by Ann Charles
“You’ll see.”
Two turns later, she pulled into the deserted parking lot of a weather-worn, three-story brick building. Thick gray clouds darkened the sky behind it, adding a hair-raising feel to the scene. No sooner than we’d parked, a swirling vortex of snow whipped through the chain-link fence edging the lot. It raced toward us, careening into my SUV and peppering the windshield with tiny pellets of ice and grit.
“Mother Nature needs to fire her welcoming committee,” I grumbled, wondering if my paint job was now speckled.
I focused back on the crumbling stack of bricks and mortar in front of us. Creepy crawlies! Couldn’t Dominick have chosen a meeting place that felt a little less like a mass murderer’s lair?
Harvey popped up between us again. “Sort of looks like hell with everyone out to lunch,” he whispered, frowning out the windshield. “You know, maybe Sparky is right about this here meetin’. Maybe we should call off this cat-and-mouse game on account of potential cardiac arrest.”
“Was this a school?” I asked, whispering as well.
Aunt Zoe killed the engine. “It’s the old middle school.”
“Never did like this place,” Harvey added. “Too many bitter memories chock-full of complex fractions and confusin’ adverbs.” He peered out the windshield. “Place has been closed up for a few decades. Probably dark as coffin air inside.”
“Harvey, could you please refrain from trying to scare the crap out of me before we even step inside?” I sat forward, peering out at the old school.
The lower-level windows were mostly boarded up, except for the arched tops, which looked like dark eyes watching us. Several of the upper-story panes were smashed out, the sills rimmed with what my imagination decided were razor-sharp glass teeth. The brickwork on each story was stained rusty brown below broken downspouts and under fragmented pieces of what were once elaborate cornices. Paint peeled from the rotting and sagging window and door frames. Large, spiderweb-like cracks lined the concrete steps and foundation around the two sets of red double doors chained closed on each side of the building. Dead weeds poked out through cracks in the foundation and surrounding sidewalk, while dirty patches of snow formed islands in the fractured-asphalt parking lot.
I crossed my fingers and toes that Dominick pulled a no-show on us. “If he isn’t here in five min …”
A black Land Rover rolled to a stop a couple of car lengths away.
Oh, balls!
“Snap my garter and call me Pussycat,” Harvey said. “Looks like the show’s about to start.”
Dominick stepped out of his vehicle wearing a long black trench coat, looking every bit as dark and dangerous as the Devil’s shadow. His mirrored sunglasses hid his eyes when he glanced in our direction. Without a nod or a wave or a simple “Thanks for taking time during your day off to rush over here and play patty-cake with me in a heebie-jeebie-inspiring, probably haunted school,” he headed toward the far set of red doors. Another gust of wind rocked the vehicle and then swirled along behind him, sweeping dust and snow from the asphalt as it trailed in his wake.
“Are we supposed to follow?” My breath fogged up the passenger window as I watched him make quick work of the chains securing the double doors.
“You two are,” Harvey said. “As for yours truly, I think the wisest decision would be to stay put and hold down the fort. You know, keep the getaway vehicle warm and ready to roll.”
I scoffed. “Try again, bodyguard.”
Dominick pulled open one of the doors. He stepped inside the shadowy building and then turned, staring out at us as the door closed.
Jeepers! This was getting Scooby-Doo spooky.
“You ready for this, Aunt Zoe?”
“As ready as I can be.”
I worried my lower lip. “What if he tries to use his charms on—”
“He promised on the phone that he wouldn’t,” she interrupted. “He said you’d fulfilled your end of the bargain when you captured the lidérc, so he would keep to the agreement.”
“Yeah, but that was before I sent his lidérc to the hereafter that’s specially reserved for really mean monsters.”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it, baby girl.” She reached for the door handle. “Let’s go find out what he wants.”
I joined her outside, pulling my collar tight when a blast of frigid air rocked me to my heels. Harvey was right—this was twig-and-berries freezing weather.
