The Wicked: A Love Story

The trouble began the year that Nathan made the Change. For him it happened earlier than we thought. He was only eleven, and it was 1967, When he made the change, Friederich did not call any of us. There were signs. He could have. And by the time we came it was to the sounds of growling and snarling. It was Natalie who understood even as I did.

Friederich had chosen to transform and fight Nathan.

Even I could do very little, and I had left Delia in the house, But it was Natalie who made the decision. She had never seen Friederich transform, but she knew I had, and looking from a dark almost black slender wolf to a grizzled white one, nipping at him and drawing blood, she said, “The old one is Friederich, right?”

I nodded dumbly,

And then, just like that, Natalie pulled out her pistol, and before I could say anything, she shot him in the head, and with a whimper, Friederich fell over. The young wolf was caught unawares, and stood blankly staring at Natalie and she said, unmoved. “Go. Through that door. Go down into that basement.”

Was it that Nathan knew his mother, or was it that she was the great granddaughter of Frau Inga, and that witch blood was coming through her? Natalie had always been an amazing if infuriating woman, and now she said, “Come, my baby. Come, my baby, and we’ll fix you tomorrow. I will have just the thing for you tomorrow, but tonight you need this. Come with me.”

She led her son downstairs, and as if he were a puppy, Nathan made snuffling noises. I could hear them. Down below, sadly, Natalie harnessed her own son and stayed with him. Up above, in the living room, I stood with Katherine, and we looked at the great form of Friederich Strauss, restored to human shape and still large in his old age, his mouth open and his eyes open, a great red black bullet hole in his temple. How old had he been? I imagined him as at least thirty years older than me, He was certainly well past eighty. For sixty years his presence had swallowed all the light from this house and overshadowed every woman and child in it, and now he lay dead on the floor, his life ended by a mother who would not see an old man who had become increasingly evil harm her son.

That night, while Natalie stayed below with her son, above my sisters and her brothers arrived at the house. They came with Mr Stenger the mortician. Maris and Claire said very little, and white haired Katherine sat in her chair, wrapped in a shawl. None of them had ever loved Friederich. He had been the monster of their lives, and now he was gone. He had been the man who had come in and sucked all of Katherine’s life away. That very night she went into the library, and pulled down the portrait of him. She took it to the attic and locked it away. That was her only commentary on the death of Friederich Strauss.

And I, who had been his partner for all of my life, his lover even, the mother of his son, how did I feel? I wished that Steiger had been there. I wished that I could tell him that this man was his father. I wished that I could tell Delia that this family was hers, that she was no guest, and that, no matter how she felt about Friederich, he was her grandfather the same as he was all of these others. And we were not a small family now. Maris had several children, many of them girls, and we would have to watch out to see how their children faired, what were the new rules of this genetic family game?

Friederich was buried out of Saint Ursula’s, and the procession was long. I wished, vaguely, that some people could remember what things had been like sixty years ago, before the wars, when Germantown was still filled with Germans and the language and the pride, not that ugly Nazi pride, but true pride, and the Blacks of Williams and Buren Street were just beginning to build their beautiful church. I wished they could remember a time when to the south and the east there was forest and Friederich Strauss had been, if a monster, also a savior, when he had been broad and tall and handsome, and come in and married Dr. Dashbach’s daughter, and the world had been wilder. But Germantown was old and tarnished now, and so many people had left, and the street names had changed and half the beer factories were empty husks. Even though the sun was shining the day my father was buried, everything seemed bleak and black, and that was probably because of all our bleak and black clothing.

“Aunt Pam,” Edward asked me, “Are you coming?”

“I am coming in a little bit,” I told him. “I will remain here a while.”

He nodded and went down the hill to leave me with the fresh grave of my father, and the headstone of my brother Jimmy.

“I hope none of them forget,” I said to myself, and then I heard a voice speak to me.

“Do not let them.”

I looked up, and for a brief moment, there was Hagano, standing before me, and before I could step forward, he was gone. It was the last time in my life I, who was now an old woman, well into my seventies, would see him. And then I realized I was indeed an old woman, and this was why Edward had looked at me anxiously and was now waiting on me to come down the hill.

I came.

HERE ENDS

THE BOOK

OF

PAMELA STRAUSS

And here ends The Wicked.

After a brief rest, we shall conclude

our tale of dark love and deep magic begun in The Oldwith

The Blood.