Sisters of Sorrow

by Axel Blackwell

  Anna still trembled, now with relief, and felt near to fainting. She gulped air through her mouth and exhaled slowly through her nose, willing herself not to vomit.

  Sister Elizabeth, she told herself, nothing to fear here but the sister. Which means move, and quickly. Anna wriggled forward, elbowing her way through small nests of seaweed and bits of driftwood. The pipe’s slight downslope sped her progress.

  “Anna!’ Sister Elizabeth called into the pipe. “Anna, have you reached the iron grate?”

  Her voice bounced back, from all sides, above and below. Again, Anna felt disoriented, she had a natural urge to turn toward the voice, but the pipe confined her. She opened her mouth to answer, but a fresh wave of echoes spiraled at her out of the darkness, “Anna?” overlapping “..ate” overlapping “…iron,” in waves of copied words.

  When the phantom words stilled, Anna answered, in a quiet voice, “I can’t see it, but I see the blockage.”

  Sister Elizabeth grunted, then said, “You fill this cart by noon and you’ll get lunch. Otherwise you get nothing. If you continue to dawdle, you’ll spend the night down here,” she paused to let the echoes die, then added, “and if it rains tonight, the devil may have you. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Sister Elizabeth said nothing more. Her heels clacked on stone as she walked out of the room. As soon as the door shrieked closed, the draft stopped, and the mist began to reassert itself. Anna had seen the blockage, but it was at the very edge of her vision. She determined to reach it before the fog completely blocked it from her view.

  On her return trip, crawling backward, she would not be able to see where she was going regardless of light or fog. And that would be fine, she already knew what was behind her. But she was loath to grope blindly into the fog and unknown again.

  Within a few minutes, Anna reached a tangled heap of brown kelp. The mass obstructed more than half the diameter of the pipe. She shoveled handfuls of the slick guck into her sack. The mist engulfed her again. Her effort drove the chill from her body, warmed her even, until steam rose off her skin. The mist no longer bothered Anna. She had seen a little way beyond this blockage to another pile of debris a few yards further down the pipe. Nothing lurked close enough to reach through the fog and touch her.

  When she had filled her sack, she squirmed and wriggled and inched backward. It seemed like an eternity before she found a means of efficiently backing up a sloping, slippery pipe while dragging a fifty-pound sack of kelp.

  The bell tolled ten o’clock as she dragged her sopping sack out of the pipe. A wooden cart waited for her in the drainage chamber. The kelp filled about a third of it. She had two hours to fill the rest. It should be enough time, but time wasn’t the only factor. She had already rubbed the skin off her elbows. Her knees were hard with calluses, but she knew they would also be bloody by the end of the day.

  Anna looked at her hands, gloved, and her feet, shoed. She quickly stripped the laces out of her shoes and after a few minutes of experimentation, fashioned her laces and gloves into a pair of elbow pads. That will help, she thought, but what else?

  She looked longingly at the door. Either Sister Elizabeth had locked it, or she had intentionally left it unlocked to tempt her. Anna had no intention of trying it. If it had been left unlocked as a trap, she knew she would probably fall for it. The call of the Pacific was even stronger than her loathing for the pipe.

  But, there was the peep window. Anna stuck her finger through the little bars in the window and slid the shutter open. Why would you need a peep window into this room? To check if the room was flooded, perhaps. Could there be another reason? Sister Elizabeth made me enter the room first, even after checking the window.

  But Anna abandoned these thoughts as soon as she felt a draft wafting through the little window – a draft that would keep the tunnel clear of fog. She wedged a chunk of debris between the bars to hold it open. Then, taking a deep breath, she plunged back into the pipe.

  Anna made three more trips down and back up the pipe without incident. She heaped debris into the cart until it could hold no more. Her impromptu elbow pads held up better than she had hoped and her knees were breaking down about as she had expected. The knees didn’t bother her much, though, because she couldn’t feel them. Her fingers, too, were numb with cold.

  Noon came and went without an appearance from either Sister Elizabeth or lunch. Anna was disappointed but not surprised. The sisters always honored their promises, in their own way, to the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and such. Anna knew if she kept working, they would feed her eventually.

