Authors: Axel Blackwell
Donny replied with an inarticulate grunt.
Anna scooped a glob of jam with her fingers,
good thing it’s too dark to see how grimy those fingers are
, and pushed it into Donny’s half open mouth.
He smacked his lips, mumbling, and swallowed. Anna repeated the process twice more, taking small bites herself while he swallowed his. On the fourth attempt, the jam slipped out of his lips and plopped to the ground. He’d had all he was going to have.
Either it’s enough…or it isn’t.
Through the boughs, Anna saw night had fallen. Wind rustled the trees overhead. She could not be sure whether the rain still fell, but assumed it did. The temperature inside their shelter was much warmer than outside, but she was still chilly.
If I’m cold, it’s not warm enough for him to recover
.
“I need you to live, Donny.”
His lips moved but no sound came. A terrible déjà vu took her, remembering her brother’s mumbling, soundless lips from her dream.
“I don’t want to go back in there by myself.”
No response.
“I don’t know if I can.”
She put her hand on his chest. It was cold and, for a moment, motionless. Then, his ribs slowly expanded. A moment later, they shrunk back as he exhaled.
“I’d rather die here with you than go back in there alone.”
She took off her heavy coat, intending to drape it over both of them. A metallic
clink
caught her attention. In the darkness, a straight silver edge gleamed. Anna reached down and felt the lamp.
It gets hot. When it’s lit, it’s too hot to touch.
She rummaged in Donny’s coat pocket for the crystals. A steady trickle of runoff just at the edge of her shelter provided the water. When she hit the striker, the lamp popped like a flashbulb and went out. On her second attempt, it lit. She closed the cover, wrapped it in her shawl and cradled it in Donny’s arms on his lap.
Then she snuggled up to him as tight as she could and draped her coat over them both.
She closed her eyes and prayed. In five years with the nuns, she had only prayed twice. Both times, it had been here, under this tree. On the night of her escape, she prayed that the rocks and hills would cover her. That prayer had been answered. Tonight, she prayed many things, but most especially, she prayed that, one way or the other, this would be her last night on the island.
Anna dreamt she returned to The Saint Frances de Chantal Orphan Asylum. She stood before the door to her dormitory. Her girls were dead. All of them. Just like Donny.
No food and no blankets gets you dead little girls and boys.
If a child will not work, neither let him eat.
Being Anna’s friend is a bad idea.
She didn’t want to see them dead, but could not turn away. Her hand, of its own accord, inserted the key into its hole. Anna begged not to see her girls dead, but the key turned and the door swung open. She willed her eyes to close, but they would not.
Beyond the door they lay, still as stone, arranged on the bare floor in two neat rows, oldest to youngest. Their black leather shoes glimmered in the pale light, all else was dull gray.
Anna woke with a start. White fog had replaced the previous day’s wind and rain. Eerie silence floated on the fog, giving the morning an unreal, dream-like cast. Gull cries penetrated the unnatural hush, but their distant, ethereal quality reinforced the surreal atmosphere.
Anna held as still as the morning, listening. Nothing stirred beyond the fallen fir. Nothing stirred beneath it, either. She felt detached from her body. Her body and Donny’s and the coat and the dirt and the tree were a single lump of matter.
She wondered if they had died during the night. The thought was a relief.
Then Donny snored.
Anna breathed again.
I’m not done yet.
With an intentional effort, she twitched the fingers on the hand she’d curled around Donny’s shoulder. They were still her fingers, life still coursed through them.
She squeezed his shoulder, flexed her arm, hugging him. “Donny, you still with me?”
He snorted, then looked up at her, questioning. Some color had returned to his face. The bags under his eyes were only half as horrible as they had been the night before. The eyes themselves, though confused, sparkled with life.
“Hi, Anna,” he said. “Where are we?”
“Don’t you remember?” she asked. “We are very close. Nothing but a fifteen minute walk from here, I think. How are you feeling?”
“I can walk fifteen minutes,” he said, smiling.
“Donny, you nearly died last night, from the cold.”
“Well, I don’t remember that,” he said. “And I feel fine now ‘cept for a crick in my neck.”
Anna sighed. “We have to do this today. I don’t think we can survive another night out here.”
“Well, of course we’re gonna do it today. Why wouldn’t we?”
“Because they’ll kill me as soon as they see me.”
“So let’s make sure they don’t see you,” Donny said.
Anna squeezed his shoulder again. “Right.”
They collected their meager supplies and slipped out from under the overhang. White mist softened everything but hid nothing. Tree trunks stood in stark contrast, black against the white fog. The lush ferns and moss glistened with dew. Beyond the trees, the sea churned, still agitated from last night’s wind.
Anna and Donny picked their way through the underbrush to the edge of the wood line. A crescent of smooth sand curled away from them in its graceful arc. Anna smiled, in spite of her dread, remembering her midnight flight across this beach.
I’ve never been so alive,
she thought.
You’ve never been so close to dead,
the other Anna said.
She decided both voices spoke true.
