by Cora May
Her fist slammed down on the table, and the tingling sensation heightened as splinters from the wood penetrated her skin.
Her eyes opened, the will to block out her situation no longer stronger than the fright she felt at the response she was seeing.
Small bits of blood—of her blood—dotted the table. She realized the warmth she had been remembering was not a remembered feeling at all. The stone in her hand was burning.
Tears fell down her face as she threw the stone onto the table.
She watched as it bounced a few times, then finished rolling off the surface, falling to the ground between the two professors in front of her.
Silence filled the room.
Minutes passed before Chanta realized that she was silently crying. Tears were falling down her cheeks at a steady rate. It wasn’t until they fell into her mouth that she realized, too, that her jaw was wide open as she stared at the space between the professors. She didn’t dare look up at them.
Shame, fear, nothing.
Those were the things she felt in that moment. She reminded herself of them two more times before she managed to close her mouth.
She commanded herself to hold on to those feelings. She would not let Reiter take them away from her.
But as more and more time passed, the nothingness she felt began to overtake everything else in her mind. Her thoughts became empty, her fear and shame became unexplainable. She slowly sat back in her chair, relaxing every muscle in her body.
It only took her a few moments to know that Reiter was the cause for the relaxation, for the nothingness. She wasn’t mad, though—and not just because he wouldn’t allow her to feel anger. She didn’t want to be mad. She wanted to embrace the feeling of nothingness. She needed it to clear her mind. She needed it to be able to face the professors. Once she was satisfied with her emotional state, she did just that, looking first Reiter in the eye, then Nessi.
Neither professor, she noted, was the least bit surprised. Or, at least, they managed to hide their emotions better than she did. Reiter was looking at her with a focused look in his eyes, as if what he was doing to her was taking a great amount of concentration. She supposed she had had a big enough outburst that it did, indeed, require a bit of effort for even the most experienced professor to qualm. She didn’t bother questioning it. Nessi, on the other hand, looked at her with a more studious kind of stare, as if Chanta’s reaction elicited nothing more than curiosity.
“What?” Chanta demanded. She forced the anger into her voice, even though she didn’t feel it in her heart. She wanted to come off as annoyed and uncaring, despite the tears that were still drying on her cheeks. She wiped those away.
“I can feel the heat from the stone,” she told Chanta. “Even still, as it sits on the floor, touching nothing on my person. That is quite a reaction.”
She stated the facts with a cold tone, as if the words meant nothing.
To Chanta, they meant everything. She gulped. She could feel the fear try to creep back into her heart, but it was mixed with something else. Excitement? She couldn’t quite put a word to it before Reiter shut it down and the nothingness returned wholly.
“It’s your stone,” Chanta told her, just as coldly. “Of course you feel its heat. It’s probably responding to you.”
Nessi tilted her head, just a slight amount, as she considered the girl in front of her. She chose to ignore the accusation in Chanta’s tone, instead focusing on the meaning behind the words.
“And why do you disown such a powerful stone?” she asked. “Especially when it clearly enjoys your presence so much.”
“I’ve read the story in the book,” Chanta told her, “and I can guess what has happened to many of the students here. But none of that is my story. And that stone? It did not respond to me. I did not command it, nor did it command me. There was no connection. It is not my stone.”
Nessi contemplated her feeble attempt at an explanation. She wondered if the professor could see through her lie and understand the true reason she disowned that stone. Nessi terrified her, plain and simply stated. She did not like the woman.
She turned to face Reiter.
“I think it’s time that I go back to my room now, don’t you?” she asked him with a hint of attitude behind her tone. “I have to be back in time for lunch, don’t forget, before the next test.”
Reiter didn’t ask her any questions, to her great relief. Instead, he rose from the table and pushed in his chair. He motioned for her to lead the way, and she obeyed.
CHAPTER FIVE: CHANTA
C hanta sat on her bed in her basement room for a few minutes after the professors left her. She waited, making sure she heard two sets of footsteps echo up the staircase. Once she had heard the sound, she counted to one hundred twice before making her move.
Her move was simple: get up and walk around the basement. Find out where the cries had come from and who they had belonged to. Dig up any dirt on these people that she possibly could. The fear and hesitation she had been feeling before, each time she contemplated leaving those four walls, was completely gone now. Or else, she was using it as motivation.
Whatever the case was, she moved without question and without thought of when lunch was to be delivered.
She slowly eased her bedroom door open. There was no lock on the doorknob, for which she was eternally grateful. She had halfway expected it, despite the fact that she had never heard the click of one. Once the door was open, she peeked her head through a small opening and eyed the staircase.
She looked up and down the hallway.
Satisfied that she was alone, she took a few tentative steps in the hall. She had already taken off her shoes, so her bare feet made no noise on the stone floors of the basement. She quietly shuffled over to the next door to the left.
She reached for the knob and slowly turned it, careful not to make any noise with the metal it was made of. It turned with no resistance. Chanta pushed the door open just enough to get a good view of the room.
