by Anya Allyn
* * * *
Jessamine played a game of Old Maid with Philomena. Her movements were fluid and graceful as always. I tried not to stare too hard—people always sensed when you did that. Except for children—they were happily unselfconscious.
Aisha and Sophronia played their own game of cards. Sophronia looked up from her hand of cards—her dark eyes cautioning me. Missouri cried out, and Aisha and Sophronia went to her, holding her hand and sitting by her on the floor. Missouri’s face was grayish, gaunt.
I needed to concentrate—for Missouri’s sake. For everyone’s sake.
Drawing my legs up, I balanced my book on my knees. I glanced over at Jessamine in short intervals from behind the book cover.
What connection was I supposed to work out? I’d hoped for more from Sophronia—much more—after I’d shown her the locket. She’d told me nothing of use.
Jessamine shuffled the deck of cards, her slender fingers moving up and down. I watched—almost mesmerized.
For a second, my eyes blurred. Jessamine’s fingers seemed to stay still at the same time as they moved. No, they stayed still in between moving.
Really see her, Sophronia had said.
I rubbed my palm across my forehead. When you stared at something too long, your eyes went funny. You saw things that weren’t there. Or sometimes you saw things you hadn’t perceived before—as in a hidden picture puzzle.
Her hands reminded me of something. My physics teacher had slowed down a movie once—and amazed the class with the black void in between every frame. The frames ran so fast that your brain perceived the movie as fluid movement. At twenty four frames per second, your brain filled in the blanks. In the old movies before film had sound, you could clearly see the flicker.
That was Jessamine, right now. Still in between frames of movement.
My chest tightened.
Her hands were touching the cards and yet not touching the cards. The still Jessamine turned and stared at me—while the moving Jessamine continued to play cards.
I dropped my eyelids down.
Whatever had just happened—Jessamine was aware of it. Aware of me.
Sophronia sent an entire pack of cards spiraling high through the air, as though she'd been shuffling the deck and her hand had slipped.
23. ROSE PETALS
The stone angel stared down on me in the bed chamber, mocking my thoughts. The breaths of the girls misted the icy air. All except for Jessamine. Why hadn’t I noticed that before?
In my mind, clearly, I could see the faded photograph of Tobias and the somber little girl. The eyes of the girl were not like Jessamine’s—they held the exact same expression.
They were Jessamine’s.
The photograph was nearly a hundred years old.
Jessamine was nearly a hundred years old.
* * * *
I sat to a dinner of creamed corn—so watered down it tasted of merely flavored water. The can of corn was the fifth last in the pantry—but I could barely focus on that fact.
My body was numb, just a shell. But my mind was wild. My mind was a pulsing, raging animal, battering itself against its cage.
From the corner of my eye, I sensed the negative image inside Jessamine turn to study me. I tried to control my breathing, look normal.
Now I knew why Jessamine only ever seemed to push food around—and put a spoonful of food to her mouth—and then talk instead of eating. All that food going to waste—on someone who didn’t need to stay alive.
With a start, I thought back to those drawings Philomena had sketched of a girl with black hollows for eyes and an indistinct body. Philomena had been trying to draw what she saw—someone who was half there and half not.
An icy chill sped along my spine. Missouri, Sophronia and Philomena had been sleeping in a room with a century-old ghost for years—and in full knowledge of the fact.
But how did Jessamine die? What was the bad thing she’d spoken of? The serpent? Were the marks on her neck the strikes of the serpent? If the serpent had taken Jessamine’s life, then she could have also taken Lacey’s. I closed my eyes against the thought of Lacey suffering that fate.
Jessamine barely spoke to us during breakfast. She had none of her usual senseless news and chatter. Afterwards, in the ballroom, she had no activities lined up for us either. I averted my eyes from her at every step.
We were commanded to undertake quiet activities while Jessamine left for the bed chamber. Raggedy Ann watched us this time. At least, she stood guard for the first hour—but toppled to the floor after that.
