by Laura Bickle
Not that it mattered. I knew that the Hexenmeister would see this house in flames before the night had fallen.
We laid Ruth on the floor of the spring room, then went upstairs to turn our attention to her mother. Frau Gerlach harrumphed at the men still standing around, staring at the two dead men.
We climbed the stairs to the parents’ bedroom. Frau Gerlach put her hands on her hips, contemplating the woman impaled on the bedpost.
“Huh,” she said. “I think it would have been easier if they let the Hexenmeister burn the house.”
I swallowed.
“Katie, go tell one of those men to find me a hacksaw. There’s no point in trying to save the furniture.”
***
I remained at the Hersberger house until late in the afternoon, side by side with Frau Gerlach. I worked numbly, following her terse directions, dimly aware of the passage of time. Outdoors, a few men were making simple caskets out of sheets of pine. The Hexenmeister had disappeared, and I assumed that he had gone to make preparations for the evening. Everyone else avoided the house.
We had to take down the bedpost, and Frau Hersberger landed on the floor in an awkward pile. But we succeeded in getting her cleaned, wrapped up, dressed, and lined up next to Ruth on the spring room floor. I managed to slip some garlic in her mouth when Frau Gerlach’s back was turned.
The four sisters were more problematic.
I followed Frau Gerlach into their bedroom with my eyes shut. I smelled blood, felt my shoes sticking to the floor. My breath was shallow, and I could feel my own living blood rushing in my ears.
I heard Frau Gerlach’s footsteps in the sticky mess, tracking back and forth, and her breathing. I heard her open a window.
“Katie,” she said, with unusual gentleness.
I forced myself to open my eyes.
The girls had been torn to pieces. Bits of flesh and bone were strewn from wall to wall. I saw a small arm reaching from under the bed and fixed my eyes on that. At first, I thought it was a doll’s—but then it registered that it was the limb of a young girl.
I looked down. I was standing on a girl’s finger. I backed up, balled my fists, and was preparing to flee. The room spun crazily around me: the reddened quilts, the smears on the walls, the human leg cast upon a half-full hope chest, a doll face-down in blood. I stared at it, unsure whether to retrieve it and clean it up or let it be.
“Katie,” Frau Gerlach repeated. She shook me.
I forced myself to look at her. “How . . .?” I had no idea what the Elders expected us to do with this.
“Ask the men to bring us four boxes from the yard.”
“But how . . .” I couldn’t imagine trying to sort the limbs and cleaning.
“We will do the best we can,” she said firmly. “God will understand. And if the Elders don’t . . . Well, they’re not here.”
I nodded, then walked robotically away, down the stairs and into the sunshine of the yard to ask the men for the boxes.
My father was there. I blinked tears at him, relieved that he’d come. He put his arms around me, and I embraced him gratefully, willing myself not to cry, not yet. He smoothed my hair back from my face, offered me some water. I saw him staring at a red stain on my rolled-up sleeve, at the red on my apron. “I came as soon as I heard.”
I nodded, taking a small sip of water before my stomach turned.
“She’s a good girl.” Frau Gerlach had come up behind me, put her hand on my shoulder. “She is a strong girl. The only strong one here. She is helping me attend the women. You should be proud of her.”
My father looked at me with sad pride. “I know.”
My lip quivered. “I have to help Frau Gerlach. There’s . . . there’s a lot to do.”
He nodded. “I will tell your mother.”
I kissed him on the cheek quickly and turned back to Frau Gerlach, who had chosen four small hollow boxes that stood beside the door. She left the lids on the grass.
We carried them to the girls’ room, arranged them on the floor.
“There is not enough left to fill these boxes.” Frau Gerlach sighed.
“How do we know . . .” I looked around the room. “How do we know what belongs to . . . whom?”
She shook her head. “God will take them however he finds them. And the congregation does not need to see them. We will just do our best.”
