Sisters of Sorrow

by Axel Blackwell

  When he finally did speak, he said, “So, why’d you steal the books?”

  Anna laughed, surprised. “I wanted to read them…” she said, “and because I was angry. One of our little girls died from the cold. Two nights earlier, Rebecca had shown me a hidden ladder into Abbess McCain’s office. We searched the place for extra blankets, or a coat, anything to keep little Norma alive. I found the books – all dime store novels and penny dreadfuls, books Abbess McCain had confiscated from the disgraced nuns upon their arrival – but we didn’t find anything for Norma.

  “When she died two nights later,” Anna shrugged, “it was kind of like, revenge, rebellion, I guess. I didn’t want Saint Frances to win every time. I wanted,” Anna paused, “I don’t know what I wanted. But swiping those books made sense, at the time.

  “It took Abbess McCain three months to realize I stole them.” Anna laughed again, but with no humor. “I hid them on the book shelf with all the other books, right on the main corridor. I put the skinny ones inside the fat boring books, and the thick books I shelved spine in, so the nuns wouldn’t know what they were.”

  Donny chuckled, clearly impressed.

  “Those were the best three months of my stay here. Not only did I put one over on the sisters – and all the other kids knew it – but we also got to read some of the wickedest stories in print.”

  Donny chuckled again, “Thought you said the nuns had been reading those books.”

  “Yeah? I also told you the nuns had dark secrets, right?”

  “Who would’a thought,” Donny laughed.

  “Anyway, somebody finally caught on,” Anna said. “I admitted, right away, that I had taken the books. I knew they’d figure it out eventually, and I didn’t want anyone else to get in trouble.” Anna’s spirits had lifted a bit, thinking of Rebecca and their little victory, but the happy part of her story was over.

  “I already told you what happened next,” she said. There was a sharpness in her voice she hadn’t intended. “They cut off my finger, and then they cut off Rebecca’s, just for spite. Her hand got infected. Two days later, she was delirious with fever. The day after that, she was dead.” Anna sat quiet for a moment.

  “I tried not to make any friends after that,” she said, the hard edge in her voice gone now. “I think I just gave up, you know? Saint Frances won. Then, when I saw a chance to escape, I ran and didn’t look back…”

  Anna propped her elbows on her knees and put her head in her hands. The broken floorboards above her reflected in the water around her feet. A slight twitch of one toe destroyed the picture.

  After a few moments, Donny spoke. “You said, before, that everybody was gonna die ‘cause of what you did. Is that true? Do you think they’ll just kill all the kids out of spite?”

  “No, not exactly,” Anna said. “But I blew up the boiler, and the factory. They won’t have any heat. And Abbess McCain won’t feed us if we don’t work. We can’t work if there’s no factory. With no food or heat, they won’t last long.” Anna paused, wringing her hands in her lap. “They already killed one boy, out on the beach.” A shudder gripped her. She bit down hard on the inside of her lip, determined not to start crying again. “I don’t think they meant to kill him. They didn’t mean to kill Rebecca… but she’s still dead.”

  Donny gingerly lifted his arm, intending to comfort her as he had before, but Anna pushed it away. She shoved herself to her feet and paced across the basement’s puddled floor, running one hand through her hair.

  “I put one over on them this time, didn’t I?” Anna said. “A real whopper.”

  Donny eyed her, nodding.

  “Somehow, they knew it was me. Abbess McCain accused me by name,” Anna said. “She’s got to be mad as the devil. She’s going to want revenge. And if she can’t find me, she’ll take it out on my girls.”

  “That’s why we need to get ‘em!” Donny said.

  Anna groaned. She dug both hands into her hair. “It’s a fortress, Donny! Stone walls, iron bars on all the doors, nuns guarding all the entrances…”

  “But you got out,” Donny pleaded. “Anna, I can’t leave Maybelle in that place. I just can’t. There’s gotta be a way. If you blew it up, maybe it’s easier to get in now, especially if you killed a bunch of the nuns.”

  Anna winced. She stopped pacing and dropped her hands to her sides. “I didn’t mean to kill them. Please don’t bring it up again.”

