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- Herausgeber: epubli
- Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
- Sprache: Englisch
The twin sisters Crystal and Diamond are born in NEW OR-LEANS, in the middle of the times of slavery, in 1888 under tragic circumstances. Shortly after their birth, their parents die, again under mysterious circumstances. In addition, a sinister fellow soon appears on the scene who embodies nothing less than the devil himself: BELPHEGOR. He tries to win over the twins' foster parents and later the twins themselves to his dark intentions, with the aim of establishing terror and world domination. Will he succeed?
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NATASCHA BIALY
The Sleeping House (New Edition)
NATASCHA BIALY
The Sleeping House
Mystery-Thriller
The twin sisters Crystal and Diamond are born in NEW ORLEANS, in the middle of the times of slavery, in 1888 under tragic circumstances. Shortly after their birth, their parents die, again under mysterious circumstances. In addition, a sinister fellow soon appears on the scene who embodies nothing less than the devil himself: BELPHEGOR. He tries to win over the twins' foster parents and later the twins themselves to his dark intentions, with the aim of establishing terror and world domination. Will he succeed?
Brief information:
NATASCHA BIALY'S book is a razor-sharp answer to the slogan “Reading crime novels - why we read crime novels and what we love about them...” : Because we revel in exciting adventures and because we want to get into dangerous and gripping situations.
>>The Sleeping House<< This novel takes us into a gripping world of greed, jealousy and unscrupulousness, but also shows us the adventurous nature of life.
Imprint
Bibliographic information from the German National Library: The German National Library lists this publication in the German National Bibliography; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de.
The automated analysis of the work in order to obtain information, in particular about patterns, trends and correlations pursuant to Section 44b of the German Copyright Act (“Text and Data Mining”), is prohibited.
© 2024 NATASCHA BILLY
Editing: NATASCHA BIALY
Bruehler Street 21, *** 50968 Cologne/Germany
Proofreading: NATASCHA BILLY
PUBLISHER: BOD · BOOKS ON DEMAND GMBH, IN DEN TARPEN 42, 22848 NORDERSTEDT
Printing: LIBRI PLUREOS GmbH, Friedensallee 273, 22763 Hamburg
TABLE OF CONTENTS :
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
ONE
IN THE VICTORIAN MANSION
New Orleans, 1888
The married couple Elaine and Elijah Gardener are expecting their first child. The young woman, at twenty-one years old, is about to give birth and is screaming in pain. Dark-skinned slaves hastily bring her bowls of hot water and clean towels. Her older husband Elijah, aged forty-two, tries to calm his frightened wife. Her painful, loud screams worry him.
Looks out for the doctor and midwife Jenny, who are a long time coming. Elaine struggles to keep her strength up, her screams grow louder. She accidentally knocks over the bowl of water. Her husband nervously calls for a slave, since everyone except him has now left the bedroom to pray outside the house, to get to the church it is difficult to find helping hands. Elaine excitedly calls for a doctor and midwife.
“Where are the doctor and the midwife, my water broke?”
She keeps looking around anxiously.
"Honey, why are you leaving me now?"
Elaine cries and is frightened at the same time, because a gush of blood spreads beneath her.
“What is happening to me here, do I have to die now?”
The pregnant woman is afraid for her life and that of her children. Elijah is beside himself with anger and tries to explain to his exhausted wife why he has to leave the house so quickly. He cannot hide his anger as he is also desperately worried about the life of his young wife and his unborn child.
"My love, everyone ran out to pray, I don't know why they did this."
“But I swear to you, everyone will pay if our child dies!”
“The slaves will regret it, I promise you!”
Sadly, he takes Elaine in his arms and comforts her. Elijah looks thoughtfully out of the window of his mansion. He raises his voice again accusingly:
“The doctor and midwife should have been here already!”
He paces restlessly back and forth in the bedroom.
"My darling, I'm leaving you for a moment, it's necessary because I have to find someone to help us."
For a brief moment he pulls himself together again, he kisses his wife tenderly on the mouth before turning around to leave the room. As he hurries out of the room, Elijah lets out a few last
Words to Elaine fly through the air:
"I won't let the voodoo witch touch you, she'll only make things worse. Trust me, everything will be fine.
I will hurry, trust me!”
Elaine looks sadly after her husband from her bed. She is too exhausted to run after him as she would have done before. She lacks the strength and perhaps it would not help her, because he would be much faster.
She sits up for a moment to see if she can get up, but she quickly realizes that she cannot do so without help from others. So she accepts the situation and lets her head fall onto the down pillows of her marital bed.
>>The elegant gentleman´s staircaseclimb<< by N.Bialy
Mansion in New Orleans. –Google Search
TWO
THE WRATH OF THE MASTER
Elijah runs out of his house in a hurry and sees the dark-skinned sixteen-year-old Michael leaning drunk against the wall of the slave quarters. He pulls Michael up by his shirt collar, angrily pushes him against the wall, lets him fall to the ground, he hits the teenager alternately with both hands until his blood splatters on Elijah's white shirt and Michael falls to the ground.
Frightened, the slave boy remains crouched on the floor, looking up in shock at his master, who hits him several times with his blood-stained hands.
"Master, what have I done to make them so angry that they beat me like this?"
“Today is my birthday, please understand me!”
Michael kisses the hem of Elijah's pants pleadingly. But Elijah doesn't even look at him, he has nothing but contempt for him. Even when Michael tries to explain everything and make it right.
