Stumble
A river of yellow and orange leaves crunched underfoot as the young girl trudged through the forest. She rubbed tears blurring the autumn woods out…
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A river of yellow and orange leaves crunched underfoot as the young girl trudged through the forest. She rubbed tears blurring the autumn woods out…
Of course, you’ll walk down the aisle, beaming at the congregation, doing your best to make it look like you actually want to be there,…
That’s when I remember. My little Andrew is still sitting on the floor of the living room, watching The Adventures of Sparkington the Superdog. The…
Ms. Mallory didn’t speak a word the whole way there. It wasn’t that she was nervous, oh no, in fact, quite the opposite– she fidgeted…
Ms. Mallory didn’t speak a word the whole way there. It wasn’t that she was nervous, oh no, in fact, quite the opposite– she fidgeted with her leather bag, brimming with excitement. The countryside creeping by the taxi’s grimy window was enough to fully entrance her. She felt strangely out of place– no blaring car horns, singing engines, echoing shouts from bustling crowds. She had cranked down her window slightly, and the usual thick smell of oil she knew so well was replaced with a rush of fresh pine. Instead of signs glowing through the steam that rose lazily off the street, the dusk forest was illuminated only by faded sunlight and the stark gleam of the car’s headlights, visible through a puff of smoke from the driver’s cigarette.
She was indeed out of her element, but as the car strained up a dirt hill into the clearing, she remembered why she had left it all behind. “I’m not so sure I’m right for this job,” she had admitted. Her confidence as a teacher had dwindled significantly after being let go. She could still see the solemn faces and farewell waves of her second-grade class as she sunk into a similar taxi soon after the last day of school had ended. “Yes, I know. I need the money. But surely you realize my predicament here– an orphanage isn’t really within my experience, and to be so far out in the country…”
But the mustachioed man behind the polished wooden desk had waved her concerns away. Ms. Mallory, of course, had the necessary experience, and worry not, it would be similar to her previous posts– oh yes, it was remote and more familial than a simple schoolroom, but Ms. Mallory was a strong woman, an adaptive woman, was she not?
“I suppose…” She had averted her eyes and trailed off, gazing at a pin board of grainy house mother photos.
Of course she was! His enthusiasm had startled even her. These girls had experienced a sour history of abandonment, chapter after disappointing chapter of teachers and mother figures who had not stuck around long before inevitably leaving, not even able to face his office again after giving up their tasks! Those girls needed a strong figure, someone to look up to, and he felt that the middle-aged teacher before him was the perfect fit. It wouldn’t be as hard as she might think, as most were already teenagers and well-versed in day-to-day routines, but a guiding, teaching hand was something they couldn’t do without– Your guiding, teaching hand, Ms. Mallory! She had certainly been thrown off by all of the praise she had received. She slept on it that night in her tiny apartment, dreaming of the helpless girls in the countryside crying out for a mother. In the morning she had returned to his office, bags packed. A feeling of excitement had filled her up inside– it was her mission and she had a duty to complete it. The schoolroom, she determined, had finished its need for her and a new calling had finally arrived!
She bit her lip and pulled at her curly dark hair as the building loomed before her, standing stalwartly in the middle of a grassy field. The first bitter shades of moonlight glinted off the ground beneath her. She was used to craning her neck at towers pointing high into the sky; she often did at the new Empire State Building back in the city. This complex, of course, posed no rivalry to that, but it did seem equally as intimidating. Nevertheless, when the driver creaked to a stop in the middle of the clearing, which acted as the building’s front yard, she hurriedly gathered her belongings and stepped out confidently into the grass. It crushed limply beneath her heels, slick with recent rain. She furrowed her brow in determination and took a deep breath, refusing to let the icy pang of nervousness set back in. The place before her could be a reclusive millionaire’s old, remote mansion, she imagined. It was starting to look dilapidated, a side effect of being decades-old and handed off between a stretching history of unsuccessful teachers, she guessed.
Turning back and leaning through the cranked-down passenger’s side window, she handed the driver the wad of cash gifted to her by the mustachioed man. You won’t regret it Ms. Mallory. I know your history, and I’ll be damned if I’ve seen another woman who cares as much for children as you do. The taxi driver paged through the crumpled bills, sliding each onto his plump belly, and when he had finished, crushed the dying ember of his cigarette stump on the dash.
“You shouldn’t do that, you know,” Ms. Mallory commented. “Fire hazard.”
Almost as if to spite her, he slipped out another, fiddled with his lighter, and ignited the tip, sighing out a puff of smoke. With one last disgruntled look, the car slowly grumbled away, creeping back down the dirt road, the red eyes of its tail lights disappearing into the forest.
Ms. Mallory turned, took a deep breath, and marched to the front steps of the mansion. It was a mansion, yes indeed, a comfortable old mansion where she and her new family would be enjoying themselves. She gulped down the butterflies in her stomach, flitting around like the fireflies she had just passed in the field, and raised her hand to knock on the door, not entirely knowing what to expect. Before she could lay her fist on the faded wood, the door swung open, bathing Ms. Mallory and the stone steps beneath her in warm orange light. A pretty blonde girl stood in the doorway, fidgeting with what looked like a shorter, more casual school uniform. Ms. Mallory stared, startled, into her long-lashed, deep green eyes before the girl turned around, calling into the mansion. “Lucy! She’s here!”
