Authors: Axel Blackwell
Sister Dolores’s pale, bony fingers curled around her wrist. Anna heard the whistle of the crop slicing through the air, and then a crack like a pistol shot. Her eyes flew open and she gawked at her knuckles with a terror of unbelief. A red welt rose there, but she felt nothing, not the slightest sting. The crop fell again with a gut wrenching snap. And again, no pain accompanied the blow. Anna stared wide-eyed and open-mouthed at Sister Dolores. As the third painless blow echoed through the dining hall, Anna’s knees gave out and she flopped to a cross-legged seat on the floor.
Sister Eustace laughed out loud. “My, my, sister, I don’t believe I’ve seen little Anna so surprised in many years.” She laughed a bit more then added, “I doubt she will mistake you for weak again.”
“No, I don’t suppose she will,” Sister Dolores mused, watching Anna. The mischief twinkled again in her eyes and, when Sister Eustace turned to walk away, she winked at Anna. “But, I really think you ought to have a look at her foot, ma’am, just to be safe. If it gets infected…”
“Sister Dolores! The last thing in this creation I wish to see is that girl’s infected foot,” Sister Eustace said without turning. “Especially so soon after eating.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Sister Dolores called after her.
“March her straight down to the factory, Sister Dolores, and if she asks you for anything, lay a lash across her lips,” she said as she strode out of the dining hall.
When they were alone again, Anna looked up at Sister Dolores and marveled, “You’re a witch?”
Sister Dolores’s eyes changed, her pallid skin darkened to a healthy bronze and her mouse-colored hair turned jet black. “I dabble,” she said, smiling.
“You’re not a nun, then?” Anna whispered.
“Never was.” Sister Dolores’s features melted back into their former state.
Anna thought she should be terrified of the witch, but could not summon her fear. Wonder and confusion crowded it out.
“Sister Eustace tells me that you killed your baby brother,” Sister Dolores said, “that you drowned him in a bathtub. Is that true?”
“I don’t know. I don’t remember.”
“Hmm. I have to kill my baby brother, and I don’t know if I can do it. I was hoping you could advise me.”
Confusion and wonder still filled Anna, but the fear finally forced its way through. “I need to go to the factory, ma’am.” She pushed herself to her feet with her back against the wall.
“Anna,” Sister Dolores placed herself between Anna and her exit, “you know my secret and I,” she tapped Anna’s shoe with her own, “know yours. Can I trust you to keep my secret?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Pinky swear?” Sister Dolores held out the little finger of her left hand.
Anna blushed again, hesitantly raising, lowering, then raising again her pinkyless left hand.
Sister Dolores giggled, “Oh, sorry, I forgot.”
Anna looked toward the door. The dining hall and the corridor beyond were empty of both person and sound.
“Anna,” Sister Dolores said, “I do thank you for telling me. That was a brave and noble act. This house may become a very dangerous place in the next few days. I am not here to rescue anyone, but I will remember what you did, and may repay the favor if a chance presents itself.”
The next few days here meant nothing to Anna. She would be long gone by sunrise. Joseph had told her so. “May I go?” Anna asked, “to the factory?”
“Go,” Sister Dolores said.
Anna zombied through the hours of factory work, cutting, stamping, stacking leather soles. The sisters overseeing her conspicuously ignored her worsening limp. Apparently, Sister Eustace had informed her staff of Anna’s attempt to fake a foot injury. That was fine by Anna. She had expected to be giddy, restless. The phrase
last day of school
kept coming to her. She had feared her excitement would arouse suspicion, but as it was, she felt too exhausted, too overwhelmed, too uncertain to be giddy.
She had just warned a witch spy that the sadistic nuns were on to her. The witch had to be evil, because she was here to kill her own brother. And she was a witch, which made her evil by default. Now the evil witch had become her… her what? Not her friend, but maybe her ally.
Would that make Anna complicit in the murder of the witch’s brother? And what about all the children the sadistic sisters had worked to death? Or neglected to death? If the witch was here to kill Abbess McCain or Sister Eustace, that would be just fine, but she was here for one of the children.