"Master, I drank the whiskey from the bottles in your cellar, um, I thought nothing of it. I had no idea.
"Um, I didn't think anything of it. I had no idea they would notice, they were so busy with the impending birth of their child."
Elijah angrily stamps his feet several times on the muddy ground. Michael stammers in a trembling voice to calm his master down.
"I'll replace the bottle with my wages, I promise you that. I'll also harvest the cotton field all day long alone. Have mercy on me, I'll do anything for you, just please don't kill me, I don't want to die, no more!"
The boy cries and screams, he gets up. He would prefer to run away. His words change absolutely nothing, full of rage he grabs the slave boy. When Elijah tries to hit him again, a man in black leather gloves, a coachman's coat and a top hat pulls him away from the now badly injured man, as Michael's screams of pain finally die down in the darkness of the night.
Melvin Morgan, the fifty-six-year-old doctor, takes Elijah aside with his hand. Melvin takes Elijah back to the villa, his country estate. While Michael is still standing on the floor, shaking with fear, the concerned >>MOMMY<< secretly watches Frame.
As a grandmother at the age of seventy-eight, dark skin and white tousled hair, in her colorful voodoo ritual dress from afar. She murmurs
Incantations against the rich farmer and his family, as well as against the doctor and against his thirty-eight-year-old midwife wife Jenny.
While >>MOMMY<< grins as she cuts the throat of a rat to get its blood, she then cuts the veins in the carotid arteries of a rooster and a chicken. She then lets the blood from the dead sacrificial animals run into a bronze bowl, which she then drinks with a big gulp and a malicious laugh.
Moving as if in a trance, she then takes two mummified frogs that have grown together at the bellies, separates them with scissors, takes a cigar box, fills it with straw, and places the two frogs close together. She places straws over the frogs' heads as hair, and uses a blood-stained handkerchief to attach the heads of the dead frogs.
Finally, she puts a dirty pair of scissors on the animals' bodies. Then she seals the cigar box with hot wax. At the same time, her grandsons quietly place a ladder against the wall of the villa.
Which goes right up to the window of the children's room on the top floor.
Artwork >>Leaving the witch´s kitchen<< by Natascha Bialy
THREE
THE HIDING PLACE IN THE CHILDREN'S ROOM
MOMMY sneaks to the Gardeners' villa, where her grandchildren are waiting, and fearlessly climbs up the ladder that Michael, who has now gotten up, has leaned against an open window on the top floor with his older brother.
As the voodoo witch enters the children's room with the baby cradle, a rocking chair and a floral wallpaper, she looks for a hiding place for her small wooden box.
She feels the ground with her hands, finds a raised area under a woven colorful carpet, pushes it aside, then removes two loose wooden planks. MOMMY puts a cigar box inside, along with two dried thorny freshly cut rose stems inside as well.
In the house, no one in the parents' room notices that someone has entered the nursery without permission. Elaine, who is about to give birth, is too busy to notice what is happening around her.
But when her husband returns, he asks for water for
Drink and to cool his wife's face. He sends two slaves to fetch water. Since the women are late, he leaves the room to look for them.
They are not to be found in the kitchen or in the first bathroom. He gets a bad feeling.
Surprised, he goes up the stairs towards the children's room to get to the second bathroom. But when he hears a squeaking noise, he stays alert. He tries to find the place where the noise is coming from. Then it goes quiet and he feels dizzy. Elijah manages to hold on to the wooden railing of the spiral staircase.
It spins around him, he weakens and sits down on a step for fear of falling down the stairs. Elijah calls to his slaves:
"Alice and Josie, where the hell are you?"
He begins to sweat nervously and leans exhausted against the stairs. When his wife impatiently calls for him and the slaves, he can no longer stay on the stairs. The women come running out of the basement of the house in surprise when they hear their mistress' voice.
Suddenly she hears footsteps on the creaking wooden stairs leading up to the hallway that leads to the children's room. The voices of two excited women can be heard running up the stairs. She quickly closes the wooden floorboards and puts the carpet back over them. MOMMY runs to the window and quickly climbs down the ladder without looking back. When they get downstairs, their two grandchildren greet them impatiently.
All three run to the slave huts in the dark night. Once there, they take the animal carcasses lying in front of the hut and throw them into a heated cauldron to cook a stew together with stolen sweet potatoes.
After cooking, the grandmother sits relaxed with her youngest wounded grandson Michael at the table in the small kitchen, with the huge cast-iron cooking pot hanging in the fireplace.
Nineteen-year-old grandson Jake joins them. The three of them are so hungry that they quickly eat the stew.
FOUR
THE BIRTH
The doctor, Elijah, and the slaves stand around the marital bed. Alice and Josie are there to help her. Until Elaine gives birth to her daughters with loud, painful cries. The children are pulled out of Elaine's womb by her midwife friend Jenny with laborious movements and a twisting motion.
Her afterbirth, the placenta, remains in her abdomen, which is not good for the young woman's health, as the body usually expels this afterbirth after childbirth. So Elaine lies in her bed, exhausted but still happy, to rest. But when she is shown her newborn children, her expression changes so much that she faints in horror.
Horrified, Elijah tries to wake his wife and screams at the other people standing around. The loud screaming wakes her up exhausted, but she reacts to him by gently wiping away his tears with her hand, looking at him, stroking his face, comforting him and listening to him reassuringly. The agitated Elijah literally gives free rein to his extreme feelings:
"Oh my God, what are these ugly creatures? Where do these monsters come from? Where are our children? What have you done with them? Did the slaves, or did the witch take our children?"
