Authors: Axel Blackwell
The passageway slanted downward, its angle increasing until the floor broke up into steps, a stairway that curved and then spiraled around itself as it descended into the lowest foundations of the structure.
The stairs ended at an iron door with a large lever in its center and a peep window near its top. Sister Elizabeth slid open the peep and peered in. After a brief hesitation, she snatched the lamp from Anna and shone it through the peep window, trying to see around it into whatever lay beyond.
“Looks clear,” she said at last, handing the lamp back to Anna. “You go first.”
Sister Elizabeth pushed down on the lever. Four bolts, one at each corner of the door, slid free of the door’s frame. Flecks of rust drifted down from each bolt hole as they slid. The door was heavy, and its hinges rusted. It screamed like a banshee as Sister Elizabeth pushed it open.
Anna shone the lamp into the room beyond. It was hardly four feet on each side and very short. She could have touched the ceiling if she stood on tiptoe. Three of the walls were stone, like most of the orphanage’s walls. But the wall to her right was made of iron. It looked like one of the older machines in the factory. A system of large gears and ratchets lined one corner of the iron wall, and a heavy chain hung from the ceiling, a lift chain of some sort, Anna guessed. A riveted iron plate covered the top half of the wall. Water dribbled around its edges.
Dripping echoed through the chamber. Other sounds echoed as well. Some from behind the iron wall, others ambient, seemingly without source – distant voices and the sounds of the factory, the surf on the beach and the eerie cry of seagulls. These sounds, all very faint and distorted by distance, blended in the echo chamber of the cisterns.
Anna shuddered.
“You’re looking at the wrong wall,” Sister Elizabeth whispered behind her. Anna turned. On the left wall, near the floor, a two-foot diameter brick pipe descended away from the room.
“This pipe,” Sister Elizabeth explained in a low voice, “runs straight out to the beach. There is an iron grate near the end of the pipe to prevent little troublemakers like you from sneaking out. And to keep other things from coming in.” She looked at Anna with a gleam in her eye, “Trolls and such. If you should find that the grate is missing or broken, you must come tell me at once. Do you understand?”
Anna looked into the pipe. A spectral, wispy mist hovered around the opening.
It leads to the sea
. The whispering voices of the cisterns felt like a dream language. The susurration of the sea and the crying seagulls spun out of the pipe and into her head.
“Do you understand?” Sister Elizabeth did not raise her voice.
She is afraid
, Anna thought. She nodded at the sister, wide-eyed. “Come tell you if the grate is open.”
“Your tools are in there.” Sister Elizabeth nodded to the burlap bag. “Crawl down the pipe until you reach the blockage. Fill this sack with whatever you find, and drag it back here. While you are doing so, I will fetch a cart to haul the debris up to the dock and dump it.”
“You’re not staying with me?”
“Ha!” Sister Elizabeth startled herself with the loudness of her laugh. She continued in a quieter voice. “I never thought I’d see the day that you were eager for the comfort of my company.”
“It’s just…”
“Shut up. The task is before you. It is simple enough.” Sister Elizabeth slapped her crop in her palm. The
snap
called to fresh life the welts on Anna’s face and forearms.
The nun pulled a pair of gloves, a trowel and a tin miner’s hat from the burlap bag. She took the lamp from Anna and secured it in a socket on the helmet, set it on Anna’s head and cinched the chinstrap. It was ridiculously large on Anna’s small head.
“In you go.” Sister Elizabeth waved her crop in the direction of the pipe. “Get on with it!”
Anna knelt and placed her hands on the slimy stone floor. She peered into the pipe. The lamp on her head illuminated only ten or fifteen feet. Mist swirled and churned in the darkness, creating the illusion of movement just beyond the reach of her light. The dank air smelled of rot. The bricks were red, but the crumbling mortar between them had turned a moldy black. Green algae lined the bottom of the pipe.
She placed a hesitant hand on the lip of the pipe and crept forward. There was a rustle and swoosh behind her.
Snap
. Fire flared again across her left thigh.
“Move!” the nun hissed.
Anna screamed and leapt forward. Her helmet struck the top of the pipe and slid off her head. She scrambled into darkness. Her hands slipped in the algae and shot out from under her. She sprawled face-first into the sludge. Her scream, distorted, dismembered, echoed back from the depths of the cistern’s labyrinth.
