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

by Nick Wisseman

  Neva watched with eyes she could barely keep open. Brin had urged her to ease the baby’s passage by stretching her womb, or enlarging her birth canal, or making her skin more pliable—anything that would accelerate the process and reduce the pain.

  “Childbearing’s dangerous,” Brin had said at least once an hour. “You could have bent the kid out ages ago and been done with it.”

  And at least once every hour, Neva had said no. She wouldn’t resort to a skinchanger’s tricks. Not to have her baby.

  She’d questioned that decision during every contraction and nearly given in a dozen times. But now that the journey—harder, more exhausting, and more frightening than any she’d ever known—was finally over, she thanked God that she’d been able to deliver naturally. “Here,” she begged, reaching her arms out to hold the tiny bundle Brin had almost finished swaddling.

  “Just a moment,” the Irishwoman said with a smile, tucking in the last bit of cloth before laying the baby against Neva’s chest. Her son—she had a son—took her nipple almost immediately.

  And changed color just as quickly.

  From brown to pink to yellow and back to brown, her boy’s skin tone altered—often unevenly—with each suck of his mouth, as if it were her milk affecting the changes, and not his heritage.

  “Like a wee, breastfeeding kaleidoscope,” Brin whispered, then knelt to deal with the afterbirth. “Looks like you were wise to keep this to the two of us.”

  Derek had offered to find a midwife, but Neva had worried the child’s blood would evidence itself in some alarming, unexplainable way. She wasn’t sure how she felt about being correct. “I’m glad you have some experience with delivery,” she told Brin.

  “I’m the eldest in a big family, is all. How do you feel?”

  Neva caressed her son’s head as it transitioned from stark white to jet black. She wouldn’t have chosen this for either of them, but his weight against her made it all feel ... right. Rearranged, but better for it. The void created inside her by birthing him, by ejecting a piece of herself, had been filled with a warm sense of completeness, a balm of happiness, solace, and ...

  Love.

  “I feel perfect,” she said truthfully.

  “Good.” Brin eyed the mess on the floor. “I’ll get that later. I’m sure Derek’s anxious for news.”

  Neva signaled her permission by closing her eyes. “I’ll be all right.”

  Brin said something in reply, but Neva only heard “Be right back” before falling asleep.

  IF ONLY.

  Neva woke to an empty room, its bachelor’s furniture graying in the dim light of the early morning. At least she’d had the better dream last night, the bittersweet might-have-been—and not the nightmare that was closer to reality ...

  On Brin’s third call to push, Neva did so with everything she had left, and her baby emerged into the Irishwoman’s waiting hands.

  “Oh, dear God,” Brin whispered, setting the squalling little thing down as quickly as she could.

  Neva shook her head, but the nightmare insisted on being a daydream, its images galloping gleefully through the ruts they’d worn in her mind ...

  Her baby—if that was even the right word for it—had a mouth that continued to howl, yet no eyes, or nose, or limbs: just amorphous, pulsing flesh that wobbled like pudding with each cry. But only for a moment, until a river of blood burst from between Neva’s legs and swept the baby back, pinning it against the far wall, where the blob of corruption transformed first into Mr. DeBell’s face, then Augie’s, then—

  “Neva?” asked Derek, saying her name as if repeating it. “Are you all right?”

  She shook her head again, her vision clarifying on her brother, who stood by the door. “Yes. Sorry. Just the dreams again.”

  He winced. “How’s your stomach?”

  She put her hand on her midsection—her flat midsection. The pain was less today. “Better.”

  “Good ... good.” His eyes wandered away from her and over the rest of the room. It must be strange for him to have her here. This was his home, a row house on the south side of Pullman Town. He was lucky to still have the lease. Despite several days of rioting and similar protests across the country—involving as many as a quarter of a million workers in twenty-seven states, proof that mobilizing a nation of laborers was possible—the federal troops President Cleveland had unleashed to get the trains running had won in the end, and the strike had been broken. Eugene Debs was in jail, and Pullman’s employees had been forced to accept his terms. Capital had triumphed.

