by David Boop
On the heels of the Murphys came the three Taylor siblings: Faith, Hope, and Charity. Hope was a boy of twelve—a scrappy lad who began every school term proving himself with his fists to those who thought “Hope” was only a girl’s name. His older sister, Faith, was one of the girls Prudence would have been happy to count a friend. Charity was nine, intensely proud of having graduated from the company of the “littles.” Then came Mary “Daisy” Filmore, with her older brothers, Edward and Daniel. As Prudence stood on the porch, ringing the final bell, the stragglers raced in, brisk and red cheeked from their run.
Each scholar greeted Prudence politely but, as they settled into their seats, Prudence became aware of an unusual air of expectancy. The children kept glancing at each other, not with dread, but with pent-up excitement. Finally, after the morning prayer and Bible verse, Faith, the eldest present, raised her hand.
“Miss Bledsloe, we need to talk with you—about the missing children.”
Prudence stiffened, wondering if they were about to accuse her. “Why me? Why not Reverend Jenkins or Sheriff Dixon or Mayor Chambers?”
Faith shook her head, the motion echoed by all the rest. “They wouldn’t listen. John and Elizabeth”—she motioned with her head toward the minister’s son and daughter—“tried to talk with their father, but Reverend Jenkins told them they were overwrought. He, at least, really believes in God and devils. If he won’t listen, why would the sheriff or the mayor?”
Prudence managed a slight smile, although her heart was still pounding unreasonably fast at what felt like a near miss. “Very sensible. All right, I’ll listen, but I reserve the right to take your problem to the proper authorities, if that’s what I feel is needed.”
Faith looked at Dylan Murphy. “Go on. Tell her.”
“Did they tell you anything about Mr. Hale?” Dylan Murphy rose to his feet as if called upon to recite a lesson. “How he, uh…”
“Had an accident?” Prudence arched her eyebrows to indicate she was open to other explanations.
“He didn’t. I mean, have an accident. He…” Dylan gulped, but continued after Faith gave him an encouraging smile. “You know how me and Eileen get up early to help our da about the stables? Well, I finished first, and was going bird’s-nesting. There’re swallows who like the eaves here at the schoolhouse. When I got here, I saw the door was open. It shouldn’t have been, since school was out for the summer…” He gulped again, then finished all in a rush. “I went to check, even though I was right scared I’d find Mr. Hale there. Well, I did, and there’s no way what happened was an accident. He’d drawn all over the chalkboard and the floor: weird letters, full of angles. He had cuts on his arms and face. There was a ruler sticking out of his chest.”
Dylan paled and covered his mouth with his hands as if trying not to vomit. Eileen took pity on him, and turned a pleading gaze on Prudence.
“You’ve got to believe this bit, Miss Bledsloe. Dylan doesn’t tell tall tales. He told me everything, even after the grownups suggested that he keep quiet. He said that the worst part was that he could swear that Mr. Hale was still alive, alive and grinning at him, grinning wide like he’d won some tremendous prize.”
When Eileen fell silent, tugging her brother down to sit next to her, the scholars from littlest to biggest stared at Prudence. Certainly at least some of them were waiting for her to reassure them, to tell them that they were excessively imaginative or, in the words of Reverend Jenkins, “overwrought.” As easy as it would have been, Prudence couldn’t do that. She paused long enough for them to feel sure she was carefully considering what Dylan and Eileen had confided, then she inclined her head solemnly.
“Very well, I believe you. Why tell me?”
“We don’t know who else to tell.” Hope’s voice broke with simple desperation. “No one would believe us about how evil Mr. Hale was when he was alive. Then we had the bruises to show. They just said Mr. Hale was strict, that he had our brightest futures in mind. Why would they believe us now that he’s dead?”
Since Prudence had entertained similar thoughts, she could only nod. “Very well. Tell me everything you know—even what you guess.”
