by Frazer Lee
And then, with a muffled splash of liquid, Saffy clamps her other hand over Victoria’s mouth.
But somehow, despite this assault, Victoria keeps speaking.
“I’m dead already,” she says, her voice decisive and clear, “just like my case file says. I died in the gas explosion.”
I feel sick to my stomach when I realize that I’m hearing Victoria’s voice, but that it’s coming from the gray girl’s lips. It’s as though the mere contact of her hands is allowing her to be inside of Victoria’s head.
“I said you don’t have to do this anymore,” I say. “Stop now. Let her go and we can all go.”
The gray girl grins through dark strands of hair and then speaks again, in Victoria’s voice. “I killed my family, Emily. I’m…dead…already….”
I can see now that Victoria’s losing the fight. She can’t breathe. All the color drains from her face. Her legs flail beneath her, and then stop moving. I look at the quartet of phantoms holding her down. They’re abusing her with their spite, and draining her of life.
And I know what I must do.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Nature Versus Nurture
The gray girl looks almost as surprised as I feel when I reach her.
I don’t have a plan as such, nothing as noble, nor as fancy as that. I just have a – well, I guess you might call it an instinct. I’ve been watching her, you see, the way the gray girl’s hands clamped around Victoria’s head seemed to be the tipping point for her victim to begin losing the fight. And I wonder if I can turn a negative into a positive, somehow.
It’s worth a shot.
We’re trapped up here in the clock tower after all. Nowhere else to go. The only survivable exit is blocked by the four hideous un-dead things that are attacking Victoria. And I know that when they’re done tormenting her to death, I’ll be next in line.
She’s coming for you, they kept saying as they pursued us to this dreadful, lonely tower. And you know what? I’m not even sure if they meant it collectively. I suspect that I’m the main course in their murderous feast, and Victoria is just the appetizer. So I have to intervene to stop them from killing Victoria. Together, we might have a chance.
Like I said, it’s worth a shot.
I have the element of surprise. Dead girls don’t expect you to rush them, I guess. Annie didn’t, in the corridor earlier, and she was thrown down on her face. I’m hoping what I’m about to do next will have a similar effect, but on their ringleader, and she seems infinitely more powerful. Victoria was at my side to help overthrow Annie. I’m on my own facing the gray girl. But now is not the time for self-doubt.
Now is the time for decisive action.
I slam the palms of my hands on either side of the gray girl’s head. Her hair feels as slick and cold as pondweed beneath my skin. She’s real to my touch, and reality can hurt. She twists around against my grip until she’s facing me, her dark eyes registering surprise—
(Yeah! Surprise, bitch!)
—through the dank strands of her cemetery hair. She bares her disgusting, yellow teeth and I can smell her. She stinks to high heaven of the grave, of rot, and of ruin. I dig my fingernails into her head, just behind her ears. She jolts, and snarls in pain. What a sound she makes – a dying animal. And she loses her grip on Victoria, just as I hoped she would. Without a second thought, I lash out with my left foot. I feel Saffy’s face, soft beneath the sole of my shoe. She emits a strangled cry as I knock her sprawling wetly back toward the staircase. I feel a surge of elation as Victoria stirs and then elbows Annie away. With only Jess to contend with now, Victoria manages to get to her feet. Jess still has hold of Victoria, but Victoria is fighting back. If my hands weren’t otherwise occupied, I’d punch the air in triumph.
But my elation quickly turns to fear as the gray girl starts fighting back, too.
She clamps her rotten teeth together and begins twisting and writhing within the confines of my grip. Her hair is so slimy that I can feel her almost breaking free. If she gets loose, I know that she’ll gain the upper hand, and too quickly for me to be able to do anything about it. I can’t lose the advantage, not now that Victoria has managed to throw off a couple of the other girls.
I have to go on the offensive.
