Lucky Number 23

by Krystle Able

  I needed to get back inside and start my ritual, but I couldn't help but look up one more time to the second floor of the manor, to where the stranger was locked inside of Lucky's room. I caught the movement out of the corner of my eye as the shadow darted below the window. I saw her, nonetheless. Number 23 was awake.

  Chapter Eleven

  I stared at the window for another few seconds to make sure of what I had seen. The curtain shifted again, and I saw the top of her head peek over the window sill then immediately duck back down. She knew I was watching her.

  My pulse quickened but I knew the door was locked securely. She wouldn't be able to get out. I told myself to finish the job at hand, but something was nagging at the corner of my mind, a voice like my own telling me to go to her. I shook my head and shifted my gaze away from the window and back to the shop. I began walking towards the building but stopped and started back up to the house torn between starting the ritual or turning off the cremation oven. I looked back over my shoulder and could see number 22 still laying on the table, her face bloodied and broken so awfully that it seemed concave. She wasn't getting up.

  "Fuck!" I cursed under my breath and jogged back to the hot shop.

  I flipped off the cremation oven and the glass furnace, took one last glance at the girl on the table, then pulled the metal door shut and rushed back into the manor anxious to find out about the girl upstairs. She was much more interesting than number 22, and I was beginning to think the cashier's body would end up going to waste even though I hadn't killed her, yet.

  I entered the manor through the front door and hung my coat on the wall pegs just inside the foyer. The only part of the manor where you could tell someone still lived there. I walked through the house to the kitchen which was warm from the heat of the kiln underneath. Glassmaking required a lot of heat in many various stages of the process, which was nice in the coldest winter months when I was inspired to create, but Hell on earth during the summer. I wiped my brow and walked up the steps to the patient wing.

  I reached the landing and stopped to listen. Her room was at the end of the corridor, but I was on guard. None of the other women I brought here had made me anxious or nervous, yet this one did, and I hadn't even seen her conscious yet. Perhaps she indeed was the muse I had been waiting for, the one that would break this cycle, and set me free.

  I walked down the hallway and listened to my heavy-footed steps resound down the corridor. My boots weren't made for stealth, that was certain. She would hear me coming, and if she were as feisty as number 22, she would be ready for me when I opened the door. I wasn't going to let another woman make me look like a weak, unprepared, asshole again.

  I stopped outside the large black door and stared at the dust-covered chalkboard that still hung on the door. I remembered the last time I labeled this roo — number 23, same as this time. I drew the words into the dust with the tip of my finger then leaned in so that my ear rested against the door and listened.

  I couldn’t hear anything inside the room. No crying, sniffling, heaving breathing, just silence. I thought for a second that she could still be unconscious, but I knew what I saw in the window. I knocked on the door and listened again. No movement. I unlocked the deadbolt and gave the door a small shove open. The cumbersome door creaked open, and I stood in place, steady and waiting in case the girl rushed out.

  I had nothing to worry about, though. The girl sat up in the bed with the sheet pulled up around her shoulders so that her naked body was covered. Her skin was still pale, and dark circles were under her eyes. The strangest thing about the woman was that her blue-tinted lips were curled into a wide smile.

  “Why are you smiling?” I demanded to know.

  She put her hand to her throat and coughed, then smiled again.

  “You lost your voice?” I asked.

  She replied with a nod, still smiling like a giddy idiot.

  “You’re not scared?”

  I was suspicious of the woman. Why was she happy to be kidnapped? Was she still delirious from being out in the cold? If her voice was gone and she was sick, that was a possibility, I supposed.

  She barked out a laugh which sent her immediately into a coughing fit. I rushed over to her bedside and sat down to pat her back. She buried her mouth in her elbow as she coughed but continued to gaze up at me with large brown eyes that didn’t show the slightest hint of fear. She looked genuinely happy, although genuinely sick as well.

