“Of course. I’ll go find one and get you some pills for the pain. Something to help you rest.”
“I don’t need—”
“Yes, you do.”
The doctor left, but Mabel and I stared down at Tomás, who sat up straight, then slipped into a hunched-over posture like he was exhausted beyond words. From his spot at the foot of the examination table, his feet did not touch the ground. He swung them slowly, like a bored and sleepy child.
“You can’t leave,” I informed him.
“Not yet,” Mabel agreed. “Stay and give us some time. We need to confer . . . and do some research . . . and . . . and talk to David, too. What’s done will not be undone so easily, should you take the next train out of town—and it might be for the best. We understand what it is. We have resources to address it. Not everyplace you might hide can say the same.”
“Very well,” he relented, or he pretended to. I don’t know which. He looked to me, or rather, he looked at Felipe, sitting in my arms—as quiet as a church mouse. “I am glad that he’s taken to you. If something were to happen to me, I would hope that you’d keep him and care for him.”
“Nothing is going to happen to you,” I told him.
“Oh, Alice,” he replied. He filled my name with such surrender, such tragic certainty. I hated the sound of it. “Don’t you know by now? Something happens to everyone, eventually.”
24
TOMÁS CORDERO
Cassadaga, Florida
MY SHOULDER WAS stiff and sore, but it was by no means the worst pain I’d experienced in my life, so I wore the injury like I wore the borrowed shirt: because I had little choice in the matter. I only had to take care that I did no damage to either my injury or the white button-up, which was a satisfactory piece from a good department store. It would suffice for the very short journey back to the hotel, where I had every intention of packing my things, sending off the borrowed shirt to be laundered, and sending myself off to parts unknown—or as yet undecided.
I had already decided to leave Felipe with Alice. Not because I wanted to, but because I was a danger to everyone and everything, and I would continue to be, so long as I lived. I would not endanger the little dog. Like so few of us who walk this earth . . . he deserves better.
It was as David declared, before he took measures to murder me: I brought this here, and I must take it away again. I regret to admit that no one here knows how to attempt any such thing, least of all me. I can only imagine that if I were gone—truly gone, dead and gone—then the thing might accompany me into the afterlife. Or if not, from the other side I might be some better use to this community (as opposed to presenting an incontrovertible danger, while I remain here in its midst).
I had made up my mind.
But every little thing conspired to thwart me. The painkiller that the doctor had provided left me woozy, or else the loss of blood did, and I was in no shape to sneak away. Then, of course, Alice was at my side every ridiculous moment, even when the police politely requested a word with me—and theirs was the kind of polite request that would not be delayed for any sake, even that of suicide.
I talked to them, I told them the truth, and I took my leave. That was all.
They wanted me to press charges against David, who sat sullenly in the back of their car while we chatted. I declined to do so. I said only that it was a private matter, and a misunderstanding. The young man is correct, and I won’t see him punished for it. Or I won’t see him punished any further, with any encouragement of mine.
The authorities took him away, regardless of my protests.
I don’t know what they intend to do with him.
• • •
IT was quite dark by the time I finally returned to the hotel.
Alice insisted that I keep Felipe with me, a four-footed chaperone, and I agreed. I promised that I would not pack my things and disappear, and I promised that I would change my clothes—and have Mr. Rowe launder the borrowed shirt and return it to Dr. Holligoss. I told her that I needed to lie down.
That last part, at least, was true.
It didn’t matter what was and wasn’t true otherwise. None of those other things would come to pass, all promises to the contrary.
• • •
OUTSIDE the window of my room, I could see people standing on the street and pointing at the curb, the sidewalk. They were pointing at my blood, which had not yet been cleaned away. Even in the freshly fallen dark, it was easily spotted. The streetlamps pointed it out, shining a spotlight upon the scene.
Someone kicked sand around, hiding the gore on the unpaved street.
That was the extent of it.
• • •
I was so very tired that I could almost imagine lying down and going to sleep right then and there, and never awakening, never rising. What a pleasant option, I thought. If only I had some useful poison to send myself off . . . what a delight it would have been. No more fires, except the fires of hell.
If indeed there is any such thing.
(The spiritualists tell me that there is not.)
• • •
BUT I had no poison—not even the doctor’s pills, for he’d given me only enough to help, not hurt. I had only exhaustion and pain. And a gun. And some promises I would not fulfill, but might delay. I lay down on the bed, and Felipe jumped up beside me. He curled up in the crook of my arm and began to snore.
I will miss him when I’m dead.
25
ALICE DARTLE
Cassadaga, Florida
I SAW TOMÁS and Felipe to their room and took all Tomás’s promises to be gospel—knowing that they probably weren’t. He was up to something. He was hurt and sad, and he was surrendering in some way. Or he was trying to.
Well, I wasn’t going to let him.
I talked Mr. Rowe into keeping half an eye on him, and then I talked Mabel into lurking about in the room next door. The walls are as thin as paper, and if he were to try anything—whether it be sneaking out of town, harming himself, or whatever else (I didn’t know what to expect from him) . . . she could intervene. She could send for me or someone else. She could do something.
