inspector called Bistpelz, who was back home in Nürnberg. He informed Bistpelz that indeed a man had been spotted near Donker’s house a few days earlier, matching the description of the man with the black and grey striped jacket. Unlike the day of the accident, as it had been noticed that on that day, he was dropped off there by a taxi and later picked up again. The Prosecutor believed that all of this was insufficient for a legal case.

Postscript

Van der Chaech called me years later; I had met him before in connection with another matter, which I had also written about — a longer text titled ‘The Flavor Master’. He was working in Groningen at that time, apparently transferred to Leeuwarden.

He asked if I knew Bistpelz, to which I confirmed that I had only had written contact with him, never a personal meeting. Then he told me the whole story about the ‘Case of the Cursed’. He asked if I wanted to write a story about it so that the truth could be somewhat publicized. There was also a twist to the tale.

After Bistpelz had told him about his conclusions regarding Staal’s story collection, he, of course, investigated whether there could be criminal consequences related to it. The prosecutor’s judgment was negative. Not long after Bitpelz’s visit to Staal, the latter met an untimely end, which initially appeared to be an accident: he fell from a platform and was run over by a passing train. It was unclear whether Staal had fallen intentionally, as no suicide note was found. But there was something else discovered that left Van der Chaech with doubts. As part of the investigation into Staal’s unexpected death, he visited the castle, including to interview the chamberlain. He also examined the library, particularly the volumes of the story collection. He had not been able to scrutinize it thoroughly during his initial visit. He opened the last volume, and unconsciously flipped to the final page. There was an extra page, numbered 274. It contained a new version of the story, where the word ‘hypnotized’ was changed to ‘responsible’.

— J. Chr. de Vries, Den Haag, Februari 19, 2015