The Mussorgsky Riddle

by Darin Kennedy

  I search for any answer that makes sense. “I am called Scheherazade. I was sent to this place against my will and I am lost.”

  “I must disagree.” The trepidation rushing through my mind dissipates as his face breaks into a toothy grin. “I’d say you’ve been found.” He removes a box of tools from the seat next to him and pats the space. “Climb on up. I don’t make a habit of biting, unless I get quite hungry.”

  “But my ankle. It’s…”

  The pain. It’s gone. A quick glance down my body reveals a pristine ankle, as if it were never injured. I spring to my feet and put all my weight on that side. Still nothing. Another miracle.

  At the man’s insistent waving, I climb up onto the cart and join him. It’s clear the seat is meant for one as my body presses against the man’s well-muscled arm. We share a quick glance, his slate-gray eyes harboring a strange intelligence for a man who drives an oxcart. Then again, this man is Anthony. As are the oxen. Tunny. Modesto. Antoine.

  Baba Yaga.

  “My apologies for trespassing. As I told you, it wasn’t my decision to come here.”

  “No apologies necessary, and please excuse my brusque manner before. Dark times have fallen and people roam these parts who cannot be trusted.”

  I raise an eyebrow. “And how do you know you can trust me?”

  “Oh, I have a sense about such things. Would you care to join me back at my home? Perhaps a drink to quench your thirst before we try to find your way back to where you were before?”

  “Of course.” This must be what Alice felt before she sat for tea with the Mad Hatter. “You are most… generous.”

  He flicks his wrist and the tassel on the end of the stick pops the air with a sharp crack. The oxen resume their trudging march forward, accompanied by the crescendoing dirge from before.

  He smiles at me with no pretense. “I am Hartmann.”

  I return his smile, and do my best to keep any concern from my eyes. “A pleasure to meet you, Hartmann. Pardon, but I must ask. Is your house far? I have many things to accomplish, and my time here is short.”

  “Fear not, Lady Scheherazade. My home lies around the next bend.”

  Pastel rows of corn beyond the fence to our left stretch as far as the eye can see. I can all but picture the artist with her crayons putting down each individual stalk with a flick of her wrist. “Hartmann, is this a farm?”

  He gazes out across the field and seems surprised by the neat rows of stalks he finds there. “Hm. I suppose it is.”

  “You did say this was your property, didn’t you?”

  “Indeed. This land is mine to protect and keep watch over.”

  “But you don’t know what your well-plowed acres are used for?”

  Hartmann’s face grows a shade of crimson. “There’s no need to be argumentative.”

  I hold my tongue for a moment, unclear as to what I’ve said that’s upset him.

  “I’m sorry. It’s just that―”

  “We’ve arrived.” Hartmann brings the cart to a halt at the side of the road and climbs down. “Are you coming?” he asks as he rounds the curve in the road and disappears.

  “Wait,” I shout. “I don’t know where I’m going.” I climb down from the cart and race around the bend after him. The sight that awaits me there is the strangest yet.

  At the end of a cobbled walkway stands a two-story cabin fashioned of wood and stone. With its old slate roof, burgundy storm shutters the color of Hartmann’s vest, and stonework porch, the house is nothing special, save one simple detail.

  The entire structure is upside down.

  The house’s rocky foundation turned upward to face the sky like some bizarre flower, the front door sits some thirty feet in the air. I can’t imagine the woven rope doormat lying on the stoop gets much use at all.

  I catch up to Hartmann. “You live here?”

  “Indeed.”

  “But, the whole thing is upside down.”

  “Upside down, and all mine. My humble abode may seem a bit unconventional, but what can I say? I rarely have to mop the floor.”

  I let out a chuckle at that last bit. “There is that, I suppose, but how do you… sit?”

  Hartmann’s face breaks into a broad smile. “Come inside, I’ll show you.”

  He leads me up the cobblestone walkway, bemoaning all the way the poor state of his yard, and stops before a tall second story window converted into a door.

  “Please excuse the lack of housekeeping.” He slides open the makeshift doorway. “It’s not often I have house guests.”

