A Witch's Burden Read online

  © D.W. Goates

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  ISBN 9781543969986

  ISBN 9781543969979 (hardcover)

  First Edition 2019

  dwgoates.com

  For the witches of the world,

  You know who you are.

  Hell is other people.

  —Sartre

  Contents

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  V

  VI

  VII

  VIII

  IX

  X

  XI

  XII

  XIII

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  I

  The trees seemed to rejoice in their reaching despite the steel-grey sky filled everywhere with oppressive, ominous clouds. As she peered briefly out the small window, the schoolteacher thought to herself that these were the sort of clouds that might portend a snowstorm in the winter. Yet on this late-summer afternoon, the strange sky was naught but a spirit-killing nuisance to the young woman as she struggled to read her novel in the obscured glow.

  She had tried once to strike conversation with the only other passenger on this final stage of her lonely journey, but had given up immediately when her cheer was met with nothing but a grunt and an icy stare from the old, severe-looking man. And so, they sat in silence as the driver hurtled their coach-and-four along the narrow mountain road.

  The close canopy of trees had almost convinced her that further attempts to read would be futile when a sudden break revealed a breathtaking gorge. This crevasse was rendered all the more startling by its proximity to the road; it was as if the wheels of their carriage rode upon the very edge, every bump and jostle threatening to send them into the abyss. Instinctively the teacher slid to the other side of her seat, as if the weight of her small frame might make the difference in avoiding such a fate. By contrast, the old man showed neither signs of discomfort nor any animation whatsoever, as he had for hours past.

  Had she gasped? She had. And a fearful gasp it had been at such a disconcerting surprise. The man, however, lacked all empathy. She did not like this mean old man. But she queried him nonetheless. How could she not? For they were close to their destination, the village of Waldheim, and she had heard nothing of the magnificent castle that now filled their view out that treacherous side of their car.

  “Whose castle is that?” said Fräulein Schreiber, as much exclaiming as inquiring.

  “Stay away from there,” came the old man’s response after a long pause—his measured tone more matter-of-fact than in warning.

  Nonplussed by his comment, she could feel her enthusiasm coming to curb on the matter already. And this was punctuated by a returning curtain of trees. They were no longer skirting upon the edge of the mountain, and it felt as if they were descending as well. She knew from the maps she had studied that the village of Waldheim was situated in a narrow valley, and given the hour, and the pass they had recently cleared, their destination was surely just below.

  She passed the final moments of their journey marveling to herself about what she had seen—a true medieval castle in every respect, built into the mountainside on the opposite side of the valley. It had a dark melancholy air to it, which the surrounding grey only served to accentuate.

  The vehicle came to a stop just as the sun sunk from the sky. For a sizeable village at the mere onset of evening, it was uncommonly quiet.

  The burly coachman swung open the door and offered his hand to steady the woman in her egress. She instead gave him her cumbersome carpetbag, which he weightlessly bore with one hand. Descending thus unsupported, she almost tripped over the long skirt of her dress as she tried to find the step box that had been set beneath the door.

  No one was there to receive her, though the schoolmaster had promised to do so in his letter over two weeks before. A check of her watch confirmed the hour. Where was he?

  “Excuse me, do you know where I might find the schoolmaster?” she inquired of the driver.

  He was busy with her large trunk which had been strapped to the outside of the carriage. Her travelling companion had already disembarked and was in the process of slowly disappearing down the ever-darkening and otherwise vacant street.

  “I’m not from this place, fräulein. Sorry,” he grunted, depositing her trunk alongside her bag on the ground before her.

  “He was supposed to meet me . . .” Her plaintive remark trailed off as she again looked around in helpless quandary.

  Her anxiety grew as the man stowed the step box and began securing the coach. She couldn’t so much as drag that trunk by herself, even if she had a place to drag it to.

  “Where are you going?” Her question came out as an accusal.

  “To stable my team, and then to get a drink and some supper in me,” he replied, chuckling. The man was back in his seat and taking up the reins. “Why don’t you get a room?” he added, gesturing to the inn right in front of her. “The innkeeper will help you with your things.” And with that he was off.

  Gasthof Schöne Aussicht, the inn, lacked all the vitality one might expect given its name and purpose. The best the uninviting place could boast at the moment was that it appeared inhabited.

  Resigning herself to putting off the search for her absent employer until morning, Fräulein Schreiber entered. The common room contained more townsfolk than the teacher had expected from without—perhaps a gawking score, but a raucous lot they were not. Like the village, the room was suspiciously subdued. She was greeted professionally if not warmly by the innkeeper—an older woman who stood behind a counter against the wall.

  Fortunately, both room and meal were available for a modest sum. It was with great relief that Elke Schreiber paid for these and, for a few pfennige more, received help with her baggage from the proprietor’s dead-eyed adult son.

