The Black Palace Page 3

  “Then let’s go bright and hit it.” She flicked on her headlamp and the light mounted on her handgun, the others going bright just as quickly.

  Sledge threw himself against the door with his shoulder like a battering ram, and the front of the house seemed to shudder. He stepped back. Despite the fractured dent he made in it, the door remained closed.

  DiFranco reached out to the knob, gently, and turned it. The door opened for her. It must have been unlocked. She didn’t look back to see Sledge’s reaction.

  Instead they all moved across the threshold in tight unison, DiFranco sweeping the firing line in front, level with them, Sledge sweeping the ceiling, Mr. Eisenheimer covering the floor nearby, Jan angling to cover their back-trail. The area looked clear from what DiFranco could see of the entryway and the farther hall, but they had to stay ready, because now that they had been spotted by a witch’s maidservant, none of them knew what the witch could—at any given moment—send racing their way, nor where it could be racing at them from.

  Sledge roared into the dark, “Witchfinders Union. Everyone in the house hit the floor. Face down, palms up. We find you any other way and you’re executed.”

  Across the second story above their heads they heard the scuffle of hard heels hitting floorboards. The sound moved toward the back of the house.

  “More than one. They’re running,” DiFranco said. “Go, go, go.”

  She led, and the team stayed with her, down the hall, past side-tables and buffets and candles in glittering brass holders, past doors that sat open to other rooms, into a foyer full of oil paintings of intricate portraits that were all missing faces.

  Jan said, “What about clearing those two rooms we passed, Mr. Eisenheimer?”

  “If anyone’s in there, they’re not moving,” DiFranco answered. “Others above us are.”

  A staircase opened at one side of the room, and since Sledge was closest to it, they all turned the hydra formation, trading firing lines, and followed his lead up the steps.

  But Sledge halted at the top of the stairs.

  “Talk to me,” said DiFranco. She swept her beam high around where he wasn’t covering. She saw only wallpaper.

  “It ends,” he said.

  “This isn’t supposed to be here,” Mr. Eisenheimer said. “None of this is supposed to be here.”

  DiFranco nudged Sledge to the side so she could see what he was looking at: the wide, carpeted stairs met a wall, flat and blank. The end they faced wasn’t a closed door or even a false wall with disguised seams. These stairs simply led nowhere.

  “What’s your call, Jan?” she said.

  “It’s incredible,” he said. “These stairs do theoretically connect, just not to this house. I’ve never been in an authentic Vihns before, and I—”

  “Focus,” she said. “Fast. They’re either getting away or setting up defenses right now. Which way to the second floor?”

  “The plans don’t exist,” Jan said. “Vihns never worked from blueprints.”

  “I’m telling you I’ve been in this house before,” Sledge said. “I think it’s back that way. The real stairs.”

  They adjusted formation again, Mr. Eisenheimer leading them back down the stairs, and they adjusted again following Sledge’s directions toward a drawing room.

  They cleared the room from the door and saw inside that an oak cabinet and clock along with an arranged dinner table and chairs were all suspended on the wall, standing sideways against gravity. Old crumbs and small bones remained on the plates. But there was no one there, and there were two doors to check, so despite Jan’s exclamations, there was no time to waste on inspecting the impossible furniture.

  They split formation and DiFranco opened one of the doors while Sledge did the other.

  Her door opened to nothing but a wall of brick. She called, “Dead end.”

  Jan said, “This house isn’t brick.”

  “Found it,” Sledge called. “This one.”

  They followed him, now forced to form a line, up narrow stairs that seemed to spiral and tilt but that led them upward regardless. These took them to the second floor. Sledge’s limp wasn’t slowing him down. They stood in the middle of an equally tight hallway, two directions to go.

  “We should split up,” Mr. Eisenheimer said.

  “Hell no,” Sledge said. “You’ll lose your ass in here. It’s a maze.”

  “It’s supposed to be,” Jan said. “But it’s more than that.”

  DiFranco told them to go one way, following her, and Mr. Eisenheimer said no, to go the other, following him. He hurried his way in the instant she hesitated, so Jan followed, and so she and Sledge went as well.