  I step inside and a wave of motion sickness threatens to overtake me. All done in bright pastel colors, the curtains hang upwards, defying gravity. Chairs, tables, and rugs rest on what has become a hardwood ceiling. An entire sink of water hangs precipitously above my head, filled with suds and a stack of dishes. I stumble with vertigo, a sensation not helped by the inverted chandelier I seize to steady myself.

  “How do you live this way?” I point to the floor above my head. “Has your life always been like this?”

  Hartmann adopts a thoughtful, if emotionless expression. “It’s odd. One day everything was right side up and the following morning I had to climb out of bed and scale down the wall to get out of the house.” He motions to the kitchen above our heads. “May I interest you in some tea?”

  I giggle despite myself. “That would be lovely.”

  Without a second thought, he turns and walks up the wall, his body parallel to the horizon showing through the window. He continues in this fashion until he reaches the floor above our heads and then, as if gravity were a mere suggestion in this place, he steps off and into his kitchen.

  Hanging upside down from what is technically the floor, he flashes me a quick smile and waves me up. “Come along. It’s not as hard as it looks.”

  With some coaxing, he convinces me to climb up the wall and join him at a small table by the window. My brain has difficulty coping with the sideways gravity, but by the time I catch up to him, everything seems to sort itself out. In fact, as long as I don’t look out the window, sitting upside down in this upended house seems practically normal.

  “The question of the hour, milady.” He goes to his cupboard and pulls down a pair of teacups and matching saucers. “Do you drink Earl Grey?”

  Hartmann pours me a cup of piping hot tea and we sit together, each enjoying the brief silence. Though the blood rushes to my head a bit, my hair stays about my shoulders and my sarong about my knees, both obeying the strange physics of Hartmann’s home.

  I finish my tea and set down the ornately decorated teacup. “The person who sent me implied I was to learn something from my visit. Other than you and this house and the forest and fields, is there anything else here to see?”

  Hartmann scratches his chin. “Only me, the house, the fields, and my oxen.”

  “Visitors, then? A gnome? Troubadour? Perhaps a child?”

  The porcelain cup falls from his suddenly trembling fingers, defying our current treaty with gravity, and shatters on the ceiling above our heads.

  “There are no children here. Why do you ask such a thing?”

  Whoa. Hit a nerve. I look away from Hartmann’s perturbed eyes and notice something strange in the field beyond the window.

  “A question. The oxen. Do they usually work the fields without your hand to guide them?” I lead the Cart Man to the window. Outside, his pair of yoked oxen now pull a large plow across a field of low crops.

  Shock washes across Hartmann’s face. “What are they doing there?”

  He darts down the wall, diving out the second story window before I can say a word.

  “Hartmann,” I shout as I rush toward the door-window. “What is it?” I step out the window and find Hartmann standing a few feet from his house on this side of the split rail fence surrounding his property.

  “Who put my oxen in that field?” he whispers. “They’re not supposed to plow there.”

  The plodding dirg
e returns, though a full orchestra has taken over for the simple piano from before. The music grows louder and louder as the oxen pull the plow toward the center of the field.

  “Get away from there,” Hartmann screams, followed by a barely audible whisper. “Some things should remain buried.”

  He scales the fence and sprints across the field. The oxen keep moving despite their master’s shouts. I tense to pursue Hartmann, but before I can take a second step, a root juts out of the ground and encircles my ankle. My excruciating lesson from the Exhibition hall still fresh, I roll with the fall and come up facing the Hartmann’s strange home. Amid the house’s uprooted foundation, a pair of yellow eyes stares down at me. Baba Yaga rests atop her stone mortar, though not a note or beat of her theme betrays her presence. Even the gentle swishing of her broom has halted. My hand instinctively goes to the dagger at my hip.

  Do you truly believe its blade is meant for me?

  Her taunting words echo in my mind as the witch brings one gnarled finger to her cracked lips and shakes her head from side to side. She points back across the field at Hartmann’s rushing form. I glance away for half a second, and when I look back at the house, the witch is gone.

