The Quiet Ones

by Brandon Massey

  The transport van also had a Georgia plate for Lowndes County. She noted the tag in her book—and spotted an item on the ground next to the van’s rear left tire. She speared it with the flashlight.

  It was a single white ballerina slipper, smeared with red dirt.

  Mallory plucked it off the ground. She thought about the Bride at dinner, dancing while the other girl strummed the harp. Most of the Brides, in fact, wore similar slippers when working inside the house.

  The finding seemed like evidence, but evidence of what? She was uncertain.

  She deposited the slipper into her purse and moved to the building’s doorway. The door was wide and without windows; constructed of steel, it looked rugged enough to serve as the entrance to a fortress. A silver keyhole was set above the knob.

  Mallory turned the knob. As she expected, the door was locked.

  “What are you doing here, Aunt Mallory?”

  Mallory whirled, a scream set to fly out of her throat. Tabitha shone a flashlight in her direction.

  Damn, does this girl ever take a break from tracking me?

  In her other hand, Tabitha held a weapon that looked like a stun baton. It was active; faint blue electricity crackled along the shaft. Why would a supposedly peace-loving young woman like Tabitha be armed?

  “Do you ever sleep?” Mallory asked.

  “I was making my rounds.” Tabitha switched off the weapon and holstered it on her waist. “I’m not surprised you’re sneaking around, and neither is Father. We expected no less from you, the great, intrepid Atlanta newspaper reporter.”

  Mallory caught the sarcasm in her niece’s tone. Had Tabitha been following her the entire time? She was annoyed at herself for letting this happen—she and Tabitha had been conjoined like twins all day. Why did she think the girl would have allowed her free reign at night, when Mallory would have been most likely to roam?

  “What is this building?” Mallory asked.

  “It’s a stable. We house and sell product.”

  “What sort of product?”

  “Why are you so interested, Aunt Mallory? If I told you poultry, would that make you feel better?”

  Darkness concealed much of Tabitha’s face, but even if they had been in morning sunlight, Mallory was sure Tabitha would have been wearing the poker face, just like Father. Both of them had lied to her countless times without hesitation.

  “Can I look inside?” Mallory asked.

  “Our business operations are confidential.”

  “If you’ve got only chickens in there, what’s the big deal with letting me see?” Mallory asked.

  “Your sister isn’t in there,” Tabitha said. “That’s why you’re here, I assume. You want to learn more about your sister.”

  Tabitha said “your sister” as if speaking of a stranger, not her own mother.

  “Right.” Mallory motioned toward the Mercedes and the van. “Is one of those yours? Is Father pushing the big fancy Benz?”

  “You newspaper people never cease asking questions.” Shaking her head, Tabitha motioned away from the building with her flashlight. “Come along. I’ve something to show you that will settle this matter for good.”

  32

  Warding away the darkness with her flashlight, Tabitha led Mallory along a new paved pathway, away from the stable, and wouldn’t tell her where they were going, despite Mallory asking multiple times. Her niece was almost certainly giving her attitude because she’d found her snooping. Mallory could live with that, had made peace years ago with how pressing for secrets tended to make the secret-keepers angry. She wasn’t there to make friends. She was there to get to the truth of what had happened to Liz.

  “Here we are.” Tabitha panned the light ahead. “The family burial grounds.”

  Mallory swallowed. It was a small plot of land tucked within a grove of elms, the entrance a wrought-iron archway threaded with kudzu. She usually wasn’t given to superstition, but something about visiting a graveyard in the dead of night pushed a button of primeval dread.

  Mallory swung around her miniature flashlight. Mist skirted the edges of the cemetery. She didn’t see a crypt, prominent headstones, or vases holding flowers. Had they buried Liz in an unmarked grave, like a pauper?

  “Where?” Mallory asked. She hadn’t intended to whisper, but her voice came out in a hushed tone, as if she subconsciously feared she would rouse the dead.

  “Over there.” Tabitha directed the beam in a section near the middle of the property. “Go on and look if you want, see for yourself.”

