THE TWILIGHT ZONE, Book 1: Shades of Night, Falling

by John J. Miller

  “Forgive me,” it said, in German. It was unsigned.

  Thomas was the first to speak after everyone had looked over the scene. Naturally, Jon thought, he would be.

  “It seems we have our murderer,” he said.

  “You think so?” Agatha Derlicht asked in a voice glacially cold and pure.

  “I do,” Thomas said with a nod. “You see, the murders [128] began soon after his arrival. As has been established,” and here he nodded at their father, “Schmidt was running from something. Perhaps some violent act. Maybe even other killings. We know for sure he drank to excess. We know he had high emotions.”

  “James drinks too much,” Jon said quietly, “and we know that your emotions can be ... excessive. Yet no one has accused you of murder.”

  Spots of red on Thomas’s cheeks showed Jon that he’d struck home with his thrust, but his brother controlled himself.

  “That’s foolish,” he said. “Why, I wasn’t even in Geiststadt when the first murder was committed, and as to a possible motive—”

  “The boy wasn’t accusing you,” Benjamin Noir said without emotion. “He was merely making a point.”

  He was hovering over the body. Suddenly he reached out and removed the blade from Schmidt’s neck. It wasn’t a knife. It was an odd tool with a pointless curved blade set at a right angle to a wooden handle. Only the top edge of the blade was sharp.

  “What is this thing?” Benjamin Noir asked.

  “It’s called a froe,” a strange voice said.

  They all turned to look to see three men crowded at the entrance to the room, Seth slightly in the lead. Jon was relieved to see brother finally returned to Geiststadt with the magistrate’s men. Seth looked harried and puzzled, as usual.

  The man on his right was older, perhaps in his sixties. He was fleshy in the face and body. He was bald on top and the hair on the sides of his head was white. His [129] clothes were well-made and expensive-looking. Jon thought that Thomas could only dream of such finery. There was something naggingly familiar about his appearance. Jon knew he had never seen him before, but still—

  The man on Seth’s left was middle-aged, soft-looking, and dressed cheaply and unremarkably. There was nothing familiar about him at all. In fact, he looked like one of those colorless men whom you’d forget the instant they were out of your sight, whom you’d have to know for years and years before you’d remember his name. He was the one who had spoken.

  “It’s used for cutting barrel staves out of wooden planks,” he said in a mild, unassuming voice.

  “Or throats,” Thomas added wryly.

  The three newcomers advanced into the room. Shock blossomed on Seth’s face as he realized that there was a corpse on the bed.

  “Is it—he—dead?” Seth asked.

  “Yes,” Jon said quietly. “It’s Johann Schmidt, the cooper.”

  “Schmidt? But he just moved to Geiststadt. Who’d want to kill him?”

  Jon didn’t offer an explanation. He stared more closely at the older man, who had followed Seth into the room, the nondescript fellow at his side. For the first time, Jon got a good look at the older man’s face and he realized who he was.

  “Why—why,” Jon stuttered, completely at a loss. He had seen the man’s engraved picture both in newspapers and as the frontispiece of several books about old New York. “You’re Washington Irving!”

  [130] The older man turned to Jon and bowed slightly.

  “Yes,” he said. “At your service, sir.”

  Jon was too stunned to reply.

  “Washington Irving, the author?” Thomas inquired in the sudden silence.

  “Yes.” The old man smiled at Thomas. “You’ve read my books?”

  Thomas shrugged with a semi-apologetic smile.

  “Not really. I don’t read much in the way of popular fiction.”

  “Oh,” said Irving, his smile suddenly gone frosty.

  “I have,” Jon volunteered. “I love your tales of old Dutch New York.”

  And he did. He wasn’t just saying that to make Irving feel better after his brother’s jibe. Irving was probably the finest author that a young America had so far produced, though lately he’d been devoting much of his time to writing tales and travelogs set in Europe, abandoning his native New York for more far-away, and more literarily-accepted locales.

  “Thank you,” Irving said,

  “If I may ask, sir,” Benjamin Noir asked in a tone that implied he would, whether or not he may, “to what do we owe the honor of your visit?”

