Danse Macabre: Close Encounters with the Reaper

by Nancy Kilpatrick

  From those twin voids, she heard her own voice and Naldo’s echo and intertwine.

  It’s been a good life, hasn’t it?

  The best, mi amor.

  A vibration began at her tailbone and lurched up her spine. She heard the blast of the train whistle and the scream of the brakes and in the midst of the bedlam that built in her head, she managed a smile of relief and gratitude.

  Even eighteen years later, the Estrella del Norte was still right on time.

  * * * * *

  Lucy Taylor is the author of seven novels, including the Bram Stoker-award winning The Safety of Unknown Cities, and over a hundred short stories. Upcoming publications include stories in Exotic Gothic 4 and The Mammoth Book of Best of Best New Erotica. She lives in Pismo Beach, CA and says about her story: “The idea for “La Senora Blanca” came to me after visiting my mother, who lives in an assisted living center in Richmond, VA. I could imagine Death capering along the silent hallways as terrified residents creep to their doorways to peer out.”

  Totentanz

  By Nancy Holder & Erin Underwood

  A kiss for luck. The merest peck, a whisper against Drea’s mouth, when Paul should have given it his all.

  Cologne’s bitter winter wind set her teeth to chattering as she read the directions to Firme Köln for the tenth time, but she still couldn’t find Endlose Gasse. She needed this job beyond just needing employment. It felt like a last chance.

  That’s not true, she thought. You’re just having pre-wedding jitters.

  Complicating matters, Cologne’s carnival season was in full swing as it neared the final Crazy Days and the residents of Altstadt — Old Town — were enjoying the celebration. Navigating the streets was an exercise in patience to avoid being swept away by festive packs of wildly dressed Carnival goers. In her severe black suit, hair pulled back, she kept stumbling on her new black heels. Her dancing shoes, actually, but they went well with her suit.

  Paul’s family had this weird tradition that the bride and groom had to dance a special waltz at their wedding reception. The music was played on a brass disc inside a music box that had been in the family for generations. Paul’s mother would bring the box and the disc with her from Berlin. For now, they practiced to a digital recording of it. It seemed tuneless, with no cues to help a non-dancer remember the intricate steps.

  Paul was astonished by her awkwardness. But she’d told him the night they’d met that she didn’t dance. He’d been too busy sweeping her off her feet to listen.

  “Triller, triller!” a young man sang on the street in heavily accented English. He was dressed like a dead Michael Jackson, white face, his nose painted to look like a triangle of bone.

  His moonwalk was spectacular; Drea felt in her coat pocket for a coin for the little black cardboard coffin beside him, the lid open to reveal a scattering of change and a few bills. She tossed in two euro coins. Dead Michael Jackson saw them and cried, “Woo!”

  A high-pitched scream followed on the end of his triumphant shout. Drea spun around just in time to see a little blonde-haired girl running backwards away from him, directly into the rush of oncoming traffic. The girl’s right foot left the curb, and she began to tumble.

  Without thinking, Drea dove after her, grabbing the hem of the girl’s coat and yanking it hard with one hand and reaching up to cradle her head like a football with the other as they fell hard to the sidewalk.

  A woman tore the terrified child from Drea’s arms and shouted at the boy. Then the mother and daughter disappeared into the oblivious crowd, leaving Drea sprawled on the cement.

  “You’re welcome,” Drea muttered, then smiled weakly as Michael Jackson held out his hand and hefted her to her feet.

  “American,” he said, and kissed her hard on the mouth, bowed, and moonwalked back to his little coffin. Then he danced past the coffin, gesturing for her to join in — no, to follow him — down the street. Feeling a little goofy, she did it anyway — people were always saying she was too nice — and he stopped beside a small brass plaque at the mouth of a nearby alley. He did a hip thrust and pointed at it.

  Endlose Gasse. Endless Alley.

  “How…?” she began.

  He handed her the crumpled printout of her directions, which she must have dropped when she’d saved the little girl, and swept an elegant bow.

