A Girl's Guide to Guns and Monsters (6 page)

A girl named Annabelle had been found dead in her bed the morning of the day that I went to live at Our Lady of the Angels. I could still hear the wailing and sobs as the ancient nun, whose name was Mother Mary Patrick, directed me to lug my beautiful crocodile hide suitcase down a labyrinth of passages to my dormitory room.

“Whatever is in that, you won’t be needing it here,” Mother Mary Patrick said, as I set it down and wiped my brow. Then she handed me a uniform—baggy blue dress, white pinafore—that looked like something out of a Victorian novel. My suitcase contained everything I owned in this world—several smart outfits including my lovely silk pajamas; my silver brush and mirror; my fox stole; and my bride doll, Angelique. Draper, our former driver (now let go) had tried to persuade my mother to sell all my clothes and trinkets, but she had refused. Now I wondered if I was about to lose them anyway.

“Here’s number four, your bed,” she said, still holding my suitcase.

I stared in disbelief at the metal cot in the center of double rows of eight—sixteen of us in a long, drab room with a creaking, dark wood floor and a crucifix made of what appeared to be olive wood hanging over each bed. There were no sheets on the thin, padded mattress or the equally thin pillow. All the other beds were unmade, and the pillow of the bed directly across from mine—number twelve—lay on the floor. The bed of the dead girl, then. Annabelle had been found at sunrise, white as a sheet, eyes glassy and half-open. I’d been only minutes at the orphanage, and I had already heard all about it.

My hair stood on end. I didn’t want to sleep anywhere near that bed. But it seemed I was to be given no choice.

“Put on your uniform and come to my office,” Mother Mary Patrick ordered me. Then she looked hard at me and said, “You’re quite old enough to be on your own. I only took you in as a courtesy.”

To whom? I wanted to ask. She wasn’t courteous in the least.

“Please, miss, I mean Mother, where should I put my suitcase?” I asked her.

She looked confused for a moment. Her eyes were milky, and I wondered if she had trouble seeing. If maybe that was why she kept glaring and squinting at me.

Then she said, “Under your bed, I suppose. Hurry and dress, then come to me.”

I tried to do as she asked, but my tears made everything hazy, like her milky eyes. I had never dressed myself alone before; I’d always had a maid, and then my mother had helped me. I was helpless.

The room swam; shaking, I lay down on the bed that was directly across from the dead girl’s bed, and cried.

 

Two hours later, after I had washed and swept untold numbers of floors, I was sent to dinner.

I staggered down a hall, so hungry, tired, and frightened I could barely move. The din in the enormous room buffeted my ears as over seventy girls sat down to eat. Some girls were still crying over the death of Annabelle. Others were laughing and chatting. I missed my mother. I wanted her arms around me, holding me against her bony chest. I would rather have that than the watery soup and pieces of unbuttered bread being served by six young girls wearing all-white habits to orphans seated at six plain wooden trestle tables, a dozen to each table.

Then I forgot my longing as I caught sight of a tall, uncommonly thin girl seated at my table. She looked to be near my age and was wearing my fox stole around her bony shoulders.

“Look at me, lahdidah, the new girl,” she announced, grinning at me, swirling the stole around her shoulders. A couple of the other girls at the table—my new dorm mates, I supposed—grinned as they gazed from her to me, watching to see what I would do.

“You went in my suitcase,” I blurted; then I realized she’d done something even worse. My suitcase was locked, and I wore the key around my neck, beneath my pinafore.

“What about it?” she asked, dangling the end of the stole over her steaming bowl of soup, as if she meant to dip it in and ruin it. “Who cares? You’re not rich any more. Can’t lord it over us any more.”

Her followers chuckled and nodded. Their eyes gleamed like the eyes of predators.

“I only just got here. I’ve never seen you before in my life,” I told her. She was so tall and skinny and mean-looking that I stayed rooted to the spot instead of walking past her and taking my seat at the far end of the table.

“You’ve never seen any of us,” she said, picking up her spoon. “We were your stupid servants and the coarse, low-class girls your parents would never let you talk to. And now . . . this place is ours, and you aren’t welcome.” She narrowed her eyes at me. “Annabelle thought she was too good for us, too.”

I sucked in my breath.

She lifted her chin. “And so did Sarah.”

