And that thought terrified her.
Roeder’s Confectionary was silent. She’d heard a jumble of information about what happened to the children after Frederick died. Mary and her six siblings were orphans now. Some were saying the children were hiding in the upper floors of the Roeder house, above the Confectionary, while others said the children had fled into Maryland. Adelaide wasn’t sure which was truth and she wasn’t entirely convinced it mattered. She only cared that Frederick himself was at peace. And, if he could have peace, she at least wanted him to be clear of the Ferry. Death needed to be the end—not a stained continuation.
She exhaled, blowing the air from her lungs and at the same time opening her consciousness to the spirit world. In one smooth movement, she slid her hand into her other pocket and touched her fingertips to the stones Annie gave her: the protection stones, the projection stones. She needed the bloodstone and the water sapphire to help navigate the dark realm, but in that same sense, she needed protection. Some stones offered both.
Some stones, according to Annie, drew the dead to your very soul.
She heard the scrape of a leather bottomed shoe against stone; it was so faint, she at first thought she imagined it. The smell of baking bread overwhelmed her, the heavily accented voice of Frederick Roeder in the nearby train yard, an echo from when he sold pies to hungry travelers, overwhelmed her. These were the traces of life. It was the dissipation of what had been, not the fragmented soul clinging to reality.
And there was something else.
Adelaide strained her ears, trying to will the sound into her mind. It was like trying to hear one person in a crowd of a thousand men all talking at once. The voice was low and steady, it repeated the same thing over and over. She couldn’t understand, though; the words were muffled and jumbled. She could hear her name in that chaotic cadence, she could hear—
An energy grabbed her from behind and yanked her around the Roeder House, throwing her into Hog Alley. There was no time to buck away from the binding-like pressure. It dragged her up by her hair and slammed her against the brick exterior, her head impacting against the bricks. The force was suffocating; her vision clouded with encompassing black, peppered with bursts of white light.
And then, her vision cleared.
Pressing her against the wall was the Shadow Man. He hunched over her, staring at her with dilated red eyes and, for the first time, she could clearly see his face. His flesh was pale, like sun bleached bones; his lips pursed and thin. He had no eyebrows and his blistered head was hairless—somehow this made his features seem to bulge.
She tried to wrench her wrist from his grasp; she had to get away from him.
His lips peeled back in a snarl, revealing stained, yellowed teeth. “Your watch won’t help you now, Adelaide.”
“Who are you?”
“Death.”
“I’ve faced death before. I don’t fear it.”
He chuckled, the laughter rattling in his chest like a hollow drum. “I am death embodied, girl. You should fear me. You will learn.”
“This town is protected.”
He grabbed a fistful of her hair and yanked her head backwards, trailing his finger across her throat. The broken nail bit into her flesh. “You have no idea what you’re dealing with.”
“Enlighten me.”
He leaned forward, sucking in a deep breath. The expression on his face changed, the snarling grin disappeared. “I smell your blood. I know what you are.”
She jerked her head away from him. “Redire ad inferos.” Return to hell.
“I rapiam transi et sequere me.” I’ll drag you behind me.
“What are you?”
“I’m a reaper.” He let go of her hair and pushed her against the wall with more force. “You cannot stop what’s coming, Sin-Eater.”
She stared at him, her terror momentarily brushed away by curiosity. “What did you call me?”
“I smell it on you, the vile blood of degenerates and detested paupers.” He spit on the ground next to her. “But I was there, centuries ago, when the living were so afraid of the dead, they cast their iniquities onto a Sin-Eater. Your people consumed them—all the debaucheries, all the hate and lies—and let the souls of the dead merrily cross into the next realm.”
“And what does this have to do with me?” She again tried to shove him away, but he was too strong. “I don’t consume sins. I protect Harpers Ferry.”
