“And your friend?”
“Lindsay?” Ben smiled. “She just wants to kick ass.”
At the top of the stairs, Lindsay Clark appeared, carrying a wooden sword and wearing a sheen of perspiration. Glowing, thought Ben. Since returning from Wisconsin, she had rededicated herself to fencing and thrown herself into martial arts as well. Three times a week, Ben tagged along here, and though he practiced kung fu alongside her, she began sparring with the advanced students while he found himself drawn more and more to the promise of the tai chi classes, of discovering inner strength and connecting to his own spirit. And if he could connect to his own spirit, could he then connect to others as well? For the last year and a half, he had come to believe in such things.
The problem was he sucked at it.
When she reached the bottom of the stairs, she bowed to Sifu Brian and said to Ben, “You ready?” They collected their shoes from the cubbies by the door and stepped out into the night air. The calendar read spring, but winter was not quite ready to release its grip on Arlington. Ben pulled his coat around him and Lindsay took a deep breath. “Feels good,” she said.
Ben turned to her.
“Hey, what do you call that sitting position when you meditate?”
“Crisscross applesauce.”
“Huh,” said Ben. One side of his mouth ticked upward in a grin.
“But we used to call it sitting Indian-style when I was a kid,” added Lindsay.
Ben sneered at her. “Fucking monster.”
Twenty minutes later, they were sitting in Luna Grill in Shirlington, a small enclave in Arlington lined with restaurants, coffee shops, and boutiques. They leaned over bowls of half-priced pasta and ate like someone was going to take them away. To the patrons at the nearby tables, mostly couples and young families, they made a strange pair: dressed in gym gear, wolfing down food, and barely speaking. It must have looked like a sad date. In truth, Ben and Lindsay were best friends.
Since returning from Wisconsin, they lived their lives like they were in training, but as with so much between them, it remained unspoken. They tried to return to their normal lives, simply folding these sessions without discussion into the daily routines of their jobs, their frequent dinners, and their movie nights together.
Lindsay’s phone dinged. She glanced at it and put her fork down.
Her face looked like a squall had blown across it. Fear, excitement, then calm again.
“What?” asked Ben.
“It’s him.”
“Severance?”
She nodded.
“What’s he want?”
She passed him the phone.
I have news. The Georgetown house, tomorrow night, 7 pm.
The same emotions he saw play across Lindsay’s face manifested themselves in his stomach. Fear in his gut, then exhilaration. The other shoe, he thought. Did Severance have some intelligence? The moment Severance saw that chest in Bayfield, Ben realized the man knew more than he was letting on. Did “news” mean answers? No sooner did he feel the butterflies of anticipation in his stomach take flight than they plummeted, poisoned by rage.
“What the pumpkin-spiced fuck?” said Ben.
“Find your center.”
“Fuck my center!”
Patrons from the neighboring tables looked in their direction.
“Sifu Brian would be so proud.”
“What’s a guy have to do to prove himself?”
“I’m sure he wants me to bring you.”
“What am I, your plus-one? This prick wouldn’t have half the answers he has if it wasn’t for me.”
Lindsay raised an eyebrow. “Us.”
“One-half of us is me!”
“You’re yelling in a restaurant,” sighed Lindsay. “Again.”
“No I’m not!” he yelled.
Ben’s phone buzzed in his pocket. He fumbled for it and read the screen:
You too, cupcake.
Ben shook his head as Lindsay grinned.
“Such an asshole…” he muttered.
Chapter 5
The next night, Lindsay’s car climbed out of Georgetown along tree-lined Foxhall Road until she came to Severance’s stone mansion. It was perched in the woods above a stream valley called Maddox Run that cut through the District, much like the trails she had explored with Ben in Arlington. She realized that the last time she had been to Richard’s home was the night her world turned upside down. When she learned that the things that go bump in the night were not always in her head.
