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The dirt road ended at a gate two miles from the old man’s house. I dated the crumbling red brick and pitted wrought iron as late nineteenth century. If the property had been a plantation, like the old man said, the house could be older. But with the gate chained and no buzzer, I wasn’t sure how uninvited guests ever got any closer.
I shut off Bubonic’s engine and swung the heavy steel door open. I took my sweet time getting out, scanning the area for surveillance — magical or otherwise. Whatever had caused the old hoodoo conjure to fill his front yard with wards made me wary. I might’ve rolled up on an entire community of practitioners. With old rivalries, older magic still, nothing more than rumors usually survived.
Optimism. You lose that being police. Every call you answer is either of the dumb or dangerous variety. Hope in humanity becomes as elusive as the justice you’re supposed to serve. But I allowed myself a taste, for Izaak’s sake. Old magic could mean lost cures.
I approached the gate and peered between the bars. A long, oak-lined lane ran toward a circular drive where Fenwick Hall sprawled like the view at the end of a tunnel. The architecture matched a lost age of promise and grandeur. True Georgian, not a more recent imitation like Kitterling’s place, the three-story brick manor rested atop a raised basement. Chimneys sprouted from all corners and an octagonal tower covered the west side. That part had the look of something new. They’d matched the original brick, but not the swag. Gleaming white front door and matching portico, the exterior had been manicured to appear timeless, but the bones were old. History had happened here.
Ancestral connections gave magic depth. As rituals were handed down and performed over centuries, the magic grew stronger and stronger until, by some calamity, those lines were severed. But the signatures left behind were undeniable. This was what allowed me to zero in on lost heirlooms and relics. In a similar way, I could sense the lingering connections here at Fenwick Hall.
I could see the house dated back to the colonial days or before. What I could sense didn’t run quite that far. One family had owned this place for centuries. But the chain didn’t run unbroken.
As I tested the magical connections, I grasped a bar of the iron gate. The surface felt several degrees colder than the mild air temperature. Another residue of magic hummed there. More neighborhood wards, these burglar alarms hadn’t been strengthened in centuries.
Distrust of outsiders ran deep. The safest thing would be to sit out here and wait for somebody to show up at the gate. Just like the safest thing would’ve been for me to make funeral arrangements already.
I’d come here to pick up a package or at least arrange a payment. None of that would happen sitting out here.
Maybe the gate had once been warded, but the brick wall hadn’t. It didn’t provide much more than a warning. Beyond a taller swooping arc on either side of the gate, the top ran no more than chest high. With no obvious wards and enchantments, new or old, I hopped up into a crouch at the lowest point. You’d best believe I scanned the grass on the other side closely.
“Hello?” I called. I slid into the yard and made my way cautiously toward the center of the long drive. “Anybody home?”
A breeze rattled through the branches. The closer to the house, the more in tune with the ancestral vibes I became. Generations had occupied the manor, but one stark gulf taunted from the deepest past. I felt around the crevices. Parted the veil ever so slightly.
Pain shot through my chest. Unprepared, I staggered to a halt. The house aged before my eyes. Darkness descended and lamps flickered to life in the windows. The mismatched western tower disassembled brick by brick under a dying sun.
The front doors were flung wide open under a now dingy portico. A makeshift ramp ran between the split entry staircase and down the gullet of the manor. I heard gunfire, raw and sharp, followed by the rumble of what had to be cannons off to the east. Screams came from inside. Not like a reaction to the gunfire, but more like a steady chorus of misery.
I’d crossed. Somehow I’d slipped into the Below without so much as a drop of blood spilled or a single beseeching cry.
Calling, keening, the house took the small spark of optimism I’d found and twisted it. Once inside, I’d no longer be lost. I felt a promise to cure my condition. I’d have the tumor ripped from my body, amputated and discarded. Cured by any means possible.
I wanted nothing to do with the place, but felt drawn toward the open doors. My Timberlands stubbornly rooted, the yawning hallway hurtled toward me anyway. I fought to hold my ground and found myself bound, strapped to a litter and rushed up the ramp. Grizzled white men held each end, their faces spattered with blood and their untrimmed beards matted and clotted.
They both wore Civil War era uniforms. In the dead light, I couldn’t make out the colors.
Screams filled the first floor. Curtains cut from stained and soiled sheets divided the foyer into a billowing hive. Behind the curtains, dark shapes jerked and struggled. One showed two men’s shadows sprouting from a bed where they held down a thrashing patient. Flecks of blood struck the sheet like dark blots of ink.
“Hey, stay with us,” one of the men carrying me said. Adrenaline drenched his wild but earnest blue eyes. “We’ll get it out.”
The other soldier shook his head and refused to make eye contact.
Was it that bad? Had the cancer torn through my skin? I clutched my chest and pulled away a bloody palm.
A hole no bigger than a dime had been punched to the left of my sternum. Blood pooled in the fleshy cavity, the surface gurgling as I tried to breathe. I could taste the familiar metallic tinge, feel that damn tickle in my throat.
The soldiers took a hard left off the main entry hall through a cramped parlor and into a larger room with vaulted ceilings. Tall windows were open into the chaotic night. Wind tossed the curtains surrounding a dozen more beds occupied by the wounded and dying. Decorations shivered on the wall as faraway artillery barrages rolled through the house like thunder. I caught glimpses of doctors working patients like lumber, their tools taken right off the carpenter’s bench and the butcher’s block. Not only could I taste a steady stream of blood, I could smell it now, coming from every corner, wafted about like a muggy salt breeze.