Then a new thought occurred to Anna.
If I leave, who will take care of my girls?
Sister Dolores said that danger approached, who would protect Lilly and the Marys? Her meaner half laughed.
I can’t protect them, I can’t protect myself.
She looked at the knuckle where her pinky belonged.
I can’t protect Sister Dolores’s baby brother, whoever he may be. The one person I did protect turned out to be an evil witch.
She considered her right hand. It should have been throbbing and useless but proved to be whole and unharmed. Anna wondered if being an evil witch was such a bad thing.
Variations of these thoughts occupied her mind from the time she entered the factory until she returned to the dining hall that evening. She caught herself either giggling or weeping or both at random intervals throughout the day.
At dinner, the other head girls whispered about her, but no one spoke to her. Her fears of arousing suspicion seemed silly. If she had gone stark raving mad, no one would have cared. None of the sisters would have shown the slightest interest, as long as she met quota and got her girls out of bed on time.
At nine o’clock, Anna lay on her back, waiting. The giddiness finally came, in waves alternating with dread. The little ones snored little snores. Jane gibbered in her sleep. Anna waited. Wondering what would happen if her collaborator didn’t show up. Wondering where they would go from the factory.
Why the factory?
Why not the loading dock?
Or the back entrance to the kitchen?
Where will I sleep tomorrow night?
Will I even be alive tomorrow night?
The bell, in its lonely tower, struck nine thirty. Anna rose. She slipped her pinky out from beneath her pillow and hung it around her neck. Abbess McCain had ordered her to wear it at all times, as a reminder of her sins, but that wasn’t why she wore it now. She was going, and she had no intention of leaving a single piece of herself behind.
Anna slipped into her work dress and shawl. For the first time in five days, she pulled her shoes off, hoping to move silently in bare feet. Carrying her shoes and the key, she crept to the old door and leaned her ear against it. Nothing stirred.
She knelt down and peered through the key hole. Across the hall, on a maroon tinted tapestry, a woman martyr writhed in agony of fire. In the corridor, few candles flickered and no one waited.
Anna slid the key into its hole, wincing at the barely audible scraping sound. As she turned it, ever so slowly, she realized that she had never considered the possibility the key might not fit. It would have been a wasted worry. The lock clicked open with no resistance.
“What are you doing?” A high-pitched whisper, so close the lips must have been touching her shoulder.
Anna spun around, choking her scream. Mary Two stood behind her, holding her blanket up to her chin. Straw clung to her hair, smaller bits stuck to the snot trail under her nose.
“Mary!” Anna struggled to keep her voice at the level of a whisper, “go back to bed. This instant.”
“You aren’t s’posed to be doing that.”
“Quiet, Mary, go back to bed.” Then she added, “I
am
supposed to be doing this. It’s head girl duties.”
“Lizzy said we need to keep an eye on you ‘cause if you go loopy Sister Eustace won’t feed us anymore.”
“She…What? No, Mary, you must be quiet,” Anna whispered, her nerves jangling like Sister Eustace’s key ring. “Lay down now and hush up!”
Mary backed away from her, looking toward the pile of straw. “Lizzy…” Her tentative voice rose, no longer a whisper but not quite the volume of normal speech. She would be yelling soon.
Anna rushed her, clamping her hand over the little girl’s mouth. They tumbled together into the straw. Mary tried to thrash free, but Anna wrapped one arm around both of Mary’s and used the weight of her body to hold the girl still. Her right hand, over Mary’s mouth, pushed her head into the straw. Anna pinched Mary’s nose shut with her thumb and forefinger. The panic in the younger girl’s eyes burned as bright and feverish as it did in Anna‘s.
Anna pushed her face to Mary’s until their noses touched. She could feel Mary sucking against her palm, desperate for a breath, but Anna held her fast, glaring into her eyes.
You have to be quiet,
screamed through her head. It took all Anna’s will not to scream it out loud. Her body trembled all over. She felt the girl under her kicking the straw, felt her chest spasm and hitch for air.
