Witch Creek

by Laura Bickle

  “I regret that it took me so long to welcome you to Temperance,” he said. “It has been a busy season here.”

  “I see that the town is bustling. Very promising.”

  “You are involved with ironworks, I hear?”

  “Yes. Most of our work is with the railroads, though I see you have impressive taste in decorative iron.” It would only be polite to remark on the fence.

  Lascaris gave a smile. “Yes. That was an indulgence. Very difficult to source that kind of craftsmanship out here on the frontier . . .”

  We chatted about the town, first over drinks and then dinner. I learned that Lascaris had been in this location for only a few years. At that time, there had been no town, not even a railroad stop.

  “It was dust and grassland,” he told me over dessert.

  “And now it’s a thriving town. With such a lovely name . . . biblical?” I thought not. Temperance was an image in an arcane set of Tarot cards that circulated among magicians. The image was of a haloed angel pouring water and fire together at the edge of a river, creating a transcendent third element.

  He chuckled. “No. That was the name of my deceased wife.”

  “Ah, I’m terribly sorry for your loss.”

  Lascaris shrugged. “It’s been years, but the loss of a wife does linger.”

  I wondered how much of that was true.

  “Well, the house is beautifully appointed,” I remarked, gazing up at the hand-painted wallpaper.

  “Thank you. I like to have a bit of civilization out here in Temperance. But not too much. Just the right amount.” He steepled his fingers before him. “So. I am quite curious about your intentions toward my little town. I feel quite protective of it, as its father of sorts.”

  “Understandably so,” I said. I had suspected as much. I also suspected that I would only be able to remain in town if I was useful to him. “May I be frank with you?”

  “Please.”

  “My employer has been struggling under the shadow of a poor reputation since the Ridgewater train accident. I assume you heard of it?”

  “I heard something of it. That some flawed iron was found to have been implicated in a train derailment in Pennsylvania. Very unlucky.”

  “It was. Business has suffered, and much has fled to our competitors. My employers are searching for new markets where we might effectively demonstrate that we have improved our production techniques.”

  Lascaris paused. “I see. And the product has improved? I would not like to see such a happenstance in Temperance.”

  “Of course. The incident in Ridgewater was unfortunate, not to be repeated. However, it has left us, shall we say . . . limited in capital. There are outstanding debts, and the owners of the company are doing their best to save it.”

  I left that idea there, but I could see that Lascaris was thinking. I wanted him to consider that the situation could be turned to his advantage. That advantage being . . . a way to launder money out of Temperance under the noses of his existing investors, without attracting attention.

  “Of course,” I said, “we would not wish to do business in any market where we were unwelcome. And you no doubt have many existing business relationships to contend with.”

  “That’s true,” he admitted. “But I think that you and I might be able to come to an agreement of mutual advantage.”

  We retired to the sitting room and talked late into the night. A servant brought absinthe, which I had not had for many years. By the time the moon was high overhead, it was decided. We worked out the terms and percentages. I was honestly surprised that Lascaris would be this quick to deal. I had figured that the idea would be danced around for many weeks.

  But there was something impulsive about Lascaris. And maybe just a little bit desperate. I couldn’t figure that part out at the time.

  But later, I knew what it was. It was both impulse and desperation, but also a sheer madness that threatened every man, woman, and child in Temperance . . . and stranger creatures than I could ever have dreamed of in a thousand years and a thousand bottles of absinthe.

  Sunset played through the stained-glass windows of the Compostela and faded.

  Lev waited. He waited in darkness and finally decided to light the lamps. His heart jumped every time the door opened, but only a couple of regulars straggled in.

  Perhaps Archer had let himself in the back door and had crashed on the couch. But Lev’s hearing was too keen; he was certain he would have heard footfalls on the back stairs and steps above from his vantage point at the bar.

  His ghosts waited with him. Wilma busied herself with blowing in the ears of her favorite regulars and insulting the rest, while Father Caleb fiddled with his rosary beads as if he expected someone to answer him. Lev appreciated this show of support, on some level.

