Sisters of Sorrow

by Axel Blackwell

  There was no moon tonight. No candles glimmered here, either. Only the boiler illuminated this space. Its red glow radiated across the floor and fanned upward, highlighting or darkening the paths and obstacles according to its own unreliable intentions.

  The machines, great iron and copper beasts, hovered around her. They stood as mechanical behemoths, bodies without animation. Their stillness accentuated her isolation. In the daytime, these brutal engines had taken fingers, crushed limbs, had even eaten whole children. In the daytime, they roared and hissed, they shook and churned. Now, they watched in silence. Anna felt their eyes, and their hunger.

  She knew she must hurry, but felt it somehow unwise to run past the sleeping machines. She did not want them to see her fear. To her right stood a machine that stamp-cut patterns from sheets of leather. Last year, Samuel Upton was loading the cutter when his sleeve snagged on the conveyor belt. Anna could still hear his screams as the conveyor pulled him into its maw, and her own screams when the belt dumped what was left of him into a bin on the far side.

  Anna hurried past in a stiff walk. A pair of stitching machines loomed to her left. Their frenzies of needles had sampled the finger blood of every girl Anna knew. She wore several needle scars of her own. Two girls, a Beatrice that Anna did not know and a Sally she did know, had both lost lower arms due to infection from the stitchers’ bites. The needles now glimmered in the red ember glow of the boiler.

  She reached the boiler just as the bell struck the first note of ten. The boiler stood as the god of the steam engines, floor to ceiling, fat as a Buddha, complex and baffling, austere. Heat and hell-colored light radiated from an open grill in its lower front panel. As Anna approached, she saw a small alcove cut into the wall behind the boiler. No light reached that space and she wished she had brought a candle. The bell continued to toll.

  “Hello?” she said. “Hello, are you here?”

  “Shhhh,” came the reply, then the whisper, “Come back here.”

  Anna looked over her shoulder. The doors back to her hall were miles away, through thick darkness and a forest of steam powered killing machines. Whatever waited beyond the boiler must be better than staying here, better than having her body and mind gnawed down to a raw stump. Like Jeffery’s leg, she thought.

  Jeffery had been one of the head boys, one of the cute head boys. He had been trying to clear a jam in the coal pulverizer that fed this boiler. He had kicked the jam loose, but he had kicked a bit too hard. With the blockage cleared, the pulverizer sprung to life again and pulverized his leg. He didn’t scream, he just turned white, then chuckled. Anna remembered that chuckle, it was far worse than Samuel Upton’s screams. Jeffery was alive when they carried him out of the factory, but Anna never saw him again.

  She slipped into the alcove behind the boiler. No one waited there.

  “Where are you?”

  “I’m down below,” the whisper hissed through the broken end of a pipe. “I will tell you how to find me but you must listen carefully, act quickly and ask no questions.”

  “Tell me what to do.”

  “There is no way out of The Saint Frances de Chantal Orphan Asylum unless someone lets you out,” the voice said. “The key will do nothing for you now. This house was built to be a fortress, and so it is. It has only four entrances and the sisters guard them all. All except the kitchen, but that one has a bell on it, and it is just outside the sister’s quarters. You must lure the sisters away.”

  “Why are they so intent on keeping us here?”

  “Oh,” purred the whisper, “they don’t post a guard on your account. But, I said no questions, time is short. Come to me and you will know everything.” The whisper softened. Anna heard in it the voice of the child who spoke to her in the cisterns. “First, on the side of the boiler, there is a crank. Do you see it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Turn it clockwise until it stops.”

  As Anna turned the crank, she heard coal sliding down a chute into the belly of the boiler.

  “Now, there are a series of levers attached to pipes on the opposite side. Some are opened, some are closed. Close them all.”

  Anna worked her way around the boiler. Its glow darkened with the new influx of coal. She found the levers and closed each of them.

  “Just above those levers there is a pressure gauge. Beside it are two copper devices, a valve and a whistle. Do you see them?”

  “Yes.”

  “Smash them flat. I left a mallet for you on the floor, near your feet.”