How the hell had I gotten here? One minute I’d been walking up a driveway, the next, I’d become a gunshot victim. I had to try and focus. Had to get out of here.
The two soldiers juggled my litter toward a bed, one end eager, the other hesitant. An uncoordinated effort, I ended up half on and half off. I made an effort to take advantage of my feet being on the floor and tried to stand.
The blue eyed soldier grumbled and pushed his partner aside. He gruffly seized my legs and swung my bare and scarred feet onto the bed. A layer of mud only a shade lighter than my dark skin covered me from toes to calves below rough wool pants.
“My son. What about my son?”
The voice of another man came out of my mouth, a thick mixture of an African dialect and English learned through survival instincts. Speaking those words had a cost, too. Blood and mucus filled my throat, and I coughed, wet and ragged.
“We’ll have the area secured soon,” said the blue-eyed man. “We’ll send some men to find your boy.”
“Stop lying to him,” the reluctant one countered. He still refused to look at me, his eyes casting nervously around.
A man stepped around the curtain. No uniform, he wore a plain white shirt and patterned vest flecked with blood. His sleeves were rolled past his elbows.
“No. Absolutely not.” The doctor’s bristly mustache twisted. “Take him to the stables.”
“Doc, he’s right here!”
“We’ve got space set aside in the stables. He’ll be comfortable there until I can see him.”
The reluctant soldier cursed, his hands already on the litter. “We need to clear this damn stretcher. There’s more of our own wounded dying in the mud out there. Come on.”
The words stung. They penetrated a collective numbness I’d always worn as a shield. How long had my people been dying in the mud, beaten and left for dead? Centuries? As the soldier’s words reached my ears, I could see those people rotting in the tall grass, buzzards circling their limp forms. People cried. Wailed. Whips cracked as they tried not to watch, and their lamentations turned into song. And I knew these fallen men, women, children as well as I knew the families fighting for their lives in the Baltimore projects where I grew up. These weren’t names scribbled into moldy ship manifests, they were faces. Flesh and blood. Family.
The blue-eyed man surged toward the doctor, close enough his beard ruffled the man’s shoulder as he shouted. “I’m ordering you to help him!”
The doctor cringed, less at the shouting and more at the suggestion. His eyes flickered toward me but focused on the wound. Blood seeped out and I seized, clutching in pain, trying to hold whatever life I had left inside.
“I can’t do anything,” the doctor said before walking hurriedly away.
I was dying. Truly dying. Signals had gotten crossed, somehow. My spirit had become tangled up with this man’s and his fate would soon be my own unless I found a way out.
Devil’s snare root could anchor the spirit. Or maybe the salted earth could stave off whatever had come to collect my soul. Trembling, I blindly patted at my side for my medicine pouch. I needed out of this nightmare, now.
“Let’s go,” said the soldier at my feet, jerking at the litter.
The blue-eyed man’s lip curled. Determination had replaced his concern. Whether he saw me or some way to justify all the blood he’d shed, I couldn’t say. He tore aside the adjoining curtain and stomped away. I heard a shout. Metal clattered. Then he was back, a pair of blacksmith’s tongs gripped in a tightly wound fist.
“Hold on now. This is gonna hurt.”
I tried to shout but only managed a fearful exclamation from a language I’d lost.
His first attempt, I swatted away. Whatever power from Below was trying to lay claim to me couldn’t have me. Not yet. Sweat beaded the soldier’s brow, his stare growing more and more intense. I went for my medicine pouch again, but he pinned my hand against the bedframe.
I wouldn’t die, not here. Not in some damned stables either. Not without seeing my son one last time.
“Izaak!”
The forceps plunged toward the wound. I winced, but there was no pain, only a hollow clanking.
“What the hell?” The soldier pulled away in shock.
Gold shone in the cavity, bright and as clean as the rays of the sun. The stench and clamor of the room faded as my vision went gray then black. When I could see again, Atofo hunched over me. He clacked the tongs like gnashing teeth.
“Ready?” he asked, his voice eager and hungry.
I hadn’t been saved yet. A mentor, sure, but did I feel safe at his mercy? My fingers brushed the medicine bag in the inner pocket of my jacket. I struggled to dig past the tied cord.
“That’ll be far enough,” demanded a gruff voice.
With the command, the spell broke. The field hospital, Atofo, it all vanished. A light breeze played in the trees and the Spanish Moss gently rocked, a ghostly reminder of the room full of curtains.
“Hold up,” I said, fighting a wave of nausea.
I scrambled for a solid foothold in This World. My singular focus on seeing my son again used to help ground me. But in the vision...I’d asked about him. Or somebody had. Who? Replaying the details threatened to drag me back under. I needed another focus.
The shotgun barrel aimed at my chest would work.
Winchester Model 1897. BPD used Remington, but I knew the Winchester. Firearms had been part of my life long before I became police. Drugs flowed through Baltimore’s streets and guns cleared the way. You didn’t make it through grade school without seeing one tucked in a waistband. They were the protective talismans of my youth. Being on the other end of one will ground you real quick.
“Think hard about your next move,” said the man holding the shotgun and now my undivided attention.