by Laura Bickle
My mouth went dry. I remembered the wraiths from the Laundromat, and my stomach twisted. “Frau Gerlach wanted to keep them where it was cool. Away from the flies.”
“Come. We must work faster.”
The Hexenmeister stumped from the room. Alex and I followed in his wake. We gathered in the kitchen, before the closed basement door. The old man opened it, and meager sunlight trickled down the steps.
“Katie,” he said softly. “Bring a lantern.”
I scurried to obey, turning up the wick of a kerosene lantern on the kitchen counter and lighting it with a long match. I traded glances with Alex. The Hexenmeister puttered around the hall closet, then came back with Herr Hersberger’s hunting rifle. He loaded it with bullets from his pocket.
“Guns don’t work on vampires,” Alex said automatically.
“No, they don’t,” the Hexenmeister agreed. “But they will slow them down.”
“I’ll go first,” Alex said.
The Hexenmeister nodded slowly and handed him the rifle.
We descended.
The basement appeared as I had left it. A small square of sunlight came in from the window, between the bathtub and the washer and dryer. Ruth and her mother lay side by side, as if they slept. The sun shone down on them, casting artificial warmth on their chests.
Alex crept across the dirt floor, poked Frau Hersberger with the barrel of the gun. She did not move.
“Ja. We are in time.” The Hexenmeister came to his knees beside Frau Hersberger. His arthritic hand shook on the stake. Alex took the stake from him and grabbed the hammer.
I took the bloody tools from Alex. “I can do it.” I should do it; these were my people, not his. And I had seen to the other preparations for their deaths.
I set the point of the stake over Frau Hersberger’s breast. “Here?”
“Ja.”
I lifted the hammer and swung. The first blow sickened me, and the stake went in at an angle.
“Keep going, Katie.”
I straightened the stake and struck again. I felt a rib shatter and hit timidly.
“Harder.”
I hit it harder.
“Again.”
The stake sank deep into her chest.
“Again.”
I struck again and the point hit the dirt floor.
“Good girl.” The Hexenmeister clapped my shoulder to draw me back, and Alex set in with the saw.
I looked away. It seemed such a perversion, to care for the bodies with such reverence and now destroy them.
“Last one,” the Hexenmeister said, as Alex pulled Frau Hersberger’s body away to clear the path to Ruth.
I fished in the paper sack for a stake, my fingers tight around it. I pressed the stake over a pin in Ruth’s dress, a pin I’d carefully set there. To be sure, I’d fantasized about slapping Ruth. Maybe even choking her. Or running over her with a buggy.
But this was different. This was real. Too real.
I swung with the hammer, missed. The hammer bounced off her sternum.
“Concentrate, Katie,” the old man said behind me.
I pressed the hammer to the back of the stake, lifted it. I had to finish this job. I struck down hard. The stake tore her dress, split her skin, and drove the pin deep away from sight.
I struck again, without his urging.
Again.
Hate bubbled up in me, coursing through my arms. I hated Ruth. I knew that I should feel compassion for her, lying here on the floor, torn and dead and held together with twine and a shower curtain. And I was destroying her again. A tear rolled down my cheek. I grunted as I swung with all my might, feeling the anger course through me, as if she were the one to blame for the dissolution of my relationship with Elijah. Not God.
It was easier to blame her.
“Katie.” Alex grabbed my arm on the upswing, and I struggled. Only then did I realize that I’d driven the stake deep into the dirt, embedding it beyond sight. I was simply pulping the flesh that I’d so carefully rinsed and tied together.
I landed on my backside, gasping, as he took the hammer from me. I drew my hands back to my chest, crept up close to Ruth on my knees.
I looked her full in her face. “Ruth, I’m sorry,” I whispered.
“Ruth,” Alex echoed. “That Ruth?”
My face flamed in shame. My rage at the dead girl was reprehensible. I was shocked that it had bubbled up now, at a time demanding compassion.
I closed my eyes. “Ja. That one.” I wanted to feel the sun on my face now, to feel God’s favor. But the sun and God’s favor had moved away, leaving me cold.
