The Devil's Hand

by Amy Cross

  All around us, an icy wind blows in from the nearby fields. On a day such as this in the cold winter of northern England, it's hard to believe the land can ever be warm again.

  “Why is it,” I mutter under my breath, “that men who speak most keenly of God's judgment, are often so keen to force their own judgments upon the world?”

  No formal words are spoken at the brief ceremony, no blessings are given, and there's not even a marker to place on the girl's grave. Glancing past Kane, I can't help noticing the patches of rough dirt nearby where other girls were buried earlier in the year. I think of their bodies down there in the cold, dark earth, with six foot of soil pressing down upon them and a layer of frozen snow on top, like the icing of a cake.

  “It's not for us to save their souls,” Mrs. Kilmartin says eventually, her breath reeking of brandy as usual, even at this time of the morning. She makes the sign of the cross against her chest. “God knows where to find them if he wants them. Otherwise, there'll be nothing except eternal damnation for any of them.”

  “Do you really believe that?” I ask.

  “I do.”

  “That does seem a rather pessimistic way of viewing things,” I mutter.

  “Is there something you'd like to say?” Kane calls out to me, his voice filled with a confident sense of his own importance. “Perhaps you feel pity for the little harlot?”

  “I'm sorry,” I reply, “please... I have nothing.”

  “Let us remember,” Kane continues, as Sykes adds more soil to the grave, “that Abigail Cartwright was no innocent young thing. She was a sinful whore who gave her body to a man outside of wedlock, and who conceived a child that way. She was sent to us by her parents, who washed their hands of such a creature and asked me personally to ensure that God's wishes were put into action. As I wrote to them in a letter last night, their daughter's fate was sealed from the moment she opened her heathen legs and allowed a seed to be implanted in her body.”

  “Such a romantic,” I mutter under my breath. “Shame there isn't a Mrs. Kane, she'd be so lucky.”

  “Quiet,” Mrs. Kilmartin hisses. “It's hardly your place to be questioning such things!”

  “There is no need for us to witness the rest of this sad affair,” Kane announces, turning and making his way around the grave while Sykes continues to shovel dirt. “I don't know about anyone else, but I most certainly have a great deal of work to be doing. Proper work, the Lord's work. Work that might save the souls of at least some of our other charge.” He shakes my hand with his black-gloved right hand, as if to congratulate me on a job well done. “I trust that the necessary paperwork will be filed without delay. I should hate to have interference from outside forces who don't understand the work that we do here.”

  “Of course,” I reply, although I feel a sliver of disgust at myself for helping this monster. As he walks away, making his way back toward the path that leads to the schoolhouse, I allow myself to reflect upon the fact that I truly and absolutely hate Jeremiah Kane, and that I would leave this place immediately if I had any means of doing so.

  “She wasn't such a bad girl,” Mrs. Kilmartin says after a moment. I turn and see that she's watching Sykes as he continues to fill the grave. “A little unruly, mind, and terribly obstinate but...” Her voice trails off for a moment. “I thought there was a chance she might repent her sins and return to the light of the Lord.” Once again she makes the sign of the cross against her chest, and for a moment there almost seem to be tears in her eyes. “Still, Mr. Kane knows best. We needn't argue with his understanding of the world.”

  “Did she say anything to you in the days before she died?” I ask.

  “Only a little. I gave her chores as usual, and she performed them well. I overheard her in prayer just the other morning, she was asking the Lord about -”

  She stops herself just in time, as if she was about to say something imprudent.

  “Asking the Lord about what?” I ask.

  “She always seemed like a very level-headed young girl,” she continues, “so I was very surprised to hear her asking the Lord for guidance about one of those silly superstitions that amuses the pupils.”

  “There are a few of those kicking about,” I reply. “Which one in particular?”

  She stares at the grave for a moment longer, before turning to me. “She was telling the Lord, in prayer, that she thought she'd felt the...” Her voice trails off, as if she can't complete the sentence.

