Inspection

by Josh Malerman

  Ullman eyed the girl suspiciously. One eye got very small as the other, the closer, seemed to grow twice as large. “No girl has ever complained about the book before.”

  She’s scared, K thought. And with the thought, a brick came loose in the Turret of her mind.

  Did Ullman know of the second tower? Did all the staff?

  “Well, it’s not easy,” K said. “And it’s getting harder.”

  “Maybe your eyes need checking?”

  K laughed. Ullman did, too, then quickly stopped. As if she hadn’t expected to express positivity at all. “But I have no problem with any of the other books! And it’s not so much the letters, the words—it’s the numbers, Professor Ullman. And what is math without…numbers?”

  Ullman grunted. “What would you have me do, girl?”

  “I’m not sure. What can be done?”

  “Are you suggesting we print new books on your behalf?” Her voice seemed to be growing smaller, weaker. Up close and one-on-one, Professor Ullman was what Professor Hjortsberg might’ve called shell-shocked.

  K could relate.

  “Not on my behalf,” K said. “On everybody’s.” She leaned closer to the teacher. “I’m not the only one who has…said so.”

  Ullman fanned a dismissive hand. “I’m sorry. But I’m not taking a perfectly good book to the printer and asking for larger numbers. You’ll simply have to use a magnifying glass.”

  K smiled. “I’ll do it.”

  “You’ll do what?”

  “I’ll take it to the printer. Where is it?”

  K looked over her shoulder as if she might find books being run off there in the cafeteria.

  “Don’t say that,” Ullman snapped. But the fear in her voice didn’t transfer to K. K wanted to know how to get down there.

  “Why? Where’s the printer? I can talk to them. You don’t have to do a thing.”

  “In the basement,” Ullman said, gripping her shawl with one bony hand and pointing to the cafeteria floor with the other. “And there’s no way a Letter Girl is going down there!”

  “Ah,” K said. But she left just enough in the one syllable to suggest she didn’t buy it.

  “You’re not even allowed in the staff bathroom, let alone the basement!”

  Ullman closed her mouth fast. The staff bathroom?

  Why’d she say that?

  “You’re one hundred percent right,” K said.

  “The answer is simply no,” Ullman persisted. “Do you understand?”

  “Yes. I get it.”

  “Good. Now, go find a magnifying glass. Or talk to Nurse Simon about a pair of glasses, for heaven’s sake!”

  “Heaven’s?” K asked. She’d never heard the word.

  Ullman’s anxious anger fell from her face. In its stead was something much more severe. K had read a word that described the teacher’s expression in a Judith Nancy book before.

  The word was horror.

  “That’s enough,” Ullman said. She got up from her chair. “Now, shoo. Back to studying. Back to work.”

  Ullman hurried away just as Hjortsberg returned.

  “Hello, K,” Professor Hjortsberg said. “What were you and Miss Ullman discussing?”

  But K was still watching the thin, frightened math professor leave the cafeteria.

  “K?”

  “Oh, sorry, Professor. We were talking about textbooks. The math book specifically. I can’t read the numbers.”

  Hjortsberg frowned. “Hmm. I’ve always thought the print could be a bit more legible in most of the textbooks. Good for you for saying so.”

  The alarm announcing the end of dinner rang, and the Letter Girls gathered their trash and carried their trays to the cans along the windowed wall. K and Q made eye contact as K dumped her empty milk carton into the plastic bag. In that brief exchange, hardly long enough for two girls to do more than acknowledge each other’s existence, time slowed for K, stretched from one end of the cafeteria to the other, and she saw herself walking the first-floor hall, taking the staff hall to the staff bathroom, entering, walking past stalls, finding at the far end there another door, a darker one, one marked BASEMENT.

  She shivered as she imagined opening that basement door, then the Corner door, too, finding a tunnel there…one that led under the pines…all the way to—

  Q nodded. She curtsied as if to say, You’re welcome. It looked as though K had communicated something after all, as a dark shadow seemed to come over the cafeteria, as her bones grew cold, as she imagined herself doing all the things she’d been taught not to do.

  How far was she willing to go? How far would the discovery in the woods force her to go?

  Live like you’re in a Judith Nancy book.

  K tried to smile at this idea, tried to smile back to Q. But she couldn’t. And she knew that her inability to express joviality, even feigned, communicated something, too.

  The Woman Wore Red, All Red

  B didn’t like any of it. Not one bit.

  “The staff bathroom?”

  Both girls had just completed their morning Inspections. Both declared clean. For K, it was empowering, the way she could go places she wasn’t supposed to, think things the Parenthood would have found abhorrent, even lie, all without repercussion.

  There was a power to it. At only eleven years old, she felt all of it.

  “You should come with me,” she said, untangling wires on the bookshelf in her living room.

  “No way.”

  K turned to face her friend, because she knew B very well and the way B said no way sounded close to some way.

  “B?” She left the wires alone, stepped to her sister on the couch. “You wanna come?”

