Arrow Rock Literary Journal

Cuffley, England
August 15, 1910

The smell of a campfire was Cascadia’s perfume. Heat-warped air drifted up past a kettle hanging low over the flame. The welts on her body from her prize fight in London had long faded away, but the bruises on her knuckles remained. Those were renewed with increasing regularity as her brother’s condition worsened.

Arthur Bell did not have a delicate constitution by any means. Other ailments he had shrugged off like they were harsh words. In normal times, he was the picture of health: tall and handsome, built like a stallion. Cascadia snorted a little. That was where their true family resemblance lay. Not in the blonde hair they shared, nor in the earlobes that the armchair geneticists loved to point out. It was that their bodies were divinely designed to be thrown from horses, chew gravel, and survive all manner of physical battery. The “rugged and hardy” physique was certainly a more flattering fit on Arthur than on Cascadia. She rubbed her calloused hands and wondered if she was worse off for them.

The kettle’s hiss broke her mind from such an unproductive train of thought. She gingerly took the kettle off and poured some boiling water into a mug, over a tea bag. Adding a couple extra ingredients on her way through the two-room cottage, she came to the bedroom, where Arthur was attempting to stand on his own.

“No, Art,” Cascadia said, “Art, sit down.”

Arthur shook his head. “If this disease’s gonna take me, it’s gonna take me standing.” A salvo of wet coughs followed his words. A new speckle of crimson was added to the pointillist mural on his sleeve. His hand found support on the end table.

Cascadia guided Arthur back down onto his bed. “I brought you tea. It’s got honey and lemon, it’ll soothe your coughing.”

“They oughta make you a saint, Cas,” Arthur said, graciously accepting the tea, “You’re doing too much for me.”

“Don’t you go spinnin’ lies, now,” Cascadia said, “I can’t hope to do enough. Nothing’s cured you yet.”

“Nothing cures consumption, Cas,” Arthur reminded her. His once deep, hearty voice was now grinding and shallow. It killed Cascadia’s heart to hear him like this.

“You bounced back before,” Cascadia said, “Plenty of times you bounced back. This ain’t no different.”

Arthur nodded. “I pray you’re right. I just can’t stand the thought that I’ll be fighting this my whole life. Not knowing if this is the one that’s gonna take me into the Lord’s arms. I don’t wanna be doing this when I’m old and gray. Hell, I’ll probably never get old and gray.”

“Don’t say that,” Cascadia said, even though it was likely true, “You’ll be wrinkly as they come.”

Arthur sighed. Cascadia knew that sigh. Arthur had sighed that way all his life, every time he fell ill and wanted to draw his mind away from his failing body. “Cadi, can you tell me something from your monster books?”

Cascadia grinned and shook her head. Therein was another piece of their shared heritage: involuntary fascination. Their father’s fascination was with Asia, the taste of which he tried to reclaim when his time wasn’t occupied by cattle. Arthur studied respectable creatures. He studied reptiles and mammals and birds, especially birds. He could hardly draw himself away from his studies, in books or in nature. Cascadia had a darker obsession: creatures wrought by unholy hands. Vampires, lycanthropes, undead spirits, night stalkers of all types. From Oregon to the Orient, she could name each one and how best to kill it. She had been lucky enough to seldom need her knowledge, but she still kept the necessary protections with her at all times.

“Not all vampires turn under the sight of a crucifix,” Cascadia told Arthur, pulling her necklace out of her shirt and thumbing the silver cross hanging from it, “You ever know that?”

“How’s that possible?”

“Vampires from Arabia suffer to their holy Quran,” Cascadia said, taking out a pamphlet of Muslim prayers transliterated into English syllables. “Jewish vampires can be halted with a six-pointed star, or the blow of a shofar horn. And pagans… well, I’m not quite as well-researched on pagans. Something I hope to change here in England.” She brought out a bullet box from under her bed, whose sheets had been stripped and transferred to the main room’s floor. A shining bullet reflected sunlight like a polished mirror. Cascadia handed the bullet to Arthur. “‘Course, a silver bullet’ll give any bloodsucker pause.”

Arthur rolled the bullet over in his hand. “Wow. Really know your onions about this stuff, ain’t you?” His weak smile broke at another coughing fit. Doubled over in bed, his mouth practically glued to the crook of his elbow.

