“Trip? Go to white light,” Holly yelled in my ear.
I flipped my monocular back and activated the Nitecore on the forearm of my shotgun. The light filled the small room with such intensity, it seared our eyes for a moment. That moment froze in time. The old woman reared, her skinless body a mass of pulsing, moist muscle and tendons. A mane of gray hair stuck to the undulating flesh of her face. Her brown eyes stared at me as if from behind a pink mask of freshly butchered meat. The Old Higue tensed, her movements slow and deliberate, her bones aged and full of ache. Her slow grind of teeth approximated a smile.
With only a hiss as warning, she sprang at me. Her bare fist struck me in the gut with the weight of having slipped on a set of brass knuckles. The blow landed deep and with such force, I nearly vomited. I doubled over and left my feet, flying into the shack wall. Plates toppled from the shelves, crashing all around me. I struggled to my feet and assumed a fighting stance. My legs unsteady beneath me, I feared I might appear drunk.
Without skin to interpret the movements of her facial muscles, her face was an emotionless, blank canvas. Her eyes refused to blink. Weaponless, I threw a series of quick jabs. She let the blows land. She kicked me in the chest. All air left my lungs. I had the sensation of plunging into deep, cold waters.
Holly opened fire. The Old Higue howled as the shells ripped into her. She threw her head back and time seemed to slow. Debris wafting in the air got caught up in an invisible stream and ignited. Her body erupted into flames before collapsing in on itself, forming a ball of flame. The incandescent ball shot upward through the roof and back the direction we came.
“Come on,” I yelled.
We ran through the woods at full speed. The Old Higue landed squarely atop Lord Evader’s house. It screeched. With a bottle of rum in one hand, Lord Evader stumbled out of his room, took one look at the Old Higue, and held his arms up to shield himself. I ran and tackled him, barely avoiding the swipe of one of her wizened claws. She shredded the back of my armor.
Holly provided cover fire. The creature slowed, wanting to chase after me, but needing to deal with the more immediate threat first.
“Come and get some,” Holly yelled. She swung the Negev back in its direction.
I pointed Lord Evader back to Carmen’s house before heading back to flank the creature. On my way, I grabbed Lord Evader’s machete. I turned it over in my hands. “Just like old times.”
Holly had the beams of her Nitecore trained on the Old Higue but I noticed something fluttering in the trees behind it.
“Owen, behind you. In the trees.”
A low-hanging branch of a cotton tree, stark and loathsome in the dim light, had something quavered along it like thick, ropey, spider webs, tangled among its limbs. The Old Higue’s skin.
“I’m all out of salt,” Owen yelled. “This will have to do.”
Owen let loose with the flamethrower. Streams of fire lit up the countryside. The Old Higue turned toward Owen and wailed like a mother grieving the loss of its child. Holly ceased fire as I neared the creature.
“Over here,” I said.
The Old Higue turned in time to see the swing of my blade as it sliced through its throat. The blade lodged in the beast’s neck. Rather than pull it free to chance another swing, I fell on top of her and drove the blade the rest of the way through. I laid on top of her, face to face, the last fetid puff of breath escaping her mouth before her head tumbled from her body.
* * *
Holly and Owen carted up the remains of the Old Higue and gave Carmen and me some space for privacy.
“Thank you.” Carmen watched them load the body.
“That’s what family is for. To take care of one another and deal with the problems outsiders wouldn’t understand.”
There was another Hebrew word that always stuck with me: mishpacha, which means “family.” I glanced at Holly and Owen, who waved me to hurry along before the police arrived with questions I didn’t feel like answering. In the end, it was the people to whom you belonged, who always had your back, who were family. And family took care of family.
It is difficult to verify if this historical account is authentic or an elaborate forgery. I include it here, because if true, the ramifications are very troubling. —A.L.
The Bride
Brad R. Torgersen
“Grandfather,” the young man said, standing deferentially in the doorway to Benjamin Franklin’s study.
