Dionysus in Wisconsin: Wisconsin Gothic, #1

By E. H. Lupton

Shortlisted for the 2024 Lambda Literary Award for Gay Romance.

A graduate student and an archivist fight a god.

Fall, 1969. Ulysses Lenkov should be working on his dissertation. Instead, he's developing an unlucrative sideline in helping ghosts and hapless magic users. But when his clients start leaving town suddenly—or turning up dead—he starts to worry there's something afoot that's worse than an unavenged death or incipient insanity. His investigation begins with the last word on everyone's lips before they vanish: the mysterious Dionysus.

Sam Sterling is an archivist who recently moved back to Madison to be closer to the family he's not too sure he likes. But his peaceful days of teaching library students, creating finding aids, and community theater come to an end when the magnetic, mistrustful Ulysses turns up with a warning. There's a god coming, and it looks like it's coming for Sam.

Soon the two are helping each other through demon attacks, discovering the unsavory history of Sam's family, and racing to find a solution that doesn't lead to heartbreak and death. But as the year draws to a close, they'll face a deadly showdown as they try to save Sam—and the city itself.

Dionysus in Wisconsin is the first in a new series of urban fantasy/historical M/M romances set in Madison, WI in the late 1960s/early 1970s. It doesn't end on a cliffhanger and can be read as a stand-alone.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Winnowing Fan Press
• Release date: May 26, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223707684

Book preview

Chapter 1

Lorenzo’s Lounge was a fine bar, as dive bars went. It was a bit off the beaten path. The interior was done up in cheap wood paneling and ugly purple neon lights, and all the surfaces seemed to be perpetually sticky. The patrons had drunk through protests, counter-protests, outright riots, and if local legend was to be believed, a brief invasion of ghouls; they weren’t going to be impressed or unsettled by one slightly twitchy magician. Therefore, one evening when Ulysses Lenkov felt like he’d spent so long reading that if he had to physically look at one more piece of paper he was going to set the world on fire, he packed up his notes and went over there to drink.

He’d been there for at least two beers’ worth of time, picking over a list of possible dissertation topics in a desultory fashion, when someone crashed into his table, sending things flying.

Ah, said a slurred, somewhat familiar voice. You’re out drinking too. Getting ready for the big guy, eh? Groovy, groovy.

Horse? Ulysses shuffled his papers back into a loose pile and got to his feet. The man who had taken everything out was still sprawled on the floor, eyes wide, pupils blown.

Lenkov, Horse said. Fruit of the vine, eh? He winked.

Ulysses cleared his throat. I think that’s wine.

Nonsense. Sheer nonsense. Hops grow on a vine. Ergo. Horse looked content to lie on the floor for the rest of the night, but other patrons were looking askance now. Ulysses reached out a hand, and after a momentary hesitation, Horse took it.

Horse was a small, unassuming, extremely magical man who was no longer quite tethered to reality. Ulysses had known him for a while—had been trying to keep an eye on him, offering help if he needed it. He’d never seen the man look quite like he did right now. Somewhere, he’d gotten ahold of an old white sheet and fashioned it into a himation. His matted brown hair had been decorated with dried maple leaves. As Ulysses levered him up, the bouncer came over and stood with arms crossed, glaring at Horse.

I told you, any disturbances and you’d have to leave. He crossed his arms in a way that made the size of his biceps apparent. Ulysses was actually surprised they’d admitted Horse in the first place, given that he eschewed social niceties such as bathing or shaving and had probably last had a haircut during the Johnson administration.

I’ve got him, Ulysses said, gathering up his things and dropping a dollar on the table.

Ulysses propelled Horse out into the cool night air, trying to make sure the man stayed upright and zip up his own leather jacket at the same time. It was October. Earlier in the year, Madison had seen strikes by Black students and anti–Vietnam War protests, some peaceful and some made less so by the presence of riot police and the National Guard. But this particular evening, other than the whoop of students here and there as they entered or exited bars, things felt quiet. It was nice. Ulysses didn’t trust it.

I want a beer, Horse said. "I want a bottle of wine too. Oh, do you think Abigail has anything good? I should go see her. Good old Snakey. Abbie. Good old Snabbie. She knows what’s going on. She knows. I need to get out of here."

