Sisters of Sorrow

by Axel Blackwell

  “I underestimated McCain’s resolve, and her cruelty. In the end, she got nothing from me, not a word…well, not a word I can repeat in mixed company.” Dolores gave Donny a suspicious eye. “She got nothing from me, but from little Joey, she took a hand. Hacked it off with a meat cleaver. Right in front of me.”

  Anna had to look away. She examined her own hand, recalling the terror of the day she lost her pinky. McCain lecturing, waving the knife, accusing. McCain laying the blade across Anna’s wrist. Do you know, little Anna, what the Arabs do with a thief? Anna nodded, she had read about it in one of the stolen books. McCain pressing the cold edge into Anna’s wrist, increasing pressure bit by bit until a tiny trickle of blood seeped from beneath the blade. But we are a civilized country, Anna, a Christian country. We are not that cruel here… McCain moving the cleaver toward Anna’s little finger. She knew what happened next, but the details had been swallowed by pain.

  Anna felt Dolores staring at her, knowing her thoughts. When she looked up, Dolores continued. “I had a week, McCain said, to remember all the names I knew, because as soon as Joey was out of the infirmary, we were to start the interrogations all over again.

  “Joey never made it out of the infirmary.” She swallowed and her throat clicked. The flask trembled in her white-knuckle grasp. “His stump took infection. By the second night, he was delirious with fever. The sisters wouldn’t let me see him. Of course they wouldn’t, you know how this place is. But, as I told you, I had learned much from my mother.

  “I made use of this simple glamour,” Dolores’s face changed to Eustace, then to McCain, then back to herself, “and sneaked into Joey’s room. As soon as I saw him, I knew. His skin had gone milk white. He was covered in sweat and trembling all over. I felt the heat of his fever from across the room. I knew he was dying.

  “I couldn’t let that happen. So, I did the only thing I knew to do. I cast a spell.” Dolores’s lips trembled and her voice hushed as she spoke the word spell.

  “It was an incantation from mother’s forbidden book. I, um, found it, one day, about a year before my parents were murdered. The spell, that is, an interesting incantation, a fascinating little string of words. I had to have that spell, but I knew I’d likely never see it again, so I did exactly as you would have done.” She stared at Anna.

  “You memorized it.” The words turned Anna’s insides cold as she spoke them.

  “Exactly!” Dolores smiled a real smile this time. “I memorized it. Something about those words, I felt like I needed them. The spell was old and its language unclear, to me at least, but it sounded as if it prevented death. I thought it was a spell of blessing. You see, I didn’t know. It is important for you to understand that.” She brushed the hair away from her face, drew out the flask, grimaced at it, and stowed it again.

  “I was caught in the wheels of a machine much larger than myself. Sometimes there is no solution, Anna, sometimes there is no right decision. You just choose the least horrible option. I thought that is what I was doing.” Dolores shook her head, stared down at her hands in her lap.

  “Never!” she shouted, startling everyone. “Never perform an incantation you don’t fully understand. Never. Never. Nev – I knew this. I know it even better now. But, but I couldn’t let Joey die. I had to…” She trailed off, then drew a long, ragged breath. “It did not heal Joey, this old spell of mine. It didn’t prevent his body from dying. It bound his spirit to his body. When Joey died the following day, his spirit did not find Summerland. When they cast his poor little body into the sea, all of his awareness and his will went with it.”

  Dolores snatched up her flask and guzzled, and shuddered. She looked at Anna, then to each of the other children, searching their eyes for understanding or accusation. “Being alive is good,” she said at last, “and being dead isn’t really that bad, but dying – dying is horrible. It’s intended to be quick, an instant for some, a few minutes in the worst cases. But Joey has been dying, piece-by-piece, for eleven years. And I did that to him.

  “But, you must understand, I didn’t know. I just believed my spell had failed. I believed Joey had died. The following morning, I used the glamour to get onto that little boat that goes to the mainland. I ran and didn’t look back. I tried to find my mother’s friends, but they had disappeared.” Dolores shook her head with a wry grin. “Turns out, they have a spy inside the Seattle Diocese who told them what McCain was up to. They were long gone before McCain even started her interrogations. It took me most of a decade to track them down.