Several more girls rose from lounging on antique furniture, which was strategically placed around the main entrance room, lit by a number of electric lamps. They looked at Ms. Mallory like curious kittens with a strange new object introduced to their environment. At the top of a wooden staircase held against the left wall, a girl with long, night-black hair emerged. She looked slightly older than the rest of the group of girls, and descended the staircase in an almost ghostlike fashion, drifting toward Ms. Mallory as she flipped her hair over her shoulder. Clearly she was Lucy, and by the way she captured the attention of everyone in the room, especially the younger girls, it looked as if she acted as the leader of the group.
Ms. Mallory coughed, clearing her throat. This was where her experience came in. A good first impression and clear reveal of her intentions was key to quickly gaining their trust. “Good evening, girls,” she smiled, hoping not to come off as nervous or ditzy. “I’m Ms. Mallory, your new house mother. I’m greatly looking forward to meeting you all.”
At first, silence. Ms. Mallory coughed quietly into her woolen coat, wondering what she could have said better. Of course, this was no ordinary school– these girls had been abandoned, beaten down by the world, and lived their whole lives here. How could she simply come in and gain their trust?
“Our pleasure, Ms. Mallory!” One of the girls, who couldn’t be more than ten years old, leapt at the newcomer with arms outstretched in an embrace, almost tripping over her nightgown. Ms. Mallory’s heart warmed as the child hugged her around her skirt.
“Come on, Abby!” The green-eyed blonde girl who had opened the door earlier rolled her eyes. “Control yourself for once.”
“No, it’s… quite alright,” Ms. Mallory insisted, chuckling. She patted Abby’s short curly brown hair and shifted her gaze to the other girls standing around the room, some appearing more interested than others. She counted thirteen in all. With classes of thirty or forty under her belt, she suddenly agreed with what the mustachioed man behind the desk had been saying– this was nothing she couldn’t handle.
She glanced at Lucy, who stared back with a cold, uninterested look at Ms. Mallory. Of course, the new teacher was intruding on her territory and her protectiveness of her fellow sisters was kicking in. The teacher wouldn’t be welcomed with open arms by everyone right away. Lucy fiddled with her straight black hair, her deep gleaming eyes appearing almost violet in the lamplight.
Ms. Mallory turned back to the rest of the group. Following Abby’s outgoing lead, more of the girls, including one with red hair and a bow perched atop her head, approached in curiosity, chattering with questions. She smiled, figuring her warm impression had gone better than expected.
“Hold on, hold on,” she chuckled, looking to the older girls, who seemed less interested in buzzing over Ms. Mallory. “You can ask me anything you want, but first, is there somewhere I can set down my things?” She looked to Lucy and the others, hoping to get a response from the more reclusive group.
“Your bedroom is upstairs,” Lucy responded. Her voice was level, calculating, almost hypnotic. She spoke with full grace and confidence. “We can show you.”
“That would be greatly appreciated. Thank you– Lucy, was it?”
But that was all Ms. Mallory was getting out of the mysterious girl so far. The group paraded up the squeakily protesting wooden stairwell, which led into a long, dim hallway, lit by dusty chandeliers that looked as if they were on their last legs.
“Do you girls take care of this whole place yourself?” Ms. Mallory questioned, glancing over faded paintings on the walls and cobwebs fluttering from the arched ceiling.
“We do our best,” the blonde girl responded.
Ms. Mallory’s room appeared themed red– the sheets and drapes were a deep crimson and waved in the breeze of the open window as night air filtered in. She strode across the room to the four poster bed near the back, across from a large armoire to the immediate left of the doorway, and piled her belongings onto it. She turned to the window, savoring the view of the darkened forest beneath a lonely bright moon. One simply didn’t get views like this in the city. She shoved the glass shut, and clicked on the radiator beneath the sill.
With a deep breath, she turned again to the girls, most of whom peered back attentively from the doorway, while Lucy and the older ones stood back in the hall. “Well, I suppose it’s time for dinner, isn’t it? You all must be in need of a good meal, and I promise you I can make a winning blueberry pie for dessert afterwards.” Chattering amongst themselves, the younger girls led Ms. Mallory back downstairs to the dining room positioned behind the entrance hall, as the others trailed behind.
The girls certainly had no shortage of food supply– as canned goods lined the shelves of the pantry– although some of it was long past expired. In a tight walk-in freezer nearby, Ms. Mallory discovered a number of meats hanging by still metal hooks in a surprisingly organized fashion, considering it was maintained by teenage girls. After taking several down and fishing through the refrigerator for ingredients, Ms. Mallory cooked what she could find and served dinner at the long, candlelit table of the dining room. She considered that she had never made a meal for her students before, so she threw together something easy and common in her home city– hamburgers.
“I’m terribly sorry to keep you all waiting,” Ms. Mallory spoke as forks clinked against plates, a melody of the girls who had clearly never seen a hamburger before. “Did someone tell you I was coming? I’m surprised they were able to get the message here that fast– this place is quite far removed, after all.”
“No, but by now we always expect the new ones,” the blonde girl said.
Of course. Ms. Mallory’s heart throbbed for the girls around the table. Their leadership had changed hands so many times they had just grown accustomed to it. Welcoming new house mothers like her was probably a practice they had gone through many times by now.
“There was no administrator here when I arrived. Is that… normal?” The teacher questioned.
“We’re old enough to take care of ourselves while there’s no house mother around. The administrators know that.”
“What happened to all the other house mothers?” She asked, admittedly curious. She had only scraped the tip of the iceberg with her new students, but she couldn’t imagine how any morally grounded teacher could simply abandon them.
The girls seemed unsure of what to say, looking uncertainly at each other, then to Lucy. Their leader was scribbling absentmindedly in a leather-bound sketchbook, and looked up only when the silence of the conversation and ceasing of clinking silverware became almost deafening. Ms. Mallory half expected her to ask to repeat the question, but instead, she answered it.
