Authors: Axel Blackwell
Donny’s lamp revealed a complication of pipes spreading across the ceiling. Jumbled crates surrounded Anna and Donny, stretching out, maze like, into the dark basement. The air was redolent of rat droppings and damp dust.
“How do we get upstairs from here?” Donny asked.
“I’ve never been down here,” she said. “I guess we should…Shh, listen.”
Donny flipped the cover closed on his lamp. From deep in the recesses of the basement, heavy shoes
clomped
on wooden stairs, and voices quietly conversed. Lamp light glimmered off ceiling pipes.
Anna grabbed Donny’s elbow and pulled him away from the door. They nestled under a tarp between two crates. She strained her ears, picking up pieces of the conspiratorial murmurs.
“…this is insane. Why are we still here…”
“…hold it steady…can’t see…”
“This one is still locked.”
“Sisters!” Anna whispered to Donny, “I can’t tell which ones.”
“Does it matter?” he whispered back.
The voices drew closer. “How much longer are we going to do this? We can’t stay here forever.”
“You want to leave? Get on the next boat. Where are you going to go? The Church doesn’t want you, anymore. I doubt anybody does. You stay with us until the job is done, maybe we’ll take you in.”
“That’s Sister Eustace,” Anna whispered.
Donny lifted the edge of the tarp and peeked out. Lamp glow highlighted the ridges of the cobblestone floor. The sisters were less than fifty feet away. Donny started to slip out from under the tarp. Anna grabbed him and pulled him back.
“Gotta lock the door,” he whispered.
“They’re too close,” she whispered back, tightening her grip.
“I can make it…”
Anna wrapped her arm around behind his head and clapped her hand over his mouth. “Hush!” she hissed directly into his ear.
The space beyond the tarp brightened as the sisters approached. When they reached the door, they stopped. Under the hem of the canvas, within spitting distance of her nook, Anna saw their black leather shoes and white stockings. Beside one pair of those shoes hung the rusty head of an ax.
The sisters had stopped talking. She and Donny had stopped breathing. Anna’s heart thumped so loudly the sisters must have heard it as well. Some crazy part of her wanted to charge out from between the crates and attack.
I can wrest that ax away if I startle them ferociously enough.
And then what?
the other Anna asked
,
sounding amused
. Chop them up like kindling? Trade their parts with Joseph for another key, or can of sardines?
She shuddered. The images – and the stench – from Joseph’s lair welled up in her mind, like bile in the throat. Donny tightened his grip on her hand, either from his own fear or from sensing hers. Muted daylight overpowered the lamp as the sisters opened the door. One began muttering in Latin. Her rapid, frantic voice trembled. Rosary beads rattled.
“Stop that!” Sister Eustace hissed. “Look, the boards are still in place. He’s not here.”
The other sister stammered, then asked, “But, who would unlock…”
“Lucifer’s
whore
,” Eustace spat. “Who do you think?”
The other sister gasped at the vulgarity.
“Oh, grow up, Evelyn!” Sister Eustace slammed the door and threw the bolt. “You’re in the real world now – and demons are afoot. Soon you will witness far greater evil than a foul tongue.”
“Sister Eustace…”
“I told you, call me Betsy. We aren’t sisters anymore.”
Evelyn tried again, meekly, “Betsy, what about the cross?”
The two women began moving farther down the corridor, toward the next door.
“The cross doesn’t appear to be doing much good. It certainly didn’t keep
your
demons away, did it?” Betsy chuckled. “And point that thing at the floor. You’re making me nervous.”
Sister Betsy Eustace’s thick calves strode away with the ax bobbing along beside them. Bobbing along beside Evelyn’s calves were the blunt, brutal barrels of a side-by-side scattergun.
Betsy’s voice trailed behind her, “But don’t you worry, child. The rest of the men arrive tomorrow. We’ll scour this rock, end to end, until we find those witches – and their little pet. We’re going to warm them up real good, so hell won’t be too much of a shock for them.”
