The Hallowed Ones (26 page)

The throng visibly shrank back. Some of the Elders looked pale and doubtful, but they nodded in support.

“Remember
Gelassenheit.
Remember the will and the love of God. Be strong in your faith, even in the face of tragedy. Obey and be saved.”

The Hexenmeister spat. “Faith is one thing. Survival is another.”

The Bishop whirled on him. His voice was low, but I could hear it: “One more word from you, old man, and I will have you shunned, cast out into your own darkness.”

The Hexenmeister watched with a level gaze as the Elders moved down the porch steps toward the gate. One Elder remained behind, still facing the interior of the house.

“I don’t understand,” I whispered. “Why can’t they see—?”

The Hexenmeister interrupted me. “They
won’t
see. They are a prideful lot, whether or not they choose to admit it. And the Bishop loves power. He’ll love it to the very end.”

Heads lowered, the men and women in the yard moved toward the house to accomplish the grim task of preparing the dead. The Hexenmeister gripped my wrist. “Find some garlic and stuff it into the mouths of the women, if you can.”

“And then what?” I dreaded the answer.

“Then you and your young man meet me back here before sunset.” The old man pursed his wrinkly mouth. “I’ll bring the kerosene.”

***

I scurried into the kitchen, unable to breathe. I opened up the window, let the breeze push the drapes aside. Behind me, above me, in the rest of the house, I could hear gasps and cries as those of us who had been assigned the unfortunate task of taking out the dead saw what had happened, what had become of our neighbors.

I rifled through the cupboards for garlic, at last locating three splintering bulbs in the bottom of a potato sack. I stuffed the bulbs into my apron pockets, confident that no one would smell the garlic on me above the hideous copper stench that clung to the walls.

I minced around the first floor, opening windows. I kept my back to the bodies. Many of the women and even some of the men fled the house in tears, unable to contemplate the job. Eventually, the Elder who had been frozen in the doorway was shoved to the side. He moved out onto the porch, where he began to pray.

I took a deep breath and walked toward Ruth, where she lay on the floor. I stared at her for a long time, overwhelmed by the task before me. I had been to funerals. I had helped prepare my grandmother for burial. I’d washed her with soap and water, lovingly dressed her and set her out on a table with my mother’s help. But this . . . this was too much. I didn’t know where to start.

“It’s all right, dear.”

A woman in her sixties stood beside me, Frau Gerlach, the midwife. I had always thought her to be somewhat uptight and disapproving. She always seemed to scowl. But I realized that she and I were the only women remaining in the house. I dimly remembered that her husband had been a butcher.

Frau Gerlach nodded to herself. “Let’s take her to the spring room. You grab her head and shoulders; I’ll get her feet.”

I crouched down beside Ruth, gingerly slipping my hands under her arms. Frau Gerlach grabbed her bare feet.

“Lift.”

As I heaved upward, an anguished howl emanated from the doorway. I looked up, half
expecting to see that the lone remaining Elder had lost his mind.

But it was Elijah. He stared in horror at the body in our arms, then at my face. He limped into the house, elbowed Frau Gerlach aside. Someone must have driven him here, against all good judgment . . .

Frau Gerlach dropped Ruth’s feet. Her legs thudded to the floor and the body pitched to the left. A piece of intestine hit the floor with a wet smack. I struggled to lay her body back down, while Elijah tried to take her from me.

“Elijah, no!” I shouted at him. “She’s dead. Leave her alone!”

Elijah sobbed unintelligibly. I felt a short pang of sympathy for him.

Frau Gerlach shouted into the yard for some men who were able to stomach handling the living. Two men dragged Elijah from the house, kicking and yelling.

I sank to my knees with Ruth’s heavy head in my lap.

Frau Gerlach bent down beside me. “We can make quick work of this. I promise.”

I nodded numbly. We picked up Ruth’s body again and descended down a short series of steps behind the kitchen to the spring room.

The Hersberger spring room was larger than ours and more modern, with running water. We awkwardly wrestled the limp corpse into a bathtub. Dim light filtered in from a basement window that Frau Gerlach tugged open. She reached for a lantern, lit it, and I was instantly grateful for the warm yellow light it cast. I didn’t think that I could bear to be alone in the dark with Ruth’s body.

