The Hallowed Ones

The Hexenmeister took his hand, smiled. “Ja. I’m Stoltz. Thank you for . . . helping with this difficult work.”

“No problem, sir.”

I was startled at that bit of awkward politeness from Alex.

The Hexenmeister gestured to a brown paper bag on the seat of his buggy. “Please take that and come into the house. We must begin.”

Alex grabbed the paper sack, and we followed the Hexenmeister into the house of the dead.

“Jesus Christ,” Alex muttered.

The house had not been cleaned. Violence still stained the floors and walls. But the bodies were peaceful. On the kitchen table, Herr Hersberger lay, fully dressed, his hands folded over his chest. A hat covered the ruins of his face. His son lay on the floor beside him.

“Bring the bag here,” the Hexenmeister ordered. Alex placed it on the kitchen table, and the Hexenmeister’s withered hands dug into the sack. He laid out a crude wooden stake of green wood, a steel hammer, and a hacksaw.

I swallowed with an audible click.

The old man grasped the stake in one hand, the hammer in the other. “It must go through the heart,” he said quietly. “Like this.”

He set the point of the stake on Herr Hersberger’s chest. I flinched when he struck it with a hammer. No blood came from the wound as he hammered, with a soft sound like tenderizing a steak.

I swayed, and Alex put his arm around me.

I began reciting the Lord’s Prayer in a small, quavering voice.

The stake hit the back of the table with a hard, solid sound, like a nail in a wood block.

I sucked in my breath. “Is it done?”

“No.” The Hexenmeister set his tools down and rested for a few moments. “The head must be taken.” His hands shook as he reached for the saw. He set the blade against Herr Hersberger’s throat and drew it back like a violinist with a bow.

The first strokes were easy. The blade slipped through flesh until it hit bone. The Hexenmeister grunted as the blade skipped and embedded itself in the table, jammed. The hat fell off the remains of Herr Hersberger’s head, releasing a handful of flies.

“Let me,” Alex said, quietly. He took the saw from the old man, pushed Hersberger’s neck to the edge of the table, and finished the job with two awkward strokes.

“Good,” the old man said. “Now the son.”

We repeated the process with the younger man. I held the stake for the Hexenmeister, and Alex took the head.

Herr Stoltz wiped sweat from his forehead, looked upstairs. “The little girls are still up there?”

“Ja.” I cast my eyes downward. “What is left of them.”

We clomped up the staircase to the bedroom. The girls’ room was cheerfully drenched in sunlight, a breezed brushing through the ruffled curtains. The boxes had the lids pressed in place to keep the flies out, but they were not nailed shut yet. The Hexenmeister pushed the lids aside with his cane, inspected the contents.

“I put the garlic in the boxes,” I said, helplessly, my fingers winding together at my waist. “I didn’t know where to put it.”

Alex sucked in his breath, glanced at my rust-colored apron. “This . . . this is what you’ve been doing all day?”

“Ja,” I said, numbly. “Picking up the pieces.”

The Hexenmeister shook his head. “There is nothing more for us to do here.” He patted my sleeve. “You have done well. Now, where is the mother and the other sister?”

“In the spring room,” I said. “Frau Gerlach and I were able to . . . make them presentable.”

The Hexenmeister frowned. “You should not have left them in the basement. It is too close to earth. Too dark.”

My mouth went dry. I remembered the wraiths from the Laundromat, and my stomach twisted. “Frau Gerlach wanted to keep them where it was cool. Away from the flies.”

“Come. We must work faster.”

The Hexenmeister stumped from the room. Alex and I followed in his wake. We gathered in the kitchen, before the closed basement door. The old man opened it, and meager sunlight trickled down the steps.

“Katie,” he said softly. “Bring a lantern.”

I scurried to obey, turning up the wick of a kerosene lantern on the kitchen counter and lighting it with a long match. I traded glances with Alex. The Hexenmeister puttered around the hall closet, then came back with Herr Hersberger’s hunting rifle. He loaded it with bullets from his pocket.

“Guns don’t work on vampires,” Alex said automatically.

“No, they don’t,” the Hexenmeister agreed. “But they will slow them down.”

“I’ll go first,” Alex said.

The Hexenmeister nodded slowly and handed him the rifle.

We descended.

The basement appeared as I had left it. A small square of sunlight came in from the window, between the bathtub and the washer and dryer. Ruth and her mother lay side by side, as if they slept. The sun shone down on them, casting artificial warmth on their chests.

Alex crept across the dirt floor, poked Frau Hersberger with the barrel of the gun. She did not move.

“Ja. We are in time.” The Hexenmeister came to his knees beside Frau Hersberger. His arthritic hand shook on the stake. Alex took the stake from him and grabbed the hammer.

I took the bloody tools from Alex. “I can do it.” I should do it; these were my people, not his. And I had seen to the other preparations for their deaths.

I set the point of the stake over Frau Hersberger’s breast. “Here?”

“Ja.”

I lifted the hammer and swung. The first blow sickened me, and the stake went in at an angle.

“Keep going, Katie.”

I straightened the stake and struck again. I felt a rib shatter and hit timidly.

“Harder.”

I hit it harder.

“Again.”

The stake sank deep into her chest.

“Again.”

I struck again and the point hit the dirt floor.

“Good girl.” The Hexenmeister clapped my shoulder to draw me back, and Alex set in with the saw.

I looked away. It seemed such a perversion, to care for the bodies with such reverence and now destroy them.

“Last one,” the Hexenmeister said, as Alex pulled Frau Hersberger’s body away to clear the path to Ruth.

I fished in the paper sack for a stake, my fingers tight around it. I pressed the stake over a pin in Ruth’s dress, a pin I’d carefully set there. To be sure, I’d fantasized about slapping Ruth. Maybe even choking her. Or running over her with a buggy.

But this was different. This was real. Too real.

I swung with the hammer, missed. The hammer bounced off her sternum.

“Concentrate, Katie,” the old man said behind me.

I pressed the hammer to the back of the stake, lifted it. I had to finish this job. I struck down hard. The stake tore her dress, split her skin, and drove the pin deep away from sight.

I struck again, without his urging.

Again.

Hate bubbled up in me, coursing through my arms. I hated Ruth. I knew that I should feel compassion for her, lying here on the floor, torn and dead and held together with twine and a shower curtain. And I was