The seven-year-old is our leader. We do what she says.
I pull my robe cowl tighter around my face. The wind burns, it’s so cold. I’m grateful Leesel was able to steal heavy robes from the coven village, and I tell her so.
She shrugs. “Sometimes the coven abducts women, especially children, from the town, and they require robes,” she explains. “Virgin birth is sporadic, so abduction is an easy way for them to increase the numbers of the coven.”
A chill threads through my spine, Leesel says this so casually.
Late afternoon. The sun lowers, and the mountain snow acquires a blue cast, matching Poe’s skin tone. It begins to snow. Big, fat flakes catch on my eyelashes, blurring my vision. Leesel squeals in delight. I look back and see her catching white fluff on her tongue.
“I see a light,” Poe suddenly shouts.
“Oh. Our lodging,” Leesel says, as if she noticed the light on her own. She runs ahead, her robe dragging behind her so that it sweeps a trail in the snow for us to follow.
We find a house pocketed in the forest.
Six chimneys breathe smoke atop a blackened roof that pitches so steeply not a flake of snow clings to it. Built in a square and three stories high, the house is unremarkable except for the legion of hurricane lamps, which glow inside fogged windows.
“Welcoming,” Poe says. He appears displeased. Closing his eyes, a smile gradually overtakes his mouth. “Rapture,” he whispers to himself.
“What?” I ask.
“Hmmm? Nothing. I was thinking though. It’s like this place wants to be found.”
Welcoming. This place wants to be found. Only Poe would delight in dissolving a welcome into a warning. Memento Mori is a wonderland for him.
The entrance is a lean door, barely visible behind dormant vines that leech onto wood. Poe is appreciative and delivers a line of poetry.
With little daylight left and the temperature dropping, I want to believe this place is safe. I allow Leesel to take my hand and pull me forward. Above the door is a sign with burned letters.
DEATH PASSOVER US
Ava squeezes Leesel’s shoulder. “What is this place, baby?”
Leesel consults her map with its chaotic lines and numbers. She nods, pleased. “Right where it’s supposed to be. Asylum, District Eleven.”
We knock. Wait.
Wait. Knock.
The door budges open and a teenage girl squeezes her face into the crack. Delicate fingers flutter to her lips. Her hand is bandaged. The door creaks open another inch. Then another. The bandaged hand lowers to find her throat. “Beware…”
We enter.
Firmly closing the door behind us, she quickly turns the key in the lock. “Oh my,” she says, wringing a lacey handkerchief. She’s in her nightgown. “A little girl. Two boys. A girl. Oh, my.”
Looking closely at her, I recognize my sister. Her disability, I mean. This girl’s eyes are spaced a bit too far apart, and her head is slightly too large. The puzzled expression on her face is one which Emmy often wore. Emmy, though, was utterly trusting. This girl seems guarded, dubious, leery.
I glance around, hoping no mentally disturbed asylum people are hiding in the shadows. It’s quiet. No screams of misery. Maybe it’s the sort of asylum where a person goes to be safe, and not the kind a person gets committed to for insanity.
We stand in a reception room containing a mammoth desk covered in stacks of parchment. There’s also a bowl filled with dried fruit that looks something like prunes, and an open guest book with blank lines. Nobody has signed in. Quill pens litter the floor around the desk. On one side of the room an arched doorway with peeling plaster delivers a dining room; on the other side, a curving staircase teeters to the upper floors. The house feels vacant, forgotten. Our steps echo. And yet, warmth flows down a narrow hallway from what must be a kitchen in use. The smell of roasting meat makes my mouth water.
Leesel squeals, points out a titanic spider dining on weaved prey, which resembles the eye of a ghost.
“Servant Sarah?” calls a deep voice from somewhere above us.
“Yes,” the girl croaks, fanning her flushed face.
I have a flashback of Emmy. Her face beeting up red, stomping her feet, throwing Jamison’s snow globe onto concrete. It shattered, and she wailed. Her arms flailing and feet kicking, it was all I could do to restrain her. She was angry, frustrated, and lashing out. She wanted the snow globe for herself. I apologized to Jamison, who was crying over his beloved gift from his uncle.