“Now what?” I panted.

Frau Gerlach stared at the dead girl. She fingered the shower curtain. “Find scissors. And a set of clothes for her.”

I scurried to the laundry area of the spring room, popped open the lid of the gas dryer. I prayed to find some of Ruth’s clothes here. I did not want to go upstairs again.

I found one of her dresses, an apron, and a bonnet in a laundry basket. I located a pair of shoes that looked like they might fit her beside the door upstairs and snatched some scissors from the kitchen. I did not make eye contact with the two men who were staring at Ruth’s brother and Herr Hersberger with their hands in their pockets. The Hexenmeister stood with them. His hand was behind his back, and I saw garlic in it.

I fled back downstairs to the spring room. Frau Gerlach took the scissors from me to cut the nightdress from Ruth’s body. She clucked as she looked at the dripping mess in her abdomen. She handed me the scissors and gestured to the shower curtain with her chin.

“Cut that into two-foot-wide strips.”

I ripped the shower curtain down, spread it out on the floor, and began to measure it out using my forearm. Frau Gerlach looked over my shoulder.

“Very good. I’m going upstairs for some twine. I’ll be back.”

Her footsteps receded, and I finished cutting the strips with my back to Ruth. I wasn’t ready to face her. Not yet.

But I had to.

I turned around, crept to the bathtub.

Ruth lay like a gangly spider, sprawled on the porcelain. She was all legs and breasts, I noticed. Well, what wasn’t torn open by the vampires. Frau Gerlach had turned her so that the remaining blood trickled from her belly down the drain. She had closed the girl’s eyes. Her ruddy matted hair was stuck to one side of her head.

I touched her forehead. I was sorry that I’d hated her. Truly sorry.

I reached into my pocket, broke apart one of the garlic bulbs. I had only three, so I had to figure out a way to make this last. I plucked out three cloves, reached for her mouth.

Awkwardly, I stuffed my fingers into her mouth to pry apart her teeth. My stomach turned when I heard something pop. But I ignored my nausea and jammed the cloves under her swollen tongue. I thought I heard a small hiss of air escaping as I did so.

I shuddered, pulled my fingers back. I braced one hand on the top of her head, the other on her chin, and closed her jaws. I brushed away a small fragment of garlic at her lip, then let out a shaking breath. I wasn’t sure exactly what this was supposed to accomplish, but I was more than willing to obey the Hexenmeister.

Frau Gerlach returned to the room with a spool of scratchy brown twine.

“At least those men are useful for something,” she grumbled. “Ask them to do something that has nothing to do with blood, and they’re all over it.”

I cracked a smile.

She nodded at me. “Men are essentially useless for the difficult things in life. For births and deaths, one clearheaded woman is more useful than a half-dozen men.”

She knelt beside the body. “Go get me one of those strips from the shower curtain you cut.”

I brought one to her. I had no idea what she intended.

She blew a steel-gray piece of hair out of her eyes. “We’re going to pretend that she’s a package. We’re going to wrap the curtain around her to hold the insides in and tie it with twine.”

I swallowed. “What do you need me to do?”

“Get behind her at the back of the bathtub and prop her into a sitting position. I’ll need you to hold her arms up while I wrap.”

It was easier said than done. Ruth was simply dead weight, and it was difficult to keep her upright. Frau Gerlach quickly wrapped her with the shower curtain from her armpits to her thighs, trying to stuff bits of her intestines back into the cavity. She then followed her tracks with the twine, tying very tightly to make sure that nothing escaped, as if Ruth were a rump roast.

Then we washed her. Frau Gerlach was all business, scrubbing at the blood stains on Ruth’s skin with a sponge and soap. She didn’t fill the tub, not wanting to loosen the twine. I gingerly scrubbed at Ruth’s hair with shampoo, rinsing red from it under the tap.

“Go ahead and scrub, girl. Ruth’s in no condition to mind.”

But, despite the garlic, I wondered if she really did.

We dragged Ruth out of the tub and awkwardly stuffed her into her dress. We were barely able to pin it shut over the bundle around her midsection, but we tried. Frau Gerlach tied Ruth’s shoes on her feet, while I tucked her soggy hair into a bonnet. I tried to do a decent job, make it look good.