“It’s this place,” she sighed, closing her book and setting down her pen. “I suppose it gets to them. It is old, and creepy, and in the middle of nowhere. There are things that happen here sometimes– strange things. We’re all used to them by now– it’s just another aspect of this old house. But I guess not everyone can see past that.” Her violet eyes connected with Ms. Mallory’s, who almost burst into tears. How tragic! She thought. How inhumane! They had been cast aside for the sake of the teachers’ comfort. She could barely believe it.
“Well, I promise I won’t be like those others. What a shame! But at least chance has finally brought me to you girls.”
Lucy regarded her with curiosity, a raised eyebrow. “I guess we’ll see.”
“I swear it. For starters, I want to learn each of your names.” She pointed to the blonde girl across from her who had first opened the door, and was now picking with a fork at her hamburger. “You were kind enough to open the door for me when I first arrived. What’s your name, sweetheart?”
Her emerald eyes flitted up away from her plate. “Bea.”
“Bea,” Ms. Mallory repeated, making a mental note. “Well, I suppose that’s easy enough to remember. Is it short for Beatrice?”
“Sure.” Her bored gaze focused once again on her food, analyzing it but not taking a bite.
“Right…” Ms. Mallory moved her attention down the table, as each girl introduced themselves.
“Zel.”
“Zel?” Another strange name. “Well, it’s wonderful to meet you.” She grasped for a second question to glean an idea of the redheaded girl’s personality, as the young student stared at the meal she had made. “I see you like bows, is that one your favorite?” She gestured to the crimson one nested in her hair.
“Yes. Lucy tied it for me!”
“Goodness, how sweet! Lucy is a wonderful sister, isn’t she?”
Zel beamed. “The best.”
Lucy didn’t seem particularly thrilled by this compliment, but she chose to ignore the conversation and, with a steely gaze, return to her sketchbook.
By the time Ms. Mallory had made a full circle around the table in an attempt to learn one thing about each girl, she had cleaned her plate. “I’m so glad to be able to meet all of you! I really am! We can learn even more about each other when class starts tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” Bea questioned incredulously.
“Yes, I’m afraid your education has been spotty at best due to the history of this place. As a teacher by trade, I cannot allow that! We need to catch up on what girls your age should be learning by now in standard schools. Don’t worry, though, I promise I will make it a wonderful experience!” She smiled warmly, hoping to conduct her excitement for learning as a beacon for her students.
Bea sighed loudly in accordance with some of the other older girls, but Abby and Zel seemed elated at the notion. “We’ll show you the classroom in the morning, Ms. Mallory! You’ll love it! It’s right next to the garden!”
“I look forward to it,” chuckled Ms. Mallory. “Now about that pie…” she swept her gaze around the room and stopped. “Hang on, you all haven’t eaten anything yet!”
The girls all became stiffly silent again as they regarded their plates, still piled with the meal that Ms. Mallory had thrown together.
“Aren’t you hungry? You didn’t eat already, did you?”
Again, the girls looked nervously to one another, their stares finally settling on Lucy, who was buried deep in her sketchbook.
“Sorry, Ms. Mallory.” Abby finally broke the silence. “We just had a really big meal.”
“Goodness, you should have told me! I wouldn’t have made all this food! You girls really are too polite.” Their nervousness at a new guest in their household certainly wasn’t helping their appetites either. It was probably best to postpone her welcome feast to a later date. She’d never known schoolchildren to pass up any type of dessert, but, as she reminded herself once more, these were no ordinary students.
When the candles had been blown out and the chandeliers switched off, the ancient house plunged into a dark slumber. Ms. Mallory peered out her bedroom window, fiddling with her nightgown and watching the moonlit fog drift by like a long exhale on a cold night. The cozy yet spacious room reminded her loosely of her tiny apartment back in the city, and for a moment she felt a flash of homesickness. She shook it off quickly, imagining the girls’ faces– Abby. Zel. Bea. Lucy. She already had their names memorized, and in time she determined to know more about their personalities as well. That was the first step to connecting with them. Besides, this was her home now. She stepped away from the tapping radiator and plucked the Bible off her bedside table, considering whether her nightly routine would cause a relapse in her nostalgia. She couldn’t decide before hearing the door to her room creak open. Lucy, the last girl she expected to see, peered in, and seeing Ms. Mallory standing beside her bed, slipped into the room and leaned against the old armoire, picking at the edge of her rose-patterned nightgown.
“Settled in?” Her delicate, pale finger tapped against her rough leather sketchbook, held by her side. Tap. Tap.
“Y–yes. I appreciate you checking up on me.” Ms. Mallory tried to give her warmest surprised smile.
Tap. Lucy’s eyes had simmered from tantalizing violet to a dark maroon in the dying light of Ms. Mallory’s solitary lamp. They had moved to the streams of moonlight bouncing in from the window. Tap. Tap. She murmured something very low, almost slipping under Ms. Mallory’s earshot. “Well, I hope you’ll be able to stay awhile…” Tap. Tap. Tap.
“Of course! My work, my life, is here now.” It was a struggle to hide her excitement. If these sentiments were any indication, she had progressed more quickly with Lucy than she could have hoped for!
Lucy’s eyes trailed slowly back to Ms. Mallory and she turned to leave. “Bundle up,” she called gently, her hand stroking the doorframe. “Gets cold here at night.”
