“Did you get the job?” she asked, without looking up.
“Yes. Thank you.” I hesitated. “My shoulder is sore. Is there a healer nearby?” I asked for a healer instead of a doctor because I was hoping for a referral to a braucher, a good witch. Like most folk-healers, I figured they depended on word of mouth since the authorities took a dim view.
“There’s one up the street at 949,” Mrs. Kemmner said. “Thomas Zeigler. Tell him I sent you. He does good work.”
“I can pay,” I said, in case she doubted.
“That’s good. Sometimes, he’ll take a chicken or fresh-baked bread, if money is tight.”
“I’ll go see him after breakfast. I hope he can help.” Mostly, I wanted to see what I could learn from him about witches since my deal with Krukis made my body self-healing. But I figured I could fake a few pulled muscles for a good cause.
I bid her goodnight, wondering as I climbed the steps how late she stayed up, and what she did with the things she knitted. I didn’t ponder much, because I’d had a busy day. I undressed and then fell across my bed and let sleep take me.
3
The smell of sausage woke me. The rooming house where I stayed in Cleveland also included meals, and our landlady was a good cook. There was a seasoning in this sausage that smelled different, and I realized it was bratwurst, almost certainly locally made. That boded well, and I dressed quickly and washed my face, combing my dark hair to be presentable. Alcohol offered me no real respite, and I hadn’t desired a companion since my Agata died, but good food was the balm of immortality.
“I didn’t know if you’d be up this early,” Mrs. Kemmner greeted me when I came to the table. The clock told me that it was after seven, and since no one else was at the table, I assumed that my fellow boarders had already left for work.
“I’m not a heavy sleeper,” I said, settling myself at the table. A blue and white metal coffee pot sat on a trivet, next to a bowl of scrambled eggs, a plate of sausage links, and a loaf of homemade bread with butter. The strong, dark coffee had little effect on me now that I was immortal, but like alcohol, I drank it for the taste and the memory of who I used to be. I made a plate for myself, eating with gusto. Mrs. Kemmner looked on with approval.
“This is real good,” I said with my mouth full. Her normally stern expression softened, and I wondered if she had sons my age—well, the age I appeared.
“Eat up. It won’t keep. I already had all I want,” she told me, and then left me to finish as she went to the kitchen to do the dishes.
I ate my fill and carried my plate out to the sink, as my mother trained me.
“You’re a good boy,” she said, patting my arm with a hand laced with blue veins and liver spots. I wondered if I’d been right about her having grown sons and where they were. I hadn’t seen evidence of a Mr. Kemmner, and boarding houses tended to be widow’s work. I thanked her for the food, and she reminded me to pick up my bag lunch when I came back from the healer.
On the way out, I paused in the living room. I hadn’t looked around yesterday. A photograph of a young man in a military uniform from the Great War sat on top of the black upright piano, and beside it, an older wedding picture that was probably Mrs. Kemmner’s. I suspected that both the husband and the son were dead.
Outside, Reading bustled with people who were in a hurry to get to their destinations. The milkman’s wagon rolled by with a clink of bottles, and school children raced by, likely headed for class. The smell of bread meant either a bakery or hausfraus getting an early start on their chores. Underneath it all hung the smell of coal smoke and horse shit, and the cough drops from the factory.
Making my way down the sidewalk reminded me of what a hermit I’d become when I didn’t have a case. I took my meals at the boarding house, where I had friends among the others who stayed there, and I drank at Ben’s speakeasy, but otherwise, I kept to myself with my books and my radio. A solitary widower’s life. Comfortable enough, I supposed, but quiet.
Sometimes, too quiet.
I pushed those thoughts from my mind, figuring that the anniversary of Agata’s passing accounted for my gloomy thoughts. I had a case to solve and a city’s secrets to uncover. That should certainly be enough to keep me from brooding, at least for a while.
