The house was in a lovely neighborhood, on a large lot with roses in front and woodland in the back. It had wood floors that made a comforting creaky sound when you walked, a gas heat stove whose flames would flicker and dance delightfully on cold winter nights, and an absolute marvel of a kitchen. Enough bedrooms and bathrooms for guests, too, and a washer and dryer already installed.
There was a wide deck, which looked like something out of Sunset magazine right down to the eight-person hot tub over in the corner, and begged for summer barbecues with the family. The deck’s three broad steps ended in a lawn that had never seen a dandelion, and it was easy to imagine children playing on that lawn, running through a sprinkler or hunting for four-leaf -clovers.
Everywhere you looked, you found perfection; not a ding, crack or scrape. It was a dream house in every sense of the word.
It was selling for way too cheap.
“She’s just been waiting for a family-oriented out-of-towner like yourself to make her a home again,” Amee, the real estate agent, assured her, smiling with very red lipstick and very white teeth. She was a pretty thing, plumpish but not overly so, maybe early forties and just getting gray around the temples. Louisa wondered if she had children. A husband. Children without a husband. That was the most common arrangement nowadays.
“When I saw the price tag,” Louisa said, clutching her handbag in front of her with tight fingers, “I was sure the description in the listing was a mistake. I’m afraid this is just too much house for somebody my age.”
“It’ll practically take care of itself,” Amee said. Her smile looked stuck on. She might as well have been holding a sign that said, “something very big is wrong, here.” She hadn’t stopped smiling since they shook hands on the front walk. Not once. Her cheeks must be aching by now.
Louisa, with an equally puppetish smile, took a step back, throwing a look over her shoulder at her car.
Buyer apprehension was apparently Amee’s shock collar. “Everything’s passed with flying colors,” she blurted, shoving a manila folder at Louisa. The folder contained receipts for every possible type of inspection: electrical, mold, roof and gutter, gas lines, pipes, foundation, insulation, leaks, cracks in the asphalt, moles (moles?), radon and lead. Even the hot tub had an inspection receipt; the note said the tub, though an older model, was in such excellent shape, it looked as though it had never been used.
The folder was a powerful incentive. Teeth-baring aside, Amee was good at her job.
Despite Louisa’s misgivings, the benefits did seem to outweigh the risks. The thing was, her pension was practically nonexistent, and Social Security barely covered the rent on her current apartment, which was shoddy, had a single small bath and a bedroom barely big enough for her bed and dresser, and was in a rough part of town. Plus, she had to haul her laundry to the elevator and ride it down two floors to the laundry room in the basement. And the complex had five parking spaces the twenty-odd residents fought over, the losers forced to park against any clear curb space they could find even if it was a block away, a terrible inconvenience when you came home from the grocery store.
The monthly payment on this beautiful house was lower than the per- month on her apartment by a considerable margin. A home was an investment. Granted, she didn’t have all that many years left, but if she had to spend money on a living space, she’d rather spend it on a space with an attached garage.
Amee was still smiling. It was chilling. Caveat emptor, Louisa thought.
And yet…
She looked at the beds of roses in the front yard, mulched and pruned and blooming furiously in the mid-June sun. She could smell their perfume from the sidewalk. She could see her old hatchback out of the corner of her eye, parked on the driveway. If the garage door was up, she could park inside. There was a door in the garage that led to the main hallway; five steps down that hall and a left turn, and you’d be in the kitchen.
She threw her shoulders back and lifted her chin. “I’ll take it.”
“I have the paperwork all prepared,” Amee said, her shoulders slumping just a tad; the big shoulder pads on her suit jacket mostly hid it, but Louisa noticed. Just like she noticed the twitch of the curtains in the big front window to the left of the porch swing.
“Somebody’s inside,” Louisa said, frowning. “Did you hire somebody to come in and clean?”
“There’s no one.” Amee gestured toward the front door. “We can sign everything in the kitchen; I’m sure you noticed all the counter space.”