She wasn’t wrong. Hours of lost sleep later, with intermittent leans over her bedside table to reassure that the melodically-tapping radiator was still working, Ms. Mallory finally switched her lamp back on and retrieved her holy book from the table next to her. She hadn’t expected the greatest rest on her first night in this new place anyway. She could still imagine herself standing in front of the second-grade class, reciting passages. Her fingers clutched it tightly when receiving the bad news: As confident as you seem, I’m afraid you just couldn’t bond with the students as well as the other teachers here, Ms. Mallory. Paging through dog-eared and water-yellowed paper, she flipped through until a section of Revelation gave up on its binding and slipped into her lap like sorrowful confetti. The nuns from her own elementary school would shudder if they could have seen her aged Bible today. Its condition was almost laughable.
A cry of singsong laughter floated through the old house.
Ms. Mallory froze, leaving Revelation spread lifelessly on her woolen sheets. At first she thought the notion had just been in her head, but then she heard it again. Like children playing, holding hands while running through a meadow.
The shafts of moonlight still distilled through the faded glass next to her. She glanced at her watch– well past midnight. If the children were up this late, they would be in no shape to learn anything tomorrow, and Ms. Mallory had specifically forewarned against this. Perhaps her first act as a disciplinarian of these girls would regrettably come so soon.
She slid the escaped pages back in and set the Bible aside, then shifted out of the bed and shuffled to the door. The hulking armoire seemed to stare at her intensely as she passed by. She slowly turned the cold bronze handle of the bedroom door, only to find that it wouldn’t budge. She jostled it again and it rattled in protest. Despite the door’s apparent age, Ms. Mallory’s hand was no match for the lock. How had she managed to become trapped in her own room?
Her breath caught in her throat as a series of loud thuds shuddered the floorboards beneath her cold feet, thumping right past her door. The laugh sounded again, now coming from further down the hall. Ms. Mallory raised her palm and slapped the door several times.
“Hello? Is someone out there? My door, it’s locked!”
There was no response. The laughter and pounding footsteps had ceased as well. The teacher waited several moments before gently trying the knob again, foolishly expecting some different result. “Hello? Who’s out there? Please, unlock this door at once!”
Still no answer. It was so quiet that Ms. Mallory could practically hear the blood pumping in her ears, and she realized how fast her heart was beating. She listened to the still-clicking life of the radiator. Tap. Tap. Tap. After a few more unsure moments, she figured whoever had run by was out of earshot or had returned to bed. The whole house was still, holding its breath like the helpless teacher. She took slow steps back from her doorway, hoping wearily that when the girls awoke in the morning she could better get ahold of one of them to open the door. Part of her suspected this was some kind of trick, a prank, played on her by one of those who didn’t yet appreciate her company, but she couldn’t be sure. After turning the thought over in her mind a bit, she chastised herself– all these girls wanted was a mother, after all. The right kind of mother, who wouldn’t leave them. Rubbing the sleep from her eyes, she moved the Bible back to its perch on her table and slipped under the covers, shivering from what she hoped was the cold.
The morning took its time to come. When it sauntered lazily in, casting its rays through the bedroom window, Ms. Mallory’s door clicked open, and Lucy stared in, dressed in a school uniform akin to the one Bea had been wearing last night. The teacher groggily met her gaze, sitting upright.
“Lucy! My door… it was locked last night. From the outside. How did that happen?”
The girl averted her dark eyes and gave the door an almost accusatory look. “Oh. I told you, it’s an old house. It’s strange. The locks on these doors sometimes get stuck and you can’t open them from the inside. Just last week it happened to Bea, and it wasn’t until noon that we discovered it and let her out. She didn’t mind, though.”
“Yes. Right. I should’ve known, you all can’t possibly take care of this whole house by yourselves.” The teacher stared absentmindedly into the pale sunlight for a moment, watching the drifting dust in the air as the events of last night replayed in her mind. “I heard someone outside in the hall last night too, running around and laughing. What was that all about?”
Lucy stepped further into the room, clutching her sketchbook to her chest like a wrinkled leather baby. Abby and Bea inched in after her, regarding their teacher with concerned looks. “Must have been Abby. She sleepwalks at night. Isn’t that right, Abby?”
“I’m sorry, Ms. Mallory!” A sob emerged from the young girl’s throat and she threw herself into the teacher’s lap in tears. Ms. Mallory smiled at her concern and patted her curly hair. “There’s no need to worry, I understand now. Everything’s fine.”
“We tried locking her in her room but she panics,” Bea explained, picking at where the top two buttons of her shirt had once been. “It’s really annoying.”
“Not a problem, but sleepwalking can be dangerous. You could easily fall somewhere around this old house.”
“I’m fine, Ms. Mallory, really.” Abby sniffled wretchedly, her grief swayed. “I… don’t go very far.”
“And the locks,” Ms. Mallory announced, standing as Abby returned to her elders’ sides. “I’ll take care of. No sense in having them anyhow. I’ll respect your girls’ privacy, as I’m sure you’ll respect mine. We have no need for them.”
Lucy and Bea looked at each other quickly, and back to the teacher, who was now regarding the clock with an incredulous ‘is this right?!’ and desperately rustling through her bag of various belongings. “Of course,” Lucy said slowly. “Come on, Bea, let’s go. We’ll be late.”
The classroom was simple, yet fanciful at the same time. Abby and Zel had been right– she did love it on first sight, and the morning rays and singing birds prevalent when she walked in had only added to the impressive initial impact of where she would be teaching the girls. Thirteen desks were lined up facing a wider one set out for her as a teacher. The girls filed in, all dressed in identical uniforms, some with excited expressions, although Lucy and Bea displayed particular boredom. When they all sat down, notebooks shuffling to the ready, Ms. Mallory realized that one desk remained empty.
“Where’s Zel?”