Behind her, Sister Elizabeth laughed hysterically. She paused for a moment to yell, “Boo!” into the tunnel, then burst out laughing again.
“Boo,” repeated up and down the pipe, mingling with the nun’s mad laughter. It came from ahead, then from behind, then from both at once, before finally fading into the constant background echoes.
“Boo,” Sister Elizabeth said again, still chuckling, then, “Don’t forget this.” She threw the sack into the pipe. It landed across Anna’s legs.
Anna tried to turn around for the sack, but the pipe was too narrow. It pinned her shoulders, trapped her hands in front of her.
“Oh, and this…” Sister Elizabeth threw the trowel in at her. It bounced off the top of her head and clattered into the sludge near her hands. “Now stop dawdling. You’ll be safe from my crop while you’re in the pipe, but unless you intend to sleep down here tonight, I suggest you be quick to your work.”
Anna dragged herself forward into the dark. The lamp on her tin hat still burned, but the hat dangled upside down from its chinstrap, shining most of its light underneath and behind her. Her eyes were too filled with tears to see anything, anyway. She inched forward, not daring to breathe until Sister Elizabeth was gone. The door screamed closed. When the bolts slipped into their holes, Anna collapsed again into the algae, sobbing violently, choking on her tears.
Anna recovered herself before Sister Elizabeth returned. She backed out of the pipe to retrieve the gloves and sack, and to adjust her hat. The water dribbling around the edges of the iron plate formed pools on the floor. She caught her reflection in one of these.
I look like the cover of a Jules Verne story.
She touched the dented metal cap with its glowing yellow eye. In the uncertain mirror of the puddle, the swelling weal on her cheek looked like native war paint.
The
thunk thunk thunk
of a cart rolling down the stairs prompted her to move. She quickly squirmed into the tunnel, keeping her elbows beneath her. The pipe was just wide enough that, if she pressed her back against its top and scraped her elbow against its bottom, she could extend one arm out before her. The cold green sludge soothed the stinging welts on her arms, but it chilled the rest of her body.
She exhaled plumes of fog with each breath. And with each breath, the vapor obscured more of her vision. By the time she heard Sister Elizabeth unbolting the door, she could see no more than two bricks ahead of herself. The mist thickened into a tangible thing, like a cold blanket around her head and chest. The yellow lamp reflected off the vapor, solidifying it. It sucked the energy out of her, cinching around her ribs like a creeping constrictor.
Noises, furtive movement, whispers churned in the fog. A scream echoed, very distant. Was that her own scream, still trapped in this catacomb? The ghost of her own pain entombed forever in this darkness? She trembled at that thought.
But if it wasn’t
her
scream, that meant someone else was down here, and
they
were screaming. That thought made her shudder all the way to her bones. She already wore a skin of goose-flesh from the cold, but suddenly her goose pimples were sweating. The wall of yellow-tinted fog before her seemed as solid as the bricks on either side. Anna reached a trembling hand into the mist. The tips of her fingers disappeared behind its curtain.
“Hello?” She whispered. There was silence, as if the mist had consumed her voice completely. Then the fog twitched, something disturbed its even flow. Something moved nearby. Anna snatched her hand back. A distant, terrified voice whispered, “hello?” Another voice, farther away, sounding as if it were below her, “hello?” Then a third “ello?” Then a flurry of fainter and fainter “O?”s.
Only echoes
.
Only echoes.
But she could not move. The fog and the bricks and her fear wound a tight cocoon. The mist drifted this way, slid that way, like a magician’s sleight of hand, proving that it hid something by refusing to reveal it. She breathed through her open mouth, to be as quiet as possible, and strained her ears. So many little sounds, elusive noises. What waited for her in the fog?
Then, behind her in the drainage chamber, Sister Elizabeth opened the door. In Anna’s stillness, the screech was as loud as a train whistle. She didn’t jump or scream this time, but stiffened, arching her back into the top of the pipe. A draft moved through the tunnel, from behind Anna, sucking the mist away from her in a horizontal whirlwind. Sudden vertigo struck her. She felt as if she were falling head first into the pipe – a bottomless pit opening beneath her.
The most disconcerting discovery, as the fog dissipated, was that she
was
alone in the pipe. Nothing waited for her. Her miner’s lamp illuminated only the red bricks and green slime.
Anna still trembled, now with relief, and felt near to fainting. She gulped air through her mouth and exhaled slowly through her nose, willing herself not to vomit.
