Sing Me Your Scars (Apex Voices Book 3) (3 page)

“Wake up.”

His voice is rough, scented with whiskey.

“Now?”

“Yes, hurry.”

“No, oh, no,” someone says as we approach the small operating
theater, but I cannot tell who it is.

He tears away my chemise. Pushes me down on the table.

“But there is nothing wrong,” I say.

“Don’t let him do this,” Lillian screams. “Please, don’t let him
do this to me.”

He lifts a blade. I grab his forearm, dig Lillian’s nails in hard
enough to make him wince.

“Please, no.”

He slaps me across the face with his free hand. The others are
shrieking, shouting. Lillian is begging, pleading, screaming for me to make him
stop. I grab his arm again and try to swing Therese’s legs off the table. He
slaps me twice more and presses a sharp-smelling cloth over my mouth and nose.
I hold my breath until my chest tightens; he pushes the cloth harder.

I breathe in, and everything goes grey—
I’m sorry, Lillian. So
sorry.
—then black.

§

I wake in my bed, the sheets tucked neatly around me. The
others are weeping, and Lillian is gone. I choke back my tears because I don’t
wish to frighten the newcomer.

“What has happened to me?” she asks. Her voice is small and
trembling.

“What is your name?” I ask.

“Anna,” she says.

“Welcome to madness,” Sophie says, her voice strangely flat.

“Hush,” Molly says.

“Who is that? What is this? Please, I want to go home.”

“I told you,” Sophie says, still in that strange, lifeless tone.
“We should have run away.”

“Where am I?” Anna says. “How did I get here?”

I try to explain, but nothing I say helps. Nothing can make it
right, and in the end, we are all weeping, even Sophie, and that frightens me
more than I could have imagined.

§

I don’t see him for several days. The music room remains
dark, the door to the operating theater locked. I retreat to the library, lose
myself in books, and pretend not to hear Anna cry. We have all tried to offer
support, but she rebuffs every attempt so there is nothing to do but wait.
Eventually, she will accept the way things are now, the way we’ve all been
forced into acceptance.

There are no signs of rot along the new stitches. They’re uneven
both in length and spacing—not nearly as neat as the others—but they hold firm.
Anna’s hands are delicate with long slender fingers, the skin far paler than
Diana’s. The weight is wrong; they’re far too light, as if I’m wearing gloves
instead of hands.

I miss Lillian so very much. I didn’t even have a chance to say
goodbye.

§

When he enters the library, I notice first his disheveled
clothes, then the red of his eyes. He tosses my book aside, drags me to the
music room, and shoves me toward the piano.

“Tell her to play.”

Everyone falls silent. Surely we have heard him wrong.

“I don’t understand.”

He steps close enough for me to smell the liquor. “Tell Anna to
play,” he says, squeezing each word out between clenched teeth.

I sit down and thump on the keys, the notes painful enough to
make me grit my teeth. I poke and prod, but Anna is hiding the knowledge deep
inside, and I cannot pull it free. I offer a tentative smile even though I want
to scream.

“Shall I sing instead?”

He groans and pulls me from the bench. The skirts tangle and
twist, and I stumble. He digs his fingers into my shoulders, brings my face
close to his. “Did you truly believe I didn’t know? I have heard you speak to
them. I know they are in there with you. You tell her to play. Or else.”

“Never,” Anna says.

Therese’s legs are no longer strong enough to hold us up, and I
sink to the floor. He smiles, the gesture like a whip. Eventually, he stalks
from the room, and I sit with Diana’s arms around me.

Sophie hisses, “Bastard.”

“You must teach me how to play,” I tell Anna.

“I will not.”

“Please, you must. If you don’t, he will kill you.”

“It doesn’t matter. I am already dead.”

“But he may kill us all, and we don’t want to die.”

The others chime in in agreement.

“I do not care,” Anna says. “I will give him nothing. He killed
me. Don’t you understand? He killed me!”

“Yes, I do,” says Sophie. “We do. But this is what we have now.”

“I do not want this. It is monstrous, and you, all of you, you’re
as dead as I am.”