We began with the larger pieces, putting them in the boxes according to size. I merely wanted to get through with the task. I slipped a clove of garlic into each box, though I only found two pieces of jaw and part of a scalp. I put the ruined doll into the box that had the smallest body parts in it.
We worked for an hour in silence, before Frau Gerlach stood and said, “Ja, that is enough.”
She stared up at the late-afternoon light on the ceiling. “They will have to have the service outdoors. There will not be enough time to clean the house before then.”
I was relieved. I could not imagine all the buckets that it would take to scrub this place clean.
“You have done well, Katie,” Frau Gerlach said. “You would make a fine midwife someday, if you ever wished to learn.”
I cast my eyes down, exhausted and shy and afraid and proud all at once. “All I have managed so far is to be a midwife to the puppies.”
She reached out to pat my cheek with a bloody hand. “God smiles on those who quietly do his dirty work, my girl.”
Chapter Nineteen
The sun was slipping toward the horizon by the time I’d trudged back to the kennel. I hauled aside the heavy door. I was exhausted, but there was still work to do.
“It’s Katie,” I called softly.
Copper raced up to me, and I knelt down to rub his ears. He sniffed at me dubiously, flattened his ears.
“I’m sorry, boy.” I surely reeked like a slaughterhouse, but there was nothing to be done for it. If I headed directly home, I knew that my mother would fling me into the bathtub, stuff me full of soup, and not allow me out for the rest of the day.
Alex ambled up to me, a sly smile on his face. He was eating an apple.
“Where did you get that?” I snapped.
He shrugged. “From the apple tree out back . . . They’re a little wormy, but that’s just extra protein. You shouldn’t be outside, Bonnet. Sunset’s coming.” He fixed his gaze on my stained apron. “What happened?”
I blew out a deep breath. “A family was found dead this morning.”
“Dead?”
“Killed by vampires.” I shut my eyes. “It was awful.”
He knelt beside me and put his arm around my shoulders. “I’m sorry.”
I nodded, leaning into the warmth of his side. “I spoke with the Hexenmeister.”
“Did he have any ideas?”
“He does. But the Elders don’t believe him.”
“Don’t believe him? Or don’t want to believe him?”
“Some of both. The Hexenmeister wanted to burn down the house with the bodies in it, but the Bishop wouldn’t let him.”
Alex looked at me. “This place will be overrun. Vamps pop up faster than Whac-a-Moles.”
I didn’t bother to ask him what a Whac-a-Mole was. I nodded. “I know. But the Hexenmeister wants to try to stop them. He’s asked us to meet him at the Hersberger house before sunset.”
“Wait . . . he wants ‘us’?”
“I told him everything.” I looked up at him. “He won’t hurt you. He needs your help.”
Alex lifted a brow. “Your wizard wants to play a little arson?”
“I assume so.”
“I like burning things. I think.” He screwed up his face. “Last thing I set fire to was a couch in college. This will be way cooler.”
I elbowed him in the ribs. “There is nothing ‘cool’ about this.”
“Just a little levity. Though . . . not every guy gets to go play firebug with a wizard and Bonnet the Vampire Slayer.”
I was going to tell him that he had no idea what was
in that house, but . . . maybe he did. Instead, I asked: “How’s Sunny?”
“She’s okay. I think. I keep staring at her and fidgeting. I think she’s annoyed at that.” His tone suddenly turned doubtful. I was reminded of what Frau Gerlach had said about men being useless in death and childbirth.
I lifted myself off the floor and trotted back to the paddock. Sunny was wrapped up in Alex’s blanket. Her tail thumped when she saw me.
“Hi, girl. How’s my mama-to-be?”
She licked my face. I unwrapped her from the blanket and ran my hands over her belly. The puppies felt calm. Her head was cool. I bent down to kiss her ear.
“Has she been drinking and eating?”
“She had dog food this morning. She hasn’t had much of an appetite since then, though she’s been drinking. She hasn’t moved except to go outside to pee.”
“I think she’ll be ready to go in the next day, definitely.” I arranged the blanket back over her body. “It’s nice of you to share your blanket with her.”
