The Dead and Empty World

by Carrie Ryan

  He takes her to the Cathedral and the Sisters whisper in a tight little knot while her parents stand to the side, white-faced and silent. No one will marry her now, they know. She’s a dreamer, and dreamers need to be broken to the will of the Sisterhood.

  Her parents don’t object when the Sisters proclaim Tabitha one of them. She puts on the black tunic and combs her hair from her face into a tight bun. She stands with Ruth and Ami, and listens to the enumeration of her duties. She bows her head and recites the prayers, but that is not where her mind and heart are. They’re on the path, waiting.

  Tabitha spends the next month planning her escape. Soon she can’t sleep anymore and she’s memorized every detail of her room. She’s tired of the stone walls, the stone floor, the tiny window looking over the graveyard, beyond which the dead roam the fences. She thinks she might understand a little now why they moan. She thinks she might understand the pain of such intense desire. It brings tears to her eyes that never seem to go away.

  She starts to wander through the Cathedral in the darkness of the too-early morning hours. She counts the windows, she counts the benches and cushions and even the stones in the floor. Anything to stop thinking about pregnant moons and Patrick and the feel of him trailing a hot finger down her spine.

  She’s tracing her own finger along a crooked crack in the Sanctuary wall, remembering the feel of his skin against hers, when the crack dips behind a curtain and she follows it. There’s a door there, and she doesn’t hesitate before pushing it open to reveal a long hallway. She wanders down it to another door, this one thick and banded with metal.

  It’s dark and she has no candle and it’s late, and Tabitha spends a long while staring at that door before she turns around and goes back to bed. The moans of the Unconsecrated whisper her into the deepest sleep she’s felt for ages.

  The next night she doesn’t even change into her sleeping gown, but instead waits in her black tunic for the Cathedral to fall silent. She takes the candle and flint from beside her bed and goes straight to the curtain in the Sanctuary, her heart pounding so hard that her fingers shake from the force.

  She sneaks down the hallway, her footsteps disturbing a thin layer of dust, and this time she doesn’t pause but goes immediately through the metal-banded door. It leads to a set of stairs, and she descends, the air growing dank and thick enough that the light from her candle barely penetrates it.

  She’s in a basement and it smells like dirt, tastes like the wet rot of fall. Rows of wooden racks march through the large room, some cradling old grimy bottles but most just barely withstanding entropy. There are no other doors and no windows, no escape from the heady mustiness.

  Along one wall hangs a curtain but Tabitha already knows this trick. She pulls it aside and finds another door, but this one is locked. She tries every way she knows, but she can’t open the door. Eventually she gives up and goes back to bed, but this time she cannot sleep.

  Soon, to Tabitha, the locked door behind the curtain in the basement becomes like the gate blocking the path. She knows she must go through it. And as with the gate, she makes her plan carefully.

  She offers to take on the chores assigned to Ruth and Ami, cleaning rooms and scrubbing walls and floors, using them as an excuse to rifle through drawers and cabinets. She finds dozens of keys and she tries them all but none work.

  The next time the moon is full she thinks about abandoning Patrick in the Forest. It’s been months since she’s seen him, and she’s angry and hurt and broken. Sometimes she’ll pull his book out from under a loose stone in the wall of her room and she’ll flip through the pages, wondering if all men are so cruel; if love is like a spring bud that blossoms and bursts in a bright hot color and then wilts and dies, never to return.

  Two days later, she spends the afternoon torn. She finds herself sneaking away and walking toward the gate and then turning back. She doesn’t know what’s right. She doesn’t want to give up the hope of Patrick but she’s not sure she’s ready to deal with the pain of him either.

  It frustrates her that he occupies so much of her mind. Even when she tries to think of other things during the day, he invades her dreams at night and she wakes up sweaty and alone. The second night after the full moon is no exception. She crawls from her bed and carries her candle to the gate and walks the path through the Forest to their meeting spot.

