Stel Parad by Lisa Menzel

Edited by Rebecca Rue Proofread by Grace Nehls

STEL PARAD Copyright Š 2020 Lisa Menzel All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, please write to the publisher.

This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Published by BHC Press Library of Congress Control Number: 2018930853 ISBN: 978-1-64397-020-2 (Hardcover) ISBN: 978-1-947727-44-1 (Softcover) ISBN: 978-1-64397-021-9 (Ebook) For information, write: BHC Press 885 Penniman #5505 Plymouth, MI 48170

Visit the publisher: www.bhcpress.com

stel parad

Enda Hughes

1 Keepataw, Illinois—Sunday, February 23rd 1845

I

t seems no one dies here when the wind stops.

Just after St. Valentine’s Day, I sat on the dolomite ledge outside the chandlery on Smokey Row, drawing passersby. Unlike building plans, hairs flit. The unwitting smooth their clothing, never returning to capturable poses. It reminds me we are changing worlds, possessing secret indicators we will shift. We are not like the canal these men have dug and died for, still in moments, reflecting us back to ourselves.

In fact, it’s rare we ever reflect.

When the bronze ripples stop, one stretches a stiff spine while the silence greets sad nostalgia. In these times, I miss Kilkenny and the intimations we come from the Ulster queens. However, if they returned home, they too, would starve. As the workers forge their last plane to hell, the Illinois River drowns poor pharaohs. We’ve hewn limestone and constructed footbridges across the banks only to be rewarded with failing hearts. In an endeavor such as this, they appear to be cumulative. The prairie mire, if not frozen, is pliable yet entrapping. One never hears an assailant’s footfalls such as those leading to this four-inch sliver in my throat.

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I was about to bury a man who froze in his stance last night. His large, convex eyes, glaucous like mine, brimmed over a tilted, admiring face. I wondered who last looked upon him. His expression had a smitten quality as though transfixed. At just beyond six feet tall, he bowed to about three and five. However, something seemed odd. His gaze was cast up another six. It was too quick to see them reflecting the approaching German navvy.

“Ever wonder if today it might be you?” his voice rattled in my ear as he snatched the shovel. Thrusting it under my jaw, he lifted me. A cold whisper then told me I was about to die despite the errant, warm wind ceasing. “The men said he was looking upon you, but you were asleep in bed with your husband. I know. I was in your window.”

Tearing eyes and the black sleeves of my dress catching my work gloves were the last images I beheld before I recognized the heft in the statue’s lower lip. I’ve drawn him. I know everyone in this town. I plotted it. I’ve spoken to every resident as to identify them upon death. This voice in my ear I did not know.

That was when the wood caught me mid-swallow. I was certain my own meager weight would behead me. I only felt the blood spread through my collar when the wind chilled my flesh. Then the torture seemed fatal. I would not be able to ask the others what they had seen, nor warn my family, for I would have no voice. Earth would graze my eyes by nightfall.

Once I finally gasped, I smelled frankincense commingle with sulfur on his breath. The crease in my boot heel caught his belt in the struggle. Rocking forward, I brought him to the ground with me.

My cheekbone scraped against embedded stones in the clay when he fastened my neck against the handle. Craning my neck to keep him from crushing my windpipe, part of the shovel’s sliver ripped through the muscle. Sunrays streamed through the statue’s corneas. My hand reached his inner thigh as a devastating grip seized my waist. Fingers vanquished tissue, advancing position. The shovel suddenly free, I

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heaved the spade into his neck. Setting forth on the footbridge, I knew it would be a nine-mile run back to Smokey Row. Ground revolved beneath me in rice grains. Across the sedge, a brassy howl blared. My heel was loose. I knew I was close. From the warped image in the dead man’s eye, I could not distinguish the enemy’s features. The hazy glint of a white buttoned shirt and galluses glared under intense clouds, dimming his face. He could bide his time in a crowd to shed distance.

Stephen Street, glazed with ice and empty, hosts the howl’s echo as someone releases the pressure valve. Pastel clapboard businesses, shuttered, cower behind private limestone and redbrick brothels. The hatworks’ black carriage windows frame my coat and trilby.

A lank figure floats behind the panes.

Stepping beneath the slanted glass roof, I enter the derelict teahouse. After the Panic, we converted this to a greenhouse. Inspecting the pepper plants, all reveal blight. The same disease ensured there would be no silk reams this year. All the larvae were infected.

