It was a scorcher of an autumn day and I hailed a cab and we rode in the back with the window rolled down. I smoked another cigarette and finished the whiskey; my mood was notably improved by the time the driver deposited us at our destination. The Corning sisters lived in a wooded neighborhood north of the town square. Theirs was a brick bungalow behind a steep walkup and gated entrance. Hedges blocked in the yard and its well-tended beds of roses and begonias. Several lawn gnomes crouched in the grass or peeked from the shrubbery; squat, wooden monstrosities of shin height, exaggerated features, pop-eyed and leering.
The bungalow itself had a European style peaked roof and was painted a cheery yellow. Wooden shutters bracketed the windows. Faces, similar to the sinister gnomes, were carved into the wood. The iron knocker on the main door was also shaped into a grinning, demonic visage. A naked man reclined against the hedge. He was average height, brawny as a Viking rower and sunburned. All over. His eyes were yellow. He spat in the grass and turned and slipped sideways through the hedge and vanished.
“What in hell?” Vernon said. He’d dressed in a bowler and an out of fashion jacket that didn’t quite fit his lanky frame. He kept removing his tiny spectacles and smearing them around on his frayed sleeve. “See that lug? He was stark starin’ nude!”
I doffed my Homburg and rapped the door, eschewing the knocker.
“Hello, Mr. Cope. And you must be Vernon. You’re exactly how I imagined.” A woman approached toward my left from around the corner of the house. She was tall, eye to eye with me, and softly middle-aged. Her hair was shoulder-length and black, her breasts full beneath a common-sense shirt and blouse. She wore pants and sandals. Her hands were dirty and she held a trowel loosely at hip level. I kept an eye on the trowel—her manner reminded me of a Mexican knife fighter I’d tangled with once. The scar from the Mexican’s blade traversed a span between my collar bone and left nipple.
“I didn’t realize you were expecting me,” I said, calculating the implications of Helios Augustus wiring ahead to warn her of my impending arrival.
“Taller than your father,” she said. Her voice was harsh. The way she carefully enunciated each syllable suggested her roots were far from Washington. Norway, perhaps. The garden gnomes were definitely Old World knick-knacks.
“You knew my father? I had no idea.”
“I’ve met the majority of Augustus’ American friends. He enjoys putting them on display.”
“Mrs. Corning —”
“Not Mrs.,” she said. “This is a house of spinsters. I’m Carling. You’ll not encounter Groa and Vilborg, alas. Come inside from this hateful sunlight. I’ll make you a pudding.” She hesitated and looked Vernon north to south and then smiled an unpleasant little smile that made me happy for some reason. “Your friend can take his ease out here under the magnolia. We don’t allow pets in the cottage.”
“Shut up,” I said to Vernon when he opened his mouth to argue.
Carling led me into the dim interior of the bungalow and barred the door. The air was sour and close. Meat hooks dangled from low rafter beams and forced me to stoop lest I whack my skull. An iron cauldron steamed and burbled upon the banked coals of a hearth. A wide plank table ran along the wall. The table was scarred. I noted an oversized meat cleaver stuck into a plank near a platter full of curdled blood. The floor was filthy. I immediately began to reassess the situation and kept my coat open in case I needed to draw my pistol in a hurry.
“Shakespearean digs you’ve got here, Ma’am,” I said as I brushed dead leaves from a chair and sat. “No thanks on the pudding, if you don’t mind.”
“Your hand is broken. And you seem to be missing a portion of your ear. Your father didn’t get into such trouble.”
“He got himself dead, didn’t he?”
In the next room, a baby cried briefly. Spinsters with a baby. I didn’t like it. My belly hurt and my ear throbbed in time with my spindled fingers and I wondered, the thought drifting out of the blue, if she could smell the blood soaking my undershirt.
Carling’s left eye drooped in either a twitch or a wink. She rummaged in a cabinet and then sprinkled a pinch of what appeared to be tea leaves into a cloudy glass. Down came a bottle of something that gurgled when she shook it. She poured three fingers into the glass and set it before me. Then she leaned against the counter and regarded me, idly drumming her fingers against her thigh. “We weren’t expecting you. However, your appearance isn’t particularly a surprise. Doubtless the magician expressed his good will by revealing Conrad Paxton’s designs upon you. The magician was sincerely fond of your father. He fancies himself an urbane and sophisticated man. Such individuals always have room for one or two brutes in their menagerie of acquaintances.”
“That was Dad, all right,” I said and withdrew a cigarette, pausing before striking the match until she nodded. I smoked for a bit while we stared at one another.
“I’ll read your fortune when you’ve finished,” she said indicating the glass of alcohol and the noisome vapors drifting forth. In the bluish light her features seemed more haggard and vulpine than they had in the bright, clean sunshine. “Although, I think I can guess.”
“Where’s Groa and Vilborg?” I snapped open the Korn switchblade I carried in the breast pocket of my shirt and stirred the thick dark booze with the point. The knife was a small comfort, but I was taking it where I could find it.
“Wise, very wise to remember their names, Johnny, may I call you Johnny?—and to utter them. Names do have power. My sisters are in the cellar finishing the task we’d begun prior to this interruption. You have us at a disadvantage. Were it otherwise…But you lead a charmed life, don’t you? There’s not much chance of your return after this, more is the pity.”
“What kind of task would that be?”
“The dark of the moon is upon us tonight. We conduct a ritual of longevity during the reaping season. It requires the most ancient and potent of sacrifices. Three days and three nights of intense labor, of which this morning counts as the first.”
“Cutting apart a hapless virgin, are we?”
Carling ran her thumbnail between her front teeth. A black dog padded into the kitchen from the passage that let from the living room where the cries had emanated and I thought perhaps it had uttered the noise. The dog’s eyes were yellow. It was the length and mass of a Saint Bernard, although its breed suggested that of a wolf. The dog smiled at me. Carling spoke a guttural phrase and unbarred the door and let it out. She shut the door and pressed her forehead against the frame.
“How do you know Paxton?” I said, idly considering her earlier comment about banning pets from the house.
“My sisters and I have ever been great fans of Eadweard’s photography. Absolute genius, and quite the conversationalist. I have some postcards he sent us from his travels. Very thoughtful in his own, idiosyncratic way. Quite loyal to those who showed the same to him. Conrad is Eadweard Muybridge’s dead wife’s son, a few minutes the elder of his brother, Florado. The Paxtons took him to replace their own infant who’d died at birth the very night Muybridge’s boys came into the world. Florado spent his youth in the institution. No talent to speak of. Worthless.”
“But there must’ve been some question of paternity in Muybridge’s mind. He left them to an institution in the first place. Kind of a rotten trick, you ask me.”
“Eadweard tried to convince himself the children were the get of that retired colonel his wife had been humping.”