  Her room was dank and spare and seemed to grow only more depressing the more light that was shed upon it—first from the single candle that had been provided, and then from the lone oil lamp that she discovered perched upon a crude three-drawer chest.

  She took her shoes off, collapsed on the small bed with a sigh, and entertained the idea of going to sleep then and there before a gastric growl reminded her of the proper order of things.

  Elke dined at a table alone in the common room downstairs. Fully half of the small evening turnout that she had witnessed earlier had already departed. The meal—a hunk of bread and bowl of warm, bland stew—was sustaining enough. But she was most thankful for the mug of astringent white wine served in accompaniment, not because it was of any particular quality, but for the way its alcoholic content improved her mood. She thought hard about ordering another, but decided against it in case anyone might initiate gossip about the new teacher in town.

  Aside from the rude staring, the few utterly nondescript townsfolk in the room paid the newcomer little mind and kept instead to their near-whispered conversations. Having nothing else to do, the teacher practiced her ear for subversive student chatter, but even attuned eavesdropping garnered her only odd disconnected words.

  When she
had eaten her fill and was in better spirits, Elke moved to the stair, intent on retiring. However, the innkeeper was there, and after exchanging evening greetings, Elke discovered that her curiosity from earlier had returned.

  “That castle . . . above the valley . . . Whose is it?”

  “This was the castle of the Margrave of Waldheim. God rest his soul.”

  “Did he leave no heirs?” implored the teacher; she enjoyed history of this sort.

  “Only a monster . . . nothing more.” The innkeeper’s tone was ominous and final.

  “A monster? What do you mean?”

  “I meant as I said.”

  The young woman’s mouth froze. After a confused pause, her brow furrowed as she prepared to deliver her response, but not before the older woman interjected.

  “Who are you? Why are you here?”

  “I’m the new teacher. I was going to ask in the morning, but do you know where I can find the schoolmaster? He was supposed to meet my coach this evening. He was supposed to have a room for me . . .”

  “I wasn’t aware we were in need of a teacher. Where are you from, anyway?”

  “I’m from up north,” replied Elke curtly. Her innocuous attempt at conversation had somehow devolved into an interrogation.

  “Oh, up north . . .” said the innkeeper thinking aloud. Her tone suggested that she should have realized this sooner. Before she could continue, however, Elke quickly broke off the exchange.

  “I should really get to bed. Good night.” The insincerity of her words hung like a stench in the air, which she used to escape up the stairs to her room.

  The room had been so plain and dark before that Elke had not noticed the small window hiding behind a forlorn little brown burlap curtain. It was the moonlight that betrayed its presence to her now—its radiance distinctly framing the blind like an eerie picture.

  She drew the curtain and was astonished by how bright the moon was this night. The blanket of clouds from the day had parted—a deep gash—leaving the moon to beam huge and silver in the black of the sky. Such was the luminescence that despite the fact that she was on the second floor, behind but a small window, with no apparent neighboring vantage, she felt compelled to shut her shabby curtain before changing for bed.

  Later, secure in her shift and nightcap, she stood before her open trunk and contemplated her bed jacket. It wasn’t something she typically wore this time of year—the additional layer could get unbearably hot—but she was at unaccustomed elevation here in Waldheim. After careful consideration she decided it would depend upon the extent of that rip in the day’s heavy blanket through which peered the cold moon. Surely if the clouds were passing, she was in for a brisk night. Holding the curtain aside, she looked again at the sky and decided that she best don her jacket after all. She was just closing the curtain again when something peculiar caught her eye.

  There was a man standing in the courtyard, as still as a statue, looking up.

  Looking at her window.

  Looking at her.

  Elke’s heart skipped a beat as she snatched the curtain closed. Rattled, she crossed immediately to the door to check the lock. With her security confirmed, she put out the lamp and threw herself into bed and under the covers. Wide-eyed she lay glaring at the flickering candle on the nightstand as it danced, shuddersome, to the tune of her recent activity.

  Moments passed as her mind raced between thoughts of the door and of the face of that man. The lock was not going to be good enough. She leapt out of bed and tried with all of her might to shove her mighty trunk against the door. It would not budge. After some effort, she was forced to manufacture her barricade from the flimsy nightstand. Upon this she placed her carpet bag to serve as much as an alarm if nothing else. She would have to remember that her lone candlestick had been moved to atop the chest.

  Thus unsettlingly settled, she began her fruitless quest for sleep.

  It was two of the clock when the urge to toilet finally confirmed that she had at some point fallen, by sheer exhaustion, into fitful slumber. Distressed, she tried resting in different positions to allay her discomfort. It was no use.

  The lavatory was downstairs through a door off of the common room. The innkeeper’s room was down there, and surely his was as well—the man, that creepy stalker, her dead-eyed son.