  When lunch finally arrived, Anna was at the bottom of the pipe. The bell struck one as she shoveled driftwood and fish parts into her sack. Sounds traveled to her down the pipe, the familiar clatter of the door screeching open, an annoyed grunt, then the clank of a metal plate on the stone floor. She held her breath and listened. The door opened again, then slammed. There came a second, smaller slamming noise, the peep window being closed.

  She had reached the iron grate, though the last clot of sea junk partially obscured it. Rust had diminished it to a net of lumpy wires, but they appeared to be intact. Her sack wasn’t full, and if she filled it, she could nearly call the job done, but hunger was louder than logic. She scrambled out of the pipe, leaving her sack and trowel behind.

  Lunch was toast and fish stew, the same as every lunch she had eaten over the past five years, except that today the stew was cold. She consumed it before she knew she had started, and downed the tin cup of water in a single guzzle. Not until it was gone did she realize how thirsty she had been, and still was.

  There is plenty of water here, somewhere. This is where all the water comes from, but how do I get it?

  On the far wall of the chamber, water glistened around the edges of the iron plate. It dripped from a slimy film of algae and rust that grew around the plate’s seams. Rust streaked the lower half of the wall. It bore other marks as well, wear marks, grooves worn into the iron.

  It’s a drainage control gate for the cisterns, Anna thought, a flush mechanism.

  A narrow gap ran along the top edge of the plate. Beyond the iron wall lay another chamber, a chamber full of fresh water.

  Anna examined the lift chain and the huge gears of the apparatus. A locking lever and ratchet device held the plate in place. A vertical strip of iron teeth ran from floor to ceiling along one side of the plate. A wheel gear engaged these teeth and was in turn engaged by the ratchet lever.

  Anna squeezed the ratchet catch and let the locking lever drop one notch. The plate slid down about an inch. She hooked her fingers over the top of the plate, stood on her tippy-toes and peered into the space beyond, a square channel receding into the darkness. Water rippled a few inches below the top edge of the iron plate. She returned to the lever and lowered the plate two clicks more. The gap widened enough for her to reach over and fill her cup.

  The water tasted sweet, so sweet she filled and emptied her cup again, and again. The fourth time she dipped into the water, she heard, for the first time in hours, the echoes. She had tuned them out as she worked, but these echoes were clearer, closer even, and very disturbing.

  She froze and listened. Myriads of ducts conveyed the noise of machinery and conversation from all quarters of the orphanage to this point. But the conversation she heard now seemed so much more distinct.

  Anna wedged her foot into one of the cogs on a large gear wheel and pushed herself up until she could squeeze her head through the opening above the plate. Water filled the room beyond. Anna could not see how far back the cistern went, but she guessed it was vast. Her lamp light did not reach the far wall. Holes riddled the domed ceiling of this room, regular circle or square shaped holes. Many of them dripped water.

  The walls of this room, the cistern Anna decided, angled outward away from the iron plate. A ledge, maybe eighteen inches wide, ran along the walls, just above the water. Small rectangular holes penetrated the wa
lls just above this ledge. Discoloration surrounding the openings indicated that water often flowed into the cistern through them, though they were dry just now. After a moment, Anna understood. These were the downspouts. These pipes led to the roofs and gutters where rain collected.

  And the voices, the echoes through these pipes, must be from someone speaking near one of those downspouts. Someone on the roof? But that didn’t make sense. Then she remembered Sister Eustace’s patio. A grand patio like that would have gutters. Suddenly she realized if I’m hearing conversations from one of the patios, it must be either Abbess McCain, or one of her proprietresses.

  The voices rose and fell, distance and bizarre acoustics garbled the individual words, but the tone of the conversation was clear: ambition, conspiracy, treachery.

  Anna’s head was already through the opening and, as Jane frequently pointed out, her head was the thickest part of her. She worked her scrawny chest onto the top of the plate, walking her toes up the cogs of the gear. Then hoisted herself over the lip and slid out onto the narrow ledge.