He sniffed his sleeve. “I think I smell like dog, though.”
“Better than smelling like a butcher shop.”
He leaned over and sniffed my neck. “I also detect garlic.”
I grimaced at him. I wasn’t much in the mood for play. Once Alex saw the Hersberger house, I was betting that he wouldn’t be, either.
***
I was terrified to take Alex into our world.
I tugged his sleeves down over his wrist bones to hide his tattoos, insisted that his suspenders were straight, and jammed Joseph’s old hat over his eyes. I hoped that he would pass for Plain from a distance, hoped that no one would get too close. He let me fuss over him like a mother hen before reminding me: “Daylight’s burning.”
I led him out of the barn, my sweaty hand in his. The sun cast our shadows long over the striped fields. I hoped that anyone who spied us from afar would think that we were simply young lovers enjoying the molten evening and leave us be.
I hoped.
I took him the long way through the fields, away from the roads. “How far is it?” he asked.
“Just ahead.” I pointed to a dot on the horizon. “That house.”
We approached slowly, and the dot resolved to a white house surrounded by a white fence. The front door was shut. There were no buggies or horses tied up at the gate, but I was still uncertain that the house was empty. Pine boxes stood empty against the side of the house—the larger ones for Ruth, her brother, and their parents. The small ones were still inside.
“Stay here,” I ordered, pointing to a tall hay bale.
Alex shook his head. “There are . . . bodies in there. There could be more than you’re reckoning. I’m coming with you.”
“I’ll check and make sure that no one’s there. I’ll come out on the porch and wave for you to come in.”
He looked at me dubiously.
“I have the Himmelsbrief.” I patted my pocket. “You can hear me scream from this distance.”
He acquiesced. “Five minutes.”
Neither one of us had a watch, but it sounded good. I nodded sharply. “Five minutes.”
I stepped out from behind the bale. Sweat broke out on the back of my neck. I was about to enter this house, full of dead, all alone.
Resolutely, I put one foot before the other, until I reached the gate. I unlatched it and let myself into the yard. The shadow of the house fell over me, the sun behind it. I was all too aware that the vampires only needed a shadow to survive, mentally calculating how many steps it was from the door to the patch of sun beyond the gate.
Something white moved in the corner of my eye, and a squeak escaped my lips. But it was only the white horse, standing at the edge of the fence.
I whistled to him. But he stood, rooted, on the other side of the yard. It was as if he sensed where the property line was. He could smell it. Smell the death here.
I walked up to the front step. The front door was closed but unlocked, and the windows were still open to give the house the opportunity to air out. The knob was slick on my hand as I shoved the door open.
“Hello?” I called. My voice was dry and cracked. I licked my lips. “Herr Stoltz? Frau Gerlach?”
Silence radiated through the building.
“Anyone there?”
No one answered me. And I was too afraid to continue farther alone.
I turned on my heel, walked down the step. I lifted my hand to wave to Alex but dropped it down to my side.
A plume of dust was lifting down the dirt road. I squinted, trying to distinguish who it was. A familiar figure held the reins, nodded to me as he pulled his horses up to the gate. The Hexenmeister.
I hurried to meet him.
The old man eased himself down from the step of his buggy. Herr Stoltz had a two-seated courting buggy, like Elijah. Only his was much, much older and showed bits of rust at the seams and along the inside tracks of the wheels. He tied his graying black mare to the fence post. The horse flicked her ears at the house, turned away.
“It’s okay, girl,” the Hexenmeister muttered at her. “We won’t be long.” He glanced at the opposite side of the yard, at the white horse frozen in place.
“I dinna recognize that horse.”
My mouth flattened. “He’s from Outside. I found him a few days ago . . . with a bloody saddle. And a foot still in the stirrup. I hoped that he would just go on . . .”
He whistled for the horse, muttered something in Hochdeutsch that the breeze ripped away before I could distinguish it. The horse picked its way carefully around the perimeter of the property and joined the black mare at the fence. Herr Stoltz shook some oats from his pocket, let the shy horse eat from his palm.