Orange rabbit fur whirls along the ground, disappearing under the steel Lane plow. Caressing my original town plans against the burgundy paint, the acrid stench of vitriol burns the gash. I must find means to remove this.

A rusted pair of pruning shears lies on the ground. I could visit my husband at the apothecary, however, I risk revealing my location.

Regardless, the blood trail may betray me. My gloves firm around the red handles, I manage to pry apart the blades. They yawn in a jagged grind. The open cherrywood door adjoining the hatworks promises someone will intervene should something go wrong.

He’s still out there.

At the point, the width will just secure the fragment. I recall Keir telling me if something lodges in one’s neck, interrupting the blood flow will result in a lethal fainting spell. Stemming the bleeding incorrectly will cause blindness.

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Thinking of the man thawing on the bank, still like my drawing, I am grateful yet forlorn.

Raising the blades to my throat, I pull straight, aligning the shard with my jaw. Searing, the agony sprouts from my bottom row of teeth.

Lacking the courage to endure, I let go. The pain is just moderately worse. Despite momentary relief, extraction is the only way.

Whether or not you feel it does not determine if it will kill you.

The blood confesses now. All its memories. All its desires. All its shame collects.

Continuing this trajectory would leave a hole in my voice box.

This is not acceptable. The others must know what happened here today. There is no wound at the top of my throat. I will have to create it. Turning the sliver toward the ceiling, the panes rattle as the clouds sweep the room.

Expelling its own pike, a hard swallow births the wood and in the aftermath, a stentorian scream. The force cracks three panes, sending down a shard into my left shoulder. From such a height, the weight is enough to cleave bone. The following scream is involuntary but ill-starred. My life, in a fountain, cascades onto the gravel. I drop the shears. I must make it to the door before my energy wanes. Crawling toward the adjoining entrance, I drag my body to the hatworks supply room. Clamoring for a wool bolt and scissors, my focus loses its axis.

Cutting, I work quickly. Wrapping my neck, I attempt to judge how tight the tourniquet should be. The sudden sensation my right lung is being removed by a cake lift inspires dread. Choking, my tongue constricts my breathing.

Eyes heavy, I have joined the drowning pharaohs.

Reopening them with supreme clarity, above me the German crouches. “I heard your screams.� His smile becomes serrated, eyes transforming into inkwells. Beyond the boiler, the needle on the brass pressure gauge arcs. In a cauldron, ash and gall dye boils, a Tyrolean hat floating on its surface. It goes from orange to black. His eyes simmer before returning to gunmetal gray accusers. Applying gentle pressure,

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he hushes me. “Only the hangman can save your neck.” As the pain subsides, my attention turns from a scar on his cheek to the dead shopkeeper on the ground. Searching his face for answers, I see he’s gone.

At the counter, skeletal fingers retrieve the hat. Drizzling a kerosene elixir from a toffee glass bottle around the brim, this mysterious man strikes a match, conjuring blue flames. Given where his shoulder begins, he could be the nine and five-foot man the statue saw.

Maneuvering the rounding jack’s oak handle, he cuts the brim loose before kneading the crown. Again, the gauge’s needle rises. The hatter knots a long, braided rope. Hypnotized by his work, I regain sentience. There is no wound in my throat and I can speak.

“My name is Enda Hughes. I am the gravedigger. Who are you?”

“I know whom and what you are,” he taunts in a half-Portuguese, half-Cornish accent. I notice the hat isn’t even stitched together.

He flicks his wrist, sending the hat onto the shelf across the room.

However, it disappears in the center. “Blonde parrot of the golden beak.

Take this message to the other side,” he trills.

Regarding the dead shopkeeper, I scramble to my feet without much compliance from my loose heel. As I stride to face him, he edges through a passage, bending his head into shelves. I find it curious, on the counter, wrapped in a pink ribbon, he has left a month’s wages.

Unlike the scrip the judge usually issues, these are genuine notes.

“Perhaps you could help me remember the name of the man who died of exposure last night,” I prod.

“He was a Swede if I’m not mistaken. He called himself Einer Skar. The man who fights alone. And he did not die of exposure.”

“I am a lady and I would appreciate you showing me your countenance when you speak.”

“That you are, your tranquility, and in time, I will abide. However, you once were Keepataw’s architect. I maintain he did not die of exposure. Rather lack thereof.”

“How did he succumb? Is it in the same manner as the man on the floor? All of this is rather peculiar. Are you responsible?”

