V. The Finding
I still haven’t been able to find my way around this marble, wooden, plastic place. And I don’t expect that the next time I see the nasty driver will be any better; she had given me a glance and spoken solemnly: “These is the floors— the top three— that is for the monsters and dee-mens and the others. Shouldn’t be going up there because if you do… death even more than before is awaiting you. Stay clearest?”
I fill my time with trying to stay quiet and aware. After what I suppose is a day, I know the fourth floor, around the paintings exhibit. It’s a bright room with muted lighting, as if it’s eternally dawn. Most of the canvases are so faded or stained with blood that there is nothing reminiscent of their past pictures. There are two paper lanterns hanging from the ceiling; the larger one is in the center of the ceiling, and the other is near the back stairs. There is a large table, and, at the far end of the low-ceiling hall, several plush black chairs with pieces of smooth, opaque glass embedded into their edges.
The ceiling plaster is etched with brilliant shapes. Italian styling, I think. I examine it while I lie on the floor when I am sure that I am alone. This both calms and causes a feeling of dread to pulse throughout my bloody body. I imagine the same knives which dicing my flesh being cleaned and softly worked into the soft moulds to create what I stare up at. This cannot be unreasonable; too much have I seen to think it might be.
Suddenly, I hear a small noise; receding footsteps. I freeze, to be sure I am not mistaken. I hear steps, coming down, down, down. I run, toe to heel, as quietly as I may, to the half-helix stairwell. I hide behind the curve of the banister.
“Over here, sir!” a high voice whispers. I look around. Gray feet rush behind a silk shoji. The feet make no sound, and that makes me uneasy. My heart, were it possible, skips and thuds in my broken chest as I contemplate being sliced by the nasty driver or some other dismal creature she had described. Again:
“Over here, sir!”
It sounds too much like the nasty driver. I turn further into the stairwell, planning to escape to floor five. Out of nowhere, hands grasp my shoulders. I freeze. Shake. Become rigid. Wish for death. A stuffy male voice warns me sternly to be careful. He pulls me back, into his chest.
“If you’re going up, it’s prudent to look first— they jump.”
I struggle surreptitiously. The voice doesn’t sound so off-putting that it might be a monster. I don’t care. I break away just as the grasped hands and arms let me go. I almost fall. Before me is a man. His visage is neat aside from his blue lips and pallid, sunken eyes and ashen skin. His jacket is modern, and it has blood in a small stream running from under his left arm to the middle of his chest. The flesh underneath is almost black. More people emerge from behind the shoji. The vines and cherry blossoms painted on it now seem like rosy wounds. I only stare.
“Who are you?” My voice is icy, eyes fiery.
The stuffy man with the slit in his abdomen looks at me intently. He seems like a vulture. The face hungers for flesh, set in a grimace and crumbling with every breath. “Roald Kapthrow. 1906.”
I turn my body away slightly. I don’t want to be near this ancient corpse. If the others do not introduce themselves, naturally I will assume that they have been here just as long. I back away, bumbling into the banister.
Turning hastily around, so that my back is to the space of the room, I ask, “And you all? What are you doing here?” They, too, seem like vultures.
The limp voice that reminded me of the nasty driver’s emerges from the bloody blue mouth of a young woman. “I came here in 1919. Lucindette Montë.” Her sunken eyes widen. The pupils are small dots, almost specs within the white globe under her heavy eyelids. I inspect her. Aside from bloody lips, I see no other clues to Lucindette Montë’s demise— met just two years ago.
The third man interjects his own introduction, dryly: “Daquan Pao. Mischief Night, 1919. They call me James.”
He has flat, small features, I assume an Oriental. He is clad in a fashionable chestnut-coloured coat. He looks almost alive; his bronze skin is only a bit matted from decay, his thin eyes only mildly tinted yellow. He removes his coat. His back has been split down the middle. Chunks of red, gummy flesh droop grimly from his spine.
“Re-killings are worse than the firsts,” Lucindette Montë sighs.
Not keen on these sudden meetings, I step away, near a boat diorama made of burned matches. “Why have you all been together, but I’ve only just now heard from you?”
