I wedged myself between them, dodging her free arm. I set the saw blade against the tender white flesh of her throat. She kicked and howled as I drew the blade back, fighting and struggling until I hit the tough bones in the back of her neck.
I reached inside myself, for that last trickle of the cold well of hate, and ripped the saw through the bone.
The last bit of artificial life in her dimmed out as her head rolled free and came to a rest next to the dryer.
The three of us, tangled in silence, stared at the head.
Alex was first to speak. “There was talk of fire?”
“Ja,” the Hexenmeister said, struggling to stand. “There will be fire.”
We scoured the house and the outbuildings for every drop of kerosene we could find: from the lamps, cans in the shed, even from the clothes iron. The Hexenmeister instructed us to cover Frau Hersberger and Ruth first, then the men in the living room. The last of it was cast about in the girls’ room.
“The fire will rise,” Herr Stoltz said. “And there’s unlikely to be enough left for them to knit back together, anyway.”
I stood at the top of the basement stairs and lit a match. I tossed it down like a falling star. At first, it seemed as if nothing happened. Then blue flames raced across the dirt floor to engulf the women.
I turned and ran through the kitchen. Alex lit a book of matches and threw them on the floor, beside the Hersberger boy. Flames swept up from his body to ignite his father on the kitchen table.
We raced from the house to meet the Hexenmeister in the yard.
“Come on,” he said, gesturing for us to climb into the buggy. He was already perched on the seat and holding the reins. The white horse stayed at the side of the black one, and it seemed that there was no getting rid of him.
“There’s not room,” I protested. But Alex had already grabbed me by the waist and was shoving me up into the buggy.
“Scoot over, Bonnet,” he said as he swung up. “We’re gonna get friendly.”
I wound up awkwardly sprawled on Alex’s lap as the Hexenmeister drove the buggy away. I could see no sign of fire, except for a bit of smoke from the open living room window.
The sun was setting, blazing beautiful orange on the horizon as Herr Stoltz’s black mare trotted down the road. The white horse fell into step beside her, as if he were part of a hitched team.
I turned around to watch until the house was out of sight.
The Hexenmeister took Alex back to the kennel and me to my house, leaving us with stern warnings to stay indoors. There were still more vampires out there. As the Hexenmeister said: “More work to do.”
I let myself into my house while the sun was still at the horizon. As expected, my mother rushed to the door to meet me and hustle my blood-smeared appearance away from Sarah’s eyes. She drew me a hot bath. I protested, not wanting to be in the dark by myself.
My mother stayed. As if I were a small child, she undressed me, then scrubbed my back with a washrag and fresh soap. She washed my hair, cared for me just as thoroughly as I’d cared for Ruth and her mother.
Guilt closed my throat, and I choked back a sob.
“It’s all right, liewe,” my mother murmured. She gathered my head to her shoulder and let me cry, smoothing my wet hair. “You are such a good girl. I’m so proud of you.”
When I looked at her, her eyes were brimming with such tears of pride that I hated myself.
After I dried off, my mother dressed me like a doll, in a nightgown and a pair of thick socks that she’d knitted for winter.
When we climbed the stairs, I saw that darkness had fallen. My father and Sarah sat by the fireplace reading the Bible. He smiled at me with that same heartbreaking expression of pride. Ginger sat beside them, looking at me with interminable sadness and fear. The afghan she was crocheting had grown longer, from her lap almost down to her ankles. She showed few other signs of life. Since her link to the Outside had been destroyed, she had seemed to collapse in on herself. I was afraid for her.
“I’ll make you some soup,” my mother said.
“Thank you,” I said, around the guilty lump in my throat.
I crossed to the front window, turned the lock on the door. I saw a small dot of orange on the northern horizon.
I drew the curtains.
We were all learning to fear the darkness.
Chapter Twenty
We gathered for the funeral the next day, circling around the ashes of the Hersberger house.
Unimpaired by rain or human intervention, the house had burned down to its foundations. The support beams, second floor, and roof had collapsed on the first floor, leaving a blackened mess. Smoke still issued from embers deep inside the structure.
Our funeral traditions had not changed in three hundred years. We did not bring flowers, drape caskets, or eulogize the dead. We did listen to a sermon and prayers, but there was no singing. And we did organize viewings at the home and bury the dead in our cemetery, all with feet facing east.
Those graves in the cemetery would remain open. The pallbearers were at a loss. The benches for church were brought to the Hersbergers’ front yard and arranged as usual, but there were no bodies to weep over.
We looked to the Elders for what to do. They gathered in a tight knot next to the structure. I sat quietly with my mother and Sarah among the rest of the female side of the congregation, my head lowered. Ginger sat beside me, dressed in her Plain clothes and looking defeated. She seemed locked in her own world, occasionally humming to herself.
Snatches of conversation swept past my ears:
“Is that the Outsider woman?”
“Do you think she’s really crazy?”
“. . . did you see the fire last night?”
“. . . maybe someone was trying to cover their tracks . . .”
“Maybe it was the Hexenmeister. He is crazy.”
“No, he’s too frail to commit such an act on his own.”
I glanced around and saw many of the men and women who were too fearful to enter the Hersberger house. Frau Gerlach nodded at me from a nearby bench, her posture prim and ramrod-straight. Her apron was pure white and her bonnet sharply starched. One would never know that she’d spent yesterday smeared in gore.
I didn’t see the Hexenmeister, which worried me.
Elijah and his father sat near the front of the men’s section. Elijah’s shoulders were a broken line of grief. I shuddered, recalling the feeling of the hammer striking the stake into Ruth’s chest.
I saw him rise, walk back toward us. I stared down at my hands, hoping that he didn’t mean to speak to me. But his shadow stopped before me, and I was forced to look up.
“Thank you,” he said. His face was open, vulnerable. “Thank you for what you did for Ruth and the girls.”
I nodded, swallowing the lump in my throat. I could not meet his eyes.
“Can I . . .” he began. “Can I come by to see you sometime?”
I flicked a panicked glance up at him.
“Just . . . just to talk?”
My grip on my own fingers tightened. I nodded shortly, just to get him away from me.
He shuffled off. My mother reached over Sarah and put her hands on mine.
“See?” she whispered. “Gelassenheit.”
Bile burned the back of my throat. I wanted to tell her that Gelassenheit had nothing to do with it.
The cluster of men in black at the front broke apart. The Bishop stood before us with his Ausbund in hand.
“God has taken the Hersberger family from us, brought them to his kingdom. We should be grateful to our Lord Jesus for bringing them home.”