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“Someone stuck a pin in his heart. As for the hatter, it was his time.”

“I’m reporting this to Judge Mandeville.”

“That will do you no good.”

“Fine. Have you seen my husband, the apothecary, Keir Hughes?”

“Yes. Last night.” He nods at the money. “Please accept my contribution.”

“What is your name?”

“Someone will send for you. After which time, I will abide.”

The needle rises as a black reflection passes across his stabbing awl.

Recognizing something is amiss, I take the stack and leave. Gathering my dress and crossing the threshold into the greenhouse, I inspect the gravel for blood and the glass for cracks. Not even the peppers show blight. I exit the greenhouse, however, once I step from the brick entrance onto the wooden sidewalk where I expect a blood trail, I, instead, encounter chest-level, golden clouds. On an unseasonably mild winter day, we refer to this as iceblink.

The German may be out here. Who is he? How did he elude me so quickly? In addition, regardless of several sketches I did of him, I have never been to Einer Skar’s home. I did not know his post. I never met his family.

“I don’t see your hair like wheat, but that Irish face bashed in,” the German calls.

In the sweet, rushing brume, I cannot place him. A hollow hiss runs parallel beneath the ice. On the chandlery’s dolomite ledge, taps become paces. Eager to find my husband and discuss these manifestations, an expeditious albeit unseen presence approaches. As the fog abates, it unveils a protective coyote dragging a stag away from this spirit. It seems like a reluctant gift it will not be allowed to keep.

Against the shoulder where the glass pierced me, bare skin enters my black wool coat, strained through my flesh. I have had apparitions walk through me before, those who were not ready to depart this world, unaware that is not our fate. We all simply remain. As the wind cools

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and changes course, pine bests unplaceable marigolds. Nature reminds us of our season.

The wind wanes and sulfur returns. Coal buildup boils like the dye and today’s inexplicable monstrosities.

Quaking pipes give way to a sound far greater than my shattering cries.

Steam overtakes yesterday’s ice. The buildings sway and shake down to their cellars, the blast ringing throughout my chest a mile in all directions. Its ferocity brings down the timber facade, exposing the hatworks second story. The linseed floor now accommodates dancing blue flames.

Through the bursting carriage windows, the boiler hurtles into the tearoom’s chimney, collapsing it on impact. In kernels and powder, bricks launch into eternity. Puzzling remnants of brain slosh down the inn windows across Stephen Street. Shreds of currency and pink ribbon stick to the white matter. I stash the stack in my dress, noting he must have had more.

A subsequent explosion sends plumes and the pressure gauge onto the street.

Crossing two charred, gloved fingers around it, I find no light enters the globe valve.

Someone planned all this.

In the emerging afternoon glow, dust shimmers and accrues. The astounding debris makes small, fused towers throughout the town.

Approving this down her snipe nose is a dark-haired, Portuguese woman in one of the living quarters. She retracts her hands in her dress’s emerald sleeves to hide both pentagram and sun rings.

It seems like a security measure for those other than her.

Aware of the rail crossing imprints in my palms, I now understand the incident threw me onto the track. The proximal heat burned away the palms of my gloves. Gazing at the gold letters of the apothecary sign, a shallow breath escapes me. Nothing beyond the windows stirs. Raging beneath my clavicle, my pulse jumps from joint to joint,

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my heart absent. Crossing and pinning my ankles together, I ponder my husband’s whereabouts.

“It’ll do you no good. Keir’s in another place.” She crouches and leans over the floor, surveying the damage.

“Where?”

“He cannot hear you.” She flings her head, revealing her withering neck, inviting a predator’s attack. She doesn’t appear threatened by anyone or thing. She is a slithering beast above me, toying with my apprehension. She gives an expression that would replace the soul of your love with a captor of yours.

“Who are you?”

“In good time.” She watches my study of an overturned stool, propping the rear apothecary door. Her attention turns to the shelf above the counter lined with cherub-etched jars. As she turns back toward me, a static creeps from my nape to my widow’s peak. She is like a parlor magician at supper tickling a helpless guest. No one can report her malfeasance, for it is of another realm. Dismayed at the heightening drums and the tribe’s distant chants, she distracts me, focusing on the street. A braided rush runner, like those used for prayers in caves, runs the street’s length. It certainly wasn’t here a moment ago.