When she could no longer see the gleam of Eustace’s lamp, Anna moved her hand away from Donny’s mouth.
“What is going on?” she whispered.
“Sounds like they think you’re a witch.”
“Yeah, I got that part, Donny.”
“Can’t say that I blame ‘em…er…I mean…” Donny stammered, “I’m not sayin’
I
think you’re a witch…what I mean is… “
“I’m not a witch.”
“I
know
you’re not a witch. All’s I’m sayin’ is if they got a witch problem
and
a demon problem, an’ then you come along an’ blast the whole place to damnation, well, they’re gonna think you’re in cahoots with the witches and demons…”
“I’m not in cahoots, Donny,” Anna said. “Did you see that ax?”
“Yeah. And I saw the shotgun. Sounds like things might be getting real bad around here, real fast. I reckon we need to get what we came for an’ get gone, lickety split.”
“Lickety split,” Anna agreed.
The two crawled out from under the canvas, looking down the corridor after the women. The only visible light leaked in through a crack under the locked door. Betsy and Evelyn were no longer in evidence.
“They came from this direction,” Anna whispered and pulled Donny down the corridor. Several yards ahead, muted daylight leaked in around the frame of another door. “I heard them checking a door just after they came down the stairs,” she said, pointing to the patch of light. “The stairway should be just ahead.”
They covered the distance noiselessly, and did not see or hear any other patrols. Directly across from the door, a set of oak steps wound around a massive stone pillar. Enough light seeped under the door that Anna and Donny found it with little difficulty.
They felt their way up the dark spiral. At the top of the stairs, another heavy door waited, leaking daylight onto the upper landing. Anna laid her ear against the old wood and listened. Donny knelt and peered through the keyhole. A tiny spear of light sparkled his green iris.
“What do you see?” she whispered.
“A golden unicorn,” he replied, perplexed, “sewed into a purple curtain.”
“Tapestry,” Anna said, smiling.
“What?”
“Not a curtain, a tapestry, a wall decoration.”
“Ain’t much of a decoration, kinda ratty.”
“Yeah, well, it’s all we had. More importantly, it tells me where we are,” she said. “Out this door, to the right, is the Great Round Room. To the left, three doors down, is where they kept Maybelle and my girls.”
Donny reached over and squeezed her hand. “Listen. Go on back down a couple steps, keep an ear out for that gal with the ax. I’ll open this door an’ see if the coast is clear…”
“We should go together…”
“We’re
gonna
go together, long as no one’s wait’n on the other side of this door, right?” he whispered. “But let me check first. That way, if I do get nabbed, you can still go fetch my sister an’ your girls. ’Sides, sounds like they don’t just wanna kill you. Plain ol’ dead ain’t good enough for the likes of you.”
“I don’t know,” Anna sighed. “If you do get caught…you could tell them you saw Sister Eustace in the basement and she said to come up here –, tell them you’ve been lost since the explosion.”
Anna chewed her lip, thoughts racing.
Eustace and that other nun will probably be back soon. Is this door locked? Is someone waiting to open the door for them? Did they lock it from this side when they went down? If Donny gets caught, his cover story would only save him until Eustace returns.
“Donny,” she whispered. “Do you have enough carbide crystals for another bomb?”
“Well,” he started, “not sure that’s such a good idea. Everyone’ll hear an’ come runnin’.”
“If you get caught, it’s all over,” she said. “I’m not going to leave you, Donny. It won’t take long for them to figure out that you were helping me.”
“Anna…”
“Hush your mouth and listen to me,” she said as harshly as her whisper allowed. “You saw what those sisters were carrying. They mean to kill me and Joseph – I guess Sister Dolores is the witch they’re after – they mean to burn us at the stake if they get the chance. That’s what you do with witches, right?”
“I guess, but…” Donny said.