  Mallory shuffled forward, grass crunching under her shoes. A small, plain granite headstone filmed with dust marked the site:

  Here lies Swan. Mother. Sister. Artist.

  Rest in peace eternal.

  Numb, Mallory stared at the inscription. “There aren’t any dates.”

  “What are you talking about now, Aunt Mallory?” Tabitha came behind her.

  “The date of birth, the date of death. It’s standard practice to include that information on grave markers. But there’s nothing here to say when she lived and died.”

  “We don’t follow the ways of the world. I would assume you’ve realized that by now. Father doesn’t believe in such artificial limitations. Those who lie here live forever in our hearts.”

  “Bullshit.” Mallory pressed the toe of her sneaker against the top of the marker. “This looks fake.”

  “I have work to do, Aunt Mallory,” Tabitha said. “I can’t indulge this stubbornness of yours any longer. Find your own way back to your room—no more detours. We’ll speak again in the morning.”

  Muttering, Tabitha whirled away. Mallory considered trailing her, axed the idea as pointless. Tabitha would be expecting her to follow and would either cover her tracks, or lead Mallory down a trail to nowhere.

  She didn’t have a wristwatch, but it had to be close to one o’clock in the morning. She was tired and might as well go to bed and try to dig in deeper tomorrow. Perhaps she could steal another few minutes with Rachel, somehow, and learn more about the stable.

  She found her way back to the courtyard without trouble. As she crossed the grounds, nearing the house, she had the distinct sense that someone watched her. Pausing, she studied the back of the house.

  A slender silhouette stood at a second-floor window, the figure framed by curtains and backlit by a golden glow. The window was in Father’s wing.

  Mallory’s heart lurched into her throat.

  Liz.

  The shadow retreated from the window, the darkness concealing all details of the stranger’s face, but Mallory believed with absolute certainty that she had seen her sister, and not a random Bride wandering Father’s wing. The assumption was illogical considering Tabitha had shown her where Liz was buried . . . but Mallory knew.

  She hurried inside. Upstairs, the doors to Father’s wing still hung open, the corridor warmly lit. Mallory raced along the hallway. At the end of the corridor, she approached the tall, curtained window from which the silhouetted figure had been watching her.

  She was gone, and there was nothing left behind to indicate that she had ever stood there at all. No secret message, no hidden code.

  Mallory gnashed her teeth in frustration. She doubled back to the inner sanctum doors.

  Those doors were locked, again. Light glimmered at the edges.

  Mallory knocked. “Liz, it’s me. I saw you at the window.”

  No one answered. She pressed her ear against the door, listened for footsteps, a voice, anything.

  “Liz, please. I can help you get out of here.”

  Silence.

  Tears trickled down her cheeks. She smudged them away with the heel of her hand. Was she losing her mind? Was this what going crazy felt like? Your brain seized on innocent items and details and wove them into a story that fit whatever theory you wanted to believe?

  Her hands shook. She remembered her pen that doubled as the digital voice recorder. The microphone featured impressive range, and becau
se the device looked like an ordinary fountain pen, it might lie around unnoticed long enough to record . . . something. Liz’s voice. A mention of her. Concrete evidence of the belief that clutched Mallory’s stomach like an iron fist.

  The table beside the inner sanctum doors included a small, empty drawer, but that might block the microphone. A vase of roses stood on the center of the table, the blood-red petals fresh, the flowers recently cut.

  She activated the recorder and lay it behind the vase, mostly hidden from view. If anyone saw it, they might assume it was only an ink pen and ignore it. The device had a battery life of twelve hours. Her next challenge would be getting back into Father’s wing to retrieve the recorder, but she would figure that out later.

  She moved away from the doors—and into Father’s path. He rolled toward her in his motorized chair. He was fully dressed in a dark suit despite the late hour. Didn’t anyone in this asylum ever sleep?

  “Aren’t you a busy little bee tonight?” He tilted his head and studied her, a smile playing along his lips. “My daughter tells me you’ve been quite active.”

  He seemed amused, not angry. But his smugness annoyed her. He was playing with her like a cat toys with a mouse whose tail the cat had pinned to the floor, and he was watching her squirm and struggle with relish.