“Go talk to Dolores,” she urged me before I left her. “When we were trying to calm David down, she came into the office looking for you. She said she wanted a word with you.”
“About Tomás?” We were whispering, because it’s as I said: The walls might as well have been made of the daily news.
“I assume, but maybe not. Go find out. I’ll stay here and keep watch . . . or keep listen, as the case may be.”
I left the room with the utmost stealth. The knob scarcely clicked when I shut the door behind me, and I tiptoed down the hall like my life depended on total silence. I felt silly for being so sneaky, but I also suspected that it was necessary. Tomás was being peculiar, and I was deeply afraid that I knew what he was up to—but I didn’t dare speculate. I refused to let myself. I opted instead to devote my attention to protecting him, to saving him.
I was here to help, and one way or another, I was going to help the living daylights out of him.
• • •
BY the time I left, it was very, very dark outside. I daresay it was proper nighttime, and not that dull late afternoon with the rosy glow at the edges of a dark blue sky. No, the sidewalk lamps were already blazing, and all the windows were lit up yellow from the gaslights within.
It was chilly, too. Not cold, but cool enough that everyone but me was sporting a sweater of some kind. I still had my bloody shawl and my bloody bandages to keep me warm.
To be fair, they weren’t that bloody. You had to really look if you wanted to see any blood, and the odds were good that if you did find some—you’d assume it was mine.
I’d forgotten to stop by my own room and change clothes. I had a lot on my mind.
I stepped
down the curb where Tomás had bled all over the place, unable to tell if the dark swatches there were shadows or stains, and unsure if I cared (if anybody cared). The next good rain would wash it off, or else someone from the hotel would get it—probably poor Mr. Rowe, who got roped into just about every odd job that presented itself. Why not blood removal? It couldn’t just stay there. It couldn’t be a very good advertisement for tourists.
I shook a little sand out of my shoe and went across the street to Harmony Hall, where I knocked on Dolores Brigham’s door and fidgeted nervously until she said, “Come in, Alice.”
“It’s me,” I said belatedly, and stupidly. “I’m here, I mean. Mabel said you wanted a word?”
“Yes, I do. Have a look at this.”
I made a noise that sounded perilously close to eew, and did my best not to turn up my nose. For there sat Dolores Brigham at her desk, guarded by a fortress of filthy, stinking books assembled around her. Some of the books were blackened and smelling of soot. Many were swollen with damp.
“These came from the rubble of Dr. Floyd’s house. They were in her library,” she explained before I could ask, like she always does. I still can’t decide if it’s reassuring or upsetting.
I sat down opposite her. Gingerly, reluctantly, I poked at the nearest waterlogged tome. It squished at the slightest pressure, and the dents created by my fingerprints stayed right where they were. It appeared quite thoroughly destroyed. “Someone managed to pull these out of the rubble?”
“Yes, and don’t make that face. They’re dirty, but they aren’t garbage. Yes, they smell terrible, but there’s nothing to be done about that.” She pushed one toward me, across her desk. It left a trail of paper peelings and slime. “Look at this one: The Art and Mystery of Pyrographia.”
“Is that what it says? I can hardly tell.”
“Here’s another: Banishment, in Lore and Practice.” She pulled down one more from the seeping pile. “Send It Away: To Call upon the Saints.”
“Do . . . do we believe in saints?”
“Certainly we believe in people who’ve manifested extraordinary abilities throughout the ages. If they honed their skills through religion, we are prepared to respect their expertise. Who are we to say which path to grace is correct? How can we even know how many paths exist?”
“I never thought about it that way. What about that one?” I asked, pointing at a very large volume, which Dolores had left open in front of her. The ink had run, but much of it was still readable. There were notes in the margins, but I couldn’t make them out; from where I was sitting, they were half washed-out and upside down.
“After having a word with Dr. Floyd’s brother, I believe that this is the book she was reading when she was interrupted by the fire. She threw it under the table—in hopes of protecting and preserving it.”
She turned it around for me. It left another smear of soggy paper streaks behind itself.
Across the top of the page, the book’s title had been printed in very small type. “The Burning Times: Witches, Women, and Punishment in Fifteenth-Century Europe,” I read. “Mr. Colby said that the dark spirit wanted us to burn. Wait—where is Mr. Colby?”
“He’s resting in one of the extra rooms upstairs. He’s quite old, but the last few days have made him”—she paused—“even older. At any rate, his fire-damaged space is all cleared out now.” She shook her head unhappily, and I don’t blame her. Her house had almost gone up, too, just like Dr. Floyd’s. So much the worse if the founder had been inside.
“I’m afraid for him,” I confessed. “I don’t know how much longer he can go on like this.”
“I’m afraid for him, too. The crossing comes for all of us, in time, but the world will be a darker place when his day arrives.”
“Dolores, what are we going to do?” I cringed to hear myself sounding so pitiful, but there it was. “How do we stop the fires?”
