“I know that—” he began a stumbling explanation, but she interrupted him with a bright smile and decisive nod.
“Yes,” Trudi said. “Yes, I’d love to. I’d love to get out into the countryside. I’d love to get away—”
She hesitated, glancing purposely away from her father.
“Let’s go then!” Jon said.
He felt excited, by more than just the brandy he’d drunk. By a sense of rebellion, a touch of impetuousness bordering on the wild. Trudi seemed to catch his mood. She nodded wordlessly, her eyes bright and expression suddenly cheerful.
They took the path that was Geiststadt’s main street, stopping to exchange greetings and receive condolences with various passers by along the way. Word of Erich’s death had spread like wildfire through the village. News [64] of any kind did, and the bad usually moved faster than the good.
Among the villagers they ran into was Rolf Derlicht, one of Agatha’s grandsons. Rolf was a husky young man a couple of years older than Jon. Jon had never liked him. When they were children Rolf had used his unusual size and strength to bully Jon—though, to be fair, he bullied most of the other youngsters as well. He even took on Thomas once in a shoving match that had quickly escalated into a serious fist fight. Jon actually hadn’t known whom to root for in that one, but for the sake of family solidarity decided to cheer on Thomas. And Thomas had needed his brother’s encouragement. Although more than a match for Rolf Derlicht in size and strength, Thomas Noir lacked Rolfs animal ferocity and fighting skills.
Thomas was taking a beating and Jon was seriously considering joining in on his side when suddenly their father broke through the ring of shouting children who were goading the fighters on to greater efforts.
Jon had never seen Benjamin Noir in such a towering rage. He snatched Rolf Derlicht away from Thomas with one hand and pummeled him with open-handed slaps with the other that sounded like gunshots as they exploded upon the young Derlicht’s cheeks. He might have beaten the youngster insensible if a terrified Rolf hadn’t managed to yank himself free, leaving a torn fragment of his shirt in Noir’s grasp. He’d run away, crying, and had never teased the Noir brothers again.
Jon always remembered that long-ago incident whenever he saw Rolf, probably because it had ultimately [65] ended, unfortunately for Jon, with a beating at the hands of his father for not coming to Thomas’s aid.
“Hello, Jonathan,” Rolf said, stiffly formal, as he always was with Jon. “Terrible news about Erich. My condolences.” Although his words seemed kind his voice lacked any sense of sympathy as he looked expectantly at Trudi.
“My thanks,” Jon said, just as stiffly. He realized that Rolf was expecting him to introduce Trudi. He thought for a moment of ignoring Rolfs obvious expectation, but then decided that he didn’t want to appear boorish in Trudi’s eyes. Clearly she couldn’t know what had gone on between Rolf and him in the past. As he introduced them, Trudi dropped a graceful curtsey and Rolf took her hand in a lingering manner that to Jon, at least, bordered on the offensive.
“I’m looking forward to getting to know you better,” Rolf said, unctuously. “Much better.” He paused, as if just remembering something. “By the way, Jonathan, Grandmutte wants to speak to you.”
“To me?” Jon asked, thrown off his course of growing annoyance by the unexpected request. “About what?”
Rolf shrugged broad shoulders. “I should know? She says to come by the house when you can.”
“All right.” He would, too, just to satisfy his curiosity regarding this unprecedented invitation. “Danke.”
Rolf shrugged, as if to say, it’s nothing, turned to Trudi and bowed. “Auf wiedersehen, madchen. I’m sure we’ll see each other soon, and often.”
“I’m sure,” Trudi said in a voice that implied no such thing.
[66] Rolf made a vague gesture of farewell, which Jon copied even more sketchily. They parted, Jon and Trudi heading for a less-traveled path that would lead them away from the village and onto the lower slopes of HangedMan’s Hill.
“What was all that about?” Trudi asked.
Jon shook his head. “I’m not sure. The Noirs and Derlichts aren’t exactly close friends. If they were this particular Noir wouldn’t be a friend with that particular Derlicht. You’ve met his Grandmother Agatha.” It was a statement rather than a question.
Trudi nodded.