Pushing herself up from the floor, the customary strain turns into the morose glissade of a lock. Her throat is a prison door’s service hatch as she appears to obey silent instructions. Staring down at the debris, preparing to dive as I saw hundreds of women throw themselves from Ireland’s cliffs in ravening grief, she surrenders to the fall.

A spike punctures her midsection like wet nettle hitting a house.

The spindle grouses as her asymmetrical body razes the wreckage, coming down from a tall, perilous, deafening stack. Her ribs fan in frozen flight. Her eyes ask of my plans, because this is how it ends and all my days are futile. Pinned to her dress, a note flags: Rutnauques reti: Follow the path. “They’ve been released.”

The sun sets the sky ablush. My daughter must wonder where I am. She and the tribe are holding a snow dance to freeze what they

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call this poison river. A coyote joins their song several miles away and I remember hearing kills are achieved through constant attacks. Prey dies while being consumed. On the prairie, we’ve learned to understand their calls. This one warns of intruders. The thought my husband may be home, just beyond the horizon, comforts me. Should I trust her? To what did she refer when she said “released”?

Meriting further exploration, it’s calming to think perhaps Keir left here early. Both are safe. And if I believed that, these assaulting auguries wouldn’t weigh on my mind.

Harsh pangs churn in my stomach, considering the amusement on the dead woman’s face. Anyone who saw it would think she relished scaring onlookers, as if something shared her body. Narrowing my eyes, I see the path, deep in the sea sedge, seeming to stretch miles toward our village. Estimating the number of hands necessary just to lay it out surpasses the town’s population. Rising, I consider the German’s hat holding together without stitches more plausible. Since the wind died, a rustling through the blue stem grass could only be his stalking footsteps. Gathering my nerve, I follow the path.

The former spirit brushes me again once I spot a fishing heron.

A reflective bird that accompanies those on journeys is also one who watches rivals closely. They arrive when we need patience, when we must do secret work and to tell us we are loved more than we know.

Hearing the strides on the canal’s opposite bank, I discover trampled reeds. A gentle soul travels parallel to me. Perhaps it waited. A warm gust grazes my face.

At the boundary between the villages’ houses, the steps halt. The runner ribbons the graveyard, ending before Mount Forest’s aqua, cedar lap mansion, framed by a bell like the Liberty and a trumpet-blowing angel hoop gate, crossed with a thick chain that reads “No Trespassing.” Brass justice scales sit in the oriel billiards window, the glint of the Essex flag and three cutlasses covering its embroidered counterparts.

The tribe’s village is a circle, ours a square. My daughter Nanokas’ house is the boundary. Amber permeating the air distracts my attention from

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the judge’s residence. Navvies fighting with the ground draw their eyes toward the pin oak’s shadow at the top of the bluff, just beneath the church windows. Neath its bough hangs the German from his trim’s braid, livid and charred. Among the dead leaves, pieces of his hat have no seams. His forehead bears the backwards, illegible signature of the tight band. The rope severed his fingers at the knuckles. Menacing the scene, our limestone church, dedicated to the saint of apothecaries and conquistadors, towers. All the curious dancers and faint drums fall silent and crowd the hill. The pain in my throat returns as the wind stills.

The German has been up there the entire time.

2

S

tanding atop the bluff, the half-Spanish seer Yabwe rests his finger near his lip. This greeting references my birthmark he claims is reminiscent of his mother’s. Regarded by many as wise, I’ve come to know him as more of a trickster. Events surrounding the stone steps we call Suicide Hill are seldom-discussed, weekly occurrences. “Something’s wrong; it’s all over your face, Ahn-da,” he shouts. A western wind rippling the scorpion grass upends his long silver hair.

Leaning on a staff, a bare-chested, hooded man biting a rabbit pelt watches me. In his mouth, the animal resembles a wide grin. Lost in his presence, I deduce he must have been the entity attending me.

“Ahn-da, I see you’ve met Ghost Rabbit, one of our gods drowned by water spirits.”

Nanokas, at her window, her black hair loose, mixes green paint.

Darting outside, she bends toward a deer carcass, only giving me a furtive acknowledgement. She breaks the animal’s jaw. A regretful expression saturates her eyes while its fur turns white. “No one should touch this creature.” She retreats.

“Ghost Rabbit brought him,” Yabwe scolds.

The hole in the buck’s mandible tells another tale.

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“Even the Scots believe this animal is a sacred messenger,” she insists.

“No one should venture into Ghost Rabbit’s storms of good fortune. Under wild rains, he will conscript the Scotsman.” Yabwe raises and lowers his hand. Subduing her argument with prophetic wisdom beyond her seventeen years, his nod reassures her.