The unlocked door floated open on its silent hinges. Candlelight spilled across Mary’s face, revealing her black, terrified eyes and her bluing skin. Anna’s own drowned face from the cistern flashed into her mind, and her brother’s. Tears burst into Anna’s eyes. She released Mary’s nose and mouth, wrapping that hand around Mary’s head, hugging her to herself.
“I’m sorry, Mary!” She wailed in a strained whisper, kissing her forehead repeatedly.
Mary gulped air in harsh, sobbing gasps. Around them, girls mumbled and murmured, turning in the straw.
“I’m so sorry, Mary, I didn’t mean it.” Her eyes streamed. “I swear, I didn’t mean it.” Anna dropped the little girl into the straw and sprinted for the door.
She plunged into the corridor without the key or her shoes. Mary’s weeping drifted out behind her, chased her into the hall. It was too late now. Too late to turn back, too late for stealth, too late for a clean get away. She had no plan. She had no clever ideas. She had only one thought, but that thought filled her mind,
behind the boiler at ten o’clock.
Her bare feet slapped the stone floor as she dashed toward the Great Round Room. Tapestries fluttered on either side, giving life to long dead saints and devils. The cyclopean eye of Abbess McCain’s office was dark, no stern silhouette watched from above.
Anna sprinted for the thick shadows surrounding the rotunda’s door. Just as she reached them, a stout figure stepped from the gloom. Sister Eustace loomed two feet in front of her. Anna had no time to stop. She plowed straight into the old nun’s bulk.
It was like running into a padded tree. Anna bounced back and sat with a thud on the flagstones. She gaped up at Sister Eustace, as powerless to breathe as Mary had been. It felt as if the nun had taken hold of her windpipe and was crushing it. Nothing ran through Anna’s head now but a white-hot scream.
Towering over Anna, Sister Eustace appeared to shake with rage. She uttered odd sounds, tinkling sounds like a wind chime. As the blizzard of terror in Anna’s mind settled into glittering drifts, she realized it wasn’t anger that shook Sister Eustace, it was laughter, a wispy, stifled giggling. The red patches on her cheeks were not from rage but high merriment.
As Anna realized this, Sister Eustace’s features changed. Her hair darkened, her skin bronzed. Her form melted away like a candle in a furnace, condensing into the younger, thinner Sister Dolores. She quickly covered her lips with one finger, giggling through it.
Anna slumped sideways and vomited fish stew across the floor.
“Who do you think is going to have to clean that up?” Sister Dolores asked in a laughing whisper. She hooked a hand under Anna’s arm and lifted her to her feet. “Come now, Anna, I’m just having a little fun with you. No need for all this excitement.”
Anna’s legs felt like noodles and her stomach like water. The corridor swayed back and forth as if adrift on the waves.
“Sister Dolores,” Anna said in a vacant voice. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m looking for my brother. Have you seen him?”
“I don’t think so…”
“What are
you
doing here?”
“I’d rather not say.”
“I’m sure not,” she chuckled. “But you may want these.” Sister Dolores handed Anna her shoes and the key.
Anna stared wide-eyed and wondering.
“Would you also like me to tuck your little ones in and close the door to your hall? Perhaps I should look out for them and keep them from trouble while you’re away?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Anna stammered.
“Very well, then. You better be off to…” she waved her hand in the air, “…to wherever it is you are going. But may I ask of you one favor?”
“Anything, ma’am.”
“If you do see my little brother, Joey, don’t tell him I’m looking for him.” Sister Dolores walked toward Anna’s dormitory, shifting back into her Sister Eustace disguise. “Thanks, dear.”
Anna barely recognized the factory. It was quiet and still and dark. She was a tiny speck of life in its vast and cavernous vault. Far up near the ceiling, the windows were nothing but black rectangles silhouetted against a blacker background.
There was no moon tonight. No candles glimmered here, either. Only the boiler illuminated this space. Its red glow radiated across the floor and fanned upward, highlighting or darkening the paths and obstacles according to its own unreliable intentions.
The machines, great iron and copper beasts, hovered around her. They stood as mechanical behemoths, bodies without animation. Their stillness accentuated her isolation. In the daytime, these brutal engines had taken fingers, crushed limbs, had even eaten whole children. In the daytime, they roared and hissed, they shook and churned. Now, they watched in silence. Anna felt their eyes, and their hunger.