  B looked to the window. K could see the warring emotions on her face, as if guilt and adventure stood on either cheek, tugging her nose between them.

  “I don’t want to. No. But…”

  “But what?”

  “But I don’t think you should do it alone.”

  K wanted to squeal. But what she was planning to do didn’t warrant it.

  The Corner was down there, after all. Or so they’d been taught.

  “There’s gonna be staff down there,” B said.

  “We’ll go at night.”

  “What if someone catches us?”

  “Then we get caught. We play dumb. We play curious.”

  “I’m scared.”

  K sat beside her and put her arm around her. “So am I. But I can’t stop thinking about what we found out there and I—”

  “I can’t, either. How could I?”

  “—and I think it’s our duty to look into it. All of it. For the Letter Girls.”

  “You make it sound like the Letter Girls aren’t a part of the Parenthood.”

  K removed her arm, got up, went back to the bookshelf. She toyed with the wires, making sure they were connected well. Q had delivered the device earlier the same day. A third ear, she’d called it. You hook it over one of your two existing ears and you can hear the trees grow. She warned K that it could be disorienting, could make her dizzy, could also make her think someone was closer than they were.

  And the problem with that is, Q said, delighted by her own invention, what if they’re not as far away as you think?

  K tried it on.

  “Go ahead and talk,” she told B.

  “Hello, my name is B.”

  K reached up quick and took the device from her ear. “Ow!” she cried. “That was loud!”

  “Can you turn it down?”

  K shook her head. “Q hasn’t figured out how to do that. Hey…go out in the hall.”

  “Me?”

  “Yeah. Go stand by the Check-Up room door.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then talk to me. I wanna see how
far this goes.”

  K put it back on. She could hear B’s shoes on the carpet. Beyond that, she heard V and Y discussing exams.

  “Hello. My name is B.”

  K looked around the living room. It sounded like B was standing right next to her. Sounded like B hadn’t left at all.

  “Wow.”

  “Hello, my big bad name is B.”

  K laughed.

  “And I think my friend K has lost her mind. Can you help her? Can you help her find it?”

  K walked to the couch, sat down.

  “My name is B. And now I’m whispering. My friend K is crazy.”

  The thud thud thud of B’s shoes in the hall, and K removed the earpiece just before her friend opened the door.

  “So?” B asked. “Does it work?”

  “Here,” K said. “Try it.”

  * * *

  —

  AT NIGHTFALL, B returned to K’s rooms. The sisters were dressed in their Body Hall best: black slacks, black turtleneck shirts. But this time, black gloves, too.

  “You ready?” K whispered.

  “Yeah. Don’t ask me that again or I’ll say no.”

  They stepped out into the hall.

  “Okay,” K whispered. “We can do this.”

  “One thing,” B said.

  “What?”

  “If we discover anything really bad down there…I’m telling you right now I’m going to tell M.O.M., and I think you should do the same. At some point, enough is enough.”

  K nodded. “Agreed.”

  But as they walked the carpeted hall to the stairs K had taken at least twice a day for most of her life, she wondered how bad it might get.

  The door wasn’t past a row of stalls, after all.

  It was in one of the stalls.

  “This is insane,” B said, the two of them yet to enter the stall. There was no toilet in this one. Only a door.

  “What if it’s locked?” B asked.

  K held up a hand quick. She’d placed the third ear on one of her own, and B’s voice was deafening. She stepped into the stall, listening for anything beyond the door. Anything at all.

  She removed Q’s device and tried the knob. It turned easily. The door opened.

  They looked at one another for a few seconds before moving. And in those few seconds they seemed to age. As if the experience, from their first trip through the pines to now, had done something irrevocable to them. Forget the lying and hiding, the clandestine missions at night.

  In that moment K and B felt as if they’d grown up. A little bit. A lot. Together.

  “Okay,” K said. “To the basement.”

  But they both heard it as To the Corner.

  * * *

  —

  TAKING THE STAIRS was as nerve-racking as discovering the second tower. Despite living their entire lives in the Turret, the girls had never been upon these stone steps, never felt the sensation of descending from the first floor. They were different from the stairs above. As though the women who built them had stopped halfway. And below, the basement was lit by loose flickering light.

  At the foot of the stairs they paused, looking both ways down long cobblestone corridors where, far off on both sides, paper signs were taped to the walls.

  K tugged gently on B’s sleeve and led her to the left. They walked the length of the hall very slow. The weak light reflected in their eyes as they read the first paper sign they came to:

  REMEMBER TO KEEP THE LANTERNS LIT:

  A DARK HALL IS AN UNSAFE HALL

  K tugged B’s sleeve again and the sisters walked even slower around the first turn, then down the length of a second hall. A closed door broke the monotony of cobblestones on their right.

  “The Corner?” B whispered.

  K shone her flashlight on the door.

  BATTERIES, TYPEWRITER RIBBON, OFFICE SUPPLIES

  Typewriter ribbon. Both girls thought of Judith Nancy.

  She wrote the books of their lifetime down here?