Tonight the massive iron gate was open and seemed to her like a great maw, waiting to swallow her car. She pulled into the massive roundabout, larger than most people’s entire properties, and was unsure where to park. Also in the roundabout was a blue Rolls-Royce Phantom she had ridden in before and a jet-black Tesla that put her in the mind of the Batmobile. She was suddenly very self-conscious about her little coupe, then she saw a pair of Hondas on the far side of the luxury rides, one of them Ben’s.
Her palms were sweaty and she realized she was nervous. She couldn’t quite put her finger on why. Before she joined Severance in seeking out, cataloging, and defeating otherworldly creatures, she had known him at the zoo, where he would lecture as a guest and routinely make suggestive comments to her, though she later learned he had known all the while that she was gay. He liked to keep things light and breezy and still continued his faux come-ons. She admitted she didn’t know much about him at all, but she knew enough that light and breezy was just a charming way of keeping everyone at arm’s length. There was more than meets the eye with Richard Severance. He had helped her and Ben with the madness in Barcroft, and a year later they were fighting side by side in the Northwoods of Wisconsin, trying to beat back an invasion of ghouls. Each of these events with Richard was revelatory; they blasted Lindsay’s ordered idea of the world—and beyond—to smithereens. What news did he have and could she take it, she wondered? Was there some new intelligence about the redmouths? The kushtaka? Was there a sighting of something entirely new? Should she have brought a bottle of wine?
Severance answered the door himself. “Bienvenue,” he said. He pulled her into the house with a hug. “Thanks for coming.”
Lindsay was taken aback. He looked distracted, a knot of worry in the center of his forehead. More than anything, this made her nervous.
Keep it light and breezy, Clark, she thought.
“ ‘Thanks for coming’?” she said. “Not ‘I specifically ordered a redhead.’ ”
“I don’t even have to proposition you anymore. You do it for me.” He raised his arms, palms up, and closed his eyes. “I have achieved peak Severance.”
“Keep your peak to yourself, Richard.”
“That’s my girl.”
As he took her coat, he asked about the zoo and her cats.
“Um…good question. I’m not quite sure how much longer I’ll be tending them.” She told him about her exchange the day before with Bankbridge.
“What’s his problem?”
“Honestly? This,” she said, waggling her finger between the two of them, back and forth. “I think he’s jealous.”
“Well then, let’s make him really jealous, shall we? The others are already here.”
Severance led her to the great room, then excused himself. It had high, vaulted ceilings and windows that faced the woods of Maddox Branch. At one end of the room was a massive dining room table, at the other end a fireplace that was larger than the bathroom in Lindsay’s apartment. At the table, Ben was chatting with Davis Holland, a former Customs and Border Protection agent who was now on Severance’s payroll. Erica Cheung, Severance’s pilot, was installed behind a gorgeous bar made of the same dark wood as the dining room table. Lindsay had not seen Davis since Wisconsin nor had she expected to see him now. When he saw her, one side of his mouth curled in a grin and he came around the table.
“Oh shit, real operator’s here now.”
She and Davis embraced. “Galahad,”
she said. “How’ve you been?”
“Busy.”
“How’s your shoulder?”
“Good enough to pour you a drink.”
“I have a feeling I’m going to need several, Davis. Wine?”
“Done.”
As Davis crossed the room to the bar to stand beside Erica, Ben came up behind her.
“This is one weird-ass cocktail party,” he said.
“How long have you been here?”
“Five minutes. Or two rum and Cokes. Choose your metric.”
“I’m kind of freaking out here, Ben.”
“I’m totally freaking out.”
Lindsay and Ben watched the three of them at the bar. Lindsay had not seen Erica since she flew them back from Wisconsin in Severance’s Gulfstream G150, the lot of them weary and heartsick. In shock. When they landed at Reagan National Airport, Lindsay had stumbled off the plane. She barely remembered getting home.
She watched Davis ask Erica for a glass of wine, and Erica immediately walk away. Davis poured it himself.