“No, you catch the ones I let you catch.” He pulled her away from the wall and again slammed her into it. Her vison clouded, the pain in her spine making her legs go numb. “That watch of yours was forged by Sin-Eaters, it was blessed in pagan rituals of this New World, this new realm of immoralities and death. This town, this vile pit between two rivers, is a vortex. A passage to hell.”
“I won’t let you—“
“You have no choice. The scourge is coming.”
She sucked in a sharp breath. Something about the word—scourge—chilled her to the deep recesses of her mind, the place where she could reach out to souls of the dead. “You’ll kill me.”
It wasn’t a questions. It was a statement.
“Fool.” His jaws snapped close to her face; she flinched. “My interest isn’t in the soul of a Sin-Eater. Your time is marked. The scourge will happen, as it has before, spawned by the fall of man’s dignity.”
“The war.”
“The war.” He repeated. He thrust his hand to her throat, tightening his grasp and cutting off her breath. “The dead will descend on Harpers Ferry and until I’ve had my fill, they’ll keep coming. They’ll flood here. And there’s nothing you or your watch or your stones can do.”
“Et bellabunt adversum te, et si necesse est moriens.” I'll fight you, with my dying breath if I must. She spit at him.
He roared with laughter, grabbing her chin and squeezing her jaw. “Superuacanea delectabiles vitae.” A waste of an entertaining life. “You’ll let this scourge happen. Sin-Eaters look away during this season—they always have and they will continue to for as long as man insists on the folly of war. Leave it alone, child. I’m not asking you: I’m telling you. The scourge will happen. And once it’s over, your troubles will end.”
She wrenched her face away from him. “You know nothing of my troubles.”
“No? Not of Thomas Cooper, the mortal who took your heart when he left; the man who promised to write you but is now consumed by the duty of the Federal Army?”
Rage boiled in Adelaide’s core and she shoved him away, breaking free of his hold. She ripped the watch out of her pocket and held it in his face. “If you touch him, I’ll send you to hell myself.”
His red eyes glowed, reflecting the aura of the watch. The scowled smile was still spread across his lips, but he looked less confident. “Don’t give me a reason to take him, Sin-Eater. Give me your bond, swear to me on the soul of your lover, that you’ll let the scourge happen. You won’t interfere.”
“I’d die for him.”
“Your oath.”
She cocked her head in a nod, her elbows locked as she held back the tremor that threatened to radiate through her body. “The scourge will happen.”
His lips spread into a wider grin, his eyes shining with some kind of internal light. “I’ll hold you to it, Sin-Eater. The death of a nation is on your hands.”
And then she realized the consequence of her promise. In saving Thomas, she set up a generation of men and boys to die in war.
The Shadow Man looked satisfied. He knew she’d figured it out; that she now understood how firmly he held her to her inherited trade in souls. She sacrificed them all to save one.
And she knew, if given the choice again, she’d save Thomas. Every time.
Chapter 20
October 16, 1861
ALTHOUGH SHE WOULD never admit it to anyone, Adelaide felt better under Union occupation. That wasn’t to say Colonel Geary or Major General Banks were necessarily better men than their Confederate counterparts. There we
ren’t. Those left in town still had no rights, no privacy; citizens were hauled off to Federal prison for being Southern sympathizers, all of Mr. Herr’s grain was utilized—apparently a government term for stealing—by the Yankees. It wasn’t fair, but it was markedly better than the prior chicken thief Rebels.
“So, here’s the bad news,” Robert sighed loudly, snapping her out of her fixation on the sorting of souls, “with all of Herr’s grain gone, it’s going to be much harder—and more expensive—to get flour.”
“How hard?”
“You don’t want to know.”
“Maybe we can barter with what’s left.” There were more important things to worry about, like the so-called scourge. “I won’t whore. Don’t even ask.”
“Christ, what do you take me for?” Robert rubbed his hands over his face. “We’re going to have to figure something out—and soon. There’s no money left.”
“There has got to be something. We’ve ground our fingers to the bone baking and building and sewing.”
“There’s not.”