I was slammed back to the floor by a hand on my shoulder. My eyes snapped open, and I scrabbled back on my hands and knees in startlement. Alex stood over me, the gun trained on Ruth.
I jammed my fist in my mouth, stifling a cry. The dead girl had turned her head toward me, her eyes burning red. She opened her mouth and hissed, reaching for me.
But she couldn’t get to me with those pale fingers. She was pinned to the dirt floor by the stake, squirming like a spider caught on a pin. Her fiery gaze boiled on me with hate. Maybe even more hate than I’d fixed on her.
“The saw!” Herr Stoltz cried.
I crawled along the floor, my hands closing around the saw handle. Alex stood on Ruth’s nearest wrist, and the Hexenmeister fixed her head in place with his cane jammed in her frothing mouth. I smelled garlic.
I wedged myself between them, dodging her free arm. I set the saw blade against the tender white flesh of her throat. She kicked and howled as I drew the blade back, fighting and struggling until I hit the tough bones in the back of her neck.
I reached inside myself, for that last trickle of the cold well of hate, and ripped the saw through the bone.
The last bit of artificial life in her dimmed out as her head rolled free and came to a rest next to the dryer.
The three of us, tangled in silence, stared at the head.
Alex was first to speak. “There was talk of fire?”
“Ja,” the Hexenmeister said, struggling to stand. “There will be fire.”
***
We scoured the house and the outbuildings for every drop of kerosene we could find: from the lamps, cans in the shed, even from the clothes iron. The Hexenmeister instructed us to cover Frau Hersberger and Ruth first, then the men in the living room. The last of it was cast about in the girls’ room.
“The fire will rise,” Herr Stoltz said. “And there’s unlikely to be enough left for them to knit back together, anyway.”
I stood at the top of the basement stairs and lit a match. I tossed it down like a falling star. At first, it seemed as if nothing happened. Then blue flames raced across the dirt floor to engulf the women.
I turned and ran through the kitchen. Alex lit a book of matches and threw them on the floor, beside the Hersberger boy. Flames swept up from his body to ignite his father on the kitchen table.
We raced from the house to meet the Hexenmeister in the yard.
“Come on,” he said, gesturing for us to climb into the buggy. He was already perched on the seat and holding the reins. The white horse stayed at the side of the black one, and it seemed that there was no getting rid of him.
“There’s not room,” I protested. But Alex had already grabbed me by the waist and was shoving me up into the buggy.
“Scoot over, Bonnet,” he said as he swung up. “We’re gonna get friendly.”
I wound up awkwardly sprawled on Alex’s lap as the Hexenmeister drove the buggy away. I could see no sign of fire, except for a bit of smoke from the open living room window.
The sun was setting, blazing beautiful orange on the horizon as Herr Stoltz’s black mare trotted down the road. The white horse fell into step beside her, as if he were part of a hitched team.
I turned around to watch until the house was out of sight.
***
The Hexenmeister took Alex back to the kennel and me to my house, leaving us with stern
warnings to stay indoors. There were still more vampires out there. As the Hexenmeister said: “More work to do.”
I let myself into my house while the sun was still at the horizon. As expected, my mother rushed to the door to meet me and hustle my blood-smeared appearance away from Sarah’s eyes. She drew me a hot bath. I protested, not wanting to be in the dark by myself.
My mother stayed. As if I were a small child, she undressed me, then scrubbed my back with a washrag and fresh soap. She washed my hair, cared for me just as thoroughly as I’d cared for Ruth and her mother.
Guilt closed my throat, and I choked back a sob.
“It’s all right, liewe,” my mother murmured. She gathered my head to her shoulder and let me cry, smoothing my wet hair. “You are such a good girl. I’m so proud of you.”
When I looked at her, her eyes were brimming with such tears of pride that I hated myself.
After I dried off, my mother dressed me like a doll, in a nightgown and a pair of thick socks that she’d knitted for winter.