Lucindette Montë closes her arms. Her pupils become stagnant. “We’ve only just reawakened. You’ll soon understand.” She stares into her palms, mouth pressed in a reserved and bitter line. She folds the backs of her hands into her sunken cheeks. Then she looks up:
“The last night, I dreamt of being put into a dark, small box— I’m very fearful of that sort of thing. It was tied shut, but I could see through it, like it were glass but not; on the outside were shadows, and people. I somehow saw that the shadows were evil, that they were the ones who had shut me in, and they were coming to get me. But the people simply stared, refused to help me. I don’t remember the rest for a bit, but I could see the soles of shoes, and then the box was on its side. The people began to jump, and I could hear the wood splintering from the strain, but I couldn’t move.
“I awoke cold and screaming, feeling the grip of death. It was just before the box gave in. I was entwined in the sheets. The window glass had a crack— the same as on the box in my dream. I went downstairs to sit awhile; thought I might be cozier to stay up until I’d calmed down.
“A mistake of all eternity, that was! I heard a terrible breathy sound, creaks like footsteps. Startled me! And suddenly I was knocked over, and I saw a shiny axe, and—” She turns her slim figure in toward herself. Her face glowers away from my glance. It remains this way for almost too long. Eventually, she coughs to pardon the silence.
“I have no opinion of getting here— and I suppose it’s best. Wandered here alone before I met the others: the same as you see us now. We devised a plan to escape, but that’s quite impossible!” Her eyelids flutter. She coughs.
“Hasn’t been this clean in a while,” Roald Kapthrow remarks.
Lucindette Montë continues, “The year I came here— that’s two years ago now— only two escaped on their own. The only time we were ever found was by the girl. Mister Kapthrow pushed her all the way off the seventh floor. I’ll never forget the thud. And then she got up, as if nothing happened at all!”
“We nearly got to the edge of the fourth floor before we had to hide. I expect the monsters heard her fall. We saw them coming up, and we heard them coming down. We were close out of ideas; had to go by word of mouth that there were places to hide— and in the dark, no less! Scared out straight of our wits that we would be caught, we split out of our plans. Ruined it all. Needless to say, many were caught— most, in fact. The screams, the tears, the pleas. And worse yet, no time to mourn. We had to keep on.
“We loaded into the elevator. When it crept down, it creaked so slowly that I thought we never would reach the bottom ahead of those monsters. Either way, should they have pried to doors open, it was plain to see that the cell was gone; they knew who was inside of it and where we were destined. Terrible screeching chains. When it opened, it was lovely: not a trap. But we wasted time, staring at the doors out. Longing.
“We stepped out slowly. Then the monsters came…” Lucindette Montë squeezes her eyes shut. Her voice is ragged.
“Lye,” she whispers. “I could see two had escaped. As in my dream, I saw their shoes, but never their faces. And I was drowned in lye as they ran free. There was no one helping me.”
She looks at me; her face is contorted into a nasty, cynical smile. Her eyes are despairing. “You have at least two more years here,” she says. “Even if you aren’t re-killed, you can’t leave. And you should be martyred for those of us who’ve been here longer. After the pain games, you’ll be buried in the graveyard. You have another year to sleep.”
We return to the fourth floor upon hearing footsteps approaching. I shriek and jump back when I see a young girl laying on one of the tables. Her wrists have been slit up her entire forearm. The expressions of pain and terror are etched plainly on her morbid face.
Dear God! What have I done to deserve this?! What have I done?!
***
Later, more shadows arrive. Not all bear signs of death; James is the only one from my first meeting who has retained any injury. At any rate, I am more grateful for the new, less-damaged company.
The first is a woman, perhaps in her thirties. She has fair skin and large doe eyes, honey-coloured. Her black hair is knotted up on her head in two small buns. Her eyes are kind, but grieved. Her name is Muriel Abbott; despite how improper it is, she insists upon a nickname: Miri.
An aging man, dressed only in a billowing white top and dark trousers calls himself Nigel Tunnigan. In life he was an artist. His accent is boggy and rounded.
A beautiful girl with silvery hair and eyes and translucent skin appears next. It pains me to see such a dainty creature slit across the throat so badly, so savagely; she was killed the same night as I, but we never saw each other. “I have been here since the day I was killed. I’ve been about the top floors, and when I came here I never saw you, or any trace of anyone. How curiously vulgar, if they make it so that we can’t even see each other until they want us to.”
I ask her for her name. I tell her mine.
“I’m Annice Blackwell. I might not say it’s a pleasure,” and she tries to smile, but I see the beginnings of tears forming in her meek eyes. I smile as slightly as I can, and nod away.
