Chapter 29 #2
I dumped out the rest of the paperwork, all the strange ink dancing in my vision as I tried to concentrate and make sense of it. My hand stilled on a single piece of paper.
It was a printed handbill with an illustration. At the top in large type were two words: “De Bokkenrijder.” Below that was a black woodcut of a man riding a goat through the sky above a village.
It was a Dutch wanted poster from who-knew-when—no date was given.
Edges crumbling, it was printed with flaking ink that looked hundreds of years old.
A companion handbill was folded in half below it, one that looked fairly modern in type and layout—it was at the very least from this century.
On it was a line illustration of a screaming woman with long hair billowing around her head. I read the printed title at the bottom.
“ ‘The Witch of Amsterdam’… What is this? Advertisement for an opera, or a play?”
I puzzled over it a moment before moving it out of the way to spy a stack of correspondence below it. The letter at the top of the stack was very familiar.
My letter to Sister Helen.
“Holy shite,” I mumbled as my pulse sped.
He kept it. But it wasn’t the only thing.
Below it was an open envelope addressed in English with a postal stamp dated just one year ago, August 1872.
When I took out the letter with trembling fingers, I was shocked to see it was written upon some very official letterhead.
Letterhead from Scotland Yard…
4 Whitehall Place, St James’s, City of
Westminster, Borough of London, England
Dear Inspector Van Leeuwen,
Firstly, I must apologize for doubting you during your visit to London two weeks past. You made an inquiry into the whereabouts of a Mr. and Mrs. Egbert Voortman, heads of your criminal “Buckriders” gang.
You were right about them crossing the Channel.
We tracked them to a farm in Kent owned by an English magistrate and his Dutch wife, Mr. and Mrs. David Hastings.
Both the Hastings were found dead and mutilated.
One of my men found evidence of occult writing and possible devil worship inside the barn.
We believe your Voortmans may have killed the Hastings and planned to take over their estate through dishonest means.
My men chased the Voortmans as they tried to flee the property, but their chase proved a failure.
They believe the Voortmans were headed back across the Channel.
I will not say that your couple are the “Buckriders” of legend, the ones from your story, who were said to ride through the skies on the backs of flying goats, gifted by the devil.
But I will tell you that my men are quite shaken up by what they saw.
And I hope never to set eyes on the Voortmans in England again.
Hastings was an important man. You’d better go ahead and make travel plans to return to London as soon as possible. I believe we should cooperate to help bring these wicked criminals to justice, for the sake of both our nations.
In service,
Sir Melville Thomas, Chief Constable
P.S. I sent two telegrams but did not hear back from you, hence this letter. Please send a reply immediately.
I stared at the ink in disbelief; then I looked at the goat skulls in front of me. The goats out in the pasture…? I recalled the master’s words when we’d visited those goats: This is my sweet boy, Abbo… He has given me a freedom that is unmatched. We’ve seen the world together, haven’t we, boy?
“This is ludicrous. There’s no such thing as a flying goat.
What, do pigs fly now too? Come on,” I said, but doubts filled my head.
Nin was real. Why couldn’t this be? I pretended that it was true and considered the details in the letter, and I began to think about further possibilities.
The letter was from last summer. The Voss parents died in Europe a couple months later.
If this letter was true, did that mean these Voortmans whom the constable was tracking had traveled across the Atlantic earlier this year and killed the Voss children to get possession of their bodies and property? And that one of them was now wearing Charles Voss’s body like a three-piece suit?
But that was just it, wasn’t it? There was only one of them here now. What had happened to the female witch? Had she been in Agnes Voss’s body the night Agnes had supposedly been killed in New York City? Who’d killed her, and where was her soul now?
My fingers sifted through other correspondence beneath the letter from Scotland Yard.
Most of the documents were in Dutch, and they went as far back as the 1600s.
One scrap of torn parchment had no date—it was a note, not a formal letter—but the ink didn’t look as faded as the older letters, and it was in English:
Beware their servant, who is a familiar to the male witch. My partner saw the servant in his true form, and he is an imp from hell. He wields no power of his own but is a spy for his master.
An imp?
An actual imp?
“I told you there were devils here!” Bethany said, backing away. “You must stop, Molly!”
But I couldn’t. I had to know everything, even if it terrified me.
I dropped all the papers back into the old trunk and reached for a smaller box, one that was about the size of a tin can of food.
When I cracked open the lid, a strange pickled odor wafted.
A corked glass bottle was inside, one that sloshed when it moved.
I hesitantly took it out and squinted at the contents.
Inside the liquid floated a single blackened finger.
One that was scorched and wizened. One that was not human.
“Mother of God,” I whispered in horror. “What is this?”
“That is my very freedom you hold in your hand,” a voice said behind me.
Bethany screamed as I swung around to face Mr. Hoffmann.
“Their servant! He’s with the invaders!” Charles cried, and began fading in front of my eyes. “Run, I tell you! Run!”