  “As those who have read me may know—” Irving glanced tellingly at Thomas, who was suddenly looking elsewhere “—from ‘The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,’ perhaps, or ‘The Student of Salamanca,’ maybe, I have something of an interest in the gothic. The ... supernatural, some may say. I was visiting my good friend Franklin Brooks, the Brooklyn magistrate, when this young man—” [131] here he paused to nod at Seth “—brought the story of the most extraordinary, uh, situation to our attention. It sounds like a perfectly thrilling story. Esquire Brooks kindly allowed me to indulge my interest by letting me accompany Constable William Pierce—” here he paused to nod at the third man “—to investigate the circumstances surrounding this murder.”

  “I see,” Benjamin Noir said, glancing at Agatha Derlicht. She looked back at him blandly, but Jon caught the meaning of their exchange. Neither one of them wanted a famous author poking about Geiststadt, looking for quaint stories regarding its inhabitants to tell to the world. “Well, welcome to Geiststadt, then, Mr. Irving. Constable Pierce. I am Benjamin Noir.”

  “Thank you,” Irving said. After his initial comments identifying the woodworking tool, Pierce seemed content to let Irving speak for him. “Is this the murdered man?”

  “It’s a murdered man,” Thomas murmured, “probably self-murdered. But you’re two corpses too late if you’re looking for the original.”

  “Eh?” Irving looked at him with some irritation, as did Jon.

  “What my brother is trying to say,” Jon said, stepping between them, “is that there’s been more ... killings.” He hesitated a moment over the last word, unwilling to commit himself to one side or the other of the suicide issue. “There’s been three ... deaths ... now in Geiststadt.”

  Washington Irving and Will Pierce exchanged startled glances.

  “By gosh,” Pierce said, his voice as mild as his looks. “We’d better get to the bottom of this.”

  [132] “Yes,” Benjamin Noir said dryly. “We’d better.” He looked thoughtfully at his sons. “Gentlemen, these are my sons, Jonathan and Thomas. Jonathan can take you to view the bodies of the previous victims, if you so desire. They’ve been kept on ice, awaiting your arrival.”

  “Splendid,” Irving said. He glanced at Pierce. “Wouldn’t you say so, Constable.”

  “Hmmm?” Pierce had been peering closely at Schmidt’s corpse. He turned his mild gaze to Irving. “Yes. Yes, I suppose so.”

  “Fine,” Benjamin Noir said with a frown. “Jonathan can explain matters—the circumstances of their death—as you inspect the bodies. Thomas, come along with me. There’s some things that we have to look into.”

  Benjamin Noir nodded to Agatha Derlicht, whom the men had seen fit to ignore during the course of their discussion. Agatha nodded back a mere millimeter, and Thomas followed Noir out of the room without a word.

  “By gosh,” Constable Pierce said as the Noirs strode out of the room, “he seems an authoritative fellow.”

  “He was a sea captain,” Jon said by way of explanation. “Now, if you gentlemen will follow me, I’ll see if I can enumerate the curious events of the past several days.”

  “That’s why we’re here,” said Irving.

  8.

  Thomas excused himself as soon as he could from the Captain’s study. The old man was again looking for answers to the events unfolding about them in his manuscripts, scrolls, and horoscopes. Thomas saw an opportunity, and knew that he should take advantage of it
as soon as possible. But, as always, he wanted reserves in place in case the unthinkable happened and his own personal charm somehow failed.

  He found Callie where he thought he would, warming herself by the roaring fireplace in the kitchen, though the afternoon temperature was already at least eighty degrees. The old woman seemed to have shrunk over the years, becoming a tinier and even more wrinkled version of herself with each passing season. Soon, he thought, she’d be no bigger than the collection of shrunken human heads with lips and eyelids sewn shut that she kept in her sleeping quarters just off the kitchen. Those heads had given him frequent nightmares as a child. He’d dreamed that they’d whispered words barely understandable through their sewn-shut lips. Telling him stories of Callie’s people. Of headhunting and lavish banquets of long-pig on white Caribbean beaches during nights of the full moon.