A brisk walk brought me to 949 North Ninth Street, a red-brick row home with a stained-glass transom window above the door. I rang the bell and waited on the steps. As I stood there, I felt the same prickle between my shoulder blades that I had felt before when the dark witch attacked me. Had I brought danger to the healer just by showing up?
“Can I help you?” A man I guessed to be Dr. Zeigler opened the door. He wore a tweed jacket instead of a doctor’s coat, with a pince-nez perched on a hawk-like nose. The man was all sharp angles, gaunt with a prominent brow, high cheekbones, and a strong jaw. His clothing hung from his tall, square frame like a scarecrow. Zeigler had a melancholy look to him, and he smelled like Macassar oil and peppermint lozenges.
“Mrs. Kemmner sent me,” I replied. “Sore shoulder.”
“Come in.”
I followed him into a home set up identically to the rooming house, only with an office instead of a front sitting room. It looked comfortable enough. Ziegler motioned for me to sit in a wooden chair and crossed his arms over his chest as he looked me up and down.
“What seems to be the problem?”
I made a show of raising my left arm as if the shoulder hurt. “I’ve done something to my shoulder. I was hoping you could fix it.”
“You know that I’m a healer, not a doctor. I use traditional methods.”
“Yes, she told me.”
Ziegler walked over and laid his hand on my shoulder. He closed his eyes, concentrating, and then recoiled, snatching his hand back.
“Who are you?” he asked, eyes wide and fearful. “You are gott beruhren.” God-touched.
“I’m a friend,” I replied. “I came to Reading to protect the good witches. I came to you because you are a braucher. I’ll help you if you will help me.”
“Help you, how?” He didn’t trust me. I didn’t blame him.
“I saw a man die verhext last night. A friend of a friend was murdered for being a witch. I’ve been in town one day, and have already been warned about the hexerei. What I don’t have is the information to connect those dots. I believe you can help me. But will you?”
Ziegler stared at me for a long time, and I wondered if he was using his abilities to decide whether not to believe me. Finally, he sighed and turned the sign on his door to “closed.”
“Come into the kitchen. I will fix coffee, and then we talk.”
I followed him through the next two rooms to the kitchen. Ziegler’s home was tidy and modest, and he didn’t make a show of his witchy abilities. Still, I knew what to look for—the bunches of dried plants, the protective “hex” signs, the smell of sage.
In the kitchen, he took a pot off the warming grate of the old coal stove and poured two cups of coffee. I knew before I smelled it that the brew would be dark, sharp, and bitter, even with sugar. I drank it anyhow, to show trust.
“I’m afraid I’ve put you in danger by coming here,” I said.
He looked up, surprised. “How so?”
“I was attacked by a dark power last night. That god-touch you felt saved me.”
Ziegler raised his eyebrow. “Do you know who attacked you? Or why?”
I shook my head. “Maybe he knew why I came here. Or maybe he realized I’m not really German. Like the others who died.”
The healer ran a hand back through his hair. “I’ve heard.” I thought he looked guilty—or maybe, ashamed.
“I’ve heard talk, around the neighborhood. Ugly things, like back over there, before the War.” He looked haunted, and I wondered what had made him choose to come here. We all had our stories, none of them happy. “I don’t wish to see those things happen here.”
Ziegler’s shaken appearance made me think he had lost somethi
ng precious to that hatred. “How much do you know about the hexeglaawe?” he asked after a moment when he had collected himself.
I recognized the word. It roughly translated as “witch beliefs.” “Some. Obviously not enough.”
“The hexerei have grown stronger lately,” Ziegler said. “They may be organizing. I’ve heard stories about a secret society of armanenschaft, occult priests who translate sacred mysteries, and cipher manuscripts.”
“Secret societies like the Free Society?”
Ziegler looked as if he were debating with himself on how much to say. “And the Order of the Golden Dawn. Those groups date back into the end of the last century. Always they have been about denying that some people were German enough to belong, or that they were even human.”
He licked his lips nervously. “Some groups drew the working people, but others attracted the most powerful and wealthy, who liked excluding those they considered to be inferior. Be careful, my friend.”
