Witch in the White City: A Dark Historical Fantasy/Mystery (Neva Freeman Book 1)

by Nick Wisseman

  Or was Derek more than he seemed?

  “We’re going down now,” he said again to Wherrit, who emitted a ragged sob as the car finally began to descend.

  Derek maintained his pose for the several minutes it took the Wheel to complete its revolution. The other men who’d tried to restrain Wherrit watched him warily, but none of them looked eager to move closer than they needed to—they already had plenty of his blood on their suits. The big man continued crying in relief, even laughing a bit when his female companion came to him and took his hand.

  “Fuck me sideways,” the attendant muttered as they hit the Wheel’s nadir, the loading platform stretching out invitingly to either side.

  “What is it?” asked Neva in a low tone, still watching Derek.

  “I don’t think Kyle understood my signal.”

  “Who’s Kyle?”

  “The operator. We’re going up again.”

  Wherrit noticed immediately. As soon as the Wheel resumed climbing, he knocked Derek’s fingers away and sprang at the door again, only to slip on a shard of glass and cut himself on several more when he fell to the floor.

  “Stop the Wheel!” yelled Derek.

  The attendant hurried to help re-subdue Wherrit. “I can’t. We always do two full rotations.”

  “Then let him jump,” one of the other men suggested—the car had only risen fifteen feet above the platform. He released Wherrit, who used the opportunity to throw off the other hands on him and make for the first window he’d shattered. But glass and his blood were everywhere now, and he slipped twice more as the Wheel continued to turn. By the time he reached the window, they’d ascended at least another ten feet.

  Rescuing Wherrit yet again, Derek yanked the big man’s shoulder back just before he would have leapt to the ground. “It’s too far!”

  “Hold him!” the attendant hissed at the other men when they approached; Wherrit was somehow more manic than before and twice as bloody.

  Derek hooked his foot around a bench leg. “How long?”

  “A full rotation takes nine minutes.”

  He winced. The other men were just as tired: Wherrit eventually broke loose as the car crested the Wheel’s apex again.

  But Neva was ready.

  Stepping forth from the back of the car—where the rest of the passengers cowered—she whipped her skirt off and tossed it over the big man’s head as he passed. Blindness calmed him even faster than Derek’s fingers had: Wherrit froze in midstride and fell to the floor. Kneeling next to him, she whispered little nothings into his shrouded ears, heedless of her bare legs and the purple rashes visible upon them.

  Chapter Eleven

  “HOW DID YOU KNOW IT would work?” asked Derek, looking away as Neva wrapped a blue coat around her waist.

  She hid her smile. She’d been half-clothed for more than a quarter of an hour, but suddenly it was awkward to watch her cover herself? “He was scared because he could see how high we were, and how much higher we were going to be. So I made it all go away.”

  Derek glanced at her, brow furrowed.

  “It’s what they do with the ostriches.”

  “At that restaurant on the Midway?”

  She nodded. “Veiling their heads calms them. And Wherrit was panicked as a bird ...”

  Derek laughed. It wasn’t an easy laugh, but at least laughing was possible now, with the harrowing ride over and Wherrit on his way to the Exposition Hospital.

  Those who’d grappled with him looked a mess, though. Wherrit’s blood had ruined much of their clothing. Neva’s dress was soaked, and Derek had been unable to offer her his badly stained jacket in good conscience—which was why she’d accepted a coat from a grateful passenger who’d stayed out of the fray. The improvised skirt hid the rashes on her thighs but left the marks on her shins and calves exposed.

  Derek’s gaze strayed to her legs again. “Do they hurt?”

  She returned the scrutiny. There didn’t seem to be any recognition in his expression. Sympathy and concern, yes. But no empathy—he didn’t know any more about the rashes than what she’d told him. “Not much since the swelling started to go down. Just a twinge now and again.”

  “That’s good.” He turned as one of the men who’d helped them in the carriage said farewell. Everyone was leaving the Wheel—its gates had been closed, shut for the first time since construction finished. But a mostly colored custodial crew was already cleaning the blood and glass from the damaged car, while a mostly white maintenance gang waited impatiently to begin repairs. The cash cow of the Fair wouldn’t stay idle for long.