  “Once I finally found them, I explained how I had tried to save Joey. They had heard, from their spy, of a strange devil haunting Saint Franny’s. It first appeared shortly after Joey’s death. I understood, then, what I had done, and so did my mother’s coven. They were quite appalled, as you might imagine. In fact, they cast me out.” She spread her arms, the gesture a cross between presenting herself for inspection and a shrug of indifference.

  “So now you know.” She took a deep breath and sat back. “I am here to undo the evil I have done. My mother’s coven has sent a ship for me. They have promised to come for me, to take me back, as soon as I have righted my wrongs.”

  “You’ve come to kill your little brother,” Anna said.

  “I’ve come to kill my little brother,” Dolores confirmed.

  Chapter 10

  “I intend to free his spirit,” Dolores said, “so that his soul can at last find the peace of Summerland…since I cannot return life to his body.”

  “Which body?” Donny asked. “He’s got at least five.”

  “Five bodies?” Dolores asked.

  All the girls turned to Donny. Donny turned red, but continued. “He collects dead things an’ sews ‘em together to make new bodies. One of ‘em is a six armed mermaid with a wolf’s head.”

  Dolores and the girls looked to Anna, incredulous.

  “I saw the mermaid,” Anna said, nodding, “and the other things.”

  “That’s why he kept me, for my parts. But he said he couldn’t take ‘em ‘til I was dead,” Donny said. “He got pretty mad when I didn’t die.”

  “Why would he want to sew up a bunch of dead bodies?” asked Lizzy.

  “He gets inside ‘em an’ they come to life,” Donny said. He no longer blushed and there was a hint of the devil in his eyes. Also, he had covered Maybelle’s ears. “He wears ‘em like a monster suit. One of ‘em has two shark heads and crab claws for fingers.”

  “That’s quite enough, Donny, thank you,” Dolores said.

  “He needed new eyeballs, so he used an antler to cut eyes out of a dead nun…”

  “Donny!” Dolores snapped.

  “Why did he need new eyeballs?” Lizzy asked.

  “Lizzy!” Jane and Anna said at the same time.

  “’Cause Anna gouged the old ones out with this key.” Donny held up the blackened key.

  The girls gasped and murmured, looking from the key to Anna and back to Donny.

  “Yes,” Anna said, doing her best to sound exasperated. “Donny got himself caught and I had to go back and rescue him.” She glared at Donny with what she hoped was a knock-it-off look.

  “You stabbed a monster in the eye?” Mary One gaped at Anna.

  “He’s not a monster, he’s my brother!” Dolores said.

  “You should’a seen it!” Donny said. “Miss Dolores put some magic in that key. It blew the monster’s eyes clean out of his head. Boy was he steamed!”

  “It did?” asked Dolores.

  “Sure did. Just ‘bout emptied his skull, I reckon,” Donny beamed. “You could’a looked in one eye an’ seen out the other.”

  “No, you couldn’t,” Anna said. “You couldn’t see anything because it was pitch black and you were under water.”

  The girls clamored. “You blew his brains out with a magic key?” “You fought the monster in the dark?” “Underwater?” “How is it still alive?”

  “He just crawled out of the old monster suit,” Don
ny answered, “an’ slipped into a new one. I guess he’s pretty hard to kill, ‘cause later on we dropped a house on him, but that didn’t kill him either.”

  This set off a new round of questions and chatter. It’s amazing what a little potato and jam can do, Anna thought, and a little hope. She looked apologetically at Dolores, but the fake nun seemed as enraptured with Donny’s tale as the rest of his audience.

  “…The savage wolves had us cornered in the cellar an’ Joseph was comin’ up outa the well, looking like something so disturbin’ he could’a scared your worst nightmare. Anna fought off the wolves, held ‘em at bay with rotten green beans and stuff while I knocked out the pillars of the house, kinda like Sampson in the Bible. Only, the house didn’t land on me like it did on Sampson ‘cause Anna pulled me out,” his voice quieted a little, “just in the nick of time. The whole house came crashin’ down like Satan gettin kicked out’a heaven. Must’a squashed the monster flat. But the wolves were still comin’ for us, they were his wolves, see…”

  “Where is this house?” Dolores interrupted.