  The light from the tiny flame of the candle barely reaches past the fences bordering the path, and it throws cruel shadows across the Unconsecrated who follow her. Their eyes seem more hollow than during the day, their cheeks sharper, their teeth and tongues black maws.

  Moans surround her, peel away her flesh until she feels bare and raw. The Unconsecrated bang against the fence, claw for her so hard their fingers snap and bones protrude, gleaming and sharp. She can’t rush because the candle will go out and so she’s forced to walk slowly, unable to outrun the death on either side of her.

  The gate is as it always is: impassive and sturdy. As she expected, the path on the other side is empty. She stands in the darkness and tries to decide what to do next. Go back? Go forward? Curl up on the path and let time take its toll?

  Her shoulders fall, her fingers go limp and the candle drops. Just before the flame sputters out against the damp earth, she catches sight of something lying on the ground on the other side of the gate. In the middle of the path is a small basket covered by a scrap of material.

  The moon is fat but waning, and she doesn’t bother relighting the candle before opening the gate and crossing through it. She pulls back the fabric to find a spray of wilted flowers, their petals black in the darkness. Nestled amid the limp leaves rests a piece of paper, and it takes her three strikes of the flint until her candle’s bright enough to read the words.

  “My Tabby”, she whispers aloud to the dead around her. “My family has grown sick and my father is on the verge of death. I couldn’t bear to leave my mother and sister so soon. Forgive my absences. Please forgive me. I have missed you and I promise that nothing will keep me from you after the hare moon. I hope that you remain mine, as I remain yours. Always, my love, Patrick.”

  She presses the words to her lips, hoping for a taste of his skin on the paper. She holds her hand against her chest, wanting to rip out her heart and leave it in this basket among the wilted flowers for him. Because she now understands that it belongs to him and always will.

  Tabitha keeps the note on her person at all times, tucked into the binding for her breasts, next to her heart. She doesn’t care that the sweat of the day blurs his words; she needs them against her. She needs to remember the feel of him.

  She continues her search for the key in a feverish daze. She finds herself staring off into space in the middle of mundane tasks, and she’s late for services more than once. As punishment she’s tasked with spending nights alone praying in the Sanctuary for the Midnight Office and Matins.

  Her eyes begin to look a bit hollow, the bones in her cheeks a little sharper and her jaw more defined. There are confusing moments when she thinks she almost feels the comforting heat of God in her deepest prayers, and she stumbles to her bed muddled and hazy.

  She’s so lost in her thoughts one afternoon that she doesn’t realize at first what it means when she comes across a large key while dusting the shelves and stacking papers on the desk in the oldest Sister’s chambers.

  She holds the key in her hands, feeling its weight. Something warms in her chest, loosens along the small of her back. She slips the key next to Patrick’s letter in the binding around her breasts and spends the rest of the day itching for the time to pray.

  She’s standing in the middle of the Cathedral, staring at the altar and trying to decide if she believes in prayer, when a little girl comes and stands next to her. The girl’s name is Anne, and Tabitha recognizes her as a friend of her little brother’s.

  Anne stands next to Tabitha quietly for a moment, and then she shyly looks up at her. “Are you praying?” she asks.

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sp; Tabitha thinks about this for a moment and answers, “I don’t know.”

  The girl looks puzzled. “Why don’t you know?”

  “Because I don’t know what to believe in right now,” she answers.

  The little girl takes a short breath and then shoves her slightly damp hand into Tabitha’s, squeezing her fingers. “I know what to believe,” she says. “My mother told me and her mother told her.”

  “What’s that?” Tabitha asks.

  The little girl scrunches her face. “You won’t get me in trouble for saying?” Tabitha shakes her head.

  The little girl motions for Tabitha to bend down and she obliges, getting on her knees so that she’s face to face with the child. The girl leans forward, her dark hair falling against Tabitha’s cheeks. “My mother says there’s a world outside the fences. She told me about the ocean, and when I get older, I’m going to find it. If you want, you can go with me.”