  “Danke,” she said, taking the paper while fishing in her pocket for more change.

  He waved her off, blew her a kiss, and danced away.

  Dashing beneath the inconspicuous Roman arch, Drea hurried down the narrow alley that opened into a generous courtyard surrounded by some of the oldest buildings she had seen since arriving in Cologne. Firme Köln was the third door to her right, the building large, Gothic style, with ornate decorations that drew her eye up to a tapered black spire inlaid with alabaster designs.

  The building looked every bit the “old money” accounting company that the headhunter had described. Of all the structures around the courtyard, Firme Köln was the grimmest, with its shadowed windows and a clinging sense of silence.

  With five minutes to spare, Drea entered the lobby. A stale scent stirred in the air. The reception room was small and lit with dim incandescent sconces that cast dirty yellow light on the walls. The ceiling towered above, decorated with delicate plaster designs and a large renaissance-style mural of angels reaching down from Heaven.

  The receptionist, a gray-haired woman who appeared to have been stuck in the Victorian era — chignon, high neck, no makeup — told her to sit down. Fifteen minutes later, Drea felt herself nodding off. After another half-hour, she wondered if she had gotten the time wrong.

  It was nearly a full hour before the receptionist ushered her down a hall and into a room so dark she could barely see the elderly gentleman seated behind an enormous ebony desk. His skin was stretched tightly over his sharply-angled face. His hair was as white as the teenager’s stage makeup, with matching eyebrows. Long, thin fingers were splayed over what appeared to be a black ledger book. He didn’t shake her hand, as was German custom. Didn’t introduce himself either — and she felt at a tremendous disadvantage, for she hadn’t been able to find out his name.

  He opened the ledger book with a flourish and ran his finger down a list of handwritten names on the yellowed page. Each name had a check mark beside it — except for hers, which was the last one on the page.

  “Fräulein Armstrong,” he said, gesturing for her to sit.

  He wrote something in the ledger. “As you know, we are looking for someone who can update our office systems, someone with a background in technology. The world is running ahead of us, I fear.” His smile didn’t quite reach his eyes. He seemed … depressed.

  “Well, maybe I can help you catch up,” she ventured.

  “Hmm, ja.” He tapped her name. “I am concerned about your work experience since you have just graduated from university. But my secretary thinks I should talk to you, and I have long since learned to trust her instincts.”

  He leaned back in his chair and folded his arms. It was her cue. Her time to shine.

  But her frustrations from the last couple of months came to a head, colliding with her hopes for getting employment in Cologne — hope that was slipping away again. It was obvious to her that he’d already decided she was wrong for the job. Why prolong the agony? “Um,” she began, and she wanted to kick herself. To her horror, tears welled. Her friends always said she was too soft, too sweet. They said Paul had bulldozed her into moving to Germany. That she needed to work in an American firm for two years so she could take her CPA exam. But he’d wanted to be home. It had sounded so romantic.

  Now, Paul was mad at her because she couldn’t get a job; and she couldn’t learn to dance his stupid family waltz; and she was blowing her interview.

  “Well,” he said, about to end it, and
she reached down deep inside herself and took a breath.

  “I’m an accountant,” she reminded him. “Like you. There are credits and debits. They have to balance. That’s the same in IT, as well. Everything can be reduced to binary. On, off. And we can integrate everything so that you can keep up with all the changes.”

  “Balance.” He sighed. “It is yes, it is no. But now there is all the gray in the world. So many variables.”

  “But in the end, credits and debits,” she said.

  He blinked and looked at her. “That’s … true.” He was quiet a moment. He seemed to be considering something. “But how do I know you’re not a, how does one say in English … a slacker? You’ve come to Germany for an adventure, and then you’ll meet someone and off you’ll go—”

  “Oh, no,” she replied. “I live here. We’re getting m-married.” She heard herself stumbling over the word.