The girls cast their eyes downward, not wanting to meet the teacher’s worried gaze. “She’s not feeling well this morning,” Abby explained.
The lesson dragged on, and eventually the birds stopped chirping outside. Ms. Mallory served her meal from the previous night when the group convened in the dining room for lunch, but again, none of the girls seemed particularly hungry. Before continuing their studies, Ms. Mallory encouraged the girls to wait quietly at their desks and headed upstairs to check on the missing student.
Zel’s door was ajar, and she laid in her bed, covered in a cold sweat, her eyes red, puffy, and bloodshot, a cruel match to her hair.
“Sweetheart, how are you feeling? The others said you weren’t well, and you certainly look the part.” Ms. Mallory stroked the child’s head with a concerned, motherly hand.
“B–b–bad.” the girl struggled through coughing. “I think… I have a fever.”
The teacher felt her pale forehead, and indeed it felt fiery to the touch. “Do you girls keep any medicine here?”
“I’m… not sure… I don’t…”
“It’s alright. I’ll take care of it.” Ms. Mallory was no nurse, but she had brought quite a variety of medicines with her for various ailments, anything she or the students might need.
She turned away to face Lucy and Bea at the forefront of the group of girls standing in the doorway. “Didn’t I tell you all to stay at your desks?” She sighed.
Bea regarded Zel with a concerned look. “Should we call a doctor?”
“That won’t be necessary,” Ms. Mallory insisted. “One would take several days to get here, and I brought a bunch of medicine of my own. Don’t worry, I’m prepared for this type of situation.” Besides, the thought haunted the back of her mind putting Zel in someone else’s hands would relinquish her control of the situation and damage the trust and connection she was so eager to build up with her students. Her image in their impressionable eyes would be damaged. She could do this. At the very least, she would test out the waters of the situation, administer her own remedies before phoning a third party.
The girls seemed unconvinced, but didn’t protest as Ms. Mallory shooed them out of the room. As she turned to close Zel’s door, the little red-haired girl stopped her with a short plea.
“Ms. Mallory?”
“What’s wrong?”
Zel slowly turned her head and stared at Ms. Mallory with cold, bloodshot eyes. “Ah… nothing. Sorry.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll be right back with the medicine.” Ms. Mallory turned to leave and nearly bumped into Lucy, who was still standing in the doorway.
“You’ll get better, Zel,” the dark-haired girl said.
But Zel didn’t get better.
The shimmering medicine bottles sat out on Ms. Mallory’s bedside table like a little army of dark liquid soldiers. For the first few days she emptied the insides of only one or two, then three, or five, draining them into a spoon. Each time she placed them between Zel’s pale chapped lips, she murmured encouragement. “This one will help,” she promised. “I’m no doctor, but I know how to take care of children, even when they’re sick. I’ve been doing it for a long time. I’m good at it.” She emptied them all. “There’s no need to worry.” Zel didn’t worry. The teacher had made it clear that she had everything under control.
The dawn of a new week arrived. Despite the sun beaming down, the outdoors in the field surrounding the mansion was cold. The chirping birds had been replaced with the crying shrieks of crows, and the leaves had all fluttered to the ground off the trees, leaving them emaciated skeletons. Ms. Mallory put on a sweater and scarf and ventured into the nearby forest behind the building, to the hole Bea had dug in the ground. The girls all stood around it in a circle, staring in solemnly. When Bea was finally allowed by Lucy to throw in the first handful of dirt, it landed on the bow nestled in red hair. The crows grew louder, fighting amongst themselves.
The next few days got shorter, and the lessons with them. The girls found it difficult to pay attention, drawing absentmindedly in their notebooks or staring out the windows into the verdant hedges of the garden. Lucy was always intensely sketching. She sat in the back, and Bea watched her fair, pale hand scrawl across the page, as if in a trance. When class finished, the girls avoided Ms. Mallory like the plague, not daring to meet her eye.
They refused to eat, even more than before. Ms. Mallory had their whole stock of food at her convenience, but she used it only minimally for her own meals. Even blueberry pie didn’t pique their appetites, although when she made it she suspected Abby snuck several pieces when she wasn’t looking. She struggled to brainstorm ways to make the lessons and food more appealing, but she knew the girls were grieving and that perhaps the best remedy would be time, mixed in with the motherly love only she could give. Only she.
“Hand me the screwdriver, won’t you dear?” She asked Bea, holding out her hand as she sized up her door’s lock. Thunder boomed outside as her newly-employed begrudged assistant placed the tool into her palm. Ms. Mallory wiggled the old nails out, and one by one they clinked onto the floor. “So, how are you holding up?”
“Fine, I guess.”
She turned to face the blonde girl, whose face was lit in the dark by candlelight. The power wasn’t so strong out here during storms. “I know it’s hard. But you should try to convince your sisters to eat and pay attention to the lessons. You’re growing girls, it’s very important.”
Bea took the screwdriver back as Ms. Mallory pushed the mechanism from its socket. “If Lucy doesn’t eat, I don’t eat. Then none of us do.” She went silent as the rain pounded against the windows.
This wasn’t working. Ms. Mallory tried prodding at the lock from a different angle. “You girls all really look up to Lucy. I’m surprised that even you follow her so closely, Bea, being the same age. What’s the story behind that, if I may ask?” Lucy, reserved even before the tragedy, had locked up entirely the last few days and wouldn’t speak a word to Ms. Mallory. With careful, well-placed remarks, maybe she could creep into another of the older girls’ inner thoughts to figure out how to get them back on her side.
“Lucy is everything. She knew what to do… when our first house mother… died. Since then, she’s just been there for us when no one else is.”