“William,” the older man said over his shoulder, his bespectacled face illuminated by the oil lamp perched on his writing desk. The quill in his hand was still poised over the parchment, upon which he’d been quickly scribbling. Now, more than ever, Benjamin Franklin’s world was a whirlwind of correspondence.
“There are two gentlemen at the door,” the young man said.
“Frenchmen?” the old man asked.
“No, Grandfather. Or, at least, only one of them is French. They say they’re from…it’s regarding General Washington, sir. About the Army. They say they can help.”
Benjamin Franklin’s spine straightened, and he slowly turned to the side, to stare at his grandson—and secretary, and personal aide—over the rims of his round glasses. It was late in the evening for such unannounced and uninvited visitors. Very odd indeed.
“Who?” the old man asked, his left eyebrow arched slightly.
“The first is Hessian, someone calling himself Van Stooburn.”
“It’s von Steuben,” a French-accented voice corrected loudly, from behind William’s position. “And the Baron is Prussian.”
Two men appeared behind William, and the young man nervously clasped his hands together, looking from his grandfather’s face, to the faces of the visitors, and back again. A commoner would have been promptly remonstrated for interrupting Franklin’s peace and quiet. But the Baron was someone already acquainted with Franklin. So the American diplomat sighed a long, tired exhale, and beckoned the two men forward.
“It’s alright, William,” the old man said. “Please make sure the front door is closed. I am sure whatever business the Baron has brought to me tonight can be handled expeditiously.”
William dipped his chin in acknowledgment and shuffled quickly from the doorway. The Baron strode in, followed by his ever-present attaché, Louis de Pontière, who closed the study door behind them.
“The answer is still no,” Franklin said, standing up from his small bench at the desk and placing the tips of his fingers into a pocket on his vest, over his ever-growing belly. The American diplomat wasn’t a spring chicken any longer, and the various parlors and courts of Paris kept him well supplied with a variety of culinary delicacies. Perhaps too well supplied? Not that it mattered much. Franklin wasn’t marching with Washington. He was a persuader, not a fighter. And thus far, his mission—as envoy to France—had been going extremely well. The French liked him. They liked his ideas. They liked his sense of humor. He was winning them over.
But not everyone was pleased with what Franklin had been able to tell them.
Von Steuben turned to his young aide and barked out something in guttural Deutsch.
“The Baron says he understands you won’t make any promises which your Continental Congress cannot keep,” Louis said, his English proficient and refined. “But the Baron also wishes to inform you that the situation has changed.”
“Oh?” Ben Franklin said, taking a couple of steps forward. “In what way?”
Louis briefly translated the question for the Baron, who again replied in Deutsch.
“The Baron says he has been made aware of a terrible new weapon, being prepared by Landgrave Frederick at the direct request of King George, and which is due to set sail for America.”
“A new weapon?” Franklin said, feeling the hair on the back of his neck begin to stand up. He’d heard rumors—through the Freemasons of Paris—that the Hessians had been promising the King of England something special, and for which the King might pay a princely sum. So far, Franklin had be
en unable to come up with anything conclusive, so he’d not bothered to get word to Washington or any of the others. But if the Baron was here tonight—rudely unannounced—it meant that the Baron was bringing more to Franklin’s door than mere speculation.
“Yes,” said Louis.
“What’s the nature of this weapon?’ Franklin asked.
Von Steuben’s frown deepened, and he looked Franklin square in the face, before uttering the name, “Dippel.”
Franklin closed his eyes, his mouth souring.
“Nonsense,” the old American said.
Von Steuben nodded his head up and down twice in affirmation, saying “Dippel” again.
“The Baron believes you know what to do about it—that you can stop the new female monster.”
“Female this time, eh? Perhaps,” Franklin said. “But there were extenuating circumstances regarding the first example, the details of which I am not at liberty to discuss with the Baron.”
Von Steuben listened while Louis made his report, then the Baron began to practically shout, gesticulating with his hands.
The young aide calmly said, “The Baron is sure that this thing is on its way to your country, sir.”
“How does the Baron know that?” Franklin asked sharply.