Horse didn’t look cold. Actually, he was practically vibrating, though from drugs or magic or something entirely other, Ulysses couldn’t tell. I think you should go home, Ulysses said. There was an assumption there, that Horse actually had a room somewhere that he could crash, but the man didn’t respond one way or the other to the idea.

Where’s your sense of self-destruction? Horse said. He started to walk away, missed the step down to the sidewalk, and crashed over again.

Ulysses picked him up and leaned him against the building’s brick exterior. They were near the corner of Gilman and University. The latter was busy with cars and wandering students, but the former was fairly quiet. Horse, what’s going on?

In the words of the prophet, we march smiling to our doom, Horse said. When he leaned his head back, Ulysses realized he’d stuck leaves into his knotted beard as well. Clockwise, clockwise. Be clock wise, Lenkov. He pushed away from the wall. Time is running out. He made it four steps down before he staggered into a lamppost and threw his arms around it like a drowning man meeting a life preserver.

What are you talking about?

The big guy himself, my man. All us far-out freaks and foxy cats are going to wind up as dog chow when the main event comes down. Horse’s eyes were darting restlessly around, but when they focused on Ulysses’s face, he felt cold despite his jacket.

I don’t understand. Ulysses rubbed his face. He wanted to believe that all Horse needed was a night to sleep it off and a decent meal to put him back on what passed for an even keel with him. But there was an electric intensity to the way he was talking, and something about it freaked Ulysses out.

It’s heavy. Horse stood and then grabbed the post again. As the year winds down, a shadow stalks us. Be warned. He is coming.

"Who is he?"

Secret of the trade! Horse motioned to Ulysses to lean closer. When he did, Horse’s sour breath gusted unpleasantly over his face as he whispered Dionysus.

A few days later, Ulysses was in the back room of his older sister Celeste’s shop on East Dayton Street, watching her finish drawing a sigil in a tray of sand and place a small token in its center. The token was flat like a poker chip, and after a moment’s thought she put a gold coin and a sugar cube on top of it.

Is that all? He’d thought the spell would need more power.

Ssh. She picked up her pendulum, a piece of quartz crystal at the end of a long silver chain, closing her eyes and letting it swing over the three photos.

A moment later the stone froze, pointing at one of the pictures. Ulysses had seen the trick before, but it never really got old.

Here, that’s your man, she said, tapping the image unnecessarily. She set down the pendulum. The coin and sugar cube were already gone; she removed the token and erased the sigil with a tiny rake. It was all very tidy.

Thanks, he murmured, picking the photo up.

Three people named Dionysus in Madison, you could just have gone and talked to them all, she muttered. But he knew she was pleased he’d come to her instead.

I got you the photos, didn’t I?

She snorted. There was a hot plate at the back of the shop, and she turned away to place the kettle on it. Cup of tea before you go?

This was probably not a part of the ritual. He assented anyway, just in case.

Have you asked Babushka about this guy? Celeste asked over her shoulder. Or Aunt Cass?

Asked them what, exactly? I didn’t have any information until today.

You had a name. They could work with that, same as I can.

He shrugged. Maybe I’ll ask them now.

Celeste rolled her eyes but offered no other comment.

Ulysses let his attention drift back to the photograph. The man in it didn’t look like much of a threat. If Ulysses had to describe him, he’d have said five foot ten inches tall and highly starched. A square in a three-piece tweed suit, dark tie, thick glasses, heavy dark eyebrows, he looked like the Platonic form of a professor. Instead, he was some flavor of librarian. Ulysses had managed to snap the photo outside of Memorial Library. In the picture, the man was carrying a stack of books and papers, a pencil tucked behind one ear. Not apparent in the black and white image but clear enough in Ulysses’s memory were the man’s olive skin and striking light green eyes.

Celeste went to the door to ask her husband Obe if he’d like a cup of tea. He heard the warm Haitian accent and his sister’s laugh, and tuned out their banter.

Since their run-in at the bar, he’d seen Horse once, sidling down an alley off of State Street. He hadn’t wanted to chat. Other bloodline magic users Ulysses had been tracking were also agitated. It was like there was something in the air. Was the mysterious Dionysus to blame?