“I’m sorry to hear about that. The house mother’s death, I mean. You must have been close.”
“She was the best one we ever had. We’d do anything to bring her back.”
With a final heave, the lock popped out of the door and Ms. Mallory held it up victoriously. “What was she like?” She asked, collecting the nails from the floor.
“You know, real nice, generous and stuff.” Bea stood up and moved with her to the next door down the hall. “She looked a bit like you.”
“Really? Well, I’m happy to be here with you girls, even though I know of course I could never replace her.”
“Yeah…” Bea sighed. “You never could.”
Ms. Mallory often wondered if the girls were getting enough sleep, because she certainly wasn’t. She stared at the ceiling, lying awake in bed, imagining the girls faces one by one as she listened once again to the slow tapping of the radiator. Tap. Abby’s cheerful grin. Tap. Bea’s bored stare, curling her hair. Tap. Lucy’s fiery, intent gaze. Tap. She got to Zel, staring up at her from the hole in the dirt. She cursed into her pillow at another hour of lost sleep. Tap. Tap. Tap.
Finally, she reached over to the radiator in a burst of rage. “Can this goddamn thing shut the hell up?” Her fingers clutched the paint-flaked metal, feeling for the switch, but it was cold. It wasn’t even on.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
She looked up and stared in shock at a figure standing next to the armoire in the darkness. As her eyes focused in the moonlight, she recognized the cold, flaring eyes. Staring at her, unblinking, unmoving, sketchbook in hand. Tap. Tap. Tap.
Ms. Mallory didn’t speak a word. She didn’t even move. She wasn’t sure whether she wanted to sink into the bed and disappear, or to blink until the figure vanished. Her blood was ice, her heart racing. Her cold fingers clutched the bedsheets as if they could hide her from sight.
It felt like ages before Lucy turned and stepped toward the door, shutting it quietly behind her, and the tapping disappeared down the hall. When she left, Ms. Mallory could still see her, almost as if she hadn’t gone anywhere. There was only one haunting face she could picture now in her mind.
Ms. Mallory lay there for several seconds, shivering in the cold room. It was a long time before she convinced herself it had been something of a bad dream and Lucy had never been there in the first place. Her breathing slowed, her knuckles regained their color. But still, she couldn’t stop staring at that spot next to the armoire. Her gaze was only pulled away when the loud thumping sounded again from out in the hall.
She swung out of the bed and crept quietly to the doorway. It was shut, but thanks to her, the lack of a lock made it easy to open, and she peered out cautiously into the hallway. Without the light of the cobweb-riddled chandeliers, the corridor seemed to stretch endlessly into pitch blackness. Her own shadow stared back at her and shivered, cast from the little light of the moon drifting through her window behind.
The creaking of floorboards emanated from down the corridor towards the entrance hall. As she glanced that way, Ms. Mallory saw a similar shadow fading into the darkness, much smaller than her own. She called out to it, but there was no response.
She figured it was likely Abby sleepwalking, as Lucy had described. But as gentle footsteps thudded melodiously in the gloom, the teacher figured she should follow Abby and make certain she didn’t stumble into trouble. How far was ‘not very far?’
She snuck down the stairs after the slow-moving girl, following her pale nightgown in the darkness. Bright moonlight illuminated her as she passed over distorted window frames cast on the floor, so that every few steps she looked like some kind of little ghost drifting along.
She weaved between the furniture and into the kitchen, like a wind-up toy whirring out its lifespan. It was as if she had done this so many times before that it had become a nightly routine. What was she up to, getting a midnight snack? “Abby!” Ms. Mallory hissed as the girl opened the door to the walk-in freezer with a blank stare. A cold fog rushed out into the kitchen, and a freezing hand seemed to grip the teacher’s body. Abby seemed unfazed as she stepped inside.
“Abby? Are you awake? It’s not safe to–”
She grabbed onto one of the hanging carcasses, like a child clinging to its mother. Then, without warning, she latched onto it like a wild animal, digging her teeth in deep. Dull crimson blood sprayed over her face. Ms. Mallory shrieked and yanked her away, startling her awake.
“Ms… Mallory?” She seemed confused, unaware of what she had just done.
“Oh, God, Abby! Did you swallow it?” She tried to force her mouth open but Abby pulled away.
“Ms. Mallory, calm down! I’m fine, see?” She acted as if her face wasn’t covered in animal blood. “I was just hungry…”
“Sweetheart… you can’t…” Surely the girls had taught Abby something about food poisoning. “That meat… it hasn’t been cooked…”
Abby stared at her with the same bewilderment that Ms. Mallory’s gaze returned. She blinked slowly, scratching her head. “I know.”
Another voice sounded from behind. “What’s going on down here? Ms. Mallory?” The teacher turned around to see Bea standing in the doorway of the freezer, shivering uncomfortably in shorts and a thin shirt. “What, wasn’t cold enough for you upstairs?”
Ms. Mallory grabbed Bea by the shoulders. “What is it with you? All of you? Abby just came down here sleepwalking, and started eating this raw!” She gestured wildly to the hanging beef as Bea pulled away in disgust– not from Abby’s blood-covered face, but from Ms. Mallory. “And don’t tell me she does this all the time! There’s always something strange going on, and none of you will give me the time of day! All I want is one good night’s sleep, just one!”
Bea scoffed bitterly and turned her back, starting away through the dimly lit kitchen. “We were wrong about you, Ms. Mallory… you’re just like all the others.”
Ms. Mallory’s heart sank to the floor. Bea was right. How could she have been so foolish? She had been so in control… so certain that she would be different. That she would be a change for the girls. Yet here she was, on the verge of losing it over the strange occurrences being strung together by this old place.