Louis repeated the questions to his master…and translated the response.
“There are family connections involved, which are too complicated to explain to you tonight, Monsieur Franklin. The Baron hopes that you will understand the gravity of this situation. He also hopes that you will appreciate the fact that the Baron spared no time, nor expense, in bringing the matter to your attention—before it’s too late.”
“Ah,” Franklin said. “The Baron wants in with Washington that badly, eh? There’s still no money in it. Washington can’t even pay his own officers, much less Prussian aristocrats seeking to make a name for themselves during a foreign campaign. Why do you think I’m in Paris in the first place, Monsieur? For vacation? For the women? It might seem to some that I am an old man on holiday, but the future of my home is at stake, and I am doing everything in my power to ensure that France remains with us during our fight against the English Crown.”
Louis translated…and received a response.
“The Baron knows all this already,” Louis said, “but he admires what you and Washington are doing. He deems it a righteous quarrel. He hopes that if he assists you in rendering the Hessian weapon harmless, you will in turn pass the good word to Washington regarding the Baron’s value and abilities.”
“Does the Baron know where this weapon is?”
“Not at the moment,” Louis said. “But we believe we know where and when the weapon is due to depart overseas. We need only be there to interdict.”
Franklin pulled off his spectacles and rubbed one eye with his fist.
“Like I told you, there were extenuating circumstances the first time. And if we’re dealing with what I think we’re dealing with—and what you seem to think we’re dealing with, too—I don’t have any alchemical weaponry, nor occult incantation, with which to send this thing back to Hell.”
Louis translated. The Baron threw up his hands, eyes rolling.
“Then how, Monsieur Franklin, did you manage it? With the other one? With the one you call Franks?”
* * *
It was three weeks overland, or six days by ship. Both Franklin and Von Steuben agreed that the ship was preferable, though they’d need a day in Amsterdam—to cover their tracks. Which was where Franklin’s connections with the Freemasons of Paris came in handy. Kings might make or break agreements at will, but the Freemasons—with their fraternity stretching throughout Enlightened homes and courts across Europe—were something else again. Franklin had but to ask and the network unfolded its rhetorical wings, spiriting him and the Baron across contested international waters, and depositing them on decidedly Teutonic shores—without either the French, nor the British, being any the wiser. For all anyone knew—and Franklin’s grandson would tell—the old emissary was at home, recovering from yet another episode of gout. Well-wishers were permitted to leave gifts or notes in the foyer, but no one was allowed to see Franklin in his bed.
Now on German soil, it was the Baron who navigated deftly. If anyone in this part of the world noticed Von Steuben’s dialect or accent, they didn’t say it. Perhaps the Baron was simply that good at effecting a local quality, whenever he spoke? Benjamin Franklin could not tell. And Louis de Pontière, for all his talkativeness at sea, had become practically mute now that they were moving in unfamiliar circles.
Franklin was simply reminded of the fact that he was old. Too old, certainly, to be undertaking such an adventure without a small host of helpers and assistants to ensure that the American diplomat was properly protected and cared for. If anything happened to him while he was away, William would be hard-pressed to explain Franklin’s disappearance. The Continental Congress had to keep the French aligned with the Congress, and almost all of that burden rested on Franklin’s shoulders.
Still, the mere mention of the name Franks had spurred Benjamin to action.
“He’s not like any man,” Franklin had explained one evening while he, the Baron, and the Baron’s aide were staring over their ship’s railing into the greenish depths of the sea. “When they brought him to me, he should have been dead. It took a direct hit from a field gun—a whole cannonball, you understand!—to neutralize Franks. When Washington’s men dropped the body off with me in Philadelphia, I thought they were depositing a cadaver. Imagine my shock to discover that the torso—or what was left of it—still had a pulse, and that tiny amounts of blood, mingled with that cursed Dippel’s Oil, flowed in the torso’s veins. I knew then that I was dealing with something truly extraordinary.”
“But how do we stop it?” Louis pleaded, staring past the waves, out to the clouds on the horizon.