  She saw that the hall ended by opening to a room, and Mr. Eisenheimer, at the lead, was first in. He called out at something, and shoulder-rolled on the floor, and from kneeling position he fired three rounds at what DiFranco couldn’t yet see.

  She brought up the rear of the team into the room, a tall space with a wall of library shelves holding hundreds of the same leather book, and on the opposite wall, a large stone hearth between her and another doorway that Mr. Eisenheimer had shot toward. She still didn’t see it. It must have fled. “What was it?”

  “I got it,” he said.

  “Got what?” she said. She produced her single-shot pocket shotgun and was ready with her bandoleer to draw the best exotics round for the job, for whatever creatures the witch in this house would be sending at them.

  Sledge produced his over-and-under, which was sawed down to the size of a flintlock pistol, and he was waiting on Mr. Eisenheimer to hear which round to choose too.

  “A witch,” Mr. Eisenheimer said. “I wounded it.”

  If he had done so, then he wasn’t a bad field agent at all. Reacting that fast—with a shoulder roll, no less—and hitting an identified, fleeing target after having guessed its direction in that maze of a house: he was legit.

  But it was slightly odd that they would encounter the witch before they did her defenses, whatever they would be, unless they had caught this one entirely unprepared for Witchfinders, which would be a different kind of odd. Nevertheless, DiFranco loaded a botanical round, the best bet when lead wasn’t enough. Sledge did too. Jan looked into his valise, which he was still carrying, but did nothing with it and instead kept his revolver in hand.

  Mr. Eisenheimer hesitated, still on his knees.

  “Get up,” DiFranco said. “Let’s get her while she’s hurt.”

  “Hold,” Mr. Eisenheimer said. He didn’t sound right. The look on his face wasn’t right.

  “Come on,” DiFranco told him. Maybe he was feeling the freeze, the combat adrenaline dump. Maybe he hadn’t been in the field for a while. She snapped her fingers for him to come along with her, her hand in his line of sight, in case that could help him come out of it.

  “I said hold, goddamnit,” he said, his voice desperate. He was shaking. He slapped at them blindly, hitting Sledge on the leg, getting him to step away. “Get back. Now. Don’t do anything.”

  “Looks like trouble,” Sledge said.

  DiFranco stepped away from him too, and only then did she notice them coming through that far door. It was a woman, with two children at her side. Their skin smoked softly with vapor, and with each slow step toward him their bare feet peeled from the floorboards with the sound of frost.

  “Daddy,” the kids said.

  “No,” the woman said as she held them back at their wrists from running. “Daddy’s working. He can’t come with us yet.”

  “Yes I can,” Mr. Eisenheimer said. He coughed tears. He held out his arms. “Come here. Let me see you.”

  They again moved toward him slowly, as if wading upstream through the thick air of the room. It smelled like crisp static, like a gathering cloud.

  Their color was vague, but not their features, which were specific down to their pores. The woman had an honest face, but it was hard, looking ever so deliberate, not yet willing to let herself cry with relief the way M
r. Eisenheimer was doing. She briefly glanced at the rest of them, clearly seeing them, seeing DiFranco, but deciding to ignore them.

  Mr. Eisenheimer was having trouble talking. He stuttered with weeping and laughter, so pained and so happy.

  Jan yelled, “Don’t, Mr. Eisenheimer. They’re not really there.”

  DiFranco pulled Jan back by the shoulder, which quieted him. “You see them too, yes?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Then they’re really there.”

  Sledge said to Mr. Eisenheimer, “Are you sure you know them? Are you sure they’re dead?”

  “Leave us,” Mr. Eisenheimer said back to him.

  Sledge said to DiFranco, “You thinking what I’m thinking?”

  She didn’t want to keep talking during this moment of theirs. It felt wrong. It felt like they should just do something to put a stop to it without having to discuss it. But she was indeed thinking what Sledge was thinking, so to confirm it she said, quietly, “We’ve got a Witch of Endor.”