  For now.

  “How is he?” asked Neva.

  Derek knew whom she meant. “Eager to see you,” he said, hiding his reluctance well, but not well enough. “If you’re up to seeing him.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “As sure as I can be. But I’d wait a day. Get some rest first.”

  She didn’t need much convincing—she was still so tired. “Tomorrow, then.”

  “Tomorrow will be fine.” Seeing her eyelids sinking, Derek stood to leave. “Sleep well.”

  If only.

  THE FOLLOWING MORNING—EXACTLY one month since Augie had stepped from the Wheel—Neva was ready. She still hurt, aching in ways that shouldn’t have been possible, but the pain was bearable.

  Time to get this over with.

  Derek helped her down the front steps, a role reversal of the last moments at the Fair, when she and Brin had carried him clear of the blaze that had painted the White City red (and ultimately black, in an echo of how the Great Fire had ashed Chicago twenty years earlier). At the bottom, she withdrew her arm from his and tried a few paces on her own.

  “Take it slow,” he said.

  They eased down the block and then two streets further south, to a smaller row house Derek had known to be empty. The town seemed vacant too, but that was because everyone who’d stayed was back to work, laboring in the same immaculate shops for the same untenable wages.

  Neva contemplated the steps up to the little house.

  “I only have a few minutes,” Derek said. He’d reassumed his position as railcar designer—temporarily. He didn’t intend to stay on more than a few months. Just until they had things settled. Brin had offered to cover rent, but he refused to live among his compatriots without sharing in the consequences of the strike’s failure. At least he had work.

  Neva gripped the stairs’ railing. “I won’t need long.”

  Inside, the little house looked the same as it had during her visit last week: the walls unadorned, the furnishings sparse, the lighting poor.

  But its occupant was vastly different.

  “Wiley,” she gasped as the Boer turned to greet her.

  “You must be Neva,” he said warmly, offering his hand, palm up. “Pleased to meet you.”

  She forced herself to let him kiss the back of her hand and smile rapturously. “It’s nice to meet you as well. I’m sorry—we should have knocked.”

  “Not at all. Derek never does.” Wiley grinned at her brother, who shrugged awkwardly. “Here,” the Boer continued, gesturing Neva to the only chair in the living room. “Sit, sit, off your feet. I’ll get you something to drink. Will tea suffice?”

  She sat, not unwillingly, and nodded.

  “Marvelous to have indoor plumbing,” he called on his way to the kitchen. “Just give me a moment to fill the kettle and see to the stove.”

  Derek winced when Neva turned her gaze on him. “I’m sorry. It was the best I could do.”

  “No, it’s fine. I’m sure it wasn’t easy. I just didn’t expect a spitting image.”

  When they’d gone back to the smoldering ruins of the Fair to recover Augie’s body, and Brin had shaped the Wheel away from his crushed—yet already regenerating—form, Neva had won the argument about what to do with him: create an organizer in Wiley’s mold, with his ambition and charisma, but sounder judgment.

  She hadn’t meant the new guise should look like Wiley, though.

 
“I imagine it’s because I had him so much in my mind,” Derek whispered. “And I brushed his once, while we were debating Pullman Town; he was the model, and none of my deviations stuck ... I’m sorry. I’m used to designing railcars, not men.”

  “You did well.” Better than she’d expected when she’d persuaded him to direct Augie’s new guise by adjusting the electrical impulses in his renewing brain, drawing on what had transpired with Wherrit—and Catherine, Derek’s former wife. It had been a hard sell, and very much a long shot. But a near miss might be close enough to the mark. Of course ... “You could have warned me.”

  Wiley’s reentry into the living room forestalled Derek’s next apology.

  “The water will be ready in a moment,” the Boer said. “Would you like something to eat?”

  Neva patted her stomach as if she’d recently eaten, being careful not to flinch. “Thank you, but no—I can’t stay long. I just wanted to see how you were doing.”

  “I’m much better now. I understand I have you to thank for that as much as Derek and Brin?”

