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

by John J. Miller

  He went down the back stairs to the cellar below with McCool flitting silently at his heels. He stopped to light a lantern in the cellar below, then went down the stairs to the crypt without making a sound. The door to the sub-cellar was closed and locked. It was possible the Captain was inside. He would often lock himself in so he wouldn’t be bothered in the middle of long or difficult experiments.

  Thomas turned and motioned to the darkness at the [166] head of the stairs. McCool was at his side in a moment, moving noiselessly as a ghost. Thomas gestured at the lock. McCool nodded. He had some talent in this area, as well.

  The somewhat cumbrous lock yielded within moments to McCool’s pick. The two men looked at each other. The tension ratcheted up another notch in Thomas’s gut. Though they couldn’t actually surprise the Captain if he was in his one-room laboratory, in a way this was the ideal place to confront him. There would be no chance of witnesses. No possibility of anyone observing them as they met him over his alchemical workbench.

  Move fast, Thomas told himself. Move fast, move fast, move fast.

  He nodded at McCool, flung the door to the workshop wide open and leaped in, holding his lantern high.

  The room was dark—the Captain wasn’t there. The door to the workshop hit hard against the wall with a hollow thooom that sounded like distant thunder. Thomas caught it as it rebounded towards him, the nervous energy surging through his system damped by a wave of disgruntlement tinged with a tiny bit of relief.

  “Where is the old sod?” McCool asked, disappointment savage in his voice.

  Thomas shook his head. He aimed the lantern around the room just to be absurdly sure. But there was nothing in the chamber other than the usual workbench, alchemical accoutrements, bookshelf stuffed with the familiar array of volumes, manuscripts, and papyri, and the large, immovable safe that contained the Captain’s rarest, most dangerous, and costliest items and potions. Thomas also [167] suspected that it protected a bag or two of gold coins, but he couldn’t be sure because he’d never seen the inside of it.

  They backed out of the workshop.

  “The Glass House,” Thomas said suddenly. Suddenly, he was sure. He knew that the Captain was there as sure as he knew McCool was a cold-blooded killer hired from the Five Points gang of Irish thugs called the Dead Rabbits. There was no doubt. They were heading for the final confrontation. “I’ll go in the front way,” he said. “You take the back.”

  “You daft?” McCool asked, most disrespectfully. “I ain’t killing no one in a house with glass walls.”

  “Everyone’s at the funeral. There’s no one around to see us,” Thomas said with more than a trace of impatience. “Besides, it’s almost impossible to see inside because of the thick vegetation. This is our best chance to strike.”

  “You’re sure he’s there?” McCool asked.

  Thomas nodded. “Oh, yes,” he said. “Sure as certain.”

  “How?” McCool asked with narrowed eyes.

  Thomas just looked at him. Finally the Irishman turned, muttering, and made his way back up the stairs. Thomas followed. He had never been so sure about anything in his life.

  They saw no one as they left the manor and split up, McCool looping around to the rear entrance of the Glass House. Thomas calmly strode through the empty manor yard to the front. He spied the Captain right away as he entered the building.

  Benjamin Noir was standing before the Corpse Flower. [168] He glanced around briefly as he heard Thomas enter, then returned his attention to his botanical monstrosity. Thomas had all he could to not put his handkerchief in front of his nose. The thing stank horribly. He waved in an irritated fashion at the buzzing flies the stench attracted. The Captain continued to stare at his hideous flower for several moments as they stood side by side.

  Finally, Benjamin Noir sighed. It was, Thomas thought, most unlike him.

  “Have you ever felt,” he said to Thomas, “that you’ve wasted a good portion of twenty years of your life?”

  Thomas shook his head.

  “No. Of course not. Though you have.” Benjamin Noir finally looked at him. “I don’t know where it could have gone wrong. You were the thirteenth. The thirteenth son of a thirteenth son—”

  “Did that matter so much?” Thomas interrupted.

  “Did that matter?” the Captain exploded. “Did that matter? By the great Hermes Trismegistus, it meant everything!”