As Harvey eased out from the back seat, I told him. “Leave Bessie here for now. We don’t need you shooting at shadows in there and somebody calling the cops with a ‘possible gunshot’ report.” The last person I wanted to have to deal with on my day off was Detective Hawke. Dominick was enough of a pain in the rump.
Harvey huffed. “Fine, spoilsport.” He slid his shotgun under the seat and shut the back door.
The three of us hurried across the lot. I held the door for my aunt and Harvey, but then had to struggle against a blast of grit-laden wind determined to drag the door back outside and me along with it.
“Holy crowly moly!” I took off my hat, shaking the dust and snow out of my curls after barely winning the tug-of-war battle. I waited for my pupils to adjust to the darkness, glad I wasn’t standing alone in the murky hallway. “Is it just me, or does this school have some bad juju going on.” I wiped off my face, wondering if buildings could have auras like people. If so, I’d bet this one’s was dark gray. “I feel about as welcome as a tornado on a trail drive.”
Harvey let out a grunt. “Quit stealin’ my lines.”
“I borrowed that one from Natalie, not you.” I pulled my hat back on my head.
A cold draft swirled around us, smelling of damp concrete and a mustiness left behind after years of wear and tear from generations of children.
“Yeah, well she stole it from me when we were down in Arizona over New Year’s.” He jammed his hands in his coat pockets, hunching his shoulders. “I sure hope I don’t run into the ghosts of any of my ol’ schoolmarms in here. I sorta had the tendency to rile the wagon master now and then, if you catch my meanin’.”
Aunt Zoe rubbed her hands together. “I imagine putting socks on Elvis the chicken would’ve been easier than corralling you back then, Willis.”
Farther down the hallway where the shadows were still too thick to see through, I could hear the sound of water dripping. Closer, on the right, a shaft of daylight spilled out through an open doorway.
Harvey sniffed, and then sniffed again. “Somethin’ is startin’ to smell sour in here. Sort of like a bagful of sweaty jockstraps.”
“Oh, ick.” I made a face at him. “How would you know what that smells like?”
“That’s a silly question.” He sniffed again. “It’s gettin’ stronger. Can you smell it?”
“I don’t smell anything like that,” Aunt Zoe said.
I could. Rotten potatoes came to mind, though, not sweaty jockstraps.
A small ripple of nausea spread up from my stomach. Hold on, I knew that feeling well enough. I squinted into the shadows, seeing something move ever so slightly.
I moved quickly, shielding my aunt with my body. “What do you want, Dominick?” I spoke more harshly than usual, not in the mood for a game of hide-and-seek in what was most likely yet another haunted building in Lead.
“Relax, Scharfrichter.” Dominick stepped forward into the light spilling through the open doorway, but his face remained half in the shadows. “We’re not here to test your skills today.”
“Then why are we here?”
He pulled off his gloves one at a time before speaking. “Join me.” Then, without another word, he disappeared through the open doorway.
I hesitated, holding onto Aunt Zoe’s arm, waiting for my gut to decide if this was some sort of trap or not. “I don’t like this,” I whispered.
“Neither do I,” Harvey said next to me. “That’s a math classroom he went into. My knees used to get shaky every time I stepped through that do—”
“S
hhhh!” I cut him off, holding my finger to my lips. I thought I heard something coming toward us from the shadows farther down the hall.
There it was again. A quiet scuffing sound. Then the swish of something being dragged along the tile floor. Then another scuff.
What was coming our way? Was it dead or alive? And what was being dragged? Was it even human?
Never mind. I wasn’t going to wait around for answers. “Come on.”
I nudged Harvey toward the shaft of light and hauled Aunt Zoe along beside me, ushering them through the open doorway first. After one last hard look into the deep shadows, I joined them in a large, rectangular room with mouse-chewed boxes, a few wooden chairs, and several broken school desks cluttering the corners. Large chunks of plaster had fallen from the high ceiling, making a patchwork on the dusty, wood slab floor.
Veiled light glowed through the arched tops of several partially boarded-up windows running the length of one wall. Water stains splotched the warped, wooden sills under them. A long, rusted radiator filled the space between two of the windows, its heating days long gone.