I apologized to the boy whose stone would later kill my baby sister.
The memory of that apology sickens me. I push it away.
The girl with the bandaged hands calls upstairs. “Dinner is ready and…the Asylum has guests.”
There’s murmuring. Soft crying. Weird laughter.
40
the chosen ones
Stairs creak. Three forms spiral down, slowly, holding candles to their faces in a funeral procession. They wear nightgowns. Even the two men. One of them is old with folds of skin and escorts an equally wrinkled woman on his arm. The other man is maybe thirty, with long curling hair, a moustache slickened with oil, a face wet with tears.
The old couple shuffles forward, stepping on their long gowns as they come to us. Poe strangles his neck, tells them beware. He’s taller than they are, but they stretch their necks and stare down their noses at him. Silently. Behind the old people, the emotional man gawks at us.
Awkward.
What’s worse is that they all have bandaged hands, like the girl who answered the door.
Ava folds back her robe cowl with shaking hands. “My name is Ava Lily. This is my daughter Leesel, my friend Jesse Morrison, and his friend Poe Bloomfield.”
Servant Sarah, the one who let us in, wrings her handkerchief. “Please go in and be seated,” she begs, indicating the arched doorway. “I shall bring in the feast.”
“Come along, Captain Wadsworth,” the old lady says in a stately voice, tapping the old man’s shoulder with knitting needles. He harrumphs and leads her under the arch, patting her veined hand. The other man follows after them, candle flame licking his nose.
Servant Sarah wobbles as if she might faint, but it turns into a curtsy. She hurries down the back hallway toward the good smells.
Leesel points out their footprints in the dust on the wooden floor. They’re in their bare feet. Like covenists. “Weird,” she says, bending over a print with a missing middle toe. Ava hushes her.
Glassy chandeliers hang low over a long table. Our hosts take seats on one side, facing the windows, which run the length of the room. We sit across from them. It’s an effort to drag back the massive chairs. Cold drafts seep through the paned glass at our backs.
The nightgown people douse their candles with linen napkins. The hurricane lamps on the window sills provide plenty of light.
Poe clears his throat. “I like that painting,” he says.
It shows a scene of starved horses alongside carriages, in addition to robed, faceless people reclining by a river that I imagine to be the Styx. Caskets float along its dark waters.
The table is set with fine china, heavily chipped.
Our hosts might not be courteous, but I can’t help noticing their intense curiosity and interest. They gawk.
“I shall give the Passover prayer,” the older gentleman says. Heads bow. I pretend, but keep my eyes open. Ava and Leesel do the same, but Poe fervently clasps his hands together and scrunches his eyes closed.
The Captain clears his throat again. “May death continue to pass over us.”
“Amen!”
“Amen!”
Sarah arrives from the kitchen with a tray in her hands, curtsies, and begins ladling soup into our bowls. Next she pours our drinks. Wine for all except one. “Pink lemonade,” she says to Leesel as she pours.
“What happened to your hands?” Leesel asks.
Sarah self-consciously pulls them behind her back. “Oh, the Judgment.”
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Spoons clank against bowls. There’s a lot of slurping. “Perhaps some music,” Captain Wadsworth suggests.
Rushing to do his bidding, Servant Sarah winds up an old phonograph in the corner of the room, the first one I’ve seen outside a museum. An eerie ballad plays and the asylumists relax.
Ava clears her throat. “Pardon me, but I don’t believe I’ve met everyone here.”
Sarah’s handkerchief brushes her face. I wonder if she’s not allowed to sit and eat with the rest of us. Breathless in a corner of the dining room, she seems so faint I think she might float away.
The tearful man with the pretty hair dabs the corners of his moustache with a napkin. Black oil smears the linen. “My name is Vincent. Forgive us. We are quite rude. It’s only that we are unaccustomed to living visitors. Wooly skeletons? Yes. Angels? Of course. The Reaper, Archangel? We fear and hope. But the living? Never.” He flaps open his napkin and uses it to hide his lower face, leaving his owl eyes to peer at us.
Captain Wadsworth and his wife offer us disapproving looks.