  Sledge nodded. “Only seen two in my time. Two real ones, anyway.”

  “Then this’ll make three,” DiFranco said. “But you ever heard of one that could pull up the dead just like that, no ceremony, and toss them at a Witchfinder after eating three rounds of lead?”

  “Sounds like trouble,” Sledge said.

  The figures stood with Mr. Eisenheimer now, who, from his knees, hugged a child in each arm ever so gently so as not to disturb their forms, and he looked up, smiling at the woman. “I’m not going to leave,” he said. “I’m with you now.”

  “They miss you,” the woman said to him. “We miss you.”

  “I should have been there,” he said.

  “You couldn’t,” the woman said. “But you’re with us now.”

  Mr. Eisenheimer lifted his handgun over the head of one of his children, toward his own head.

  “Shit, we got to stop him,” DiFranco said. She went for him, but she had to halt just as fast.

  Mr. Eisenheimer had quick-drawn a second handgun at her movement, and he looked at her with it. He looked at all three of them. “Leave us, Witchfinders. That’s an order.”

  Jan said, “Don’t do it, Mr. Eisenheimer. Come on. A witch is doing this.”

  “No,” he said. “A witch did not do this.”

  DiFranco took another step toward him—she was going to have to disarm him, which would be tough, and hope they could wrestle him away from his dead family—but he cocked the hammer of his handgun at her, so she had to halt again.

  “I’ll kill you if I have to,” he said. “You understand.” And with that he faced his family again, laughing for them as if they had no need to worry, crying at his children’s small, quiet words of love to him.

  “Fuck,” Sledge said. He grabbed DiFranco by her field pack and tugged at her. “Come on, DiFranco. We got to let him go.”

  “We have to get him. No leaving a Witchfinder behind,” DiFranco said. “We could try dissipating them. Mirror shards. Salt shot.”

  “You saw the man’s eyes,” Sledge said. “It’ll be a firefight with him if we do. Let it go. It’s not your call. It’s his.”

  Sledge was walking her out toward that far door, on the way to continue their chase.

  Jan was saying, “What’s he going to do?” only because he didn’t seem to know what else to say.

  Mr. Eisenheimer already had his own pistol to his temple, smiling to his family, telling them he’s with them now.

  “We can’t leave him,” DiFranco said again, but she let herself get pulled out the door with Sledge and Jan anyway. She didn’t know why she was letting herself get pulled away, feeling like she was reliving a distant and dark dream, but she was leaving nonetheless, and she hated it.

  And then, out of sight, was the gunshot.

  The house rang with silence. Candles flickered in the hall sconces.

  She wanted to go back in and see, but Sledge pulled her away a little more and said that he found the blood trail, and he made her look at the spots on the floor, plainly trying to distract her from going back in the room to see his body, from seeing whether his dead family would still be standing over him wondering what to do next.

  DiFranco tried not to get lost in wonder herself. She needed to remember that it was black and white: this witch was dangerous as hell and had just taken out one of the team, and some maidservant was with her that was somehow vital—at least according to the riddle, her only lead—and so they had to be stopped. DiFranco had a job to do, and seeing the blood trail should have been enough, so she decided to focus forward and keep moving.

  She took only a moment with the screen on her watch to send out the distress call, letting Central Dispatch know that a Witchfinder was down and back-up was needed, and then they continued.

  They moved through new hallways, strange rooms, following the spots of blood up another set of stairs to the third floor. DiFranco and Sledge remained sharp, clearing corners as they turned, sweeping firing lines to keep themselves covered, but Jan now did nothing more with his light or revolver except merely follow them.

  “Why did he do that?” Jan said. “He didn’t have to do that. Don’t they train you guys for that?”

  “Train what guys for what?” Sledge said.

  “Us guys,” Jan said. “For I don’t know. For ghosts.”

  “That ain’t the problem,” Sledge said.

  “Death, then. Don’t they train you guys to deal with that?”

  “That ain’t the problem either.” Then Sledge said with half a laugh, “What’s the matter, kid? You never been in love before?”