“If they catch you, they’ll do the same to you, because now
you’re
in cahoots. I can’t let that happen. I won’t. I told you before, and I meant it with everything that’s in me, I will die before I ever let them catch me. If they are waiting for us out there, well, we have to fight. We have to fight until they let us go or kill us. That’s all there is to it. Do you understand?”
Donny nodded, green eyes sparkling with awe.
“Now, if we go out there and hit them with one of your bombs, they are going to think its devil magic, and they’ll either run away to get help, or they’ll shoot us dead on the spot. Either way, we win. If I’m dead, they won’t have any reason to harm the girls, right? Worst outcome of that plan, all of us still get free of this place.”
“Ho-lee Geez, Anna,” Donny whispered.
“Come on, Donny, we don’t have any time, Sister Eustace…”
Donny hushed her with his finger on her lips. “Yeah, Anna, I know,” he whispered. “I’ll make some bombs, but, well, you gotta go down the stairs a ways, so you can’t see me.”
“What? Why?”
“Well, uh, I, uh have enough crystals, an I got two jars…but uh, I don’t got any water…I’ll have to, um…”
“You know what,” Anna interrupted, “I’ll go down a few steps and keep an ear out for Sister Eustace while you get those bombs ready.”
“Good idea.”
Five steps down took Anna around the curve of the spiral staircase and put the stone pillar between her and Donny. She listened intently to the dark basement, hoping only for silence, but she heard more of the bomb making process than she wished. Bits of conversation drifted up from the darkness below. They were still too distant to discern what was being said, but Anna clearly recognized the tone and timbre of Sister Eustace’s smug prattle. Then, there was a pop and a flash of light behind her.
“Anna,” Donny whispered, “all ready.”
Anna returned to the door. The two remaining Mason jars sat on the floor. Twin tongues of fire hovered over their lids.
“They’re still a ways away but they’re coming,” she whispered. “Here’s plan A, if it’s clear out there – we run down the corridor to my dormitory, and pray to God your sister is still there. Once we get inside, close the door and hide. There’s lots of hay to burrow under. After ten minutes, Eustace should be out of the basement. We’ll take the girls and leave the same way we got in. We’ll hide in the woods until late at night, then we’ll sneak onto the boat. In the morning, when they try to take the boat out, there will be enough of us to overpower the pilot. We’ll make her take us to the mainland.
“Plan B, if they are waiting for us out there,” she said, “we fight to the death. I’ll take the bombs, you take the key. Stab for the eyes. It’ll all be over in a few minutes.”
Donny whistled low through his teeth, shaking his head. “Anna, I swear, if I hadn’t seen you cryin’, I guess I’d swear you were an angel. An’ not one of them angels that sang for Jesus, I mean one of those Old Testament Angels that visited vengeance on the wicked.”
“Are you still glad you met me?” she asked.
“I’ll tell you in a few minutes.” For once, Donny wasn’t smiling.
Anna raised a Mason jar overhead, at the ready. Donny twisted the key. The lock clicked. The door swung silently inward. Anna held her breath, nerves humming. Donny withdrew the key, gripping it like a knife. The hinges squealed as the door opened farther. Donny stopped it with his foot. He craned his neck through the gap, scanning the corridor in both directions.
“It’s clear,” he whispered.
“Go,” she said.
Donny stepped into the hall, held the door as Anna slipped through, then locked it behind them.
“Don’t shake them up too much,” he said, nodding at the jars.
“Come on,” Anna urged, jogging toward her old dormitory.
Donny ran alongside her to the right, key in hand. To her left, the dormitory doors were spaced along the wall at fifty-foot intervals. Anna knew every tile in this floor, every threadbare tapestry, every crack in the ceiling plaster. During her stay here, Anna had never noticed the odor, but she recognized it now, the smell of tears and desperation. It was all familiar, but different. She no longer belonged to this place. She was no longer
part
of it.