Cascadia didn’t know what else to do for Arthur. He was dying, and there was nothing she could do! Anything, any fix, even just a tonic or medicine to ease his pain! It probably wasn’t safe for Cascadia to stay in the bedroom. Tuberculosis spread through coughing, after all, and there was plenty to be done elsewhere. Fewer hands had made work heavy.

“I don’t think…” she said, looking back toward the pantry, “I think we’re entirely out of food.”

“Baxters brought us some meat pies, remember?”

“We’ve gone through those already.”

“Ah.”

Cascadia stood up. “I’m gonna go bag us something for dinner. Don’t… Stay safe while I’m gone, you hear?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Arthur said, already reaching for a book beside his bed.

Cascadia gave Arthur a kiss on the head before she left, grabbing her hat and rifle by the front door. A good hunt would calm her restless soul.

——————

Life continued around Cascadia as if she were the most normal animal in the forest. Birds chirped their final mating calls of the season. Small critters scampered about, threatening to draw her attention away from the task at hand. She almost felt like Arthur. If he were there, he would have had those animals eating out of his hand. He needed food and water if he was going to recover. Fresh, clean water was easy enough to come by, but food? Well, that was to be the fate of the red deer that strayed into Cascadia’s view.

Cascadia lined up her sights with the hind’s eyes. She was better with a pistol, but she was no slouch with her Swedish Mauser, either. Being in England, an Enfield would have been easier to keep loaded, and a Krag would have been more familiar to her Yankee hands, but nothing was quite as satisfying to shoot as her trusty Swede.

One squeeze of the trigger.

A sharp crack echoed through the valley. Birds fluttered up from the trees. The deer jerked wildly, running off into the forest. For a moment, Cascadia thought she might have missed her shot. When she got closer, though, and saw the blood and brain matter decorating the grass, she knew her aim was true. She tracked the trail of blood to the spot where her kill lay sprawled across the forest floor. Something was off, though. She wasn’t alone.

A strange, cloaked figure was hunched over the carcass, toying with it. No, not toying. Working very diligently and precisely on something Cascadia couldn’t make out from a distance.

“Hey, fella, I shot that!” Cascadia shouted, putting her rifle over her shoulder and drawing her pistol from its holster, “Quit fiddling with my kill.”

He didn’t look up from his work as she approached. Closing in on the scene, Cascadia heard him humming a tune. Was it… an opera? Austrian, maybe?

“You hear me?” Cascadia said, “Would a sock in the jaw make your hearing better?”

Still, nothing. That is, until the deer rose from the dead like the Son of God and bolted into the woods. Cascadia holstered her pistol, brought her rifle back up, and by the time she’d shouldered it and pulled the trigger, her prize was already gone.

“God damn that doe- hind- what the blamin’ Hell ever it is!” She turned to the hooded man, her left hand white-knuckled on her revolver. “I got a lot on my plate and little on my table, mister. And now that deer certainly ain’t gonna be filling it. You better explain yourself before I turn Donner on your necromancer ass!”

The hooded man rose to his feet and loomed over Cascadia. A pair of tinted goggles and a mask full of rubber tubes obscured his face. Not a single inch of skin was exposed.

“I apologize for your inconvenience, Fraulein,” he said with a soft German accent, “I will, how you say, make it up to you.”

“How? You got a magic spell to make bread and fish?”

The man shook his head. “I am no magician. I am a doctor.”

“Witch doctor, maybe,” Cascadia snorted, “What kind of physician raises the dead?”

“A successful one, with many years of experience,” the doctor told her. Cascadia was surprised to even get an answer. “I specialize in… second chances. Not only curing disease and mending mortal wounds, but making my patients better than they were before. You yourself are an excellent hunter. I see the eagle in your eyes, Fraulein, and the wolf in your claws. But you could be better, yes? I can make you a better hunter.”

Cascadia held up a hand. “Hold your horses now,” she said, “Back up a few paces. You said something about curing disease?” Witchcraft was a sin, but with all other options exhausted she was willing to pray for God’s forgiveness and accept his penance.

“Ja.”

“Got anything for tuberculosis?”

“Och, nasty business,” the doctor said with a slight shiver, “Ja, I have performed many such operations. All successful, with no relapse.”

Cascadia thought back to her winnings from the prize fight. “What can you do for a hundred pounds?”

“That would be quite heavy.”

