The Barter

by Siobhan Adcock

  “Oh God, I’m so sorry!” she cries out.

  The form, or possibly the woman inside of it, lurches toward her but cannot cross the threshold. It is penned inside the house, and she is trapped outside of it. To go back home she needs to—to what? A membrane she cannot bring herself to violate hangs just inside the door.

  “Bridge, it’s okay,” Mark says. He is looking back at her, leaning halfway into the house, his arm holding the door open. He has one foot in the house and one foot on the front step. Around his body, all over his outstretched arm and his shoulder, against his cheek, against his chest, the whiteness and blackness flicker and curl together, vicious like smoke. “Let’s talk about it inside.”

  Then Mark’s expression changes. He has seen not the ghost but Bridget, her obvious terror. And also Julie, who has turned in Bridget’s arms and is staring at the ghost, her glassy, exhausted eyes blank and wide, her little mouth open and exhaling. Bridget can feel herself beginning to gasp for air, can hear her breath coming harshly. There she is, she’s inside of it, she’s allowing herself to be eaten, she’s allowing herself to be consumed by it, what is it, what is it, why didn’t I see before that she’s inside of it, inside of it and fighting her way out toward us—Jesus, God, look at the way Julie’s looking at it, she can see it, too—

  “Bridge?” Mark reaches for her. His warm arm is around her shoulders, embracing her and moving her.

  “Don’t pull me in, oh God, don’t move us!” Bridget screams, but it’s too late. He has gently, gently, so gently pulled them right into the whiteness and the blackness, so close to it that the smell of the grave is closing over Bridget’s face, shutting out the air, and she thinks for a second that she might pass out from the stench and the cold, but she remembers Julie in her arms and yanks desperately out of the way, stumbling over the doorjamb, falling against Mark’s body and then down onto the floor, where her head and Julie’s little head both smack smartly against the wood. Julie is screaming now, and Bridget scrabbles to cup Julie’s head with her hand, curling up around her girl on the floor, trying to protect her from what she knows will now come, having tasted them both and needing to bite deeper.

  “Bridget! Jesus!” Mark drops to his knees and leans over them. “What happened? Is Julie all right?” He is between them and the ghost, his face large and scared over Bridget’s, his hands between her body and Julie’s, looking for blood, feeling for broken bones.

  And behind him, over his head, it comes: The ghost of the woman is now a flickering shadow trapped like a moth inside of some white, staticky haze that seems to be eating her, dissolving her—and it is this haze, this seething and searching and shapeless and hating thing, that is coming for them with its black mouth open.

  “Can’t you see it? Why can’t you see it?” Bridget cries. She tastes blood in her mouth. She can’t say the word “ghost,” she can’t say something so crazy and terrifying, she can’t make it real by giving it a name—but how much longer can she be alone with it? How much longer can she live in the same house with a thing that she can’t name or speak of to anybody, not even her husband, not even the little girl who sees it as plainly as she does?

  Mark, helpless and frightened, shakes his head down at Bridget. “What are you talking about? What are you looking at?” Shaken, uncertain, he looks back over his shoulder, then back down at Bridget. “I see nothing. I see nothing.”

  Julie is still screaming and screaming.

  CHAPTER TEN

  The magician’s first exhibition took place on a bleak December night during Christmas week. It was a good time for an entertainment to come through town, with the harvest shipped and the country families gathering for the holiday. Magic had passed the height of its popularity in the large cities and in Europe, but here, on the telegram- and railroad-laced waistline of what was left of the frontier, the two-week engagement of the magician Herr Robert Krause, young and handsome, brought in most of the families in the county. He was said to be from Munich, and he spoke with a heavy accent during his performances. On the street he was said to have hardly any accent at all.