  Anna crept along the edge, worm crawling at first, then carefully, ever so carefully, rising to a hands-and-knees crawl. She put her ear to each of the downspout openings as she came to them. A fat white frog leapt out of the third pipe, squeaking loudly as it flew past her face.

  Anna let out half a squeak of her own before clamping one hand over her mouth. The frog splashed into the black water and disappeared. Anna tottered on the ledge, almost falling in herself. Only by flopping flat on her belly did she managed to stay on the ledge.

  For several seconds she, lay flat on the stone, her heart slamming against the inside of her ribcage. This is stupid, Anna, get back to where you belong, she thought, and she was right. But just then, voices started up again. Very close now. Intrigue permeated the conversation’s tone. Secrets were being passed, big secrets, and Anna was so close. She scooted forward again, just a few feet, to the fourth pipe.

  With her ear to the hole, Anna recognized Abbess McCain’s voice at once. “Are your sure?”

  “No, not entirely,” said the second voice, one Anna did not know, “but her story lacks credibility.”

  “Yes, it does, and so does her telling of her story. Sister Dolores does not strike me as either strong-willed or incorrigible.”

  The other voice laughed. “I can’t even call her devious, though she is trying to be such.”

  “Has she given any indication of her true purpose?” Abbess McCain asked.

  “No, but I would speculate that she intends to smuggle someone off the island… Or, perhaps she is trying to make a name for herself as a reformer, a crusader against child labor.”

  “Hmmm…” McCain paused. Anna pictured her pacing the room, deep in thought. “Has she indicated special interest in any of the children, or any of the newer sisters who have been sent to us?”

  The other voice didn’t respond immediately, and in the pause, a new noise put Anna’s heart in her throat. Sister Elizabeth’s keys jangled outside the drainage room door.

  Abbess McCain and the other voice may have continued speaking, but Anna heard none of it. Her muscles went as rigid and cold as icicles. She slapped the cover closed on her lamp. Thoughts blew through her mind like flakes in a blizzard.

  Will she notice the iron plate is lowered?

  No. I only moved it a few inches, and she is a dunce. All of my tools are at the bottom of the pipe. She will assume I’m there as well.

  What if she calls to me? Will the echoes fool her?

  Probably not.

  Anna heard the key turn and the lock click.

  If she calls to me, if I have to speak to her, she will know where I am.

  And then what?

  Only one answer came. And then she will kill me. That is all.

  I could lie. I could tell her I finished cleaning the pipe and decided to clean in here…

  But, that wouldn’t work. And then she will kill me.

  There would not be time for a single word of explanation, not with Sister Elizabeth.

  The moment she sees that I am not where she put me, she’ll beat me senseless and then drown me, right here in this room. She’ll hold my head under water until my eyes roll up and my lips turn blue.

  Anna knew exactly what a drowned child looked like. She had seen it before.

  She thought of the echoes in the pipe, the ghosts of voices wandering through the dark, lost in the lightless catacombs forever. In the deep pool, she saw – with dreadful clarity – Sister Elizabeth thrusting her head under that black water. She felt the sister’s sinewy fingers clutching her hair so she couldn’t get away.

  Will my ghost be trapped like those echoes?

  What a lonely place to haunt.

  The drainage chamber door screeched open.

  Unless you kill her.

  This new thought electrified Anna. I can’t… But she knew she could. She saw it as clearly as she had seen Sister Elizabeth drowning her. The sister would call for her. Anna would not answer. Sister Elizabeth would shout down the pipe at her, probably throw a pebble down as well. While she was thus engaged, Anna would slip out of the cistern and fully release the ratchet lever. The iron plate would drop to the floor, thousands of gallons of rain would crash into the drainage chamber. Sister Elizabeth, with her head already in the pipe, would be washed away in the deluge, crammed and contorted down the length of the pipe and finally crushed against the grate.

  Anna trembled all over with the vision. Adrenaline spiked as her terror gave way to a wild excitement she had never known. The welts on her face and forearms and thigh flared. The knuckle where her pinky should have been throbbed. The black void of grief inside her swelled, swallowing her heart and lungs and guts.