Cascadia groaned. “I will give you one hundred British dollars if you fix my brother’s…” the German tongue came to her easily enough until the word “tuberculosis,” which she had never learned. “T-tuberculosen…”

“Your German is quite good,” the doctor said in English, “but I should like to practice my English. What is the nature of the infection, to your knowledge?”

Cascadia nodded. “It’s chronic. Flared up a couple times in childhood. Then once when he was eighteen, and right now at twenty-one.”

“Ah, yes,” the doctor said, “Chronic tuberculosis. Guérin and Calmette performed a successful immunization rather recently. My method has combined their work with my own. You see-”

“Whatever it is,” Cascadia said, heading off his tangent before it could start, “Will a hundred pound sterling cover it?”

The doctor cocked his head to the side. “My dear, no. I said I would make up the sorrow I did you with your deer. Consider it a debt repaid.”

Cascadia’s legs buzzed, begging to jump for joy. Finally, finally! Finally, God had seen fit to send her a good Samaritan -or perhaps a good Bavarian- in her time of need! Her lip trembled slightly, almost undetectable. Mist played at the sides of her eyes.

“How soon can you see him?”

The doctor didn’t answer how most doctors would. He didn’t give her a list of dates and times or tell her that his office was full. Instead, he simply said: “I am eager to do my work.”

——————

“Arthur!” Cascadia said, barging into the bedroom, “I found someone who might be able to fix you!”

Arthur leapt out of bed with surprising alacrity. His legs buckled beneath him and he nearly fell over, but he looked eager. “What are we waiting for, then?”

Cascadia blinked. She thought she would have to fight to convince Arthur to try out a strange cure from a suspicious-looking German scientist. “You’re sure you don’t want to… think about it first? Like you usually do?”

“Hell no!” Arthur said, “I’m miserable, and I might die any day now. You could tell me to put a bullet in my lung to cure my consumption and I’d do it in a heartbeat. Bring me to ‘em.”

Confused, but optimistic at this development, Cascadia led Arthur through the main room and went outside to check on the doctor. On the ride back to the cottage, she had learned his name was Krueger, and that he was Prussian, not Bavarian. Over the course of their conversation, Cascadia’s excitement had been tempered by reality. No honest man hid his face, especially not behind a mask of machinery. Even so, she maintained her confidence in Doctor Krueger’s capabilities. He had restored life to a deer missing half its brain. Consumption had to be easy for him.

——————

Cascadia sat outside the steel door to Krueger’s shack. Arthur and the doctor had gone inside a while ago. The doctor’s rendition of some foreign waltz seeped through the door. In her haste, Cascadia had brought nothing to occupy herself but her own fears. Perhaps she would add another poem to her field journal to take her mind off things. She put pencil to paper, and strung together the most floral words she could muster.

The fields of primrose under summer skies
And scent of poppies quiet all her fear
The celandines bring water to her eyes
Until they meet their end astride the year.

Not her worst work. She decided to make it a sonnet with another stanza. Maybe something about changing seasons? Let “her” have a nice, comforting fire, a blanket…

The coming winter chills her to the bone
When Gen’ral Frost makes march across the ground
The fields made bare so Autumn may atone
As she remains to heated hearthside bound.

The sound of Germanic humming inside was interrupted by a scream Cascadia had never heard Arthur make before. High and shrill, it curdled her blood in her veins. She shot to her feet and yanked on the door handle. It didn’t budge. Arthur’s screams hitched in a symphonic swell of squelches and crunches. Cascadia rammed her shoulder into the door, again and again, until her body stopped registering the pain.

“Arthur!” Cascadia shouted. She drew back and kicked at the lock, but the only result was a clap of thundering nerves echoing up her leg.

There was only one thing for it. In an instant, Cascadia’s gun was out of its holster and shakily held against the steel-framed door. Every conscious sense in her body would have told her it was a bad idea, but no part of her was thinking clearly except her trigger finger. A fiery cloud of powder, steel, and vaporized lead blew back against her hand. The gun fell from her blackened hand, useless as the dent it made in the door.

Arthur’s screaming stopped. Cascadia’s began. The horrid noises continued inside, gurgling and crackling in the fresh silence. She threw herself against the door one last time. She slid to her knees, shaking with rage and sorrow. Protecting Arthur was her highest priority. Every decision she’d made since leaving Wichita was for his safety. Every bruise, every scar, every leering eye she’d endured was for him. And she’d led him to his death on the gullible hope of an easy cure.