Vincent briefly raises his wine goblet. “But of course, we welcome you.” He tries to smile and reveals bad teeth. “There is no safer place in all Memento Mori than an asylum. The stories are true. Immunity from His services! Shall I—”
“More lemonade,” Leesel requests as Sarah arrives with a tray of meat and vegetables. Ava cringes. Clearly, Leesel has chosen not to acknowledge the existence of Vincent.
“—introduce this refined couple?” Vincent twists to his right and impossibly increases the width of his eyes. “I present Captain Wadsworth and his wife, Mrs. Wadsworth.”
Leesel greets the Captain, but that’s it. Mrs. Wadsworth apparently has no more existence than Vincent. It’s obvious. Rude. Mrs. Wadsworth’s lips flatten on her heavily powdered face. Captain Wadsworth doesn’t seem to notice, but swallows a gulp of wine.
The front door to the asylum opens. Poe pops out of his seat. Vincent reaches across the table, clasps Poe’s shoulder, shoves him back down. “The angels summon,” he peeps.
“They do?” Poe asks, his eyes as wide as Vincent’s.
Vincent beckons for us to lean close. He whisper-hisses with a hand over his mouth. “You may wish to join our servitude and enjoy permanent reprieve from the Reaper’s services.” He accepts more wine from Servant Sarah, and when she prods him in the back, he raises his overflowed goblet. “A toast! To those of us inside these walls, with embodied life everlasting!” Glasses chink. “And to those outside, well…let them die!”
The asylum people laugh, drink deeply. Sarah retreats to a corner.
Ava’s smile is acidic. “Seems rather callous,” she says.
“We are chosen by the Reaper to live,” Vincent explains. “There is no guilt in that.”
“Oh,” Ava says with an air of enlightenment, “all of you are the chosen ones.”
“You understand perfectly.”
Servant Sarah takes a tiny step forward. “What is it like…out there?” she asks breathlessly.
They all seem to hold their breath for an answer. Even the Captain’s wife can’t mask her curiosity. Her mouth hangs open, fragments of carrot on her tongue.
Poe doesn’t have to be asked twice. “It’s been a horror,” he says earnestly. He tells them everything, right from the beginning, and it’s like he’s been practicing it. Even I’m drawn in. Sarah, unnoticed by the others, pulls up a chair.
Captain Wadsworth leans back at the end of the story. “How dull,” he remarks.
“Yes, I’m quite bored with his anticlimactic story,” Captain Wadsworth’s wife agrees, nodding. She notices the fork in her hand, remembers her dinner, spears a piece of meat. “Perhaps the story of the girl’s chin would be more thrilling.”
Ava’s face flames red. I catch her eyes with mine. Hold them. Until she nods, until she gives me her broken smile.
“This dinner is delicious,” Vincent says, distracting everyone from the silence that has fallen.
Everyone agrees and a toast to Servant Sarah results. Poe’s appetite has disappeared. He pushes meat around his plate, smearing gravy. Ava quickly gives his arm a squeeze. That gets a small smile out of him. Biting off a chunk of potato, he chews as he stares at Ava.
His face is flushed. He just doesn’t know how to hide his feelings.
Ava stiffens.
“I would like to say something,” Servant Sarah says, her voice barely audible. “I liked your story, Poe. I found it stirring.”
Captain Wadsworth points at the corner. Servant Sarah returns to her post, head hanging.
“No matter, that story is over,” Vincent says. His top lip is now stained black from the moustache oil. “We ourselves enjoy a happy, everlasting, embodied ending.” He elicits and accepts a refill of wine from Sarah. “A toast. To the Reaper’s new workers! Who among you is quick with numbers?”
Poe indicates Leesel.
“We pride ourselves on our paperwork,” Vincent sings. The wine is bringing him out. “All stories lived within our district are properly documented for our viewing and Judgment, and we oblige. I suspect Miss Ava will demonstrate great talent in Judgment. Jesse and Poe, tunneler pick-up occurs every third night. I look forward to your assistance loading crystals in the wheelbarrow.”
“You will supervise, Vincent,” Captain Wadsworth says.
“And impudent Leesel must assist Servant Sarah,” his wife adds.
“We won’t be staying more than one night,” Ava announces. Silence.