  Elke put on her robe and slippers, and tried as quietly as she could to remove her barricade from the door. The inn was deathly quiet. It felt as if her every move, no matter how slight, was announced to the whole of the place. With the door unlocked, she peeked tentatively into the hallway, the glimmer of her candle meandering effortlessly into the passage. Feeling light in her slippers, and emboldened by the stillness, she descended the rough-hewn staircase as a ballerina might, soundlessly. It was with a faintly audible sigh of relief that she greeted, finally, the door to the toilet.

  Inside, she considered her options. It wasn’t the worst common toilet she had encountered, but it was certainly no place she wished to linger. She decided that the worn, well-used wooden box seat with its porcelain bowl might foul her nightclothes and so was forced to disrobe. A brass hook mounted in the back of the door facilitated this. A sort of shelf that ringed the seat area could be used for support, and it was here that she placed her candle.

  Gathering her long brown hair from her naked back and laying it upon her breast, the young woman began an awkward and unceremonious squat. It was only at this time that she noticed something weird about the little room.

  The cedar paneling planks—an aromatic wood chosen without doubt to assist with the odor of the place—were unusually filled with knotty imperfections. There were dozens, no hundreds, of these little eyes all around her. It was as if she were on stage!

  Oh, how she wanted to be done with this! With growing unease, her gaze passed quickly to-and-fro from one ogling spectator to the next—the whole kinky scene made the more upsetting by the lewd licking of her lonely candle.

  She peeked back, just briefly, to confirm her positioning above the bowl, and when she did . . . she saw it. There was an eye, a real eye this time, peeping directly at her tight rump from a hole where a knot should be.

  The blood-curdling scream she emitted had to have awakened the inn as well as any who slept in the houses nearby.

  The startled guest was just pulling on her robe when the innkeeper’s voice came from the other side of the door.

  “Are you all right, fräulein?”

  “No, I am not!” Elke shrieked in retort, swinging open the door violently. “Summon the police! I wish to swear out a warrant for the arrest of your son, the pervert!”

  Shocked and maddened by this accusation, the innkeeper responded firmly and loudly, “I will not. My son is not a pervert. You must leave this house, immediately!”

  “It’s the middle of the night! I will do no such thing. Call the police right now, or I shall myself.”

  “You’re welcome to get out, right now, but you won’t be coming back!”

  Fräulein Schreiber couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She was also stuck. She couldn’t very well go outside in what was to her a strange town at two in the morning in her nightclothes. And she certainly wasn’t going to go up, change, and leave her trunk and things behind in this awful place. Instinctively, she walked to the base of the stair, but then found herself immobilized there as her indignation began to erupt into an inferno of rage.

  “Where is your God-damned son?!” The blaze positively flashed in her eyes. “He will answer for this! Where is he?”

  This wasn’t a request, yet the older woman stood in malevolent defiance. And so, the young woman rounded the corner toward the back of the house. There was a small hall there and, unless the old bat slept with her creepy son, his room must be this one: the one right across from hers. The pummeling Elke delivered to this door belied her petite stature.

  �
��Open this door, you freak! Open this door and tell your mother what you have done!”

  The innkeeper was on her, snatching at her wrists, but stopped when the door opened.

  Both became still as there before them, a shadow in the doorway, stood the slack-jawed creature—dumb and staring as he did—his dead eyes revealing not the slightest hint of shame.

  Feeling at once both disarmed and outnumbered, Fräulein Schreiber attempted to recover by assuming the role of constable for this apparently lawless inn. “Tell your mother—why were you looking at me in the toilet?” she declared, becoming also judge and jury.

  “I was asleep. You woke me up,” came his simple, unconcerned reply.

  “You lie!”

  At this loud accusal, the innkeeper was reanimated. This time she seized the schoolteacher by the arm.

  “There’s some passage from your room that leads behind the toilet!” Elke tried to shove past, but the combination of the oaf blocking the doorway and the innkeeper pulling at her arm made this impossible.

  “What is going on here?”

  The two women ceased their struggle momentarily and looked back toward the common room whence this firm, thickly accented, and rather annoyed question had been posed. A mustachioed, middle-aged man was standing there in his nightshirt. The single candle gripped in his right hand poorly illuminated his face, though the concerned furrows of his brow were clearly evident.

  Freeing herself from the innkeeper, Elke moved to greet this man as if he were an oasis. After quickly expositing her case, she encouraged this man, whom she took to be a fellow guest of the inn, to follow her to the toilet room.

  Here, after identifying the cedar knot that the culprit had used as a peephole, she prepared, with great flourish, to press upon it with her index finger.

  It did not budge.

  Holding her candle close, Elke carefully inspected the area. Though she was sure it was this one, she checked others nearby—the three paneling planks in the place behind the seat alone had dozens of knots throughout them.