Gun fire crackled from the heights. It had become an everyday occurrence; Adelaide barely flinched. “Maybe we can sell more shirts.”
“There’s no fabric.”
“We can buy fabric.”
“With what?” Robert glared at her. “There is no money. We used it to buy food, remember? We’ve hocked everything we could, we’re down to what’s on our backs and a few shit baubles that no one wants. What do you expect me to do?”
Adelaide looked down at her scuffed shoes. “We can’t give up. Not after what we’ve been through.”
“I have some ideas.”
She frowned. He made her nervous with his ideas.
Robert shrugged his shoulders and turned his face away from hers. It was the same movement he used to make when their father would ask him to do chores and Robert pretended not to hear. “Look, it will be fine. We beat them Yankees good at Manassas; the war will be over in no time. Then everything will be back to normal.”
The scourge is coming. “Normal?” Adelaide shook her head. Her brother was wrong. “We haven’t had normal in two years.”
In an instant, the entire room shuddered. An explosion unlike any she had ever heard before ripped through the narrow valley. It was promptly followed by another. And then another; seeming to roll down Shenandoah Street from the Charlestown Pike.
Adelaide dove to her knees behind the counter, pain slamming up her thighs as she fell to the ground. Robert immediately dropped down beside her and pressed her head to his chest, covering her face with his arms. Before he could utter a word, explosions roared down from Loudoun Heights, shaking the very floor beneath them.
She clapped her hands over her ears and screamed, “What is it?”
“Cannonade.” He yelled, his voice barely audible above the incessant roar. “The bastards are firing at each other.”
She was too terrified to cry, her body began to shake uncontrollably. It was like Armageddon, as described by the book of Revelations. Perhaps this was it: perhaps Christ had come to take his faithful home. Or, maybe this was the scourge. Death flooding into the Ferry, the scream of artillery their funeral march.
“I have to get everyone out from upstairs.” Robert screamed in her face. “We have to get down to the cellar, just stay right where you are.”
“No, no!” Adelaide furiously shook her head. “You can’t leave me here alone. You have to stay!”
“Addy—stop it.” He grabbed her shoulders and shook her violently. “I’ll be right back.”
“Please don’t leave me here.” This was like nothing she’d ever experienced, this wasn’t the scare of a specter entering her bedroom or the terror she felt when Levi fell into the river and was almost washed away. This was everywhere: it rocked her body, it reverberated in her chest. She felt it to her soul. You will see death.
Robert pulled away and pushed her back against the counter. “Stay here.” With that, he ran towards the door.
Artillery exploded outside, echoing off of the heights surrounding town. It seemed to be all around them and on top of them at the same time, as if the cannons were outside in the street aimed directly at the building. Adelaide cringed with every blast. It felt like a hammer was smashing against her body, her chest shuddered with each reverberation of the cannonade.
Out of the corner of her eye, she could see soldiers running past the front windows of the store. Whatever was happening on the other end of Shenandoah Street was serious enough to bring them out from safety during the artillery barrage. She wanted to run out to the street and stop them, to beg them to return to the shelter of the Arsenals. They were lambs to the slaughter.
But she couldn’t break her vow. Sin-Eaters looked away—and she was going to have to do the same.
Someone clapped a strong hand on her shoulder.
She shrieked and jerked away. “Robert!”
He yanked her to her feet and pushed her towards the back of the shop. “I told you I’d be right back.”
Rebekah, Levi, and Adelaide’s sisters were huddled near the far counter. At Robert’s beckoning they scampered over, practically moving as one unit.
“Stay behind me,” He cautioned, peering out the front door, “if anything happens…”
“Shut up, Robert.” Sarah broke in. “We know what it means to run, you damned fool.”
Taking one final look outside, Robert yanked the doors open and shoved Adelaide out on to the front stoop. “Run through the alley. Don’t stop, not for anything, until you get to the cellar door.”
He didn’t need to remind her.