  I rise from the ground, rush the fence, and leap into the field beyond. The crop, a thick wooden vine that tangles my feet, bears fruit resembling bunches of grapes that stare up at me like a thousand bruised eyeballs. Hartmann charges the oxen from the front, brandishing his whip stick before him. The deafening melody stops as the oxen halt in their tracks. Hartmann draws close to the oxen and as I catch up to him, he is working to unhook them from the plow.

  “Not this field,” he repeats over and over, oblivious to my presence. “Never this field.”

  “What is it, Hartmann?”

  “Return to the house, Scheherazade. This is no place for a woman.”

  “What has happened? What is it about this field?”

  “To the house,” he shouts across his shoulder as he struggles with the yoke on the oxen to my left. “I’ll come for you in a few minutes.”

  “Very well.” I’m about to leave when I see it. Just beyond the blade of the plow.

  Jutting from the ground like some morbid signpost, a hand points to the sky, the blood-covered fingers wrapped around of all things, a silver pen.

  “There’s a body.”

  “There’s a body,” Hartmann repeats, his tone mocking. “Of course there’s a body. Why do you think I don’t want the oxen to plow here?”

  “Do you know who it is?”

  “It doesn’t matter. Now, return to the house while I clean up this mess.”

  “I’m not leaving until I find out who is buried here.” I rush around the oxen and fall to the ground beside the upraised hand. Hartmann moves to stop me but the ice in my eyes convinces him to keep his distance. Alternating between the dagger’s edge and my manicured nails, I dig till my fingers are as bloody as the corpse’s. Knowing what I’m going to see before I get there, my raw fingers find the shock of blonde hair, confirming my worst suspicions. I brush the moist soil away and look down on a face I’ve only ever seen before in photographs or on a television screen.

  The face of Julianna Wagner.

  I gasp a full lung of air and open my eyes back in Archer’s office. Drenched in sweat, I glance around the room, my bleary eyes refusing to focus. Three faces look down on me. Archer’s steel-blue gaze, filled with concern, is the first to resolve out of the backlit fluorescent blur. Caroline holds a damp washcloth in her hand, while Agnes holds a cell phone in her trembling fingers.

  “Hold on, Agnes.” Archer’s baritone anchors me in this reality. “I think she’s okay.”

  Agnes adjusts her reading glasses and slips the phone into her pocket.

  “How bad was it?” Though not as rough as the first couple of times, my voice still comes out like the mewling of a half-drowned cat.

  Archer helps me back to the couch. “You fell to the floor. At first it was like the other times, but there at the end, it looked like you were having some kind of seizure.”

  Caroline touches my shoulder. “We were about to call 9-1-1.”

  Panic fills my chest. I seize Archer’s wrist. “Don’t do that. Don’t ever do that.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Once I’ve gone in, don’t let them take me away. No matter what happens.” I turn my head to face Caroline. “If I’m in there and you separate me from Anthony, I might not be able to find my way back.”

  “Like we’re letting you do this again.” Archer crosses his arms. “Absolutely out of the question.”

  “Oh, I’m going back in there.”

  As Archer and I continue to argue, I catch Jason’s gaze. He’s doing his best to play it cool, but the stunned shock in his eyes says it all. Like his mother and even the skeptical Dr. Archer, he’s become a believer. A few minutes later, as he and Archer help me to my feet, Jason mutters, “That was unbelievable.” The skeptical black pepper scent from before is gone, replaced with an aroma reminiscent of fresh brewed coffee. “You’re for real.”

  “Did you…” Caroline considers her words. “…learn anything? Anything that will help?”

  “I got a few answers and confirmed a couple things I already suspected.” I stretch, the muscles of my back, chest and arms aching like I just pumped iron for a day or two. “Before my next trip through the Exhibition, though, I’m going to need to pay a visit to Anthony’s school.”

  pull into the lot behind the police station a few minutes late. After my harrowing tour of Anthony’s mental playground yesterday afternoon, I could hardly open my eyes this morning. I had planned to enjoy a relaxing brunch around eleven to center myself before the interview. As it stands, I barely got out of my room by noon. I park next to a white Cadillac Escalade with a flyer in the window sporting a picture of Julianna with contact information and a reward.