“Please,” I say. “Teach me something, anything that will make him
happy. I’m begging you, please.”

She doesn’t respond.

§

Three more trips to the music room. Three more refusals that
leave me with a circlet of bruises around the arms; red marks on my cheeks in
the shape of his hand; more bruises on the soft skin between breasts and belly.
The others scream at Anna when he strikes me, but she doesn’t give in.

She is strong. Stronger than any of us.

§

The fourth trip. The fourth refusal. He pulls me from the
bench with his hands around my neck. His fingers squeeze tighter and tighter
until spots dance in my eyes and when he lets go, I fall to the floor gasping
for air as he walks away without even a backward glance.

§

I wake to find his face leering over mine. I bite back the
tears, begin to lift my chemise, and he slaps my hand.

“If you cannot make her play, I will find someone else who will.”
He traces the stitches just above the collarbone, spins on his heel, and
lurches from the room.

I sit in the darkness and let the tears flow. I don’t want to die
again. I will not.

§

I creep into the passageway and make my way into the
kitchen. Cheese, bread, a few apples. An old cloak hangs from a hook near the
servants’ entrance. I slip it on and pull up the hood before I step outside.
The air is cold enough to sting my cheeks, too cold for the thin cloak, but I
head toward the gate, searching the ground for a rock large enough to break the
lock.

Perhaps my mother will scream, perhaps my father and brothers
will threaten me with violence, but they cannot hurt me more than he has.

I’m five steps away from the gate when he grabs me from behind.
All the air rushes from my lungs. I draw another breath to scream, and his hand
covers my mouth. He leans close to my ear.

“I had such high hopes for you. Perhaps I will have better luck
with the next one.”

I fight to break free. The gate is so close. So close.

He laughs. “Do you have any idea what they would do to you? Even
your own parents would tear you limb from limb and toss you into the fire. If I
didn’t need the rest of them, I’d let you go so you could find out.”

He presses a cloth to my mouth, and I try not to breathe in.

I fail.

§

I wake in the large operating theater. The smell is blood
and decay, pain and suffering. I scream and pound on the door, but it’s barred
from the outside. I sink down and cover my eyes; I don’t want to see the
equipment, the tools, the knives, and the reddish-brown stains. There are no
windows, no hidden doors, no secret passageways. There is no hope.

I have no idea how much time passes before he comes. “This is
your last chance,” he says. “Will you play?”

“No,” Anna says.

“Please, please,” the others beg.

“I will not.”

“She will not play,” I say, my voice little more than a whisper.

He smiles. “I thought not.” He closes the door again.

Does he mean to leave us locked here until we die? I bang on the
door until tiny smears of blood mark the wood, then I curl up into a small ball
in the corner.

I wake when he opens the door again and drags something in
wrapped in a sheet. No, not a something. A body. I lurch to my feet.

“No, no, you cannot do this. Please.”

“I can do whatever I want. I made you, and I can unmake you.”

He approaches me with another cloth in his hand. I know if I
breathe this time, I will never wake again. Sophie is shrieking. They all are.

I stumble against a table and instruments clatter to the floor
with a metallic tangle. I reach blindly with Anna’s hand, find a handle, and
swing. He steps into the blade’s path, and it sinks deep into his chest. He
drops the cloth; his mouth opens and closes, opens and closes again, then he
collapses to the floor as if boneless. Anna lets out a sound of triumph, but I
cannot speak, cannot breathe, cannot move.

“No, no,” Sophie shouts. “What have you done?”

Therese and Grace scream, Diana lets out a keening wail, Molly
babbles incoherencies that sound of madness, and all the while, Anna laughs.

His eyes flutter shut, and his chest rises, falls, rises. I drop
to his side and pull the blade free, grimacing at the blood that fountains
forth. His eyes seek mine. His mouth moves, and it sounds as if he is trying to
say, “I’m sorry,” but perhaps that is only what I wish he would say.

Nonetheless, I say, “I’m sorry, too.”

Then, I begin to cut.

§

“Thank you,” Anna whispers, right before the blade touches
the last stitch and she is set free. I close my eyes for a brief moment to wish
her well on her journey, but there is not enough time to mourn her properly.