“You once told Dr. Floyd that fire is the thread that ties all our troubles together. Fire is only the weapon—it isn’t the source of our difficulties.” She chose a page that was badly stuck to several others, and carefully, slowly peeled it free. While she worked the fragile sheets apart, she said, “Three are the threads, as is so often the case. Fire, and witches, and hammers. Alice, could you remove the bandage, please? George said I should take a look at your arm.”
“My arm?”
“Before he went to sleep, he said that your burn is a knot in the thread, and I must pull it loose. Would you mind unwinding your bandage?”
Just thinking about my injury made it hurt again, but I could hardly tell her no. “Sure, just give me a minute. The wrap is filthy, and I need to change it anyway.” I picked at the edge of the wrap.
While I worked at the gauze, she kept reading and searching in the tome at hand. “Ah, here’s the passage I was looking for.” She tapped a large paragraph in the middle, and since it was upside down to her, she told me to read it for myself.
I did. I read it in silence, trying to keep my lips from moving.
While the pursuit and prosecution of witchcraft were prevalent through the continent off and on for decades, even centuries, the zeal with which the accused were hounded and tried was given a significant boost in 1487—with the publication of The Malleus Maleficarum ( The Hammer of Witches, in English; Der Hexenhammer, in German). This treatise was both a paranoid screed and a handbook, detailing the symptoms of witchcraft, the likely perpetrators of witchcraft (who were almost exclusively women), and the best means for eradicating the practice—which involved a goodly number of stakes and matches. Compiled by a Dominican clergyman (Kramer, with additional—and possibly minor—assistance from fellow Dominican Sprenger), this new weapon against the devil spread far and wide, with the advent of the printing press, well beyond the borders of Speyer, Germany, where it first appeared.
My head jerked up. I’m sure my eyes were as wild as a lunatic’s when I blubbered, “The . . . the hammer? Of witches?”
Dolores looked up from the page. “A hammer to be used upon them. A weapon of God, forged against evil—or that’s how Mr. Kramer thought of himself, I’m sure. Wicked men rarely know what villains they truly are, and they even more rarely care. Alice, do you know if Tomás fought anywhere near Speyer?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea. But . . . maybe?” I’d stopped unwinding the bandage to stare down at the book. It was calling me, drawing me. Or something was. Maybe it was Dr. Floyd, whose first name was Janice, and I’d only just learned that much after she’d passed.
I reached for the book, and closed my eyes, and laid my hand on the disgusting wet pages.
• • •
THE world flashed bright, then dark.
• • •
I saw Dr. Floyd holding the book open in her arms. She reached for a pencil to take notes. (I was always told that you shouldn’t write in books, but then again, I always thought that was a silly admonition.) She scribbled something in the margin. She heard a noise. She looked up. A hulking, shadowy figure loomed behind her. She saw it in the mirror that hung along the library wall. She opened her mouth to say something, to call its name; she knew its name. I could see it on her face. She called its name. I couldn’t hear it. I don’t know what she called him.
I know he called himself the hammer.
He grabbed her by the throat and lifted her; he pulled her up, he pushed her against the ceiling, and every place he touched began to burn.
• • •
DR. Floyd was standing in the library, holding the book, scrawling a note with the pencil.
She looked into the mirror, and the angle was such that she was looking right at me.
• • •
MY eyes jerked open. “She wrote something,” I breathed.
“There are some pencil marks, yes, but I’m not sure what they mean.”
“She drew a line, an
d a circle—around those names, Kramer and Sprenger. And there, in the margin she wrote . . .”
“See appendix,” Dolores filled in. “But the appendix at the back of the book is nothing but wet pulp.”
I traced the ever-so-faint pencil lines with my fingertip, back and forth between the circled words and the margins, to the shadow-light impression of another piece of scrawl. “This bit is very short, just a couple of letters. It’s just . . .” I froze.
“Alice? What is it?”
“I know what she wrote, under the bit about seeing the notes.”
“How? You can barely see it. I’m not even sure what it says, and I’ve been examining it with a magnifying glass.”
“Well, I’m sure,” I said, with more certainty than I’d ever felt about anything in my life. The last twists of the fabric bandage came free from my arm, and fresh air hit the burn like a slap. I displayed the gruesome injury and pushed the book around to face her once more, so she could see them both at once. “Look, don’t you see? It’s as plain as the nose on your face.”
Dr. Floyd had written down the initials “H” and “K.”
Mr. Kramer, who called himself “the hammer,” had written down those same initials, right there on my skin.
Dolores gasped slowly, and through her nose. “Let’s not leap to any conclusions—”
“I don’t believe in coincidences anymore.” I rose from the chair and paced in a circle. I tried not to look at my arm, and I tried to think.
“Alice . . . ,” she said, like she was trying to slow me down. She didn’t try very hard. She was poring over the book’s passage, dragging her finger lightly along the text.
I kept talking, because of course I did. “It was unprecedented; that’s what Mr. Colby said. The flame projector that Tomás used on the battlefield was unprecedented, and even the dead might take notice. This man”—I jabbed a finger down at the book—“this man noticed. He came along for the ride. He came here for us. Tell me, do you know what . . . what . . .” I looked at the book again. “Kramer. What his first name was? I bet you it started with an ‘H.’”