  It was by coincidence that the magician’s stay in town coincided with the Hirschfelders’. They had settled at Dr. Mueller’s house for a holiday visit, leaving the little there was to be done with the livestock and the farmhouse in the care of the Heinrich boys and Dusana. The real occasion of their visit, besides celebrating Christmas with their only relatives, was to borrow money from the Doctor. John’s misery and mortification had not been able to wait: He had taken the old man by the elbow and into his confidence the very first night of their visit. Rebecca understood without being told that the Doctor had agreed to the loan. Indeed, judging by the old man’s forced yuletide jollity, he was almost as mortified as John.

  At first Rebecca felt shy about asking John the terms. But the more she thought about that, the more her own shyness irritated her. It was her property, too, was it not? She ran the farm, too, did she not? She supposed it would have been irregular and embarrassing for both John and the Doctor if she’d insisted on joining their conversation—or if she’d so much as been in the room while a loan was discussed. But plenty of things about their life were irregular and embarrassing, beginning with the fact that Frau had arranged for John to have his own bedroom, separate from where she and Matthew slept. She wanted to know. She deserved to know about the money.

  One night as they were all preparing for bed, she cornered her husband in his upstairs bedroom, crowded with thin-looking, austere furniture that Rebecca couldn’t remember seeing in the house before. “What did Papa say about the loan, John? You haven’t told me.”

  John studied her carefully before answering. “He agreed. I thought you could tell.”

  “But is that all? How much did we borrow? On what terms do we pay him back? What did he say to you?”

  John’s expression registered a mixture of amusement and pain. “Well, first of all, he said he was prepared to give us this house. I told him that wouldn’t be necessary. Then he said he’d give us any amount we wished.”

  Rebecca shook her head. “He isn’t that rich.”

  “No. But I think he meant it. He would put himself and Frau Nussbaum out in the street if it would help us. If it would help us, I believe the two of them would be prepared to come out to live with us on the farm.”

  “That would be hard for his practice,” she observed.

  “Certainly it would.”

  “So then.”

  “We left it with him writing me a check. Which I have deposited.”

  Rebecca waited.

  “We’ll pay him back, Beck. I promise,” John said softly, meeting her gaze with a sure, determined nod. Now it was her turn to feel embarrassed. She realized that to John, it must seem that she was accusing him of taking advantage of her father, of not doing enough to provide for his family, when really she was just curious to know how much money he’d given them and how they’d invest it, how they’d pay it back. How much trouble are we in, exactly? Why can’t you tell me? She opened her mouth to try to explain, to ask, and then Matthew began to cry, and she had to excuse herself, and had never found a moment to speak to him about it again. And after a few days it began to feel too late to reopen the subject, and she decided she’d ask him later. And then she never did.

  It was luxurious and wild to be back in her girlhood home in town, where the smell of animals was absent and the library was full and nothing was required of her but to watch her boy and to help Frau in the kitchen, where she comported herself mostly without disgrace. But being here was maddening, too—knowing, now, how little she’d been prepared for. John, meanwhile, was all restless energy. He spent hours wandering around the place, finding odd projects, like a hinge that needed rehanging or a bolt that could be tighter. Her heart ached for John’s humiliation, and her father’s, too. She counted the days until they could return home.

  In the
end, the awkwardness around the house drove them to attend several of Herr Krause’s magic shows, the five of them, Rebecca, John, Matthew, Frau, and even the Doctor wrapping up in blankets after supper for the quick, lantern-lit ride through chill, starry blackness to the schoolhouse. Rebecca sat with little Matthew on her lap in the third row of the auditorium of the brick schoolhouse where she and John used to sit in assembly as children. Afterward, the family shivered excitedly back through the streets to the warmth of the Doctor’s fireside. John and Dr. Mueller drank thick wine in the parlor while Rebecca and Frau put the little boy to bed.

  Rebecca invented lavish bedtime stories about magicians and magic shows she pretended to have seen. Listening to his mother in the minutes before sleep, Matthew would turn brooding and thoughtful in the depthless way of children who have learned to be serious in their efforts to try to understand the world. (Rebecca liked to imagine his baby thoughts at these moments, whispering, “Such a grave young man we are,” and kissing his soft forehead over and over again.) Meanwhile, Frau sat nearby, that comforting old presence, sewing by a dim lamp and voicing infrequent, guttural signals of approval.

