by Sara Faring
“What’s the problem, girls?”
Mariella snaps her gum. “This is a crummy assignment, Miss Quercia.” She drops her pencil, glances at Silvina, who gnaws on the dry fringe of her lip.
“Thank you for your gratuitous assessment, Mariella. But it only asks that you think creatively. Surely you have a good memory on hand? Like the yacht you mentioned in your first composition, perhaps?”
“The yacht?” she replies, her voice wavering. She sucks in a gum bubble with a crack. I can see her mind whir as she tries to regain her footing.
“Miss Quercia,” Silvina says, a mischievous smile blooming on her face, “have you even ever been on a yacht?” She nudges Mariella, as if to produce a chuckle, but both of them look at each other instead, unsettled.
They’re rattled, the girls. Be it by Luciana’s absence or something else entirely.
“Is there another assignment we can do?” Mariella asks in a plaintive tone I’ve never before heard. She chews fiercely at her gum, awaiting an answer.
“No. And chicle.” I point at the garbage can.
Mariella rises, spits her wad of gum directly into the pail, and curtsies, as the rest of the class giggles.
All I can do is sigh. “To work, girls. Please.”
Twenty minutes in, while the others have written barely a word, Sara slides her paper forward on the table. She smiles angelically, an off-putting enough sight for me to say good work.
“Miss Quercia, might I read an excerpt to give the other girls some inspiration?”
Am I to trust her transformation? She is all sweetness and politeness today. I look around at the other girls, who seem to mirror my nervousness, but I urge her on, eager to give her a chance at redemption.
She clears her throat and reads:
“‘She’s in a room, and there’s a man above her. A man slender as the horizon line with fingers cold as ice. He touches her head, down to her chest, down to the space—’”
“Sara,” I interrupt, masking an internal shudder. “Enough.” I expect to hear giggles, but in their place is a terrible silence. Silvina’s cheeks have gone a shade of green little seen outside a frosted-over vegetable garden.
“You don’t love it?” A maniacal grin distorts her face. “It should feel intimately familiar to every girl here.”
I am dumbstruck. Mariella balls her hands into fists. We sit there as the seconds tick by. None of them will look at Sara, that beast of a girl.
“It’s about her pregnant mother at her ultrasound, obviously,” snaps Mariella, shooting Sara a look of triumphant anger.
I am so grateful for her interruption I could kiss her cheeks.
“Right. An interesting perspective, but we were looking for something more current.” I look around the table, desperate for someone else to speak up before Sara feels compelled to reply. “Have any of you chosen a memory?”
Mariella clears her throat. “Can we use class for inspiration?”
“If you must.”
She looks around at the others, whose eyes drift to their pages as if they’ve received a telepathic message, and they scribble away. They leave their papers in a neat stack by my place at the end of the class—all except Mariella. The rest of them file out the door, one by one, and then Mariella steps forward, her assignment in hand. I hold out my hands expectantly.
“I did try to remember a story, Miss Quercia,” she says to me, her pale face marred by deep undereye circles. “You have to believe me. I must just have a headache today because of everything going on.”
My heart softens because I’ve never seen her this cagey. “That’s just fine, Mariella.”
“Thank you.” She thrusts the paper into my hands, marked by her sweaty fingerprints. “I need to go check on Gisella and look for Luciana now,” she adds as she hurries out.
There is a carousel, it reads. I’m in my blue coat, and I’m reaching for the gold ring on my tiptoes …
She’s written about a passage we discussed while reading The Catcher in the Rye. And I don’t believe it was an effort to serve me attitude—I remember the fear marking her face.
* * *
The lunchroom is empty but for a meager stack of ham-and-cheese sandwiches. I linger for a bit, wondering where everyone is—feeling paranoid and excluded all the while—before taking a sandwich to my room. On the way, I try Morency’s door again, but she doesn’t answer. I swear I’m going to break into hives awaiting this meeting with her. I consider leaving a note under her door but decide against it after kneeling by her door for a good five minutes, note in hand. I’ll try her later, I tell myself. Tucked inside my room, I flip through the other sheets. The girls have stolen other passages and passed them off as their own memories. If it’s a joke, I don’t understand it.