  “I could take you there, but he’s not there anymore,” Anna said. “We saw him here, this morning.”

  The girls hushed and turned wide eyes on Anna.

  “That’s wonderful!” Dolores said, clapping her hands. “Tell me where you saw him.”

  “He was crawling through the rubble, where the factory used to be.”

  “Well, it’s about time he showed up,” Dolores said. “I was expecting him days ago. I guess you two slowed him down a bit.”

  “It was you who unlocked the door for him?” Donny asked.

  “Yes, of course. He wants his hand back. When he comes for it, we’ll be ready.” Dolores said. She practically glowed with delight.

  “What do you mean, ‘we’?” Jane spoke up in her most authoritative head girl voice. “Anna might have made some deal with the devil to get out of here, but I certainly did not!”

  “He’s not the devil, he’s my brother,” Dolores nearly shouted.

  “Why does he want his hand back?” Donny asked. “He’s already got a whole pile of hands.”

  “Abbess McCain kept the hand?” Lizzy asked.

  “Why were the wolves helping him?” Anna asked.

  That seemed to catch Dolores’s attention. She raised her hands and hushed the girls. “That is a very interesting question.” To Donny, she said, “You stop agitating these girls, young man, or I will turn you into a toad.” To Anna she said, “Did you see him when he was not wearing one of these ‘monster suits’?”

  Anna nodded.

  “Well?” Dolores asked, “What did you see?”

  Anna looked at the seven faces staring back at her. Maybelle slept, leaning against Donny, but the others were enraptured. How could she tell Dolores what she had seen without further inflaming the rampant imaginings of her roommates? She considered the tiny torso, the remains of a six-year-old child.

  “He must have been insane with terror,” Anna said gently. “I…I can’t even begin to imagine. How long? How long do you think he was down there? Before he…revived, became aware again?”

  “What did you see?” Dolores repeated, her shell of frivolity cracking.

  “There isn’t very much of him left,” Anna said in a low, flat voice. “Just ribs, and half of one arm. It’s like he has fallen apart. The rest, it’s just gone.”

  Dolores stared into Anna’s eyes, silent and motionless. The other children sat as still as death. Dolores’s features waivered, like a summer mirage. Drops of wetness appeared on her lap. She is falling apart, too. She’s crying, balling her eyes out, but using the glamour to hide it from the girls, or from me.

  Anna took Dolores’s hands. They trembled in her grasp. “You and me, Dolores,” she said in a near whisper. “We are in this together, remember. You and me, true sisters. You know everything that is in my heart, because we are the same.”

  Dolores’s face shimmered again, revealing the tears. The woman’s body shook with sobs. “The sisterhood of sorrow,” she said.

  “All these years,” Anna said, “I believed that I had killed my brother. I let momma say I did it because I wanted her to be okay. I think daddy knew it was a lie all along, but he wanted her to be okay, too. Then, when she wasn’t okay, he blamed me. As if I should have killed Ephraim, so that it wouldn’t have been momma. Nothing I could have done would have saved him. And what I did trying to save momma just made everything so much worse.”

  “Wait, Anna,” Dolores said. She released Anna’s hands and straightened her spine. “Quiet. We’ve travelled similar paths, you and I, but do not try to get close to me. You don’t want me as a sister. I have only one thing left to do in this life, and it will cost me my life. I must die for Joey to die…and Joey must die. I have to do that for him, it’s all I have left to give him. But I do not wish to hurt you, Anna. These are your sisters,” she gestured to the silent, awestruck girls, “care for them. Do not bond with me. I hope to be dead before sunset.”

  Dolores wiped her eyes and hardened her face. “All of Joey is alive. Not just the monster suits, not just the thing that you saw crawl out of the suit. All of the bits of his little body still carry his soul – his will and consciousness – with them. That’s why I asked you what you saw, that’s the only reason.