——————

Cascadia awoke when the opening door pushed her aside. She reached for her pistol, but her hand only made it halfway across the step before she recognized the man standing over her.

“Arthur?” she said, hazy with unbelief as if she were seeing Saint Peter break his grave. Cascadia rose to her feet. She had to touch him to be sure. When her fingers felt the scratchy hair on his jaw, the tears came anew. “Arthur, you’re alive!”

Arthur’s arms closed around her. “More alive than I’ve been in months. Wh-why’re you crying, Cadi?”

“If I see that damned doctor again,” Cascadia growled, “I’m gonna rip that mask off him and know how the face of evil looks!”

“Now why wouldya go and do a thing like that?” asked Arthur, “He fixed me up real nice. I’m breathing clearer’n I ever did, even before the tuberculosis. I feel… I feel like a new man.”

Cascadia pulled away from Arthur and looked at him properly. He appeared much the same as he always had. He was full-bodied, not atrophied as he was at the height of his consumption. His eyes were bright, not sunken, but there was something different about them that Cascadia couldn’t name. A colorless glint atop his natural brown, and a subtle sharpness in his smile. It worried her. There was some trick at play that Arthur wasn’t aware of, she was sure.

“I don’t know about you, but I’m mighty hungry,” Arthur said, “I been sippin’ broth for too long. I need something I can sink my teeth into. How about a real steak and potatoes kinda dinner?”

“You go on and get the horses,” Cascadia said, still breathless as a woken dreamer, “I’m gonna have a… have a word with the doctor.”

Arthur nodded, and headed for the horses with a spring in his step. “I’ll buy!” Cascadia granted herself one glance at a happy Arthur before entering Krueger’s shack.

The inside of the shack served as Krueger’s operating room. A metal table sat in the center of the room. The floor around it was stained with blood and flesh. The doctor himself was washing his gloved hands in a red-filled basin. Crimson was smeared all up his arms. Flecks of meat dotted his front.

Cascadia grabbed Krueger by the tubes of his mask. “What did you do to him?” she growled, pulling his face close to hers. He didn’t seem startled.

“I cured the cause of his tuberculosis,” Krueger explained calmly, “And I removed the chance of it ever coming back.”

“Don’t patronize me. I took care of him for years! His consumption spread beyond his lungs. His blood was full of mycobacterium tuberculosis. What did you do, drain him dry?”

Krueger shrugged.

“Don’t you fuckin’ shrug at me!” Cascadia shoved Krueger away and stomped off toward the door, toward Arthur and the horses. “If I find out you hurt him in any way, I’ll mail what’s left of you to Germany in a tin can!”

Cascadia glanced back to see the doctor staring at her, still as a statue, his face hidden and unreadable.

“I look forward to seeing you again, Fraulein Bell,” Krueger said, monotone. A shiver ran up Cascadia’s spine as she gazed into the soulless black lenses of his mask. She crossed herself as she left, hoping to keep out whatever demon had touched her brother. Under her protection, no less. In her heart, she knew what her desperation had done to him. The crucifix over her heart knew, and the silver bullets under her bed would know, too. That all her hours of obsession had not saved her from this fatal error.

Arthur smiled at her as she mounted up beside him. Cascadia couldn’t bring herself to return it. “I’m sorry,” she said, feeling her tears cool under her chin, “I’m so sorry, Arthur.”

Arthur shook his head and laughed. “I saw the scene, too. Probably see it again in my nightmares. Whatever you heard while I was under, it’s all right as rain.” He put a hand on her shoulder and gave her a shake. “I feel good, Cas.”

Cascadia wiped a hand down her face to clear away anything weak. She was iron now. She’d keep a close eye on Arthur, and redouble her research, in case a real cure could be snatched from the jaws of this new doom. Until then, she’d keep her silver bullets close at hand.

——————

The fields are burning under summer skies.
His fate, as ever, shackles her with fear.
The memories bring water to her eyes.
Without her he will not survive the year.

She’ll carve through sinewed flesh and sunder bone
So he may stay on her side of the ground.
She will make sins for which she can’t atone
So his soul may keep to his body bound.

John Rogan is a senior at Lindenwood University, majoring in Acting and minoring in Creative Writing. They have been involved in Lindenwood’s Creative Writing Club for four years, and fill every speck of their free time between work and rehearsals with either writing or seeking inspiration for their next project.