Editor's Note: This is an excerpt from Nick Mamatas's Northern Gothic: A Novella (New York: Soft Skull Press Inc, 2001).

July 13, 1863

The Civil War Draft Riots lasted four days, and they were busy days for William and Michael. They raided liquor stores for free beer, and visited other stores to shut down or burn them to the ground. Mass meetings outside churches, factories and the piers formed instantaneously whenever enough men with brogues showed up to shout orders.

"We need to end the violence! This is a strike, not an anarchy!"
"He's a Republican! A Unionist! Shout him down! Abolitionist!"
"Burn the coons, burn the factories!"

"Bugger the coons, take the fight to the East Siders! We won't fight for the fat cats, but we can bring the fight to them! Ward Nine for the Sons Of Erin!"
"The lads need for ale! McSorley's at four o'clock!"

William missed that particular call for alcohol. He followed Michael, now, and the gang from the Five Points. He had tried to go home, to get his other shirt—the one he wore was stiff with dried sweat, it was like wearing a box--but met Erin on the warren entrance. She had a snarl and a pot of scalding water ready for him.

"Come one more step, and I'll boil you," she said. "You're a bad one, William. Neil and me ain't want nothin' to do with ya." She was calm. She smiled now. Like she was looking forward to William taking that one provocative step down so she could blanch the skin off his bones.

William wasn't that drunk. He left, and rejoined the throng, hooking up with Michael and a crowd of rioters enjoying a quiet afternoon of flames and milling about. The streets were theirs to rule. Michael had a plan, and a frigid smile, not unlike Erin's. William wasn't afraid this time.

"Ho, brah," he said, voice deep, like a man's, thanks to two days of sucking down smoke. "What's transpirin'?"

Michael shrugged. He spoke to the little crowd around him, not William. "I am getting' tired, my friends. I am getting' tried of seeing niggers in our city. They keep turnin' up, like bad pennies. They're the reason we're in this mess, they're the reason the Republicans are getting' all riled up, and they're the reason our workingmen's association keeps gettin' broke and bothered," he said, peaceful as church.

"I want nothin' anymore to do with them," William said, stepping forward. He was relieved--surprised, too--that the men turned their attention from Michael to him. "I can't stand these niggers. They're all over the city, like they own it. Like wharf rats. I tell ya, it is us or it is them. It ain't even about the war now--win or lose, we got ourselves a city that's getting' real dark."

The knot of men weren't sure whether to nod or cheer or look down at their shoes or rush out and push someone. But us or them they understood.

"Lemme tell ya, I don't have any children. We don't do something now, I won't have any. We'll be slaves ourselves, or worse, and the darkies will have the run of the town. I say we burn 'em! Burn em out!"

The city was still except for distant fires crackling like leaves crushed underfoot. Then one of them roared, "Burn 'em out! Smoke 'em blacker than they are already!" Then they ran, nearly leaving William behind. Michael picked up a banner, a scarf wrapped on a broomstick and rushed down the street, bringing the boys with him.

William, his mouth open and about to say something else, noticed, shut up and ran up behind them.

The Colored Orphans Asylum lay on a patch of land right on Fifth Avenue. The building was splendid, like spun white glass. Wide low steps, stretching across the length of the building. Bay windows, larger than caves, covered with thick curtains. Bought and paid for by Manhattan's greatest Republicans and abolitionists—the old biddies in Temperance, the grousers uptown, the moneymen who got rich just by looking at ledgers. Much of the rest of the block was in shambles, but the Asylum floated free on a pond of grass, the tilting wrecks of nearby buildings too far for fires to spread.

Irish orphans depended on the goodwill of men on Fridays tossing a penny in a jar.
Michael and four strong men rushed a flaming wagon up and over the steps and into the double doors. They buckled, but held. The nose of the buckboard splintered. Flaming wood, blaze over jagged, splintered edge, spiraled and skittered down the steps. And again. William picked up a piece of wood and hurled it through one of the windows. Curtains went up like paper and shook with every battering the doors took, hurling embers, remnants.

The door collapsed to ragged cheers and stumbling as the wagon rolled out from under the men and rolled into the asylum. William waited for waves of little raisin-headed kids to pour out. A rock? His fists? Just let 'em run to starve in the streets or be picked off? But nobody came out. The others ran in, whooping and screaming, and not a minute later, a couch flew out the window and landed hard on the steps, splintering and chipping stone. William rushed halfway up the steps, crouched to avoid any other furniture or little flaming nigger babies that might get tossed out, but stopped himself. He wasn't crazy enough to run head first into a burning building yet--he was going to live, GD, he swore. Riots are for other people to die in, not William Patten.