Martyrs from Ireland’s Catholic legends haunt my memory, depicting these creatures as heralds of suffering. Although the judge chided me for misplacing that evil church’s key, the same used for his cellar’s jails, pagan life has been kind. Spirits have spoken to me there is no God. There is only us and those who have come before. They have urged me to right what is wrong and to be good to my fellow men. I descend from the Cooper and Gardner witch lines as well as royalty immune to curses. One would go to the Gardner witch when in need of healing. When in need of curses, one would go to the Cooper witch.

Once the latter cursed a couple she hated. She made the extra measure to wane their cattle, starving all beasts. When asked if she had done this, she pled no question.

I’d have thought this day a dream if I weren’t reading an embedded Farrah’s Toffee tin in the mire. I haven’t seen one since April 1838 when a greedy fellow passenger huddled over it. I thought it odd at the time a Cornishman traveled with us from Kilkenny. Such men are even rarer here. Sterling, our foreman, jumps down the stone steps. His deep-set chestnut eyes study me as I determine the package is new.

“A fossor’s day’s made when her foe is on the wrong side a the grass! Looks like a Cornishman’s come to visit.” He points at the tin, framed by cracked earth. Unbuttoning his collar, he’s late to save his whisked blue and green plaid hat. We approach the body.

“Sterling, how long’s our friend been up there?” I prod to see if he knows what happened.

“Kaleidoscope flesh ought to tell you most a the day, Enda. Ugly, aye?” He chuckles.

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Revealed canines return my absent heart into a hammering rhythm as I avert Sterling’s gaze. “Untie him before the priest arrives,” I snap, surprised by my own brusque voice. Right beside the grave I dug when the ground was amenable, the bloody coyote yips. We anticipated last night’s freeze making Einer Skar’s death so curious.

“Smells ghastly. Like pickles and hardboiled eggs.” Sterling recoils and I catch it, too.

“Need some Portuguese devil’s hotpot?”

I watch the smoke coming from the chimney of the cottage Judge Mandeville just had built for our mysterious new resident.

“After I lose to the coyote over his scraps.”

“Has Keir been waiting at home long?”

“I haven’t seen him since this morning.” He grabs the German and I fall despondent. “Afflicted mother a Jesus, why’s this man so heavy?!”

“Reaper’s hangin’ on him,” I jest.

“If you’re gonna gibe me over this, I’m not helpin’ you.”

“No Scotsman was ever mistaken for a sunny day. You’re right; toss him near that Light of the World sculpture you engraved,” I respond, motioning.

“If it’s true you can stop an Irishman with sentiment, how do you stop a Swede?”

“You don’t,” I affirm, watching him ascend the leaf-strewn grade.

Above the open plot hulks a rotund priest, tonsured by nature. A fifth of rye in his left hand, he flashes bloody, fur-caked rabbit teeth.

Staring into his cornflower eyes, rills of sweat pour down my torso.

Arm clawed by his right hand, he feigns terror. The trouble? This priest visited us about the post, but died yesterday.

I’ve no time to move before his body tumbles, nailing me to the pin oak.

Three hundred pounds grind me into the creaking wood while a bound, unfamiliar Haitian woman watches. “Always a heart attack.”

Sterling drops the German and rolls the priest off me. “In they go;

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I’ll cover them later.” Scanning from the grave to the bluff, I find she’s gone. Relief gives way to confusion. I search for the vanished woman.

“You sit a minute; I’ll be behind the capstone.” Sterling hauls them around the corner.

Agonizing about my twelfth rib and the feast the tribe prepares, I wish I’d eaten.

Sudden banging of Nanokas’ eastern shutters and one of the mansion’s cathedral doors commences. I no longer see her, Yabwe or the rest of the tribe. Ghost Rabbit is gone, too, as the wind stalls. A haze of frankincense, underpinned by rank decomposition, stings my eyes. Knowing Sterling is nearby, though having lost my words, I throw stones at the church. Kettles boiling beyond, I envision the revolutionary gauge. A scant shadow appears in a light pool near the capstone, but it isn’t Sterling.

Neither body he was s’pose ta toss hit the earth. Twinges radiate from my right shoulder blade to the base of my skull. The clattering shutters and door desist.