At the far end of the beach, The Saint Frances de Chantal Orphan Asylum waited. Through the fog, it appeared as an ominous, indistinct black mass. Its tower still stood, but beyond that detail, Anna could not determine how much of the structure remained. Nor could she determine if any sisters guarded it.
“That’s where we’re going,” she said.
“That’s it, huh? Not much to look at, is it?”
“You’ll see,” she said, stepping out of the forest. “Let’s stay right up against the trees until we get close, then we’ll duck back into the woods.”
Donny followed her onto the sand. Reefs of driftwood logs lined the boundary between beach and forest. The two worked their way through this maze toward their objective. It took twice as long as Anna had guessed to cover the distance, but they would not be seen among the tangle of logs.
Anna chose not to look at the tower as they approached. By focusing on the next few feet of their journey, she could keep her mind off their destination – in the same way that, when she was in the factory, doing the next thing that must be done helped her block out the suffering of her maimed and dying friends.
As they approached the edge of Saint France’s grounds, they slipped back into the trees. Anna heard a low whistle behind her.
“Holy geez, Anna! You did
that
?” Donny whispered.
She looked up at the ruin of the factory and gasped.
The dormitory wing and rotunda stood, as they always had, but nothing remained of the factory except a scorched black wall and a gaping pit. A spider’s web of cracks crept up the height of the tower. It seemed more like a column of loose stones than a bell tower. Again, Anna thought of it as a grave marker. It conveyed the sense that no one had lived here for centuries. A forgotten ruin, lost to memory, condemned to oblivion.
All its windows were as dark as Joseph’s empty eye sockets. In the early morning fog and the eerie silence, it would be easy to believe she looked upon the ruins of an ancient castle – the kind of castle where evil sorcerers had once conjured plagues and curses.
“Good Lord,” Donny whispered. “I think it’s the sisters that oughta be scared of you. Not the other way ‘round.”
Anna stared, open-mouthed, at the black hulk that had been her prison for nearly half her life. To her left, the indomitable Pacific rumbled. Before her stood the carcass of a stone demon that had devoured so many children. She suddenly felt very fragile and small. A creeping terror chilled her from her marrow outward.
I killed it.
How long did it stand, just beyond the reach of the sea? How many children has it eaten? How many childhoods has it claimed? And I killed it!
“Anna?” Donny asked. “Are you okay?”
“Just…” she held her palm up to Donny. “I didn’t know…I…What if that was the wrong choice?”
“What?”
“All these years, Donny, the ocean is right here, but not even the ocean could…break it down…couldn’t overcome…I’m not the ocean…”
“You’re not making any sense, Anna.”
“I…I can’t
un
do it, if it’s wrong, I can’t
fix
it!” she said, “Little girls shouldn’t be
able
to do something like that!”
“Anna, you ain’t no little girl, remember?”
“But I
want
to be! Don’t you see? I want to get to be a child. Just for once. I don’t want
this
,” she thrust a hand at the ruined tower. “I don’t want to be responsible for this! Or for you, or your sister, or all those girls!”
Anna turned away from the ruins and sat on the damp earth, gazing back into the forest.
I want someone to be responsible for me
.
The other voice said,
then you should have stayed inside.
Anna vowed to herself, if she ever found that other Anna, she would drown her in a bathtub. For now, she planted her face in her hands and wept.
“Somebody had to do it.” Donny put his hand on her back and said, with simple sincerity, “I’ll be responsible. Thank you for helping me get this far, Anna.” He patted her shoulder. “I have to go get Maybelle now.”
She snatched his hand as he began to move away.
“Wait, Donny…” She sniffed, wiped her eyes, and stood.
He looked at her, questioning.
Anna shrugged and forced a smile. “I didn’t say I wasn’t going.”
Donny smiled back at her. “Uh…you have a booger hanging out of your nose.” He dug a filthy hanky out of his back pocket and handed it to her.
“Thanks, Donny,” she said with a weak smile.
“So, how do we get in?” Donny asked.
“I left through that door.” Anna pointed to the kitchen entrance on its patio above the main loading dock. “It sprung open after the blast. Looks like they fixed it, though.”
“I don’t know, Anna, the place looks deserted. What if everybody juss up an’ left?”
“We saw that boat yesterday. Remember?” Anna pointed to the little steamer bobbing alongside the dock.
“I don’t recall much of yesterday, really, but if you saw a boat, I believe you.”
Anna looked him over, wondering just how much more they could endure. She again wondered if they had died in the night and were now just ghosts searching for a hell to haunt. She reached over and pinched Donny’s arm.
He slapped her hand away and glared at her. “If you think you’re dreamin, you’re supposed to pinch
yourself
.”
“Sorry.”
Anna and Donny turned back to the orphanage. Thick planks barricaded the kitchen door. A Celtic cross hung from the center plank. The double doors in the front of the rotunda had also been boarded over with heavy planks and sealed with a large cross, as had the loading bay door.
“Looks like they’re tryin’ to keep the devil out,” Donny said.
“Maybe they are. When I lived here, the sisters were always very careful to keep all the doors locked up tight. I used to think it was to keep us in, but maybe they were trying to keep Joseph out.”
“You think they knew about Joseph?”