  At dusk, a shadow in a hat came to the front door. Lev instinctively distrusted men in hats. That probably came from his time during the war. But it was a visceral pang of dread that he felt from his gut clear through to his spine, not just remembered foreboding.

  The man approached the bar, wearing a park ranger’s uniform. Lev recognized him, greeted him as the man removed his hat and placed it on the bar.

  “Ranger Hollander,” he said.

  Mike Hollander nodded, looked away, then looked back. “Do you happen to know an Archer Harker?”

  “Yes.” Lev didn’t elaborate. Maybe the kid had pissed in the wrong pool, but Lev wasn’t going to give the ranger more to go on than he had to. He mentally calculated how much money he had in the cash register and the safe for bail money.

  “I’m sorry to say it, but . . . we found him dead a few hours ago beside a creek in the southeast portion of the park.”

  Lev stayed rooted in place. Blood rushed through his ears. He gripped the edge of the bar so hard his knuckles cracked.

  “Oh, no. Hell, no,” Wilma said. She was on his left, Father Caleb on his right. He could feel their cold shadows pressing against him, trying to fortify him. Father Caleb made the sign of the cross and muttered to himself.

  The ranger continued. “It looks like foul play. He was apparently packing up camp when it happened. A hiker found him. Your name and address were in his wallet. I, uh . . . were you close?”

  Lev whispered, “He was my son.”

  Was. For maybe a day.

  And now he was dead. Here, and then gone.

  Chapter 14

  The Madness Season

  These pages had taken time to write. As Petra sifted through them, she felt creases and wrinkles pressed into the paper, as if Gabe had tried to wad some of them up and throw them away. Others had hesitation marks carved in the margins, broken dashes that she imagined came from him pressing the pencil on the paper, thinking. Some were filled with lead, others empty. The pressure and vigor of the penmanship bloomed and faded, as if he had slept, woken, and written again and again.

  She read and slept, waking with the pages pressed against her cheek. She drank Maria’s potions and let her fingers graze over his writing, trying to imagine what he had felt living these events, recalling them.

  This was the closest she’d been to him, she realized, this account of his past. And she might never get that close to him again:

  Lascaris was mad. I had been drawn into his manipulations. Foolishly, I thought I had the upper hand.

  I was terribly, terribly wrong.

  Lascaris tested me, in many ways. First, he tested my ability to fulfill my end of the business bargain. Pinkerton sent a shipment of pig iron to make things look authentic, and I sent away bags of gold nuggets hidden in wine bottles and flour sacks. Cash would come back through a courier. This went back and forth a few times over the next months, without so much as a hitch. I feared a train robbery setting all these carefully laid plans awry, but we were lucky in that respect.

  The financials up to snuff, he tested my loyalties. I was invited to Lascaris’s home often. He was quite the entertainer, throwing parties for the townsfolk, visit
ors he found interesting, and whichever ladies he fancied at the moment. There was a revolving door of them, and none of those short-lived romances ever ended happily. And by happily, I mean that most of those women were never heard from again.

  In the winter of 1861, a woman stepped off the train who I thought might have been his match. She was a singer from Ireland. She’d run out of money, and the conductor refused to take her any farther. She got kicked off in Temperance with only the clothes on her back. In most situations, she would have wound up immediately at the brothel, wandering half-dressed through the secret doors to the hotel in search of gold nuggets.

  But Lascaris had seen her crying in the street and spitting on the train tracks. Something about that intrigued him, apparently, and he brought her home with him. The deal was ostensibly that she would cook for him. I am certain Lascaris knew nothing of Irish cooking, but he learned.

  Muirenn turned out to be much more than a domestic servant, of course. He heard her singing in the kitchen, and he was entranced. She sang at his parties, and Lascaris fell for her. As much as a man like that can fall for a woman, anyway. But it was more than her voice; Muirenn was a witch, and that was irresistible to Lascaris.

