She sat there, looking up at the beast, grateful at least that it wasn’t screaming. Maybe she could get her jacket away from it and sneak back into the bunk room, so none of the villagers would know. Or perhaps they should just clear out, and forget their two hundred schillings. One thing was certain: if she did get the head, her price was going up. Schreber should have warned her. She could have been killed. The creature opened its mouth wide, and Angelika saw why it couldn’t alert the locals - they’d cut its tongue out.
It hurled itself against the bars, rattling the chain that held cage to gibbet. The sound echoed. Villagers poured from their huts, armed with crooks and hayforks. Franziskus leapt up, but Angelika stayed seated on the cold dirt. The Verldorfers pointed the tines of their forks at her throat and chest, or stood ready to bash her with their crooks. They surrounded Franziskus, too; he held his hands out beside him, far from the scabbards of his dagger and rapier.
Angelika shook her head. She blinked. ‘Where am I? What has happened?’ She hoped Franziskus was clever enough to follow suit.
A gaunt woman with dusky skin thrust the blunt end of a pole at her; she might be considered beautiful, were she equipped with a few more teeth. ‘You know where you are, harlot! It is Verldorf, and you do the Dark Gods’ work!’
Angelika rubbed her forehead. ‘Verldorf - why, yes, I begin to remember…’ The villagers looked to one another for guidance; a few stepped back. Angelika smelled guilty consciences. Even the toothless woman moved a pace to the rear. ‘I slept, in there!’ Angelika cried, pointing at the open shutters, which provided punctuation by banging in the wind. ‘Then I thought I dreamed- ‘ She regarded Potocki, who was still, but had shifted position. ‘Yes, this thing, this beast, it is alive! It beckoned to me!’
Without warning, she sprang up, seizing Ralf the innkeeper by the tunic and sticking her blade to his throat. ‘Why did you not warn me of this foul thing’s sorcery? It stole into my dreams and lured me nearly to my death!’ The others sidled back, making a wide ring around her. Off to the side, she noted that Franziskus stood with eyes shut and head down.
‘I beg pardon, madam!’ Ralf cried, struggling to kneel, though her tight hold on his shirt brought him short. He clasped his hands in supplication. ‘We should have warned you, it is true! Forgive us - we are afraid to speak its name, or even think of it. It haunts us; we are cursed!’
‘Tell me of this thing, and I’ll decide if forgiveness is warranted.’
‘For decades it has stalked us! We cannot kill it! First, it sent minions: cripples, gypsies, madmen! They waylaid our shepherds, put hands on our children. One by one, we slew them. Then the beast itself came. It could leap over a house or break a man’s neck with its empty hands! It ambushed our headmen; it set us against one another. Sometimes it even stole our blood, to drink!’
A few of the onlookers joined together to underscore Ralf’s words with a rising wail of lamentation; it prickled the fine hairs on the back of Angelika’s neck. She released him.
Ralf shook his head. ‘Many times he came, and many times we fought him. We pierced him with sharpened stakes, and he dug himself up from the grave we made him. We burned his flesh, yet still he walked. We drowned him. We broke his bones. He casts spells on us if we lapse in diligence, and fail to keep his tongue trimmed down. The only safe place for him is in that cage. And now we see that, even with his tongue out, he can still creep into the minds of unprepared strangers. Please absolve us of our ignorant crime of omission!’
Franziskus caught her gaze; he was cocking an eyebrow at her. ‘Very well,’ Angelika said. ‘In the face of such implacable evil, your error is understandable. What was it that first brought Potocki’s wrath on you?’
‘Our grandfathers could tell you, perhaps. Some say one of our ancestors offended him. Others claim he came here in search of an ancient text, abandoned here by a mysterious traveller. Which we did not have, because one of us had foolishly burned it, as kindling.’ He stooped to pick up a stone, which he pitched at the cage; it went between the bars but missed Potocki. Through the creature’s jagged teeth, a hiss escaped.
In an exaggerated gesture, Angelika craned her neck to gaze into the lightless sky. ‘We would leave immediately, but night travel is too dangerous. We’ll retire to your bunks for now, though I doubt either of us will sleep.’
‘Shall we stay up and stand guard?’
‘Please don’t; though I’ve accepted your apology, my anger toward you has not entirely subsided.’