  Looks like the Wagners beat me here.

  Detective Sterling meets me at the front desk.

  “Ms. Tejedor. Thanks for coming.”

  “Sorry I’m late. The roads in Charlotte change names about every four blocks.”

  “You think Charlotte’s bad? I lived in Atlanta for a couple of years. Didn’t know you could name every road in a city after a peach tree.”

  The same floral bouquet wafts across my consciousness. Nice to know he actually wants me involved. “Are the Wagners here?”

  “Just arrived a few minutes ago. They’re… eager to meet you.”

  “Dramatic pauses are a dead giveaway, Detective Sterling.”

  He raises an eyebrow. “I suppose I shouldn’t try to pull anything over on someone with your resumé.”

  “Let me guess. One or both of them isn’t too crazy about bringing in someone with my particular skill set.”

  “Two for two. Mrs. Wagner has been chomping at the bit to talk to you since we called last night. Mr. Wagner, on the other hand, has been less than enthusiastic.”

  “Don’t worry.” I straighten my blazer. “I’ve worked tough rooms before.”

  Sterling directs me back to one of those interrogation rooms you see in all the cop television shows. If only it was the first time I’d set foot in one of those.

  Or even the twenty-first.

  Detective Bolger is there, hanging off the corner of the table. To his left sit a couple plucked from a high society magazine. Tanned and trim, Mr. Wagner leans back in the straight-backed metal chair. His eyes do a half roll as our gazes meet before his face slides into a practiced smile. Mrs. Wagner, conversely, stares at me with a look of desperation that mirrors Caroline Faircloth’s expression from five days before. Two mothers, both clutching at straws in an effort to save their children, neither of whom I’m sure I can help.

  Different though their reactions are, the double dose of raw onion is a testimony to the Wagners’ shared torment.

  “Ms. Tejedor.” Mr. Wagner rises from his seat and extends a hand. “Thank you for coming. I’m Stuart Wagner and this
is my wife, Margaret.”

  Mrs. Wagner offers a cautious smile, but keeps her silence.

  I shake Mr. Wagner’s hand. “Detective Sterling asked me to come by this afternoon and see if I could add anything to the case.” Mr. Wagner sits back down and I take the seat opposite him at the table. “Is it all right if we go ahead and get started?”

  “No offense, Ms. Tejedor, but I’d like you to answer a few questions before we agree to your involvement.”

  Pretty standard response. As the skeptical hint of black pepper works its way into the mix, I have to work to keep the frustration from my face.

  Sterling sits down next to me. “Ms. Tejedor has agreed to work with us on your daughter’s case, but as involving someone with her talents lies a bit outside of our normal procedure, we’ll only proceed as you are comfortable.”

  “Don’t worry, Detective Sterling. I’ll be more than happy to answer any questions Mr. Wagner might have.”

  Julianna’s father leans back in his chair. “Before we lay out all our dirty laundry to a complete stranger, I was wondering if you’d perhaps review your credentials. After Detective Sterling here got in touch with us last night, I did some research online. I know all about the case you worked in Virginia last year, and what I read was encouraging. Still, it’s a lot to swallow. What sets you apart from a carnival palm reader or those 900-number people on TV that tell you whatever you want to hear to keep you on the phone?”

  I lean across the table, interlacing my fingers as I put on my business face. “What sets me apart is I get results.”

  “Now, honey,” Margaret Wagner says. “Ms. Tejedor drove all the way here just to meet with us. Let’s give her a chance to speak.”

  Far from placated, Mr. Wagner crosses his arms and lets out a not so subtle grunt. The black pepper stench doubles in intensity.

  “Please excuse my husband, Ms. Tejedor. We’ve both been beside ourselves since Julianna disappeared. He doesn’t want me to get my hopes up.”

  I grip her hand. “I’m afraid I have to echo that sentiment. I’ll do the best I can to help, but Julianna has been missing for three weeks. Statistics show―”