“She’s the head of the Derlicht family. They’re the most powerful family in the village—and my father’s rival for influence and authority. Over the past couple of years it’s been clear that she’s been grooming Rolf to lead the family when she’s gone. The old bat is older than my father. She can’t have that many years left.” He smiled. “Have you learned anything yet about Geiststadt’s history?”
“Not much,” Trudi admitted. “Since we’ve been here we’ve spent most of our time making the shop livable and readying samples of father’s wares. I haven’t really had much of a chance to get know anybody. Except for you, now.”
She smiled prettily, which made Jon smile in return.
“I’m sure you’ve heard about the Noirs and Derlichts,” he said.
She waved a hand in a dismissive gesture as they passed the last building on the lower slopes of the looming hillside. Above them now was virtually virgin [67] land, untouched but for the graveyard which lay to their left.
“Gossip,” she said.
Jon smiled. “Go on. You can tell me. I’m sure it’s nothing I haven’t heard already.”
“Well,” Trudi said, “it’s clear that the Derlichts don’t like your father. Also ...” She hesitated. “... he doesn’t attend Church. Nor does any Noir, except the daughters who’ve married into local families.”
“That’s true,” Jon admitted cheerfully. His father had totally neglected instructing him in religion. That was all right with Jon. He could see the hand of God everywhere about the countryside without the need for a church to view it in or a priest to tell him how to worship. “We Noirs are a godless lot. It’s one of the reasons the Derlichts have been suspicious of us over the years. They’re good Calvinists, you know.”
Trudi gave him a sharp look, but didn’t seem as shocked by his frank confession as he’d feared she might be. Another item in her favor, Jon thought. They approached the waist-high stone wall encircling the graveyard that held over a hundred years of Geiststadt dead, stopped, and leaned against it. Most of the graves were marked by wooden crosses. Very few—mostly some of the more notable Derlichts—had stone markers. The wooden crosses were almost all scrubbed of name and date by the elements. No one knew exactly who lay in many of the graves, but the cemetery was well tended with loving care by the community. Jon spent his own fair share of time tending the graveyard, for his mother [68] lay somewhere in one of the lost graves, the only Noir so far laid to rest in Geiststadt.
“Why is this called HangedMan’s Hill?” Trudi asked, looking around the bucolic landscape. “It seems very pleasant.”
“It is,” Jon said. “I love hiking the ridge way. The view from the top is tremendous, and there are scores of hollows and delightful hidden meadows. But there—” He pointed. “Do you see that notch where those parallel ridges nearly come together?”
Trudi squinted, shading her eyes as she stared in the direction he pointed.
“Yes, barely.”
“That’s the site of the old cemetery. The one used by the Dutch when they originally settled here almost two hundred and fifty years ago. The village was called Dunkelstad then. But it was destroyed and abandoned fifty years before the Derlichts and other families returned to the area and founded Geiststadt.”
“What happened to it?” Trudi asked.
Jon shrugged. “No one knows for sure. Some say the town was wiped out by Indians. Others say a plague or disease of some sort. Whatever it was must have been pretty disastrous. Most of the buildings were gone by the time the Derlichts arrived. In fact, their house is one of the very few built on a foundation laid by the
Dutch.”
“What’s this all got to do with HangedMan’s Hill?” Trudi asked.
“I’m coming to that. During the Revolution, the Battle of Brooklyn was fought some miles from here. But prior to the battle, a contingent of German mercenaries, [69] Hessians, came through Geiststadt. Despite the fact that practically all of the citizens of Geiststadt were fellow Germans—or maybe because they were—the Hessians pillaged the community. Halfway through the rapine, though, they were taken by surprise by a militia raised from other towns in Kings County. Not actual soldiers, you understand, just armed citizens. Some of the Hessians escaped, but more than half a score were surrounded, captured, and taken to that notch in the ridge way I showed you.