When we climbed the stairs, I saw that darkness had fallen. My father and Sarah sat by the fireplace reading the Bible. He smiled at me with that same heartbreaking expression of pride. Ginger sat beside them, looking at me with interminable sadness and fear. The afghan she was crocheting had grown longer, from her lap almost down to her ankles. She showed few other signs of life. Since her link to the Outside had been destroyed, she had seemed to collapse in on herself. I was afraid for her.
“I’ll make you some soup,” my mother said.
“Thank you,” I said, around the guilty lump in my throat.
I crossed to the front window, turned the lock on the door. I saw a small dot of orange on the northern horizon.
I drew the curtains.
We were all learning to fear the darkness.
Chapter Twenty
We gathered for the funeral the next day, circling around the ashes of the Hersberger house.
Unimpaired by rain or human intervention, the house had burned down to its foundations. The support beams, second floor, and roof had collapsed on the first floor, leaving a blackened mess. Smoke still issued from embers deep inside the structure.
Our funeral traditions had not changed in three hundred years. We did not bring flowers, drape caskets, or eulogize the dead. We did listen to a sermon and prayers, but there was no singing. And we did organize viewings at the home and bury the dead in our cemetery, all with feet facing east.
Those graves in the cemetery would remain open. The pallbearers were at a loss. The benches for church were brought to the Hersbergers’ front yard and arranged as usual, but there were no bodies to weep over.
We looked to the Elders for what to do. They gathered in a tight knot next to the structure. I sat quietly with my mother and Sarah among the rest of the female side of the congregation, my head lowered. Ginger sat beside me, dressed in her Plain clothes and looking defeated. She seemed locked in her own world, occasionally humming to herself.
Snatches of conversation swept past my ears:
“Is that the Outsider woman?”
“Do you think she’s really crazy?”
“. . . did you see the fire last night?”
“. . . maybe someone was trying to cover their tracks . . .”
“Maybe it was the Hexenmeister. He is crazy.”
“No, he’s too frail to commit such an act on his own.”
I glanced around and saw many of the men and women who were too fearful to enter the Hersberger house. Frau Gerlach nodded at me from a nearby bench, her posture prim and ramrod-straight. Her apron was pure white and her bonnet sharply starched. One would never know that she’d spent yesterday smeared in gore.
I didn’t see the Hexenmeister, which worried me.
Elijah and his father sat near the front of the men’s section. Elijah’s shoulders were a broken line of grief. I shuddered, recalling the feeling of the hammer striking the stake into Ruth’s chest.
I saw him rise, walk back toward us. I stared down at my hands, hoping that he didn’t mean to speak to me. But his shadow stopped before me, and I was forced to look up.
“Thank you,” he said. His face was open, vulnerable. “Thank you for what you did for Ruth and the girls.”
I nodded, swallowing the lump in my throat. I could not meet his eyes.
“Can I . . .” he began. “Can I come by to see you sometime?”
I flicked a panicked glance up at him.
“Just . . . just to talk?”
My grip on my own fingers tightened. I nodded shortly, just to get him away from me.
He shuffled off. My mother reached over Sarah and put her hands on mine.
“See?” she whispered. “Gelassenheit.”
Bile burned the back of my throat. I wanted to tell her that Gelassenheit had nothing to do with it.
The cluster of men in black at the front broke apart. The Bishop stood before us with his Ausbund in hand.
“God has taken the Hersberger family from us, brought them to his kingdom. We should be grateful to our Lord Jesus for bringing them home.”
My hands tightened into fists. Grateful? I bit the inside of my cheek until I tasted blood.
“. . . God has a plan for us, here on earth. It may seem inscrutable. Unknowable. But our faith in the Lord will bring us through this time of violence, to his kingdom and reunion with our loved ones in heaven. Only through faith, love, and obedience to his will shall we reach the kingdom.”
I let his words wash over me. They were, I realized, meaningless to me. I watched him read aloud from the Ausbund, reciting hymns that we usually sung. My attention wandered to the smoke rising from the back of the house. It didn’t smell like the slaughterhouse of yesterday. It simply smelled of burning wood. Pure. Cleansing.
