Mister White: The Novel

by John C. Foster

  The body beneath the sheet had not moved. Of course it had not moved. Still, more light would be beneficial.

  He took one long step to the windows and yanked the cord that lifted the blind so that silver moonlight reflecting off the snow would enter the car.

  Herr Steiner brought the lighter close to the fogged window and saw the beads of condensation on the interior. He extended an index finger and drew a quick arc.

  “Nein,” he said even as a terrible thought bubbled forth. “Nein!” He heard the slither of fabric and whirled about as the body beneath the sheet sat up.

  - 4 -

  The car was dark save for the parallel running lights on the floor and a few reading lights. Lewis moved quickly but carefully, trying not to bump seats and awaken anyone. He had decided to get off the train despite being far from any towns and did not want passengers to be able to place him if they were questioned later.

  It was a car full of German and Belgian skiers returning home and Scandinavian tourists heading south where the days were longer and warmer. Here, a family slept in an ungainly pile of limbs and puffy coats; there, four nuns sat straight across in a row with veiled heads bowed. Whether asleep or in prayer, Lewis could not tell.

  His fear had diminished to a background hum as his training reasserted itself. He plucked a draped scarf lightly from the back of one seat. A hat and gloves from the rack above a snoring old man. It would be cold and he would need the protection.

  He reached the end of the car and peeked through the porthole before sliding the door half open and slipping through, pulling it shut behind him in one smooth motion. He was exhausted, his lack of conditioning resulting in sore muscles and stiff joints, but he was reaching into deep wells of experience.

  He had been afraid before.

  He had been hunted before.

  He had survived.

  A glance into the dining car showed empty tables. Lewis slipped inside, pulling the door shut behind him to cut off the rush of noise.

  He became aware of the distinctive clink of silverware and noticed the flicker of a candle, obscured by the man eating alone at one table, facing away from him.

  Lewis reached into the valise and his fingers found the butt of the pistol, but he did not draw it.

  “Komm, Herr Edgar, mit mir.” Come, Mr. Edgar, join me.

  The voice was muffled but familiar, and Lewis took a step toward the diner, freeing the pistol from the valise and holding it down by his leg.

  “A strange night, ja?”

  Lewis stiffened at the English. He was certain he had spoken only German while onboard the train.

  “Was war das?” Lewis asked, stepping closer and aiming the pistol at the neatly combed hair on the back of the diner’s head. “In Deutsch, bitte.”

  The man was bent protectively over his plate in the manner of a starving beggar, sawing diligently with his right hand. Lewis heard a mewling sound that raised the hackles on his neck. A bloody steak knife was placed on the table and a fork picked up, all with the right hand. The man ate, the sound of his chewing sickening.

  Lewis closed the distance until the barrel of his pistol was mere feet from the back of the man’s head. He noticed dark stains on the white tablecloth near the knife and the conductor’s cap resting on the table.

  “Schau mich an,” Lewis hissed. Look at me.

  The man’s shoulders twitched and he lowered the fork to rest on the plate as he turned, cheeks bulging as he chewed, eyes streaming tears.

  The head conductor. Lewis flinched in surprise.

  “How?” He blurted, only then noticing the man’s ruined left hand resting on the plate. The conductor swallowed and picked up the knife without moving his eyes from Lewis.

  He began sawing off another finger.

  “What the fuck?” Lewis said.

  “Please,” Herr Steiner said, and Lewis made a sound as he heard a finger bone snap. Blood was a drunken smear of lipstick around Steiner’s mouth. “Who is he?”

  “Stop,” Lewis said, stepping back.

  “Who is Mister White?” Steiner asked, and Lewis bolted back the way he had come, banging through the door and skidding on the wet metal between cars until he careened into the entry of the first passenger car.

  He threw a desperate glance over his shoulder, but Steiner had not left his table. By then, Lewis had the next door open and was stepping into the passenger car, dragging the door shut behind him.

  The car was now empty and dark.