“Once that had been the Dutch cemetery, but it had been abandoned for over a hundred years. It’s a spooky bit of land, even now. I’ve spent many an afternoon wandering about it, myself. I’m not terribly superstitious, but I’d hesitate to go there at night. Many believe it’s haunted. Many believe they’ve seen spirits there at night, searching for ... something. Some say a White Lady haunts the burial ground. Some say a whole troop of ghostly phantoms. That’s how Geiststadt got its name, you know. ‘Spirit Town’ or ‘Ghost Town’ in English.”
“What about the Hessians?” Trudi prompted.
“Oh, yes.” Jon realized that he’d gotten lost in diverging branches of ancient lore while telling his tale. “Well. They were hung. Most of them. Twelve of them, according to the stories. But there was a thirteenth. For some reason the militia didn’t hang him. Perhaps he was the ringleader. The one who instigated the rape of the village. Perhaps the militia had to vent their wrath on someone and hanging that last Hessian wasn’t enough.” Jon shrugged. “Perhaps they’d just run out of rope, or suitable branches.”
[70] “What’d they do to him?” Trudi. asked, her eyes wide.
“Why, they ...” Jon stopped. His gaze went distant. He was silent for so long that Trudi laid a hand on his arm. He started, and looked at her. He couldn’t understand why he hadn’t made the connection before.
“They cut his heart out,” he said. “And dropped his corpse in an unmarked grave far from his comrades.”
He and Trudi looked at each other.
“Cut his heart out?” she asked. “Just like Erich’s?”
Jon nodded. “Just like Erich’s.”
Suddenly, though the sun still shone and the breeze still blew warmly upon their faces, the lower slopes of HangedMan’s Hill no longer seemed a cheerful place. The gloom that sometimes descended upon Geiststadt was a nearly tangible shimmer of dark energy. In complete accord they turned without a word and headed back to the village, as if both wanted the nearness of other people rather than the solitude of the now eerie hillside.
McCool couldn’t get the water hot enough to suit him.
Callie was heating buckets of it in the fireplace, but it cooled considerably by the time McCool had lugged them up three flights of stairs.
“Faster, you damned bogtrotter,” Thomas said as he reclined in his bathing vessel and McCool added another pail to the tepid bath water.
McCool leaned back, gritting his teeth.
“You’re not paying me enough to fetch water, Your Honor.”
Thomas temper flared. He was not in a good mood. Someone was trying to kill him. He would not overlook [71] or rationalize that. Maybe it was the Derlichts. But why now? Why so suddenly upon his arrival?
“Enough of your insolence. I can return you to the slums where I found you and pick any of a hundred out of the gutter to take your place. You understand, McCool?”
“Yes. Your Honor,” he said, his impertinence barely controlled.
That was all right. Or at least sufficient.
“Fine,” Thomas said, rubbing a sponge absentmindedly on his chest. “Fetch me another pail of hot water. I must think.”
McCool went off without a word. Thomas sank lower in his tub, the water almost covering his face, his knees poking up into the air.
A tub big enough to stretch out in would be nice, he thought, and pipes, perhaps, to carry hot water from a central reservoir.
Unfortunately, though, he had more pressing matters than plumbing to occupy his attention.
If it was the Derlichts trying to kill him, he knew who was probably to blame.
Supper was a sober affair in the Noir household. Seth, of course, had not yet returned from Brooklyn. He wasn’t expected back until the next day at the earliest. James and Jon were at the table ready to eat, but Thomas and their father were absent. Jon sent Callie to summon them three times. Three times the summons had gone unheeded.
[72] “Damn it all,” James said. “The food’s getting cold and I’m getting damned hungry. Let’s eat!”
They dined alone. For all James’s faults Jon usually got along with him better than anyone else in the family. Tonight, though, James was sullen and uncommunicative. Jon put his brother’s mood down to the presence of Thomas, whom Jon had actually yet to greet.
Thomas had been closeted in the study with their father for most of the day, thick as thieves. Jon knew better than to interrupt them when they were in closed session. Besides, he had no real desire to see Thomas. It was bad enough when he had to deal with him. He felt no need to seek him out just to say hello.
James started to drink brandy with his meal and was at it long after the meal had ended. Jon went to his room. He tried to read, but couldn’t interest himself in either the small collection of scientific monographs he’d accumulated, or even the classic literature in Greek or Latin he usually enjoyed.