Ulysses shook his head. Whatever was going on, he was going to be the one to take care of it.

image-placeholder

Sam came out of the Historical Society building at lunchtime clutching all the things that hadn’t fit in his satchel: three notebooks, four books, and fifteen student essays he’d finally finished grading. As usual, his mind was elsewhere. He had forty-five minutes for lunch, and then he had to be at the education building to teach, with office hours following from three to five, and then just enough time to bike home and change before his call time for the play at half past six.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a bicyclist coming at him across the mall and pulled back. It wheeled past—just as someone crashed into him from the other side. It wasn’t a glancing blow, either. Everything went flying.

Oh no, he managed, and bent to try to retrieve his papers before they could get stepped on.

I’m so sorry, said another voice, and suddenly someone was collecting his things. I didn’t see you there.

It’s fine, he said. Then the man straightened up.

Sam’s first thought was that he looked like James Dean—heavy eyebrows, full lips, straight nose, electric blue eyes. And the man obviously knew what he looked like; why else would he have bought that leather jacket? And the jeans. True, he’d chosen a black shirt with a Warhol drawing of a banana rather than a white T-shirt, but the outfit was still a hair away from being utterly ridiculous . . . except that it looked so good on him.

Here you are, the man said. And then, I’m afraid everything has gotten a bit jumbled.

It’s, ah— Sam had thought he’d clipped or stapled all the loose pages, but a few did appear to have come apart. He groaned internally. It’s no problem.

I feel bad. The stranger grinned cheekily, exposing straight white teeth. Can I buy you lunch?

Sorry? Sam was pretty sure that James Dean look-alikes didn’t spend their time buying lunch for archivists who resembled awkward scarecrows. I don’t know you. Do I? I’m sure I’d remember having met you. He felt himself flush.

Ulysses Lenkov, the man said, extending his hand.

Sam had to juggle all the books around to extend his own. Sam Sterling.

Of course. The man cocked his head to the side, and then said, Food? Come on, my treat.

Yes, Sam said, still trying to compose himself. I was just going to go to the Union.

Ah, come on, Lenkov said, we can do better than that, and led him down State Street to a little Greek trattoria he’d never been to before. Dolmades, the sign read.

Where are you from? Lenkov asked when they’d ordered.

Madison. Sam fidgeted, stirring his water with his straw so the ice cubes clinked together. Well, Maple Bluff, but I went to East High School.

Bad luck, I went to Central.

Sam smiled faintly. Are you a student here?

Grad school, for my sins. Lenkov made an apologetic face. Department of Magic Studies. What about you?

Magic Studies was definitely not what he’d expected, but Sam supposed he didn’t have much basis for comparison when it came to magic users. I’m an archivist, and I teach a class in archival methods to students in the librarianship program.

Really? Lenkov leaned back, like he wanted to see what Sam looked like from a distance. Don’t mind my saying so, but you hardly look old enough.

I’m turning twenty-five in December, Sam told him. I graduated from high school early.

Lenkov snorted. I’m sorry, I don’t believe you.

Sam dug his faculty ID out of the inside pocket of his jacket and dropped it on the table. There you go.

He picked it up and examined it, raising an eyebrow. Dionysus, eh?

Yeah. He looked away. I go by Sam.

I would. He set the ID back on the table. What’s an archivist do?

It’s like being a librarian but for documents.

It was a glib, deliberately simple answer, but Lenkov caught his eye and nodded encouragingly. What does that mean?

Ah. Most people were entirely uninterested, and Sam was reluctantly excited to be asked. Well, librarians work with certain types of objects—

Books.

Or journals. Newspapers. There’s— He shrugged. Anyway, they take care of these objects and make them accessible to the public by creating a catalog record so they can be found, right? But if someone just donates a big box of their papers, that’s not very accessible. So an archivist goes through them, tries to write down some general categories of documents and the topics they contain, makes notes of time periods covered, sometimes purges irrelevant materials. Then they—I—compile all that information into a finding aid for researchers.