He hits the doorpost with his hand in anger.
"I took in the voodoo witch and her grandchildren. I was warned about her. The three of them were sold so cheaply on the slave market. Since then I've only had trouble with her and with her grandchildren. Her youngest stole our whiskey from the cellar. On top of that, the older of the two raped the mayor's sixteen-year-old daughter in our barn and got her pregnant."
Elijah's emotional pain is almost unbearable for him.
"What a scandal, a black slave had robbed a helpless white girl of her virginity against her will, that is more than terrible."
He is ashamed because he did not prevent it.
"Out of revenge, because my friend, the mayor, because he means so much to me, I thought about it. I decided to beat the slave Michael, the younger brother of the rapist who stole the whiskey, as punishment. Maybe his grandmother secretly saw everything and that's why she cursed us."
Elaine continues to listen attentively to Elijah and tries to get out of bed, weakened. However, she fails because she is too weak, as her afterbirth has still not come out. He lifts his wife out of bed and carries her through the dark hallway.
out of the bedroom. Elijah's dirty shirt is covered in fresh blood from the birth of the twins.
The placentas of the newborn children finally detach, slide out of Elaine's vagina and fall with a splash onto the hallway floor.
Disgusted, her husband steps over her mother's excretions and, clutching her, carries her safely away. Elijah carefully lays his wife on a red velvet chaise longue. He takes a deep breath and tries again to calm his exhausted wife.
"I will take you to safety, we will have those horrible children taken away from here. I cannot bear to have to look at them any longer. It is very bad for both of us. They will bring us misfortune, lead us to ruin."
A storm is brewing outside. The shutters slam open and shut loudly. Horrified screams echo through the library as Elaine thinks of her newborns. She gets up and runs out of the room and back into the bedroom. Her husband Elijah wants to follow her, but Elaine is faster. They have both reached the bedroom. Melvin the doctor friend puts a sharp scalpel in the shocked Elijah's hand; he also has one in his hand to separate the Siamese twins that are fused together at the skin on their bellies.
Melvin is on alert and preparing himself for what may come. He nervously pesters Elijah.
"Let's separate the two. I would rather make angels than create monsters. God has given us a test, only together can we break the witch's curse, Elijah."
He can't think about it for long, because it was a matter of life and death. His friend Melvin urged him.
"Elaine should not be present during the procedure , please take her back to the library. This will make it easier for all of us, as most women are very sensitive about this, especially after childbirth or births with such complications."
Melvin thinks about the situation for a while, but then he is quite sure about his suggestion.
"We will separate the children now and then take them away from here. I will take care of it personally with Jenny, don't worry about it any more, my friend."
He tugs on Elijah's shirt sleeve to keep him alert.
"Come on, it's time to start before it's too late and you change your mind."
Melvin opens his doctor's bag and places all the cleaned surgical instruments on the bed like scalpels, next to the screaming babies. He takes a pipette and drops ether into their little open mouths to numb them. He gives just a few drops of ether, the little ones' screams stop, they close their eyes and fall asleep.
Satisfied, he washes the little bodies with water and towels that the now mute, frightened slave Josie had brought him. He ignores her and waves to Elijah that he'd better take part in the procedure. Disgusted, he doesn't let his friend's request be denied. But he only agrees if he doesn't touch the children.
Melvin has to assist him, he has to hand over his surgical instruments. His friend agrees to this. He also expects him to keep quiet about what he saw and the later removal of the children. Without telling Elijah where the children would be taken. But he didn't care anyway, the main thing was that they were away from him and his wife.
He would rather have no children than have demonic children who are cursed and will only bring the couple more misfortune than they already have.
They wanted to finally be happy together again, to start over, to leave everything behind, to give up their lordly property and to start a new life in another country, without obligations, trouble with slaves and suffering from inadequate harvests with droughts or floods.
Both had enough money to live a happier life elsewhere. They didn't have to answer to anyone.
FIVE
THE FIRE OF DESTINY
Elaine sits up exhausted, her two slaves do not leave her side and another quickly sets about cleaning the weakened and rigid, silent mistress of the house from the traces of childbirth.
While the others dress Elaine like a puppet. The exhausted woman even endures the strenuous task of being laced into her corset. She is dressed in a heavy, frilly silk dress with puffed sleeves and two servants place her on a chair in front of the fireplace in the library.
There Elaine finally tries to find peace, but she is unable to, because she is startled twice by the loud cries of her babies, which causes her to cry. In her shock, she falls from her chair and her petticoat gets caught on the grate of the logs in front of the fireplace. She falls so far that one of the puffed sleeves of her silk dress gets caught in the open hearth of the fireplace, with her arm in the middle of the flames. The fire spreads rapidly up her arm, all the way to her hand. The flames eat deep into her young, tender skin.
Her terrible cries of pain are shrill and accusatory. No one is with her, because she had sent everyone away to stifle the screams of her children. All the slaves and servants quickly run together, with Doctor Melvin, whose hands are still bloody from cutting up the little bodies, to the library. Together they put out the fire.
Melvin carefully treats the burns on her arm and hand with ointments made from various herbs. But Elaine just faints from exhaustion. Melvin examines her entire body for further burns, and to get a better look at her body, he tears off her partially burned dress; he quickly unlaces her too-tight corset.
Elijah, who also heard the horrific screams , abandons his still sleeping newborns because the life of his beloved wife is much more important to him. He leaves her lying alone on the marital bed.