  She looked up at him, still rocking as he approached her place by the fire. Her dark eyes gleamed like beetle’s wings shimmering in the moonlight.

  “What do you want now, young master?”

  [134] Thomas smiled his charming smile.

  “Maybe just to say hello, Callie,” he said, slipping effortlessly into Callie’s native language, almost forgotten now by the rest of the world. “To see how you’re doing.”

  Callie’s response was a sharp cackle that had little of humanity in it, and even less humor.

  “Do not lie to me, young master. You don’t care how Callie does. You want something. You need something from me. That is the way you are. You are your father’s son.”

  Thomas’s smile became fixed, but he kept it in place and nodded. Callie had been the closest thing to a mother that he’d had when he’d been growing up. But she’d really been more of a stern taskmistress than a loving parental figure. Whereas Jonathan had been given over largely to the care of his various sisters after their mother had died giving them birth, Callie had cared for him as a baby. She’d washed him. Dressed him. He suspected that she would have fed him from her own body if her milk hadn’t dried up years before. But it had never been out of love. Rather, it seemed, out of duty to the Captain.

  She’d taught him her own tongue. It was almost a private language that in all of Geiststadt only Thomas and Callie and the Captain understood, that very few people in all of the rest of the world knew.

  The Captain had said, whenever anyone cared enough to ask, that he’d found her in Cuba. That she was the only daughter of a noble Spanish house that had been slaughtered in a native uprising. The truth of the matter, which again only Thomas, Callie, and the Captain knew, [135] was close, but ironically twisted from the fiction the Captain perpetuated. Callie was from Cuba. She was from a noble house. One that went a lot further back in Caribbean history than the Spanish did. She was a Karibe Indian, descended from a line of chieftains, shamans, and witches. Once a powerful and populous tribe that dominated many islands in the far-flung Caribbean, the Karibes had been in decline long before Callie’s birth. Decimated by savage, interminable internecine wars, Callie’s people were finally finished off by centuries of slavery under the Spanish. She was one of only a handful of pureblood Karibes left in the world. There were warriors, headhunters, priestesses, slavers and slaves, cannibals and kings in her ancient lineage. And she was the sole repository of all their ancient and powerful knowledge. She had more heka than anyone Thomas had ever met Except the Captain.

  “There is no escaping your wisdom, old one,” Thomas said in the ancient language. “You are right. I come for your help.”

  “About what?” Callie asked.

  “There is a girl—”

  “A girl?” the old witch asked scornfully. “At this dangerous time! Murder and death all around you. And you occupy yourself with a girl? There will always be girls, young master. Always.”

  “But this one is special,” Thomas pleaded. “And now is the time to strike.”

  Callie started rocking again, her head nodded in time to the rhythmic rolling of the chair.

  “It’s the cooper’s daughter, isn’t it?”

  [136] “Yes, wise and ancient one.”

  “Don’t patronize me, boy.” She continued to look into the fire as she spoke. “You know that Jonathan loves her already. And she could very easily come to love him in return.”

  Thomas only smiled.

  “I see.” Her sigh was like a soft breeze on a summer night, unseen and barely heard. “All right. You are the thirteenth son of the thirteenth son. Your destiny is great. Your desires must all be met.”

  Thomas had heard that before many times.

  “You’ll help then. Like you did with that girl, what was it? Almost eight years ago?”

  Callie stood, slowly and with effort.

  “Yes. She was your first, wasn’t she?”

  Thomas nodded. He’d been thirteen and he was in love. Well, he’d thought he was. She was eighteen, buxom and beautiful, but cold to his youthful wooing until Callie took a hand. It lasted most of a summer, until the girl got pregnant. The Captain paid the family off and she disappeared. Thomas had never seen her again.

  “Very well. I will make the dough and bake the image. First, though, you know what we need.”

  It was a statement, not a question. Thomas nodded. He was willing to trade a little pain now to ensure a lot of pleasure in the near future. Hopefully, the very near future.

  Callie took a pewter mug from its hook near the fireplace. She got the needle from where she kept it, stuck in a knot of her hair. It was a splinter of bone from a [137] human femur honed sharp as, well, a needle. Thomas rolled up his sleeve.