Now the words tumbled out: reports of too-coherent nightmares, of whispered threats that, if they didn’t keep up with their studies, Mr. Hale would return to give them a proper “schooling.” How, before he had disappeared, Henry Schuler told Dylan Murphy that Mr. Hale was trying to make him come to night school to catch up on his lessons. How Rosemarie Dubois had taken to sleeping with her Bible, but how her mother had forbidden her to do something so disrespectful of the Good Book, and, then, the very next day, Rosemarie had vanished. The tales were all outrageous, all—given what Prudence suspected about Samuel Hale—too much a confirmation of her fears.
* * *
When the scholars had finished their reports, Prudence sent them outside for morning recess. They dashed out with lighthearted enthusiasm, the burden of their special knowledge transferred from their shoulders to hers. Only Eileen Murphy lingered.
“What will you do, Miss Bledsloe?” she asked, her expression far too wise for a child.
Prudence spoke her half-formed thoughts. “Mr. Hale doesn’t seem to care about me, only about the students. If I am to reach him, then one of the students must be used as bait to bring him out of hiding. I don’t know if I dare do that—both for the child and, quite honestly, for myself.”
“Because people are talking,” Eileen responded seriously. “Most of us have spoken up for you, but there are those—the lazy ones who don’t want to come to school, the scared ones, those big boys who don’t like that you don’t respect them as nearly men—who feed the nastier gossip. But those of us here today, we all trust you. If you ask, any one of us would act as bait. You see, we all stood by when Ralph Bolton was killed. That haunts us as much as does Mr. Hale.”
“Guilt’s a powerful force,” Prudence agreed, knowing how true that was from long experience. “But why do you all believe I can do something about Mr. Hale?”
Eileen answered Prudence’s question with one of her own. “Did I ever tell you I have the second sight? There is a time to set a wolf to guard the flocks.”
She grinned impishly, tugged her knit cap over her red curls, then skipped from the room to play in the winter sunshine.
* * *
Although Prudence protested, Charlie Bolton insisted that he be the one to act as bait.
“Mr. Hale killed my brother. And he hates me worse than he does the rest, ’cause not only did I get shut of him, he lost his job because of me and Ralph. He might suspect a trap, but if it’s me, he won’t be able to hold back.”
“Won’t your parents be keeping a close eye on you?”
Charlie’s lips pressed into a thin line. “Not a bit. They’ve gone strange since Ralph died. I think they blame me.”
Or if they don’t, you do, Prudence thought. Another reason to take the risk. I won’t have this child bearing that burden.
“Very well, Charlie,” she said. “Start reciting those times tables. If you mess up around times six, I’m going to speak very sternly to you. I might even give you lines.”
* * *
One element of her plan that Prudence had not confided to the students was that it included permitting Samuel Hale to capture Charlie. She needed to track the schoolmaster to his lair if she were to have a chance to find the other children—children she felt certain were still alive, if not entirely sane.
So it was that when Charlie, moving as if sleepwalking, came trudging across the packed snow and entered the schoolhouse, Prudence locked the schoolhouse door behind them both. Then, a shadow among shadows, she drifted after the boy. Behind the teacher’s desk an opening gaped amid the new floorboards. Prudence felt no doubt that this was the precise location where the hate-maddened schoolmaster had shed his own blood. The opening led to a staircase that twisted around itself in a jagged spiral with angles like those of summer lightning.
Putting on
e hand on the bannister, Charlie stepped into the dark mouth in the floor and began his measured descent. Afraid that this uncanny portal might exist solely for the boy, Prudence waited only until Charlie’s head had vanished beneath the floor, then hastened to follow, matching her steps to his, so that it would sound as if only one person paced the metal treads.
The sides of the spiraling stair were lined with thousands of elegant leather-bound books, each of which bore the name of Samuel Hale on the spine. Samuel Hale on geometry. Samuel Hale on Shakespeare. Samuel Hale on the Roman Empire. Samuel Hale on pedagogy. Samuel Hale on occult knowledge. No title repeated twice, each volume a testimony to the wildly impossible dreams of an ambitious man.