  By that time, Lascaris had dropped his guard a bit around me. He would play little card tricks for Muirenn, pull coins from behind her ear. Simple sleight of hand. One day, she surprised him by snatching the coin from his hand. She put it into her palm and closed her fist over it. When she opened it, the coin had turned into a tiny frog that hopped out onto the floor. The frog wound up under the chair in which I sat. I scooped it up and let it out the door.

  Lascaris laughed uproariously at that. “You must tell me how you did it!”

  Muirenn looked him straight in the eye with her hands on her hips and announced, “I’m a witch.”

  This was my opening, the one I’d been waiting for. “There’s no such thing as witches,” I declared. “You and your party tricks.”

  Muirenn waved me off. “You do not have to believe in something for it to be real. Tell me, do you believe in God?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know if there is or isn’t a God. But I do know that witches and demons exist only in the mind of the priest.”

  Lascaris only grinned, though. “Show me more, Muirenn.”

  She took off her shoes. She stood barefoot on his freshly polished floor. She clapped her shoes together, and they were suddenly full of water, cascading out on the floor in a puddle.

  Lascaris clapped like a child. “Brava!”

  Her chin lifted. “Show me a better party trick than that.”

  And that began an evening of one-upsmanship, the likes of which I had never seen. I think that I am relatively good at debunking most magicians. I have exposed a great many false table-tippers and fraudulent mediums in my time. But Lascaris and Muirenn were inexplicable. I thought I could have explained the frog as simple misdirection and the shoes as a bit of hypnotism. But it all went terribly, terribly insane.

  Lascaris started a fire. He went to the basement, and there was a rattle of locks. He returned with an assortment of glass bottles. He threw an apple into the fire with a pinch of black powder, and it rolled back out as an orange. He bit into the orange and spat out mercury onto the floor.

  Muirenn was not impressed. She muttered over the fire, and the fire took on the shape of a great lizard or a dragon.

  “Salamander, salamander,” she chanted. “Come to me from the ether.”

  The fire-being crawled out of the fire. Muirenn reached toward it and stroked its ill-formed head without getting burned. The fire coalesced into a tiny lizard-like creature with a pattern of stars on its back, which turned and fled back into the fire.

  I sat down on the couch and feigned confusion.

  “Don’t faint,” Lascaris said, clapping me on the back and shoving a brandy into my hand. He was delighted. “You are among friendly magics.”

  By hard and bitter experience, I knew better. There is no friendly magic.

  Lascaris began to reveal to me more truth. Once he had an audience for his feats, his ego soared. He would start to hold séances, the three of us, in his home over a black mirror. Many strange visions bubbled up in the glass, things my mind now still struggles to comprehend. I demonstrated appropriate naive curiosity and fascination. He asked me to source odd things for him in addition to the iron shipments: a peacock and a pair of peahens, volcanic ash from Italy, coins from ancient Rome, a jar full of shark teeth.

  I knew that he was using these materials for more than party tricks to impress Muirenn. Gradually, I was invited to their odd after-dinner rituals: attempts to summon spirts and such. They’d send away the servants for the night and draw arcane symbols on the floors in chalk to dance on. Creatures would come knocking at the windows or peer back from the glass in mirrors. By the ends of these sessions, the chalk would be worn away, but the creatures would linger.

  Real magic was ruled by Lascaris’s pocket watch. He insisted that the most powerful times to work magic were at noon and midnight, that spirits were most restless then. He would work the most bizarre magics at those times, the ones calling for blood, spite, and sacrifices.

  On my walks back to the inn, you can be certain that I kept one hand on my pistol and another on my silver knife. Shadows seethed on the road between his house and town. I jumped at every coyote howl and every flicker of bats across the sky.

  There was a particular coyote I remember. He would walk with me along the road from Lascaris’s gate to the edge of town. No monster of the dark ever bothered me in his company. He would keep pace with me, my escort in darkness. He would walk to the end of the dirt road, then stand and watch from the edge of night as I walked to the main street in Temperance. Then, he would always vanish.