  The mallet was heavy. With one stroke, Anna flattened the valve and bent the whistle. With a second stroke, the whistle ceased to be. The boiler groaned. It shuddered as if Anna’s pounding had awakened it. She stepped away, suddenly afraid of what she had done.

  “I’m not so sure that was a good idea,” she said.

  “It is a terrible idea. But this is a terrible place. Now listen close and speak no more. Let my words burn into your memory. If you miss one thing, you will be caught, and if you are caught, they will kill you. Listen and remember. We will not speak again until you are free.”

  Chapter 9

  “This will cost me another finger if your plan doesn’t work,” Anna whispered into the dark room.

  It’ll cost you a lot more than that, her other voice said. If you fail, they will kill you. That’s the only thing Joseph told you that you know to be true.

  She found an odd sort of freedom in that thought. Once they’ve killed me, there’s nothing more they can do. Nothing is off limits now. There is an upper limit on punishment, but the potential for wickedness is infinite.

  Anna had fled the factory after hearing Joseph’s instructions. The boiler moaned and growled, its red glow brightening to orange. The stitchers, with their needle teeth, hissed at her as she ran past.

  At this hour, the back stairs between the factory and the dining hall had been deserted. Anna slipped through the dining hall and into the kitchen undetected. Joseph had told her to wait here until she heard the signal. Rest, sleep if you can. Even if you sleep deeply, you will hear the signal. When you hear it, run for the kitchen door. It will be open for you.

  She found the kitchen door. It was nestled deep into a recess in the stone wall. A heavy oak beam barred it, padlocked into iron brackets on either side. Another padlock attached a spring to the door. The spring was fastened to a cable that disappeared into a small hole above the frame.

  That cable goes to the bell in the sister’s living quarters, she thought.

  A round window opened near the door’s top. Anna had to stand on tiptoe to see out the small pane. Beyond this door, wide wooden stairs descended to the loading dock. The little steamer bobbed alongside the dock, its lights turned down.

  Anna sighed and turned back to the kitchen, hugging herself. Her breath floated in the air before her face. I’ll be needing a coat, she thought, if I am to be outside all night. And food.

  Two coats hung by the door, oiled lambskin on the outside, fleecy wool on the inside. Both were too big for her. Anna pulled the smaller of the two from its hook and slipped into it. I’ve been swallowed by an inside-out sheep. It was something Lizzy would have said, and Anna felt an urge to scold the precocious girl. Well, at least it will keep you warm and dry.

  The kitchen was too big, too open. Anna knew she could not rest here, much less sleep. She surveyed the room a second time and found what she needed. Beyond a long butcher-block counter, a pair of plain doors opened into the pantry.

  Anna tiptoed around the counter and crept inside. It was a closet sized space that smelled of coffee and yeast and potatoes. A few loaves of leftover bread filled one shelf. Canned fish lined most of the other shelves. The pantry floor was devoted to sacks of potatoes.

  Anna discovered that her inside-out sheep had very deep pockets. She crammed a loaf of bread into one of these. The other she filled with potatoes. Having secured her provisions, she huddled under a pile of empty burlap sacks, listening, thinking, waiting fo
r the signal.

  He said it would be loud. If I hear it, won’t the sisters hear as well? Will they all be lured away from the exits?

  Not exits, Anna, that other voice said, he didn’t say exits, he said entrances.

  But what does that matter? As long as I get out. How does he know they will all be lured away? Will they all need to go check the boiler? That doesn’t make sense.

  Anna wrangled these thoughts, puzzled over them, all the while listening intently to the sounds in the old stones. She worried that she would miss the signal if she slept, but Joseph told her to sleep if she could. She burrowed deeper into the empty potato sacks and closed her eyes.

  You know what you’ve done, Anna, you are not a little girl anymore, her other voice said.

  But she didn’t listen. What does it matter now, as long as I get out.

  She hugged herself and worried and rocked and slept.

  Anna woke to someone calling her name. It took only a minute for her to remember where she was. The smell of fish and bread and potato dirt filled her nose. She lay still as death and listened. The old stones groaned. They seemed to pulse with anticipation. Pipes overhead vibrated and thrummed.