  “When you touched Wherrit’s temples,” Neva said after Derek finished wishing the other man good fortune, “calming him with your fingertips—that was almost magical.”

  He winced. “Just pressure points, is all.”

  She cocked her head.

  “A technique I read about. It’s from the Orient.”

  “And what technique would that be?” asked a thin custodian, taking the words from Neva’s mouth. But then, Quill had often been able to anticipate her replies.

  “Mr. Cole,” Derek said in surprise as their former teacher stuffed a bloody rag in his pocket and removed his gray cap.

  “It’s good to see you again, Derek,” Quill replied. “And to hear you saved a man’s life with ... pressure points, was it?”

  “A corollary of acupuncture, actually. Rather obscure.” Derek plucked at his undershirt, tarnished in the many areas where blood had seeped through his coat. “I should get back to Pullman Town to change this.”

  Neva frowned. “You just arrived.”

  “I think I’ve seen enough of the Fair for one day. Unless you need me to stay?”

  “Not if you need to leave, but ... why did you come?” She thought of the favor she’d asked of Sol. “Did Mr. DeBell get my message? Did he send you?”

  “No. I wanted to talk to you ... Not now, though.” Derek gestured in the direction of the Cold Storage Building’s smoking ruins. “I’ll find you tomorrow.” He nodded at Quill. “Mr. Cole. Are you still teaching?”

  Quill tapped his custodian’s cap. “Only sweeping, I’m afraid. Good posts are hard to come by these days. But it sounds like you have one with George Pullman?”

  “I do. I design passenger cars for him. Nice to see you.” Derek shook Quill’s proffered hand, squeezed Neva’s shoulder, and strode off.

  “I also heard about your shrouding technique,” Quill said to Neva as she craned her neck to follow Derek’s progress through the crowd. “Quick thinking, that—I’m glad you’re feeling better.”

  “Thank you.” She resisted the impulse to reposition the coat around her waist and hide as much of her legs as she could. Quill had been drunk the night he’d resigned from the DeBells’ five years ago (following a midnight rant—shouted through the house—about the injustice of four anarchists hanging earlier that day for their supposed role in the Haymarket riot). But there’d been more than whiskey clouding his eyes when he’d tried to kiss her on his way out. There’d been longing too.

  And she’d only been sixteen.

  “It seems you’re everywhere these days,” he observed. “Are you sure you’re all right? A madman on the Wheel, after the porter on the Pier, and Augie gone missing—Wiley told me.”

  Not everything: Wiley must not have believed her when she’d said Augie and the porter were one and the same ... Or maybe the Boer was keeping that secret for her? “I’m fine. How do you know him?”

  “Wiley? Through Pieter. Listen, if you need anything ...”

  “Thank you. Right now I think I just need to see Mr. DeBell.”

  “Oh.” Quill pursed his lips, then restored his cap to his head. “I’d ask you to give him my regards, but ...”

  “I know. It was good to see you.”

  “Likewise.” His lips twitched. “To think we’ve both worked here, all these months, without running into each other until now—twice in two days. What a labyrinthine spectacle this place
is.” He shook his head. “Well, I should return to the mess that fellow left on the Wheel. I’m sure Augie will surface on his own, but I’ll keep an eye out for him. Once he appears, maybe the three of us can discuss The Reason Why the Colored American Is Not in the World's Columbian Exposition? Powerful stuff, though I fear it won’t have the intended effect. You’ve read it?”

  “I have, but another time.”

  “Of course.” He tipped his cap. “Take care.” Whistling, he removed the bloody rag from his pocket and strolled back to clean the Wheel she’d so recently overheard him plotting to destroy.

  “One problem at a time,” Neva murmured as she watched him go. “One problem at a time.”

  AFTER STOPPING AT THE Algerian and Tunisian Village, where she changed into modest clothes and left a message for Wiley with Wahib, Neva resolved to walk to Mr. DeBell’s office at the Union Stock Yards. It was only a few miles; if she had to dip into her meager savings to pay train fare, she’d rather save it for the way back. And a bit of a hike might do her good.