“Ja, there is evil in that house.” He explained, “A white horse is a sign of God’s purity. It will not willingly walk where the Darkness falls.” He rubbed the horse’s nose. “Where’s your friend?”
I gestured with my chin. “There.”
Alex emerged from behind the haystack, his hands loose at his side and his head lowered. I could not see his face beneath this hat. My heart quickened uncomfortably, and not just because I was exposing him to the possibility of discovery.
The Hexenmeister looked him up and down as he approached. “Good evening, young man.”
The Outsider stuck his hand out. “I’m Alex. You must be the wizard.”
The Hexenmeister took his hand, smiled. “Ja. I’m Stoltz. Thank you for . . . helping with this difficult work.”
“No problem, sir.”
I was startled at that bit of awkward politeness from Alex.
The Hexenmeister gestured to a brown paper bag on the seat of his buggy. “Please take that and come into the house. We must begin.”
Alex grabbed the paper sack, and we followed the Hexenmeister into the house of the dead.
“Jesus Christ,” Alex muttered.
The house had not been cleaned. Violence still stained the floors and walls. But the bodies were peaceful. On the kitchen table, Herr Hersberger lay, fully dressed, his hands folded over his chest. A hat covered the ruins of his face. His son lay on the floor beside him.
“Bring the bag here,” the Hexenmeister ordered. Alex placed it on the kitchen table, and the Hexenmeister’s withered hands dug into the sack. He laid out a crude wooden stake of green wood, a steel hammer, and a hacksaw.
I swallowed with an audible click.
The old man grasped the stake in one hand, the hammer in the other. “It must go through the heart,” he said quietly. “Like this.”
He set the point of the stake on Herr Hersberger’s chest. I flinched when he struck it with a hammer. No blood came from the wound as he hammered, with a soft sound like tenderizing a steak.
I swayed, and Alex put his arm around me.
I began reciting the Lord’s Prayer in a small, quavering voice.
The stake hit the back of the table with a hard, solid sound, like a nail in a wood block.
I suck
ed in my breath. “Is it done?”
“No.” The Hexenmeister set his tools down and rested for a few moments. “The head must be taken.” His hands shook as he reached for the saw. He set the blade against Herr Hersberger’s throat and drew it back like a violinist with a bow.
The first strokes were easy. The blade slipped through flesh until it hit bone. The Hexenmeister grunted as the blade skipped and embedded itself in the table, jammed. The hat fell off the remains of Herr Hersberger’s head, releasing a handful of flies.
“Let me,” Alex said, quietly. He took the saw from the old man, pushed Hersberger’s neck to the edge of the table, and finished the job with two awkward strokes.
“Good,” the old man said. “Now the son.”
We repeated the process with the younger man. I held the stake for the Hexenmeister, and Alex took the head.
Herr Stoltz wiped sweat from his forehead, looked upstairs. “The little girls are still up there?”
“Ja.” I cast my eyes downward. “What is left of them.”
We clomped up the staircase to the bedroom. The girls’ room was cheerfully drenched in sunlight, a breezed brushing through the ruffled curtains. The boxes had the lids pressed in place to keep the flies out, but they were not nailed shut yet. The Hexenmeister pushed the lids aside with his cane, inspected the contents.
“I put the garlic in the boxes,” I said, helplessly, my fingers winding together at my waist. “I didn’t know where to put it.”
Alex sucked in his breath, glanced at my rust-colored apron. “This . . . this is what you’ve been doing all day?”
“Ja,” I said, numbly. “Picking up the pieces.”
The Hexenmeister shook his head. “There is nothing more for us to do here.” He patted my sleeve. “You have done well. Now, where is the mother and the other sister?”
“In the spring room,” I said. “Frau Gerlach and I were able to . . . make them presentable.”
The Hexenmeister frowned. “You should not have left them in the basement. It is too close to earth. Too dark.”