The Wicked: A Love Story

The Journal of Pamela Strauss

I wonder if I might have allowed Jimmy this treatment for ever if not for Steiger. Claire and Maris seemed horrified at their brother being locked up, but you could tell they were relieved that he was downbelow and not in the house, and they always went to the Kellers on William Street during the full moons. Friederich was more or less ashamed and irritated by the whole affair, and Katherine wept in her room, but it was Steiger who, like Mary Magdalene beside the tomb, wept at the door to the basement.

“Let me go down there with him!” Steiger said, “If he is restrained then it won’t be a danger.”

“Don’t be a fool!” Friederich raged, and then he calmed down and said, “And yet you have such a strength to you. Would that you were the one who was my son.”

The hand he had raised in anger, he lowered. “There will be no going down there.”

But it ws during this time when Jimmy suffered, that Steiger also suffered, great headaches, tears uncontrollable. It was for Steiger’s pain that I began to wonder if there was anything I could do.

As a midwife, I went all through Germantown. I had gone to all women and Ada and I learned from all women. The Negro women of Saint Agatha’s were Catholic as well, and practiced their own form of magic. And so it was to them that I went, wondering if they knew any kind of cure for strange ailments. I could never have said, “My brother becomes a wolf, what can you do?” But I knew the Negroes had their ways, ways they told very few white people. And who could blame them? I myself had seen what damage white people could do during the years of the war.

But the women and some of them had told me about a strange benefactor of the community. One woman, Florence, said, frankly, “How else would we have been able to build this church?” And it was a fine church, what with its rose colored stone and the great pillars of white cement, the high towers, the stain glass like jewels. “We did pay for it, but we had one benefactor, and he is like us, like some of our number, for he practices the Art and is mighty in his works. There are things he knows that not even I know.”

I waited for her to continue.

“I am a mere conjure women. I light my candles and say my prayers, but this man is a true witch, a sorcerer, and if you were not in such need, I would never you a thing about him. I will write to him, and see if he will speak to you.”

“And if he says no to you,” I boasted, “I will write to him myself.”

Florence shook her head, mocking me.

“The imperiousness of a white woman!”

“The desperation of any woman.”

“Ah,” Florence looked at me differently now. “Well, then, I will send word to him and see.”

“His name?”

Florence stopped and said, “Why do I hesitate. He can protect himself, and if he does not wish to be found, he surely won’t.

“Augustus Dunharrow.”

I was distinctly at the mercy of Florence, or rather, the mercy of time as I was waiting for a response from her that was in turn from this enigmatic man. I knew that their conjure people must, like Frau Inga, deal in the wealth and wisdom of the land, but that there was a powerful sorcerer among them, and one so powerful he could amass architects and large sums of money, enough money for a Negro congregation to build such a fabulous church as Saint Agatha’s, was a wonder to me.

There were other things on my mind. I was not young anymore, and time seemed to fly. Only a few years ago, it seemed, we were afraid of our neighbors as their love turned to hate and the Kaiser Wilhelmstrasse was turned to William Street. But very quickly, people in the neighborhood seemed to respect the German homeland again. Americans will rewrite their history, but I remember that in those first days, when The Nazis arose, they spoke to a pride in the ancient Germanness of not only us, but all right thinking Anglo Saxon people. They sought a purer race, better order and a certitude as to who should rule, and that who was us, and it wasn’t only in Germantown that sympathy was aroused for Adolf Hitler when he took over Germany in 1933. In America we watched with real interest, and I have to admit, for those of us not entirely sure of what was going on across the sea, his success was our success.

But then Jews fleeing into New York with their own tales began to tarnish the legacy of Herr Hitler. Not as much as you might think, though, for there is something about America that creates a shame in those who immigrated long ago about those just coming in, and even the American Jews did not necessarily wish to hear anything about the suffering of their cousins fleeing Germany and Eastern Europe. As time went by the legacy of Herr Hitler was becoming more and more complicated, and the way we were seen in Germantown was complicated as well. In the night I could transform into a wolf and defend myself from anything, but what could I do as a middle aged woman with the traces of Bavaria in my voice?

All together, it was a time of caution, a time when many people spent more hours than usual in Saint Ursula’s, their fingers moving through the jeweled threads of rosaries, and it was around this time that Katherine brought me a letter with my name in fine spidery script and a return address Curiously, and at the end of another exhausting full moon, I opened it.

My dearest sister,

Your plight has come to my attention as well as the nature of your blood. I have heard of such things, and you and your family are certainly not the first of your kind, for there are many such people who change their skin, though the source of this gift differs from family to family. How it came upon you and yours I cannot say. There are herbs and potions to promote such a skill, and also those which will stop it. I do not feel that I can be entirely honest with you or know you well enough to recommend what will aid you in a simple letter. Please come and see me at my home as soon as you are able. I await word from you, though on second thought it would be best, for expediency’s sake if you left immediately. Enclosed is one train ticket.

Yours,

Augustus Heret Dunharrow

When Kruinh returned from Chicago, the house felt it. It was not that he had taken a long time. He had been gone for only a half hour. He sat in his rooms with Sunny and when Laurie came, knocked on his door and entered, Sunny said, “I will leave you two to talk.”

Laurie, brow furrowed watched the blond curly haired man leave, watched him shut the door behind him.

“What happened in Chicago?” Laurie asked? What could have gone so wrong?”

“As you know,” Kruinh said, offering a seat to Laurie, “as you heard from Evangeline’s own mouth, her clan was doing killings. They are done now, for her clan is done. But Lynn Draper is no more.”

“Lynn?” Laurie’s voice was lead.

“We can never know, for Evangeline was gone and from what Dan says it was not in her mind. Maybe it was not Evangeline, but a henchman of hers. Perhaps, discovering there was no longer a child she was not worth abducting. Evangeline had worked quite a bit for that plan.”

“And in her rage she killed Lynn,” Laurie said, his voice almost toneless.

“Yes.”

They were not mortal. Kruinh never had been. They were not of this age, either one. Small talks did not pass between them or half comforts.

“I wanted to kill her,” Laurie said, at last. “The anger rose in me every day. Almost blotting my happiness, even my happiness with Daniel. The things that ordinary men have, acceptance… modern outlooks… I don’t have. And all I could think of sometimes was revenge. And now she’s gone.”

Lawrence Malone shook his head, unable to understand his feelings.