  Both Frau and Matthew had a favorite among Rebecca’s stories: the tale of the robber. Frau liked the tale because it clearly borrowed from her own inventions, and Matthew liked it because of the little twist his mother gave to the end. It went this way: “Once upon a time there was a famous robber who stole from all the best houses in Germany without ever getting caught. The robber came from a long line of robbers and had inherited from a distant robber relation a magical sack that could hold anything—as much as could be put into it and much more besides. The sack could hold the contents of an entire noble house, and many nights it did. Well, success made the robber bold, and one night the robber decided to steal from the great dark house of the great dark magician who lived on the great dark hill. So the robber took the magical sack and, late one night under a new moon, crept into the magician’s house. The robber was afraid in the magician’s house; it was shadowy and cold. But the robber found marvelous things: a time machine, a ring that granted wishes, a potion that allowed you to speak to animals and understand them, and, most precious of all, a small mirror, little enough to fit in my hand, that showed images of your loved ones’ faces and told you all their thoughts. After putting everything that could be carried off into the sack, the robber was hungry and tired and decided to try the magician’s kitchen.

  “To the robber’s great surprise, though, the magician was sitting in the kitchen, at a table spread with cheese and cakes and sausages, with a single candle to light his handsome face. ‘Welcome to my house, master thief,’ said the magician. ‘Please, sit down with me and eat.’ The robber was startled, but the food looked so delicious that it was impossible to refuse. When the robber sat in a chair to take a delicious bite, the magician caused the robber’s chair to grow arms and hug the robber tightly, too tightly to move.” Here Rebecca squeezed Matthew tight, to demonstrate. “The magician said, ‘I see you have taken my magical things and put them into your sack, master thief. But I will make you a deal. Give back what you’ve stolen, and I’ll take only what’s mine.’ The robber said, ‘I’ll keep what’s in my sack, magician.’ The magician laughed and said, ‘Think twice, robber. The police are coming.’ And the robber sighed. ‘All right then, magician. Have it your way.’ Then the magician caused a great, sweet-smelling wind to blow through the kitchen—” Rebecca blew softly on the little boy’s face. “The wind caused the robber’s hood to fly off her head. For the master thief was a pretty young woman, with hair black as night that flowed like water.” And here, at the moment the little boy had been waiting for, Rebecca would brush Matthew’s face and arms gently with her hair, and he would smile mightily and kick his small legs and grasp at it. “The magician held out his hand to her and said, ‘My dear, everything I have is yours, for I have loved you since I first saw you in my mirror, the very one you’ve stolen. Let me take what is mine, your heart and your hand.’ And the magician and the robber maid were married and did good magic together the rest of their days. The end.”

  * * *

  Herr Krause began each of his performances in the same way. Wearing a dark suit and tie and a magician’s straight-sided hat, he strode to center stage, removed his hat while bowing deeply, and wished them good evening in English and in German. He would then attempt to put his hat on his head, whereupon a dove would fly out, or colorful streamers of ribbon, or one night an actual rabbit. This simple, silly opening gesture was enough to endear him to the audience and in particular to the children. His face would betray just a flicker of amusement at the apparent disaster, and then Herr Krause would become stern. Then the magic would begin in earnest. His next trick was typically something a bit frightening, and most nights it involved fire. He walked through it, swallowed it, put his hand through it.

  The final performance was one that Rebecca and John attended alone. It had been advertised as inappropriate for children, so the Hirschfelders left Matthew with Frau for the evening. Dr. Mueller had intended to come, had bought the ticket, but at the last moment was compelled to stay at home. He wasn’t well. He had chest pains, was often weak and green and short of breath. Rebecca didn’t like to leave him, but the Doctor insisted.

  “The rumor is that tonight’s performance will be special. I want you to tell me about it when you return home. I will wait up for you with a cigar.”

  “Not a cigar,” Rebecca protested. “Not when you’re breathing like this.”