  “There’s a lot going on here that you haven’t shared with me,” Mallory said.

  “You may be family, but you’re only a temporary guest at Sanctuary, Sister Mallory. Thus far, you’ve given me no reason to trust you.”

  “What would it take for you to trust me?” she asked.

  “You’ll need to accept our system—my system.” He swung his chair around and looked at a painting that hung on the corridor wall; a painting, of course, of himself. He steepled his gloved fingers in his lap. “My authority cannot be questioned. I am the supreme ruler of this domain. The lives of everyone here are in my hands.”

  “I can’t accept that, and you know it.”

  “But I can help you, Sister Mallory. I sense your anguish. I possess a deep understanding of how the mind works. I can take away your pain, if you’d only allow me the opportunity.”

  “You can counsel me, huh?” She couldn’t hide the disgust in her voice. “Like you counsel your Brides before you slice out their larynx?”

  “The Brides live in a state of blissful silence,” he said, without missing a beat. Turning his chair, he advanced closer to her. The candlelight reflected on the tinted lenses of his glasses made it appear that his eyes were aflame. “You can’t imagine the misery of their lives before they accepted the vow of silence. Perfect peace. True tranquility. Why do you think they choose to stay?”

  “Choose to stay?” Mallory said, thinking about Rachel and her promise to get her out of there. “I doubt that.”

  “Any of them could leave, at any time they desire,” Father said. “They remain because here, they have found joy. It could be yours as well, Sister Mallory.”

  He had a lulling, hypnotic voice, and the quality of his voice, underscored by her own fatigue, made her feel a bit light-headed as she listened to him. He reached for her hand. His skin, encased in the glove, was warm, his grip gentle as a night breeze.

  “Let me help you, Sister Mallory. Let me take away your pain.”

  “I need the pain,” Mallory said. “It’s what drives me, defines me. I need to find Liz. She’s here. I know it.”

  “If your sister had cared anything for you, she would have contacted you before she died,” Father said.

  Mallory snatched her hand out of his grasp.

  “I’ll find her,” Mallory said. “Or she’ll find me.”

  Father’s lips twitched, oddly, as if he wasn’t sure whether to laugh, or cuss her out. Mallory brushed past his chair on her way out of the wing. She’d endured enough of these folks for the day.

  That night, she dreamed about Liz and Father. Liz was twelve, as Mallory remembered her, but she was dressed like a Bride, in all white; Father was an old man with a bushy white beard and fuzzy salt-and-pepper hair, and he wore a tattered black suit. Liz pushed Father in his wheelchair around the mansion’s polished corridors, pausing periodically to admire her brilliant paintings of him.

  Someday, Swan, I promise. Father smiled and patted her hand. Father sees all.

  33

  “Wake up, Aunt Mallory. Father is going to punish Rachel. All are required to attend the judgement.”

  Mallory opened her eyes. Tabitha stood beside the bed, sunlight streaming inside through the half-open plantation shutters and painting her face in alternating stripes of light and shadow. Mallory had no idea when her niece had finally gone to sleep, but the young woman looked invigorated, excitement dancing in her eyes.

  Yet as the meaning of what Tabitha had said took root in her mind, Mallory felt a flash of alertness as acute as a caffeine rush. She sat up and flung away the bedsheets.

  “Punish Rachel?” Mallory asked. “What do you mean? What the hell for?”

  Tabitha bent closer. In a whisper, she said, “A sexual transgression.”

  Mallory’s mind reeled. Had she gone to sleep and awakened in an alternate reality where nothing made sense? Father was punishing Rachel for a sexual transgression when Nimrod had blackened her eye and forced her to give him oral sex?

  She glanced at the small grandfather clock on the desk, half-convinced she was still asleep and dreaming. The time read twenty minutes past eight. She’d slept for a good seven hours, but it was a restless sleep on an unfamiliar bed in a strange place. Disturbing dreams had tormented her all night.

  “Hang on.” Mallory rubbed her eyes. “I’m trying to catch up here. What exactly did Rachel do to deserve punishment?”