I grit my teeth and pull the gray girl’s head toward mine. The struggle makes my arms burn from the effort of just keeping hold of her. The act of pulling her toward me is excruciatingly counterintuitive. Every fiber of my being is telling me to push her away, not to pull her closer. But I focus all my efforts to get on with the horrible task that is – quite literally – in hand. It’s working. And, even though it’s an almighty, almost superhuman struggle, I manage to pull her closer to me.
All the blood rushes to my head, and I feel my temples almost bursting from the effort. I wonder if that’s what she feels, too, as I grip her head ever tighter and pull it toward mine. I wonder if she can feel anything at all. She growls, and the sound makes me think that the only thing she must feel is hatred. I smell the ripe decay escape from between her dead lips and almost gag at the stench. I have to fight against hate, whatever the cost. And what’s the opposite of hate? I redouble my efforts and lean my body closer to hers.
Until our foreheads touch.
There’s a sonic boom inside my head.
A psychic blast.
So much pain, and so much fury that it shatters the fragile mirror of my mind.
No, of our minds.
It’s insane.
I can see myself through her eyes, and I can see her through mine, all at the same time, overlapping and separating, and overlapping again, until…we are one, but not the same. The intensity of it rocks me from my physical reality, shocking every nerve ending in my body into submission. And I feel like I’ve been ripped from my body. I’m cut adrift in the cloying air of the clock tower, my sense of being divided into a mad sprawl of untethered atoms. I wonder if the wind that still blows steadily through the open arches will blow me away.
Then I hear a ringing sound and it’s so distinct, and so musical, that I wonder if the clock tower has a bell that I simply haven’t noticed before.
It takes me a few moments to focus on the sound. And when I do, I realize that it’s coming from the discarded music box. The discordant chimes seem to grow louder as I concentrate on their source. I’ve heard this tune before, but there’s a different quality to it now. As it plays on, I realize that the chimes are playing backward. And with that realization comes another sound.
Tock-tick.
The clock tower clock starts ticking in time with the music box chimes, also in reverse. The effect is such that the sounds seem to draw the air from around me with each shuddering, backward, tock and tick.
God, the chiming in my head is so loud now, it’s deafening.
And my feet start moving in time with each tock-tick. I look down and see that I’m walking backward, but I can’t feel my feet or my legs. It’s as though I’m floating above the floor as I move. It’s a horrible sensation, because all the while I am reminded of the drop from the open archways.
Then I come to a halt.
I’m standing in the open archway looking out over the wilderness at night. I can see my breath in front of my face, only it isn’t my breath – and it’s moving in reverse. The whole world seems to change, subtly. The black night sky beyond the clock tower arches becomes dark blue. I realize that I’m watching sunset – in reverse. The deep blue sky turns magenta around me, and then brightens to a pale gray. Clouds drift by, unnaturally fast, as impossible afternoon light creeps in around me.
Or rather, around us.
I can feel her shadow.
It envelops me like a cloak. The gray girl is standing here with me. And not just that, but she’s inside of me – and all around me. I can feel her. And the feeling is soul-shocking despair. A melancholy so deep
that it’s unfathomable. My vision swims and even though I can’t feel their cold, bitter kisses against my cheeks, I know that tears are there. We’re seeing through each other’s eyes and as I – as we – glance down at the ground far below, I know what’s coming and I’m powerless to stop it.
And we fall.
Into the rush of air that leads to the impermeable finality of hard earth.
We fall.
And keep falling.
That discordant ringing in my ears subsides as we plummet from the tower until there’s only a sharp intake of breath. Mine, or hers, I’m not sure.
And then—
I’m sitting—
We’re sitting—
In Principal Quick’s office.
Her manuscript lays open on the desk. ‘Girl A’. She made us her case study. But she’s barely started writing it. There are only a few pages. This must be a long time ago. We’re not sure because we don’t know how the past feels. We’ve been living the next day for so long now.