  “The Devil's hand on her shoulder?” I ask, raising a skeptical eyebrow.

  “She's not the first to have said such a thing,” she whispers, keeping her voice low even though Kane is too far away to hear us.

  “It's just a form of hysteria,” I reply. “Please, Mrs. Kilmartin, don't let yourself ponder such foolish matters.”

  “Three girls this year,” she continues. “Two of them came to me directly for guidance, one of them went straight to the Lord, and all three were dead within days!”

  “What does Mr. Kane think of it all?” I ask.

  “He was furious when it was first mentioned,” she admits. “He said any girl who speaks of such foolish things is doomed to eternal damnation. After that, I felt it was better to deal with the girls' concerns myself, but now I'm not so sure. What if... I mean, is it not possible that... I...”

  “That the Devil really is at this school?” I ask, unable to stifle a faint smile. “That he lurks in the shadows, reaching out and planting his hand on the shoulders of passing girls, marking them for imminent death?” I pat her shoulder as I turn to walk away. Kane is just about visible in the distance as a black smudge of a figure stalking his way back toward the distant schoolhouse. “Let us not stray too far from rational discourse, Mrs. Kilmartin,” I add. “I am a man of both faith and science, remember, and even I cannot condone such thoughts. Besides, the Devil has no business here, not while we have the pious Mr. Jeremiah Kane to keep us all under the watchful eye of God. Why should any of us hold fear in our hearts? We are protected.”

  Hearing no answer, I turn and see that Mrs. Kilmartin is yet again making the sign of the cross against her chest. For a woman who claims to believe in both God and Kane, she clearly still feels the need to take an awful lot of precautions.

  III

  Sitting in my room late at night, with just the light of a flickering candle to ward away the darkness, I do the same thing I do every night. It has almost become a ritual.

  I write a draft of the resignation letter I know I can never deliver.

  I set down my true thoughts about the way Jeremiah Kane runs this school. I write to tell him that I abhor all his repulsive arguments and all his foul statements regarding the girls here. I write that even though they might have made mistakes, these girls are not lost to God, that they are not irredeemable sinners. Then I go on to relate some of the stories that I've heard from the girls' own mouths, their explanations for how they ended up in this unfortunate condition, and I take care to make the bastard see the damage he's causing. I write that there is blood on his hands, and I take back my assurance that Abigail Cartwright must have had a weak heart to begin with. I call him a murderer, and a liar, and I warn him that I shall go to the police and tell him everything.

  Then I sign the letter.

  And then I burn it.

  The truth is, I can never leave this place. If I even tried to go, Kane would destroy me. I learned far too late that if one is going to spend time in the company of such a man, one should ensure one does not inadvertently grant him leverage over one's life, over one's soul. Kane knows things about me, about what I have done in the past, about why I am so especially concerned with the lives of fallen girls. If he so chose, he could ruin my life and perhaps even have me led to the scaffold. A braver man than I might accept that price, in order to end Kane's reign of terror, but I am too weak and fearful.

  If I were brave, I would never have come to Beacon's Ash in the first place.

  Setting my pen down, I stare
into the flames that devoured yet another letter. I can't help sighing at the thought that I have no way out of this place, no opportunity whatsoever to free myself from the nightmarish cycle of life, birth and death that exists at this school. I know full well that I shall write another letter tomorrow night, and another the night after, and another every day of every week for so long as I sit and rot in this hell. And I shall burn them all, and carry on doing my job, because I am a craven, cowardly man.

  Suddenly hearing a tentative knock at my door, I turn and look across the darkened room.

  “Hello?” I call out.

  Silence.

  I check my fobwatch and see that it is a little after nine in the evening. Too late for one of the girls to be up and about, of course, but not too late for one of them to have snuck out regardless. I wait, and a moment later I hear the knock again. Perhaps I am reading too much into the sound, but I fancy that it sounds like the knock of a small, timid hand.