The other man raised one eyebrow. That sounds like a lot of work. By which Sam thought that he meant it sounded boring, which was disappointing.

It’s an interesting intellectual puzzle. His meal—a plate of the titular dolmades—arrived, and he cut into them. And it’s quite gratifying to take something that’s a total jumble and make it available to researchers.

Lenkov was watching him rather than digging into his own dish. Who are these researchers?

Sam shrugged, feeling abruptly self-conscious but unsure if he should put his fork down or not. History professors, mostly. Or, you know, grad students who want to be history professors. Genealogists. All kinds of people.

Really? Lenkov laughed. I know I keep saying that.

That’s how history works. Something happens and someone writes it down in a letter to their mother. Then twenty or fifty or a hundred years later, a PhD student digs it up, blows the dust off, and writes a paper about it. A professor from a rival school who hates the student’s advisor writes another paper saying that she had it wrong because of some other document on the same topic, and then they go around and around for about twenty years until the older prof retires, the newer one is tenured, and no one knows which way is up. Then some middle view that tries to compromise between the two of them becomes accepted history and gets written into textbooks, and all high school kids in the country get dragged through it. Sam put down his fork, then picked it back up and took a bite.

That sounds a bit tortured.

Sam nodded. It keeps them off the streets.

Lenkov finally took a bite of his gyros. How did you get into that?

I was really interested in Latin poetry. Sam looked down at his plate, concentrating on cutting up the next dolma. Eventually I came up against the problem of what constitutes an authentic text. It’s not like . . . He paused, waving his fork in thought. "Oh, Slaughterhouse-Five, where you can just go see the original manuscript Vonnegut created if you’re curious. At some point there maybe existed an original manuscript and it was lost, so all we have are copies, which are more or less credulous and mouse-eaten and were copied out by better or worse scribes, and we have to figure out what the intended word is."

The other man scratched his head. That sounds more like a reason to work in rare books.

It’s about the transformation of books from endlessly iterable objects to unique objects, Sam said firmly. And from there, archives deal solely with unique objects. He hesitated, and then added, Actually, rare books and archives often go together. Back in Manhattan I worked in a rare books collection. But when I was looking to move back here, the Historical Society had a job open, and the rare books department did not.

Lenkov nodded, and Sam managed a little half smile in response. There was no way the other man actually cared, but Sam was absurdly charmed to have been asked.

Now he caught a glimpse of the clock above the bar and winced. Oh dear, is that the time? I’m sorry to eat and run, but I’ve got to get to class. He stood, fishing for his wallet.

I said it was my treat, Lenkov said, waving away the money he offered. Sorry about your papers. He smiled. He had a really nice smile.

Sam hesitated, torn between inviting Lenkov to the play and the bare, ugly fact that the other man was just being nice, that this meal was essentially a meaningless gesture.

Is everything okay? Ulysses asked.

Caught waffling, Sam grabbed his things. Thanks for lunch. See you around, he managed, and all but sprinted out the door.

Chapter 2

Ulysses spent the afternoon in the microfilm room at the public library, perusing old issues of the Wisconsin State Journal . Unfortunately, even going back ten years netted him relatively little: a few pieces about Sterling Enterprises, which was possibly Sam’s father’s business; a human interest piece about the sixteen-year-old valedictorian of the class of 1960; a wedding announcement from 1962 for a blond woman with the maiden name of Sterling who must have been a cousin. It was a headache.

When he brought a few books up to the counter, Carol was working. She was a strong, stocky woman, about five feet even with dark hair cut in a neat bob. You look rough, she said sympathetically.

I guess. He dug through his wallet to find his library card. The microfilm machine always makes me queasy.

Oh, me too. I used to be in charge of doing quality control on the microfilms. She made a face. What were you looking for?

Anything on the Sterling family. You know them?

You mean like Sterling Enterprises? At his nod, she shook her head. Sorry. But I know who would.

Don’t leave me in suspense. He leaned his elbows on the counter.

The Wisconsin Foundation. At his blank look, she sighed. The old man’s a big donor, right? The association probably has some prospect research on all his kids, just so they have some ideas if any of them want to donate. Seeing he didn’t understand, she waved a hand. Like they won’t ask someone for donations to the limnology program if someone in their family drowned, maybe. Or if someone really loves music—

They’d ask them to donate to the music program. He looked at her quizzically. How do you know all this?