She knew she must hurry, but felt it somehow unwise to run past the sleeping machines. She did not want them to see her fear. To her right stood a machine that stamp-cut patterns from sheets of leather. Last year, Samuel Upton was loading the cutter when his sleeve snagged on the conveyor belt. Anna could still hear his screams as the conveyor pulled him into its maw, and her own screams when the belt dumped what was left of him into a bin on the far side.
Anna hurried past in a stiff walk. A pair of stitching machines loomed to her left. Their frenzies of needles had sampled the finger blood of every girl Anna knew. She wore several needle scars of her own. Two girls, a Beatrice that Anna did not know and a Sally she did know, had both lost lower arms due to infection from the stitchers’ bites. The needles now glimmered in the red ember glow of the boiler.
She reached the boiler just as the bell struck the first note of ten. The boiler stood as the god of the steam engines, floor to ceiling, fat as a Buddha, complex and baffling, austere. Heat and hell-colored light radiated from an open grill in its lower front panel. As Anna approached, she saw a small alcove cut into the wall behind the boiler. No light reached that space and she wished she had brought a candle. The bell continued to toll.
“Hello?” she said. “Hello, are you here?”
“Shhhh,” came the reply, then the whisper, “Come back here.”
Anna looked over her shoulder. The doors back to her hall were miles away, through thick darkness and a forest of steam powered killing machines. Whatever waited beyond the boiler must be better than staying here, better than having her body and mind gnawed down to a raw stump.
Like Jeffery’s
leg
, she thought.
Jeffery had been one of the head boys, one of the
cute
head boys. He had been trying to clear a jam in the coal pulverizer that fed this boiler. He had kicked the jam loose, but he had kicked a bit too hard. With the blockage cleared, the pulverizer sprung to life again and pulverized his leg. He didn’t scream, he just turned white, then chuckled. Anna remembered that chuckle, it was far worse than Samuel Upton’s screams. Jeffery was alive when they carried him out of the factory, but Anna never saw him again.
She slipped into the alcove behind the boiler. No one waited there.
“Where are you?”
“I’m down below,” the whisper hissed through the broken end of a pipe. “I will tell you how to find me but you must listen carefully, act quickly and ask no questions.”
“Tell me what to do.”
“There is no way out of The Saint Frances de Chantal Orphan Asylum unless someone lets you out,” the voice said. “The key will do nothing for you now. This house was built to be a fortress, and so it is. It has only four entrances and the sisters guard them all. All except the kitchen, but that one has a bell on it, and it is just outside the sister’s quarters. You must lure the sisters away.”
“Why are they so intent on keeping us here?”
“Oh,” purred the whisper, “they don’t post a guard on your account. But, I said no questions, time is short. Come to me and you will know everything.” The whisper softened. Anna heard in it the voice of the child who spoke to her in the cisterns. “First, on the side of the boiler, there is a crank. Do you see it?”
“Yes.”
“Turn it clockwise until it stops.”
As Anna turned the crank, she heard coal sliding down a chute into the belly of the boiler.
“Now, there are a series of levers attached to pipes on the opposite side. Some are opened, some are closed. Close them all.”
Anna worked her way around the boiler. Its glow darkened with the new influx of coal. She found the levers and closed each of them.
“Just above those levers there is a pressure gauge. Beside it are two copper devices, a valve and a whistle. Do you see them?”
“Yes.”
“Smash them flat. I left a mallet for you on the floor, near your feet.”
The mallet was heavy. With one stroke, Anna flattened the valve and bent the whistle. With a second stroke, the whistle ceased to be. The boiler groaned. It shuddered as if Anna’s pounding had awakened it. She stepped away, suddenly afraid of what she had done.
“I’m not so sure that was a good idea,” she said.
“It is a terrible idea. But this is a terrible place. Now listen close and speak no more. Let my words burn into your memory. If you miss one thing, you will be caught, and if you are caught, they will kill you. Listen and remember. We will not speak again until you are free.”