  “Ah, true love.” His smile was wistful. “I have not had that good fortune.”

  Neither have I, she thought; to her horror, she also almost burst into tears again.

  “So, first step taken,” he said, and then he snapped the ledger book shut.

  “Das ist Scheisse,” Paul said, practically spitting the words at her. “Shit.”

  “Trial periods at new jobs are normal,” she said. She was standing in their apartment holding a bottle of champagne and her cell phone. He was still at work.

  “Not for free. Did you even bargain when he told you he wouldn’t pay you a goddamned euro?”

  No, she thought, and although she’d braced herself for this reaction, and practiced what she would say in response, everything was melting away in a sea of uncertainty. It was a little weird not to get at least something for showing up to work.

  “I thought we could go out, to celebrate,” she said instead. “It’s carnival.”

  “We say Karneval,” he corrected her with asperity. “I’ll be late. Someone has to pay for this wedding.”

  He hung up. On her.

  She stared at the phone as if it were a foreign object and sank down onto the couch. He was right; no, he was wrong; he was wrong to be so mean. She was desperate; no one was hiring, and at least she would have some precious job experience if it didn’t work out, wouldn’t she?

  When Paul came home three hours later, a little drunk, he handed her some wilted flowers and took her in his arms. He told her how sorry he was, and explained that his office had gone out drinking together to team-build, that it was too late to take her to Karneval tonight; it was time for champagne and waltzes at home.

  “Kiss me first,” she said; and he laughed at her and brushed her mouth again the way he had that morning, just going through the motions. Then he held his arm out to the side and draped his other one very loosely across her upper back. She laid her hand in his and wrapped her arm around his waist.

  Blearily, he hummed the godforsaken non-melody, and she shut her eyes in resignation. He dragged her around the living room like a marionette with broken strings, humming in her ear, too loudly. It all felt so random and weird.

  “Oh, my God,” he said in English, “you really can’t dance.”

  Fuck you, she thought, and blanched, because she didn’t talk like that and she certainly didn’t think like that, not where Paul was concerned. But what she said was, “I know.”

  She couldn’t dance, but she could streamline, coordinate, integrate. The next day on the job, she dazzled her boss, who was simply called Herr T. He sat beside her in her frigid dimly-lit office with its heavy antique furniture that cast long shadows about the room, and watched as she showed him what she had planned for Firme Köln. There was something different about him today. He seemed … fuller, somehow. She’d thought his hair was all white, but there were streaks of blond in it.

  She was very aware of him sitting so close, and she tried very hard to hide it. He was a million years old, for heaven’s sake, and she was engaged.

  “You see, we make records for each client,” she told him, tapping on her laptop keyboard. She had brought it with her to work. “Then the accountant inputs the variables for each tax situation, and with these prompts, the computer accesses the appropriate programs, which you would lease.”

  “Tax situation,” he said, smiling a little. “Paying what one owes.”

  “Yes,” she said, a little confused.

  “What one owes,” he said again. He walked to the window and pulled aside heavy red velvet curtains, stirring the shadows and revealing the brightly lit streets crowded with revelers. She stood and followed him.

  “Will you go out tonight?” she asked and he glanced at her, startled.

  Then he pursed his lips in amusement and looked back at the window. She had the distinct impression that at first he’d thought she was inviting him out, then realized his mistake.

  “Saturday night is the Geisterzug,” Herr T. said. A faraway look clouded his face. “It is a sight to be seen.”

  “The Ghost Parade. I’ll be sure to see it.” She moved from the window. “Good night, Herr T.”

  “Gute Nacht, Fräulein Armstrong,” he said, his bone white fingers still gripping the curtain.

  As she left Firme Köln, Paul called her and said he would take the streetcar and meet her, to make up for the night before.

  They would celebrate Shrove Thursday together. Tonight was the Parody Parade, playing off the coming Rosenmotag — Rose Monday — parade. Instead of big fancy floats, tonight’s festivities consisted of dancers and marching bands interspersed with deliberately cheesy, mock floats that consisted of carts pushed and dragged through the partying crowds that spilled out from the pubs, filling the streets. The Crazy Days were here.