My stitches are clumsy, ugly, but they seem sturdy enough for
now. His hands are too large, the movements awkward, but gloves will hide them,
and soon I will know how to make everything work the way it’s supposed to.

He whispers he will never tell us how. We laugh because we know
he will eventually; he will not want his creation, his knowledge, to fall apart
or to rot away and die. He mutters obscenities, names, and threats, but we
ignore him.

We are not afraid of him anymore.

In the ballroom, I set fire to the drapes and wait long enough to
see the flames spread to the ceiling and across the floor in a roiling carpet
of destruction.

“Where shall we go?” Therese asks.

“I don’t know,” I say.

Sophie gives a small laugh. “We can go anywhere we wish.”

The heat of the blaze follows us out. The air is thick with the
stench of burning wood and the death of secrets. The promise of freedom. We
pause at the gate and glance back. A section of the roof caves in with a rush
of orange sparks, flames curl from the windows, and the fire’s rage growls and
shrieks.

When we hear shouts emerge from the town below, we slip into the
shadows. This is our,
my
, body, and I will be careful. I will keep us
safe.

Meg locked the door behind the last customer and flipped the
hanging sign to
Closed
. Despite her aching feet and stiff lower back,
this was her favorite time of the night. The shelves of the bookstore shimmered
with what the customers had left behind, a mix of excitement and happiness. The
rug in the children’s section gave off a soft glow, and the air was redolent
with the scent of sunshine after a long rain.

On her way out, she trailed her fingers across a shelf and
smiled. She wondered, not for the first time, how people could bear to work in
offices where the internal politics turned everything sticky and grasping. Then
again, most people weren’t even aware of what lingered around them.

The early autumn air held a slight chill, a promise of the colder
nights to come. A homeless man sleeping in a puddle of shadow next to the steps
of a building didn’t stir as Meg tucked a few dollar bills into the cup at his
side, avoiding the strands of dejection that smelled of sour milk and dangled
from his clothing like lifeless tentacles.

Halfway to her apartment, she turned a corner and walked into a
red and blue whirl of police lights cordoning off the entire street. Behind the
blockade, she saw an ambulance, several uniformed officers, and a young man
sitting on the curb with his wrists cuffed. Regret pooled around his feet; his
features were obscured behind a veil of sorrow the color of brackish water.

“You’ll have to go around another way, ma’am,” an officer said.

“Thank you. Please be safe,” she said as she turned around.

If she went around the block, she’d have to walk past the bars on
Linwood Street and the want, the need, and the sad desperation made the
sidewalk a dangerous place. She did her best to avoid places awash in
negativity, like a coffee shop first thing in the morning with too many people
rushing, glancing at their watches, and grumbling at the lines. All of it made for a storm of chaos that spiraled in
the air, dropping tiny bits like confetti. The last time she’d dared,
she’d left with a migraine.

But to avoid the bars, she’d have to go another block out of her
way. A tiny twinge in her back made the decision for her. Just this once, she’d
take the risk; if she walked fast, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad.

Even through the closed doors,
the music from the bars pushed out into the street, a steady thump of drums and
a whine of guitar. A handful of people congregated on the sidewalk, smoking and
speaking in hushed tones. A neon glow danced on the pavement, but the light
held no cheer. The very walls pushed out a strange sort of sadness, sticky with
lies and sharp with need. The air was heavy with the smell of beer and a hint
of stale vomit, and beneath, a smell like citrus left too long on the vine.

She kept as close to the curb as possible, but the concrete
tugged at her feet, trying to lure her in with false promises of happiness in
martini glasses, of conversation in slurred words, of love in a stranger’s
tangled sheets.

She sidestepped a broken patch of pavement, and someone shoved
into her from behind, propelling her forward. She stumbled, arms flailing. Her
palms met a hard, muscled chest, and hands grabbed her upper arms.

She glanced up into striking blue eyes. Strong cheekbones. A
cleft chin. A handsome face, but beyond the blue of his eyes, there was
nothing. No compassion, no anger, only a vast emptiness. He offered a smile
that held as little emotion as his gaze.