“Bea!” She called out desperately and the blonde girl, who had all but disappeared into the darkness of the kitchen, froze and glanced back at her. “Listen, I… I’m so sorry about what happened to Zel. I shouldn’t have taken things into my own hands. But I will never, ever make that mistake again, and you can count on this– I promise I will work towards being the best house mother you girls have ever seen. I want to be that for you.”
Forgiveness still eluded her, but Bea gave her a long, slow, contemplative look. “Good night, Ms. Mallory.”
The teacher sighed. Between all her mistakes, she supposed she shouldn’t have hoped for anything more. She turned to Abby, who stared back at her innocently. “Come on, dear, let’s get you cleaned up.”
Ms. Mallory’s mood turned with the sunrise. She felt like a new person when morning came. Still shaken from the previous night’s events, she trudged downstairs, stifling a yawn. A new determination had birthed within her, to renew her original mission to stay with the girls, even through the tragedy and whatever strange behavior came with it. As she started down the stairs, the lone black-haired girl greeted her vision, bathed in innocence and dewdrop-ridden sunlight, her back to Ms. Mallory. She sat comfortably on an antique couch, her chin resting on her knee. The teacher froze on the stairs, which gave an indignant squeak under her feet. She had decided that she should tell Lucy about her intentions now, her renewed vows, figuring that by some slim chance it might open her up more and allow the teacher to carefully tread into her thoughts.
She slowly walked up behind her, focusing on the intricate rose pattern plastered over and over on the nightgown pulled against her smooth skin. She opened her mouth to speak, but realized that the girl was intent on her work in her sketchbook, and for the first time, the teacher was able to catch a glimpse of the portrait she was scrawling.
It was like staring in a parchment mirror. Lucy had gotten her face right down to the last detail– the mole under Ms. Mallory’s left eye, her earrings, the way her hair fell down her shoulders. She had on a blank expression, but one that hinted at surprise, wonder. She couldn’t help but gush over the unadulterated talent contained before her.
Lucy quickly shut the sketchbook, seeming embarrassed that her work had leaked into Ms. Mallory’s eyesight. She looked up at the teacher with a violet gaze.
“Please, don’t let me disturb your work,” Ms. Mallory encouraged. “It looks incredible, unlike anything I’ve ever seen. Where’d you learn to draw like that?”
Lucy paused a long time before saying anything, staring down at her chest. “Lots of practice.”
“You really have talent. One day I’m certain you could even go into the city and be a professional.”
“What do you want?”
The teacher bit her lip. Her student had once again locked herself away. However, she felt confident she was still making progress. After all, every little bit helped. “I just wanted to let you girls know, I’ve been thinking everyone could use some time off. So I decided to cancel lessons for the next few days to give us all a chance to reconnect with each other.” Not to her surprise, the girl seemed uninterested. “I promise, it won’t be as torturous as it sounds.” The teacher chuckled to herself.
Lucy was busy staring off into the distance outside, and Ms. Mallory followed her gaze to the strong wind blowing leaves like a puff of confetti through circling crows. The windows rattled in their frames with every gust. “Of course, Ms. Mallory,” she finally agreed, and the teacher was pleasantly surprised at her giving in. “I’ll just shower, then we can all eat breakfast together. It’ll be fun.”
“Certainly! I’ll go ahead and throw something together.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Lucy waved her hand dismissively as she stood up, snatching up the sketchbook. “Bea and I have it covered.”
As she turned to walk away, Ms. Mallory called after her. “One more thing– were you in my room last night at all?”
The girl stopped and gazed back, giving her a strange look, rose-like lips slightly parted, as if she was searching for words. “No.”
After Lucy left, Ms. Mallory watched the trees moan and bend in the wind outside. So far, none of the other girls had gotten up, but she made no attempt to gather them since she had cancelled today’s lesson anyway. Her heart was squarely in her throat. The girls could come together in the face of awful circumstances, after all. Maybe Ms. Mallory’s epiphany and change had finally put her above the previous house mothers in the eyes of the girls. Instead of running away, she was striving to be better. She guiltily congratulated herself with a grin. And now Lucy and Bea were offering to make breakfast in her place… she needed conversation material, something they were undoubtedly interested in to keep her positive streak up. The only thing that came to mind was Lucy’s sketchbook. She now understood why the girl was so obsessed with that thing– with her talent. Maybe if she saw some of the other artwork, she mused, she could discover what made Lucy tick. She had been so secretive about it, but Ms. Mallory couldn’t see any other way to develop the connection she was determined about developing with her students. Yes, she would just ask to borrow it, only briefly, and flip through a couple of pages. That was all.
She marched upstairs, closing in on the high-pitched squeal of running water. She tapped the door briefly and peeked in, making sure Lucy was actually in there. She spotted the girl’s slender form, blurred through the mottled glass of the shower door and ambient steam, and the book lying on a table across from her. Her back was turned; she hadn’t seen or heard Ms. Mallory come in, and the temptation was too great. Convincing herself it was a good idea, the teacher snatched the sketchbook from the table, promising herself to put it back in five minutes– no, even less!
She scurried downstairs with her prize, feeling strangely giddy like a child on Christmas morning, then like she had just robbed a bank. But if Lucy wasn’t going to cooperate, she would have to do something to dig deeper into her psyche. She flipped the book open in a seat in the entrance hall and flitted through the worn pages. It had clearly been used for several years– some pages were starting to fall out, but she quickly found the drawing of her again. Turning back, she found there were more, sketched from different angles, but all as intricate and accurate as the first.