Vincent laughs nervously. Pats his long curls. “I’m sure you don’t mean that, Miss Ava.”
“I do.”
“But we appreciate the hospitable offer,” Poe blurts.
“Ava, you alarm me,” Vincent says, glancing at the Wadsworths. “Please, do not refuse asylum. I hate to think of you dead. I much prefer your loveliness as it is now. The corpse becomes rigid…”
Dessert is a seven layer chocolate fudge cake.
The front door slams, and Poe’s out of his seat again.
“Is anyone here?” someone calls. Everyone looks startled, except for Leesel, who turns toward the archway with only mild interest as she licks fudge from her fork.
Bethany sweeps into the dining hall, brushing snow from her shoulders. Her nose is tinged blue from the cold, but her cheeks and lips are a bright pink. Shrugging off a heavy cloak, she glances at Sarah, who lunges to catch the garment before it hits the floor. The wintry conditions outside have done nothing to the perfectly arranged blonde spirals hanging to Bethany’s waist.
She opens her hands. Boots clatter to the floor.
Her feet are bare.
41
the beheading
Ava reaches for me as she glances at Leesel. “Is it her?” she whispers. “Is it Elspeth?”
“Yes, Mommy.”
Bethany-Elspeth looks straight at me and winks. Her eyes roll back. A moment later she steadies herself. “Oh, my,” she says. “I do feel faint. No doubt I need nourishment.” She pinches her cheeks. “What a lovely gathering. May I join in?”
“She’s gone again,” Leesel reports. “It’s okay, Mommy. Go ahead and eat. She’s found us. There’s nothing to do.”
Vincent topples his goblet in his haste to stand. “Join us!” he chirps. He cinches his nightgown belt tightly around his thin waist. “Please, please. Servant Sarah, seat this vision of loveliness immediately. Champagne. Uncork the champagne!”
Poe waves. “Bethany! Where is George?”
She acknowledges us, finally. “What a surprise to find you all alive! And this must be the little girl whom you lost. But what did you ask? Oh, George. What a silly question. Could he possibly have braved the Memento Mori wilds, as I have?” She allows Vincent to take her hand and lead her to a chair. She sighs dramatically when he kisses her fingers and bats her eyes at him before addressing the room at large. “The wedding is off!”
Poe holds a hand to his heart. “What happened?”
Beth
any accepts champagne from Sarah. “There was quite the stir in town after you ran away,” she scolds. Poe’s skin blotches red. She waves away his apology. “I don’t blame you. George could be rather dull. But I digress. A rumor circulated through town that George and I…well, I can hardly bring myself to say it…We were accused of consorting with tunnelers. I told the gossipers what to do with themselves, but George, oh my…I hate to be the one to bring you this dreadful news…”
Leesel pats her little mouth with a napkin and sighs with contentment.
Bethany’s smile shows every gleaming white tooth in her pretty head. Her breathless excitement focuses Vincent’s attention.
“George beheaded himself!”
I swallow just as Bethany shrieks this announcement, and begin to choke; Ava slaps me on the back to dislodge the meat from my throat. “Did you say George beheaded himself?” I ask, coughing.
Poe looks ill as Bethany explains.
“George kissed me—it was a perfectly poignant moment—and recited a poem on my loveliness, perhaps the loveliest of all I have ever received from my many admirers, but he told me there was no choice left him. He must defend his reputation. To prove his disgust for the resurrection, he beheaded himself in the highest fashion, right in the town square! A martyr! To think, my George now an iron ghost, never to suffer the disgrace of a boney resurrection. It was the most perfect moment. Children wept! His beheading was utterly spectacular, noble…and…so very…bloody.”
“And not anticlimactic,” Captain Wordsworth says, eyeing Poe.
Mrs. Wadsworth raises a toast.
Leesel giggles. “How do you behead yourself?” she asks. I was wondering about the logistics of this feat myself. No one answers.
Sarah places a bowl of steaming soup before Bethany, who tastes it carefully, then nods her approval.
Mrs. Wadsworth orders Servant Sarah to bring the next course for Bethany. “You poor dear,” she says. “There are few like your noble, spectacularly dead fiancé, and my own noble Captain, of course.”
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