After a descent that seemed to continue for hours, the stair ended at the doorway into nightmare version of a one-room schoolhouse. Chained to uncomfortable iron desks were the missing scholars: Filbert, Josie, Henry, and Rosemarie. Eyes dull, the four children recited in cacophonous unison fragments of the rotes they had failed in Prudence’s class. Every time they made a mistake, fire flared around them and they screamed—an action that caused more flames, more screams, more errors. Despite this, not a one showed a single blister or even reddened skin. They remained neat and tidy, a teacher’s ideal of perfect students.
At the front of the classroom, Mr. Hale stood at a podium more suited to a fine university rather than a one-room schoolhouse. He was much more handsome than Prudence had expected: tall and stately, clean-shaven, his golden hair shaded with silver at the temples. Only his eyes hinted at his revenant existence, for their natural color had been replaced by the dancing orange-red of an infernal furnace. Hale’s body showed none of the mutilations he had inflicted upon his mortal form, although perhaps his dark broadcloth suit hid the scars. His left hand gripped the podium, with his right he held a ruler that he tapped in cadence with the scholars’ recitations.
When Charlie hesitated at the doorway, Mr. Hale’s head swiveled. The motion was inhuman, a twist like a doll’s head that involved neither neck nor shoulders. The expression of evident scorn made his handsome features ugly.
“Times six still giving you problems, Charles?” Hale boomed in a deep, sonorous voice. He motioned for Charlie to seat himself at a vacant iron desk where the chains shifted in anticipation of their prey, like rattlesnakes waiting to strike.
When Charlie obediently stepped over the threshold, the rattling chains struck out at him. Prudence grabbed the boy by the collar and swung him behind her. The chains struck her with enough force that she staggered, but their fanged heads could not piece her winter clothing, although her favorite cloak would never be the same. The chains hissed in metallic disappointment and coiled back, granting Prudence a brief second during which she could attend to Charlie.
Prudence’s grip had broken whatever spell that had held the boy. He began screaming in terror, and might well have frozen where he stood, but Prudence pushed him onto the stairs.
“Charlie! Run! Leave this to me.”
Charlie didn’t hesitate to argue or offer heroics. As he fled, his footsteps rang against the stair treads. Alert to any pause that might indicate that Hale’s magic had freshly ensnared the boy, Prudence’s sharp hearing caught a muffled thudding from far above. Prudence realized that this was someone pounding on the schoolhouse’s locked door. Time was running out—at least if she wished her own secret to remain undiscovered.
Prudence stepped into the schoolroom, placing herself between the four youngsters and Mr. Hale. “I have come for my scholars, Samuel Hale.”
“Your scholars?” Hale sneered. “I have sacrificed myself to Knowledge, thus I claim these four, body and soul. Who are you, a weak and undereducated woman, to challenge me? I went to Harvard! I went to Yale! You would coddle them, love them, pamper them to their eventual detriment.”
“Undereducated I may be,” Prudence replied coolly, “but weak… Well, now. You’re just showin’ your own ignorance.”
With that, she began her change. Human was only one of the three forms that Prudence Bledsloe could call her own. The other she chose most often was that of a wolf. One of the joys of living in the western wilds was that, unlike “back East,” a pawmark barely merited notice. But there was a shape that rested between, a form that no one—not even the one who wore it—could term other than that of a monster.
This was the shape Prudence chose now: the shape of the werewolf. For this encounter, she had not thought it wise to rely upon her guns, for she did not know how far the sound of shots fired might carry. Nor did she know if bullets could harm the undead thing into which Mr. Hale’s knowledge of the dark arts had remade him. She’d long learned to choose her attire so there would be no unseemly tearing when she changed. Pleats on both skirt and blouse spread to accommodate her altered build.
Although she did not wish to use her guns against Hale, as a werewolf, Prudence possessed natural armament. Her mother had warned her about the dangers of tasting either human flesh or that of wolves but, whatever else Samuel Hale might be, he was no longer human—nor was he a coward. As Prudence’s form reconfigured, Hale lifted high the ruler he held in his right hand, the straight edges glinting like razors. He lunged at her, stabbing for her heart as once he had stabbed into his own.