  Now B took K by the sleeve and the two girls advanced, gripping each other’s arms. K thought of the second tower. She thought of J in there. Is this the way she went? Through these halls, then the Corner door, underground, only to emerge with different hair, a different body, a different voice, in a second tower in the pines?

  She imagined the overweight Inspector from that second Turret rounding the hall corner ahead. The hair on her face down to her knees.

  “Come on,” B said. B suddenly in charge. Hjortsberg had talked about this sort of behavior; she’d called it overcompensating.

  When someone is afraid, very scared, they often react by being overly brave.

  Whatever it was, K was happy for it.

  They continued, taking a second turn, this one to the right, where many doors broke up the cobblestone walls. There were more lanterns in this hall and the doors varied in sizes, and the Letter Girls paused to look. K put on Q’s third ear. She could hear the flames flickering. A bottle opening? Yes, the twisting of a cap. The unmistakable sound of a struck match coming to life. The sound of someone drinking.

  K grabbed B’s hand.

  The match. Someone lighting the lanterns? Someone to check all the lanterns?

  A dark hall is an unsafe hall…

  K moved fast, pulling B with her into the shadowed cover of a depressed doorway.

  Suddenly the idea of being caught in the basement, with Q’s third ear, felt like a very bad idea, indeed. She worried about B. Worried about Q. Worried about herself.

  She was doing this not only for the knowledge but for her sisters.

  Was she doing it the right way?

  It felt like she was. It felt like they should continue. Like it or not, there were answers down here.

  K removed the earpiece.

  “You hear anything?” she asked.

  “Let’s go back upstairs,” B said. “I think we’ve seen enough.”

  “Maybe.”

  They stepped out of the doorway, looked down the hall. Saw another paper sign taped to the wall at the far end.

  “Let’s read that,” K said. “Then we can head back.”

  But the length of hall looked very long to B. “I’ll wait here.”

  “What? No. We go together.”

  B inhaled deep. “You owe me so much for this, K.”

  “I know.”

  The two stepped out of the doorway and advanced arm in arm. They passed one, two, four doors, each with a name and an occupation. K thought of the staff bathroom upstairs. A door in a stall. More doors in a dingy dark hall. The Parenthood didn’t shine quite so bright from this angle.

  There was a door marked PRINTING. A door marked ACCOUNTING. Some included the names of women they’d seen upstairs. As if the staff of the Parenthood were no more than the trolls from Judith Nancy’s Under Things.

  “We’re under things now,” B said.

  When they reached the white sign taped to the stone wall, neither understood what it said.

  GLASGOW TUNNEL:

  ONLY TO BE USED BY MARILYN

  “Who’s Marilyn?” B asked.

  But K was thinking only of the word tunnel.

  “The second tower,” she said. “If we take that tunnel…we may come up into—”

  “Into the tower?”

  “We have to at least check the tunnel. We don’t have to take it.”

  “No. We don’t.” B pressed a finger against the paper. “Marilyn’s the only one who can use it.”

  “We’re not supposed to be down here at all. Why would we suddenly listen to the rules?”

  “See? That’s exactly what I was worried about. There’s no end, is there?”

  “I think there is.”

  K made to move, but B grabbed
her arm.

  “If you can tell me right now what the end is, what it could be, I’ll keep going.”

  “J,” K said. A crack in her voice was audible in its echo. “Come on. We’ve come this far. There are answers down here.”

  “Yeah? Well, maybe I don’t want them.”

  K eyed the length of hall. The entrance to the tunnel was visible, a dark oval amid the cobblestones.

  “You do,” K said. “But if you wanna wait here, that’s all right.”

  “I’m too scared to wait here.”

  “Then hold on to me. Nobody’s gonna get us. I promise.”

  “You can’t promise that.”

  “No. I can’t.”

  With B clinging, K walked faster, past more doors. They reached the black hole sooner than either wanted to. Above it, just evident in the glow from the flames, the letters, poorly painted, spelled: GLASGOW TUNNEL.

  K shone her light into the tunnel. Dirt walls and a dirt floor. No end in immediate sight.

  “Turn off your light,” B said.

  “Why?”

  “Someone might see us coming.”

  They both looked to where K’s light faded.

  K turned off the light.

  They entered the dark of the tunnel with only each other. Through the third ear, K heard their shoes again. She thought of the three miles it took to get to the second tower. Thought of the time that took, too. If this tunnel really went there, they’d be walking in this dark for forty-five minutes. That was too long. Each minute felt too long. What if someone were to come from the other direction? Someone with a flashlight?

  Someone in the dark?

  Still, the girls advanced. Soon K was leading B faster, the fingertips of one hand sliding along the left wall for guidance.

  “K,” B whispered.

  K removed the earpiece. “What?”

  “I heard something.”

  “I didn’t. And I was wearing the third ear.”

  “Well, I definitely did.”

  “What did you hear?”

  “I heard footsteps. Something. I don’t know.”

  The girls waited. They listened. K raised her flashlight, made to turn it on, but…

  Someone else’s light beat her to it.