  Dr. Mueller wheezed for her benefit and grinned, the little old gremlin. “Never let’s pretend that we tell each other what to do, daughter.”

  Rebecca and John had had few occasions since their marriage to ride out together into the dark alone in a wagon as they did that night, wheeling through the town toward the schoolhouse. They were quiet for most of the drive, each of them wading in their own thoughts.

  “The last time we rode together like this might have been the night we were married,” Rebecca remarked eventually. She had been worrying about her father, recalling him in his stronger days as a younger man, which had led to thoughts of John, and of how often she and John had done this, just this very thing, when they themselves were younger. The wagon routes from her father’s house. They’d all led to the same place in the end. She was surprising herself with something like sorrow. Had there been love between them on those old rides? She thought now that perhaps there had, sitting between them on the buckboard like a little bundle, wrapped up and disguised as something insignificant, and she had been too inexperienced, too angry, too confused, to acknowledge it. Shutting her eyes tight against the cold night air that rushed toward them, Rebecca thought of the hour again, the hour of her life that her mother had bartered so that the two of them could be together, and wished fiercely for the chance her mother had been given. What wouldn’t I give, she thinks, for us to love and be loved by each other. What wouldn’t I pay to make my little family whole, real, unburdened.

  “That might be so,” John allowed.

  “Do you think Matthew will keep Frau up tonight?” Rebecca asked as they pulled onto the starlit schoolhouse road.

  “I expect she gave him extra milk,” John said.

  “She wants to spoil him,” Rebecca agreed.

  “It’s good to let her.”

  “But not too much. A farm boy can’t grow up in luxury, expecting women to dote on him,” Rebecca said lightly, before she realized how she sounded.

  John’s face, always so capable of concealing what he felt it was better not to express, changed very little as he said, “I suppose you’re right, Beck.”

  Their wagon joined the others outside the schoolhouse, where the chill night air plumed with the breath of horses and harnesses chimed like bells. Boot soles of women and men they’d known most of their lives were heard to crunch and slide against the hard-packed earth on their way to clop up the schoolhous
e steps. The air smelled of stove fires and cold leather. Some of the men, clustered together to smoke before heading in to rejoin their wives, were laughing a bit louder than was strictly necessary, as if to prove they weren’t afraid of anything they were likely to see or hear inside.

  The rumors about the magician’s final show had been dark ones. The handbills had declared that Herr Krause possessed the power to read minds, predict the future, and foresee death, and that his final performance would be devoted to the exhibitions of those blacker, more mystical talents; therefore, no one under the age of fifteen would be permitted to attend. It was said that this was the pattern of his engagements from town to town: a few shows of straightforward magic, of the sleight-of-hand, cabinet-of-wonders, knife-throwing variety, and one final performance that revealed such grim mysteries that afterward, presumably, no one in the town would want to see the magician again and he’d be welcome to depart. It was said that his performances had ruined families and driven men to desperation. How exactly these wreckages had been accomplished was less clear. To Rebecca it all sounded delicious.

  The Hirschfelders skirted the crowds huddled in the cold on the schoolhouse steps and made their way into the close, smoky, gaslit interior of the building, weaving their way through the throngs to the ticket taker and thence to their seats. Men came to say hello to John, and women nodded their braided heads to Rebecca. While John made small talk over the seat backs, she looked around at their neighbors, at the curls of smoke hanging in the air overhead, and at the lantern stage lights and the heavy curtain that had been contrived for the magician’s performances. What a strange place to find oneself is a theater, or a room made into a theater, she found herself thinking. Lines and lines of people, their heads and shoulders, a whole bobbing sea of consciousness, are all laid out in neat rows like supper on a table. A monster’s dream. Rebecca could positively swear that she wished no harm to a single person in the room, and yet she imagined a dragon laying waste to the entire assemblage with the swing of a thorny tail or a single breath of fire. It was easy enough to imagine, in fact, that they had all gathered here for precisely that purpose.