Completely out of breath and full of concern, he asks his friend Melvin about her condition:
“What about my wife, why did they leave her alone?” Elijah’s face turns red with anger.
“Do I have to punish any of you again?”
He asks the slaves and servants who stand around his wife and the doctor with their heads hanging down, not daring to contradict their master for fear.
Elijah stands threateningly before them:
"It's your own fault, you slaves of voodoo. You create monster babies from hell, you have bewitched my children!"
The husband cannot hide his tears of grief.
"My dear wife has burned herself. What else will happen here?"
Elijah finally collapses in despair and falls to the ground. Ashamed, he just wants to be alone and doesn't want to see anyone anymore.
"Everyone get out of here now, I want to be alone, take the two creatures with me and get them out of here, Melvin, before something else happens!"
Melvin nods in agreement as he helps Elijah to stand. Then he leans on Melvin and asks him to help again.
“Do whatever you want with them and help Elaine to become healthy and happy again.”
Doctor Melvin leaves the library to go back to the bedroom to carry out his friend's order. In the meantime, Elaine has woken up and her husband is smiling at her with a tear-stained face.
She takes a deep breath and speaks to him in great pain:
"Ah, my arm hurts so much, honey! Please help me, it's all so badly burned. I can't move my arm or hand."
Elaine tries to get up again, she looks around in surprise.
Her husband leans against her and asks the servants:
"Where is Melvin? He wanted to get another ointment from the drugstore? Everything is taking so long. Before that there was the terrible birth and then this. Where the hell is he?"
The servants just shrug their shoulders fearfully and remain silent.
Elaine sighs lethargically, hopelessly:
"What have we done? We have always been good to our slaves as domestic servants. But why are we being punished so harshly by God?"
Elijah gently strokes his wife's long hair, which hangs loosely over her shoulders, to calm her down.
"No, something like that can't be from God. He doesn't forgive so many bad punishments. This is probably just devilish voodoo witchcraft."
Possessed with anger against the black population, he leaves the room, runs to a broom closet, takes out a broom, not to sweep. Back in the room, he angrily beats his slaves, who run out of the room screaming in panic, out of the house and into the open air. Elaine wants to stop the escapees so that they do not escape their punishment. But she is still too weak. Instead, she spits at them, screams degradingly and follows them in her anger. Her husband lets her scream to get rid of her feelings of despair.
"We have the blacks to thank for that, all of whom we freed from Africa. We will all go naked into the fire. Women will give birth to crippled children. The mayor will find out who is guilty. The criminals will hang, death will take you. Jake, the pig who raped Lilly, will burn in hell, the mayor's daughter is now unintentionally pregnant."
The last of the servants, who had heard everything outside through an open window, ran away in horror, scattered across the entire property. Elaine's husband has chased everyone away with his wife. So they are both alone. Her husband leaves the room. He stands outside his villa, his loud, pithy words leaving his mouth.
"Death will knock on his door tomorrow morning and he will invite him in. From the beginning he has been the tormentor of his vengeance against us, against our house and against the peaceful, righteous citizens of this city."
Elaine hobbles out of the library in the remains of her underwear to see if her newborns are still in the bedroom. It has become very quiet, no one else is in the bedroom except her. Relieved and exhausted, she collapses into bed and waits for Melvin, still in pain. Elijah cleans her burns and cools them with cold towels. In between, he lovingly strokes his wife's head, which has become hot.
He becomes restless and leaves the bedroom to get new towels. Then he hears crackling noises coming from the library, and smoke is coming from the doorframe of the open door into the room on the first floor.
The glass in each window shatters with a loud crash. Elijah holds one of the wet towels over his mouth and nose. He calls out to one of the slaves, but no one answers him. It becomes quiet in the house of the Lord, so that only the destruction of the fire can be heard.
The master of the house is no longer moving, he is lying dead on the floor. He had tried in vain to put out all the fires in the library. He threw the valuable books out of the window in vain. He died in vain, because several pieces of glass are stuck in his eyeballs and a huge shard of glass is stuck deep in his still-beating heart. It all happened so quickly that he couldn't even scream.
Elaine cries out for her husband in concern as the flames have now reached the hallway and the bedroom. She screams in shock and panics, so she runs down the burning hallway until the flames envelop her whole body in flames of fire, her skin burns rapidly and the partially burned flesh on her legs falls from her bones as she tries to get to the library. She is horrified to see that her husband is completely burned, a charred black corpse.
Full of grief, anger and also tormented by emotional pain, Elaine longingly lies down next to her husband Elijah. She, like him, burns to black ash. A wind comes from outside, coming in through the window, blowing the couple's ashes out into the open until nothing is left. No one goes anywhere near the house, even when it is completely burned.
Melvin doesn't show up with the ointment, not at that moment.
Ten years later in the garden of the family’s other house
Morgan, on the outskirts of town in 1898….
Two ten-year-old twin girls are playing in the midday sunshine. They are weaving colorful flowers into their reddish-brown hair, and their dark brown, almost black eyes are shining with joy as they spot more flowers a few meters away.
They run to this spot with their wreaths on their heads. They pick as many flowers as they can carry. They sit down in the meadow, put them aside to fool around.
As they are about to start, an elderly woman comes to the adjacent garden fence. She quickly asks them both to come in in time for lunch. Smiling, they follow the request and walk hand in hand with bouquets of flowers. The woman gratefully accepts the bouquets.