Sister Elizabeth
, she told herself,
nothing to fear here but the sister
.
Which means move, and quickly.
Anna wriggled forward, elbowing her way through small nests of seaweed and bits of driftwood. The pipe’s slight downslope sped her progress.
“Anna!’ Sister Elizabeth called into the pipe. “Anna, have you reached the iron grate?”
Her voice bounced back, from all sides, above and below. Again, Anna felt disoriented, she had a natural urge to turn toward the voice, but the pipe confined her. She opened her mouth to answer, but a fresh wave of echoes spiraled at her out of the darkness, “Anna?” overlapping “..ate” overlapping “…iron,” in waves of copied words.
When the phantom words stilled, Anna answered, in a quiet voice, “I can’t see it, but I see the blockage.”
Sister Elizabeth grunted, then said, “You fill this cart by noon and you’ll get lunch. Otherwise you get nothing. If you continue to dawdle, you’ll spend the night down here,” she paused to let the echoes die, then added, “and if it rains tonight, the devil may have you. Do you understand?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Sister Elizabeth said nothing more. Her heels clacked on stone as she walked out of the room. As soon as the door shrieked closed, the draft stopped, and the mist began to reassert itself. Anna had seen the blockage, but it was at the very edge of her vision. She determined to reach it before the fog completely blocked it from her view.
On her return trip, crawling backward, she would not be able to see where she was going regardless of light or fog. And that would be fine, she already knew what was behind her. But she was loath to grope blindly into the fog and unknown again.
Within a few minutes, Anna reached a tangled heap of brown kelp. The mass obstructed more than half the diameter of the pipe. She shoveled handfuls of the slick guck into her sack. The mist engulfed her again. Her effort drove the chill from her body, warmed her even, until steam rose off her skin. The mist no longer bothered Anna. She had seen a little way beyond this blockage to another pile of debris a few yards further down the pipe. Nothing lurked close enough to reach through the fog and touch her.
When she had filled her sack, she squirmed and wriggled and inched backward. It seemed like an eternity before she found a means of efficiently backing up a sloping, slippery pipe while dragging a fifty-pound sack of kelp.
The bell tolled ten o’clock as she dragged her sopping sack out of the pipe. A wooden cart waited for her in the drainage chamber. The kelp filled about a third of it. She had two hours to fill the rest. It should be enough time, but time wasn’t the only factor. She had already rubbed the skin off her elbows. Her knees were hard with calluses, but she knew they would also be bloody by the end of the day.
Anna looked at her hands, gloved, and her feet, shoed. She quickly stripped the laces out of her shoes and after a few minutes of experimentation, fashioned her laces and gloves into a pair of elbow pads.
That will help
, she thought,
but what else?
She looked longingly at the door. Either Sister Elizabeth had locked it, or she had intentionally left it unlocked to tempt her. Anna had no intention of trying it. If it had been left unlocked as a trap, she knew she would probably fall for it. The call of the Pacific was even stronger than her loathing for the pipe.
But, there was the peep window. Anna stuck her finger through the little bars in the window and slid the shutter open.
Why would you need a peep window into this room?
To check if the room was flooded, perhaps.
Could there be another reason?
Sister Elizabeth made me enter the room first, even after checking the window.
But Anna abandoned these thoughts as soon as she felt a draft wafting through the little window – a draft that would keep the tunnel clear of fog. She wedged a chunk of debris between the bars to hold it open. Then, taking a deep breath, she plunged back into the pipe.
Anna made three more trips down and back up the pipe without incident. She heaped debris into the cart until it could hold no more. Her impromptu elbow pads held up better than she had hoped and her knees were breaking down about as she had expected. The knees didn’t bother her much, though, because she couldn’t feel them. Her fingers, too, were numb with cold.
Noon came and went without an appearance from either Sister Elizabeth or lunch. Anna was disappointed but not surprised. The sisters always honored their promises, in their own way,
to the Lord a day is like a thousand years,
and such. Anna knew if she kept working, they would feed her eventually.
When lunch finally arrived, Anna was at the bottom of the pipe. The bell struck one as she shoveled driftwood and fish parts into her sack. Sounds traveled to her down the pipe, the familiar clatter of the door screeching open, an annoyed grunt, then the clank of a metal plate on the stone floor. She held her breath and listened. The door opened again, then slammed. There came a second, smaller slamming noise, the peep window being closed.