Louisa had noticed the counter space. The cupboard space, too. She didn’t do as much baking as she used to, before she retired, when she could give away all that crumb cake and strudel and German chocolate cupcakes, much better for the figure than eating an entire cake by herself. But she could still appreciate a well-designed kitchen. And there was a convection oven. She’d never used one, but she’d heard about them. Her daughter-in-law said they made muffins light as a cloud. Perhaps she’d make cupcakes and invite the neighbors. At Louisa’s age, it was best to know who could help you with what. And anyway, the neighborhood had a lot of young families. She only got to see her grandsons a few times a year, and since the neighbor children weren’t her responsibility, she was allowed to feed them as many cookies as they could hold. Maybe she could even pay one of the older boys to mow that huge lawn in the back.
“I’ll need to buy a lawn mower,” she said, mostly to herself.
“There’s a service,” Amee said.
“How much?”
Amee cleared her throat. “The original owners had an arrangement with a local… company. The service will continue at no cost to you for the next several years. Maybe more. I’ll get the details about that to you asap.”
Louisa looked at her.
“You don’t need to worry.” Amee patted the top of Louisa’s shoulder with her fingertips. “Here’s my card. You can always call me if you have any troubles.”
Louisa looked at the card. It was heavy duty and very white, and had Amee’s name and direct number embossed in gold on it, as well as the name of Amee’s company. It was a very official card.
Louisa set it on the kitchen counter next to a phone jack. That was nice; not many people had landlines anymore. It was all fancy phones with no buttons and apps that, as far as she could tell, didn’t do anything useful. Her son had gotten her one of those phones for Christmas last year. She still didn’t know how to call anyone with it.
“Sign here, here and here,” Amee said, pointing to highlighted lines at the bottom of three pages full of bullet points and fine print.
Louisa thought of taking groceries right from the garage to the kitchen, and of the laundry room just down the hall from the master bedroom. She thought of the money she’d save on rent each month, and how she hadn’t been able to buy Christmas presents for her son and his family for the past five years. She’d have guest bedrooms. Her son and his family could stay at her place for Christmas. They could put up a tree in the living room next to the heat stove, and eat frosted gingerbread men and decorate the tree together.
She signed.
***
She hired a local moving company to bring over her furniture in a big orange truck; the men were kind enough to take her bed apart at the old place and put it back together at the new, pushing the headboard against the wall facing the door, just as she wanted it. The room was awfully large for her plain little wooden bed with its full mattress, not even a queen bed, which might have made some kind of impression, but only a full, which, even with the pretty homemade quilt on it, looked like a frightened toddler crouching in a corner. The big bathroom, with its jacuzzi tub and huge shower head, was like something a movie star might use; her cheap shampoo and bar soap cringed apologetically on the little shelf in the shower wall. Her blue jar of moisturizer was an absurdity on the counter. At least the hand soap dispenser, which she’d picked up at a garage sale on a whim, fit the surroundings: it was beveled glass, with a pewter handle. Very classy. She’d put gardenia-scented soap in it.
The kitchen was a different story. She had all sorts of cake pans and baking sheets and pie pans and glass roasting dishes and two jelly roll pans and muffin tins in giant, large and small sizes. She had two cookie jars and several cake carriers and stands, and all sorts of serving dishes, some of which had belonged to her mother, ordered directly from Germany.
And she had a dining room, now, rather than a bare bit of linoleum next to the refrigerator. It was wonderful. Her china cabinet fit with room to spare. In fact, she had to put all three leaves in her dining table to make it look right in the large space. It would have looked better if she had more chairs, but she didn’t entertain large numbers of guests like she used to. Perhaps that would change. She’d have to think about getting more chairs.
Once she had her things put away and the bed made and the cupboards organized, she made a trip to the grocery store, and when she got home, she pulled into the garage, switched off the motor and simply sat there a few moments, anticipating the marvelously short walk from the car to the refrigerator.
The garage door into the house was slightly ajar, and a soft glow, as from a lit candle, shone through the crack. Louisa opened the car door.
The light snuffed out.
She crept up to the door and placed the fingertips of her free hand against the wood. When nothing happened, she pushed gently. The door swung wide.
There were muddy cat prints up and down the hall, even on the walls. The house reeked of hot beeswax.
Louisa went back to the car for her grocery bags. The pork sausages and the milk would spoil if left out too long, and she didn’t have so much money to spare that she could afford to waste perfectly good food for the sake of a misplaced cat.
She didn’t own any beeswax candles. That mystery should be investigated once the perishables were in the fridge. Likely something had spilled somewhere.