  Thomas felt vaguely disappointed even as he saw, over the Captain’s shoulder, Tully McCool approaching. Flitting silently from bush to planter, from cover to cover, the long-bladed dagger gleaming in his hand.

  “Did I never matter to you, then?” Thomas asked. “Or just the fact that I happened to be your thirteenth son?”

  The Captain laughed. “I needed a thirteenth son,” he snapped. “What did it matter what he looked like or what his name was. I needed that son!”

  “Why?”

  “Haven’t you learned anything, boy?” the Captain [169] asked with angry exasperation. “Don’t you realize how rare a thirteenth son of a thirteenth son is? Your heka is overwhelming—should be overwhelming.” He shook his head and looked thoughtful for a moment. “But it isn’t. It just isn’t.”

  “You sired me for the value of my heka?” Thomas asked.

  “Fool,” the Captain said without much rancor. “I sired you as a repository for my heka. For my will. My consciousness. My personality.”

  The revelation struck Thomas like a physical blow.

  “I’m getting old,” Benjamin Noir said, as if to himself. “This body won’t last much longer. But—” he looked at his son, the fires blazing in his dark eyes again “—I will not die. I will not rot like a dead dog in the ground. I spent years siring children so I could have the thirteenth son whose body would be strong enough to withstand the transference spell. Whose body would serve as my vessel until I could sire another thirteen sons and move forward another generation, and then another, through eternity. But you’re weak!” The Captain lifted his clenched fist as if to strike Thomas, who flinched backwards at the rage in the old man’s eyes. “Weak! You almost died, twice, when I attempted the transference. I cannot be trapped in a dying body. It would mean my own death—”

  Thomas suddenly snarled like a beaten dog that raises its head to defend itself at last.

  “Your death is closer than you think, old man.”

  “What do you mean?” the Captain ground out through clenched teeth.

  [170] Thomas laughed. It was suddenly funny. All the Captain’s plotting. All his plans. All gone for nought.

  “Turn around and see.”

  The Captain whirled suddenly, as if warned at the last second by more than Thomas’s sardonic comment. Tully McCool stood within striking distance, blade in hand. The Captain started to roar out a protective spell, or perhaps a curse, but McCool, whose skills had been honed in many a street fight and clandestine assassination in the tough neighborhood called Five Points, struck a sudden and sure under-handed blow.

  The blade sliced up like summer lightning. It slid in between the Captain’s ribs and struck home to his heart. McCool’s hand thumped against the Captain’s chest. Words wriggled on the Captain’s writhing lips, but either anger or death kept him from articulating them.

  He half turned, his long arms flung wide. McCool released the blade, letting him go. He stared at Thomas for a long moment. Thomas stared back, unable to keep the relieved and mocking half-smile from his lips.

  I showed you, old man, he thought. I showed you who was the better. Smarter. Tougher. I showed you.

  Thomas Noir caught his father’s body as the old man fell limply into his arms.

  It was a long afternoon.

  Isaac went down to the manor and fetched some shovels, as well as rope that they’d need to lower the coffin, while Jon waited in the abandoned graveyard with Trudi. Now that he had the opportunity to talk to her, he discovered that he couldn’t find the words. He [171] couldn’t tell her what Thomas was really
like. If she really loved him, she wouldn’t believe him. If she didn’t love him and was intent on marrying him for money and security, the truth wouldn’t matter. He didn’t think Trudi was like that, but how well did he know her? How long had he known her? Not very well and not very long. He could be wrong about her, but he didn’t think he was.

  That left only one improbable conclusion. She did love Thomas, even though she’d known him for less time than she’d known Jon. Thomas sometimes had that effect on women. It wasn’t quite ... natural.

  Isaac arrived with the shovels. Jon took one and glanced around the cemetery.

  “This looks like a nice spot,” he said to Trudi.

  She looked up at him, her eyes dull, almost uninterested. She had been quiet the whole time Isaac had been gone, sitting silently by her father’s coffin. It was almost as if she were a different woman than the one he’d met just a few days ago. Of course, she was now alone in a strange community. Her entire world had come crashing down around her. It was natural that she’d be somewhat numb, that she would retreat to some inner place where she’d feel safe and protected.