Sophronia stared fixedly at the supine Raggedy doll.
Philomena hummed to herself, cutting out paper dolls on the carousel until she grew bored. Then Sophronia showed her how to fashion origami dolls with fancy pleated dresses.
Sophronia glanced over and caught my eye. Aisha lifted her eyes to us. A silent message passed between the three of us. A message of terrible knowledge. I realized then they both already knew what I did.
I turned my head away. Inside me, a point of light died. Something like white noise rose in my mind.
Rising, I stepped away into the corridor. If ghosts were real, then I was not. And neither was the world. At least, not in the sense I'd always known. Reality was tenuous. Reality was a painting that seemed three-dimensional, but you could walk around it at will. Tossing in my mind was a show I'd seen once of a blind woman in a remote village. Her weathered, crinkled face stared about in confusion when she was given sight for the first time. All she saw were meaningless, flat shapes. Things had no purpose, no dimensions. I was that woman. At the edge of a great space of nothingness, I prepared to walk away, say goodbye to myself.
Hands touched my shoulders. Aisha and Sophronia gazed intently at me.
“Please, leave me alone.” My voice was harsh in my ears. I shrugged myself away from them and continued up the corridor.
Ethan slept in his cell, his gaunt limbs close to his chest. I stepped into the storage chamber. As I lifted my dress overhead, I had the distinct sensation my body belonged to someone else, and what used to be me was running, just running, aimlessly.
My hands tore the black dress from the manikin and dropped it over my head. The dress clamped tight on my body, seething at the touch of my flesh. My knees buckled. I found myself in the corner of the room, huddled against on the floor.
The darkness of the tunnels loomed before me. I rose and stepped inside. Trailing a hand along the wet, slimy walls, I could see nothing. Air wafted ashy and burnt around me. Fear seeped through my bones. Why had I come here?
The answer came forcefully, battering itself inside my head: To lose yourself.
Forcing myself on, I blundered deeper into the winding, twisting veins of the cave.
Ahead, a pillar of crystalline rock stretched from ceiling to floor. I can see that.
A figure leant against the pillar. Henry.
“The dress suits you far better than it ever suited Audette.” He took a last puff of his cigar and let it fall to the ground. Lifting a lamp with the other hand, he peered closely at me. His face wore the faint traces of the paint of a circus clown.
I whirled around, ready to flee.
“Are you with me?”
His question echoed in the dark spaces of the cave.
I stilled myself. “Yes.”
The dress twisted on my body.
He moved close behind me, breath on my neck. “I knew you couldn't stay away. I knew you'd return. Even though you deny who you are.”
Heart beats scudded through my chest. “Who am I?”
“There are no accidents in this life. There is just denial. And you came by your own desire to the carriage.”
Slowly, I shook my head. The scent of cigar smoke thickened as he drew closer.
“You are just like me.”
“I am not like you.”
He brought something around to my face. A rosebud. Deep and red in color. My fingers laced around the stem. The rose bloomed b
efore my face.
A single petal fell from the rose. It drifted to the floor, melting into a tiny pool that looked like blood.
“I have to go.” My words were hollow, tinny like carousel music. I stole a glance back at his face.
He grinned widely, bowing with a flourishing gesture. He set the lamp on the floor and paced away, until he disappeared into the black perimeter of the lamplight. Gasping, I reached for the lamp.
I turned and walked the other way.
I'd been prepared to go with Henry. Almost. I didn't understand myself, let alone anyone else.
As I rounded the next corridor, my light fell upon the desk. The plate of cake was gone. I travelled on through the darkness. There was no way back, even if I wanted it.
This is what you wanted, Cassandra.
Vibration gathered in the tunnels, pulsed in my ears. I ran. Tunnel after tunnel.
Transparent formations began to vein the walls, hang from the ceilings. Water streamed down and dripped from the formations. Secret things humans were never meant to see. Wetness and decay saturated my nostrils.