Sunlight streams in through the window. She’s smiling at us. Holding something up to the light. The light catches her eyes and they sparkle. She’s saying something to us and we do try to focus but we’re drifting again. We’re neither out nor in of this little room and its private meeting. We gaze at how the sunlight makes dust motes look so very pretty as they float across its beam, like fireflies. The window is open, just a crack, and the breeze that blows in from outside smells like Pease Blossom. Principal Quick places the something on the desk in front of us. We recognize the shape and the logo emblazoned on it. It’s a carton of cigarettes.
We hear her voice, then. It is soft and melodic. A voice describing a dream state.
(Are we hypnotized? It feels like we’re hypnotized.)
“Take them. Use them. They are currency in this place, and the dividend is friendship. Buy their confidence with them, one cigarette at a time. Tell me what they tell you. In strictest confidence, of course. Run along now.”
We run along, though we can’t remember leaving Principal Quick’s office. We run along to the recreation yard. We pretend that we managed to steal the cigarettes. Aren’t we clever? The others are highly amused by us. Especially Saffy. She smokes two back-to-back. Even puts her arm around us at one point. It seems to be working. We listen hard to everything she says so that we can remember it and then tell it all to Principal Quick. In strictest confidence, of course.
Yes, she made us her case study all right. ‘Nature versus nurture’. It says so in her book. We have a sneak peek when she’s pretending not to look the next time we’re in her office. And she gives us more cigarettes, more instructions. We follow. And they give us what we think Principal Quick wants. Only they don’t tell us the truth, they tell us lies. We don’t know that yet. They pretend to be our friends, but they’re not. We don’t know that yet, either. We won’t notice their conspiratorial smiles until it’s too late.
“Happy Birthday,” Principal Quick tells us, so it must be.
We don’t recall having had birthdays before, so we remain quiet. We watch as Quick opens her desk drawer and reaches into it.
“I got you a gift,” she says. “I hope you like it.” And her eyes twinkle, even though the sun isn’t shining today.
We wonder if the gift will be more cigarettes. We hope so, because we like it when the others are our friends. It’s a good feeling when they confide in us like they do. Spill their secrets beneath a cloud of tobacco smoke. Allow us to join in when they torment one of the others. It feels kind of grown up, you know, fitting in like this? It feels like friendship. And that friendship feels more real than anything else.
“Happy birthday,” the principal repeats. “You’re doing so very well. And I’m so very proud of you.”
She reaches over the desk and ruffles our hair. We laugh along because we feel how a pet dog might feel, only not as unconditionally grateful. Principal Quick misinterprets our laughter, of course, perhaps because this is the only tenderness she’s ever shown. She reaches out again. There’s a good little doggy. But this time, we recoil from her touch.
“You can’t make me snitch on my friends anymore,” we say.
We still have our bite as well as our bark, you see.
Principal Quick almost looks hurt for a moment, and then looks indignant. The sparkle in her eyes solidifies into ice.
“They’re not your friends. You don’t have any friends. You only have me. Your mother.” She withdraws from us and paces the small expanse of floor behind her desk.
We tell ourselves it’s not true. We spend more time with them than we ever do with her. They know us, the real us. She doesn’t. Whatever she’s writing in her book barely even scratches the surface of who we really are. Which is weird in a way, because by forcing us to play inmate with them, she has made us into what we are now. One of the sisterhood. A girl amongst girls-behind-bars.
She sighs, then speaks again. “I remind you that your father didn’t want to know. He walked out on me – walked out on the both of us – just as soon as he found out I was carrying you.” She pauses at the framed picture on the wall. Her graduation day. Her professor, and her former lover. “You want me to look after you, don’t you? Studying your disorder will make us both rich. We’ll show your neglectful bastard of a father what we can achieve. A new life, far from here. And you can have more new friends to play with than a thousand cigarettes can buy. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
Oh yes, my disorder. Or is it our disorder? No, mine. All mine. I’ve been thinking about that. What if I didn’t have a disorder until she decided to imprison me here with them? I never committed any crime. Never did anything wrong. Recently, in our office sessions, she’s told me that I did. That I just can’t remember. But I don’t believe her. I think every time she hypnotizes me, she makes me more forgetful, more befuddled. I’m not one hundred percent about it, but I think the ringing in my ears began soon after she started putting me under. I look at the smirk on her tight lips and I think—
(You did this to me. You made me like this.)