I sigh and sink into one of the uncomfortable chairs. Awkwardly I say, “When do we escape?” It comes as more of a disparaging comment than a real question.
“That’s moot. Et’s all t’ do wi’ thur whims.” I look up to see Mister Tunnigan, who has joined me. He sighs and motions toward the others. “Yer one told you about it, has she? Two yares ago, a course. How the last they’d see a thur lives— yeh know my meanin’— was right before thur freedem. And yeh’ll find the same pattern?” Those remarks roll off a bit gaily for the turpitude of our situation.
“Right, yeh see, et was very hostile last yare; so many paroxysms ’et yeh’d rather be killed befare the games even star’id.”
“Er— how would that be?” I ask.
“Try an’ escape airly,” he replies.
“Oh,” I say. I try again. “The girl on the— ” I gesture and look over, then readily turn back and clear my throat. I clench my jaw.
“Her nem is Katerin. She tried last night. They make a point a bringin’ the bodies to us, as a warnin’.”
“Better her than me…” I shudder. I feel a pang of something; and not guilt, not pity. Something makes me leer towards her, to observe this girl’s fate. And although in life every force within me would have told me to look away, I feel as though it is my morbid right: to see what I am a part of.
He lowers his voice, leaning in to me. I study his face; it has not aged properly: his skin is waxy and unfaltering, but he has wrinkles—barely there, but enough to know that he once led a life of his own bidding. I dither.
“Now yeh see, it happened a James last year. I’d say yeh wouldn’t want a be askin’ him about it. Bitter as hell.” The old man leans back a bit, his secret remark over. “But then I s’ppose we all are. Oh, but not yer one, Miri.” He remarks to the air, “She’s been here too long. Takes it out a yeh, doesn’t it.”
I nod. “And what else happened last year? To make it so terrible?” It is a stupid question; the bloodless faces around me, my own lifeless existence, the throbbing, aching in my otherwise numb bones; all of this, yet still I compel him to continue. I ask from perhaps some sick, vulgar desire to hear a demise worse than my own, that I might be spared in his tale if I could not be in real life. And in perfect resonance, he tells me.
“A lot a children,” says he. “Five, I think; or six. Damns me to forget, but the longer you’re in the ground, waiting— things pass.” Mister Tunnigan points toward the stairs. “I’d be settin’ every day there, just waitin’. Now, I don’t s’ppose you’re well aware that monsters have names?”
“Names, sir?” I shake my head as he continues, realizing too late that he did not require a response from me.
He eyes me as if I were a pupil speaking out of turn in a lesson. Clearing his throat, he spits out, “An’ well you be aware of it! They’ve done away with formalities with us, but among them, they fancy a little commentary. They’d come all hours, especially at first, when no one dared move. Not for lack of wanting, yeh see, but for lack of dimwittedness.
“The likes of which I’d reckon you’re well spared from!” Lucindette jests. I don’t care to oblige her, and neither does our narrator.
“And as time went, the others came: healed by then—you’ll be healed as pairt of it — but where I was going was, I heard them monsters calling each other.” He softens his voice to a gruff whisper, imitating their voices: “‘Ives, come see this! Toullee, come here, Pilkington, over there, Moritiana, Thrasher!’
“Now yeh see, the children came up later, and we found out they’d been orphans or working— you know, errand boys, apprentices and such. But Miri saw ’em and told ’em stay out of the way. Just set ’em until there were a few who escaped. And then they joined us on our plot— or our execution, whichever yeh fancy.
“We were to follow the monsters and know where it was that they wint; now that I had their names straight after a lot a listening, this job fell to me. We knew that usually after a good killing, they’d go back up to recount— well, isn’t that I reckon to know what a monster does in his silly hours. Anyways, a group of three or four had left— we s’pposed that their demise would be our opportunity. Horrid, innit? But that’s the truth, like.
“Mind, if a monster sees you up here, they’re not like to try an’ kill you. Scare the damned daylights out a yeh! But most a the time, you won’t be seeing ’em until you’re almost out. If you see one an’ you get too close, they might, but if it’s across th’ room jest leave quickly and silently, even if et saw you.” Mister Tunnigan raises his chin smugly, gives me widened eyes, as if saving those last words for another story.
This news, of possibly seeing a monster or another nasty creature stirs a new compunction. “B-but you said they were—they fancy to murder… why might they wait?”