An arch-shaped cavity had been cut high into the crystalline rock. I moved underneath, holding the lamp high.
My scream cut the air.
Skeleton.
Dark bones.
Stained yellow dress.
Skull.
Hat.
Hot tears wet my face. Strength left me—I crouched on the ground like an animal.
Lacey.
I forced myself to see her again. The skeleton was propped upright and standing in the cavity. A long yellow dress encased the body of bones—a dark stain spreading from the bodice downwards. A summer hat was tied under the chin.
No, it couldn’t be her—couldn’t be Lacey. The bones were aged. The skeleton had to have been here for a long time.
She had to be The First One. Prudence.
I knelt—my mind deadening.
Something reached around and clamped over my face. I struggled, slipping on the rock. Fingers dug into my shoulders, shaking them violently.
Wake up! Wake up!
A high voice.
With a shudder I felt myself dragging backwards, my back hitting a wall. The eyes of Aisha and Sophronia bored into mine.
“Don't scream again,” said Aisha. “Please don't scream again. You'll wake Jessamine. What happened?”
I shivered feverishly. “Get this dress off me.”
24. STRIKES OF THE SERPENT
Days passed. Days where I didn't speak. Time wound itself around me.
Ethan had an asthma attack and came close to dying. Aisha kept a vigil in front of Ethan's cell—her hands locked onto the bars. Missouri grew worse. Philomena tried repeatedly to engage me, but I refused her. Jessamine drifted about the underground almost wordlessly. And the food... the food dwindled to the last can.
I watched it all from a distance.
Missouri rose from the daybed, and stepped unsteadily from the room. Sophronia looked up in alarm. Philomena slept peacefully on her chest after she'd spent half an hour settling the restless little girl.
Aisha's pale face appeared in front of mine. “Cassie. We have to go help Missouri.”
“You go.”
“She could fall. She can barely stand up.”
I turned my head away from her, away from her accusing eyes. Her hands grasped my arm, half-wrenching me to my feet.
“Get up, damn you,” she yelled. “What makes you think you're so special? We're all going through this!”
I leapt to my feet, pushing her away.
Her mouth drew in. Her fist connected with my jaw.
She snatched her fist back. “Oh God. I'm sorry... I'm sorry...."
I shook, unable to speak for a moment. I ran from the ballroom and into the corridor. Missouri's bent frame stumbled into the bathroom. She gripped the sink with both hands, spluttering into the steel bowl. Bright blood exploded in the sink.
Moving behind her, I touched a towel to her mouth. She stared in the mirror at the two pallid figures who stood side by side. Breathing heavily, she padded into the bed chamber. She laid herself back, gasping on her bed.
Aisha pushed past me, through the crevice to the chamber. “Why'd you let her come in here?”
A strained sigh came from deep within Missouri's chest. “This is where I want to be.”
“The air is wet .. and too cold in here. Please ….” Aisha bowed her head.
“I don’t want Philly... to see me, like this.”
I edged my back into the wall.
Missouri's gaze drifted over to me. “You're full of rage, Calliope.”
“This place,” I said, “operates on a spider web of lies and deceit.”
“You want to know everything? Look at yourself. You discover a truth and can barely function.”
My bottom lip quavered. “Yes I know about Jessamine. But you shouldn't have held back the truth... about Prudence. I found her... I found Prudence.”
Missouri's eyes watered, her features losing composure.
Aisha strode up to me, her hand gripping my arm. “You found Prudence?”
“She's dead,” I spat. “She never left here.”
Aisha turned slowly around to Missouri. “Tell me that's not true.”
Missouri plunged into silence. Aisha's arm slackened and fell away from mine.
“The reason I told no one about Prudence... is because of Prudence,” Missouri said finally.
“But why?” Aisha's voice wilted.