When she entered the kitchen, every baking dish in the cupboard was on the floor. Her knives were jammed into the potted plants on hooks above the sink, and her forks were stuck into the back of the couch in an uneven row. She’d never have found the spoons at all, except that there was a handle sticking out from where they’d all been shoved under the refrigerator. Her pots and pans were stacked together inside the oven, which was on; her toiletries were in the fridge, which was off.
As far as she could tell, nothing was stolen. But every dish was broken, except the ones that had been her mother’s, imported directly from Germany. Those were still tucked carefully inside the china cabinet.
Louisa set her bags of groceries on a counter, surveyed the mess, thought, well, now I know, and rolled up her sleeves.
When the fridge was back on and the groceries (and her toiletries) put away where they belonged, and everything was as spic and span as she could make it and her fingers were wrinkled and puffy from all the hot, sudsy water, she pulled out butter, flour, sugar, eggs, heavy cream, baking powder and apples, and some cinnamon, nutmeg and vanilla, as well.
Louisa had been raised with all the old tales. She thought maybe she knew what she was dealing with, and in her experience, a good piece of cake made introductions and mended fences.
When the cake was baked and cooled enough, she shifted it to her mother’s white cake stand, set out her mother’s tea plates and the rescued forks, cut the cake into wedges, and made a pot of good coffee. She pulled out a tester slice for herself and ate it without a plate, leaning over the kitchen sink; it was her mother’s recipe, written in German in her mother’s graceful, sloped cursive, and Louisa had done it justice. Even her mother couldn’t have baked a better kuchen. Satisfied, Louisa washed up and went to brush her teeth, then went to bed early with a book.
There was a dead mouse in her bed. She pulled off the bedding, dumped the mouse into the trash and took the bag to the curb, remade the bed, took a quick shower and climbed back in with her book.
This next part was a risk. It was dangerous to turn off the bedside lamp, cuddle up and fall asleep. But if she was right about what was happening and who was doing it, etiquette must be observed. They didn’t like to be seen or heard, and they preferred to move about while humans were sleeping.
When the moon was whole and high and there was no more traffic on the street and the bed was warm and safe, a pressure on Louisa’s chest woke her. Something was stealing the air from her lungs, and she couldn’t move, and she could hear her own heartbeat, too loud and fast. A pair of yellow-green eyes glared down at her, narrowed and angry, and a high, rough growl seemed to surround her, coming from everywhere at once. The pressure increased until Louisa thought her ribs would crack.
A voice hissed in her ear, “aussteigen.”
Then the pressure was gone.
Louisa lay there, terrified, for a count of thirty, and when she was sure the thing was really gone, she shoved the covers aside. Pulling her robe on, she crept out of her bedroom and down the hall, grimacing at the overwhelming scent of hot beeswax. She got to the kitchen entrance, took a deep breath, coughed as the beeswax smell coated her tongue and the inside of her throat, and stepped into the room, reaching to flick on the light.
The fridge hummed. A rafter creaked. The clock on the wall click-tokked, click-tokked.
Someone had eaten the streusel off the top of the apfelkuchen and picked out all the apple slices, leaving shreds of half-mashed cake on the cake stand. It looked like they might have eaten some of the cake, as well, but they’d covered the remainder in ketchup, allowing it to drip down the sides of the stand onto the counter. The cake looked like a murder victim.
The cups hadn’t been used, but the coffee was gone; whoever had drunk it had chugged right out of the pot, then left the empty pot on the burner, where the dregs of liquid in the bottom could bake on, staining the glass and leaving a sour, burnt smell in the air.
Louisa swallowed. Hugged herself. Let the fear turn into resentment, and the resentment into determination.
Then she pulled the trash can over and dumped the mangled cake into it. This was her house; they couldn’t just chase her out. She’d win them over, instead. See if she wouldn’t.
But just in case, first thing tomorrow morning, she’d buy a baseball bat.
***
For the next three days, Louisa baked. Pfeffernüsse, gingerbread, Sachertort, Linzer cookies, peach strudel, Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte, bienenstich. Each time, a bit more was eaten, and a bit less consigned to a grisly, ketchuppy death. The chunk of Sachertort in her underwear drawer was unpleasant, and the peach strudel remains on the compact’s engine block made the garage stink of blackened sugar and charred peaches (a smell which persisted all the way to the car wash, and took some effort to scour away.) But the sweets were, to some extent, eaten, which was progress. The creatures liked the sweets, therefore they couldn’t hate her completely. Maybe. In theory.