  She and Paul drank hot wine, and applauded as the Parody Prince dressed in rags and a silver crown encrusted with plastic jewels rode by on a cart pulled by a pair of button-eyed clowns with fiery red wigs, blue Lederhosen, and candy cane striped socks. Dancing behind him in perfect formation was his troupe of Prinzengarde. They wore colonial-looking uniforms, women in dresses, men in pants, all of them wearing Dreispitz — tricorne hats. Then came more floats, with the riders tossing candy and trinkets into the crowd.

  Paul was getting drunk, yelling and nearly knocked over a little boy to grab a shiny necklace of silver beads. Drea was very cold, and tired, and she found herself thinking about her first day at the job, and how well she had done, but Paul had only asked a question or two about it, and moved on.

  A float trundled past with an oom-papa band. Dancing the polka on the slow-moving cart was a man in a skeleton bodysuit and two men wearing Renaissance outfits-one a priest with his red robes, the other a noble in his red and gold doublet. Paul grabbed her and started dancing maniacally in little drunken circles.

  “Polka, Drea!” he shouted.

  He whirled her in a wild circle with a series of hops. She stumbled on the slippery sidewalk, flailing and sliding, crashing into people, most of whom just laughed.

  “Paul, please stop!” she said, as she tried to extricate herself from his tight bear hug.

  “She can’t dance!” he cried. “She can’t make money! But she sure can fuck!”

  “Paul!” she cried, humiliated. “Stop!”

  “Oh, you fuck so great.” He mashed his lips against hers, darting the tip of his tongue like a snake against her teeth. “Let’s go home now. I want to fuck my American.”

  “Oh, my God,” she said, turning her head and ignoring the chill that crept down her spine. “You’re drunk.”

  But she knew he was speaking from his heart. She remembered the first time they’d slept together. It had been a long time for her, and they hadn’t done much sleeping. He was dashing and funny and he obviously liked her a lot. The sex had been great because she’d been so happy. She’d felt special in his arms. He hadn’t noticed
that it hadn’t been all that great for a while now.

  He grabbed her head and kissed her again. She jerked away, almost tumbling to her knees, and hurried the seven blocks to the streetcar stop. She covered her mouth with her hand to keep from crying or screaming or both as the brilliantly illuminated city roared past.

  She passed a hotel, and thought about checking in. She thought about going to the airport and flying back to Boston.

  But if she left, she left in defeat. And maybe it was just nerves for Paul, too. Maybe he was as afraid as she was. That they were, in essence, dancing the same dance.

  Paul came home even drunker, and passed out in the middle of apologizing. Drea slept on the couch but she didn’t think he knew, because he was still asleep when she left. Smiling grimly, she let him oversleep. He might have the only paying job between them, but by light of day, she had somewhere else to go.

  At work, she began to write up a technical document for Herr T. Paul called, apologized, promised he would never treat her so crudely again. To reward him, when lunchtime rolled around, she put on the horrible black pumps — her dancing shoes — and queued her iPod to play the quirky waltz. She would conquer it, by God, and everyone would applaud at the reception, and it would all be good.

  Closing her eyes, she imagined Paul in her arms, and her feet were less clumsy, her movements more fluid than when he whirled her around like a puppet.

  When she opened her eyes, she found Herr T. standing in a dark corner, watching. He looked even younger, and when he saw that she had spotted him, he smiled faintly.

  “I was just practicing,” she said, blushing.

  “No one should dance alone.” Herr T. moved closer, holding his hand out to her. “If I may?”

  Drea stepped into his arms.

  “When you move, move from your heart. That is where the dance begins,” he said. He hummed the notes of a different waltz, something very strange, and together they glided, and she was almost graceful. His hand was cold without warming from her touch as they spun about the room, their shadows following them across the floor.