Upon the church’s stained windows, I question why the glassmen limned the saints like grotesque wraiths. Lifting my coat, I see them move without hue where the twilight should suffuse them. Intrigue and calculation are their only discernible features. Yet somehow, I am certain they’re fiendish. All return to vibrant, pious portraits while a shadow hovers, derived from the vilest dark.

Pale as I am in the cellar window’s reflection, I see nothing of the phantom before me.

Awed by its stature once I raise my head, I sustain severe vertigo.

Ragged, cavernous breaths enter where nostrils should be. Heels submerge and the ground suspires, tottering and inhaling me deeper each time.

Every thoroughfare of entrails craving sustenance liquefies when I peer into the hooded abyss. Gnarring exhalations, successive and without need to gasp again, sound like nothing I’ve heard from

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mankind. In a chiseling voice, it informs me, “Tivacov nemon muut: Your name is called.”

Reaching for my shovel, I falter before asking, “By whom?!” Guiding the spade through its habit, I overturn torsos before striking torture devices. It is as though I am sifting relics of the Inquisition.

Agitated, it replies, “Ea’h’cairtap t’se rot’pircs mumalac: The patriarch’s pen.”

Regaining full vocal capacity, I demand verification. “How do you know it’s my name?”

“Aiuq mungis t’se ni ilibuc out sutluv: Because the signal is on your face.” Trapped in the ground, I lower the shovel, employing it as a fulcrum. Easing one weakened heel from the mire, I plan my trajectory home. Sleeve drawn to its hood, handless, it hushes as one hole closes with a sear. The motion unnerves me and I consider I do not want to give away where I live to something that may never have.

“Here we estrange and I decline the patriarch’s invitation—whatever he attributes to my mark.”

“Arebil em te mae da es: I will deliver it to him.” Lurking fingers in the earth of ancient victims have my other heel in their grasp. I struggle to resist as these rogues produce a shining scythe from the grave. The blade lacerates the mark on my face, the slice unlike the German’s. It is true.

Yells from my chest accompany the taste of iron. A red rivulet pools against my wool collar. Swinging the blade again, missing my neck, my hat’s leather band falls, slashed in my hand. As anguish registers above my lip, the fingers in the ground unclasp my heel. Rending the skin from my back, the rugged bluff extends my descent.

Lying on the bank, surveying the vivid amaranth sky, moments lapse before the specter remerges. Aching, I manage to rise. Idle, its cruel laughter resonates in my legs, every other sense dead.

Angling the scythe down upon me, to my surprise, it places it in my grip. Never had it occurred to me this villain wished to test me.

Daring not to fathom to what end, I concede to its ability for rapid

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progression. Assessing if anyone has yet been to Stephen Street, I muse on its state. Might I return? I do not want this thing to know where I live.

Throwing the handle back against its form, I find myself sprinting through the sedge. I veer through trees in the event it travels the bank. Although it leaves no tracks, at least I’ll see its shape. Nodes still bare offer little cover as my mind revives this hellion made from shadow. Now that the grove no longer shields me, my rasped, chafed lips grate against my teeth. After tripping over another Farrah’s Toffee tin, I reason this cannot be the same one. Reason, however, does not allow me to trust that I overpowered a demon. Instead of finding it in pursuit, I feel it in the recesses of my eyelids. Edgy, I fear I may have consumed it upon contact. In sleep, they watch us, but if I carry it, I endanger everyone.

Pausing to scan both villages, I feel the wind reverting from the lake, becoming much colder. Western gales prevail upon eastern winds, sounding like brisk, far-off screams.

As I run from the high grass, a forsaken charge detonates, blasts the ground and frightens me. Against my lungs, the inhaled frost burrs.

No souls wander as the dusky landscape resembles opposing sides of a torn postcard.

Candles, like embered cigar tucks, come into focus from the redbrick building’s windows. The first building on the east end of Stephen Street is for new arrivals. Haloed torches bespeak more workers have come to replace the two thousand we’ve lost to disease and strain.

Beyond its rooftop, alluring indigo, mother-of-pearl clouds stripe the deep pink aurora, mesmerizing me. Nested around their peripheries, one would never suspect their perfect prisms destroy the atmosphere.

Inexplicably, upon rounding the corner, I find this thoroughfare is not only desolate but intact. Yearning to know what happened to the town, I espy the runner is gone. A funeral carriage tied up at the candle shop keeps no horse. Marching back toward the alley, I deliberate that the weather drove them indoors.

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Eager to reach the apothecary, thinking the woman deceived me, I incorporate images from the church windows’ blue grinning faces.