For the most part, it looked exactly like hers. It was a bedroom with a bed, a dresser, a desk, and a rug. There were no books on the desk, and she was sure there were no clothes in the dresser, either. The only other difference was the color of the bedspread and rug. This room was decorated in a sky-blue color.
It was just that, though—a bedroom. The air that came out of it was colder than the air in the hallway, and there was a thin layer of dust covering most of the surfaces of the furniture that she could see without even going into the room. It had been unused for a long time.
Chanta’s face fell. She had hoped for a bigger secret, but as she made her way to the next door and found a similar bedroom, her hopes fell even further. She was sure that all of these rooms were going to be the same. It made sense. They were prepared to take in a bunch of new students, and this must be the place they were all supposed to start out. That was what the headmistress had told her, was in not? That this was the place they began until they could learn to control themselves enough not to hurt any other student?
But if that were the case, she told herself, then she would not be the only student down here, surely. She began to walk faster down the line of doors, opening each one without trying to be quiet. She was working on a time limit, and the slower she went, the closer lunch would come and the more likely it was that Maleka would find her snooping around.
She pulled open door after door, finding a bedroom behind each one. A pink room, a green room, a red room, and a gray room. That was the last door on the left side of the basement. She crossed over to other side of the hall and pulled on the doorknob.
And she was greeted with a surprise.
The knob did not turn. She had finally reached a locked door. The question was, what was behind this door?
She pressed her ear against the wood. She could hear her own quiet breathing, but nothing else.
She chewed on her lip and waited a few more seconds.
She wasn’t sure if the crying h
ad come from this room, or perhaps it was just a supply closet, but she couldn’t walk away until she knew for sure. She bit down harder on her lip as she contemplated.
Ever so gently, she tapped on the wooden door.
A soft tap tap.
She waited for a response.
Her heart skipped a beat as she heard a shuffle from the inside of the room.
Was it coincidence? Or did something live respond to her tapping?
She tapped once more.
The responding shuffle came this time with an added sniffle. A sniffle. That meant something alive was surely in there. Her heart was beating faster now. Faster with excitement.
And then, all of a sudden, with hesitation once more. Should she speak to the being on the other side? She bit her lip and looked around the basement, listening to the staircase again. Still satisfied that she was alone—at least, in the hallway—she studied the doorknob. There was a keyhole just below it. She knelt down to peer through it.
The hole was very small, and she could only make out a small bit of color at a time. She pieced together a blue bedroom, similar to the one she had seen before. This one looked empty, too, but not like no one lived in it. It didn’t look dusty and stale; it looked cold and alone, like it was meant to keep stimulation out. As she slowly scanned the room and gathered bits of every corner of the room, she saw no signs of life. The bed was still made, the desk was clear, and no dirty dishes were laid out anywhere. It was as if she heard a ghost sniffl—
An eye.
Chanta stumbled backward, falling onto the carpet in the middle of the hallway. Her butt hit with a soft thud, which she hoped no one heard. She waited a moment, her eyes fixed on the staircase, but no sound came from it.
Then she had to give herself a minute to process what she had seen.
An eye. Big, round, brown. It was empty, as if without thought, but somehow… intelligent. As if it could see right through her.
But no, Chanta told herself. She was being ridiculous. How could such a contradiction exist? She had to focus on what the eye actually meant. There was a human being behind a locked door in the basement. These people were crazy, they had to be.
She sat there, in the middle of the carpet, her mouth hanging wide open as she continued to stare at the door. She knew this was exactly what she had been looking for, but she was somehow too stunned to do anything about it.
This was it. The crying she had heard had come from this door.
Do something, she told herself.
Now!
But she didn’t move.
Seconds ticked by, but it felt like hours to her. She wasn’t able to make a decision. She knew that, at any moment, Maleka would come down the stairs and find her sitting there, in front of the locked door with a person behind it.
Tap, tap, came a soft sound from the door.
The sound was an echo of her own tapping. Chanta’s attention suddenly snapped to focus wholly on the situation in front of her. The echo was the noise that she needed.
Her legs, still seeming to act on their own accord, now lifted her body. She took a few hesitant steps forward, her body still crouched low enough to the ground that, when she reached the door, her eye was level with the lock. She took a deep breath before she pressed her face up against the keyhole.
This time, she did not jump back when her eye was lined up straight with the eye on the other side of the door.
A shaking hand reached up to the door. Tap, tap¸ came Chanta’s own, slow response.
Tap, tap.
The response was quicker. It was also lighter, she realized, as if the person knocking had a smaller finger. She decided it had to be a child, then. Who else would have a smaller finger than she did?
She gritted her teeth.
Tap, tap.
Tap, tap.
The response was even quicker this time, as if a continuation of her own tapping. A game? Chanta wondered. Or a conversation?
Tap, tap, tap, was her answer.
Tap, tap, tap, came the snappy response.
She waited a little longer this time. Her finger was still shaking as she held it in the air.
Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap.
Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap.
She still couldn’t decide: game or conversation? But it was time to make that decision for the both of them. She cleared her throat.
Then she gasped as the being on the other side of the door, too, cleared its throat.
She hadn’t expected that. Was it a game, then? Was it copying her, noise for noise, and would she have an unsuccessful conversation?
Did it even matter? She had to try.
She glanced toward the staircase once again. She had to try quickly, too; she knew that much. She took a deep breath. Her last conversation with a student had not gone so well. She couldn’t imagine how this one would go.
“Hello,” she whispered, making sure her face was far enough away from the door that her words would not come across muffled or hard to make out.
“Hello,” the being on the other side mimicked, repeating her word back to her in a way that matched the tone exactly. Again, just like the tapping. Although he did not move his face away from the door enough for a clear sound, Chanta could tell that, indeed, the person on the other side was a boy. He was a young one, too—no more than a child, surely. He could not have been older than her brother.
Unless something was wrong with him. That option seemed plausible enough, too, else the school would not have kept him locked away, Chanta decided. Though, what could he have done that was so bad, if they were, indeed, “Blessed,” as the professors say? She decided she shouldn’t judge this boy too harshly. After all, she would surely end up in the same position if she couldn’t get a handle on her “Blessing.”
She had to press forward.
“My name is Chanta,” she told him.
“Chanta,” the boy repeated back to her.
“Yes,” she said gently. “Chanta. What’s your name?”
“What’s your name?” the boy whispered back to her.
Her lip raised in a snarl—and she was glad the door was there to keep him from seeing it. This wasn’t going to be a productive conversation, then. He was no more than a parrot.
“What’s your name?” he whispered again, using the same delicate tone that she had used. “Douglass.”
“Douglass?” Chanta repeated back, hope springing back into her voice.
“Douglass?” he repeated back to her. “Douglass.”
It was as if he was repeating her words back to her so that he could taste them in his mouth. Maybe, she decided, it was his first conversation in a long time.
“How old are you?” she asked him.
“How old are you?” he repeated back to her.
She tried to hold back her annoyance. She couldn’t fault him for being treated like a lab rat. She didn’t even know, after all, how long he had been down here. Had he been born down here, maybe? Or just ruined? So many possibilities ran through her head faster than she could pinpoint any of them.
“I’m seventeen,” she answered him. She wasn’t even really sure if he had been asking her or not, but she felt the need to show him how conversation was supposed to flow.
“I’m seventeen,” he told her.
She took a deep breath. Or course that was his answer. It wasn’t even for sure an answer. It could have been her own response parroted back to her. She moved on.
“Why are you in there?” she asked. “Come out and play with me.”
The word play sounded peculiar even to her own ears, and even as she said it. This boy wasn’t necessarily a child. There was nothing to confirm that as of yet, and still, that was the word that came out of her own mouth. She wasn’t sure if she was just assuming that, or if some extra sense she had was telling her to use the word—that it would trigger a reaction from him.
And, indeed, it did.
His somehow too smart eyes suddenly brightened a little bit. She watched as
his focus shifted to from looking through the keyhole back at her to looking at the keyhole. He knew he was a prisoner.
“I want to play,” he told her.
She waited then, hoping for more. He fell silent, though, and kept looking back and forth between her and the keyhole. It became clear that she was going to have to prompt him further.
“I want to play, too,” she told him. “But I’m out here, and you’re in there.”
“You’re out there,” he repeated back to her.
It wasn’t a parroted phrase, though, she realized with great relief. It was more of a… a realization? No. It was a thought. He was trying to process what she was telling him.
“And you’re in there,” she repeated for him, finishing his thought.
His focus drifted away again. He wasn’t losing focus, though, not exactly. Instead, it was like he was contemplating the situation. Chanta let him think for a moment, waiting patiently as she kept a close ear on the staircase.
Suddenly, his eyeball snapped right back into hers. She resisted the urge to fall backward again. She almost choked on the gasp.
“Get me out,” he told her.
It was the clearest, most logical thing he had said yet. It was his very own thought, not a single word paraphrased from her. It was exactly what she wanted, and yet, somehow, it was terrifying to her.
“I want to,” she answered him when she finally felt the courage to. “I really want to, Douglass, but… I don’t know how to. I don’t know why you’re in there. Can you tell me why you’re in there?”
He made meaningful eye contact with her before he bowed his head. All she could see was his blond hair and freckled forehead for a moment. When he looked back at her, she thought, for the first time, that he was more than an empty shell.
“I have to be,” he told her. “They’re afraid of me. They say I’m too dangerous, that I hurt people. But that’s not it. They’re afraid of me.”
As he spoke, she could feel her own heart falling through her chest and dropping into her stomach. His voice was ominous and vague. But his answer fit with the purpose of the basement. If this was where the school kept the people they were afraid of until they were no longer afraid of them… Would she become like this boy? Locked away in a windowless room for the rest of her life?