  The little girl pulls back, her eyes shining and her little body almost trembling with energy. Tabitha thinks about telling her that it’s true, that there’s something greater beyond their gate. That she’s touched the very edge of it. But when she opens her mouth nothing comes out.

  Tabitha starts the Midnight Office early and races through the words, baldly reciting them hot and fast without thought to their meaning or significance. After the last Amen she slips from the pews past the altar and toward the secret door.

  She’s just pulling back the curtain when she hears the whisper of feet over stones. “I thought we would keep you company tonight,” Ruth says, carrying a candle into the Sanctuary, a yawning Ami at her heels. They pause when they see Tabitha and the hidden door.

  Tabitha’s heart beats fast and wild. There’s a certain thrill, she realizes, in getting caught. “I finished early,” she says.

  Her two friends drift closer. “What’s that?” Ruth asks.

  Ami tugs on her sleeve. “It’s not our place to know if they haven’t told us,” she says. The whites of her eyes almost glow in the darkness.

  “Where does it go?” Ruth asks Tabitha.

  Tabitha grasps the key tightly in her hand, its dull teeth digging into her palm. “I don’t know,” she says.

  “Ruth?” Ami’s whine is tinged with anxiety. She glances over her shoulder, as if expecting someone to come upon them at any moment.

  “You’re going to explore it?” Ruth asks. Tabitha recognizes the hint of a thrill in her voice. Knows that Ruth is like her—that she craves the knowing.

  Tabitha raises her chin. “I am.”

  “Ruth ...” Ami is now close to panic, scrabbling at her friend’s arm. Ruth looks from Ami to Tabitha, and Tabitha knows the moment she makes up her mind, because her shoulders droop a little. She places a hand over Ami’s.

  “We’ll pray for you,” Ruth says to Tabitha. Ami sags with relief. “And we’ll make sure no one asks about your absence.”

  Tabitha nods. “Thank you,” she says, thankful to be left alone but more grateful to know that her friends will be looking out for her.

  Ruth tugs Ami toward the rail and together they kneel. Alone, Tabitha slips through the door, and before the curtain falls back into place, she sees Ami’s head bowed low and Ruth’s glittering eyes following Tabitha’s movements with both lust and resignation.

  The basement is the same as before: dark and damp. She slides back the curtain and pulls out the key. The lock on the door doesn’t even protest, just slips to the right, and the door cracks open, revealing a long low tunnel.

  There’s a flutter in her chest like the first time she opened the secret gate between her and Patrick. On a small table just past the door she finds a stash of old candles, but she ignores them, cupping her hand around the flame on the taper she brought with her and pushing into the darkness.

  She can tell she’s underground: the walls are slick with moss and sweating with moisture, the floor is a hard-packed dirt. Her steps are slow and hesitant not because she’s afraid, which she is a little, but because, until recently, with her forays into the Forest, it is so rare for there to be something new in her life, rare for her to have a feeling she’s never experienced or a thought she’s never shared, and she still isn’t used to such a novelty. She always assumed she knew this village and this life and everything about them, and now she’s found something new and she wants to make it last.

  Down the low tunnel she finds a series of doors, most of them with locks that her key won’t budge. But one door opens easily after she twists away metal bars that hold it closed in the stone wall. In the room beyond, the glow of her candle illuminates a low bed piled with mildewed blankets, and a rotted mat on the floor.

  Against the far wall sits a rickety table with a thick book resting on top. She knows even in the dimness that the book is a copy of the Scripture, and she’s about to return to the hallway and her explorations when something about it calls to her.

  She wonders if this is what it was like for the prophets she’s learned so much about, this pull toward some offering of a truth. She places a hand on the book, thick dust sliding smoothly under her fingers.

  With a reverence she’s never before felt, she opens the cover. The printed text is as she expects. What she doesn’t expect is the cramped handwriting covering the margins. She sets down her candle and leans closer to the page, reading the first line: In the beginning we did not know the extent of it.