  “Yes,” she said. The stretch of ground that Jon indicated was an isolated patch away from any trees whose roots they’d have to dig through, or thick patches of brush that they’d have to clear away. “Thank you both for doing this.”

  “Our pleasure, Miss Trudi,” Isaac said, and began to dig.

  Jon joined him. Trudi fell silent. She looked down at [172] the ground at nothing as Jon and Isaac dug her father’s grave.

  The sun rose overhead. It was a hot day, almost unnaturally so, and still. There was no breeze to stir the leaden air. Sweat dripped from their faces and ran freely down their backs and sides. They worked steadily, stopping only for infrequent breaks. Fortunately the dirt was soft loam rather than hard clay. It came up easily on their shovels. Before they had gotten three feet down they stopped for a moment to watch the funeral in the Geiststadt graveyard break up. A long line of people was already making its way back down to Geiststadt where Agatha Derlicht was hosting a wake for her grandson and for the memory of old Erich as well.

  “Guess they’re done,” Isaac said. It was the first words they’d spoken since they started to dig.

  “Guess so,” Jon replied. Like Trudi, he didn’t feel much like talking.

  Isaac obviously realized this. He took up his shovel and began to dig again. After a few moments he stopped when his shovel scraped something hard.

  “Something down here, Jon,” he said.

  A round white dome had been exposed by a stroke of his shovel. Jon looked at him. They both knew what it was.

  Jon kneeled in the dirt and brushed away the soft loam with his bare hand, exposing a greater expanse of naked bone. It was a whole skull, rather well preserved. Jon thrust his hand into the dirt around the skull, soon exposing more remains as Isaac watched. Even Trudi watched, though her eyes betrayed no more interest than [173] if they were digging up potatoes rather than bones from an unmarked, unknown grave.

  “I wonder who it is?” Isaac asked.

  “You know,” a voice said from behind them.

  Isaac was so startled that he dropped his shovel. Jon sat back suddenly on his heels and even Trudi showed expression on her face as she turned to look at the speaker.

  It was Katja Derlicht. She was standing underneath a thick-branched oak, twenty yards from the three young people, looking curiously ephemeral in the deep shade. No one had heard her approach.

  “Ah,” Jon said. “You, uh ...”

  “Startled you all?” Katja asked when Jon seemed unable to finish his sentence.

  “Yes. Startled us.”

  The old woman smiled. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to. I’ve been so long in the forest that I’ve taken its silence. I move like a tree branch. Like a flower tossed by the wind. Silent and unseen.”

  “That’s all right,” Jon said. There wasn’t much else he could say. He rose, brushing the loam off the knees of his pants. He gestured towards Trudi. “Katja Derlicht, this is Trudi—”

  “I know who she is,” the old woman said with a gentle smile that she turned upon Trudi Schmidt. “I grieve for your loss, dear,” she said, “but it must be some comfort to know that your father has gone on to his just reward.”

  That’s probably, Jon thought, exactly what she’s afraid of, but he smiled as Trudi thanked the aged woman with [174] a trace of her old smile back on her too-wooden, too somber face.

  “You said,” Isaac said tentatively, “that we know who this skeleton is. Was. I mean.”

  Katja Derlicht turned her smile to him.

  “Of course.”

  Jon and Isaac looked at each other. Suddenly Jon had the feeling that if there was enough of the skeletal remains they’d see that its rib cage had been crudely hacked apart so that the heart beating beneath it could be removed.

  “The Hessian,” Jon said. “The Hessian who was not hanged.”

  She nodded.

  “What are the odds,” Isaac said “that we would find his body now?”

  “There are no coincidences,” Katja told him. “Only undiscovered connections.”

  Jon squatted down over the body. Almost of his own accord his hands went out to smooth the dirt away from the remains of the lost and forgotten corpse. When he was done, he’d exposed all of the skeleton. It was very well preserved. Fragments of uniform still enshrouded the corpse. A row of buttons lay among the bones of the hacked ribcage. Bits of leather also lay in pieces among the bones and, amazingly, leather boots, still mostly whole, covered the remains of the feet and lower leg bones.