The other girls at the table blinked and shifted uncomfortably. “Now you’ve gone too far,” said one of them, thin-faced and freckled, with a single wheat-colored braid down her back.

Then all heads turned as Mother Mary Patrick swept into the room with a tall young man who was dressed in priest’s black, wearing a priest’s white collar. His hair was the color of a tawny, sun- kissed lion, and his eyes were dark and deep set. He gazed around the room without speaking, and then his look lit on me. I swayed a little; then, as if somehow he had emboldened me, I reached forward and grabbed my fox stole from around the shoulders of the girl.

“Oh,” she said. The young priest looked at her. Really looked. She paled, crossed her arms, and turned back around.

“What is that you’ve got there? What are you doing?” Mother Mary Patrick asked me sharply.

The room grew silent. Everyone was looking at me. I gathered up the stole and clutched it against my chest. If I lost it again, I would die. I felt it as strongly as hunger.

Weeping, I turned and ran out of the room; I stumbled down the dark passageways, meaning to go to my dormitory, grab my suitcase, and leave. Instead, I found myself in the chapel. I had no idea how I had wound up there but I ran inside, claiming sanctuary.

Annabelle’s coffin sat before the altar. It was a simple pine box, not an elegant ebony coffin with gleaming hinges like my father’s. Large white candles on either side of the altar cast flickering light on a lid. A spray of pink roses and a shiny silver cross were arranged on the lid. Unnerved, exhausted, I pulled out the kneeler and folded my hands, threading the stole through my fingers like a rosary.

I closed my eyes and prayed for her soul. I prayed for my own, and I prayed for help, and for food. It had been stupid of me to leave the dining room. I was so hungry I could barely stand it.

Hail Mary
,
full of grace . . .

A soft scratching sound interrupted me. I figured it for a mouse and tried to resume my prayer. I concentrated on the soft fur of my stole, remembering days when my mother and I would dress up in our furs, gloves, and hats, and meet friends in tea rooms and at bridge parties.

The sound was louder this time, scritch, scritch, scritch . . .
was it coming from the coffin
?

“Annabelle?” I cried, but my voice was a dry husk. I jumped to my feet and raced to the coffin, moving aside the cross and the roses and setting them on the altar. I leaned over it, spotting a brass handle, and realized what I was about to do. As the candles flickered, I gazed at the entrance to the chapel, then back down at the coffin lid. I should fetch someone; I should call for help . . .

Instead, I wrapped my fingers around the handle and yanked back the lid. The wood let out an awful creak. Chills ran down my spine and I flinched and looked away, then back . . .

... at nothing.

The coffin was empty.

I blinked, not understanding, looking in again. Footsteps rang on the stone floor and I half-expected to see a young girl—Annabelle—laughing as she came toward me, telling me it was all a joke. The footfalls grew louder. I shut the lid and replaced the flowers and cross, then scooted back to my pew, where I sat unsteadily down. I didn’t know why I was being so secretive. Why I was shaking even harder. There were reasons why the body would not be inside the coffin—perhaps she’d died of a contagious illness. Maybe she had begun to smell . . .

“Hello,” said a voice. I turned, to see the young priest standing in the doorway, holding a bowl of soup. I got to my feet again, holding on to the back of the pew as I turned to face him.

“Sorry,” he said, walking toward me. Steam rose from the bowl; I smelled meat, barley, carrots, and potatoes and nearly screamed. “I didn’t mean to startle you.” He held out the bowl with one hand and touched my face with the other. “Poor Bess.”

I stared at the soup as if I had forgotten how to eat. It was thin, and there were no vegetables or meat. Maybe I had only imagined their bouquet.

“Annabelle. She-she’s gone.”

He blinked. Studied me.

“Her . . . she’s not in there,” I tried again. My mouth was watering.

“No. She’s not,” he said. “We’ve already buried her. There was some concern about contagion.” He took me by the arm and sat me down, gesturing for me to eat.

I slurped the watery soup, trying to eat like a lady, unable to stop making so much noise. I sounded like a dog lapping up water.

“We didn’t tell anyone about Annabelle,” he said, watching me with mingled pity and amusement. “However, to set your fears at rest, a doctor examined her and declared her to be free of disease.”

“Then why not put her back in her . . .” I couldn’t even say the word “coffin.” It sounded so ghoulish. I began to lose my appetite, and I panicked and kept eating.