They ran past the second door. Anna turned to Donny and smiled. He looked back at her, favoring her with a rakish grin. Beyond Donny, something sprang out of an adjoining hallway. Something gnarly and nasty. It,
she
, seized Donny from behind, clamping gnarled hands over his shoulders.
“I got you, you wretched!” the woman cackled, digging sharp fingers under his collarbones. Then she shrieked, “Lucile! I fetched you a devil!”
Anna skidded to a stop, turning back toward Donny. The thing that had grabbed him looked like an animated, bowlegged scarecrow, only uglier. She was bone thin and knobby all over. A profusion of gray-black dreadlocks sprang out of her head and were only partially corralled by a filthy red bandana. Her eyes, and her six remaining teeth, were yellow and crooked. Her right ear hung an inch lower than her left. She wore a heavy cross around her neck, a quiver of stakes on her back, and a pair of flintlock pistols on her belt.
“An’ don’t you be tryin’ to run off, neither, faery child,” she said to Anna. “I got my irons loaded with
silver
, if you take my meanin’!” She nodded at the pistols in her belt, then screamed, “
Lucile
! I gots two of ‘em!”
Heavy footsteps thundered toward them from the adjoining hall, presumably Lucile, whoever that was. Anna stood frozen, back pressed against the wall, Mason jars in limp hands. Donny, stone rigid at first, now wriggled and squirmed against the woman’s iron-hard hands.
“Let’s have a looksee…” The scarecrow lady spun Donny around, his back to Anna, his face to the woman.
Lucile rounded the corner from the hall at a full run. Anna choked on her scream. The woman’s frizzy red hair and sharp nose were unmistakable, Sister Evangeline,
the Woodpecker
, whose dead body lay in Joseph’s cistern. Anna was so startled she almost didn’t notice the ax, and by the time she did see it, it was too late.
Lucile’s eyes (Sister Evangeline’s eyes) bored into Anna as she ran past the paralyzed orphan. Surprise and recognition gleamed in those eyes. Then, a wickedly playful grin spread across the dead nun’s lips. Lucile sprinted at Donny, dropping the ax into a lavish windup.
“Hold him tight, Hattie!” she bellowed at the scarecrow lady. “Judgment’s a’comin!”
Hattie’s jaw dropped. Her eyes dilated in simultaneous terror and exultation, as she saw what Lucile intended to do with that ax. Horrible sounds bubbled out of her – giddy, hungry, yearning laughter. She dug her skeletal fingers into Donny’s shoulders and thrust him out to arm’s length.
Anna’s hands felt like stone. The jars felt like lead anchors. She screamed, “No!” And kept on screaming for the eternity that it took to hurl the bomb at the ax-wielding nun. The jar tumbled end over end in the air, fire flaring through the hole in its lid.
Lucile’s ax traveled through the bottom of its arc and soared upward, over her head. Her charge brought her between Anna and Donny, and as the ax passed its apex, Anna saw nothing but Lucile’s back and her horrible orange mane.
The ax plummeted, gleaming. The Mason jar bomb finally struck Lucile square in the back – and bounced off, unbroken. There was an explosion, however, an explosion of bright red blood, spraying the ceiling and walls on both sides of the hall. The ax splitting through skull – all the way to spine – made a crackling, wet
thwock
, like a watermelon dropped from a rooftop.
Anna’s scream turned to a wail.
The Mason jar hit the floor and exploded.
Lucile, Donny, and Hattie tumbled forward, propelled by the blast, landing in a heap. The concussion knocked Anna back against the wall. Glass bees stung the exposed skin of her face, hands and legs. She tried to yell for Donny, but her voice sounded muffled, as if her ears were packed with cotton.
Anna staggered. Her feet didn’t want to stay under her. She groped her way along the wall toward the pile of bodies. New trickles of blood sprang from her scarred and battered shins. Blood glistened everywhere – all over her, on the back of Lucile’s calves, speckling the walls and ceiling, spreading in a pool across the floor.