—I would have been fine if she had just let me go. And it’s such a clarifying thought. Just let me be a normal girl, on the outside of this forgotten place with all its fragile and forgotten fuck-ups. Well, now I’m one of them. And for what?
I see her absentmindedly run her fingertips across the surface of her book. The manuscript looks fuller now. The pages have multiplied as Principal Quick has unpacked each day we’ve spent behind bars. Incarcerated even though I…even though we have done nothing wrong. Nothing except the accident that was our birth. We wonder if we ever really were ‘Emily’. Maybe for a little while? Until the rot set in. Until Quick’s anger and resentment took hold and she saw fit to weaponize us against our father. Against the world. ‘Girl A’. That’s us. She doesn’t love us. Not really. We are just her ticket out of here. Each day of our lives more empty words for her best seller. She wanted to see how we’d react to being institutionalized with a criminal element. Well, the damage is already done. She gave us our disorder. And our disorder made us begin to shut down just as soon as we became aware of the betrayal.
Be careful what you wish for, I guess.
We leave her smirking face in her office and go back to the dormitory. The little music box is hidden in our pocket. A birthday present we can never use, because if we do, they’ll know what we are, and what we’ve been doing, and who we’ve been doing it for.
They’re waiting for us when we return. Saffy and the others. She sits cross-legged on her bed, flanked by Victoria, Lena, and Annie.
“How was your little one-to-one session with teacher?” Saffy says, and there’s something crueler than ever in her voice, so I don’t answer. I just swallow and wonder why my throat is so dry.
I’m on my own here. Vulnerable.
“Did she give you any cigarettes this time?” Saf
fy asks. She chuckles mirthlessly, and the others join in.
“I don’t…” I begin.
But I can see it on their faces. They know I’ve been snitching on them the whole time, telling Principal Quick everything they have confided to me in the dark. And it’s then that I realize my throat is dry because I’m shit-scared.
“Grab her, girls,” Saffy says.
Their hands are on me in a flash. Their fingernails dig into my flesh. I know that bruises will form where they twist my wrists painfully as they drag me over to where Saffy still sits, patiently waiting. She looks at me pityingly, then slaps me hard across the face. I taste blood on my lip and know that she’s split it with her first blow. Then the others rain down hard on me with fists, nails, and – as I curl up to protect myself on the floor – feet. My whole body becomes numb as they punch, and kick, and scratch. Their laughter rings in my ears. I try to call out for help, but I know she won’t come. This is just another part of the narrative in her book. Part of my life story as an inmate of her fucked-up reformatory. And the ringing laughter becomes a series of musical chimes. They’ve found the music box. Saffy holds it up close to my face so I can see it, even though my vision is blurred by my tears.
“Give you this, did she? For being a good little snitch-bitch?”
Saffy turns the handle, faster and faster, until the music chimes become a parody of music, notes flying off the handle. Then she stands over me. She drops the music box to the floor and stamps on it. The others laugh. Somebody spits and I feel it warm on my face.
Then they drag me into the bathroom. Saffy goads them on, telling them to take me to the mirror. They hold my head up by my hair and I can feel it being torn from my scalp. They make me look at myself.
“Take a long, hard look, bitch.” Saffy grips my chin and holds it up.
I can see myself in the mirror, but I don’t recognize my face through the blood.
“You’re not ‘one of us’,” she says, her hateful mouth intimately close to my ear. “You’re nothing. You’re pathetic. And mark my words. Each and every day you spend with us in this shithole will be – from now on – a living hell.” She unclamps her hand from my jaw, letting my head drop. “Flush her, girls.”