I know his answer, but I require affirmation, extrinsic, verbal. I must. He resumes a cavalier tone, lulling thumbs on temples. “Oh, I think that they like to wait in s’spense. Stopping an escape en it’s wake… Sick almost to deprive that. ’Nd don’t they live on such forces, ensorcelled by the delectation?” He tastes each syllable of his suave interjection.
Heavenly Father, be with me… So close yet so far away. Then I say it out loud, tasting each virulent syllable for mine own.
Mister Tunnigan sighs. He leans back slowly, but not comfortably, as if shifting his own body to the turn of phrase, so close yet so far away. “Something like that. And I don’t know if you know this, either, but they like knives the most. Well, I know you must.” He gives a cold stoic look about my crimson wreckage of a body. “Got chopped ap good that night, a all.” I do not act offended.
“Miri and Lucindette, the chill’uns, and a few others with myself went downstairs. We were the only ones left. Six had died we presumed, so the monsters would’ve been back. Turned out, we arrived during the spree instead a after. We hid behind the fountains. Poor small ’uns star’id crying. Ah, it was tort’rous to watch a horrid event as to partake. Alas, we got out okay; those damnable imps of Satan were too drunk on their salubrious ravaging to take much notice. Prob’ly assumed we’d all been right afraid a the gruesome scene to come down.
“Miri shoved us into the elevator. It had been axed and wouldn’t work. So she starts trying to cover the littleuns’ eyes. Spare them that, I s’ppose, even though they’d been those bodies and seen ’em all round. Her perturbation caused them all to panic, and to cry a bit too loudly. Got them out a the box. Back through the bloody lobby to the main stairwell— that’s th’ only other way out all the way to the ground floor.
“We get there, and a monster is sleeping. Suddenly the railing banister falls an’ thuds hollowly. I think a child must’ve leaned too fare on it. And then he wakes.” Mister Tunnigan looks at me.
“Well, Jaysus, Mary and Joseph, she threw herself at ’im. He gauged out her eyes, went after everybody and they ran for the door. Everyone died. He ripped ’em limb from limb, staked them through their little sill hearts, slit their throats…” he gulps sickly. He closes his eyes, hangs his head; he looks at the thin edge of the table, a small steady stream of dark smooth scarlet running from Katerin’s wrist.
All of the sudden, Mister Tunnigan spits, “And I just stood there like a bloody coward! A coward… After I went upstairs, a demon broke my neck. The girl stepped in after and took their bodies outside. That I saw before I left. There are things in the world it is better to not know about; of course, those are the things that people want to know the most about…”
I close my eyes and wonder if Katerin is in peace for a while. And I wonder if there is a way I can join her before the pain games begin. I might lose my breath, if I had any. Mister Tunnigan tells me that soon I’ll be recounting my own tales, and that, “in time, yeh’ll see that they eren’t quite as bad ’s before.”
Miri comes to tell me to stand. I obey, nimbly.
Annice Blackwell, that shy, odd beauty pines for refuge from a lonely purgatory. No one obliges. I wish to take the brim of my thumb along the fine ridges of Miss Blackwell’s snowy cheekbones and dry her tears before they become frost.
***
My body stiffens as more shadows join us; I gather only names now, which I know will be lost in a few minutes after gaining them.
A lady in a fine lace shawl and matching hat bears herself beside me in a chair, a true unforeseen apparition. I prance up at once, then reseat myself, realizing my rudeness after it’s already too late. I grasp the chair’s arm and demand politely for the woman’s introduction.
She faces me with a pinky face. Her nose is tipped at its base and curves slightly to the right. Her yellow hair is pinned away from her face in papillote sprigs. “Not that it’s your business, lovey,” she says haughtily. “I am Missus Adelaida Dezetersia. And of course you’ll call me Missus Dezetersia like a good lad, won’t you?” she scoffs and tosses a loose curl behind her shoulder.
The worst part is, she is only the first of the evening. By the end of a few minutes the list totals thus:
a Missus Adelaida Dezetersia; a Miss Goldie Dustsceawung; a couple, Hazel-Pearl and Macklin Pribble; a Mister Bradford Harlin; a Mister Gilbert Holloway and his sister, Christana; a Mister Leo Thieme; a Mister Nicklaus Patke; and children Evelyn Allis, Kimberly Spurlock, and Eunice Romack.
And maybe more will come. We could fill our own town cemetery. I doubt that anyone would visit.
iamnotoldfashioned 