  She immediately recognizes the writing for what it is: a history of the village, beginning with the Return. She carries the book to the bed and begins to read. When her candle bums too low, she gets another from the table by the door.

  Time ceases to exist for Tabitha in that room. All that matters is the words, the memories. The horrifying facts of her world. Stories she has never heard, about the brutality of the pre-Return existence, about the sacrifices those who came before her made to keep her village safe.

  It feels as though the words crawl from the page and eat their way under her skin, infecting her with a fever that causes her head to pound and her blood to bum.

  She begins to understand the precariousness of their existence. The delicate balance of knowledge and ignorance, of what to pass down to the general populace of the village and what to keep locked up safe in the Cathedral.

  And she learns the reason the paths are forbidden. She reads about the bandits who attacked the village in the early years. About the men who would leave and never return, who would alert the outside world to the village’s existence, who would incite a fresh wave of refugees that overwhelmed the village’s resources.

  There were times when the Infected from other villages would try to invade. There was a year when her village almost perished because a small child wandered from the Forest and turned Unconsecrated in the middle of the night, sparking infection that raged.

  In a desperate act, those who’d come before her closed off the paths. Sent word that their village was infected and broken, would never survive. They started to tell the next generation that they were all that was left. They killed any who dared to tip this delicate balance.

  They did it out of love. Out of loyalty. Out of a desire to continue the existence of humanity in the service of God. They did it with a passion born of conviction.

  This, Tabitha realizes, is what she inherited. This is what she jeopardizes every time she steps into the Forest.

  As she closes the book, Sister Tabitha understands that she has to decide what she will stand for: her own desire for love or devotion to her village and the people within it.

  Tabitha has just stepped back into the Sanctuary, weak and trembling, her face pale, when the oldest Sister comes upon her. “You’re late for the Midnight Office,” she scolds. “Your face is streaked with dirt and your hair is uncombed. This is no way to come before God.”

  In the past Tabitha would have seethed inside at being treated like a child, but tonight she merely nods and walks stiffly to her room. She has been in the tunnel chamber for almost an entire d
ay, and her eyes bum, dry and painful.

  She washes her face and plaits her hair and returns to the Sanctuary half asleep for the midnight prayers. It’s hard not to weave on her knees, not to rest her head against the altar railing and slip from the world.

  Ruth and Ami join her. Ami keeps her head bowed, her fingers laced so tight that her knuckles blaze white, but Ruth looks Tabitha straight in the eye. “We covered for you,” she says.

  Tabitha nods. “Thank you.”

  “What did you find?” Ruth asks. Ami closes her eyes tightly, mumbling prayers as if trying to drown out everything around her.

  Tabitha thinks of the Scripture with the journal written in the margins. She thinks of the burden of her knowledge and wonders what it would be like to share it. To seek counsel.

  She thinks of telling Patrick. Of lying in the spring grass with his fingers tangled in her hair.

  “A basement,” Tabitha says truthfully. “Old dusty bottles and broken shelves.” She turns her attention to the altar and the cross, though she still feels Ruth’s heavy gaze.

  “That’s it?” Ruth sounds disappointed, deflated.

  Tabitha nods and joins in Ami’s mumbling prayers, reciting the words without thinking or hearing or feeling them. In her mind she’s begging God to tell her what to do, what choice to make.

  Tabitha sneaks back to the room underground whenever she can, each time with a growing sense of dread and apprehension rather than excitement and joy. She sits on the old bed surrounded with the taste of mildew and she stares at the book lying on its rickety table.

  There hasn’t been an entry recorded in it for seven years. Since the last-oldest Sister passed on in her sleep. Tabitha wonders if the Sister simply forgot to mention the book to her successor or if its loss was more purposeful. If maybe the Sister meant for the village to forget its past and start anew.

  Tabitha understands that this determination rests in her hands now. She’s suddenly become the keeper of her village, and she must decide whether to accept the mantle.