  “Sorry.”

  “There may be someone who could help us, if I can find a way to contact her,” Anna said. She suddenly felt very tired again. “Sister Dolores…”

  “One of the nuns!” Donny exclaimed.

  “No, well yes, but not really. She snuck in to Saint Frances, pretending to be a nun.”

  “Why?”

  “To…” kill her brother, Anna thought. “To… I, um, I don’t really know. Maybe she’s there to rescue someone?”

  Donny eyed her, suspiciously.

  “Sister Dolores might help us,” Anna said more resolutely this time. “And, maybe you’re right. If the explosion did enough damage, we may find a way in.”

  “‘Course we will!” Donny said, beaming at her with his obnoxiously infectious smile.

  “Stop that,” Anna said, turning her attention to the rim of the cistern in its dark alcove. “This is not something to be happy about.” She felt a wave of some indescribable emotion wash over her. It was the way she had felt the moment before she confessed to stealing the books. “Smiles like that don’t last very long were we’re going.”

  Chapter 18

  They stood at the rock-rimmed edge of the cistern, peering into the blackness below. The basement’s ambient light revealed the first four rungs set into the cistern’s wall. Darkness hid whatever lay beyond.

  “Do you think, maybe, we should wait ‘til morning?” Donny asked.

  “If we are going to do this, we are going to do it now,” Anna said. “It won’t be any brighter down there whether the sun is rising or setting.”

  Donny worked his way around the cistern, toward the rungs, until he stood at the back of the alcove. “Do you have any more food? Maybe we should eat first.”

  “We can eat as we go, Donny,” Anna rummaged in her pockets. “But if we start thinking up reasons to wait, we’ll never go down that hole.”

  She found two more potatoes, and, at the bottom of her deepest pocket, the iron key. She handed a potato to Donny, but didn’t look away from the key. There was something off about it. How did she have the key? She had dropped it during her flight from the dormitory. It had been in the straw beside Mary Two.

  Donny crunched a bite out of his spud and made an “mmm, mmm,” sound.

  “Sister Dolores gave me this key,” Anna said, wondering.

  Donny tongued the potato chunk into his cheek, “Thought you said Joseph gave you the key.”

  “He did, but I lost that one, dropped it in the straw when I fled the dormitory hall…” Anna said. “Then, I met Sister Dolores… and she returned it to me, but I don’t know how she got it.”

  Donny swallowed his bite of spud. “What’s it open?”

  “Joseph’s key unlocked my dormitory. I think this is the same key, but I don’t know. It feels different.”

  “Can I see it?” Donny held out his hand.

  Anna passed it to him.

  No sunlight reached the back of the alcove, where Donny stood. As he grasped the key and drew it into the pool of shadow, it began to glow. Donny gasped and yanked his hand away, dropping the key. It struck the rim of the cistern with a ping, then splashed into a puddle on the floor. Dim light filled the alcove, rippling across the ceiling.

  “How’d you do that?” Anna whispered.

  Donny backed into the wall and edged away from the key. “I didn’t do it,” he whispered.

  The glow began to flicker and dim.

  “Grab it, Donny! Before you lose it.”

  He looked at her, doubtfully.

  “It won’t bite you
. I’ve been carrying it around for two days.” Anna started working her way around the cistern.

  Donny pulled the key out of the puddle with his thumb and forefinger. At his touch, it resumed glowing. “Why’s it doing that?”

  “Maybe Sister Dolores bewitched it.”

  “She’s a witch?” Donny exclaimed. “The only friend you have, the one that’s supposed to help us, is a witch?”

  “She dabbles,” Anna said.

  “Dabbles in what?”

  “I don’t know, Donny! I don’t know if Sister Dolores is a witch. I don’t know what she is. I do know she helped me get away. She promised to look out for my girls,” Anna said. “And apparently, she has given us a light when we needed one.”

  Donny held the key out to Anna. “Witches are evil.”