  When her coughing subsided, she sat back up and mouthed “thank you” before raising a hand to my cheek. Her fingers were still a bit swollen and blue. Her touch was not welcomed, however, and as she cupped my face, I swatted her hand back down and jumped up from the bed.

  She jerked her hand back to her chest and looked at me with confusion and sadness in her eyes.

  “Who are you?” I demanded to know. “What’s your name?”

  “Ivy,” she croaked with a hand to her throat.

  Speaking pained her and I regretted making her do so, but there was something odd about this young woman. She seemed so familiar, but I knew no Ivy’s, I knew that for a fact. Ivy wasn’t the type of name you’d forget. I studied her thin, narrow face and tried to remember if I had seen her before.

  “Are you from here?”

  She nodded her head, then paused and shook her head instead.

  “Kind of,” she coughed.

  “What kind of fucking answer is that?” I asked her.

  I wasn’t getting anywhere with this woman, number 23, but I knew something about her wasn’t right. She looked normal enough, albeit she was filthy; her face was sweet, but warning bells were going off in my head.

  “I lived here,” she tried to explain, but before she could say anything more, the motion lights suddenly flashed on outside.

  I ran to the window of her room in a panic and tore the curtain to the side. Number 22 was outside, crawling through the snow. There was no way she could see after the damage I inflicted on her face. Her left cheek had been nearly caved in, her face had been broken, she shouldn’t have regained consciousness, and there she was, nonetheless.

  “Shit!” I spat.

  “Go get her,” the young woman in bed whispered.

  I turned and stared at her. Her smile was twisted. There was something wrong with this woman. I knew she had seen me carry the girl outside to my shop surely; she had seen what I did to the girl. I was confused at why she wasn’t rooting for the girl to get away. Did she think I would save her? Did she not realize it was me who hurt the girl? I didn’t have time to ask. I rushed out of the room and slammed the black door shut behind me. I locked the deadbolt, but I couldn’t get number 23’s sick smile out of my head as I ran out of the manor and across the snow.

  “You’re not going to get away!” I called out to the girl who was on her hands and knees trying to scramble out of sight behind the large metal outbuilding.

  I reached her in no time and grabbed her matted and bloody hair. I yanked the fistful of hair downward hard, and she crumpled to the ground instantly and moaned. My boot slammed against the center of her back and sent her sprawling headfirst into the snow. I stepped down on her back so she couldn’t get up.

  “I didn’t want to hurt you!” I yelled at her.

  Tears welled in my eyes. I hated when they made me hurt them. Her body would go into the fire bruised, battered, and broken rather than whole and pure. What would I turn her into now? Robert used to say that as long as art was beautiful people would buy it, but there was a certain purity about glass, a delicacy to the art of glassblowing that required perfection. Although the ash would serve its purpose whether the body it came from was beautiful or broken, I, as the artist, would know that it was all a façade. The glass would be tainted. Perhaps I would turn her into pipes to be sold to the gift shop where I met her, wouldn’t that be fitting? She would come full circle in a certain way. Yes. I decided without delay what she would become.

  I slowly lifted my boot off her back and knel
t beside her. Her breathing was shallow, and her face was buried in the snow. I grabbed the back of her shirt and hauled her up over my shoulder. She was no longer coherent and didn’t fight back anymore. Number 22 finally understood it was the end and had accepted her fate.

  I looked up at the manor as I hauled number 22’s body back to the entrance. Number 23 was low in the window as though she were sitting or kneeling on the floor. She was wrapped in a sheet. The bright motion lights reflected off the window and enabled me to see right through the thin material. Her breasts were perky, and her nipples were dark against the fabric. She had taken her bra off.

  I looked away but turned and looked right back up. She smiled and put her hand on the window before motioning to the building and mouthing “go.”

  The sliding metal door was already partially open from number 22’s escape but rather than nudge it just wide enough to get through, I kicked the door and slid it wide open. I wasn’t ever into voyeurism, but if number 23 wanted a show, then she’d have one.