  “You asked why the wolves were helping him. At some point, those wolves must have ingested part of his body, if I understand the spell correctly. The coyotes and the crows, as well. He is in them. He does not control them, not completely, but is able to influence them. The wolves attacked you because Joey directed them to do so. But they ran away because their instincts were stronger than his influence. Also, Joey knows what those animals know. The island, too, I imagine. Particles of little Joey scattered by the tide and surf, carried away by crabs and seagulls…”

  “That’s how he knew about the moon and tide,” Anna said. “On the night I escaped, Joseph knew just how everything would be. He knew how to make me disappear into the island.”

  Dolores smiled. “He is the island, and the sea around it. For eleven years, he has been becoming this place – and losing himself to it. He influences everything of which he has become a part, but those things influence him as well. The thinner he is spread, the less himself he will be. When he dies, if his soul finds its way to Summerland, he will have peace. But, if he is scattered to the four winds, he may never find it. I have to free him while he is still aware of who he is, and what he is.”

  “And to release him from your spell, you have to die?” Anna asked.

  “Someone has to die,” Dolores said, “and it should be me. My mother’s craft, its power is drawn from balance. As he is now, Joey can neither kill nor be killed. But if he takes a life, the magic that binds his soul to his carnal relic will begin to unravel. The curse will slowly drain away and he will be free.”

  “Well, shucks,” Donny said, “just turn him loose on this McCain you keep talking about. He could rip her to shreds and solve two problems at once.”

  “He could kill her,” Dolores said, “but he won’t. He could have killed you, but he didn’t. Evidently, he understands the limitations of his power. I think McCain understands as well. She is well studied in the ways of the witch.

  “I believe McCain has known about Joseph for quite some time. That is why she keeps his hand in her office, to torment him, to draw him. All these years, she has kept this place sealed up, taunting him. Joseph wanted you,” Dolores nodded at Anna, “to blow up the factory for several reasons, but mainly so he could retrieve his hand.

  “McCain knows she can’t keep him out anymore, and knows he can’t kill her. So, now she has summoned her army of witch-hunters to help her capture Joseph and burn him at the stake.”

  “But that won’t kill him?” Donny asked.

  “No,” Dolores said, “He would be reduced to vapor and ash, but he would not die. His soul would be doomed to eternal limbo, never knowing the peace of death.” Dolores
paused, the unreliable glimmer stole across her eyes. She looked up at Anna. “This is the other half of McCain’s devious little scheme, she expects you and me to try to rescue Joey once she catches him. She used your girls as bait to bring you here. She’ll use Joey to catch the two of us, so we can all burn together.”

  “But, if she wants to catch Joey, why do they keep lockin’ all the doors?” Donny asked.

  “Because they are cowards,” Dolores said, “a bunch of old women terrified of a little boy who has been dead longer than he was alive.” She laughed aloud, then added, “They don’t want to let him in until they have more troops. A few of the mercenaries arrived early this morning, and some of McCain’s long-time cohorts. They have barricaded themselves in the rotunda, waiting for the rest of their reinforcements. The only reason you saw Hattie and I in the corridor is somebody,” Dolores winked, “keeps unlocking the doors. McCain has been sending out patrols to find the creep and to re-lock the doors.

  “However, after Eustace’s little adventure this morning, I’m guessing she will discontinue the patrols and focus her efforts on securing the rotunda, until Thaddeus Everstout arrives. I expect his boat to set sail from Seattle this evening or early tomorrow morning. I have to finish this before then.”

  “What about us?” Jane asked. “What happens to us after you and your little devil-monster brother kill each other?”

  “Well, I don’t know, Jane,” Dolores said in a perky voice. “I owed Anna a favor. She asked me to look after you while she was gone. I did. Now she’s back, and I have other responsibilities. I guess you’ll just have to grow up and fend for yourself.”

  “Dolores,” Anna said, “none of this is their fault. They shouldn’t suffer for what I did, or for what you and Joseph have done.”

  “No, they shouldn’t.” Dolores raised her eyebrows at Anna. “Nor should McCain have killed my brother. Nor should I have cursed him with eternal life. Nor should Eve have eaten the apple. Take it up with God. There’s nothing I can do about it.”