Since there was no point in going to the cemetery, the funeral disbanded early. The congregation scattered like blown dandelion fluff. I still didn’t see the Hexenmeister among them, not even when I climbed the high step on my family’s buggy to survey the crowd.
His absence chewed on me as I worked my chores. I had little to do: laundry for myself and the Millers, picking pumpkins, searching for some wild sarsaparilla for tea and wild onions for stew. My mother had given me just enough to keep me occupied, to keep my thoughts from churning.
But they still churned, spiraling like blood down the dark drain of the Hersberger bathtub.
Self-loathing soaked through me. I hated what I had done yesterday. I hated how I had felt about it. I could feel myself falling into darkness, into a strange world that looked like my own on the surface but was full of bloody secrets underneath.
Only one of my secrets filled me with warmth: Alex. I was relieved to have someone beside me and the old Hexenmeister. Someone who was willing to do the Lord’s dirty work with me. Someone who I could be honest with.
He was as far from Elijah as a man could get. But he was a good man. I knew it in my heart . . . my heart that skipped when he was beside me. I had not ever experienced that buzz of emotion with Elijah. I didn’t know what to call it. But it—and he—fascinated me. And I was afraid that I was falling for him. Falling for a secret.
I ranged far from the house with my basket in search of the sweet root. I found that my feet took me north, and I followed them straight to the Hexenmeister’s house.
But as his house came into view, I realized that Herr Stoltz was not alone.
One of the Elders stood on the front porch. And he was holding a gun.
My heart lurched into my chest. Had something happened to the old man? Had they hurt him?
Screwing up my courage, I crossed the road to the house. I held my basket primly before me, thankful to have it as a plausible excuse. “Is Herr Stoltz home? I have brought him some sarsaparilla and onions.”
The Elder on the porch regarded me with skepticism. “Ja. He is home. But he is not taking visitors.”
“Oh. I hope he is not ill?”
“No. He
is not ill. But he is not allowed visitors.”
I blinked. “He is not allowed visitors?” The old man had always done as he pleased. I glanced at the front window, through the glass, and my heart sank. I saw Herr Stoltz sitting at his desk. And the Bishop stood before him. The look on his face was such a wrath as I had never seen.
The Elder moved to block my view. “The Bishop says he is to stay here. He has violated the Ordnung. No one speaks to him.”
My eyes slid to the rifle. I understood: Herr Stoltz was a prisoner in his own home. The Bishop has found out or suspected his hand in the fire that consumed the Hersberger house.
My eyes widened, and I blurted: “Is he under the Bann?”
“No. Not yet, anyway.”
I lamely held the basket before me. “Could you please give these to him?”
“You can leave them here. I will give them to him if the Bishop says it’s okay.”
I nodded, handed him the basket, and walked briskly away from the house. I walked until I was out of sight of the guard.
And then I fled.
At first, I headed south, toward home. I wanted to tell my mother, have her comfort me. I wanted my father to listen, to feel his protective shadow over me.
But I was learning that some things were beyond them, their powers to understand or their strength. This was one of them.
I veered south and east, toward the kennel. There was one person who would listen to me.
I hauled open the barn door, flooding the straw floor with light.
Alex rushed to the sound of the door reeling back. His sleeves were rolled up to his elbows, and he was holding a bucket of water that splashed onto the knees of his britches. A worry mark deepened his brow.
“Jesus, Bonnet. Thank God you’re here.”
“What’s wrong?” I dreaded his answer.
He gestured helplessly to the back. “The dog . . . she’s in labor. I think. I don’t know.” He set down the bucket and rubbed the back of his neck with his hand. “You’ve got good timing.”
“Ja,” I said darkly. “I have excellent timing in all things.”
He searched my face. “Look, don’t worry about . . . about last night. Your wizard is working on it. The old man’s got some vinegar in him. He’ll have all of your folk outfitted with Himmelsbriefs—or is it Himmelsbriefen? Anyway, he’ll have you guys set up before long. The vamps will move on, and maybe by then the military will have—”