  Wordlessly, Isaac and Jon climbed out of the grave. From the deep shade that enveloped Katja Derlicht like a shawl hundreds of little lights suddenly shone. They [175] danced around her like tiny sparks tossed on an unseen wind, swarming like silent, glowing bees. After a moment they darted out from the shade of the trees, tumbling in a shifting spiral into the hard daylight where their glow was dimmed, but still visible.

  “Fireflies,” Jon breathed.

  He had never seen them out in daylight before. He had never seen them swarming like this, either. They came towards Jon and Isaac, but suddenly dipped down when they reached the open grave and landed on the Hessian’s skeletal remains. They stayed a moment. Their light dimmed and died. Then they took off again, their flight choreographed, it seemed, in a complex, undecipherable pattern. They swept past Katja Derlicht and vanished into the upper slopes of HangedMan’s Hill.

  “What do we do now?” Jon asked in a quiet voice.

  “Gather up his remains,” Katja Derlicht advised them in quietly, “for reburial. Make sure you get them all. Then put Johann Schmidt to rest in the grave. It seems like an appropriate place.”

  The three young people looked at each other. Trudi seemed more alert, more alive, than she had all day.

  “I think she’s right,” Trudi said. “I think this would be a good place for my father to begin his search for rest.”

  “All right,” Jon said. He turned to look at Katja Derlicht. He wanted to ask her many more questions. But she was gone.

  The worst part was the blood, though to be honest, there was less than Thomas had expected. McCool, when queried, said sardonically, “Well, I stuck him through [176] the heart, didn’t I? Stopped pumping almost at once.” He paused, looking at Thomas as they stood over Benjamin Noir’s body. Thomas had caught the Captain as he fell, then eased the body to the floor. “I expect you want me to finish it?”

  “Finish it?” Thomas asked, distracted. He could hardly believe that his scheme had worked. That the Captain was dead and he was heir to the Noir estate. After planning it for so long, somehow it all seemed somewhat anticlimactic. But, he reminded himself, it wasn’t over yet. Not by a long shot. “Yes. Yes, I suppose so.”

  They had to keep up the pretense. That had been part of the plan, to sow confusion by pretending a supernatural killer was stalking Geiststadt for spectral revenge. Schmidt�
��s killing was just an attempt to induce more confusion, to break the established pattern. Also, parenthetically, it served to make Trudi vulnerable and dependent on Thomas’s sudden offer.

  “But quickly!” Thomas said. He glanced around the Glass House. They were still quite alone, but also quite vulnerable to someone stumbling upon their little drama.

  “Quick as a pig to the slaughter!” McCool said, gleefully. He did seem to enjoy his work. He straddled the Captain’s body and with a single stroke of his razor-sharp blade sheered through the old man’s coat and shirt from neck to waist. He plunged the knife into the Captain’s chest and began to saw through the ribs.

  Surprisingly, Thomas found that he couldn’t watch. He turned his head, looking up and away as if he were checking for lurkers among the verdant foliage that made [177] the Glass House a riot of color. McCool glanced at him, grinned, and went back to his butchery.

  “Jaysus, these flies,” was his only comment as the horde of creatures attracted by the odors dispersed by the Corpse Flower were already finding their way to the Captain’s fresh and bloody corpse.

  “All right,” McCool said after a moment. “What do we do with it?”

  He stood, holding a small oiled cloth sack in his bloody hands. He handed it to Thomas, who accepted it distractedly. He was, he suddenly realized, holding the Captain’s heart in his hands.

  “You’d better go rinse your hands in the lotus pool,” he told his co-conspirator.

  “Good idea.”

  “Hurry up.” Suddenly Thomas was impatient. He wanted to get out of the Glass House. It was warm inside. Too warm. And it smelled of death.

  McCool plunged his hands into the lily pool and rubbed vigorously. The bag Thomas held in his hands suddenly seemed unbearably heavy. Unfortunately, Thomas thought, there was no feather to weigh it against. The Captain’s soul was undoubtedly demon-fodder this very moment. Thomas, glancing around the Glass House, was struck by a sudden idea. The Corpse Flower. The Captain had loved it so, let his heart nourish it.