  Part of her brain still screamed I can’t kill her. But that was the little girl part, and Anna was done being a little girl. I won’t die like that. I can’t stay here anymore. It occurred to her that she might also be swept away, but that didn’t seem to be of much consequence just now.

  She crept to the edge of the gap, staying just out of view. Sister Elizabeth’s shoes clacked across the wet floor. Anna waited.

  And what will you do once you really are a murderer? The little girl voice asked.

  She thought of the warehouse, the dock, and the boat. She thought of the Pacific.

  You don’t know how to drive a boat. But that didn’t seem to be of much consequence, either.

  “Anna!” Sister Elizabeth finally called, “Anna, haven’t you finished yet?”

  Anna poised at the gap.

  Please don’t, the little girl voice begged.

  She visualized the sister bending down to peer into the pipe. The next sound would be the sister calling her name. I will be swift as an adder. She hoped the noise of her echoing name would cover any sound of her movement.

  “Sister Elizabeth?” A child’s voice called out of the drainage pipe. Anna gasped. The voice from the pipe continued, “Sister Elizabeth, I’m nearly finished.”

  “What is taking so long?” the sister called. “You ought to have been done an hour ago!”

  Anna gaped around the inside of the cistern. She held a hand in front of her face and stared at it.

  I am here. I am not in the pipe. She clapped the hand over her mouth and thought. I am not speaking, as the voice continued.

  “There is a branch stuck in the grate, Sister Elizabeth. It’s stuck real good, but I almost got it.”

  That’s a boy’s voice, Anna realized, that’s a boy’s voice, but Sister Elizabeth is too dense to notice.

  “Well, I am much too busy to come checking up on you every ten minutes. If you want to miss dinner, that’s just fine by me. I’m sending a troop of boys down to haul this mess out of here. If you are not finished by the time they arrive, you will spend the night in this hole.”

  “Oh, I’m quite sure I’ll be done by then.”

  “Humph,” Sister Elizabeth’s shoes clacked away. The door screeched, and the bol
ts clicked into their holes.

  Chapter 4

  Curiosity had driven Anna through the gap to eavesdrop on Abbess McCain. Curiosity had often overpowered her better judgment, and she wore the scars to prove it. But now, with her nerves as tight as piano wire, her wits as frayed as her old shawl, and every ounce of adrenaline spent, curiosity held no power over her.

  None at all.

  She had no interest in discovering whose voice had answered Sister Elizabeth from the pipe. If she went to her grave without ever knowing, that would be fine with her – so long as it wasn’t today.

  “I wouldn’t really have done it,” she said to her reflection in the dark water. Her face peered out of the pool at her. It seemed to float below the surface. In the sallow glow of her miner’s lamp, her skin was sickly yellow, it alternately distended and shrunk with the slow ripples.

  That’s what you would have looked like after she drowned you, her mind replied. Just like little Ephraim.

  Anna didn’t say anything to that. She didn’t think anymore, either. She reverted to the quasi-catatonic state that typified the little ones in her care. No questions, no forethought, no introspection, just do the next thing that must be done.

  The next thing that must be done was simple. She slid through the gap into the drainage chamber, surprised to see that nothing had changed. Every aspect of the room stood exactly as she had left it. Though she had been in the cistern for mere minutes, Anna felt as if she hadn’t been here, in the drainage chamber, for a very long time. Not since she was a little girl.

  Memory came to her one bit at a time.

  What must I do, now?

  Retrieve the trowel and gunnysack.

  Where are they?

  At the end of the drainage pipe.

  Is there a boy in the pipe?

  I don’t think so.

  She bent to the pipe and crawled inside. The echoes and whispers and mist danced around her, but she didn’t notice. Over and over in her mind, she saw Sister Elizabeth being crushed and dismembered by the torrent of water, saw her being propelled in a crumpled ball through the narrow pipe. It horrified her now. She was weak and sick with the dread of what she had nearly done. Her body ached in every joint, worse than she could remember ever aching. Her head pounded and her knees bled.