  It was true, but not in any way she wished to explain. “Only at the beginning. Derek’s been here far more than I.” Through much of July, he’d stayed up nights trying to get it right, to be sure. And not just once. When they’d satisfied themselves that his first effort—a blurred form that looked more mannequin than man—didn’t remember anything, they’d started the cycle again to confirm that subsequent transformations wouldn’t undo the changes to Augie’s core mind. Neva had wielded the knife that time, and the time after, when they’d conducted one more test to be certain, taking heart in the fact that insects no longer appeared during any point of the process.

  “Do you recall anything yet?” she asked as casually as she could.

  “No,” Wiley answered, his confusion seeming genuine. “Only what Derek and Brin have told me.” It hadn’t been much: the agreed-upon story was that he’d suffered a blow to the head during the rioting at the Fair, lost his faculties, and become a raging danger to others for a short while—thus the ropes when he’d woken. “I can’t thank you enough for having faith in my recovery and not taking me to the sanatorium. I’m not sure I’d have survived it.”

  “It was the least we could do, considering how instrumental you were to the strikers’ near-victory.”

  “I wish I could recollect exactly how I was so useful.”

  “You will,” she said, injecting optimism into her voice to cover her real emotions.

  The sound of boiling water bubbled from the kitchen, followed by a low keening noise. “That’s the kettle,” he said. “Back in a moment.”

  Neva watched him hurry out of the living room. His mannerisms weren’t quite Wiley’s; Derek had changed that much at least. And the guise’s mind was a blank slate—he didn’t seem to have any memories, not even fuzzy, filtered ones from Augie’s true past. That should make him biddable enough to be directed into the right arenas. The world certainly still needed fixing.

  But if he reverted to anything dangerous ... Well, she still had her knife. She hoped never to have to cut her brother again, but she was ready to do so if required. And Derek believed burning Augie’s brain—fully burning it, to the point of incineration (and not just the scalding it must have received in the Cold Storage blaze)—would put an end to his regenerative abilities.

  Another fire. Please, God, don’t let it come to that.

  “Would you like a bit of honey?” asked Wiley.

  “Plain would be fine,” she answered, trying not to dwell on the fact that her dead admirer’s guise was speaking to her through the transformed mouth of her mind-swept brother.

  She’d never been less happy to have a plan succeed.

  BACK AT DEREK’S HOUSE, Neva slumped into one of his overstuffed chairs, reached into her pocket, and pulled out the amazing drawing Augie had done of their family while he’d thought himself Mr. DeBell.

  They could have tried any of these guises instead. Her mother, who she’d never known. Or her stillborn sister, who’d never had a chance at life—Neva had sketched her into the picture a few days ago. Or even Augie, without the madness.

  But she wouldn’t have been able to stay near him for long. Or any of them. That had been clear after spending a few minutes with the almost-Wiley guise.

  Brin would guide him, though. She’d reintegrate him into the organizing community—perhaps in a different city, since it would be hard to explain the Boer’s resurrection to those who’d known him in Chicago. Especially if Quill was still alive. But with luck, Wiley would make up for at least some of Augie’s sins.

  It was the best they could hope for.

  “She’s through there,” Brin said tenderly, from just outside Derek’s spare room.

  “Miss Neva?” a small voice asked.

  And then Dob came through the door.

  He’d gone from skinny to starved, and his clothes had maybe three good stitches between them. But he was alive.

  “Dob,” she breathed, setting the drawing aside and opening her arms.

  He snuggled into them eagerly, desperately.

  The Irishwoman stepped inside.

  Neva stroked Dob’s hair. “You found him—thank you.”

  Brin smiled. “Didn’t take much. Just checked at Hull House again, like you asked. The little squeaker turned up there the other day.”

  “Was he with anyone?”

  She shook her head—his aunt and cousins were out of the picture, then, scattered during the fighting at the Fair ... Or worse. “I’ll leave you two be.”

  Dob stood up once they were alone. Neva tried to do the same, but a tremor in her stomach doubled her back over.