“Timing,” he replied. He played with the end of my stole. “The girls had already been through so much, and the replacing of the body would too traumatic.”

I imagined a girl my age in the cold, cold ground, and shuddered. “Is there a graveyard here?”

“Yes. I presided over her burial myself.”

He gestured to the food. “Eat. Drink.”

“Why did she die?” I asked him.

“She had a weak heart,” he said, his voice dropping. He sounded sad and troubled. My own heart went out to him. I took several more spoonfuls; still hungry, I laid the spoon in the bowl.

“I want my mother,” I told him. I was dizzy, and I could barely keep my eyelids open. “Why couldn’t she stay here, too? She could earn her keep.”

He lifted my spoon to my lips. “Unfortunately, there are too many mouths to feed here as it is. Now listen, Bess—that’s your name, isn’t it? Others sacrificed so that you would be nourished. Not well-nourished, I’m afraid,” he added.

“I’m so tired. I’m too sleepy,” I said, which astonished me. Five minutes ago, I wouldn’t have believed I could say such a thing, but my eyes were closing.

“Come now,” he prodded. I didn’t answer. I was half-asleep already. “I’ll walk you to your room, then,” he said. “You shouldn’t be in the hallways alone.”

I wanted to ask him why. This was a convent, a holy place, wasn’t it? We were safe.

I couldn’t form the words. I felt as if I were dreaming as he took my hand and helped me to my feet. I imagined that he would carry me, like a princess. He was too handsome to be a priest.

That’s sinful
, I thought, sighing.

“You’re troubled?” he asked me, as the walls of the dormitory floated past me.

“Everything . . . is troubling,” I said. “Who was Sarah?”

“Another girl. She passed away six months ago.” He paused. “There was a washerwoman, too. A young Irish woman. The girls seemed to have forgotten about her.” He crossed himself.

“That was before the crash.” I stumbled; he steadied me, but I began to fold up, like the accordion our old priest at Sacred Heart used to play, like a tired, wan survivor. “How did she die?”

I knew he answered, but I didn’t hear him. Then hands came around me . . . was he undressing me? Was someone else? I couldn’t seem to see anything. I remembered that my bed was unmade, yet now I lay in starched, bleached sheets. They made my skin itch, and my eye water as they closed . . .

... and I woke up suddenly, my lids half-opening, as whispers wafted through gloomy half-light:

“This is the one.”
It was Mother Mary Patrick.
“Such a troublemaker.”

“Perfect.”
The young priest.

I opened my eyes. My head was at an angle; light from the hallway spilled into my room, and a shadow fell across my face. With terrible effort, I slowly turned my head and raised it off my pillow, almost grunting.

Their backs to me, Mother Mary Patrick and the priest stood at the head of the bed beside Annabelle’s. They were gazing down at the occupant; then Mother Mary Patrick pulled a piece of white cloth from the sleeve of her habit and handed it to the priest. He draped it over the crucifix on the wall.

They turned, facing me, and I shut my eyes tightly. I could feel them moving past my bed; and my heart skipped beats as they stopped.

“She didn’t eat all her gruel,” the priest said. “She was too upset.”

“You don’t think . . . ?” Mother Mark Patrick replied, sounding anxious.

“No. She’s asleep.” He snapped his fingers. “Bess?” he whispered. “You see? It’s fine.”

“Poor lamb, poor lamb,” Mother Mary Patrick murmured, her voice far kinder than I had ever heard it. “All my poor lambs.”

“It’s for the best,” the priest replied. “You know that.”

Then they left the room, shutting the door, taking the light with themselves. I tried to get up, but I couldn’t force my eyes open again. I was trying to puzzle out what I’d seen and heard. Had they put something in my soup to make me sleep? What had they been doing in our room?

It was too hard to think. Time passed; I drifted; and then a penetrating cold spread through my body, like someone injecting ice into my veins. I was so cold I hurt; and I thought I might be dying.

Trembling, I lay as still as I could; then I heard a little sigh, and someone whispering, “Hush.”

I forced my eyes open. A strangely glowing, bluish mist wafted around me, illuminating the room. Shadows were thrown against the ceiling, and there was nothing on top of me. Ever so cautiously, I raised my head and looked across the room.