At night, she kept the baseball bat with her, underneath the bedcovers. The creatures must have known it was there, because they didn’t touch her again. Not to say things got any less awful. The first night, it was tapping: on the windows, then on the doors, and then every faucet in the house started to drip, plink… plink… plink. Something began knocking on the garage door—knock-knock-knock, pause, knock-knock-knock, pause—but when she finally grabbed her bat and went to check, there was nobody on the other side.
Exhaustion finally dragged her under, but when she woke the next morning, bleary and sick to her stomach and resolved to call the plumber, the faucets weren’t dripping anymore.
The second night, it was the sound of yowling, so loud it made her head ache, so startling she woke already climbing out of bed and landed on her stomach on the floor. She could hear the hallway doors opening and slamming again and again, and as she lay there, gasping and disoriented, something with claws swiped at her calf, slicing thin lines of pain down the middle.
Yelping, she pulled herself back into bed and fumbled for the switch on the bedside lamp, but when she found and pressed it, nothing happened. She tried pressing it a few more times, her breathing frantic and heart beating hard, but the lamp wouldn’t come on.
Now what? She lay there a moment, fear pinning her to the mattress, listening to the banging doors. The bed was false safety; in fact, it would probably be better to stand and face the enemy than to be caught lying helpless on her back. And she should probably wash the scratch, because there was no telling what those claws had been in. Other than ketchup.
It was hard to push herself up; everything in her wanted to burrow deeper under the blankets and hope for the best. But she did sit up.
“I have my bat right here with me. And I will use it,” she announced, in case something was hiding under the bed. And then she put one tentative foot over, rested it on the floor, and waited. Nothing grabbed her ankles. She put the other foot on the floor and stood.
The overhead light wouldn’t come on either, so she stumbled blindly to the bathroom, clutching the handle of the bat so hard her fingers ached. She flipped the bathroom switch up and down uselessly a couple of times, then climbed into the tub and rinsed the wound as best she could in the dark, telling herself that the sting was already starting to ease, and she didn’t smell blood, so it couldn’t be a deep scratch.
There was a soft squeak and a rush, and then the shower came on full blast, drenching her in icy water. Shocked, she felt around for the tap, couldn’t find it, and swung her legs back over the edge of the tub, so she was standing in a sodden nightgown in the dark, freezing and furious. It was too much; she yelled a few of her father’s favorite German swear words at the ceiling.
The door slamming stopped abruptly, somehow communicating a sense of shock. This time, when she flipped the switch, the light came on.
It occurred to her, as she peeled off the dripping nightgown, that somebody might be watching. She found she was too angry to care. “Go ahead and look!” she shouted, and stomped back to her bedroom, naked as a plucked goose.
There were no further incidents that night.
By the third night, she couldn’t have slept if she’d wanted to. So she was ready when the yowling started up again. This time, it had words in it: “Eindringling! Verreisen, verreisen! Du bist nicht erwünscht!”
“It’s my house!” she shouted back, fumbling around for the baseball bat. It wasn’t there. They’d taken it, and now she was afraid to poke her head out from beneath the covers. “I bought it! I’m not leaving!”
There was a silence. Then it started to get very warm in the room, so warm that she had to throw off the sheet and blankets and gulp for air.
Candles were everywhere. On the window sill, on the bedside table, on the floor. On the end of her bed. On the coverlet. All of them burning too brightly to be ordinary candles; they were like scattered chips of sunlight in her dark bedroom. As she watched, they slid toward her, inch by inch, across the floor and over the coverlet and down the wall, closer and closer.
Louisa’s nerve broke. The candles had left an obvious path from the bed to the open bedroom door, and she took it.
More candles in the hallway, covering the wood floor, sliding toward her. There was only one free path: down the hall to the patio door, and out onto the deck. Louisa rushed to the door, flipped up the latch and shoved the door open, darting outside.
The door slid shut behind her. She heard the latch click.