  I threw the gift shop cashier’s body back onto the table. I didn’t bother being gentle this time since she had already forced me to damage her face and body. The furnace and cremation oven were both still warm, and they roared to life as soon as I turned them back on.

  I tore the shirt off the body then undid her bra and ripped it off as well. The rest of her clothes were off in seconds. I was on edge and wanted to show the girl in Lucky’s room that I wasn’t her knight in shining armor. What happened to the little bitch Amber would happen to her too.

  I stood next to the body and paused to catch my breath. I looked through the wide-open doorway up to the manor. She was still in the window. Number 23 stared directly into my eyes but did not indicate her thoughts about what she was witnessing. Her face was blank. There was nothing there. It was an expression I was familiar with. Maybe she was insane like all my foster sisters had been growing up?

  I took a deep breath and refocused on the woman in front of me. This one had been so much trouble. I reminded myself that I was almost done. I was closer than ever to move on and away from here. Number 23 was upstairs waiting to become my most beautiful piece yet. She would be the first to see her fate ahead of time.

  I looked up at the window again. She was completely still, but her expression had changed. One eyebrow was cocked now, as though she were growing impatient. I scoffed and went to the washroom to retrieve buckets of warm water and soap. I didn’t look up at the window when I got back to the main room. Instead, I set to work, washing the blood, dirt, urine and fecal matter from the woman’s body. I kept an eye on the rise and fall of her breasts in case she started to wake up again.

  Her nipples were hardened and alert. I was dying to get a reaction out of the girl in the window, so I pinched number 22’s nipples hard and cupped her large breasts as I ran the soft, white, soapy, towel down her chest. I looked back up at the girl in the window. No reaction. I went to the head of the table and pulled the body forward so that her head hung off the table and washed the bloody hair.

  When I was finished, I arranged her on the table, arms crossed over her stomach. A large toolbox stood against the wall, and I walked over to it and opened the thin drawer on top. Several needles full of tranquilizer rested inside. I always made sure the women were completely sedated before they were purified since they couldn’t be dead. Unfortunately for number 22, I didn’t think she deserved the luxury of being tranquilized. I also didn’t believe she’d wake up anyway and didn’t want to waste the chemicals.

  I put the needle back and shut the drawer. When I turned the girl in the window was still staring with a blank expression. The flames were roaring in the brick cremation oven—it was time to show her exactly who I was. I lifted the lid to the cremation oven and slid the tray the body was on up the table where it led into the oven. I grabbed a clay jug from the countertop along the wall and dipped my thumb inside. I had stolen the Holy Water from the Catholic church in town. I didn’t believe in God the way religious people did, but I did believe the water could cleanse their souls and my art was about purity. Just before I pushed the body inside, I glanced back up at the window. She had to be frightened now, right?

  The girl wasn’t frightened at all, but her expression had changed. She looked intrigued, and when I locked eyes with her this time, she nodded, as though she was giving me the go ahead to push the girl into the flames. I didn’t need her permission, but I complied with her wishes and gave the tray one last push to send it into the oven. I pulled the oven door shut and secured the lever in locked position. I waited for the screams, but none came. I was glad I made the right decision about not wasting the tranquilizer.

  Chapter Twelve

  The cremation of a human body took around two and a half hours. I didn’t need to wait for the oven to do the work. I wanted to talk to the woman upstairs again, but I was unnerved by her. The way she watched me through the window, without so much as a flinch when I shoved number 22 into the oven chamber, made me curious about her.

  The idea of getting to know her rather than turn her into art, to set her soul free, made me nervous. I hadn’t felt that way about a woman before. I didn’t care about the women I met. Their bodies served a purpose—either sexual or artistic, and my past had been full of them. I had never cared to get to know any of them before, however.

  I looked up to the window and realized the woman was gone. Number 23 wasn’t watching me anymore. I left the hot shop and pulled the sliding door shut again. I walked back up to the manor and climbed through the cellar doors into the basement. I considered cleaning up the cage and bringing Number 23 down to stay inside. I hooked a hose up to a shop sink and began spraying down the floor inside the cage.