Erica approached Ben and Lindsay and said “Hiya, kids” without breaking stride for the table. She winked as she breezed past.
Davis returned and handed Lindsay a glass of red. He had a look on his face she had never seen before: sheepish.
“A little chilly in here, Davis?”
“We, uh, had a falling-out.”
“Of bed?” said Ben.
“Don’t be a pig, Ben,” said Lindsay. To Davis, “You should totally ask her out though. Want me to show you how?”
Severance reappeared then. “Everyone fortified?” he said, looking to see they each had a glass. “All right then, let’s get this over with.”
They moved to the table and took seats, all except Severance. Davis installed himself in a chair behind a laptop. Erica sat on the far end of the table from Davis. Ben and Lindsay sat next to each other and looked at Severance, who paced the room.
“I appreciate you all coming,” said Severance. “I’d understand if you threw your phones in the river the second my number appeared, but in an effort to be more transparent—”
“Hey,” said Ben, “where’s Alex?”
Severance and Davis exchanged a look. Davis said, “He didn’t think it was a good idea for both of us to be away from the rez.”
“Or, more likely, his phone is very, very wet,” said Severance.
Davis pretended to concentrate on his laptop.
“Like I said,” said Severance, “I understand. But I have some answers, and what few I have I owe them to you. Davis?”
Davis tapped the keyboard and an image of an old man, taken with a telephoto lens, appeared on the massive flat-screen TV mounted to the wall. Hard-looking men flanked him, one in particular with tattoos crawling up his neck. They were crossing a parking lot of what appeared to be a diner. Davis tapped his keyboard again, and the next slide was just of the old man, a close-up.
“His name is Dr. Henry Drexler, former professor of anthropology at Princeton University, my alma mater.”
“Why are you surveilling an old man?” asked Ben. “That’s creepy even for you.”
“Technically,” said Severance, “Galahad here climbed the tree, so he was doing the creepy. I met Henry for a cup of coffee yesterday. It was a lovely morning, filled with stimulating conversation, bullets, and kung fu.”
“Krav Maga,” said Erica from the end of the table.
“Richard,” said Lindsay. She knew this was difficult for him, that he was stalling, but she didn’t care. She was filled with nervous energy and getting impatient. “Why?”
“Henry and I have a complicated relationship: We’re friends.”
“Why are you surveilling a friend then?” said Lindsay.
“Once upon a time, I did the sort of work for him that you do for me.”
“You were his field man?” she asked.
“Partners, really. Back then, we traveled together. It was on one of our…research trips where we met Alex.”
“Researching a possible wendigo,” said Lindsay.
Severance nodded.
“We didn’t see eye to eye on that trip. We didn’t see eye to eye on a lot of things,” he said, tilting his drink at the screen. “We come from very different backgrounds and come at things from a different angle. Obviously. But we always had similar interests.”
“Booze and Bigfoot?” asked Ben.
“Let him talk,” said Lindsay. “Richard, I’m seriously about to jump out of my skin, so land the plane.” Erica snorted from the far end of the table.
“Fair enough. But I can’t talk about Henry without first talking about his father.” He nodded at Davis and the screen changed to an old, black-and-white photo of a very handsome military man smiling at the camera. So handsome, in fact, that it took Lindsay a moment to recognize the Nazi insignia.
“Meet Dietrich Drexler: colonel in the Nazi SS, wet dream to the Aryan Nation, and nightmare to everyone else, including his own son. Dietrich was the perfect little Nazi, very active leading up to the war, then records get sketchy. Have you ever heard of the Ahnenerbe?”
Lindsay shook her head.
“A division of the SS,” said Ben, “that looked for evidence about how the Aryans came up with everything in history that makes the world great.”
Lindsay looked at him sideways.
“History Channel.”