  He searched in vain for a passenger and saw no luggage, no books or laptop computers. There were no jackets draped on seats or empty food cartons. He steadied himself against the nearest seat back, his feet invisible with the running lights out. His breath misted in the air and he heard the crackle of moisture freezing on the windows. A choosy, eldritch light entered the windows, outlining certain details, while leaving others entirely in shadow.

  In the eerie illumination, Lewis saw that his initial assessment was incorrect. He could just make out the four nuns sitting in a row towards the rear of the car, unmoving beneath their black shawls.

  The train shuddered and he stumbled, reaching out to catch himself on a seat back. A puff of dust arose as his palm slapped down and he recoiled, turning to flee.

  He detected a flicker of motion through the porthole and pressed his face against the glass to see.

  The door across from Lewis’s car slid slowly open to reveal the dark maw of the dining car. A smear of white floated within the black until some deeper color, some greater density of darkness, filled the doorway.

  His psyche short-circuited and he stumbled back before sliding into the aisle seat, paralyzed as he watched the handle of the door begin to turn. The pale moon of a face filled the porthole, unformed and terrifying behind the glass.

  “No, no, no.”

  He lifted his weapon and fired blindly in the direction of the door. Three shots. Four. They were deafening in the enclosed space of the train car but shocked him from his lethargy so that he could roll to his knees and begin to crawl, dropping the pistol and valise. From behind him came the low keening sound of a wounded animal.

  He heard the scrape of corrupted metal, the noise of whetstone against knife and rusting hinges opening with an avalanche of dust. The strength went out of his arms, fighting with all of his might not to collapse, groveling like a worm as—

  Mister White.

  —swept toward him.

  He had no time for regrets, no time to conjure the face of his wife and child. There was no room even for fear as blinding white pain seared his mind.

  The train rocked savagely to the side as if struck by artillery fire and light swept over Lewis as a rooster tail of sparks fountained up from the wheels, assaulting the windows with luminescent fury that threw crazed, rippling shadows about the compartment.

  In his madness, Lewis could hear words.

  “Quid erat agnum est nunc leo.”

  A whisper.

  A scream.

  Lewis slapped his hands over his ears as the train was rocked again, as if struck by a giant’s palm.

  The dark nuns rose.

  “Quid erat agnum est nunc leo!”

  The windows exploded outward and a cyclone of ice and snow screamed inside.

  Quid erat agnum est nunc leo. What was the lamb is now the lion.

  The nuns filed into the aisle and began to walk towards him. The terrible weight of their regard pressed him to the floor, peeling back his coat and shirt and skin and ribs to skewer the very heart of him with their absolute judgment. Every flaw in his character, every wicked decision, was mounted on a glass slide as a giant eye peered down at his soul through a microscope of impossible proportions.

  Behind him, he heard a rumble so low and deep, a subsonic scream that twisted his insides and filled his mouth with bile as the first nun reached up with hands of withered flesh, of scar tissue, of bone, and lifted the black veil from her emaciated face. Her toothless mouth opened, as did her eyes,
white and blind in the ever-dark, and from the bowels of the crone came a sound—

  - 5 -

  Are you all right? Are you okay?

  It was a muffled voice, not by distance, but as if the speaker and Lewis were both underwater.

  “Sind sie verletzt?” Are you hurt?

  Lewis felt gentle fingers probing him and he reacted violently, sweeping his hands blindly as he opened his eyes and pain exploded throughout his battered body.

  Illuminated by firelight, a bearded old man in a monk’s cassock was backing away, eyes wide and fixed on the pistol in Lewis’s right hand.

  “Nicht bewegen,” Lewis said, coughing against smoke as he pushed himself to a sitting position with his free hand.

  The man held out his hands, fingers wide. “Nein,” he said.

  Lewis pushed up to one knee and stood, body swaying but gun aimed unwaveringly at the other man. Behind him, Lewis saw that the train had derailed, or at least partially so. One car had split in half. Jagged, open ends, both halves pointed towards his position in the snow beside the tracks, as if he had been fired from a cannon.