Ralf nodded. He spotted the metal alarm for the shutter doors, lying near the cage. While seeming to look the other way, Angelika watched him pick it up.
Angelika and Franziskus headed into the bunk room again; Ralf and his fellow villagers formed an escort. Once inside, she stationed herself beside the window. She listened as Ralf, back outside the building, replaced the shutter’s alarm device.
‘You’ve made me an accomplice in dark deception,’ Franziskus said.
‘That’s the sort of thing that happens when you decide to follow a person like me.’
She sat and waited until snores reverberated between the hovels of Verldorf. She reached out to cut the alarm cord. Again, Franziskus opened the shutters and she caught the bits of metal. She slid out of the window. He followed. She crept to the cage. From her pouch, she withdrew a large key, which she’d liberated from Ralf’s pocket as she’d held him at knifepoint. She slid it into the lock at the bottom of Potocki’s cage, turned it and swung the cage door open. She stood her ground and bared her teeth. Potocki leapt out at her. She sidestepped. Potocki hit the dirt where she’d been, landing on his face. She dove onto his back. Franziskus jumped to seize his kicking legs. She grabbed the corpse’s matted hair and pushed his head into the mud. He bucked powerfully. Angelika took her knife and placed it on the back of Potocki’s neck. She leapt up, then fell, so that her entire weight pressed on the blade. She opened a gash in Potocki’s neck that went clear to the bone and kept hacking; there was no blood, and the dried flesh came off in chunks. Franziskus fell back as Potocki kicked him in the chest. The head came off. Verldorfers streamed forth from their doorways.
Angelika seized the head by the hair and jumped to her feet. The villagers roared angrily. Franziskus gasped as Potocki’s legs scissored around his chest. Angelika grabbed his collar and hauled him upright. A rock, thrown by the toothless woman, sailed past her head. She and Franziskus turned and ran. Potocki pushed himself up and sent his headless form charging at the loudest sound, the howling of the people of Verldorf. They shrieked. They pounded the undead creature with their clubs. Angelika did not look back.
The head, held by its hair, snapped at her. ‘The box!’ she said. Franziskus wrestled it out of his pack. He held it open as Angelika dropped Potocki’s head into it. He slammed it shut. The head rattled and bumped inside it. ‘A good thing the box is well-lined,’ she said.
SKULLS LINED THE walls of Schreber’s cottage. Some sat on shelves, but most were simply stacked in precariously vertical piles. The skulls of halflings, or children, which were the smallest, formed the top rows of each stack. The philosopher’s axe leaned casually against the pile nearest the doorway. Schreber leaned against a short cabinet of polished teak; he had positioned himself so that it shielded him from Angelika and Franziskus, who faced him. Angelika held the iron box.
Angelika sniffed the air, taking in the delicious aroma of roasting meat. ‘Preparing a feast of welcome for us, Schreber?’
‘Ah,’ he said, looking furtively at the open entranceway to his back room, ‘that smell is in fact my cooker, where I remove the flesh from my fresher finds.’
‘Ah,’ said Angelika. ‘Then that leaves us only with the exchange of our merchandise for your two hundred schillings.’
Schreber reached into a drawer. ‘What kind of miscreant do you take me for? To do business with common grave robbers?’ He pulled out a pistol.
‘I was afraid you might say that.’ Angelika had removed the lock f
rom the iron box. She opened the lid. The head sprang out of the box, at Schreber. His eyes widened. Jaws snapping, the head sailed in a vigorous arc across the room. Its teeth clamped onto the front of Schreber’s throat. Bright red blood spattered chalky skulls. Schreber fell, disappearing behind the cabinet. His screams ceased, replaced by the squishing of flesh gnawed by ancient teeth.
Angelika and Franziskus ran to the front doorway. They stepped outside the cottage, slamming the heavy wooden door shut, bracing it with their backs. The flailing noises they heard from inside continued for a surprisingly long time.
Schreber’s home stood in a neglected corner of the walled town. The few passers-by they could see were some distance away, in a busier square, where marketers sold gruel and skewered beef from canvas stalls. There was no one to ask them why they leaned so desperately on the scholar’s front door.
The thrashing sounds subsided.
‘We can’t risk its getting out and harming the townspeople,’ Franziskus said.