The ruler blade found its target, slicing through Prudence’s bodice, deep into her heart. Hale shrieked in satisfaction but, although Prudence shuddered at the impact, swallowing a howl of agony, the ruler was not silver. The wound could hurt her, it did hurt her, but it could not kill her. She forced her transformation to continue until she stood in her new form: wolf head atop human torso, that torso covered with fur and possessed of much larger hands that curled from the weight of claws. She still possessed a woman’s long hair, caught in a bun, still a woman’s figure, but these softening touches only made her seem more a monster.
“Yellow-eyed daughter of Fenris!” Hale declaimed, leaping back from Prudence with inhuman agility. “I hoped to weaken you before you had gained your monstrous form. Do you think that I, high-priest of Knowledge, do not know what will harm you?”
Prudence was perfectly certain that Hale did know what could harm werewolves. However, he’d already demonstrated that he had no silver weapons. What could he do to her?
Holding his razor-edged ruler high, as a wizard might his wand, Samuel Hale declaimed in a steady rhythm that recalled the rotes he set his students. Prudence’s Latin wasn’t very good, but she knew a spell when she heard it. She braced herself for what might come.
A hissing clatter caused Prudence to wheel to one side, although she took care that she did not turn her back on Hale. The iron chains were sliding from Filbert Ditwaller, releasing him from his bondage. As the hulking youth staggered to his feet, his glazed expression transformed into one of purest malice—a malice Prudence knew instinctively was Hale’s own, for no boy could be capable of so much hatred toward one whose worst offense was a refusal to grant him an adult rank he had not yet earned.
Samuel Hale had chosen his weapon well, for Prudence would not harm one of those innocents she had risked so much to save—nor could she risk that in his eagerness to grab hold of her, Filbert might unintentionally injure one of the three still entrapped. Darting past Filbert, Prudence gathered her skirts and loped down the aisle toward the back of the classroom. Chortling madly, his malice colored with something like lust, Filbert stalked after her, chunky hands outstretched to grab Prudence, his lips moving in an obscene parody of a kiss.
Even with her bulky werewolf’s form, Prudence possessed a degree of grace, and easily dodged the youth. If she could hold off Filbert long enough for those above to arrive, well, her own doom would be assured, but she had never expected to live a long life. That was rarely given to monsters such as herself. At least the children would be saved.
But Hale’s perfidy did not stop at turning Filbert into an extension of his will. He was laughing now, laughter which punctuated an insane lecture.
“Do you know, Mis
s Bledsloe, why silver is necessary to harm a shapeshifter? Do you know why we needed to reach the modern era for silver to become a truly effective weapon?”
Prudence noticed that Filbert’s attack became less focused as Hale spoke. The youth still followed her, his hands reaching out to grope, but the motions lacked intensity. If she could keep Hale’s attention split, she might be able to avoid injuring Filbert.
Intensifying the drawl she had brought with her from the mountains of Tennessee, a drawl she had trained herself to speak without, Prudence replied, “Well, now. No, I can’t rightly say I do. My mama jus’ told us that silver weapons can be fatal to our kind, and that we should take care when we must carry silver coin and suchlike.”
In response, Hale’s own accents became more precise, more blueblood. “Silver affects werewolves because it is the moon’s metal, polishing to shining white, tarnishing to inky black. Just as the moon is the orb of change and can rule the shapeshifter, so the moon’s metal is the only one that can do lasting and permanent harm to a ferocious monster such as yourself.”
“That’s right sensible,” Prudence said, making her tones unctuously impressed. “I ain’t never heard such a way of seein’ it.”
And she hadn’t. Maybe someday she’d spare the time to find out if there was anything to Hale’s theory but, at the moment, Filbert had backed her into a corner while Hale chanted in Latin again. This time she recognized the words for silver and for Moon and knew to fear the worst.
Had there been moonlight outside the windows before? Prudence didn’t remember, nor did she particularly care. There was moonlight now, wide silver beams that were being sucked in by the razor-edged ruler Hale held in his right hand. But what he held wasn’t a ruler anymore. The ruler had transformed into a pistol—a pearl-handled model, a bit effete compared to the six-guns that Prudence herself preferred—but definitely a pistol and one that she did not doubt would shoot silver bullets. Heck, Hale probably wouldn’t even need to worry about reloads.