My boyfriend runs the Grant Information Collective, she said. It’s out of Memorial Library. They work with the Foundation.

Could you ask him if I could take a look at whatever they’ve got? I promise not to use it for evil. He batted his eyelashes at her.

What’s your interest? Dissertation related?

Ulysses shrugged uneasily. Something weird going on. I’m looking into it.

A snort. I’ll ask when I talk to him tomorrow.

Thanks, I appreciate it.

He went to the gym and spent an hour throwing some weights around and decidedly not thinking about Sam.

Sam, who moved gracefully even though he was a distracted disaster. Sam, who had startling pale green eyes and a surprisingly melodic tenor voice. Sam, who seemed like a nice fellow and who smelled kind of like old paper.

Sam, who was apparently also the terrifying Dionysus.

He didn’t come off as threatening, or even mean; Ulysses was willing to bet a lot of money that he’d never been in a fight in his life. He didn’t have the aura of power that some more powerful magicians gave off either. If he had an aura of anything, Ulysses might have called it repressed likeability. He was average height but folded in on himself, spent a lot of time looking like he was trying to disappear.

He made his way home and fell asleep still trying to reconcile all these pieces. He woke up to a ghost.

The woman’s name was Snake-Eyed Abigail, and she was wearing a peasant skirt and blouse, her long, flowing, glowing hair woven with colored feathers. In death, she’d finally achieved yellow eyes with the vertical pupils she’d always wanted. But she hadn’t been dead the last time he’d seen her.

Hey ya, Abbie, he said uncertainly. Is this for real?

She nodded. Afraid so. They got me, U.

Are you sure? Where are you? Maybe I can—

She waved a hand as he reached for the edge of the blankets. I can’t tell you where I am. And you wouldn’t like what you found if you came.

Abbie! he said, anguished. She’d been good at remote viewing, finding missing gravestones, lost necklaces, and once a stolen dog with equal ease.

Don’t worry about it, she said, sitting down on the foot of his bed. I’m not.

Why not? He sat up a bit.

She shrugged. I think the bits that do the worrying are all in the body. Anyway, I got a message for you.

A message?

A word. She rolled her eyes. It’s ‘Dionysus.’ 

He stared at her. What does that mean?

She scratched her head, or where her spirit thought her head used to be. I can’t tell you that, man. And then she looked around at something he couldn’t see. Oh, I gotta go. Good luck! It was swell knowing you.

She winked out and he woke up for real, gasping and quivering, tears leaking out of his eyes as his body cramped, his nervous system rebelling as the ghostly imposition retreated. He fumbled in the drawer of his bedside table and stuffed a couple of penny candies in his mouth. Then he lay back and thought about Abbie.

Horse being weird was one thing. A lot of magic users—the ones who ran on instinct rather than sigil and spellcraft—were not exactly stable people. That was why he’d started seeking them out in the first place, to try to figure out how to create a more settled environment for them. But if Abbie was dead . . .

He was going to need to get to the bottom of all this. And quickly.

Wednesday was gone before he knew it, most of that time spent tracking down where poor Snake-Eyed’s body was. When he eventually found it in a flophouse near the capitol, she was, as he’d feared, quite dead. The cause of death wasn’t obvious—meaning no stab wounds, basically. He wasn’t an expert in bodies, as he explained to a bored-looking police sergeant when the Madison PD finally deigned to show up a few hours later. The rest of the day, he got drunk. In memoriam. Poor old Abbie.

Thursday afternoon he made it to Memorial Library. The Grant Information Collective was on the fifth floor, tucked away into a single room on the west hallway. There were two narrow windows, more like the arrow slits of a medieval castle, that looked out on the grassy mall stretching between the library and the Wisconsin Historical Society building.

Carol’s boyfriend was named Bruce Polzin, and if Sam was well-starched, Bruce was made of stone. His hair was practically cemented to his head and his tie was fastened tightly to his shirt, but when Ulysses introduced himself, he smiled and