In the far corner, Dominick sat on the edge of a school desk near a stack of boxes that were hemorrhaging faded textbooks from gaping seams. With his ankles crossed and his hands in his coat pockets, he appeared to be at ease. But there was a cagey glint in his gaze that said differently.
Harvey moved over to a pile of books near one of the windows, leaning down for a closer look.
“Why did you choose to have us meet you here?” I asked Dominick, catching sight of a mouse darting from one of the boxes over to the radiator.
He shrugged. “I wanted to ensure our privacy and I needed to look into a situation here. The best course was to kill two birds with one stone.”
I preferred that killing be totally off the table today. After all, it was my day of rest.
A high-pitched screech came from the hallway.
I aimed a wrinkled brow toward the open door, waiting for something to lurch into view. Was that Dominick’s “situation” or something else? I should have brought a weapon with me. At the least, a baseball bat or a …
Something slammed, echoing throughout the building.
My heart scrambled up into my throat. My bladder was probably one more scare away from springing a leak. Damn it! I wasn’t in the mood for this haunted school baloney.
I focused back on our host. “Okay, Dominick. You snapped your fingers and we jumped. What do you want?”
He eyed me for several seconds. “You’re not much of a morning person, are you, Violet?”
“Mornings are for the birds, especially in the winter, and I’ve been told somewhat recently that I’m more of a mule.”
“I said a ‘hinny,’ ” Harvey corrected, returning to my side. “Yer too ornery to be a mule.”
The hinny in me tried to poke him in the ribs, but the old mongoose in him dodged just in time.
“Got yer tail up, don’t I?” He snickered. “Now stop tryin’ to kick holes in stall doors and pay attention. I have a feelin’ that Masterson is about to talk a blue streak any minute now, and I’m not sure how long my prostate will hold out in this chilly nightmare.”
Dominick waited for us to finish and then turned to Aunt Zoe. “You brought extra company, darling. You disobeyed the instructions I gave you on the phone.”
“Willis is Violet’s shadow,” Aunt Zoe explained in a tone that was meant to put an end to further discussion on the matter.
He raised one black eyebrow in my direction. “And where is the rest of your entourage?”
“Here and there.” That was none of his concern. “Enough with the chitchat, Dominick. Why are we here?”
He pulled his hands from his coat pockets and clasped them together. “It has been brought to my attention that you have a formidable problem looming, Scharfrichter.”
Chapter Four
A formidable problem? Just one?!!
My snort of disbelief sounded loud in the mostly empty classroom. I had a full-on, Level 5 on the Fujita scale, clusterfuck of problems brewing, according to Prudence-the-dead-Executioner.
And Prudence wasn’t the only one who’d spoken of doom and gloom in my future. No sirree. I had bad omens playing chicken with me more often than not.
Take old Ms. Wolff, who’d warned me about too many cages being opened last fall. I didn’t fully understand what that “cages” business meant at the time, nor did I now, but I got the gist of her shit’s-about-to-hit-the-fan message. It’d been hard to miss while she was blackmailing me into executing her so that I could assume her Timekeeper skills. Skills supposedly needed for the upcoming battles with especially problematic troublemakers. Skills that I had yet to figure out how to use in order to save my own ass, let alone anyone else’s.
Then there was … never mind. Now was not the time to stroll down memory lane.
Ignoring Aunt Zoe’s raised eyebrows, I told him, “I’m flush with problems, Dominick.”
Although less so than I had been before I took care of his damned lidérc. At least I’d thought so before this little classroom meeting. However, judging by the tension visible on his usually schooled features, I might have escaped the frying pan only to land in the fire.
“Which problem in particular has you calling me at the buttcrack of dawn?”
“It wasn’t really dawn when he called,” Aunt Zoe said.
“Some of us had been up long enough by that time to need a catnap,” Harvey added.
I shushed both of them at once.
“I’m referring to the situation involving a local taxidermist,” Dominick said.