I knew that, better than most. “That’s why I look out for the ones who need help.”
Ziegler gave me another long appraisal, and I wondered what he saw. I wondered, but I wasn’t sure I really wanted to know. I had my own darkness, and plenty of blood stained my hands. I told myself I fought for the people who couldn’t, the champion of a god who watched out for the regular folks, but in the hour of the wolf I knew that some of those deeds had cast a shadow on my soul.
“Did you know the healer of Rehmeyer’s Hollow?”
“We crossed paths. When he died, powerful relics were taken from his house. Some of those relics enhance magic. Others bind dark powers.”
“If you had to guess who killed him—”
“Look to the Völkisch groups. Some of them wish to see the dark gods rise again.”
I felt a prickle on the back of my neck. “Any particular dark gods?”
Ziegler’s worry showed in his eyes. “Veles, god of the underworld.”
Holy shit. It would be an understatement to say that Veles did not get along well with my patron, Krukis.
“I have had dreams,” Ziegler went on. “Of a black spot on the mountain. Then the sun turns black, and there are monsters in the deep places.”
“Does any of that mean anything to you? It sounds bad, but it’s also not very specific.”
He shook his head. “No. My dreams are true sendings, but they are often riddles or filled with symbols. I saw a skull with crossed bones and a strange drawing of the sun.”
“Can you show me what you saw?”
Ziegler reached for a pad and pencil, and drew me a wheel within a wheel, with crooked spokes like lightning bolts. I had never seen anything like it.
“Is it familiar to you?” I asked.
“No. But deep in my belly, I fear it.” He paused. “I have something to show you—and a gift that may help.”
He left me in the kitchen and walked into one of the other rooms, then returned carrying a piece of parchment and a fountain pen. Ziegler slid the parchment toward me and made a mark at the bottom with the fountain pen.
“This is a himmelsbrief,” he told me.
I spoke German better than I read it, and the old-fashioned fraktur lettering on the document made it all the harder. Heavy strokes of ink and florid embellishments gave the yellowed parchment a medieval appearance. “A ‘heaven letter’?”
“It holds divine protection,” Ziegler told me. “It will protect you from evil and misfortune, and enable you to speak with the dead.”
I had been about to object since I already had divine protection of another sort, but I shut my mouth because my deal with Krukis didn’t do squat to help me talk to ghosts. That sounded like it might come in handy.
“What’s the catch?” Magical items always came with a price. Best to know that up front.
“You must defend those who cannot defend themselves,” he replied. I did my best to live up to that, and it was what Krukis required of me for our deal.
“I accept.”
He folded the letter and handed it to me with a solemn expression. I felt like one of the knights of old, receiving a writ from the king.
“Be careful,” Ziegler said. “I believe that most of our neighbors are good people. But the darkness is spreading, and sometimes even good people can be led astray.”
“What about you? If they went after one healer, what’s to keep them from coming after you?” I asked.
“I have wardings. Protections. I trust in magic—but I also carry a gun.”
“Smart man. Thank you. If you need me, I’m down at Kemmner’s boarding house.”
He saw me out, and I found the sunny day did not lift my spirits. The speakeasy didn’t need me until evening, and I had no reason to hurry back to the boarding house except to pick up my bag lunch, so I took a walk down to Penn’s Commons, admiring the fountain and the statue of a large stag, and doing my best to appreciate the green open space as I ate my sandwich and apple, giving the City Jail a wide berth.
I didn’t see anyone following me, and at the moment, I didn’t feel a dark presence. But I still sensed that I had drawn the attention of something, or someone, not mortal. Intuition told me to seek it out, and I found myself drawn toward the far end of the park, toward Hill Road.
As I drew closer, I felt the weight of the himmelsbrief in my pocket as if it grew heavier with each step. When I reached the corner, the parchment felt leaden. The air around me grew cold, and a shudder went through me. An unassuming plaque, hidden off to the side, confirmed my suspicions. This was the potter’s field, the burying place for the poor, condemned, and unlucky.