She kept going. These were now women she didn’t recognize, or whose faces seemed vaguely familiar, but they were twisted into strange expressions. It took her a while to pin down where she’d seen them– the pin board in the mustachioed man’s office. These were the old house mothers?
There were more. Page after page. Intricate. Detailed. Labelled. Anatomized. She gasped as their skin began to come off, their expressions blank and lifeless. Their ribs were exposed underneath. Organs, hearts, flesh. Drawn as if by a man of science, an experienced surgeon. Labelled extensively. Numbers. Temperatures.
Recipes.
She slammed the book shut. Barely managing to gulp down bile, she felt herself break into a cold sweat. For a second she felt she’d gone too far, then she wondered what these kinds of drawings were doing here in the first place. She was shaking, her face contorted into a shocked look. Maybe this wasn’t the thing to talk to Lucy about. She should get rid of this right away. Just forget she had ever seen it, act like it didn’t exist. No sense in starting out again on a sour note, she told herself.
Her sweat-drenched fingers gripped the leather binding and she jumped to her feet and hurried back up the stairs. To her relief, she could still hear the water running. Thank goodness, Lucy would never know she had taken the book, and it would be as if nothing had ever happened. No crime had been committed. She could just forget about it!
But when she slipped into the bathroom she discovered Lucy and her clothes were gone, vanished into the cloud of steam. She sighed, defeated, figuring there was only one option left– owning up to her mistake in person. She headed to Lucy’s room and knocked on the door. It creaked open slowly, and only then did Ms. Mallory realize she had never actually been in Lucy’s room. It was dark, the heavy red curtains closed, and lit dimly with candles. Lucy sat comfortably on blood-red sheets of her four-poster bed, combing out her shining wet night hair.
“Lucy…” Ms. Mallory began as if she was in a confessional belting out her sins to the priest. “I made a mistake, and I realized it. You probably noticed that your sketchbook was missing– well, I’m the one who took it. I’m terribly sorry.”
Lucy smiled absentmindedly. “Oh, Ms. Mallory, it’s fine,” she forgave in a singsong voice, smiling warmly.
Ms. Mallory had never seen her wear that expression before, and she felt relieved. Then she felt her skull crack as Bea stepped out from behind the door and swung the heavy wooden post into the back of her head.
She crumpled to the ground, gasping for breath as the ceiling spun above her. Bea tossed the weapon aside and it clattered to the ground, slick with Ms. Mallory’s blood. The other girls immediately emerged from the shadowy corners of the room, their cold faces dancing in the candlelight as they approached and stood over Ms. Mallory, forming a circle around her.
Bea crouched down at her feet, and the other girls followed suit, their bare knees hitting the floor all around her. They were each dressed in their uniforms, as if they had simply been preparing for class, and stared into Ms. Mallory’s eyes as if they were looking at a rabbit they had caught in a trap.
Lucy was still brushing her hair and humming cheerfully to herself as if nothing had happened. She gazed down with pity at the teacher on her floor in the ever-widening pool of red, joining the other crimson stains on her floorboards. Setting her comb down, she slid off the bed and knelt down next to Ms. Mallory, placing her head in her lap, and stroking her hair lovingly. “Shhh…”
“What… why are you doing this?” the teacher choked out.
“Quiet… it’s out of your control now. It was never in your control.” Lucy drew her fingers through the thick puddle she was sitting in, and pressed them to her lips. The colors matched.
“If this is… if this is about Zel, I swear–”
“This isn’t Zel’s fault. It’s yours. It happens sometimes, that the first-timers get sick from our meals– Zel was weak, but on the other hand, Abby is one of the strongest yet. Fair trade, I’d say. And her death only proved that you had failed us.”
Bea knelt closer, her hands on Ms. Mallory’s stomach. Her fingernails were long. Sharp. The other girls leaned over like they were trying to listen in on some scandalous secret.
“Please… stop… I can help… who… who… did this to you?”
It was Bea’s turn to talk. “I told you. Our first house mother was the best. She gave us everything.”
“Yes,” Lucy agreed, flattening her palms in the blood, then lifting them and letting it run down her arms. “She was perfect. Pure. But the Depression came, and we were forgotten. It was so cold, and we had nothing to eat. Nothing. I thought we were all going to die. But she told us… she would keep us safe. She would give us food no matter what. And she did.”
“We would have starved if Lucy hadn’t gone first,” Bea said, picking at her buttons again. “We would all be dead.”
Ms. Mallory choked out a helpless cry, a sob that died somewhere in her throat. She felt dizzy, numb, like the ceiling was crashing down at her.
“She was faultless,” Bea declared. “She gave up everything for us. You, Ms. Mallory, you’re no different than the others. You couldn’t even save one girl. One day, our perfect mother will return. And we will be waiting. As long as we keep getting rid of the tainted ones, they will send her eventually, and our family will be whole again. We’re human, Ms. Mallory, just like you, but we’re different. Only our perfect mother would understand. Only she.”
Lucy passed the sketchbook around the crowd, letting the girls study its detailed drawings as if they were studying for a test. As it arrived at Abby, Ms. Mallory pleaded with her through tear-filled eyes. “Please…”
“Sorry, Ms. Mallory.” Abby handed the book back to Lucy, who tossed it aside. “It’s been ages since I had a good meal.”
Lucy gave her arm a slow lick from elbow to wrist, her tongue parting a viscous waterfall of red. She turned back and leaned over Ms. Mallory, eyes burning heavy scarlet in the flickering candlelight. The crows sang outside. The group of girls breathed heavily as one. The wind rattled the windows, shaking the whole house. But all Ms. Mallory heard was Lucy’s stomach emit a low, guttural growl.
~~~
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