  Then her name again. “Anna Dufresne! Show yourself!”

  Not in the kitchen, but close. One of the sisters.

  Anna didn’t know which, and she didn’t care. If one knew she was out, they all knew. A cold sweat broke on her neck and arms. She curled into a ball, trembling, feeling as if she had been punched in the stomach. I couldn’t have missed the signal, she insisted. I couldn’t have.

  The bell tolled. Anna held her breath. It struck twice, then stilled.

  Two in the morning. I’ve been asleep almost four hours. She stared, wide-eyed, at the dark underside of a potato sack. Her mind groped desperately for a plan or an idea.

  What had Joseph said? Wait for the signal. When I hear the signal, the kitchen door will be open for me. What signal? Is the door open now?

  If I slept through the signal, it should be.

  She slipped out from under the burlap and gingerly pushed the pantry door ajar. Through the crack, she could see the recess that housed the kitchen door, but it was shrouded in shadow.

  Anna crawled out of the pantry on hands and knees. Her lambskin coat, heavy with stolen food, dragged along the floor under her. Keeping the butcher-block island between herself and the dining hall, Anna worked her way toward the door.

  The kitchen brightened a bit, light seeped in from somewhere. Anna could make out the frame of the door, its bar, its locks, its bell wire. Whether she had slept through the signal or not, the kitchen door was still closed, bolted, locked and alarmed.

  Then, the dining hall door burst open. Light flooded the kitchen. Anna froze. The long counter stood between her and the dining hall. Whichever sister had entered the kitchen couldn’t see Anna yet, but she surely would as soon as she rounded the counter.

  “Anna,” it was Sister Elizabeth, “if you are in here, you had better show yourself. Right now.”

  Anna slid to the counter and pressed her back against it. She looked left and then right, searching for anything that might save her. Then she looked straight ahead. Her lungs locked up. The pantry door still stood ajar.

  Sister Elizabeth saw it too. “Aha!”

  But, that was all she said. At that moment, the floor rose. A slow, powerful heaving of the stones lifted Anna. Sister Elizabeth shrieked, and apparently dropped her candle. Darkness swallowed the kitchen once more.

  A noise like nothing Anna had ever heard enveloped her, a deafening, grinding roar. Thunder crushed Anna’s eardrums, as if the sound had fingers, and was pushing those fingers into her ears. It came from everywhere. It was inside her, vibrating her organs, rattling her brain. Jittering her teeth. The rising floor wobbled, rippled. Seams popped open between the floor’s stones.

  Hell colored light, like she had seen in the boiler, bloomed in the windows. Everything in the kitchen suddenly moved, rotated. Only two colors existed, black and orange. Shadows spread outward, drifting in graceful arcs, painted by the fireball erupting into the night sky.

  And still the roar escalated. A burning filled Anna’s throat. She realized she was screaming. A saucepan bounced off her left shoulder. A heavy skillet hit the floor by her hand. Ladles and kettles and pots rained down around her from the counter top and overhead racks. Any sounds they may have made were swallowed by the terrible pounding thunder.

  Potatoes and onions spilled out of the pantry, rolling and wobbling across the floor like drunken marbles. Terrified rats scurried among them, darting this way and that.

  The floor stopped rising, ratcheting to a halt, then suddenly dropped. Anna dug at the floor with her fingertips, pressing her face into it. It fell nearly two feet, rippling and rolling like a wave, before settling.

  The roar began to subside, taking on a crackling, splintering texture, like an enormous tree toppling. Other noises surfaced in the receding tide of sound. Clashing, jangling, clattering. Beams snapping, doors slamming. The bell, high in its great tower, bonged and clanged and reverberated. And screams. Someone screaming very close to her.

  Anna remembered Sister Elizabeth and clapped her hands over her own mouth. The screaming continued. Anna peeped around the counter. Sister Elizabeth lay writhing and shrieking, pinned beneath a fallen oak beam. Anna decided she was thrashing about too much to be seriously injured, but had no interest in finding out for sure.