Missouri’s cheeks were wet, shining. She took in some labored breaths. “Prudence was brought in a year after I was. It was terrible of me... but I was glad to have someone else to share my days with, to share the horror with. I told Prudence—about Jessamine—soon after she was brought in. Prudence took the news badly. She began drawing madly every day... reams and reams of paper. I couldn’t reach her. Couldn’t stop her.”
She moved her head to the side, eyes squeezed shut. “And then one morning... one morning I woke to find her in a pool of blood. There in her bed. She’d cut her wrists sometime during the night.”
Aisha and I quietly moved to Missouri's side.
“Knowing the truth killed Prudence,” said Missouri softly. “She’d been here less than a month. That’s why I knew if there was ever another girl brought down here—I’d never tell.”
The hellish scene Missouri had painted of Prudence's last days and night seared my mind. And there was something else, something underneath the horror.
“But she can't be The First One... Prudence,” I said slowly. “Not if she was brought in a year after you.”
Missouri shook her head in soft, sad movements. I realized then Missouri had never said she was.
“Then who is she... The First One?”
“I don't know,” Missouri responded. “I've seen her, perhaps three times in all. But I barely see her before she is gone—and she's always shrouded in a strange darkness. Years ago, when I first came here, was the first time. I knew she'd been here before, because Jessamine greeted her—like someone she knew. I've always felt she is the key to the mystery of our imprisonment. But I haven't seen her for a long time. I don't know what happened to her. I hoped you could find out.”
I raised my eyes to the stone statue in the wall. “So that's yet another girl that something awful happened to.”
Missouri touched my arm. “Time has run out, for all of us.”
Aisha drew out Prudence's sketches from her clothing, and placed them in Missouri's hands. “Please tell us what the pictures mean?”
Missouri lifted weary eyes to the ceiling, frowning as her fingers touched the paper. She brought the drawings around to her face. The papers dropped through her fingers as though they were laced with poison.
Missouri's expression froze. “She comes here.”
“Who comes here?” Aisha sat next to Missouri on her bed.
“The serpent.”
I grasped Missouri’s arm. “What do you
mean, she comes here?”
Missouri moved her head away sorrowfully. “We only see her shadow. Jessamine fears her too.”
Aisha gasped. Horror charged through my entire body, turning my limbs to stone.
Lamia was real?
How could she be? She was a myth, a drawing, an imagining.
I thought back to my first time in the underground, and the shadow I’d seen pass over the ceiling—the shadow I'd thought had been a product of my own fear.
“There's more... about Prudence.” Missouri's eyes were distant. “Prudence saw her—the shadow—the night she died. The shadow wrapped itself... around her. Jessamine commanded the shadow to leave... but it was too late. Prudence had already been on the edge of losing her mind. I think that’s how the shadow was able to hurt her.”
I bowed my head, barely able to conceive what Missouri was telling me. Her words ate through me like a plague of rats.
“God,” I whispered. “That’s why she—Jessamine—sleeps with the toys in the room? That’s why you called the toys her guardians that first time we talked, isn’t it? They’re not guarding her from us so much as guarding her from... Lamia.” My voice fled from me, raspy and cracking.
She nodded, her face drained. “Don’t think of the serpent as a name. I don’t think she can be defined. She could become more dangerous, if you define her. Prudence drew the serpent the way she saw her—and then the serpent struck.”
“But what does she want? Why does she come here?”
Missouri inhaled sharply from the effort of speaking. “You need to stay strong, Calliope and Angeline. There's nothing I know that can help you.”
I bent close to her. Her breath dusted the air white.
“Tell us. We need... to know.”
Her eyes locked with mine, staring into me. “I’m afraid. I’m afraid for you if you know it.”
“No more secrets,” I whispered.
She shook her head stiffly, her face twisting with pain.
I backed away from the bed, knowing I couldn’t push further.
She drifted to sleep.
Fear and revulsion clung to me like the material of the black dress—malevolent, evil. Aisha sat stonily, eyes glazed and unseeing.