One of Anna’s ears popped. Her hearing in that ear returned, and she heard a muffled crying – or laughing – she couldn’t tell which.
Lucile stirred, rising slightly, and rolled off the body pile. Anna tried to make her feet work, intending to rush the nun, fight to the death as she had promised Donny. But at the thought of Donny, and the vivid echo of that sickening
Thwock
, Anna’s knees buckled. She grabbed for the wall and sat down hard.
Lucile was laughing, trying to stifle it, trying to stop it, but laughing all the same. She sat up, covering her mouth with her hand, chortling through her blood-wet fingers.
Fire surged through Anna, burning high in her cheeks. She set her teeth and raised the second Mason bomb.
Then, Donny rolled off Hattie and sat up, looking bewildered.
Lucile held her hand up, “Wait, Anna,” she said between giggles, “Anna, it’s me.”
It happened in the eyes first. Lucile’s emerald irises dimmed, fading to black, then flared purple. Her red hair darkened to the oily black of crow feathers. Her milky skin bronzed. Lucile’s pointy features melted away, revealing Dolores.
“You should have seen your face!” Dolores cried. “Oh, Anna! It was priceless!”
Anna looked to Donny. He sat on the floor, poking at his ears as if trying to rid them of water. Blood coated his face, and the front of his shirt, but it wasn’t
his
blood.
The room rotated sideways, like a capsizing ship. Between Donny and Dolores lay the scarecrow woman, Hattie, feet splayed, ax handle protruding from a wet mass that had once been her face. As Anna began to understand what had happened, the floor struck her in the side of her head.
“Don’t worry, Anna,” Donny’s voice floated to her. “I won’t let them feed you to the needle machine.”
“What?” she said.
“You fainted,” he said.
“Did not,” she mumbled, letting Donny help her to her feet.
“Do you know that crazy lady?” he whispered into her ear.
“That’s Dolores,” she said, “the witch I told you about.”
“I was afraid you might say that.”
“Hurry up, you two lovebirds,” Dolores called. “We’ve got to hide this corpse. Quick.”
Anna and Donny eyed the witch.
“Come on, come on! We’re in this together,” she said. “I’ll explain everything as soon as we clean up this mess.”
The ax now lay at the base of the wall. Dolores had placed a black cloth over Hattie’s ruined face.
“I think we’ll drag her…down there,” Dolores said slowly, coming to the decision as she spoke it. “Yes, to that door you came through. We’ll toss her down the stairs.”
“Sister Eustace is down there.” The words wandered out of Anna’s mouth as if lost.
“I know!” Dolores clapped her hands. “Won’t it be a hoot? She’ll probably wet herself when she sees this. Hee, hee! But, we haven’t much time. Now, stop gawking and help me. You two grab that arm.”
Anna moved toward the body, then hesitated. Donny lifted the left arm and shot her a cock-eyed grimace. She stepped forward and grasped the limp arm. Loose skin seemed to slide independent of the stringy, lifeless tissue beneath. Anna’s stomach turned.
“Heave ho!” Dolores called, taking hold of the right arm. Together they dragged the corpse to the basement stairs, painting a trail of blood behind them. When they reached the door, Dolores dug a key out of Hattie’s pocket and unlocked it.
The door swung inward, squealing. Dolores helped them drag the body to the edge of the stairs. “Oh, I almost forgot, grab those pistols,” she said, nodding at Hattie’s belt. “They may come in handy.”
Suddenly, from below but very close, Sister Eustace called up. “Hello? Who is that on the stairs?”
“It’s just me…” Dolores shouted, shoving the children back into the hall. “Dolores the
witch
!”
With that, she rolled Hattie’s corpse down the stairs, and tossed the remaining Mason bomb after it. She slammed and locked the door, just as the bomb exploded. Evelyn screamed.
Dolores dropped a bar into brackets across the door. “Well,” she said, brushing her hands together, “that ought to keep them busy for a while.”