The Unwanted (Black Water Tales Book 2)

by Jean Nicole Rivers

  There’s something in the basement, she could hear Ivan’s soft voice echoing.

  Until that moment Blaire had been so caught up in the aftermath of the incident that she had forgotten Ivan’s solemn words, and the more she thought, the more she realized that he had spoken those words to her not once, but twice. A chilly breeze blew over her ballet slipper shoes and coasted up her legs, soon enveloping her entire body.

  As she walked toward the steps, Blaire felt rebellious. Though there were never any instructions that the basement was off limits, she still felt like a child sneaking cookies from the jar before dinner, mischievous, but harmless. The black paint on the railing that led down the small flight of steps was rusted and peeling to a reddish-orange color. Damp leaves had gathered in the corners of the underground compartment just before the door. Blaire looked around cautiously before her descent. With every step she took down, there was less light, and the chirping of the birds grew fainter along with the unceasing splash of the sea waves. At the bottom of the stairs just out of the light, she found herself standing face to face with the foreboding door. Blaire jiggled the knob, which barely moved, and noticed that the door had a lock at the knob and a rusting silver padlock in another hinge a little further up.

  If there was something in the basement, it was being guarded like the family jewels, Blaire thought to herself.

  With her keys she began a lengthy process of trial and error only to realize that none of the keys fit either of the locks. They had given her keys to everything but the basement.

  She bent down to examine the slit underneath the door, the place from where she imagined blood was spilling out on her very first evening at St. Sebastian. As soon as she placed her fingertips on the cold ground, the hairs on the back of her neck lifted. Something was behind her. Something sinister descended on her.

  Slowly, she turned to see that several black crows now lined each of the concrete steps that led down to the basement. The dark creatures twitched anxiously as they eyed her, and Blaire’s lips curled in revulsion. They were a gang of black watchers, their heads all cocked at strange angles of curiosity, flaunting their flawless black coats and their sharp beaks that were ready to pluck out her eyes at the first false move. Worst of all were their beady, white-rimmed black pupils digging into her, pulling her insides out like a medical examiner performing an autopsy.

  Even the crows knew that she had no right to be down there, she thought, but again perhaps they didn’t care about her at all, because they themselves wanted to know what peculiar thing was on the other side of the red door.

  There’s something in the basement, the repeated whisper assaulted her from every angle. It seemed to be a ghost embedded in the very nature of this place, a part of St. Sebastian as much as its brick and mortar.

  She feared the consequence of even the slightest movement as the pecking little devils examined her like an object of prey. Blaire shrank further back as a dark shadow came over the steps, blocking out the sunlight.

  “Blaire!” a voice spoke, startling the birds, causing them to flap their wings and fly in every direction out of the pit. Blaire shielded herself from the chaos of the departing crows, and then she ran up the steps to see a clear image of Travis in his workout clothes.

  “What are you doing down there playing with birds?” he asked.

  She turned and looked back down the stairs in time to see one lonely black feather coasting back and forth on the currents of a light wind until it settled peacefully on the gray cement.

  “I was not playing with birds, Travis,” she explained as she dusted off her clothes. “I was just…just…looking to see if there was any more stuff for my classroom in the basement.” She took off in a huff to make her way back around the building.

  “Was there?” he asked, struggling to keep up with her.

  “I don’t know. It was locked.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yes, I’m fine.” Blaire’s voice started to soften.

  “Sure?”

  “I’m sure. I’m just still a little upset about Ivan, I guess.”

  “Blaire, everything will be fine. I’m going to finish up my workout, and I will be in my office in about an hour if you want to talk.”

  “Fine,” Blaire answered coarsely.

  Travis placed his earbuds back in his ears and jogged on ahead of her.

  Inside of the building, she wrangled her windblown hair into a bun before rounding the corner toward her classroom, nearly colliding into a strange man.

  “Oh, sorry,” the man said as he grabbed her shoulders lightly to make sure that she didn’t stumble.

  “No, I’m sorry,” Blaire responded.

  “No, I’m sorry.” He pointed out a dark smudge that his greasy hand had made on her blouse.

  “Oh,” she said as she looked down. “It’s okay.”

  “I’m Latif. I think we met a while back at Berek’s.” He held out his clean hand.

  “Right, I’m Blaire.” She was trying hard to control her smile. “You work here?” Blaire asked noticing that he carried an oversized, dusty case.

  “Marko hired me to take care of some handy work around the place.”

  “I thought that was what Heinrik was for?”

  “Heinrik takes care of odd jobs, but people call me when they need a real handyman. He wants me to fix the heating before winter weather sets in and the elevator too. I think he’s trying to impress you Americans.”

  “Well, it will be nice to have the elevator working,” Blaire said, which was followed by a moment of silence that was neither empty nor awkward, but completely comfortable. “I better get going, I have a class.” She scooted passed him and continued down the hall. Before stepping inside of her classroom, she took one last glance at Latif who was headed toward the elevator.

  After dinner that evening, Blaire found a quiet spot in the waiting area and tried to read, but was asleep within minutes.