  DiFranco wanted to correct him and say that it wasn’t love, but guilt, and that she should know. But maybe not, because maybe it was that Eisenheimer finally saw where he was meant to be, which she envied. So she said nothing.

  They followed the blood into the remains of an old nursery, with miniature beds and cast-iron toys and porcelain dolls, but they stopped, looking at the barred window, looking at the countless scratches and bite-marks that were cut long ago into the wood from the floor, up the walls, along the ceiling. They looked back and forth at two other doors to take. The blood trail had stopped.

  Footsteps clacked above them again.

  “They’re a floor above us,” Sledge said.

  DiFranco said, “But this is the top floor.”

  “Then look for an attic ladder,” Sledge said.

  He and DiFranco spiraled away from each other, beaming the ceiling for an outline of a hatch that might be discerned from the myriad scratches.

  “Stairs,” Jan said, pointing through one of the doors.

  DiFranco pushed past him, and they followed her, and although she saw the stairs leading up, as she got closer, she saw what was wrong. The stairs were upside-down, balusters, molding, carpeting, and all, and they led over her head, ending in the ceiling, going nowhere.

  She said, “You really need to start helping with this house, expert.”

  “I don’t know,” Jan said. “If they’re backward, maybe we should go up them backward.”

  She didn’t know what he meant, if he meant anything at all, but he inspected the staircase at its sides and then opened a hatch. It would have been a door under the stairs had they been right-side up.

  He shone his light inside and yelled with an echo, “Up this way. Blood spots!”

  DiFranco scrambled behind him through the hatch, which led up a new set of stairs behind the others. She had to climb on all fours. Sledge followed a little slower this time, and they came to a new, full floor, not at all an attic. She saw movement from a room, and she called for them to hurry with her. The movement was wisps of vapor that reflected her lights, and she heard noises as she neared it, like the whipping of a sheet in the wind, and like something wet and throaty.

  As soon as Sledge was at her side ready to turn the corner with her, they swept the edge and entered the room, and the whole scene came to her in an instantaneous glimpse—no longer th
an a few fast heartbeats—but feeling as long as a cycle of the moon. In front of a medium’s table lay two maidservants on the floor, positioned on either side like strange statues at a gate, kneeling with their bonnets face-down on the floor and their palms outstretched in surrender, their crimson dresses in flowerlike folds about them. A witch sat behind the table, she, a slumped form in black robes and a coin-mesh veil, a sight that could have been out of old Babylon. She might have been asleep or dead at that angle in her chair were it not for her fingers working and needling the air at unnatural speed. Condensed breath leaked from her veil and fell off the end of the table like heavy, slow smoke. Behind her, a half-formed figure of mist with something of a hand opened and closed a curtain ceaselessly and without sense, the tall fabric covering nothing more than a wall. All this was immediate and striking in the beams of their flashlights, but something else happened in that slow grip of seconds. Someone was kneeling in front of the table, where the breath collected, between the surrendering maidservants. It was someone shadowed from the lights but still unmistakably there, rising. He was rising. It was going to be another one of their dead—DiFranco was sure of this. It was going to be her father.

  “Hold,” she said, fanning her arms to keep Sledge and Jan behind her, to keep them from trying to dissipate him.

  The figure lifted his face. DiFranco did not recognize him.

  “Horace,” Sledge said.

  DiFranco looked back at Sledge, then at the figure. Sledge knew him, and she didn’t. It wasn’t for her. It wasn’t her father. And only in that moment did she realize that she had hoped it would be.

  “Sledge, is that you?” the figure said. “What’s that knocking? Who is it?”

  DiFranco heard no knocking.

  “Horace, buddy, I’m sorry. I’m sorry, man.” Sledge changed out the load in his sawed-down shotgun with two different rounds from his exotics bandoleer.

  The witch remained unmoving in her chair, except for her fingers working like frantic spider legs, weaving threads of mist almost too fine to see.

  A muffled giggle came from one of the two maidservants who had surrendered on the floor.

  “I can’t hear what you’re saying,” the figure of Horace said. “What is that? Where’s that knocking coming from? It’s thunder.”