  Quid erat agnum est nunc leo. The words filled Lewis’s head and flooded from his mouth. The old man stiffened as if he had been struck across the face.

  Lewis snatched the moment to look left and right. Not a single passenger besides himself had been ejected from the train. He searched for the pale-faced Mister White as a cold not born of winter chilled his blood.

  “Nonnen,” he said. Nuns.

  The old man’s eyes grew wider still, but Lewis was looking past him at the old flatbed truck with wooden boards lining both sides of the bed. It was running, door left ajar where it was parked on the snowy shoulder.

  “Munich. Now,” Lewis said, advancing with the pistol outstretched and herding the monk into the open driver’s door before quickly rounding the vehicle and jerking open the passenger door with a squeal of hinges. As he stepped up onto the running board, he looked again at the flaming wreckage of the train car. Looming up behind it was the wavering black of mighty ruins.

  He threw himself into his seat, burying the disbelief at what had happened onboard the train.

  “Drive,” he told the old monk, jabbing the gun into his ribs. Spitting snow, the truck lurched away from the train.

  - 6 -

  The old truck’s heater rattled like a fan one step away from the trash bin, while producing little in the way of warmth. Lewis was reminded of a line from Shakespeare, something about sound and fury signifying nothing.

  Then he caught sight of a featureless oval in the windshield and looked away, frightened of his own reflection.

  “I am Lucien,” the monk said, removing a hand from the wheel and holding it out. The truck slid a bit in the snow and Lewis grabbed the armrest.

  “Christ, keep your hands on the wheel,” he said.

  “Yes,” Lucien said, unperturbed, while righting the truck. “May I ask you a question?”

  “I’ll tell you the address when we get to Munich.”

  “No, no.” Lucien made a sound that might have been a chuckle. “I merely wish to ask you, are you a good man?”

  “No more talking.”

  Lucien raised a conciliatory hand. “I am sorry. It helps to keep me awake while driving. Normally I sleep now but was awakened by a call moments before the accident.”

  Lewis rubbed a hand over his face and said nothing.

  “I am caretaker for the convent of Saint Emily de Vialar,” Lucien continued, in his unruffled manner. “The ruins located on the other side of the tracks, at the site of the accident.”

  Lewis leaned his head back against the rest and listened, anything to distract him from what had happened aboard the train.

  “In 1941, during the war, the four residents of St. Emily’s raised their voice in protest against what they saw as the Vatican’s capitulation and tacit acceptance of the genocide. For a brief while, their voice was heard, newspapers made in basements were handed out. You see, they did not approach the men of the surrounding villages, they spoke only to the women.”

  Lewis cracked the window an inch and lifted his chin for a sip of cold air to clear his head, but a buzzing had started that would not go away. He wondered if he had a concussion.

  “The women spoke to each other across lines of drying laundry and huddled at market. They spoke to the schoolteachers who chafed under the new edict and finally, when it seemed as if a dam would burst, they spoke to those men who had not yet been sucked into the tide of war.”

  The old man drew in a breath and pushed it out, as if to lift a heavy burden.

  “A great gathering occurred at the convent and the nonnen spoke eloquently and with passion to the crowd. And their truth was felt by all…and by the men of the Gestapo, who were among the audience, black uniforms covered in the wool of farmers.”

  Lewis placed the pistol in his lap and pressed fingertips to either temple, rubbing, but the buzzing only increased, as if a machine inside his skull had awakened and was spinning to life.

  “Stop,” Lewis said.

  “The Gestapo held the crowd at gunpoint as they made an example of the four nonnen, shaming and violating them, breaking them in front of the people until each of the four was killed with fire and blade. The Gestapo did not kill the people, as expected, but allowed them to go forth and spread the word of what happened to those who spoke against the Reich.” He paused and glanced at Lewis. “And this is why I ask if you are a good man because I would understand why the nonnen helped you tonight.”