  “It was your idea to go back. I told you it’s a bad place. There are some very scary people where we’re going. A lot scarier than Sister Dolores.” Anna did not take the key. “And Joseph is waiting somewhere between here and there.”

  Donny’s eyes popped at the mention of Joseph, but then he jutted his lower jaw and said, “I am going to get my sister.” He dangled the key over the cistern and looked down. A moth fluttered up out of the depths, but all else was still. “And you’re gonna get your girls.”

  Holding the key aloft, he offered his other hand to Anna and nodded at the iron rungs.

  “You want me to go first?” she asked.

  “Well, I’ll go first, if you want, but…well, I mean, I’m not too scared or nothing. It’s just…” Donny blushed. He looked at Anna, then into the hole, then back at Anna.

  “What?” Anna demanded. “You are the one who wanted to go.”

  “Yeah, we’re both going, but,” he motioned at the rungs, “it’s a ladder…and you’re wearing a dress…”

  Anna’s cheeks burned as bright as the boiler. She shot Donny a look that could have melted iron. “Give me the key.”

  He lowered it into her palm. “I just…”

  She brushed away the hand he had offered and climbed over the stone rim of the cistern. Pebbles and dust tumbled off the edge and dropped into darkness. Seconds later, an echo of hollow plip’s rose from below. Donny raised questioning eyebrows. She glared at him, but when he offered his hand a second time, she took it.

  Anna lowered one foot toward the first rung, scraping the toe of her shoe down the stone wall. Once she found it, she swung her other foot over the edge and down to the second rung. Donny held her left hand tightly. Her right arm was wrapped over the rim, with the key in her right hand. Her knees trembled. Her hands felt as if they could, at any minute, lose their ability to hang on. She clung to Donny’s hand so hard it must have hurt him, but his grip didn’t falter and she was very glad he was there.

  When she had descended to the fourth rung, she could no longer reach Donny or the rim of the cistern. She found that she could not hold onto the key and a rung with the same hand. Hooking the rung with her elbow while holding the key in her palm worked, at first, but then she wasn’t able to unhook her elbow once she had stepped down to a lower rung.

  Donny saw her dilemma. “Hold it in your teeth. You know, like how a pirate holds his dagger.”

  She thought about saying that she had never seen a pirate hold a dagger in his teeth, but held her tongue. She wanted to tie it to the string that had held her pinky, but that would require climbing back out.

  If I climb out of this hole, I may not have the courage or energy to try it again.

  She clamped the key between her front teeth, more like a thermometer than a dagger, and decided that having a key in her mouth was a pretty good excuse not to talk to Donny, at least for a little while.

  With both hands firmly grasping rungs, Anna grew more at ease climbing down. The rungs attached to the wall at regular intervals, allowing her to find them easily with her feet. The glowing key illuminated the stones directly in front of her, but the darkness around her seemed deeper by contrast. She couldn’t see her feet at all.

  “I’m coming down, right behind you,” Donny whispered.

  Anna grunted, “Mm-hmm.”

  “Look down, so you don’t get any dirt in your eyes.”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  She heard him slide over the edge above her. Small pebbles tapped her arms and the top of her head. She tried to whisper, “be careful,” at him, but it came out as muffled “s” sounds. He’s probably figured out to be careful without me saying so. Still, the idea of Donny falling past her or – God forbid – on top of her, sent a chill through her.

  “Don’t worry,” he called down in a loud whisper. “I can see your hands. I ain’t gonna step on ‘em.” Now that he was fully inside the cistern, the echoes of his whispers slithered back out of the darkness like a knot of phantom serpents.

  Anna tried to shush him, but that came out sounding snake-like as well. Donny seemed to get it, anyway, and did not attempt to speak again.

  The wall they descended remained vertical, but below the fourth rung, the walls to their back and sides curved out and away. The cistern opened into a half-dome shaped room, about twenty feet across. Anna stopped to examine the space. Both feet on the same rung, she gripped a rung tightly with one hand, with the other she drew the key from her teeth and held it out.