  But she found no respite.

  For one thing, she was bone-weary. Literally. She hadn’t done so much bending, in so short a time—and so openly—since ... since she’d been a reckless child, and Augie had convinced her to be more careful.

  Adding to her fatigue were the questions that dogged her from the moment she exited the Fair and headed west on 59thStreet. How had Derek truly calmed Wherrit? Could he bend minds? Should she report Quill and the others to the authorities? Did she want to? What had happened to Dob’s mother? Could Mr. DeBell help? Where did the crescent-marked insects come from? Was anyone directing them? Would their venom drive her mad too? Were they targeting “talented” people? Would she start targeting “talented” people?

  Then there were the memories—they hit Neva hardest after she turned north on Halsted. Listening to Mr. DeBell recount his days as an abolitionist to Abiah and Jasper, his legitimate children. Hearing Mrs. DeBell call Caleb a “dark brute of a butler” minutes later. Seeing Derek sitting at the far end of the dining table, away from the rest of the DeBell family. Huddling in a corner of the kitchen, away from the other servants. Watching Quill lecture Jasper about women’s inspiring role in the French Revolution. Deflecting Quill’s profuse apologies for trying to force his lips on hers.

  And Augie—so many memories of Augie.

  Come 51st Street, there was also the stench of the Stockyards. A whiff of it always lingered in the Chicago air; the smell of pigs and cattle—living and dead—greeted visitors to the city and wished them farewell when they left. But now that Neva was nearing the Yards and their acres of meat, dung, and blood, the odor had grown beyond what she was accustomed to.

  Worst of all, though, were the homeless.

  Many had come to Chicago in hopes of finding a job at the Fair. At the peak of construction, more than forty thousand men had been employed to erect the great buildings, dredge the lagoon and canals, sculpt the statues, plant the flowers, operate the electric spray-painting machines that colored the main structures white, and on and on. People had paid twenty-five cents just to watch the operations. Running the Exposition took fewer hands, however, which left many idle on the streets. And with the country in such a bad way—as stock prices plummeted and banks closed left and right—the number of destitute, desperate families only continued to swell.

  Neva’s heart went out to them, but she didn’t have time for charity and little of it to give. So she walked on, trying not to see the hungry men and women with their skinny, ragged children. She wasn’t the only person determinedly casting a blind eye: few of those who could afford to visit the White City wanted an illustration of how sharply it contrasted with the Black City that had made it.

  No answers awaited Neva when she at last reached the Stockyard’s main gate, an imposing limestone arch topped with the bust of a bull. But a tour was in progress:

  “Seventy-five thousand hogs, twenty-one thousand cattle, and twenty-two thousand sheep,” a guide was reciting to his audience. “That’s how many animals we can hold at any one time. Annually, we process about nine million, but that’s likely to be higher this year with the appetite at the Exposition. The work keeps the world in meat and a fifth of Chicago employed. But the numbers don’t do the Yards justice. Let’s go see the process in action.” He glanced at a woman in the front of the audience, dressed in an extravagant white dress she likely planned to wear to the Fair as well—tourists who came to Chicago for several days often visited both attractions. “Ma’am, you’ll want to hold up your hem. The floor can be a bit red.”

  The woman covered her mouth with one hand, but her other went to her dress and raised it several inches. A second woman in the group did the same. Neva watched them follow the guide into one of the pig-slaughtering plants and felt momentarily ill. Mr. DeBell had given her the tour years ago, and the worst scenes remained vivid in her memory. Hogs marching up the “Bridge of Sighs,” so named because it afforded them their last look at life in the pen. Men stunning the hogs with a sledgehammer to the head and winding chains about their legs. The chains hoisting the hogs and swinging their limp bodies to the first butchering station. Men slitting the hogs’ throats. The chains dipping the hogs into a vat of boiling water and swinging them to the next station. Men making more cuts. The chains swinging the hogs to more stations. And so on, until all you could see—even when you closed your eyes—was men and chains and carnage ...

  Neva shuddered. By going into that building, those women would be stained whether their dresses brushed the floor or not.