"Are these beautiful bouquets for me? You really made a lot of effort, very magical of you my dears."
Another person, a dark-skinned older domestic servant, takes everyone's flowers and goes into the house.
While the girls are hugged by their proud mother in gratitude.
"We had a lot of fun picking the flowers, Mom. They should be the most beautiful flowers for you, you can now call them your own. They won't be the last flowers we pick for you, you can be sure of that."
Everyone is together in the family's blue Victorian house.
Sitting at a large table in the Victorian dining room, the girls and their parents enjoy lunch in the sunlight that illuminates the room. The family does not seem to be complete. Melvin, the proud father who praises his daughters for the flowers, also asks for his sons.
"Thank you for giving your mother these beautiful flowers, that's thoughtful of you. You did a really good job. Don't you think so, Jenny, my darling? Oh, where are our sons, are they still busy with the experiments? They should be on time for dinner though."
The dining room door suddenly opens with a loud bang as Dr. Melvin's fourteen-year-old son James and his older sixteen-year-old brother Charles come running into the room to sit down at the dining table. Shy, with their heads hanging, they only briefly look into the faces of their angry parents . Before the brothers can start eating, the food, served by servants, is lovingly served on their plates. Melvin looks sternly at both of them as they eat, but prefers to remain silent and carry on eating.
Mama Jenny continues to whisper praise to the twin girls, who are laughing and whispering about their older brothers without them noticing. They are too busy eating what appears to be delicious food. The family happily finishes their lunch together until the doorbell rings loudly. Melvin asks all family members to stay in the dining room.
A dark-skinned maid opens the door and happily hugs a young man of twenty-six, also dark-skinned.
That's why Melvin, the eighteen-year-old chambermaid Lydia, looks at her in astonishment.
"Do you know each other and if so, why is he interrupting our lunch? Lydia, you know I don't like being interrupted during lunch, I've told you that often enough."
The doctor is uncomfortable and tries as hard as he can to hide his feelings.
The chambermaid Lydia senses this anyway, but he just remains silent. He only briefly glances at the unknown guest. She tries to put the situation right with her joy.
"Excuse me, Master Melvin, may I introduce my older brother? He walked here from the other side of town."
Lydia bows respectfully and apologetically to Melvin, while signaling to him that her brother is welcome. Melvin looks up at Jake appreciatively. He offers him hospitality. He invites the young man to the dining table, which is lavishly set. All family members are happy together about the extraordinary man from the other side of town. Everyone present shows him this with a warm smile at his surprising presence.
After everyone has finished eating, the host and head of the family wants to say a few words to the new arrival. He himself bubbled up with unexpected curiosity.
Melvin, very excited, approaches his guest’s chair and looks at him questioningly:
"Well, my friend, don't be so shy, we don't even know your name. What I did say is that I posted an ad a few days ago. For a job as a coachman to accompany us through the city in a carriage."
Melvin explains it seriously, with a certain touch of kindness.
"We have a hard-working team here. You have to be able to fit in, lead the horses, keep the harness clean with your hands. You will also drive the funeral carriage, the four-horse team with the oak coffin inside, because funerals take place here, for which we are also responsible. That is part of your work here with us, as is feeding and caring for the horses. You are now the coachman and at the same time the groom of the noble grooms."
He tells his new servant in confidence.
"So make the best of it. I'm counting on you, please don't disappoint me."
The seriousness is clearly visible on the doctor's face. Melvin stands up and takes a bottle of whiskey from the cupboard. He pours some into the whiskey glass of Jake, his stable boy. Jake accepts it gratefully and drinks, enjoying it sip by sip until he has emptied his glass.
After the drinks, Melvin's wife Jenny comes and asks him to stand up. He stands up in surprise, she stands in front of him and shakes Jake's hand to greet him. She hands him a handkerchief embroidered with the initial "M".
The overwhelmed Jake bows humbly before the couple and, sobbing, addresses a few honorable words to them:
"Dear Master and Madame, my name is Jake. I have never received a gift from a master as a slave, especially not such a valuable gift. What does the sign actually mean?"
Jake asks, embarrassed.
“It’s a pity I can’t read what’s written on the handkerchief. Unfortunately I never learned how.”
Shocked but at the same time touched, he respectfully takes his master's hand and kisses it. Surprised and grateful, he strokes Jake's bowed head comfortingly with his unkissed hand and asks him to stand up.
Melvin gets up to take a small wooden jewelry box from a dresser in the room. He opens it, inside is a finely crafted gold chain with a gold cross pendant, which he takes out. The chain that hangs around Jake's neck. Melvin happily enjoys the joy of their new helper and member with his family.
"You are part of our family, Jake. This is your place now. Forget what happened in the past. This is your present, the here and now. The big letter "M" on the handkerchief is our family name "Morgan". The cross on the chain is the cross of our dear Lord Jesus Christ. Amen! It is yours now, my son. You are no longer a slave. Welcome to our family. Now let's have a drink. Cheers, to you, my son!"
Jake kisses Melvin's hand; he bows in thanks. Tears of joy flow down his cheeks. After he has calmed down, he raises his whiskey in return. He empties it in one gulp. Jenny refills the empty glass. They quickly drink it together.
When everyone is about to sit down again, the twins Crystal and Diamond get up from their chairs and rush excitedly towards Jake. The two of them happily touch the astonished Jake. The girls gently stroke his arms.