I come to Sara’s essay. I hadn’t even glimpsed it, tempted as I was to chuck it into the trash. But I wonder if she elaborated on the page. I am surprised to find only a single line of text, written in uneven, intricate Old English lettering.
You are all fucked.
Gasping, I crumple up the awful paper in hand. Should I show it to Morency? What good would that do—proving I can’t control my students? Proving Carmela right?
But Sara can’t be allowed to terrorize the other girls.
I spend the rest of the afternoon before my meeting with Morency fretting—turning over ludicrous theories in my head about the nature of undead spirits, running my fingers over the spines of the prodigious book collection in the sitting rooms downstairs, hoping for a book to serve as my bible in this strange fight I am entering. I feel a stickiness on my fingertips, and when I pull away from the books, a pus-like mildew plasters my fingers. Upon closer inspection, it stains every spine—the darkness prevented me from noticing it at first. The books themselves are being eaten away.
* * *
Before dinner, I try Morency’s room again. Room 1, at the head of the hall. The door is double the height of the others—fittingly. Intimidatingly. I knock and wait, smoothing my wrinkled shirt, my matted hair. I don’t expect her to answer this time, either, and with a hint of relief, I turn to return to my room when the door clicks and creaks open. Morency, dressed in a haughty frown and all-black funereal garb that brushes the floor. She must repurpose extralarge, charred medieval witch rags for her outfits.
“You’ve kept me waiting long enough. At this rate breakfast will begin soon.” With a nod of her slicked head, she urges me inside.
I could eat off the floor of her mahogany sitting room, sparely decorated but impeccably clean, with its own unused fireplace, crowned by a cast-iron mantelpiece. Her bedroom must be off one of the other shut doors, long and skinny as Morency herself. There is a bizarre fun house aspect to her quarters. She settles on a chair, posture straight as a rod, and fixes her hawkish eyes on me, without gesturing for me to sit on the uncomfortable-looking brocade sofa to my left—a blessing in disguise. We are nearly the same height when I am standing and she is seated, a baffling trick.
“Luciana has run away,” she says, clasping her hands on her lap.
It takes me a moment to process her disclosure. I feel as if her bun has swallowed my own head and popped it open like a grape. “Luciana?” I step toward her, my blood flowing hot now. “But where could she have gone?”
“Nowhere,” she says. “Not with this mist. We will find her eventually. Mr. Dello Russo has been leading a large group of house staff around the property in search of her. You may join in after we speak.”
I am speechless: Have I been dallying all day while the others have been occupied with this? We sit in silence as she gives me the evil eye, and I struggle to grasp what’s keeping her from excusing me—what’s keeping us from leaping up and joining the search.
“I have heard it said,” Morency says at last, “that certain staff members anticipate the reprise of the house’s tragedy of some sixty years ago. I wish to relay to you that promulgating obscene rumors such as these will result in your immediate dismissal. T
alk of the virus is unacceptable. It upsets the girls, and it upsets the staff.”
The damned virus. I know in my bones that it’s a smoke screen used by Carmela and Morency to conceal the Zapuche’s true history here and their curse. But for a moment, I wish it was a virus. I wish these signs of spirits we’ve felt were … symptoms. Quite physical and entirely explicable. The thought makes me shudder; considering that I may be going mad because of some unknown, true illness. “I don’t understand what this has to do with me.” Unless she thinks I’ve been scaring the girls with rumors of the virus returning. She thinks I scared Luciana into running away.
She tut-tuts. “You mustn’t hide your sins now, Miss Quercia. Madame De Vaccaro is aware of your propensity for indiscretion.”
I pale, never expecting to be accused of a hypothetical crime I did not commit. “Ms. Morency, I only worried about Michelle to you in private. I never said a thing to anyone about a virus—”
She holds up a claw. “Do consider yourself lucky that I am handling this situation myself. It would be a shame to attract the attention of Madame De Vaccaro when she is preoccupied with more important matters. As punishment, you will go without your evening meal tonight. Stay inside your room after the search. Do not request food from the kitchen staff, and do not ask a soul to bring food to your room. I will know, and you will face a more severe punishment. Is that clear?”