  She shook her head and walked in the opposite direction. She needed to find Mr. DeBell.

  It had been a long time since she’d been in the Yards but locating his office building proved easy enough: its location was another part of her prior visit she hadn’t forgotten, largely because the north end overlooked Bubbly Creek, a branch of the Chicago River fouled by the Yards’ blood and entrails. The gory runoff was so thick that the creek constantly bubbled with the gasses of decomposition—thus its nickname.

  Resisting the impulse to hold her nose, Neva entered the building and made her way to the sales department. Mr. DeBell’s office was empty.

  “He’s been out this past week.”

  Neva turned to find a young, white executive leaning against the doorframe of the opposite office. “Out where?”

  “Out without telling anyone where the blazes he went.” The young executive inclined his head. His voice was deep. “How did you get in here?”

  “I walked.” It was true. No one had stopped her as she’d navigated the Yards. She’d been moving with purpose—perhaps that had helped. “So Mr. DeBell’s missing?”

  “Maybe. Incommunicado, at least. What business is it of a colored girl’s?”

  “I used to be his servant.”

  The young executive ran his eyes over Neva’s body. “I’ll bet you did.”

  She gave him a look that was four parts withering and no parts encouraging.

  He laughed. “I suppose that’s none of my business.”

  “Have you spoken to Mrs. DeBell?”

  “Jonas—one of the partners—did. Lucretia doesn’t know where Ed is either. In fact ...” The young executive gave her a different type of appraisal. “He went missing shortly after another visitor of your persuasion came knocking.”

  The sudden lump of foreboding in Neva’s stomach was as nauseating as the surrounding smell of slaughter. More, even. “Who was the visitor?”

  “I’d never seen him before, but he looked a bit like you. More disgruntled, though—I could see thunder in his face. Didn’t hear him say why. But Ed called him Augie.”

  Chapter Twelve

  NEVA TRIED NOT TO CRINGE at the sound of her brother’s name—the confirmation she’d been dreading. “What did they talk about?”

  The young executive shrugged. “Ed shut the door. But I suspect it’s neither of our businesses.” He straightened and crossed his arms. “You’l
l show yourself out?”

  She hesitated, but it seemed clear she wouldn’t be allowed in Mr. DeBell’s office. “Of course.”

  The young executive motioned with his head to the stairs. Apparently he intended to watch her leave.

  So Neva went, hoping she looked steadier than she felt. Augie had come to Mr. DeBell a week ago? Come angry? And then Mr. DeBell had gone missing? But even addled by an unnatural fever, her brother wouldn’t have—couldn’t have—harmed the closest thing he had to a living father. Not the Augie she’d grown up with. But why hadn’t he told her about any of this?

  She needed to know more.

  The article she’d read that morning returned to her as she debated where to go next—one of the first victims with a rash had been a girl in the Levee District. It wasn’t far from the Yards: maybe another hour’s walk.

  Heading north, Neva crossed the bridge over Bubbly Creek—while holding her nose, without looking down—then cut back to Halsted, which she stayed on until 21st Street. Turning east, she continued walking as she readied herself to enter Chicago’s most sinful slum.

  The Levee lay at the south end of a square mile commonly referred to as the “wicked city.” Pool halls, brothels, and saloons abounded in the area, but the Levee was particularly notorious for its salaciousness: prostitutes patrolled every street, dressed in skirts never reaching their knees and bodices cut so low they were barely more than belts. Several pimps called out to Neva as she strode past a stretch of opium dens and casinos, hand firmly closed over her pocketbook and eyes alert for anyone paying her too much mind. Most assaults occurred at night—no one with any regard for their safety went into the Levee after dark—but sunlight hardly guaranteed safe passage.

  Fortunately, the friend she’d come to see proved easy to find.

  In truth, Big Mag was difficult to miss. A colored vagrant almost as large as Wherrit, Mag was stronger than a bear, faster than a snake, and brawled like some ferocious combination of the two (which made her the undoing of any police officer who tried to arrest her). But she was also quick to laugh, and Augie had charmed her with his imitations some years back.