“I don’t know. I never knew about him until he slipped me the key…even then, I really didn’t know about him…” Anna said.
“You think that key will get us back in?”
“Not if all the doors are nailed shut. Besides, it only works on the interior doors.”
“Well, there you go,” Donny said, smiling. “We’ll use it on the exterior doors that
used
to be interior doors.” He pointed to a door in the charred wall that had separated the factory from the rest of the south wing.
Anna rubbed the key and considered. “That might work. We’d have to run all the way across the grounds, out in the open, and there’s probably going to be a lot of rubble blocking our path once we get close.”
“Let’s not,” Donny said, his voice suddenly ice.
Anna looked back at him, about to ask
why not
. Then she saw what he had seen, not at the ruined factory, but on the beach – foot prints, animal and human. And hand prints. And tentacle prints, as if a single file parade had marched up out of the sea, across the beach, directly toward the burned-out shell of the factory.
“You think that’s from Joseph?” Anna whispered.
“What else could have left that track?” Donny asked.
As if in answer, the two children heard a metallic
clank
from the pit beneath the factory. A moment later, they heard another sound, like stones sliding against each other, then plunking into a puddle. In the fog, and at this distance, it was hard to be certain, but Anna thought she saw movement among the fallen stones and timbers of the factory.
“What’s he doin’ here, Anna?” Donny asked.
“What are you asking me for?” Anna replied. “I think he’s been trying to get in there for a very long time, but I don’t know why. Besides, that’s not what matters. What matters is staying away from him and finding a way in. If he’s busy here, that’s good. My girls lived at the other end of the building. Let’s work around to the other side. They must have at least one working door.”
Saint Frances’s lawn wrapped around its ancient stones in a semi-circle, as if some great leviathan had risen up from the sea and taken a bite out of the forest. The fog thickened with the brightening morning. Anna and Donny crept along in the ferns and underbrush, just at the edge of the open ground.
“We’re gonna have to get closer,” Donny said. “I can’t see nothin’ through this fog.”
Anna reluctantly agreed. “If we must leave the cover of the woods, we might as well run right up to the base of the wall. Less chance someone will see us from a window.”
They stole across the lawn as silent as shadows. When they reached the foundation stones, Anna pressed her back to the wall, closed her eyes, and listened. Distant, eerie gull cries, the hush of the surf, Donny’s rapid breathing beside her. Nothing else disturbed the stillness.
Anna opened her eyes, and her heart sank.
“Donny!” she whispered. “Look.”
The dew soaked grass of Saint Frances de Chantal’s lawn glimmered in the mist. Its frosting of tiny droplets coated the grounds with perfect uniformity – except for a green line cut directly from the woods to the wall, a trail of footprints left by two little lost orphans. It stood out like a beacon.
“Well,” Donny said, “we’d better not be here if someone looks out the window.”
He took her hand and dragged her with him. They jogged along the back of the wing that had housed Anna and her girls. She could see the windows, nearly thirty feet above them, but had no idea which ones opened into her old hall.
The wing stretched over two-hundred feet away from its connection to the rotunda. They made their way along its base. Two sets of stairs led down to doors below ground level. The first of these doors was boarded up and sealed with a cross, like the others they had seen. The second door also appeared secure, though no cross hung there.
“You think they ran out of crosses?” Donny asked.
“Someone took it down, look.”
Several feet from the descending stairs, a cross lay in the grass. A short trail through the dew led up to the cross, as if someone had tossed it from the stairwell.
Donny hurried down the stairs.
“Look,” he called up to Anna, “this board is loose.”
Nails squealed as Donny yanked a plank off the entrance. It set Anna’s teeth on edge and her spine tingled. She looked left and right down the length of the wall. Nothing but grass, stone, and fog. “Be careful, Donny,” she whispered.
“I got it open, c’mon,” Donny said. “It wasn’t locked.”
Anna surveyed the yard again, then scrambled down the stairs.
“This isn’t right,” she said. “Why would they barricade all the other doors but leave this one unlocked? What if it’s a trap?”
The door stood open about three inches. Donny had pulled off the bottom board, but several others still obscured the doorway.
“Look, we’ll leave the rest of the boards up. We’ll crawl in under ‘em, and close the door behind us. They’ll never know we were here.” He started into the opening.
Anna grabbed him and whispered, “But what if they’re waiting for us, just inside the door?”
“We were looking for an opening,” Donny gestured to the door. “We found an opening. It’s the best we could have hoped for. I’ll go in first, since they’re not lookin’ to kill me. If it’s safe, you follow.”
Anna sighed. “Right.”
Donny eased the door open another few inches. The rusty hinges protested, but not loudly. He crawled under the lowest board into the dark interior. Anna waited in the stairwell with her back pressed to the wall.
The heavy mist condensed into drizzle. Curls of fog hovered over the lawn, drifting this way and that. Dark shapes floated with the fog at the edge of the forest. The
tick
and
patter
of drizzle played with her ears, distorting the silence. She could no longer tell if what she heard was distant seagull chatter or crying children.
She dropped to her knees, squirming under the board and through the door.