  Constable Pierce didn’t say much. Washington Irving did most of the talking, in the form of an endless stream of questions that nearly made Jon Noir hoarse as he tried to answer them all. By the time they’d looked over old Erich’s body Irving had been briefed on the history of Geiststadt and the relationship between the Derlichts and the Noirs. As they viewed Rolf Derlicht’s body Irving’s questions elicited the recitation of supernatural occurrences connected with Geiststadt, though Jon edited these so that his own experiences were glossed over. He wasn’t comfortable enough to entirely accept them himself, let alone discuss them with strangers. Particularly strangers who were connected with the magistrate’s office or who were widely read popular authors.

  “This Corpse Flower that you mentioned earlier,” Irving said as they left the Derlicht’s icehouse where Rolfs body was stored against the heat of the late spring day, “sounds fascinating. I’d love to see it. How about you, Constable Pierce?”

  “Good gosh, yes,” said the mild-looking man, which were about two more words than he had spoken during their lengthy inspection of the bodies. “I don’t think we have any of those in Brooklyn.”

  “No,” Jon said. “I wouldn’t think so. I haven’t had a chance to look in on it myself today. I’ll be happy to take you to the Glass House for a tour. We also have some very interesting carnivorous plants that I believe [138] would also be scarce in Brooklyn. Not to mention our Egyptian lotuses and lilies.”

  “Sounds fascinating,” Pierce said without too much enthusiasm.

  As they went down the main street of the village, ignoring—or at least pretending to—all the whispers and stares that followed them, they passed Thomas Noir. He was dressed, Jon thought, like a city fop. And he was headed right for Schmidt’s shop.

  Trudi, Jon thought with a sinking feeling.

  Thomas bowed deeply and smiled. Pierce and Irving nodded back to him pleasantly. Jon grit his teeth, and took their visitors on to the Glass House and its collection of exotic flora.

  What a nice day this was turning out to be, Thomas thought, as he bowed in the direction of the investigator, writer, and brother.

  The Third Intercalary Day in the calendar of ancient Kemet. Only two days till the first day of the year. In the contemporary calendar, the first day of summer. And, of course, his birthday. How time flies. As the first of the days between years was dedicated to Osiris, the second to
his son Horus, the third belonged to their implacable enemy, Set, or as he was also sometimes called, Seth.

  Knowing his own colorless lapdog of a brother, Seth, Thomas thought this mildly amusing. Set could have almost been Thomas’s own patron saint. Or god. The Egyptians considered him the god of evil, the personification of drought, darkness, and perversity. He was the enemy of all that was good. Impatient to be born, he’d [139] torn himself from his mother’s womb. He murdered his own brother, Osiris, mutilated the corpse, and scattered parts of it up and down the length of the Nile. He persecuted both his sister, Isis, who was Osiris’s wife, as well as Horus, their son. The enemy of light, his head was the head of a beast unknown to man. His weapon was the primeval knife that was the symbol of dismemberment and death, and the fact that he had red hair made all redheads in Egypt feared and scorned for three thousand years. But yet, when Horus the Avenger finally defeated him after a cycle of battles that had lasted eighty years, the gods spared his life.

  Why? Thomas asked himself. Because they knew they needed him. They needed his strength and cunning to face the Apophis serpent in the final battle between Order and Chaos. In the end, they could not do without him, and that, he thought, was the perfect metaphor for his own life.

  Thomas didn’t believe these old myths literally. No sane man did, although he wasn’t sure about the Captain. But they were an instructive guide to the depths lurking underneath the apparent ordinariness of life. For example, the Captain needed Thomas’s strength and cunning, even though he also feared him for those very qualities. Thomas wasn’t sure why the Captain needed him. Perhaps because of something the old man had done in the past, as Benjamin Noir now seemed to believe that these unsolved murders were a sign that something in his checkered history might be catching up to him. On the other hand, Schmidt’s death seemed to have given [140] the old man pause. Maybe Benjamin Noir didn’t know what to believe.