  Just as she began to get a sense of the size and nature of the room, the rung under her feet broke loose. Anna screamed, and dropped, swinging into the wall. Her hand on the rung held, but just barely. She grasped desperately at the wall with her other hand, her feet dangling and clattering against the stone.

  Above the echo of her scream, which pounded and resonated through the room, she heard a watery PLOINK, and the room darkened. The key! Her free hand found a rung. She looked down. Where her feet hung, a chunk of stone had broken loose from the wall, about three feet below that, black water rippled away into the unseen depths of the cistern. Beneath the surface, maybe ten feet down, glimmered the key, its unnatural glow flickering and beginning to dim.

  Chapter 19

  “Donny, the key!” Anna cried, trying to yell and whisper at the same time. Her feet scrabbled against the crumbling stone.

  Before she could say more, there came a clumsy flutter and whoosh from above – beside – then below her, as Donny plummeted past. He struck the surface of the water with a loud slap, and a long-echoing splash.

  Anna bit back another scream, focusing her attention on trying to regain her footing. The rung below the one that had dropped her looked as if it might fall out at any moment, even if she did not step on it. She pulled herself up by her arms, walking her toes up the wall until they reached the next rung.

  Below, the key’s glow dwindled. Darkness crawled out of the deeper reaches of the cistern, closing in from all sides around the small light. Anna strained to see Donny under the water. Ripples rolled over the surface, lapped against the stones, then slid back the way they had come. The waves distorted Anna’s view. She could make out a dark form backlit by the key. Or was it two dark forms? The masses dove toward the bottom, swimming down toward the glow. In the rippling dim light, the silhouettes and shadows merged and separated and merged again. Arms, legs, tentacles – Anna couldn’t tell.

  The forms wavered and shifted. Anna needed to scan the room, find the drainage pipe, before the dim glow vanished completely, but she could not drag her eyes away from the dying light and the shadow she hoped was Donny.

  Anna had been holding her breath since Donny had dived past her. A hungry ache gnawed her lungs. She let the stale air out and inhaled. How long can he stay down there, she wondered, I’m going after him…

  Then the light vanished.

  Blackness rushed in from all sides, so fast and solid it seemed to physically strike her. An airy fluttering noise chased itself around the semi-circular room, the echoes of her last gasp.

  She strained her ears, longing for any hint as to where Donny might be, terrified of what else she might hear. She peered down, praying for just a l
ittle glimpse of light. But the harder she stared into the tarry blackness, the darker it grew. It pressed against her as if it was dirt, and she was buried in it.

  “Donny?” a pleading whisper.

  The echoes taunted her, “Neeee…neee…nee…”

  A terrible idea bloomed in her mind. Just go back up. There’s light up there. Donny’s dead. You can’t help him. You can’t save your girls. Just go back up, where you are supposed to be.

  Above her, a hair-thin crescent of light broke the intense darkness. The cistern’s rim glowed like the corona of an eclipsed moon. Maybe there’s another way out up there. Maybe we missed something.

  “I’m not going back up,” she said. But she couldn’t stay put, either. Think. The pipe must be close to the surface of the water…

  Go back up.

  No! I’ll swim around the edge. I’ll feel for the pipe.

  Donny’s dead. Drowned just like Ephraim. You’re going to be swimming with his corpse.

  Shut up!

  What if you bump into it? What if it grabs your ankle and pulls you down?

  “Donny?” She yelled into the black.

  The echoes thundered back at her, deafening. Anna buried her face against her hands where they clung to the iron bar. If he is dead… “I’ll get Maybelle for you, Donny. I’ll try, at least.”

  Anna lowered herself, extending her arms and letting her feet slip off the last solid rung. She took two deep breaths, holding the third and prepared to drop.

  Suddenly, the room filled with light. Anna looked back, over her shoulder, and down. An unearthly bluish luminosity radiated out of the water. A black silhouette raced toward the surface, swimming straight at her.

  In her head, Anna was screaming, It’s Donny! He has the key! But her feet kicked and scrabbled and her hands clawed desperately for a higher rung.

  Donny burst through the surface, gasping and splashing, the key glowing in his hand. “I got it! I got it!”