My jaw hangs open in shock. She hasn’t said a word to me about sneaking out of my room at night, nor befriending Dom, yet she zeroes in on the most absurd claim of all. I’m not sure whether to be relieved or incensed, but my face smolders with shame. I’m not a child, I want to tell her.
She grimaces, taking my silence for an imbecile’s admission of guilt, surely. “I do not take pleasure in penalizing young people. I do believe that most intelligent beings learn from their mistakes,” she says. “In time. You seem to be the exception to that rule, what with your proclivity to speak at will without a care to the consequences—as a beast might, were it granted the privilege of speech. Consider this punishment a warning, Miss Quercia.”
I am numb: Morency’s flawed conclusions stem from her personal logic, the logic of the ruined and hopeless world she inhabits. “How very kind of you.”
I know it is a mistake as soon as I say it. Her mouth shrivels to raisin form at the hint of sarcasm. “Miss Quercia,” she says, “I am not a kind person, but I am a fair person.” The air hangs heavy around us as she fights a tidy, tiny grin of self-satisfaction and as I process the inherent madness of her statement. “Well then. Anything else?” she asks. “Speak up now, or we shall leave to join the search.”
I stare back at her. She was the one to ask me here, the one to rip me apart, the one to … well. I compose myself, tugging together the muscles in my face like I’m wrapping an odd-size package with string. Realizing her smug attempt at dismissal affords me a rare opportunity. “There is no virus. So what do you know about the Others in the house with us?”
She inhales sharply. “Have you lost all ability to form coherent thought?”
“I felt them, you know,” I add, ignoring her and gaining courage in my last-ditch effort. “Whatever they are. And I know you’ve felt them and fear them, too. That’s why you make us stay in our rooms at night. You know what I’m talking about—”
“If Madame De Vaccaro were to hear a word of your ramblings, the consequences would be severe, especially for a young woman in your position,” she says carefully. “I fear that you may have been overwhelmed by the requirements of your position, Miss Quercia—the need to behave as an adult, hearing you speak as such. Happily for you, I know that these past couple of days have been trying for you and the rest of the staff, due to Mr. Lamm’s attack and Mrs. Hawk’s sudden illness—”
My heart leaps into my throat, a choking mass. “So Mrs. Hawk was ill? She didn’t leave for a better opportunity?” I feel like a fool speaking the words.
Morency pinches her lips together. “She was ill, and she left without advance notice. That is all there is to say. There are more pressing matters on hand, such as the welfare of our girls.”
“When did Luciana disappear?” I ask, fists clenching. “How do you know she ran away? Couldn’t she be somewhere inside the house?”
She fixes both black eyes on me, wills me to avert mine. But I do not. Luciana would not run away. She wouldn’t. How could she survive on the hill alone, in the cold? Could she be staying with a staff member? Could she be—?
“Luciana left all her possessions in her room, and as such, I am certain she will return in due time. We are not discussing one unruly girl. We are discussing one unruly teacher. Now, I am willing to pretend I heard you say nothing. I do not agree to do this often. Do get some rest tonight, Miss Quercia, and never speak of this aloud again. You may take comfort in the fact that God has a plan for each of us, and he rewards the obedient. If one follows the rules, everything else becomes irrelevant.” She flattens back her hairline and rises to her full height, an ebony tower.
“But I need to understand why the rules exist,” I say softly, surprising even myself. How can anything as banal as house rules matter when girls and teachers alike are being tormented and disappearing?
She steps toward me, affording me a view of her chin, the refuge of one long stubby strand of black hair. “I must remind you that you are an employee, Miss Quercia. Could it possibly be a good use of your time to question the rules of this house and the philosophy behind them?”
For the briefest of moments, her question seems sincere. But I am reminded of her disdain for me most of the time, and every fiber of my being wants to pluck the hair from her chin in a petty little rage. She is maddening, a sphinx. I feel as if no combination of words I can conjure up will, when spoken, convince her of my good intentions, of my desire to help. And simultaneously, I remember my tenuous position here and her threat with regard to Carmela. Clearly, candor will get me nowhere with Ms. Morency. I feel myself fold like a paper figure. “You’re right, Ms. Morency,” I say. Her eyes narrow, convinced I’m making some pitiable play at humility. “I think we started off on the wrong foot,” I add. “I’m eager to do a good job. To do well by the girls. To be liked by the other staff.”