Severance said, “More or less. They sent expeditions around the world looking for archeological and historical evidence of the superiority of the Germanic people. Basically, trying to give Hitler’s crazy a sheen of legitimacy. Speaking of crazy, Himmler was in charge of the Ahnenerbe, which was a lot like putting the monkey who can throw his feces the farthest in charge of the zoo. The organization had many institutes. One such institute was responsible for some of the more horrific ‘medical’ experiments at concentration camps. Dietrich, however, was in the Social Sciences Division, and he was placed in charge of a little institute called ‘Folktales, Fairy Tales, and Myths.’ ”
Lindsay felt a chill run up her spine. She stifled a shiver in her chair.
“Like the broader Ahnenerbe, Dietrich’s job, ostensibly, was to find evidence of the Germanic influence in folklores, fairy tales, and myths. His real job though was—”
“Let me guess,” Ben interrupted: “to find them for the Reich. And weaponize them.”
Severance gave Ben an admiring look. “There’s that monstrous thinking I love. Dietrich’s work with the institute took him around the world, mostly on expeditions throughout Europe and Asia, leading right up to the war. But just prior to the war, he was sent here under an alias, where he moved about the country, looking into American folklore. Or more precisely, Native American folklore. Then the war broke out. Dietrich was considered too valuable to risk bringing back over to Germany as cannon fodder, so he was allowed to stay to continue his research, provided he do a little saboteur work on the side. Toward the end of the war, with Hitler and Himmler’s crazy in full bloom, more and more they hoped Dietrich or someone else would be able to unearth a superweapon that would bring the Allies to their knees. Maybe he strung them along for a while, but Dietrich saw which way the wind was blowing and stayed in America permanently.” Severance looked at Ben. “He bought land, put down roots, and started a family.”
“In Jersey?”
Severance nodded.
“All my trips to the Dirty Jerz, sitting in the woods all night long. Looking for something. Anything. And you never thought to tell me?”
“It wasn’t until I laid eyes on that chest that I made the connection. And I didn’t confirm there was a connection until yesterday.”
“Fine. You gave us the history lesson. Now what’s this have to do with your buddy?” asked Ben.
“Ultimately, Dietrich settled in the Pine Barrens and had a son.” Another image flashed on the screen, a black-and-white yearbook photo. A bookish and bespectacled middle-aged man with a tentative smile. “Meet Dr. He
nry Drexler. This is from when he was faculty at Princeton, when we met. When we were friends.” Severance looked deeply sad for a moment, and Lindsay noticed him cover his face with a drink from his tumbler. When he spoke again, his voice was loud.
“Imagine Colonel Dietrich Drexler, not just your garden-variety Nazi, but an SS officer. And not just an SS officer, but the Aryan ideal, the great white hope of the Third Reich, Mr. Master Race himself…and his one and only son is born with poor eyesight and a withered leg.”
“Fuck me,” said Ben. Lindsay looked at him and his mouth was open. He looked shaken, pale. “The limping man.”
Chapter 6
Without warning, Ben was back in the basement of his next-door neighbor’s house, the walls pressing in on him. Screeching rats on fire, darting back and forth, sparking new blazes like a plague. A woman who looked like a witch, keening as the flames engulfed her too, lunging at him. Then Ben, with the near-dead weight of Alex Standingcloud, desperately trying to get up and out of that dark dungeon, even though something even worse was prowling outside, waiting for him. Ben felt as if he was breathing through a straw, like the room was filling with smoke. He shook his head roughly and found himself back in Severance’s great room.
“You son of a bitch. Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t go Jersey on you right now.”
Severance pointed at Davis. “I pay him to discourage that sort of thing.”
Lindsay touched his arm. It was like a balm. “What is it?”
“Madeline’s basement. Before she stabbed Alex and the house went up, the witch was monologuing. She said something about a limping man. That he had lied to her.”
“Why didn’t you tell me before?” said Severance.
“Why didn’t I tell you? Are you serious? I was in shock. And after that night, I didn’t hear from you for a year because you have this funny habit of disappearing when shit gets real.”
The Devil's Colony Page 4