  “I don’t dare put a name to the act.” Tabitha retreated to the doorway. “You must come, quickly. Everyone is gathering in the front yard.”

  Everyone here is insane. But she worried she was at fault for this situation—Rachel wouldn’t have been outdoors in the gazebo, easy prey for Nimrod, if Mallory hadn’t pleaded for her help.

  She hoped she was wrong, hoped that something else was going on, but she doubted it. Holding a woman accountable for a man’s sexually depraved act seemed like a page straight out of Father’s misogynistic playbook, victim-blaming at its finest.

  She dressed in a clean uniform that matched the one she had worn yesterday. Upon reaching the catwalk, she looked toward Father’s wing. The outer doors yawned open.

  Had her hidden recorder picked up anything useful during the rest of the night? Waking to an announcement of Rachel’s absurd “punishment” caused her to suspect that much had been going on.

  “Come on, Aunt Mallory!” Tabitha called to her from the bottom of the staircase.

  She would have to return to Father’s wing later. She descended the steps and met up with Tabitha.

  Tabitha grabbed Mallory’s hand. They went outside through the front doorway.

  A crowd had gathered on the veranda, mostly Brides. Mallory counted eleven of them, some of whom she wasn’t sure she had seen before. The elderly woman, Nana, huddled near the veranda railing, leaning on a cane.

  Father sat in his wheelchair at the base of the ramp near the staircase. Nimrod stood next to him, hands clasped behind his back.

  Rachel stood away from the group, near the edge of the driveway. Mallory did a double-take; she didn’t recognize the girl at first because she had ditched the Bride uniform for street clothes. Rachel wore raggedy jeans, battered Adidas sneakers, and a black t-shirt with a faded “Black Girl Magic” slogan printed on the front. Her natural hair was a dark halo, thick as wool. An olive-green duffel bag lay at her feet.

  Behind Rachel, the white transport van Mallory had seen last night at the stable was parked in the horseshoe driveway, engine idling.

  When Mallory emerged on the veranda, Rachel spotted her and lifted her chin in acknowledgement. A purple bruise marred her right eye, but her eyes seethed with fiery defiance.

  Fa
ther turned. He swept the crowd with a stern look.

  “We are gathered here this morning, family, to deliver a sentence to a young woman whom we once counted as one of us,” Father said, his voice resonant as a preacher’s at a country tent revival. “She has committed an unforgiveable trespass, a sexual transgression of the vilest kind. This, she did after taking a vow of chastity, obedience, and silence.”

  Rachel’s lips quivered. Mallory freed her hand from Tabitha’s clasp and clenched her hands into white-knuckle fists.

  This is outrageous, she thought, shaking.

  Father directed his full attention to Rachel.

  “The punishment for this transgression,” he said, “is permanent expulsion from Sanctuary. You have been disfellowshipped from the family, effective immediately. But you will never regain your voice, child. Silence is the mark you will bear as you navigate the putrid, depraved streets of the outside world, a reminder of your sin that will remain until your last day on this earth.”

  Tears spilled down Rachel’s cheeks, and Mallory felt her own throat constricting with emotion, too. But what could she do about it? She had no power here. Maybe getting away from Sanctuary was exactly what Rachel needed, and maybe she could get surgery to repair her larynx, restore her voice. A lot of maybes, but she had to believe that some good would come out of this for this young woman. She had her whole life ahead of her, and maybe she could salvage something from this harrowing experience and find a better, healthier path.

  “Now, family.” Father turned to the gathered group. “Smite this repulsive whore and send her reeling into outer darkness.”

  Smite? Her stomach plummeted. Does he mean what I think he does?

  Nimrod stepped forward; he had a pair of steel handcuffs dangling from his hand. He approached Rachel, and for the first time since this bizarre ceremony had begun, terror flared in her eyes. Grunting, Nimrod pinned her arms behind her. She tried to struggle out of his grasp, but he cuffed her, and then he slipped his arm around her neck, trapping her in a headlock. She gasped, eyes bulging, lips working, but no sound came out except thin squeals of protest.