Their justice was long-overdue, but those who wronged the dead had passed beyond the reach of mortal vengeance.
Unless…the forces that I had come to Reading to contain also had a hand in the misfortune of the unnamed dead?
Dr. Ziegler had said that the Völkisch groups like The Order and the Free Society attracted people from every class—including those in powerful positions. In Reading, that had to include the men who ran the railroad—and owned the coal and iron mines.
That gave me an idea. I intended to come back here to the pauper’s cemetery, once I had my questions ready for the dead. But I needed to go somewhere else first. Seventh and Elm, the site of the Reading Railroad Massacre.
It took me a bit to find the spot. Roads had been moved and renamed in the fifty years since the tragedy, and I wondered if that was, in part, to keep the place where the men died from becoming a shrine, to erase the memory of those who were killed. My feet seemed to know the way, and when I followed my instinct, the odd document in my pocket felt lighter.
The railroad’s treatment of its striking workers had been so bad that not only did civilians join in fray on the side of the strikers, but one regiment of the state militia threw down their weapons and refused to act against the workers. That was when the railroad company brought in its private security goons, and things went from bad to worse.
Gooseflesh raised on my arms, and a cold wind rose from nowhere, mussing my hair and tugging at my clothing. There wasn’t much left now except for a narrow cut between two high stone walls that allowed the tracks to run beneath the cross street.
I could smell the gunpowder and blood, and see the smoke rise in the air. Men shouted and cried out, jeered and cursed. Different voices, different accents, but not so far removed from those memories of my last breaths fifteen years later, on a different slope.
That’s when I realized I wasn’t just imagining the view of the massacre, or reliving my final moments in Homestead. The magic of the himmelsbrief showed me the tragedy as it unfolded, or perhaps made it possible for me to see through the eyes of the dead.
I heard voices all around me.
“—monsters in the mines.”
“—couldn’t command us, so they brought hell spawn from the depths.”
“—summon the power of hell, and call forth the Vril-ya.”
I staggered, putting my hands to my e
ars. The voices went silent, and I stumbled to the side of the embankment, well away from the tracks, to catch my breath and still my pounding heart. Despite Krukis’s gift, I knew that I had—would always have—what the soldiers from the Great War called “shell shock” or “soldier’s heart” from the horror of my death. Those memories haunted my dreams, made me flinch, and sent my heart pounding from loud noises, or doused me in cold sweats.
What I had just experienced was not the wrestling of my damaged mind to come to grips with my violent death. I knew what I had heard was real, the ghosts of the massacre trying to stop a new and perhaps even worse calamity from befalling their hardworking brethren.
My hands shook, my shoulders heaved as I struggled to regain control, and I knew if a policeman were to find me at this moment, he would be certain I was drunk. After a bit, I steadied, though inside, I felt shaken to my core.
“Thank you,” I murmured. “Danke.” I gathered my wits and headed back toward the rooming house, wondering if I would encounter other spirits along the way.
Fortunately, no more messengers from the restless dead accosted me. I closed the door of the boarding house behind me and breathed a sigh of relief.
“Mr. Mack? Is that you?” Mrs. Kemmner had left her rocker, although her knitting project remained on the seat, awaiting her return. She bustled in from the kitchen.
“Did Dr. Ziegler help?” she asked, peering at me over her spectacles.
“He was very helpful. Thank you,” I said, which was the truth so long as I didn’t mention my shoulder.
“There’s a note for you.” She pointed to a sealed envelope lying on top of the piano. “A man dropped it by earlier.”
I thanked her, and she headed back to the kitchen. The handwriting on the envelope was West’s, and I wondered for a second if Mrs. Kemmner was the sort to steam open the seal in search of juicy gossip, but I saw no signs of tampering.
Joe. New developments on the job. Meet me by the fountain in the park at six tonight. Watch your back. —W
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