The shy Jake enjoys it all. Everyone leaves the dining room and goes outside together to show Jake the horses' stables and let him judge the horses' appearance, as well as the carriage.
Artwork >>The pure evil on his throne<< by Natascha Bialy.
SIX
MYSTERIOUS VISIT
On the blossoming, green property, surrounded by white wooden fences with the many fruit trees that provide shade for the manor house. A rough, stony path leads from the house to a wooden building that looks like a barn. With a large , equally white gate, it stands open, so it looks inviting.
This allows you to see inside. In the stable area, which is made up of white-painted wooden panels, separate horse boxes with half-gates and nameplates for the horses, hard-working stable boys of various nationalities work.
The family, including Jake, has now reached the stables. Two dark-skinned stable boys open the large gate of the stable. Everyone enters the horse stable with the barn, which has straw and hay bales filled with feed sacks, which is located right next door to the adjacent horse stables in the same building.
The horses are housed in neat straw-lined stalls that contain feed bins with water troughs that are filled. A happy neighing can be heard from the stalls. Each of the horses in the stalls seemed content. The childlike twin sisters Crystal and Diamond simultaneously take Jake's hands. Pull him toward two white horses that are tied up. These are being brushed to the rafters of the stall by two young Asian men. The Morgans greet their stable attendants with hugs. He puts a ten-dollar bill in each of the men's vest pockets. The other two dark-skinned men, who had earlier opened the barn gate, come over with sacks of oat feed. Melvin beckons them over with hand signals. The working men set the sacks down in an alcove in the stall area. Melvin puts a ten-dollar bill in their vest pockets as well.
Crystal looks proudly at her father, she is happy about her father's generosity. She wants to imitate him and puts a ten dollar bill in Jake's pocket without her father seeing it.
But Jake has noticed this action, and when he wants to thank her, the girl nudges his arm to distract him, and with a smile she engages him in conversation.
"Jake, these are our horses 'SNOW and FLAKE', they are twins just like us. Both are as identical as we are. My name is Crystal and this is my sister Diamond. So welcome to our Morgan family."
The girls smile, they take Jake's hand and pull him between the two horses. Jake smiles back and strokes the horses gratefully on the neck and tenderly behind the ears . The horses neigh contentedly at the caresses they receive from Jake. Jake senses how everyone feels good, seems to be happy somehow.
He introduces himself to the sisters in a friendly manner:
"Hi, I'm Jake, the new assistant and carriage driver. They are really beautiful animals. The horses are well cared for and healthy. You girls can be proud of yourselves and of your great horses."
The girls are very impressed with how gentle Jake is with their horses and feel that he is more than just a stable boy/assistant or coachman.
Despite their childhood, they feel a certain attraction to him. They are far from realizing what effect this could have on their future together, which is still a long way off. Whatever it is, it's good. At least for the moment, and who knows what else will happen.
But until then they have three older brothers. Nothing better could happen to them than this. They smile at their new brother Jake. He curtsies politely to them.
Jake laughs amusedly:
"Have you chosen me as king now, after such a short time? Amazing, I would not have expected that. But fine, I'll turn a blind eye then."
The sisters start to giggle. Out of joy, they dance around him like little ballerinas. The girls hold out their hands to him, then quickly pull them away again. They tease him, laughing, and push him around a bit. Jake lets them do this because he enjoys it himself.
He laughs so heartily that the girls are delighted. Above all, they have a new playmate. Their playmate is happy to play his new role as king without complaining. The girls curtsy to him to show their respect in the game.
The whole thing seems like a comedic theater play, because Jake is a bit clumsy and falls from his makeshift throne, which the children had previously diligently built out of branches and chopped pieces of wood that they had stacked criss-cross on top of each other.
"Your Majesty, Your Majesty, we want to be your servants. Now don't be so shy! It's only fun. We want to serve you out of gratitude, Jake. A little nonsense, just as a game."
Her new brother, whom she now has crowned her king with a woven crown made of straw, says yes and happily takes part in her play without complaining. He thinks that it is a play, mixed with children's games from the realm of her still young imagination. How quickly the years of youth fly by without us wanting it, now I let them do as they want.
Jake thinks benevolently. They are not harming anyone, and not themselves either. It's also a bit of a laugh. So what more could you want than to just be happy and enjoy your childhood.
SEVEN
EXCITEMENT EIGHT YEARS LATER
A group of several older men in suits with top hats have sat down on their chairs, all arguing excitedly. Most of them are angry. They express their discontent loudly among themselves, until suddenly a wooden hammer is struck on a piece of wood, as by a judge in a court of law, and the speaker interrupts the assembled gentlemen from their discussions.
Suddenly it becomes very quiet and everyone looks attentively at the speaker on the stage. After he has said it, they all applaud the mayor of the city of NEW ORLEANS . All the gentlemen excitedly greet a tall man with a stern expression on his face who waves at everyone. The crowd cheers him expectantly and happily.
Mayor Keys begins his speech again, but this time very excitedly, while the apparently well-known guest silently makes way for him by giving him his place at the lectern. The two meet their eyes benevolently, the mayor looks at those gathered while he reads from the sheets of paper that lie neatly on top of each other on the lectern in front of him. Now he speaks to them, more urgently than ever.
“Hello, I’m Major Marshall Keys, the mayor of this beautiful city, as you all know.”