On restless nights he’d commonly roust Isaac and they’d go for a ramble by moonlight. But tonight there was something depressive about the dark. Something told Jon that danger was loose in the night. While he normally wouldn’t seek out peril for no good reason, neither would he shrink from it. But this feeling deep in his gut told him that an unknown hazard was stalking Geiststadt. Jon didn’t want to face it unless he had an inkling of what it was about.
He wasn’t, as he told Trudi, superstitious. And yet ...
Trudi. Her image came upon him as he tossed and turned in his narrow bed. Something pleasant, at last, to [73] fasten his mind upon. Something beautiful. Something untouched by the miasma that sometimes seemed to come out of nowhere to engulf his fair little village.
He finally managed to fall asleep with Trudi’s image in his mind. It was a thin, fitful sleep, hardly refreshing, but it got him through the night. He awoke early as usual, and went down for a solitary breakfast that, as usual, Callie prepared for him.
He was sitting in the kitchen lingering over another mug of strong tea when Manfred Jaeger burst into the kitchen without knocking, panting as if he’d been fleeing the devil himself.
“Have you heard the news?” he gasped, then reported it before Jon could even open his mouth. “Rolf Derlicht is dead—murdered—mutilated.”
Jon heard himself question Jaeger from a long distance away, thinking at the same time that somehow he already knew the answer.
“Like Erich?”
The messenger only nodded, his expression wild as he tried to gulp enough air to calm his heaving lungs.
“Where?”
“The cooper’s yard. Under the oak.”
Jon nodded, almost abstractedly.
Jaeger sketched a vague salute of farewell, then hurled himself back outside to further spread the word.
Jon had been right, he knew now, not to go out the night before. Danger was stalking Geiststadt. The savage killer had claimed his second victim.
5.
Friday, June 17th, Second Intercalary Day
“What is this world coming to?” Hausfrau Gottchen asked Jon as she stopped him on the dirt lane that served Geiststadt as a main street. “Are we all going to be killed? Are we to be murdered in our beds tonight?”
“I don’t know,” Jon said, trying to keep up with her questions. “I don’t think so. I’m sure not.”
The
Gottchens were one of his father’s client families. They looked to the Noirs for protection in times of trouble, but never before had Geiststadt experienced trouble like this. Trouble usually meant a scanty crop or disease striking the cattle. Life and death, yes, but something you had time to contemplate and plan against. Something money from the deep Noir pockets could help you recover from. It was bad enough when Erich was killed. But if a madman was killing Derlichts, then no one was safe. No plan could protect you. No amount of money could shield you from sudden, terminal disaster.
“They say the body was found in the yard of Schmidt the cooper. I don’t know. I haven’t seen it myself. Who would want to look upon such a thing?” A sudden thought seemed to strike Frau Gottchen. “This Schmidt, he is a strange man, isn’t he? And a stranger, as well. What do we know of him, anyway?”
Jon didn’t even try to keep up with her flow of words.
“I don’t know, Frau Gottchen,” he said, which seemed [75] a suitable reply to most of her questions. He bowed and said a hasty goodbye and hurried off before she could launch another stream of unanswerable queries.
Isaac fell in beside him and they both headed towards Schmidt’s yard.
“Callie woke up both Captain Noir and your brother Thomas with the news,” Isaac said. “The Captain wasn’t happy. Seems like he thought that Erich might have been killed by the Derlichts for some reason.”
“I don’t see why,” Jon interrupted.
“I don’t see why either,” Isaac agreed, “but the Captain thought Erich’s killing might be part of some kind of plot against the Noirs.”
“Rolfs killing would seem to argue against that theory,” Jon muttered.
Isaac nodded. “Anyway—the Captain don’t want the body disturbed until he can come and look at it himself. He told me to find you and make sure it stays put until he arrives.”
Jon nodded. That was reasonable. Though it was a mystery what his father might see that he himself, for example, couldn’t see.
THE TWILIGHT ZONE, Book 1: Shades of Night, Falling Page 6