  She turned toward her exit. The door hung ajar, its frame sprung, its oak bar snapped in two. That was the signal, stupid. Run!

  Chapter 10

  Anna sprinted into the night. She flew through the kitchen door and plummeted into darkness. Her feet continued running, they continued striking the wooden stairs as they ran, but it felt as if she were tumbling into a bottomless abyss. She had been confined within those walls for five years, never once allowed outside. Now, Saint Frances was exploding behind her, the surf of the Pacific crashed just ahead, and a limitless universe of stars spiraled into infinity above. She was free, and it terrified her.

  As she ran, the stairs became a boardwalk became a dock, stretching out into the churning Pacific. Anna, dizzy and overwhelmed, trying to see everything at once, failed see how close she was to the edge. Just before the line where sea met shore, she ran right off the side of the dock, dropping, with a muffled thud, onto the soft sand.

  She rolled twice, coming to rest alongside a beached rowboat. Overhead, the empty void of night twinkled at her. Stars spun slowly. Anna lay on her back gasping cold salt air until they stilled.

  When her breathing slowed and her vertigo calmed, she sat up, facing the sea. Glassy black breakers rolling shoreward reflected the inferno behind her. Blood-red caps of foam rode these waves as they crested.

  A high-pitched whining, like steam escaping a damaged pipe, filled Anna’s ears. As this whining subsided, the calming hush of waves replaced it. She listened for a breath or two, gathering her wits, then turned to look at what she had done.

  The sight took her breath away again.

  Fire blazed from a pit where the factory once stood. Great stones and timbers and mangled machinery littered the grounds around The Saint Frances de Chantal Orphan Asylum. A few large pieces had fallen as far away as the upper beach, but the sand near the water was clear of any wreckage. The rubble cast long dancing shadows in the wavering firelight.

  The boiler had exploded. It had leveled the back half of Saint Frances’s southern wing. Anna sat, mesmerized. It had occurred to her that the boiler might rupture, but she had no idea it would explode so cataclysmically. People must have died.

  Lots of people.

  Just sisters, she thought.

  It was a wicked thought, but she rubbed the knuckle where her pinky used to grow and felt no guilt. Just sisters, what does it matter now?

  Children began emerging from the broken walls. One or two at first, then in groups, until their shadows crowded out the shadows of the fa
llen debris. They drifted around the wreckage, awe struck and wondering, looking at the ocean and the stars and the smoldering hulk of the factory. A few, mainly the older boys, pointed south to the forest, but none drifted beyond the bright ring of firelight. Not yet.

  Anna looked to the forest, where Joseph told her to hide. It lay two hundred yards down the open beach. Where she lay now, in the shadow of the beached and peeling rowboat, she felt safe. But, the icy sea was rising. When she fell to the sand, the waves were only outlines and highlights. Now she saw each one clearly, and some foam had already reached her. She had read about the tide, how it rises and falls. Her boat would not be beached much longer.

  Suddenly, Anna heard screaming. She turned back to where the children had been milling about. Sisters, dozens of them, poured out of the openings in the wall like hornets from a kicked hive, screaming orders at the children. “Get back inside this instant!” “Come back here!” “Don’t you run from me!”

  Children scattered, some running for the woods, some running back to the dormitories, most running with no idea where they were heading. They ran through the night, busting shins and breaking ankles on the scattered stones. The walls of Saint Frances de Chantal, even when blown to bits, refused to let its children go. The sisters fell upon them, shrieking like banshees.

  Anna knew she had to move. The tide, slow and relentless, advanced behind her. Abbess McCain and her minions swarmed the beach in front of her. The orange fireball in the pit etched their shadows across the beach, shrieking and screaming and thrashing and running shadows. A pagan carnival, Anna thought.

  She looked to the forest, far across the diminishing curve of sand. She had to go, but it was too bright. They would spot her at once if she ran that way. She considered the rowboat, but it was heavy, and she was not. Even if she could manage to get it into the water, I have no idea how to row a boat. I’d be a sitting duck.

  She surveyed the beach on the other side of the dock. To the north, the soft sand gave way to boulders and a high, craggy outcropping of rock.