“To be liked,” she says, long nose wrinkling. “To be liked. What a lofty goal for an educator. You have entirely missed the point.” My mouth opens and closes as she shoos me outside with bony fingers. I swallow and move toward the exit, eager to escape the paradoxically claustrophobic confines of her giant-size room. It’s windowless, too, the sooty fireplace the only point of access to the outside world.
“And, Miss Quercia?” she says. I turn back to find her pointing at a large, watery brown stain on my skirt, unnoticed drippings from my tea this morning. “This is a house of education. Do try to look tidy.”
* * *
The fog outside is thick enough to taste; I feel a drizzle, too. Standing still, I cannot see my own feet; the cloud dissipates for mere seconds every time I take a step. I feel as if I am being smothered—it would be easier to swim. We conduct the search by forming a human chain, assisted only by a rope procured by Morency. The rope is our lifeline, especially as the cobblestones beneath us, once so even and immaculate, crumble. I am the link between Mole and Morency—Morency tugs me forward on the rutted ground, and Mole eases me up every time I stumble. There is no way Luciana could have made it far in this clouded hell. Every so often, Armadello calls out his own name, so that each of us may answer with ours in kind and ensure no one else gets lost. Carmela is not present: I suppose her excuse is that she is monitoring the girls, who cannot be permitted to join the search, either.
I sweat inside my coat. How are we meant to find Luciana when we cannot see one another? Lighting our lanterns only makes our trekking more difficult, lighting up our individual air pockets and blinding us further.
Mole and Armadello urge us to give up for the evening shortly afterward, and everyone else accepts this. Silly girl, I
hear whispered.
I spend dinnertime in my room, imagining no one discussing Luciana’s absence at all, the search long forgotten, just as no one discussed Mrs. Hawk’s disappearance. When the clouds consume one of us, everyone else seems to forget them. Sustained terror doesn’t suit the house’s private fantasy for us yet. I imagine Yesi, sparkling and bubbling with gratuitous wit, enchanting those around her. I imagine Mole’s conversations with Diana, in which she explains Gisella’s and Michelle’s conditions in über-anesthetized terms, translating their chilling description of a ghostly man into childspeak’s bad dreams. I imagine Carmela, toasting us all for remaining in a house that is degenerating—a house she may very well know is tainted beyond hope.
There is so much falseness in this house.
I haven’t any relevant history books in my room to piece together new theories about the house. So I try, briefly, to sculpt my future lessons into tools to distract the girls—to distract myself, too. Good literature temporarily pulls us out of a difficult moment; great literature suggests a permanent model for strength. So: The Giver. Only the Giver and his trainee are permitted to carry society’s memories, and everyone else is stripped of their collective past to form part of a colorless, emotionless world.
As I simmer and scribble, the air in my claustrophobic square room grows thin, and when eleven in the evening arrives, piles of ripped-up-paper confetti cover my bed like first snowfall. Enough. I come to my feet and slip on my coat. Fight it is.
I move through the hall with no hesitation. Hesitation will kill me here at night. But I do think to myself: Fool, fool, fool. Traipsing around without Dom, without anyone. The 1 hanging on Morency’s door glints at me, and the house itself remains suspiciously quiet, muting its own groans and cracks as if to goad me into exploring more deeply. I fold my arms across my chest and push on down the steps, skipping the missing planks. The ugly paintings on the hallway walls hang askew, as if someone’s knocked them; either that, or I’ve developed vertigo. I ignore them and march on. Soon, I hear the hum of the refrigerators. The ticking of a phantom clock I’ve yet to spot in daylight. The faintest rustling, like a rope dragged along distant floorboards. I shut my eyes when I nose into the stone hallway, counting out the steps that remain. Sixty steps. I know it now, and by treating it like a game, I hope to trick my blooming fear. I imagine a sunlit garden path, scented by roses. My foot collides with the stairs—disintegrating, too—overestimating the distance by a step. I open my eyes, glimpsing a darting shadow at the top.