  When she awoke, her eyes fluttered lazily, and she was staring at the stained brown fabric of the couch. She turned onto her back and blinked her eyes to clear the blur of sleep that still lingered. At the end of the couch, an unidentifiable figure sat watching her.

  “Why are you here?” a child asked.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  “What? Andre?” Blaire spoke adjusting herself to a sitting position, waiting for clarity in her sight.

  “Can you read this to me?” he asked holding up a red children’s book.

  “Of course,” Blaire said.

  Andre snuggled against her as she read. He stared intently at the pages as she flipped through them, but she was delighted at the fact that he was powerless to keep a smile from spreading across his face at particular points in the story. Yet by the end of the book, Andre was unresponsive and staring at the far wall of the room.

  “Why are you here?” Andre asked again.

  Blaire was unsure of how to answer this question, but she did her best. “I am here because I like helping children and the workers at St. Sebastian need help. There are not enough workers here to make sure that all of your needs are met, so nurse Wells and I are here to make sure that you don’t get sick and to make sure that you are learning.”

  “Why am I here?” he then wanted to know. Though his second question was as clear as his first, her answer to a question that was essentially why do some parents not want their children or why do people die, and why is life unfair would be much more complicated. Blaire had no answers for those questions. Those were questions for the philosophers, the people who saw the world as a whole machine, working together as one all-knowing entity with moving, feeling parts churning toward the greater good. This was not a question for people like her, who just lived one day at a time pondering the frail workings of moments from one to the next. The world barely made sense to people like her.

  “It’s because I am weak,” he said as he began to rock himself back and forth, not noticing his own unconscious movement.

  “No.
” Blaire shook her head. “That’s not true.”

  “I’m not strong like other kids.”

  “You are very strong, Andre.”

  “No, I’m not like other kids, and that is why they don’t want me. I wouldn’t want me either. Maybe I should not have been born. Maybe it was a mistake.”

  “Just because you don’t understand everything right now does not mean that everything doesn’t make perfect sense. One day you will open your eyes and know exactly why you’re here, do you understand?” Blaire explained.

  “But I have no one…not even parents.”

  “Doesn’t matter. Parents are wonderful, but even without them you are valuable.”

  Andre looked up at her, and she hoped that she was convincing, considering she had no idea if the words that were coming out of her mouth were true. She hoped that they were for Andre’s sake and for her own.

  Instantly, Blaire was back in that horrible place again, that fiery hell, and she wanted to move, but her feet were cemented into the ground. One of the men standing close to her disregarded the warning of the man in the blue shirt and dashed toward the accident. Her mother was still alive, but she had stopped screaming, stopped fighting. She pulled her free leg back into the car, and then did something that Blaire did not understand, she closed the door.

  “Uh,” Blaire stuttered, finding herself face to face with Andre again. “Uh, you’re here because your parents were not in a position to take care of you. They needed help, and they thought it would be best for you to come here.”

  “If the people here are helping my parents and you are helping the people here, who is going to help you?” he asked before gathering his book and lumbering off into the hall without waiting on her answer.

  Blaire got up from the couch and started to go after him when she was blinded by a flash as she entered the hall. There was laughter, and then another blinding flash.

  “Danya,” Blaire called, struggling to regain her sight. The little girl held up a handful of instant photos.

  “Your pictures?” Blaire’s eyes were still seeing white spots, but she tried hard not to sound irritated. Blaire opened the packet and stared at the first photograph. It was a haunting image of Dariya standing by the life-size Virgin Mary statue in the backyard. The girl was wearing the same dress that she and her twin wore almost daily, and her hair was tossed about in its usual chaotic manner. There appeared to be a flaw in the photograph as one of Dariya’s eyes was stretched out of place, deforming her true image. In the second photograph, Lorna loomed in the background while Vesna stared menacingly at the camera as she helped Andre up the stairs. Vesna was wearing her usual wicked scowl and her features were not out of place; yet the same deformity of light or film plagued this photo as well, as her mouth was drawn up at a weird angle that made her look like a bizarre twin of herself. Quickly, Blaire flipped through the remaining photographs and saw that the same deformity afflicted a different person in each image. When Blaire came to the last picture, all the others fell from her hand in a snowfall of flawed reflections as her attention turned to this image. In the photo Blaire was next to Ivan whose face was completely lost in a misshapen swirl. Blaire saw her image and it appeared almost normal, but she could see it. She pulled the photograph closer to her eyes and there it was, just the tiniest bit of a flaw beginning to develop there on her face.

  Blaire’s trembling hand had trouble gathering the photographs from the floor and tucking them back into the package. She handed it all back to the girl with a slight smile before heading hastily toward the stairs.

  Vesna rooted herself in Blaire’s path. “Ms. Baker.”

  “Goodnight,” Blaire said, walking around the woman who she assumed was heading out for the evening.

  “Ms. Baker,” Vesna called again. “What happened on the roof with Ivan?”

  Blaire rolled her eyes as she turned to face the woman. “You know what happened.”

  “What did he say to you?” Vesna asked, a splenetic glare climbing out of her face like a multi-legged alien crawling out of the cockpit of its downed vessel.