‘We can’t take the chance of abandoning a possible two hundred schillings!’ Angelika replied.
They nodded and burst back through the door. Once inside, Franziskus seized the handle of Schreber’s axe. They couldn’t see Potocki. They could see the legs and torso of Schreber’s lifeless body.
‘Here, Potocki…’ Angelika said. ‘Here, boy…’
The head came bowling out from behind a set of shelves. It barrelled at her feet, across a worn carpet. She leapt aside and ducked down, rolling the rug up over the skull. She kept at it, until the thing was trapped and unable to move. With the axe handle, Franziskus pounded the lump in the carpet. He kept hitting at it until the rug seemed to trap nothing more than a shapeless mush. Gingerly, Angelika unrolled it. Indeed, Franziskus had thumped Potocki’s skull to the consistency of porridge. The paste was grey, with a few flecks of pink rippled through it. Franziskus spotted a few pieces of still-solid bone in it.
He smacked those as well, until they were as gluey as the rest.
‘Enough,’ said Angelika. She stepped over to the cabinet, bracing herself against it to roll Schreber’s body out of the way, giving her the clearance she needed to open its lower drawers. She started with the top and rifled through it. From the last drawer, she withdrew a purse. It was the one he’d flaunted back at the ravine. She opened it and turned it upside down. Rocks poured out. ‘The occasional item of value, my foot,’ she said. She gave his remains a dispirited kick. ‘I suspect it’ll be of little use, but we should search the rest of the place.’
Angelika pawed through all the drawers she could find. She checked under Schreber’s bed and inside his mattress, leaving his sleeping quarters strewn with stuffing. She cleared his shelves, opening each of his books to see if it had been hollowed out. Franziskus sorted through the philosopher’s cups and bowls, but she thought his inspection less than thorough and went through them herself. She opened the lid of Schreber’s cookpot, and grimaced. She even looked inside some of the skulls.
She took the pistol and put it in her belt. ‘This is the only portable thing of value here.’
Franziskus stood, hands on knees, peering down at the glob of paste that had been Potocki’s head. ‘Look at this,’ he said.
She looked. She could see nothing.
‘See? It has moved. It has travelled several inches, toward the doorway, in just the time you’ve been searching.’
Angelika nodded. She had to agree; the crushed skull had inched ahead.
‘Where does it think it’s going?’ Franziskus asked.
She straightened, got her bearings, and performed a quick calculation. ‘Verldorf,’ Angelika Fleischer said. ‘It intends to reunite with the rest of him. And, my guess is it will - in about a hundred and twenty-five years.’
She stepped over it and left the cottage, doing nothing further to impede its progress.
THE SMALL ONES
by C. L. Werner
THE SOUND OF squealing laughter echoed across the northernmost of Eugen Duhring’s wheat fields. The wide patch of barren ground had been left fallow this season to allow the soil to replenish and revivify itself. Duhring was known as a miserly and mean-spirited man, hateful and bitter about his station in life. Some in the village of Marburg called the wheat farmer ”the Badger” because of his fierceness regarding trespassers on his property. Had Duhring heard the laughter and seen the small shapes scampering across his field, he would have set his brace of dogs on them. If the farmer happened to see who one of the shapes was, the children could have expected a swift and physical reprimand courtesy of a switch broken from one of the nearby trees.
Keren laughed even as she gasped for breath and danced away from the outstretched arms of her pursuer. She was a young girl, long locks of golden hair dancing in the bright sunlight, her white blouse and black dress offsetting the rich colour of her arms and face. The girl’s face was pretty, her button nose placed above a pair of pouting lips that were well-versed in the art of forestalling a scolding by means of a simple downward tremble. Her eyes had a slightly mischievous cast to them, the faintest arching of her brow that hinted at a cunning mind. She carried herself with an air of pride, and it would have been apparent to any observer that she considered herself better than her companions, a sense of station more befitting a great lady of some Bretonnian house than the daughter of Marburg’s miller.