Miserable, Louisa sank into a huddled lump on the deck stairs and wept. She’d have to stay in a hotel while she looked for a new apartment. How could she possibly afford it? Where would she get enough to manage the first and last rent payments she’d need to move in somewhere else? She was too old to sleep in her car. How would she stay warm? Where would she park? How would she shower? Oh, no, and her purse was still inside. She didn’t even have that rotten phone her son bought her.
A low, gurgling chuckle drifted to her through the darkness.
Louisa was too despondent to jump; she just sniffed and huddled lower.
“Giving you a hard time, are they?” somebody said. The voice was friendly, if a bit gruff and oddly cadenced; the words would speed up, then slow down, like a wave cresting.
Louisa raised her head, squinting in the direction of the voice. There was a sudden, small flare of light, and then the stranger stepped forward, putting a pipe stem to his mouth and puffing several times to get the tobacco burning properly.
The light was bright enough to see him fully: a creature the size of a nine year old boy, but broad-shouldered and stocky. His short beard was gray-streaked, and his ears and nose were overly large and puffy, as if somebody had squeezed his neck so hard it made bits of his head swell up. His eyes were black-pupiled and black-irised, but merry and crinkled at the corners.
It wasn’t a match or lighter he was holding. There was a flame on the tip of his finger. Just before he closed his hand to snuff it, she saw his old-fashioned sailor suit.
“Klabautermann,” Louisa murmured.
“A German girl,” he said, sounding pleased, and also satisfied, as if he’d just confirmed a suspicion, or perhaps won a bet. “And you know the old tales. Very good.”
“Where did you come from?” A klabautermann would die if he spent too much time on land.
“The nearest source of water,” he said, chuckling to himself.
Louisa’s gaze traveled to the hot tub. It was hard to tell in the dark, but it seemed like the cover was askew. “They put chlorine in hot tubs, don’t they?”
“They do. And I take it right out again.”
A klabautermann. That explained the hot tub’s pristine condition. At least he was friendly. Or if not friendly, at least he didn’t seem inclined to attack her. It was awkward to be caught crying, though. She turned her head away, angling her shoulder toward him, and since she couldn’t seem to stop, did her best to cry quietly.
Not that it mattered, really. She’d likely never see him again.
“Der heinzelmännchen, right?” she asked. The tears made her voice thick and unsteady. Nothing to be done about it. “In my house. That’s what they are, isn’t it?”
“That’s right.”
“How many have they kicked out?”
“Four others before you.”
At least she wasn’t the only one. She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, wondering what to do about her nose; she was getting drippy. “Do you think they’ll let me back in long enough to pack my things?”
The klabautermann handed her a tissue. Heaven knew where he’d been keeping it, but it seemed clean. She blew her nose. Hunted vaguely around. Set the tissue on the step, snugged up against the base of the railing where nobody would accidentally step on it. If she ever got into the house again, she would throw it away properly.
“Did you notice…” he puffed his pipe, the glow of the burning tobacco brightening and dimming rhythmically, “…that there are more heinzelmännchen in the house now than when you moved in?”
“I don’t know why it matters.”
“Indulge an old sailor.”
She smiled in spite of herself. “I thought maybe there had been that many all along, but some of them left me alone, at first.”
“Oh, no.” The deck creaked as he strolled over. She could feel his eyes on her. Assessing, but not unkind. “There are definitely more than there were three days ago. But many of them will leave tonight. Or maybe tomorrow night.”
Louisa sat up straight. “For good?” She realized how that sounded. “I mean, why?”
She heard him shift. Smelled the tobacco of his pipe, musky and earthy and too strong to be comfortable, although nothing so bad as cigarettes. “That’s a big secret,” he murmured. “Not one easily shared.”
“I’d bake you apfelkuchen, but I can’t get into my own kitchen.”
“Don’t know about apfelkuchen. I might like bratwurst and sauerkraut. And fried potatoes. With beer. A lot of beer.”
“Well, you’ll have to get them somewhere else.”
He puffed his pipe a while. The silence was companionable; he was an easy person to be sad around. It was nice to have someone next to her as things were falling apart, even if the someone wasn’t human.
“Who told you the old tales?” he asked finally.