Hags unseen hasten my steps beneath the iridescent clouds fading from broken glass. Unsolved, beyond the greenhouse lies the pressure gauge in the middle of Stephen Street. Rushlights from the formerly imploded upper level illuminate the blood trail to an abrupt end.

Antler gouges disappear within several feet along the bricks. Rammed beneath the apothecary’s rear door’s handle set, the stool still props it open as I enter.

Across the street, unbidden, another monk lights a wick in the candle shop’s window. Where the hatworks’ boiler should be entrenched, my husband egresses from the apothecary’s backroom and stands before me, concealing this adversary. As soon as he crosses, the figure is gone.

Matches briefly sparking against the counter brighten his gold-ringed clover eyes and etched face. My breast unwinds a tight coil, but can I trust Keir’s image is not a disguise?

As he lights the lantern, a cavalcade unfolds outside, encompassing harlots, gamblers, navvies and cheats.

“Let’s see that lip.” He sighs, unspooling some gauze. Ambling toward a stool, I notice six cherub jars are missing from the shelf. Dried mud falls from my shoulders once he removes my coat. After he unbuttons the back of my dress, I feel his hands salt flags of skin.

Dabbing beeswax to stem the bleeding, I ask, “Are there any brotherhoods you know of in the area?”

“There’re no monasteries established here. How did this happen?”

“Any obscure holidays today?”

Keir thinks for a moment. “Polycarp preached of the dead resurrected and foresaw a pillow of fire. Said he would exterminate the wicked, but for refusing to burn incense, a mob stabbed him with a spear before the pagans could burn him. Many believe his executioners perished in a fatal earthquake, but he rejected the immortal soul. It’s not really a feast the Catholics celebrate anymore.”

I stare at him, unable to express any former fear.

Stel Parad

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“Are you certain you hadn’t fallen asleep and dreamt it? It was mild today.”

“A possessed woman was impaled on the ruins. Now everything is as it was. Leaving that thing in the candle shop is dangerous. We need to contact our neighbor.”

“Seems the German finally drove you mad.”

“Evil disguised itself as him while he was hanging on Suicide Hill.”

Retrieving several tomes, he reminisces, “The Galician’s believe in a witch they call the asumcorda.”

“And what made you mention it?”

“Processions of dead monks they thought were hindered by a protective circle drawn around oneself. Asumcordas, however, spy and may enter a locked dwelling regardless.”

Serving myself some absinthe from a crystal punch bowl, I ask, “Can anything restrain asumcordas?”

“Most Galician’s say Azabache jet.” He presents a black bracelet tied with a satin ribbon.

I loosen the grip on my band as he places it on my wrist. “Returned magic to the asumcorda is avoided by palm fronds nailed to their doors.”

A glass shelf shoots through the candle shop window, upsetting the pedestrians. Securing the rear door, we take the lantern and hasten.

As we travel north, I search faces for the snipe-nosed woman, wondering how many passersby are evil.

High on the bluff, my shovel sits upright among the graves.

Awareness someone’s watching pervades me. Sterling looks straight ahead as he engraves the priest’s stone, unaware of the terror I endured.

However, it seems he understands my disquiet. “The latest priest must be covered once he’s finished,” I explain, fetching the shovel.

“Enda, we should eat first,” Keir urges. Reeling from returned hunger, I encounter a palm frond nailed to the new cottage’s door. Zealous to know what lay within, I’m startled to hear Keir say, “I’ll visit Nanokas.” I decide I can accomplish no more without sustenance and head to our house. I ponder whom or what may be watching me from

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within the new cottage. Keepataw surrounding the mansion in a square and Wiskin in a round, all business transpires as the dead peer into our windows. We look out, but don’t always see them until it’s too late.

Entering our cabin, I gather yeast for a bowl of water, watching out the window. My vision fogs as I bite into an apple. Sizzling mutton neck and potatoes fry in the pan. A hooded Celtic god we call Dagda, with a staff that kills, pervades my thoughts. Looking at my bracelet, I observe a charm forged into a fist.

Stealing across the floor, the light of the snow moon casts upon a man’s silhouette.

Apprehensive, I flinch, amusing Keir. “Nanokas sound?”

“There’s not enough sun, she claims, and she’s soaking bone in peroxide and nitric acid.”

“Takes after her father.”

“Adapting to not having her here.”

I wipe off my hands. “She insisted.”

“Please, Enda, bread at this hour?”