  “Ivan? He didn’t say anything, Vesna,” Blaire lied. “Why do you ask?”

  There’s something in the basement, Blaire heard the boy’s voice echoing through the tunnels of her mind. Vesna narrowed her eyes and her thin, maroon lips which created a fractal of frenzied lines across her face.

  “He’s not well,” Vesna stated firmly. “You do know that?”

  Blaire cocked her head.

  “I thought I heard voices out here,” Anya said, stepping out of the playroom before Blaire could respond to Vesna’s enigmatic question. Vesna turned away from both women, tightened her jacket, repositioned her overnight bag on her shoulder and headed toward the front door.

  “Goodnight, Vesna,” Anya called out to the departing woman who gave no response.

  “Goodnight, Vesna,” Blaire added with the most unnoticeable of taunts.

  Anya turned her inextinguishable enthusiasm toward Blaire.

  “What do you know about St. Sebastian?” Blaire asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I just mean about the history or just anything out of the ordinary.”

  Anya shrugged before speaking, “I know an old man used to live here when it was a house. When he died, he left it to a woman named Magda and her daughter, Anastasia.”

  “Do they still have family in Borslav?” Blaire asked.

  “Oh no, I think they were from somewhere up around Slokivka, and they brought some family down from there a long time ago, but none of them are around anymore, that I know of. Why do you ask?”

  “What about the basement?”

  Anya swallowed hard. “What about it?”

  “What’s down there?”

  “Oh, I don’t know, old stuff, I suppose.”

  “I was thinking that maybe I should have a look down there and see if I can find supplies for my classroom. Do you have a key?”

  Anya hesitated for a long time before she spoke, “No, I don’t. I need to get back to the children.”

  Blaire stood alone in the hall for a few seconds before making her way up the stairs. On the second floor, she heard bouts of rambunctious giggling. Amber light flooded the hallway giving a direct path to the older girls’ room. There Blaire spotted three girls sitting on one of the beds, with Travis standing in front of one of them, Natalka.

  “Ms. Baker,” one of the girls called out. Travis turned to see Blaire and immediately stepped from in front of Natalka revealing his work. Her eyes were painted with a soft pink eye shadow, her cheeks the color of roses and her lips the color of bubblegum. Travis laid on the finishing touches with a mascara wand.

  “You look gorgeous,” Blaire complimented.

  “Thank you,” Natalka and Travis spoke in unison.

  Blaire laughed, noticing that the other girls were made up as well. “All of you look really great, except for you, of course, Travis.”

  “I know I’m hideous,” he responded playfully. Travis went back to Natalka’s eyes with the wand, and Blaire lay across one of the other beds. On the floor in the corner, Danya painted her sister’s eyelids with a purple shadow to match her dress.

  “I look like one of the girls in the films,” Natalka said, gushing with childlike pride. She grabbed a magazine from the bed, flipping several pages and handing it to Blaire.

  Blaire reviewed the pale girl on the glossy page with her dark hair and striking brown eyes. Her skin was creamy and flawless while her lips flaunted soft curves and a poutiness that would not have allowed anyone to miss the fact that she was a movie star. Blaire looked back to Natalka, who looked tired and frail. Her eyelids were heavy with a consistent supply of tears, ready to flow at any moment, and her eyes carried dark circles underneath that would have made The Addams Family cringe. She was beautiful, but looked nothing like a movie star.

  “Spitting image!” Blaire declared.

  Lorna and another girl entered the room and w
ere offered greetings by everyone except Danya and Dariya. They followed Lorna closely as she crossed to the far side of the room by the dresser.

  Natalka went to the mirror to admire herself, while Blaire watched Travis work on one of the other girls for a few moments before she heard a disagreement taking place between Lorna and Natalka. Blaire got off the bed and started toward the girls just as Natalka grabbed Lorna’s arm furiously.

  “What’s going on?” Blaire asked, removing Natalka’s fierce grip which caused the little container of blue eye shadow to clatter to the floor.

  “She’s stealing,” Natalka accused.

  Lorna nodded from left to right.

  “Lorna, this is Natalka’s makeup. Nurse Wells bought it for her, but the next time I go to the Dobish Market, I will get you one, okay?” Blaire said to the little girl before she turned to the older one. “She just wanted to look at it, Natalka. That’s all. She wasn’t stealing.”

  Dariya and Danya sat quietly in the corner, one watching and the other listening. “She’s not even supposed to be here,” Natalka said with a growl. “I don’t want her touching my stuff.”

  “The little girls just want to hang out in the big girl room from time to time,” Blaire explained. Natalka rolled her eyes as Lorna fled into the hall.

  When it was time for bed, Blaire and Travis headed for the third floor. “That was really nice of you,” Blaire commented.

  “I’m sure I had more fun than they did,” Travis confessed.

  Blaire was quiet.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I’m still upset and confused about what happened with Ivan.”

  “It must have been terrible,” Travis sympathized.

  When they reached the third floor, Blaire stopped and made sure they were alone.

  “What is it?” Travis asked.

  She took a deep breath. “When we were on the roof, Ivan said to me that there is something in the basement.”