Not that it mattered. I knew that the Hexenmeister would see this house in flames before the night had fallen.

We laid Ruth on the floor of the spring room, then went upstairs to turn our attention to her mother. Frau Gerlach harrumphed at the men still standing around, staring at the two dead men.

We climbed the stairs to the parents’ bedroom. Frau Gerlach put her hands on her hips, contemplating the woman impaled on the bedpost.

“Huh,” she said. “I think it would have been easier if they let the Hexenmeister burn the house.”

I swallowed.

“Katie, go tell one of those men to find me a hacksaw. There’s no point in trying to save the furniture.”

***

I remained at the Hersberger house until late in the afternoon, side by side with Frau Gerlach. I worked numbly, following her terse directions, dimly aware of the passage of time. Outdoors, a few men were making simple caskets out of sheets of pine. The Hexenmeister had disappeared, and I assumed that he had gone to make preparations for the evening. Everyone else avoided the house.

We had to take down the bedpost, and Frau Hersberger landed on the floor in an awkward pile. But we succeeded in getting her cleaned, wrapped up, dressed, and lined up next to Ruth on the spring room floor. I managed to slip some garlic in her mouth when Frau Gerlach’s back was turned.

The four sisters were more problematic.

I followed Frau Gerlach into their bedroom with my eyes shut. I smelled blood, felt my shoes sticking to the floor. My breath was shallow, and I could feel my own living blood rushing in my ears.

I heard Frau Gerlach’s footsteps in the sticky mess, tracking back and forth, and her breathing. I heard her open a window.

“Katie,” she said, with unusual gentleness.

I forced myself to open my eyes.

The girls had been torn to pieces. Bits of flesh and bone were strewn from wall to wall. I saw a small arm reaching from under the bed and fixed my eyes on that. At first, I thought it was a doll’s—but then it registered that it was the limb of a young girl.

I looked down. I was standing on a girl’s finger. I backed up, balled my fists, and was preparing to flee. The room spun crazily around me: the reddened quilts, the smears on the walls, the human leg cast upon a half-full hope chest, a doll face-down in blood. I stared at it, unsure whether to retrieve it and clean it up or let it be.

“Katie,” Frau Gerlach repeated. She shook me.

I forced myself to look at her. “How . . .?” I had no idea what the Elders expected us to do with this.

“Ask the men to bring us four boxes from the yard.”

“But how . . .” I couldn’t imagine trying to sort the limbs and cleaning.

“We will do the best we can,” she said firmly. “God will understand. And if the Elders don’t . . . Well, they’re not here.”

I nodded, then walked robotically away, down the stairs and into the sunshine of the yard to ask the men for the boxes.

My father was there. I blinked tears at him, relieved that he’d come. He put his arms around me, and I embraced him gratefully, willing myself not to cry, not yet. He smoothed my hair back from my face, offered me some water. I saw him staring at a red stain on my rolled-up sleeve, at the red on my apron. “I came as soon as I heard.”

I nodded, taking a small sip of water before my stomach turned.

“She’s a good girl.” Frau Gerlach had come up behind me, put her hand on my shoulder. “She is a strong girl. The only strong one here. She is helping me attend the women. You should be proud of her.”

My father looked at me with sad pride. “I know.”

My lip quivered. “I have to help Frau Gerlach. There’s . . . there’s a lot to do.”

He nodded. “I will tell your mother.”

I kissed him on the cheek quickly and turned back to Frau Gerlach, who had chosen four small hollow boxes that stood beside the door. She left the lids on the grass.

We carried them to the girls’ room, arranged them on the floor.

“There is not enough left to fill these boxes.” Frau Gerlach sighed.

“How do we know . . .” I looked around the room. “How do we know what belongs to . . . whom?”

She shook her head. “God will take them however he finds them. And the congregation does not need to see them. We will just do our best.”

We began with the larger pieces, putting them in the boxes according to size. I merely wanted to get through with the task. I slipped a clove of garlic into each box, though I only found two pieces of jaw and part of a scalp. I put the ruined doll into the box that had the smallest body parts in it.

We worked for an hour in silence, before Frau Gerlach stood and said, “
Ja,
that is enough.”

She stared up at the late-afternoon light on the ceiling. “They will have to have the service outdoors. There will not be enough time to clean the house before then.”