“All right, I’ll fry it! I have never known a man so begrudging of other people’s toil. On second thought, no. I already set the bowl.”

“Maybe I’ll go cover that priest for ya then. Although, I know you’ll insist on that, too.”

A plangent iron ladle strikes the bottom of the door.

Rising upon Keir’s opening, Yabwe beams. “Ne je nah: How are you?”

Instructing that he is well, Keir yawns. “Ndeyekwes.”

“That’s good he knows what I’m saying.” Yabwe bestows him with late goldenrod.

“Actually, I think I need the medicine if you want to trade for duck and lamb,” Keir negotiates.

“Having been reared by an Irish woman, we are family. Although I cannot accept due to fasting, you would owe me nothing. Regardless, absinthe could help my vision. A woman wearing a figa to thwart a curse is afraid.” He espies my bracelet.

Stel Parad

25

“A monk attacked her.”

“Paltry jet was never able to fend off men like the Grand Inquisitor, Sarmiento,” he balks. “And none knew evil magic like the Inquisitors.”

3

Y

abwe’s violet eyes glisten. “Such idols would only make them angry. My grandfather shows me land taken from Spaniards accused of witchcraft.”

“A dough won’t rise with a corpse nearby,” Keir reminds me.

Reaching into his medicine bag, Yabwe hands Keir a necklace.

Linked shells show Nanokas on horseback. Absinthe in hand, Yabwe blesses us, “Walk in beauty. Bama mine ngoji: Later again somewhere.”

After locating my hat, coat and the lantern, I pass Yabwe sitting before the frond on the new cottage’s door. Now shining my light on the northwest corner of the plot, I jump down. Taking the church key and tucking it in the priest’s pocket, I swipe his rye because of his crushing me. Staring at him, his ruddy complexion dwarfing his glasses, I whisper, “You’n me’re even, Rabbit Teeth.” Climbing out, I cover him, dust myself off and head home.

Walking between our cabins, in passing, I watch Nanokas through her window.

Last red bead knotted, she stretches beneath her marbled wolf furs. Enwrapped at the window, she promises, “Mno dbeket, Ne’ni: I’ll see you after the storm.”

“Sleep well; I love you,” I tell her, admiring the azure moonlight in her hair. 





Sauntering through the door, I stand, picking through my plate, too exhausted to slice the bread. “After that, I’m stuffed.” Keir puts down his fork and unlaces my boots. He carries the rye to the

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Lisa Menzel

cupboard, chuckling and telling me, “No,” before helping me into my nightgown.

Annoyed, I ask, “Has Yabwe left?”

“Resume your supper and I’ll see.” He approaches the window, catching a glimpse of the new cottage.

“Seems that way. And do you think that is where your ‘monk’ resides?”

“No, that thing came straight through the Gate of Chaos. T’was no man.” I return my empty plate.

Sliding our wedding blanket over my chest, he asks, “Can you lie on your back?”

“Uh-huh, but I want you to lock the shutters,” I request. “Not yet,” I add as he attempts to turn out the lantern.

“Understand that fiends hate oak incense and the stove is stocked.”

As I try to control my breathing, I find my nails digging into the headboard. My nerves harden and the room feels heavy. “Nothing to fear.

I’m right beside you.”

“Yabwe must’ve gotten to me,” I respond, shaking.

Keir turns, his eyes falling closed. Burying men on days like today make it hard to see him like this. However, I consider the sooner I attempt to sleep, the sooner morning will come. 





About the Author

L

isa Menzel’s ancestors were immigrant farmers in Minnesota who fed the mocked and starved Chief Medicine Bottle in their soup kitchen. In November of 1865, he was executed after a dehumanizing trial for his role in several raids during the Dakota Wars. After WWII, her grandfather went to work in Chicago for R.R. Donnelley, publishing many Native American accounts including the works of Charles Eastman and autobiography of Chief Black Hawk.

She began her writing career as a Chicago rock music journalist for Lumino Magazine, interviewing the likes of The Offspring, Local H, Jeremy Enigk and Kasabian before becoming a screenwriter, director, cinematographer and editor. Her debut dark fantasy feature, Thinking Speed, was honored by Women in Film & Television. Today, she is a producer, developing several series’ and films. She is an award-winning portrait and nature photographer, whose work has been published in American Road Magazine. Splitting her time between Los Angeles and the Midwest, home is above one of Chicagoland’s most haunted cemeteries along the I&M Canal.