He clears his throat a little to be able to deliver his speech better, then he looks curiously into the individual rows of seats to see who has come. Satisfied, he begins to speak:
"Distinguished gentlemen, free men, council members, business people. The police chief of our city of New Orleans and the pastor, have come together here to find solutions to these horrific crimes. Because the safety of all of us is at risk, it is urgent that the meeting take place here."
The mood among the nervous men gathered around them deteriorated more and more. Helplessness spread across their desolate faces. Their conversations among themselves continued, everyone spoke incomprehensibly. Their way of speaking made Keys and his guest, the police chief, a little angry. They had the feeling that they were not being taken seriously, that the people gathered were taking the situation too lightly.
The old, sixty-five-year-old, plump mayor Keys therefore again advises order and everyone who has stood up must now sit down again. Individual chairs are pushed aside for seating, some fall with a loud bang onto the wood-paneled floor of the hall, because not everyone wants to listen to him and some people feel more comfortable outside. For whatever reason, no one knew.
After everything has calmed down, the gaunt fifty-six-year-old police chief Peter Sanders steps onto the stage. He greets his friend Mayor Keys and everyone else with a friendly handshake.
The thoughtful police chief Sanders also addresses the number of those who have not left the room with a serious expression.
"Hello, I'm Peter Sanders, for those of you who don't know me yet, I'm the police chief of the city of NEW ORLEANS . Mayor Keys has assigned me, together with my men from our police station, to get to the bottom of the gruesome murder cases. In combination with ghosts and voodoo spells. And also to ultimately keep the murderer under wraps until the death penalty is carried out by Judge McDaniels."
After what was said, loud applause and clapping filled the not-quite-empty hall in the afternoon. But then the sky suddenly darkened until it turned black, accompanied by a violent storm that caused some of the windows to burst open. The glass in the open windows shattered, the shards of glass clattered to the floor, and the loud barking of dogs could be heard outside.
The assembled men become restless, they keep walking back and forth. Some leave the hall anxiously, saying goodbye first. Others, who are not afraid, try to nail the broken windows with boards that they had brought from outside. Someone removes the broken glass from the floor. After the windows have been nailed shut, the rest of the people sit down again. Half of the chairs remain unoccupied, however. The mayor himself has brought his chair onto the stage.
He takes his place next to the lectern. Outside, the rain has stopped and there is no wind.
The mood of those still present is now calmer, they try to concentrate more on the mayor's speech. Mayor Keys seems thoughtful, but shocked, he carefully explains the situation to the assembled male population as best he can.
"It's good that you're all calming down. There is no peace here, only fear of death. I don't mean fear of the damn storm. As the police chief has already mentioned, horrific murders are happening here. The strange thing is that all the victims, whether male or female, had their hair cut off. The hair was apparently taken away afterwards. Next to the dead were always two mummified female frogs, each with a dried rose."
He looks closely at the horrified faces of those present and nods in agreement, then he continues speaking.
"But that's not all, because most of the inhabitants of this town report that the places where the bodies were dumped are haunted by the ghosts of those who were murdered there. I have a feeling that the whole thing has something to do with the mystical voodoo magic, performed by the black slaves here, as a ritual. Or someone who practices it for fun and boredom. I don't really believe it, but I would rather attribute it to these dark-skinned people . Because it all started after we got new slaves. There was even a voodoo witch among them. It's all very creepy, but I promise you that we will solve it together with the police."
The inner calm of the assembled men, with general panic, enters the hall when suddenly the door opens; two invited men in doctor's coats hastily push a stretcher on which lies something in the shape of a human body, covered with a white linen sheet and seemingly motionless. The stretcher of the stretcher is lifted up and then placed in front of the stage where the podium is, right in front of the rows of seats of the astonished spectators, who are whispering quietly among themselves. The linen sheet is quickly removed by the two of them. With horrified faces of disgust, those who remain see what is now visible underneath.
A pale, slightly bluish dead human body appears. A loud murmuring with gagging sounds can be heard halfway through the hall. Some of those present hold a cloth handkerchief to their mouths to spit into it. A sharp, acrid smell of slightly decomposed flesh spreads and reduces the air they can breathe. Some leave the hall gagging, while others vomit as they run out.
Two police officers who accompanied the police chief also quickly run out. Then both police officers return with pliers. They run to the broken windows and quickly pull the nails out of the wooden boards so that fresh air can come in.
The morning sun is now shining through the open windows, it is early the next day, the fresh air fills the whole hall. The bestial smell of the beginning of decomposition is slowly disappearing. The remaining men are beginning to overcome their disgust at the sight of the corpse, but are distracted by their interest in solving the murders and continuing to listen to Dr. Morgan's speech. The doctor sets about asking his assistant to help him open the leather suitcase that Dr. Morgan's assistant, the thirty-six-year-old Doctor Janson, had previously taken from a landau carriage parked in front of the town hall.
Dr. Morgan then focuses on his waiting audience, who expect answers from him.
I would like to introduce myself to you all:
"My name is Dr. Melvin Morgan, I am the chief physician of the hospital here in NEW ORLEANS. I am also involved in solving the murders that happen here. This may seem absurd to you, but it is important that we follow up on every lead, no matter how inconvenient or dangerous it may be ."
He sighs and takes a deep breath, after a short pause a slight grin crosses his face.
"If you still have a weak stomach, it would be advisable to leave now and not linger here any longer, as it will not be a pretty sight. Those who can bear it should stay here. So it is entirely up to you whether you have the courage."