  “The dead nuns?” Lewis asked, attempting a sneer.

  “Dead in body but, clearly, not in spirit.”

  “Then you’re shit out of luck, my friend, because I am nobody’s idea of a good man.”

  “Nein,” Lucien said with a shake of his head. “Then you are about some task that is good?”

  “I’m running for my life.”

  “Running from what?”

  “I…don’t know.” Lewis grabbed his head. “What the hell are you doing to me?”

  Lucien patted Lewis on the leg. “Nothing, my friend, but you were touched by a miracle this night, and a man does not walk away from such an event without an awakening.”

  “Bullshit.”

  Lucien laughed. “Not bullshit. You have seen it and cannot call it so. Tell me, what did you see?”

  Lewis rolled down the window and let the cold air slice into his sweating forehead. “I can’t explain.”

  “You were at a moment of danger, of crisis, when the nonnen saved you?”

  Lewis jerked back in his seat at the vividness of the memory. “God, yes.”

  “And was this danger the work of man?”

  “I don’t think it was.” Lewis felt tears leaking from the corners of his eyes.

  “Now, tell me what you are about,” Lucien demanded.

  “I’m running.”

  Lucien slammed his palm on the dashboard with a crack like wood striking wood. “Tell me what you are about!”

  “I’m trying to get back to my family,” Lewis said, choking back a confused sob. “I don’t understand what’s happening, but I think they’re in danger, and I need to get to them.”

  Lucien let out a great sigh, and his tense features softened as he spoke so quietly that Lewis struggled to hear him over the rushing wind. “And what could be more holy a task than that?” Lucien hummed a snatch of music to himself and gave his passenger time to think before asking, “What is in Munich?”

  “The train to Vienna.”

  “Ah, the train is terribly crowded,” Lucien said. “But perhaps more comfortable than this aged chariot?” He patted the dashboard.

  “Thank you,” Lewis said.

  As if in answer, the monk downshifted the truck and pulled to the side of the road.

  “Hey,” Lewis said, picking up the gun. “What the hell are you doing?”

  Lucien smiled and gently pushed down the barrel of the pistol. “You have been touched
by a miracle, by the nonnen of Saint Emily de Vialar.”

  And the buzzing opened inside Lewis Edgar’s head and he knew the truth of the old man’s words.

  “The nonnen are saints of God and can see into a man’s heart, but I must listen to words. You are not Catholic?”

  “No,” Lewis said.

  “Then I will make this easy for you,” Lucien said with a grin. “Tell me, my son, why you think you are a bad man?”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  - 1 -

  Ronald slept deeply, having succumbed immediately to a dreamless state of exhaustion as soon as he stretched out on the couch. He lay in snoring slumber in the front room, shirt rucked up to reveal the pale bloat of his belly, the prone expanse of him lit by the unflattering flicker of the snarling television.

  On three different occasions, sheep had fallen into the millpond and Ronald was forced to swim after them, clutching a fistful of sopping wool as he dragged them bleating and kicking to shore. Each time he had tied the offending animal to the trough with a length of rope, ignoring their plaintive cries. The three goats stared at the performance as if entertained, chewing their cud and regarding Ronald with glittering eyes.

  “Fuck you,” he had said, more than once. The chewing beasts had grinned back.

  He had considered calling The Man to report the incidents, but ultimately rationalized that it was just the way of sheep to be so stupid. Clozapine was good for rationalization. And so he had fallen asleep, science fiction blaring onscreen, his frozen French bread pizza lying unfinished on the plate he had placed on the floor near the couch.

  The front door rattled in its frame and Ronald jerked awake with a phlegmy snort. “Wha—”

  Something struck it hard, and again the door banged in its frame.

  Ronald sat up and made to rise but tripped with a foot twisted in his blankets. He fell headlong and cracked his chin against the unforgiving floor.

  Bang!

  The door shook and Ronald saw paint flecks fly free from the interior.