She had reached the iron grate, though the last clot of sea junk partially obscured it. Rust had diminished it to a net of lumpy wires, but they appeared to be intact. Her sack wasn’t full, and if she filled it, she could nearly call the job done, but hunger was louder than logic. She scrambled out of the pipe, leaving her sack and trowel behind.
Lunch was toast and fish stew, the same as every lunch she had eaten over the past five years, except that today the stew was cold. She consumed it before she knew she had started, and downed the tin cup of water in a single guzzle. Not until it was gone did she realize how thirsty she had been, and still was.
There is plenty of water here, somewhere
.
This is where all the water comes from, but how do I get it?
On the far wall of the chamber, water glistened around the edges of the iron plate. It dripped from a slimy film of algae and rust that grew around the plate’s seams. Rust streaked the lower half of the wall. It bore other marks as well, wear marks, grooves worn into the iron.
It’s a drainage control gate for the cisterns,
Anna thought,
a flush mechanism.
A narrow gap ran along the top edge of the plate. Beyond the iron wall lay another chamber, a chamber full of fresh water.
Anna examined the lift chain and the huge gears of the apparatus. A locking lever and ratchet device held the plate in place. A vertical strip of iron teeth ran from floor to ceiling along one side of the plate. A wheel gear engaged these teeth and was in turn engaged by the ratchet lever.
Anna squeezed the ratchet catch and let the locking lever drop one notch. The plate slid down about an inch. She hooked her fingers over the top of the plate, stood on her tippy-toes and peered into the space beyond, a square channel receding into the darkness. Water rippled a few inches below the top edge of the iron plate. She returned to the lever and lowered the plate two clicks more. The gap widened enough for her to reach over and fill her cup.
The water tasted sweet, so sweet she filled and emptied her cup again, and again. The fourth time she dipped into the water, she heard, for the first time in hours, the echoes. She had tuned them out as she worked, but these echoes were clearer, closer even, and very disturbing.
She froze and listened. Myriads of ducts conveyed the noise of machinery and conversation from all quarters of the orphanage to this point. But the conversation she heard now seemed so much more distinct.
Anna wedged her foot into one of the cogs on a large gear wheel and pushed herself up until she could squeeze her head through the opening above the plate. Water filled the room beyond. Anna could not see how far back the cistern went, but she guessed it was vast. Her lamp light did not reach the far wall. Holes riddled the domed ceiling of this room, regular circle or square shaped holes. Many of them dripped water.
The walls of this room,
the cistern
Anna decided, angled outward away from the iron plate. A ledge, maybe eighteen inches wide, ran along the walls, just above the water. Small rectangular holes penetrated the walls just above this ledge. Discoloration surrounding the openings indicated that water often flowed into the cistern through them, though they were dry just now. After a moment, Anna understood. These were the downspouts. These pipes led to the roofs and gutters where rain collected.
And the voices, the echoes through these pipes, must be from someone speaking near one of those downspouts.
Someone on the roof?
But that didn’t make sense. Then she remembered Sister Eustace’s patio. A grand patio like that would have gutters. Suddenly she realized
if I’m hearing conversations from one of the patios, it must be either Abbess McCain, or one of her proprietresses.
The voices rose and fell, distance and bizarre acoustics garbled the individual words, but the tone of the conversation was clear: ambition, conspiracy, treachery.
Anna’s head was already through the opening and, as Jane frequently pointed out, her head was the thickest part of her. She worked her scrawny chest onto the top of the plate, walking her toes up the cogs of the gear. Then hoisted herself over the lip and slid out onto the narrow ledge.
Anna crept along the edge, worm crawling at first, then carefully, ever so carefully, rising to a hands-and-knees crawl. She put her ear to each of the downspout openings as she came to them. A fat white frog leapt out of the third pipe, squeaking loudly as it flew past her face.
Anna let out half a squeak of her own before clamping one hand over her mouth. The frog splashed into the black water and disappeared. Anna tottered on the ledge, almost falling in herself. Only by flopping flat on her belly did she managed to stay on the ledge.
For several seconds she, lay flat on the stone, her heart slamming against the inside of her ribcage. This is stupid, Anna, get back to where you belong, she thought, and she was right. But just then, voices started up again. Very close now. Intrigue permeated the conversation’s tone. Secrets were being passed, big secrets, and Anna was so close. She scooted forward again, just a few feet, to the fourth pipe.