There was a clapping of hands and applause from those still present with strong stomachs and courage. Doctor Janson uses a scalpel knife to make a cut in the abdomen. He cuts the dead man's torso in a Y shape from top to bottom. Clumped blood runs viscously from the openings of the cut.
Janson looks curiously and astonished at the occupied rows of chairs. Only those who, despite their disgust, gave in to their curiosity remained there. They watched the two doctors at work very closely without flinching. After some time in the procedure, two assistants of the
Mayor's office, who are waiting at the exit. A little later they come back with a basket full of clean beige cotton cloths. The head doctor, Dr. Morgan, hands the dirty knife to his assistant doctor.
He takes it, cleans the knife with one of the cloths that had been brought to him. Then he puts it back in the doctor's bag. He takes out a bone saw and wants to saw open the rib bones with it. But before Janson can begin, Morgan rips the saw out of his hand and angrily lets it fall to the floor.
Morgan's face darkens with anger at his assistant, he grabs him by the collar of his coat so hard that he can hardly breathe. Agitated, he lets go of him after a short while, but immediately afterwards he speaks seriously to him, giving him a strict reprimand. Janson sits down exhausted on a chair near Morgan.
"Who told you to saw open his chest? You work alone without asking me. The way you work is completely against my rules. And you know it. If you carry on like this, doing what you want... I'll have to fire you, you'll lose your job. You have a family to support. Do you not care about your family? Or is it the alcohol that makes you do these rash things?"
Doctor Janson just sits there in silence, looking into the eyes of the assembled men, who are now just looking at him accusingly and are just as silent. Those present shake their heads thoughtfully, but before they can all express their displeasure, the horrified mayor stops them with hand signals and asks the doctor to calm down for a moment.
Doctor Janson cleverly uses this moment to justify himself.
"I'm sorry, gentlemen, I thought I was doing the right thing. I actually wanted to prove that I was as thorough as my superior, Dr. Morgan; the respected good Dr. Morgan."
Laughing, Janson gets up from his chair and continues to speak in his emotional outburst. Morgan shakes his head in horror, but he does not interrupt the speech of his subordinate doctor. The restless Janson continues. Those present continue to listen to him with interest.
"If you all only knew who is really behind this facade. He has a whole family on his conscience, our lord, dear senior doctor, if he even has one. His parents are dead, he burned both of them with the help of the slaves."
Janson's voice gets louder, his body shakes with anger, he runs back and forth. The people gathered become restless, they too can no longer remain calm. Each of the men speaks up in unison. They stand up from their seats angrily. Everyone talks to the desperate Doctor Janson.
"You and your alcohol, you can't live without it. We will never believe the accusations you make against your superior, Doctor Morgan. Everyone here knows that you are striving for his position. There are many reasons for this, which you yourself know, Doctor Janson. Well, drinking and your own career, all of that is more important to you than your family. We know you very well and you don't want to disappoint your father again. Do you?"
Janson cannot argue against this, he admits the disappointment of his father, who is still angry today that his son only got an assistant position as a doctor under Dr. Morgan in the hospital in New Orleans , and that he also married the daughter of a poor farm owner. He makes it clear to those present that all this happened under circumstances over which he himself had no influence.
Confident and confident in himself, he roughly pushes Morgan aside. Morgan doesn't resist, just looks at him confused and walks to the first row of seats and sits down on one of the empty chairs.
Janson ignores him at all and continues his explanations to draw attention to himself and to alleged injustices. He bangs his fist on the wooden desk in front of him to interrupt the sudden whispering of the gentlemen so that he is the only one to be listened to.
"Gentlemen, I, you have a murderer and criminal sitting in your ranks. His slaves helped him to get rid of his friend's newborn children. Just because they supposedly didn't look normal. To this day, no one knows where the children, two girls, are. If you ask me, I think they were killed, just like their parents, who died in a fire in the villa of the Gardeners, the married couple who were friends of the very esteemed Dr. Morgan, shortly after the girls were kidnapped. Everything was burned down to the ground. Well, the doctor is also an arsonist, it just keeps getting better. So many coincidences."
A murmur fills the room, Morgan's head turns bright red with anger.
Police Chief Sanders comes up to him with a glass of water. Both men whisper quietly to each other, Morgan drinks the glass. He goes up to the angry Sanders, reaches into his police jacket pocket and pulls out a small bottle of whiskey. He hands it to him, pats him on the back reassuringly. The latter looks at the police chief in surprise after taking a big swig.
He secretly observed the scene between the men talking. It annoyed him because he felt that Sanders was not taking him seriously at all. That's why he spoke to the police officer directly.
"Sanders, you surely still remember this case? After all, you and your people have been investigating the police for a long time."
Loud murmuring fills the entire hall. When the mayor steps back onto the stage and politely asks the now somewhattipsy doctor to vacate the podium, then goes to the police chief, it suddenly becomes quiet. The drunken doctor goes back to his chair.
The mayor gives the floor to the police chief with a gesture in his direction. The thoughtful police chief Sanders speaks calmly.
"Yes, I remember it very well. Unfortunately, we weren't able to find out who did this to the Gardeners. They were nice people who had been trying to have children for a long time. It was a huge strain on the couple. I felt really sorry for them both, Miss Gardener even tried to take her own life."
In a flashback, the police chief remembers the past with sadness and tears in his eyes.
"It happened in the quiet park in CITY PARK at LANGLES BRIDGE on the lake in the middle of the summer day. A young new colleague named Ray was on an outing with his sons in NEW ORLEANS CITY PARK to fish for the family dinner on the lake."