I tried to keep surprise from showing on my face. Hell, it hadn’t even been 24 hours since I’d left the scene of that crime. “How do you know about that?”
“I have my ways, Scharfrichter. Same as you.”
Same as me? Ha! He must not know about my tendency to seek counsel from my Magic 8 Ball.
He zeroed in on Aunt Zoe and said something in a foreign language that went in one of my ears and out the other. I did manage to recognize two words, though: magistra and Nachzehrer.
Magistra was the Latin word for a female teacher. It was also a title handed down through our family line, given to those who were enlisted to train a Scharfrichter. His use of that particular word had me wondering if Aunt Zoe had let it slip about her family “duty” at some point last month when he’d wooed her with his charming spell. Or had he somehow read her mind? And was his familiarity with this term even something I should be concerned about?
As for the other word I’d picked up, since he knew about last night’s events at Jones’ Taxidermy, I wasn’t really surprised to hear him talk about the Nachzehrer.
I watched my aunt, waiting to see if she replied in Latin or in plain old English so that Harvey and I could follow along.
Her blue eyes held mine for several seconds before she said, “There is not much written about that particular foe. Violet knows that according to German folklore, the creature is similar to a vampire, only it consumes human flesh rather than drinks their blood.”
Dominick raised one dark eyebrow. “That is the extent of your knowledge in this matter?”
“Not quite. It’s written that the creature is a reanimated human corpse, although there is no cause listed to explain the occurrence.”
I watched Dominick for some sort of reaction to her words, but he held his cards close to his vest.
Aunt Zoe continued, “There was also one account that claimed if you are bitten by a Nachzehrer, you will turn into one as well. Although this borders on implausible if you ask me.”
I snorted yet again, drawing all three pairs of eyes.
“Is there something wrong with your nose, Violet Lynn?”
“Yer startin’ to remind me of my momma’s favorite pig, Lulubelle.” Harvey pursed his lips. “That girl always had her snout buried in somebody else’s shi—”
“Harvey!” I cut short his Old MacDonald tale of yet anoth
er alleged spirit animal of mine. For chrissake, why couldn’t he compare me to something less barnyard-ish like a cheetah? Better yet, a unicorn.
Returning to my aunt and Dominick, I held up my hands. “Doesn’t anyone else find this Nachzehrer crap far-fetched besides me? I mean, we’re basically talking about zombies here as if they’re real.”
“A Nachzehrer is no voodoo-created monster from Haitian folklore, Scharfrichter,” Dominick said without a hint of mirth. “Nor is it some fictional, brain-hungry fiend from Hollywood.” He shook his head slowly. “These particular terrors that you must hunt and execute are remarkably more menacing and savage. They would like nothing more than to gut you and revel in your blood and entrails.”
“Oh, is that all?” I barely held in a third snort. “And here I was worried that a Nachzehrer would want to cuddle with me under a blanket next to a campfire and maybe sing a few verses of ‘Kumbaya’ a cappella.”
Harvey snickered. “I think Bobby Pickett’s ‘Monster Mash’ would be more likely to tickle their turnip, don’t you, Zoe?”
“It’d be a graveyard smash,” Aunt Zoe shot back a line from the song.
I rolled my eyes. “You two are about as funny as a block of wood.”
Dominick cleared his throat. “Is this the extent of your knowledge, Magistra?”
Aunt Zoe shrugged, tugging off one glove. “According to an old book I found on mythical creatures, it is believed the Nachzehrer eats its own death shroud immediately upon re-awakening.” She took off her other glove and stuffed both in her pockets. “Truth be told, though, I have trouble believing that it would eat a burial cloth.”
“Don’t forget about havin’ to cut off its head and to shove a copper coin in its mouth to kill it,” Harvey chimed in. “Or maybe it was the other way around—first you put the copper coin in its mouth, then you have to cut off the head.” He scratched his chin through his beard. “Although it might be tough to put the coin in the bugger’s mouth if it’s still chompin’ away. Sort of like tryin’ to pet a shark when yer wearin’ chum-dipped mittens.”
I frowned in his direction.
He winked back.