Still, perhaps the girl was not to blame for her superior attitude. Her father, Bernd Mueller, considered himself something of a petty noble, the closest thing the village of Marburg had to an actual burgomeister. The prosperous miller was banker, landlord and, some would confess in confidence, robber baron to the farmers who made their living in the vicinity of Marburg. His was the only mill for many leagues in any direction, and Mueller made certain that his monopoly paid well. True, a farmer could take his wheat to some other village, perhaps Fallberg to the north or Giehsehoff to the east, but the expense and time to do so would cost the farmer more than it would to swallow his pride and pay Mueller’s extortionate rates. Mueller openly mocked his patrons, treating them as little better than indentured servants. It was small wonder then that the girl should hold herself as superior to the children of her father’s customers and deal with them in a manner befitting her eminent position.
Keren laughed again as Paul lunged for her and she danced away from his clumsy attempt to catch her. Paul was a tall, gangly boy, his face still bearing the moon-shaped depressions from the pox that had struck Marburg many years ago. He swore one of the colourful curses he often overheard in his father’s tavern and turned to again try and catch his quarry. A safe distance away from the hunter, Therese blushed when she heard the words leaving her playmate’s mouth. Beside her, the brawny figure of Kurt remained wary, lest the hunter turn his stumbling steps in his direction.
Keren started to dart away from Paul’s clutching hands once more, when suddenly a bright flash of pain tore at the back of her head. A hand slapped the small of her back and Paul’s figure pranced away from the girl in triumph.
‘Ha, now you have to try and catch us,’ the boy laughed as he sauntered toward the advancing Therese and Kurt. Keren dropped to her knees and stroked her long golden locks.
‘You pulled my hair, you stupid toad!’ the girl snarled in her most indignant tone.
‘I caught you,’ corrected the boy, noting with some concern the sullen look that had crawled across Kurt’s face.
Keren rose from the ground, glaring at Paul, venom in her eyes. ‘Doesn’t your family teach you any kind of manners? Just because you look like a monster doesn’t mean you have to act like one.’ The words left the girl’s mouth like daggers, her target visibly wilting at the assault.
‘Show your betters some respect,’ Kurt said in a low, menacing voice as he pushed Paul with a meaty hand. Kurt often helped his brothers in their profession as foresters and his size was quite beyond his years. He was entirely devoted to Keren, and many of the village children had received a beating a
t his hands when offence or her own malicious spite made Keren call upon the devotion of her brawny protector.
‘But I caught her,’ protested Paul, retreating from Kurt’s glowering form. Therese came to her brother’s aid.
‘Try and catch us!’ she cried, racing away into the woods that bordered the wheat field. Paul took that as an excuse to run away from Kurt and the threat of a short and one-sided fight. Kurt cast a confused look at Keren before deciding that he should hide as well or risk being tagged himself. Devoted or not, the young woodsman had no desire to bear the stigma of playing the hunter, even for Keren’s sake. In the matter of a few seconds, Keren was left standing alone in the barren field.
The girl let a few moments pass, trying to compose herself rather than actually intending to give her friends time to conceal themselves. It was humiliating for her to be the hunter. When she had proposed this game, she had never thought that she would ever have the shame of being the searcher. Indeed, if everyone had not already run off, Keren would have haughtily declared that the game was stupid and that they play something else. Now she would have to show these farmers’ brats that she was much better at playing the hunter than any of them.
Keren entered the shadowy stand of trees and tried to pierce the dark bushes and bracken with her youthful gaze. She listened carefully for any aberrant sound that her quarry might make in seeking to elude her. Only the chirping of a few birds and the frightened scrambling of a startled squirrel rewarded her efforts. She continued to walk along the narrow game trail, her annoyance rising with every step. How dare these peasants force her down to their level? It was enough that she deigned to play with them at all, why should she endure this indignity? The girl loathed the role of hunter, playing alone, struggling through the bushes whilst having to endure the taunting elusiveness of the others. It was not for the daughter of Bernd Mueller to have to chase for friends, she thought, as if she really wanted to find a rabble of dirty peasants anyway. Keren had almost made up her mind to leave the others to their stupid play and go home when she heard the rustle of dead leaves behind a patch of bushes a few yards away. A crafty smile crept upon Keren’s face as she stalked toward the noise. She had found them much faster than Paul had and she would not be reduced to chasing them out into Duhring’s wheat field either. Slowly, with as much silence as she could manage, the girl made her way to the bushes. With a yell of victory, she jumped around the closest of them. Abruptly, her yell became a shriek as the girl realised what she had found.
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