She hoisted her skirts up above her ankles and broke into a run. The alleyway between their house and the drug store next door was narrow—she never could have had made it a hoop—and clouded in shadow. The other end seemed so far away. Immediately, she panicked, afraid that someone was waiting at the other end to grab her as she rounded the corner. Spirits, she could handle. The Shadow Man wouldn’t bother her. But a man, a soldier, ready to grab her and utilize her like a commodity?
Damn them all to hell.
Sarah was two steps behind. As they burst into the narrow shaft of sunlight at the other end of the alleyway, she darted around and threw herself full force at the cellar door. “It won’t open!”
Robert pushed her aside. He thrust a key into the padlock and threw it into the grass, yanking the doors open.
Artillery shells rocketed down from Loudoun Heights, bursting through the air and impacting buildings; in the ground or into the cliffs surrounding town. It was impossible to tell what the cannoneers were aiming at; for all Adelaide knew, it could be them.
“Addy, go!” Robert grabbed her elbow and directed her to the stone steps leading down into inky blackness. She carefully picked her way down, clapping her hands over her ears as another shell burst towards the center of town. If death and the Shadow Man were waiting for her—she was ready to go.
The darkness swallowed her. She squinted, trying to make out any shape in the blackness, and took a few steps forward, hunching over slightly since the space did not have much height. Her shoes crunched on broken glass and other assorted trash on the cellar floor.
The moment they were all down in the cellar, Robert took a few steps down and slammed the doors behind him. They were plunged into complete dark. The musty, rotten stench of the enclosed space, no more than a hole in the ground, was overwhelming. Her body swayed. It was disorienting, almost dizzying, to stand in a space and feel the eyes of death watching her. Waiting.
A spark of light. Robert lit a match and picked his way down the rest of the stairs, pushing past her. Levi held out a lantern and carefully steadied it while Robert pressed flame to wick.
The darkness subsided slightly. The cellar walls were packed dirt, but the ceiling overhead was made by the shop’s floorboards. It was not a place meant for human habitation; in fact, the family mainly used it as a trash bin. Garbage was everywhere. Adelaide swept her foot
across a patch of ground, trying to clear enough debris from the dirt floor so she could sit. It didn’t help much, as there were bits of glass and bone still ground into the dirt. She untied her apron and spread it flat, hoping she wouldn’t get cut through the fabric. The depth of the cellar muffled the sounds of the artillery blasts somewhat, but the percussion made dirt shower down from the walls.
Sitting down on the apron, she pulled her legs up and rested her chin on her knees. “How long do you think we’ll be down here?”
Robert laid his frock coat on the dirt and sank down. “Depends on how much ammunition they have.”
Adelaide glanced over at Sarah. She was clutching Lizzie to her chest, glaring at Rebekah, her lips pursed in a thin line. “Sarah?”
Her sister ignored her. “Don’t you want to hold your child?”
Rebekah, who was squatting uncomfortably in the center of the floor, did not answer. Instead, she stared down at the ground, visibly disgusted by the condition of her surroundings. She should have been happy to be alive, but from the look on her face, she would have preferred death over being in the filth incrusted cellar. It wasn’t that Adelaide wanted the woman to die…but, she knew she wouldn’t have objected if the scourge devoured her.
“You’re a horrible person.” Sarah blurted out. “And a worse mother.”
Rebekah’s normally dead eyes flashed in anger. “What do you want me to do? I don’t know how to take care of a child. I didn’t even want her—”
“Stop, just stop.” Robert bellowed. “It’s bad enough out there. I don’t need you two clucking at each other like angry hens. We are a family, like it or not, and you can either shut up or have a go outside. I don’t want to hear another word from either of you about this and if I do? I’m shoving you out the door myself.”
Rebekah and Sarah fell into a hostile silence. Sarah glared at her across the cellar, cuddling and bouncing Lizzie in her arms. Rebekah continued to rigidly crouch on the floor, staring straight ahead.
Adelaide wanted to shake them both. This wasn’t the time.
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