Louisa sighed. It wasn’t like she had anything better to do. She was in her nightgown, locked out of her house. “Oma Hilma. My mother’s mother. She’s long gone now, of course. But I still remember. She would come all the way from Germany to visit, and while she was here, she insisted we all speak only German.” The memories helped a little; she found herself smiling. “We would have kuchen and kaffee—well, we children would have milk—and the adults would talk about the family, you know. Until the children got bored, and then we would ask Oma for stories.” She shook her head. “Some of those stories were too scary for children, but we wanted them anyway. Even though some of them were so awful you’d have nightmares.”
The klabautermann hummed thoughtfully, tapping the bowl of his pipe idly against the deck rail. “It’s hard to come to a new country. You aren’t among your own anymore. Nobody speaks your language. The faces aren’t familiar. The smells are different.”
“I suppose,” Louisa said.
“Without a bit of the familiar, you start to wonder why you thought it was such a good idea to travel. You are desperate for the company of others like you. When you find a place like the country you left, that place becomes very precious to you. Something to protect and defend. To fight for. Because to leave it is to leave your country a second time.” The pipe had gone out; he made a disgruntled noise, then added, “sooner or later, you will make the new country your home. But it’s hard to bear too many differences at once. ”
Louisa had an idea where this was going. “Do you mean… Are you saying this house is a kind of hostel? For heinzelmännchen?”
A thunk and scrape. A flare of light. The klabautermann relit his pipe, poking one long, flame-tipped finger into the bowl and puffing until a bright cherry glowed inside it. She wondered where he’d dumped the used tobacco. “This house has been a stopover for many years. The first family to own this house was a husband and wife from the old country. They had friends among the feen. They welcomed the heinzelmännchen. In exchange for room and board, they never had to clean, or mow their lawn, or repair the roof or the pipes. Although,” and here he chuckled again, “the wife’s baking wasn’t so good as yours. The heinzelmännchen may not like you, but they have told me about the Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte and the bienenstich.”
“They smeared half the bienenstich on my cupboards.”
“But they enjoyed the other half very much.”
That remark was not worth acknowledging. “So, the trouble,” Louisa said slowly, “is that they think I will kick them out?”
“That’s right.”
“But I won’t!” Louisa turned toward him, equal parts hopeful and frantic. “I don’t mind if they stay. In fact… In fact, I would like them to stay. I live alone, you see. I have for years, ever since my husband died. Just pottering along, nobody but myself for company. My son and his family live in another state. I… Well, I’m just saying I wouldn’t mind a few people around. And I could bake for them. It would be nice to bake for other people again.”
There was a long, quivering silence.
Behind her, the latch on the patio door clicked.
The klabautermann exhaled a slow stream of heavy smoke. “You might regret that offer.”
“Probably. But I’ve made it. Too late now.”
The glass patio door shirred quietly as somebody shoved it open. Louisa knew the proper etiquette. She didn’t turn to look.
Something small and soft rubbed against her side, making her jump and yelp. She looked down. A tabby kitten sat next to her, blinking big yellow eyes in the light of a beeswax candle, which hovered a few feet above it. The kitten mewed an inquiry.
“If you want,” Louisa said, leaning back to give the kitten full access to her lap. It gathered itself and hopped, landing lightly, and began to purr. Louisa reached her hand out, one slow inch at a time, until it rested lightly on the kitten’s fuzzy head. She rubbed the spots below the large orange and cream-striped ears, and the kitten obligingly purred louder.
The klabautermann huffed a quiet laugh. “Well, that’s done it,” he said, knocking his pipe on the rail again. “They’ll all want your attention now. Still, I think I managed the intervention well enough.”
He cleared his throat.
“I have coffee,” Louisa said. “I had to throw the last of the bienenstich out.”
“Kaffee isn’t bad on its own,” the klabautermann said.
Above them, the candle snuffed out, leaving an afterimage of a creature something like a man, and something like a child, and also like neither of those things. Louisa felt it lean over her, smelled beeswax and dish soap, saw a shift in the dark, silent as a cat’s paws.
Someone whispered, “willkommen zu hause, frau.”
Louisa smiled, stroking the cat and listening to it purr. It was a nice night. She could see a lot of stars, this far from the city.
“Danke,” she said.
Maybe tomorrow, she’d make bratwurst and sauerkraut. She’d go to the store for beer in the morning.
Dessert would be lebkuchen and kaffee. Yes. That would be best.