  Number 23 was going to be the last, and it was bittersweet when I thought about it. Creating glass art was my passion and setting these girls free of their wickedness was my duty—I knew that, but my inspiration was fizzling out, and my sense of responsibility to my father was waning. My goals were different than his. While he experimented with their minds to try to produce a cure, it was I who had found the only way to rid them of their darkness truly.

  My mind began to drift back to the last time McCourt Manor saw its 23rd patient. Robert had told me she had gone into witness protection, the only girl to make it out alive and that I would never see her again most likely. She was so young, only twelve years old when they pulled her out of her bed and carried her out of the house forever. I doubted she would even remember me. Although, part of me knew that she would never forget me, even if we never saw each other again.

  Lucky had been strong. She had outlasted all the others by years. My father and mother loved her, and so did I. She was my sister. She was supposed to be my father’s legacy, his greatest achievement, a breakthrough in psychology that would catapult Dr. John McCourt to stardom in his academic and professional circles. I was the one fulfilling the legacy now. Lucky was gone, and if she had wanted to come back, she would’ve by now.

  My sister was twenty-two, almost twenty-three now. Her golden birthday was coming up, and I wondered how she would celebrate. Lucky’s birthday would’ve been the event of the century if she were still here, with us. Her birthday was father’s favorite number; a number he dreamed about, had faith in, thought was part of his fate.

  I remembered when I told my father about her. He was angry that she was so young. He had ordered my mother to not accept any girls under 16, but when the caseworker called about Lucky—about the girl with the darkest soul social services had ever encountered, and told her she was only eight years old, my mother had to meet her, even if she was in Missouri. Convincing department of child and family services in Missouri to transfer her to our program in Minnesota wasn’t hard. The local caseworkers were more than eager to sign over the girls to Dr. John McCourt, well-known adolescent psychologist, and his wife. But, the Missouri authorities for child welfare was more than eager, compared to our local departments, to give up the disturbed little girl
. Within just a few days, Lucky was on her way to us. My father didn’t want the girl but when he found out about her birthday, January 23rd, his attitude was quick to change. He didn’t like that she was young, but fate seemed to have something else in mind for his study, and he was willing to take the chance. Her first night hadn’t gone well, but she soon became my father’s favorite.

  The water from the hose splashed on my boots and up my legs, drawing me out of my memories.

  “Shit!” I exclaimed and jumped out of the way of the puddle that was accumulating on the basement floor.

  I turned off the water and grabbed one of the large dust mops that were now soggy with water and tried to push the accumulation down the drain near the sump pump. I had wasted a lot of time lost in thought, and now I was losing time cleaning up a mess. I sighed in frustration and backed up against the hot kiln.

  “Fucking ouch!” I yelled again as my shoulder contacted the large kiln that was radiating enough heat to warm the entire manor.

  I groaned and pulled my shirt up over my head. A towel hung from the edge of the sink, and I dipped it into the water from the hose that had dripped into the sink. I pressed the cool rag against my shoulder and winced. The burn was the size of my hand and covered most of my shoulder and part of my bicep. I had suffered plenty of burns in my profession as a glass blower. There was plenty of creams and ointments upstairs in the bathroom that would take care of the burn, and I could easily get ahold of some pain pills if I didn’t have any Vicodin’s left. The girl upstairs would need to be checked on before I did anything else. I was getting too distracted, and now that the basement floor was a sopping mess, I would have to keep her upstairs in Lucky’s old room no matter what.

  I headed back upstairs to the patient wing. I wasn’t mindful of being quiet this time and marched straight to her room, unlocked the door, and pushed it open. She wasn’t hiding or cowering as I expected. She was sitting up against the headboard with the sheet wrapped around her body. She waved casually when I burst through the door as if she had been expecting me. Her expression showed no sign of fear, anxiety or even nerves. She smiled again, warmly, as though we were old friends.