Robert Walker - Shadows in the White City

Alastair noted several children clinging to the man and his wife. “Are you not fearful for your children, sir?”

“There he goes again, Mother…calling me sir.”

“Well? Have you fear for your children?” persisted Ransom.

“My true children have abandoned us, mother and father. These little ones you see here have adopted us, so to speak.”

“Adopted you?”

“They elect to stay close.”

It did appear the children were here voluntarily and held no fear of this couple. “Still, sir, tell me, what is your name?” asked Alastair.

“Crusoe…Robinson Crusoe.”

Obviously, the man was educated, well-read, and enjoyed verbal jousting. “Well, Mr. Crusooo …have you any opinion of the Vanishings?”

“I have my suspicions, yes.”

“And what are these?”

He held out his palm for money. Alastair filled it with a dollar bill. “I have recently come across a horrid fellow, a man who is Anti-Christ if I am human.”

“Anti-Christ?”

“The Anti-Christ.”

“Who is this man, the same as the children call Zoroaster?”

“I suspect so. I’ve seen him slaughter small animals, skin ’em and eat ’em uncooked. Says I to him once, why not build a fire and fry that meat?”

“And his reply?”

“He asked back, ‘Ever e’t raw meat?’”

“Then what?”

“Then I decided to let it go.”

“And what makes you think him evil other than eating the flesh of animals?”

“It did not stop at his eating uncooked animal flesh.”

“Go on.”

“He fed it to his children.”

“Indeed!”

“Indeed…and his woman.”

“The whole family is eating dog flesh?”

“Times are hard. Dog, rat, cat, and I fear children now.”

“It is too crushing to believe it.”

“Didn’t someone say the bodies are carved up? Like grandma’s holiday turkey?”

“Yes, this is true. All the same…what you propose, Mr. Crusoe, is beyond the kin of all but wolves.”

“Wolves’re kinder. Several knives of varying blades are used so I read.” He held up a tattered Herald.

“You are well informed, but the general feeling is that the butcher uses several knives.”

The decrepit man shook his head. “Reverse that thought. Several butchers, some large, some small, trained on a separate blade-all carving on the carcass.”

“A horrible notion.”

“Hard to swallow, you mean!” He laughed at the bad joke until the laugh turned into a coughing jag. “But it’s what I told the other man who came asking.”

“The other man? What other man?”

“Why the doctor. It’s what I told the doctor.”

“What doctor? Please tell me it wasn’t Dr. James Phineas Tewes.”

“No, not ’im. The surgeon, Dr. Fenger. He called himself Dr. Josephs, but I read the papers…maybe a week late, but I read ’em when folks throws ’em away, you see.” He warmed to his subject, waving his soiled paper. “I’ve spied his picture in the paper more’n once.”

“Fenger came down here and talked to you?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“A day ago now.”

“And this butchering family…these cannibals? Did you point them out to Dr. Fenger?”

“Point them out? No. They’ve relocated by all accounts, so there was no chance.”

“Where did they relocate to?”

“Dunno.”

“And this is what you told Dr. Fenger?”

“I never let on I knew who he was.”

“But you informed him as you did me? No deviation?”

“I did, and he paid me a damn sight better’n you.”

“Was anyone with him?”

“Yes, that big-shot guy.”

“Big shot?”

“ Ahhh …fellow they call Chief in the papers.”

Kohler and Fenger here, tracking down this cannibalistic family twenty-four hours ago, and Christian knowing this even as he autopsied Danielle, yet he’d said nothing of it, confided nothing of it. It could only mean one thing.

“Tell me…when’d you last see the Anti-Christ and his family?”

“Not for days now.”

“Does the Anti-Christ go by a man’s name? I understand he goes about in men’s clothing.”

“He calls himself Jones, Smith, and sometimes Dobbins.”

“Dobbins?”

“Donald P. Dobbins.”

Ransom wondered if the man made it up as he went. He decided this was the case to some degree. “Dobbins, I see. Can you show me where Dobbins and his family can be found? Where they sleep when here?”

“Aye…for another buck.”

Alastair yanked out another bill and laid it in Robinson Crusoe’s hand. “What about me?” asked Sam beside him. Ransom frowned at the boy but gave in, handing him his last single.

As they followed Crusoe down the maze of the sewer, tramping through turgid black water part of the way, Alastair gave thanks that it’d been a dry month.

They passed others who’d taken up residence here below the city-desertlike expressions on their faces like so many zombies. One gaunt, weather-beaten old woman loudly tsk-tsked at their passing and shook her head and loudly announced, “I’told ya all…predicted this. My daughter told me so. They’ve come to root us out.”

“I’m not here to harm you, old mother,” Ransom assured her.

“The angels will catch him some day. Leave him to the angles. They’ll destroy him,” said the addled woman.

“In Chicago, we’re not much for leaving justice to angels or to another life, my lady.”

She twittered at his calling her “my lady.” She came alongside Ransom with a small vial of water, splashing it over him, calling it holy water to protect him. “If you’re that stubborn bent on it, you’ll need protection,” she finished. “Besides, the Anti-Christ hates holy water. Burns his soul like acid.”

He imagined the old woman had stolen the water from one of a hundred churches in the city.

The old man shooed her off, while Sam said, “Holy water makes his skin dissolve and turn to steam…weakens him. But tainted holy water don’t bother him in the least.”

“Right, son,” replied Alastair, tired of hearing this kind of nonsense.

But Sam kept on. “You know, like sewer water and like tap water’ll do for ’im. That he can even drink and it don’t bother him, but not blessed holy water. I know a priest sells it outta the back of St. Alexis shelter for the homeless.”

“I’ll bet you do.” Alastair took a moment to jot down the priest’s name, as he wanted a talk with this man.

Just then Alastair saw a large figure rise in the distance here, a strange steam coming off him. The figure appeared flanked on two sides. On one side, a woman, on the other a child. Then another child, then another. They seemed to curl up from out of the ground like smoke. Alastair heard the song sung in the streets by children replaying in his head:

On a night so dark,

Amid a sky so blue,

Down through the alley

Satan flew

It’s here each night

he sends his Bloody Mary,

who looks such a fright

but flies like a fairy

and eats the flesh

of live snakes, drakes, and hakes-

Skins and eats kids too…

You may ask till blue

Answer is in the rhyme

That many ne’er see in time

That her secret name is true…

So call out Mary, Mother of God!

Else she carves you as a calf

and feeds you to her devil half.

Alastair looked from Sam and back to the homeless family shrouded in gloom here, below ground. They looked back with vacant eyes: This motley group, not so deadly as pathetic, recalled a family in one of Philo’s photos.