  “Are you all right, Miss Neva?”

  “I will be,” she said, pressing her hands against her hips to brace her torso.

  Dob didn’t look convinced.

  “I was sick,” she elaborated, trying not to think of her miscarriage and how its pain lingered—perhaps because of the corruption she’d carried within her. “And then I got sick again,” she added, her thoughts gliding over how the bolt of Derek’s lightning that had detonated the Ferris Wheel had also worsened her condition.

  “But you’re getting better?” The need in Dob’s voice was heartrending to hear.

  “I am. Little by little.” Augie might have been able to shapeshift away such internal damage, but she’d yet to learn the trick and could only wait for her body to repair itself naturally.

  Slowly, she released her hips and picked up the drawing. “Can I show you something?”

  “Yes.”

  She tapped her mother’s side of the sketch. “This is my family: my father, my mother, me, Derek, Augie, and ... my sister.”

  Dob raised his eyebrows. “It’s very good.”

  “Thank you.” Neva pointed to the space between her image and Derek’s. “Dob, would it be all right if I drew you in here?”

  She didn’t add, “You can stay with me if we can’t find your aunt,” or “Brin will make sure we always have enough to eat,” or “Please be my son.” But even young as he was, the boy seemed to understand. Nodding, he gave her another hug, long and tight.

  When she could trust her voice again, Neva gently disengaged herself and crouched to his level, ignoring her stomach’s discomfort. “There’s only one condition: we have to tell each other the truth.”

  He started to nod again, but she held up her hand—and in it was the last cowry. Miraculously, the only remaining piece of the necklace had survived Derek’s heavy use of it, both at the Ferris Wheel and in the little row house two streets over, where he’d relied on the shell to enhance his electrical affinity and accelerate Augie’s reformations.

  She’d need its strength now.

  “The Columbian Exposition was a marvel,” she said softly, “the greatest spectacle mankind’s ever seen. Its legacy will live on forever. Yet it was also a mirage, a temporary paradise built on a swamp and returned to it by fire. Chicago changed its spots for a
time, but not for long.”

  Pausing to swallow, Neva remembered how the Court of Honor had glittered in the sunlight while homeless lined the streets outside the gates. How mostly white visitors had toured the Fair while mostly colored custodians cleaned up after them. How the anarchists had schemed to inspire with violence when compassionate leadership might have been enough.

  Then she thought of how Mr. DeBell had taken her and her siblings in under false pretenses. How Augie had concealed his full abilities and predilections. And how she’d pretended to be pregnant before him on the Ferris Wheel, when in fact she’d lost the child months ago, bleeding it out in the front of the storage room while he regenerated in the back.

  “Lies don’t last,” she continued eventually, “and when the mask comes off, everyone is laid bare. I won’t have that with you. So now I need to show you something else. Please don’t be afraid.”

  Squeezing her fingers tight around the shell—oh God, what if she couldn’t do this? She hadn’t tried since leaving the Fair. Hadn’t tried, and hadn’t wanted to—Neva breathed in, out ...

  And changed her skin.

  Afterword

  FANS OF ERIK LARSON will have guessed that I’ve read (and revere) his incredible The Devil in the White City. An exemplary work of narrative nonfiction, the book recounts how Daniel Burnham, an architect and urban planner, oversaw the building of the 1893 World’s Fair while Henry H. Holmes, one of America’s first recognized serial killers, stalked its exhibits and preyed upon young women. But my interest in the Fair predates my experience of Larson’s masterpiece.

  During the summer of 2006, when I should have been progressing my never-to-be-completed dissertation on the Long Civil Rights Movement, I served as an intern at the Chicago Field Museum, which was founded with artifacts from the Fair’s Anthropology Building. My job was to photograph a selection of those artifacts and research their provenance. (This rarely felt like work!) Near the end of my time at the museum, someone recommended The Devil in the White City. I tried it, loved it ... and started mulling a stranger, more-fantastical version of Holmes and the investigator who eventually caught him.