“I told you,” the old diplomat said, “in the case of Franks, it was a direct hit with a field gun. But that did not kill him. I am not even convinced that a creature such as Franks can be killed. Which is why I was amazed to learn—upon sewing the creature back together using fresh cadavers from the Philadelphia medical college—that Franks wished to serve the Continental Congress. Can you imagine?”
“So that was it?” Louis said, after repeating Benjamin’s words to Von Steuben. “Franks is made whole again and bends his knee to your cause?”
“No,” the old man said. “I knew we couldn’t simply make him our slave. We have too much of that back home as it is, you know? We’ve entered an age when men must do away with that kind of thing. It was wrong in the time of the Pharaoh. It was wrong in the time of Caesar. It remains wrong, even if some of my countrymen disagree. Anyway, I didn’t want Franks chained to us. I wanted him with us of his own accord, compacted in agreement, like a man. So we drew it up formally, with stipulations. Franks would serve the Continental Congress, and we would give Franks a cause worth fighting for—with one caveat.”
“And that was?” Louis asked, after translating for the Baron.
“Franks made it clear that there would be no more like him.”
“What does that mean?”
“Well, putting the poor creature back together—with flesh and bone from several different bodies—I learned enough about him, and also about Dippel’s Oil, that I probably could have tried to produce a facsimile. I certainly know more about electrical fire than anyone else at home, and it’s the electrical fire—combined with Dippel’s Oil—that makes a thing like Franks possible. One of the two, by itself, is not sufficient. Combine them in the right ways, with enough raw tissue, and a man might create anything. Even something grotesquely unlike a man. But there’s more to it, even than that.”
“Yes?” Louis said, after a short pause to translate.
“I deduce that Franks first came to this Earth as a disembodied spirit.”
“You mean, like a ghost?”
“Possibly, though I don’t think that word is righ
t. A ghost implies the spirit of one who has lived and died. Franks never even had the chance to live—until Johann Konrad Dippel gave him that chance. Now? Now, Baron von Steuben has learned that Dippel did not terminate his experiments after Franks’ creation. The Freemasons had assumed that Dippel quit, when I was still a young man in England. But it seems Dippel did not. How or why this second creation has eluded attention, until now…”
“So we blow it up,” Louis said, for his master. “Or we burn it. To pieces, or to ashes. That doesn’t seem so hard.”
“Washington’s troops—in their graves—would disagree with that assessment.”
“Do you propose to talk to it, then? This she-creature of Dippel’s design?”
“I don’t know, sir. Having not even seen it yet, I really don’t know.”
And so, the three men found themselves spying on a ship, far from any of their homes, and with only a few pistols tucked into their belts, and no real plan other than to wait and see who—or what—was taken aboard.
Yet again, Benjamin Franklin was reminded of his age. Even one night on the harbor—with the damp, cold air making beads of water on his marten fur hat—could be the death of him. The weapon he carried was one the young French aide had loaded for him. Franklin doubted he had the reflexes or the eyes enough to fire—and hit anything. Besides, a musket ball would not stop a creature like Franks any more than a flea might stop Franks. If things got desperate, the Baron proposed to set the entire ship aflame. The gunholes in the ship’s side meant there should be cannon powder aboard. The Baron claimed to know a thing or two about that. Franklin did not and could not have tried to guide them to the armory. Again, he was a man of reason, not of action. Yet here he was, trying to take action, with the skimpiest of reasons.
Maybe they would get lucky, and the rumor of the Hessian weapon would turn out to be just that—rumor. They could all have a good laugh about it on the way back to Franklin’s Paris home. And Franklin would write an introduction letter, on behalf of the Baron, to General Washington, anyway. Von Steuben may have been a Prussian aristocrat looking to pad his service resume, but he was not a coward. He was prepared to give his life if it meant stopping Dippel’s second monster; it showed in Von Steuben’s eyes. And the young French aide? He would follow his master to Hell, if necessary. So Franklin would write his letter on behalf of them both. The Revolution needed grit.
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