  “You may enter,” I say out loud. “Don't be shy.”

  I wait, but still there is no response. Sighing, I get to my feet and make my way across the room. I must confess to feeling a flash of irritation, but I also know that many of the girls here are nervous about their bodies, and this wouldn't be the first time one of them came to me and then held back. Fortunately, I have become rather skilled at teasing their fears from them. As I open the door, I half expect to find one of the more nervous girls waiting outside, perhaps with night terrors or some physical problem relating to her condition, but instead I find only a cold, dark and empty corridor with no sign that anyone has passed this way recently. I lean out and look both ways, but there is no-one to be seen.

  Stepping out and letting the door swing shut behind me, I wait for a moment. It's not uncommon for a girl to summon the courage to approach me, only to suddenly lose that courage. I look toward the small table a little further along the corridor, but there is no sign of anyone hiding beneath. I suppose there must simply be -

  Suddenly there is a knock at the door again. I turn, realizing that this time there must be someone on the other side, in my room. I push the door open, confused as to how anyone could have slipped inside without me spotting them, but my room appears empty. Letting the door swing shut behind me, I take a couple of steps toward the window, only to hear the knock again. Turning, I realize that once again my elusive visitor seems to be out in the corridor, and evidently he or she finds great amusement in knocking first on one side of the door and then on the other.

  “Okay,” I say firmly, pulling the door open and stepping out into the corridor, and this time taking great care to pull the door shut behind me so that there can be no trickery, “I've had quite enough of this game, thank you very much. To what do I owe the pleasure of a little company tonight?”

  I wait, with my hand still resting on the door handle, but a moment later I hear stumbling footsteps at the corridor's far end. I look in that direction, but of course it is too dark to see anyone in the shadows.

  “Hello?” I call out.

  I hear the creak of a distant door being opened, and then silence once again.

  Turning, I take a moment to lock the door to my room before heading along the corridor. I know full well that if one of the girls has decided to play a trick on me, she will not let up until I have found her. They can be rather tiresome when they put their minds to it. When I reach the end of the corridor, I push the door open and look through into the dark, unlit stairwell, but after waiting for a few seconds I realize that there's no sign of anyone in the area. Still, I step out and look first down toward the ground floor and then up toward the second, convinced that at any moment I shall see the tell-tale evidence of childish tomfoolery.

  I wait.

  Still nothing.

  “Utterly ridiculous,” I mutter, glancing back along the corridor toward my room. “Quite how -”

  Suddenly I hear it. At the far end of the corridor, back the way I came, there is another faint, cautious knock on my door. It only lasts for a few seconds, but it cannot be denied. And yet... I know I locked that door, and I know my room is scantly furnished so it's not as if anyone could hide in there. Feeling a shiver of concern in my chest, I remind myself that I am a man of rational thoughts and so, accordingly, I make my way cautiously back along the corridor until I reach the door, at which point I take the key from my pocket and...

  Again, I wait.

  I have told so many girls to keep rational thoughts over the years, but until now I had never realized quite how difficult that could be when one is faced with something that seems inexplicable.

  There is an explanation for this trickery. There has to be. I must simply focus and -

  Suddenly I hear the knock again, and I am quite certain that someone is on the other side of the door.

  “Who is this?” I say firmly, reminding myself that I must not sound harassed. “I know I am the more lenient member of staff here, but I assure you, I have my limits.”

  I wait, hoping that I might have changed someone's mind, but now there is only silence. Filled with just a hint of frustration, I slip the key into the lock and give it a turn, before pushing the door open and making absolutely certain this time that no-one can possibly come out without being seen.

  The door swings open, creaking slightly, revealing only my bare room.

  I take a step forward, glancing around. The candle still burns on my desk, but no-one is hiding over there, of that I am certain. I push the door shut so that there is no escape for my tormentor, and then I get to my knees and look under the bed, but of course there is no-one down there either, which leaves only the wardrobe. Getting to my feet and making my way over, I pull the door open but find only my regular items of clothing, hanging in their usual place and seeming quite undisturbed. Shutting the wardrobe again, I look back across the room and try to work out where one of these ingenious young girls could be hiding now, but as the seconds tick past I realize there is simply nowhere.