  I wondered if my strange escort was a summoning of Lascaris or Muirenn. But no. I didn’t think so. The coyote merely ferried me back and forth, like Charon over the River Styx. Why, I never figured out. Perhaps he was some kind of genius loci, a spirit of that place and that dirt road.

  I had enough suspicion that Lascaris was conjuring gold by this time and not mining it. Gold and other, more fearsome things. He began to ask if I would send for more morbid and dangerous things for him: the severed hands of an executed prisoner, a rare book that was rumored to be cursed, a cornerstone from a building destroyed in a fire. Once, he asked for a pair of fresh human eyes, and they had to be green.

  I’d been sitting on his porch when he asked for them. I blinked and blurted, “What do you want the eyes for?”

  “For the Great Work, my friend.” He blew smoke from his cigar into the darkness, where it writhed uncomfortably before dissipating.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “The Great Work is the greatest conjuring, beyond even the creation of gold. It is the culmination of the works of the seven stages of alchemy, perfecting each process until immortality can be achieved.”

  I pretended to be shocked into silence. He had confessed to the gold. I just needed proof to bring to Pinkerton.

  “I will get you the eyes,” I said. “Green.”

  That took some doing. Back east, Pinkerton’s men combed the undertakers for a green-eyed dead man. They cut his eyes out and pickled them in a jar, sending them to me carefully packed in a crate with some silks for Muirenn.

  Lascaris was pleased. He did not ask where they had come from, and I did not volunteer.

  But I felt I now had better standing to ask him more about the Great Work. I wanted to gauge how far along he was in this endeavor. The gold was fascinating enough, but I confess to having more curiosity about what his ultimate aims were, since the gold seemed like a mere means to an end.

  In hindsight, I realize I was already being shown another spell: the one I was under.

  He took me for a ride one day. We packed up two of his horses and headed east. On that ride, he told me that he was working through the alchemical stages, and that he thought he was close to perfecting th
em. We were on our way, he said, to show me the thing that he felt was key to accomplishing this.

  We passed through the lands that now surround the Rutherford Ranch. At that time, there were no buildings or fences or cattle. Just grassland and bison grazing in that sea of green whipped by the wind. We rode until we met a massive oak tree, standing alone in the field.

  “Behold,” he said. “The Lunaria.”

  It looked to be an ordinary tree to me. But I noticed that the land around it was dark, with the unmistakable rusty scent of old blood in the soil. I did not ask if the stain was cattle or human—I was certain I didn’t want to know . . . or that it even mattered to me at that point. There were chalk marks on the tree, alchemical symbols. The ground was littered with black feathers, puddles of mercury, and silver powder.

  I dismounted and touched the bark of the tree. It was warm, like an animal. “How is this the key to eternal life?”

  “The Lunaria is the embodiment of the ‘As above, so below’ principle of alchemy. Its roots dig into the earth and its branches reach into the sky. It is a perfect mirror, conducting energy from the earth to the cosmos in a perfect circuit.

  “I have been working on this tree for many months. Feeding it. It will soon be ready.”

  I made a point not to ask him what he had been feeding it. The smell of blood was enough to let my imagination fill in the blanks.

  Pinkerton was ready for me to pull out by that time, to come back east and report to the investors. I was torn. I felt the tale of Lascaris’s wealth and madness was too fantastical to be believed, that I needed hard evidence to deliver to the men in grey flannel suits. I also dreaded leaving Lascaris to his own devices. As things stood now, when he demanded body parts, I could scavenge those through back channels without harming anyone. If I was not there . . . I knew that he would subscribe to more direct methods.

  You see, he was making other friends. One such man was Joseph Rutherford. He was a shady man, a gambler and a thug who’d recently come to town to run a gambling operation. He’d ingratiated himself to Lascaris. I had heard him threaten some of the women at the inn to the point at which he was no longer welcome there or the brothel. I’d seen him rough up men in the bar who owed him money, and a couple of those men never came back. I had no doubt that were I to leave, Rutherford would step in with more sadistic means.