  I take a step forward, the floorboard creaking beneath me, but I refuse to accept the irrational just yet.

  “This is foolish,” I say out loud, for the benefit of the girl or girls who are behind all of this. “Show yourself now, and I shall not report this incident to Mr. Kane. Otherwise, you can expect the full weight of his punishment to come crashing down upon your shoulders. I need hardly emphasize how unpleasant that experience will be for you.”

  I wait.

  No reply.

  Perhaps the girls know me too well. Perhaps they know that I would never turn them over to that monster, that I could not stomach the cruelties he would undoubtedly visit upon them. Sighing, I'm just about to issue more impossible threats when I hear a faint bumping sound over by the window, and I turn to see the silhouette of a tree branch dancing across the pane, blown by a gust of wind outside. Heading over, I'm surprised to see that the weather is far less mild than I had realized, and that the trees are swaying gently in the late night breeze. I suppose it is possible, then, that a few stray gusts of wind managed to sneak into this old stone building, and that the knocks on the door might in fact have been caused by natural phenomena. I glance around the room one more time, but it is quite clear now that I am alone and I cannot help but smile at the thought that I could have wound myself up so easily.

  Still, I wait a moment longer before forcing myself to accept that I was mistaken.

  Turning back to my desk, I lean down and blow the candle out.

  And in that instant, I suddenly feel the hand on my shoulder.

  I stay completely still, my mind racing as I tell myself I must be imagining the whole thing, but there can be no doubt as I stare down at my desk in the darkened room that, from behind, a hand is resting gently on my right shoulder. It would not be correct to say that the hand was suddenly placed there at the moment when I blew out the candle; rather, it is as if the act of blowing out the flame caused me to become aware, in a split second, of something that had been happening for a longe
r period of time. I feel now as if the hand was on my shoulder all the while I was searching for the source of the knocking sound, yet somehow I only noticed its presence once the candle was out.

  I wait, but the hand remains.

  I dare not turn my head and look, but after a moment I force myself to tilt my face just slightly. In the darkness of the room, with only moonlight to illuminate the scene, I am just about able to turn my eyes until I see, out of the very corner of my vision, a hint of something pale resting on my shoulder. I tell myself that it is nothing, that once again I am wrong, but the hand feels very firm and certainly cannot be mistaken for a breeze or a trick of the mind. My body is already trembling with fear, but I tell myself I must not look into the eyes of whatever stands behind me, even if...

  Finally, slowly, I turn to see. And in that instant the hand is gone, and I am left standing alone in my darkened room.

  Part Three

  IVY JONES

  I

  I spin around, but it's already gone.

  “Did you hear that?” I ask, taking a step back.

  “Hear what?” Sissy asks, still combing the knots out of her hair.

  “Like a...” I fall silent for a moment, watching the bathroom door, but there's no sign of anyone. Still, I know there was a faint scratching sound, and I felt a presence as sure as Sissy is right here next to me.

  “You shouldn't talk about things you don't understand,” Sissy tells me matter-of-factly.

  I turn to her. “I shouldn't?”

  “It's disruptive.”

  “Who told you that?”

  She shrugs, while working on a particularly tangled knot. Nearby, one of the other girls is throwing up in the toilet. I'm glad my morning sickness phase is over.

  “Here,” I say, grabbing the brush from Sissy's hands and turning it to get a better angle. The knot comes out easily enough, but I immediately start work on another that has somehow accumulated closer to the top of her scalp. “You've been talking to someone, Sissy O'Neill. It can't have been Mr. Kane and I doubt Mrs. Kilmartin can stay sober long enough to talk sense, and Sykes is, well, Sykes is Sykes. So it must have been Doctor Ratcliffe.”