The Appearance of Annie Van Sinderen

by Katherine Howe

  “Hey,” a girl’s voice says nearby, and I look up in terror.

  She’s gazing on me curiously, and looks somewhat familiar. In her face, she looks familiar, anyway. She has heavy straight-cut hair over her eyes, and something about her bearing reminds me oddly of Ed. An impish twinkle in the corners of her eyes. She lays a hand on my shoulder and says, “You okay? You need anything? Hungry, maybe?”

  She’s oddly dressed, too, in frayed short trousers and stockings and a tight bodice with no sleeves, and she has tattoos of leaves along her arms and winding around her neck. I’ve never seen a woman with tattoos. I’ve only seen ink like that on the arms of whalers in bawdy houses where I wasn’t supposed to be.

  “Thirsty,” I manage to say, my eyes hunting behind her, afraid that the rumbling will come back.

  The street looks the same. Sort of. Does it? Two blocks away another tenement is slowly collapsing, consumed by the same brown dust cloud, while next to it another bizarre glass cliff bursts instantly up out of the ground like a mushroom, reaching impossibly high into the sky. Then another one, a block farther down. And another! The crowds moving in the streets don’t even stop. No one screams. No fires break out.

  The girl, oblivious, rummages in a paper bag that she’s carrying and produces a glass bottle. She twists out the cork—no, there isn’t a cork, just a kind of foil cap—and passes it to me.

  “Here. Drink up. You look like you need it,” she says.

  I read the bottle, which has a paper label glued to it that reads COLT 45. I don’t understand what this means.

  “But . . . what is it?” I ask. Not that beggars can be choosers.

  “Go on,” the girl with the tattooed leaves says. “Trust me. You look like ass.”

  She thinks I look like . . . a donkey? I’d be offended, if I weren’t so thirsty.

  I take a swig from the bottle, and the liquid is an unpleasant, malty beer. But it rinses my mouth. Grateful, I swallow long and hard, feeling the bitter liquid pour into my stomach.

  “All right,” the girl says. “Take it easy.”

  I drink deep from the bottle and then wipe my lips on my sleeve. Before I can thank the girl, she’s vanished into the throng.

  The rumbling is back, or more properly it never left, this time shaking the victualing house next door to the first tenement. Three men sit smoking pipes at a little table in the front window, and a ruddy-cheeked woman is pouring them flagons of beer. In a trice the rumble has consumed them without so much as a whisper. The victualing house folds in on itself as I watch, like a collapsing paper house, and this time my scream comes so loud that some people actually stop to watch. I fling aside the glass bottle, hearing it shatter, and an unseen voice cries, “Hey, watch it!” before I gather up my skirts and flee.

  Blinded by tears, I dart and weave between the people. I have to reach Herschel’s uncle’s shop before the rumbling gets him.

  What if I’m too late? What if it isn’t there?

  What if I never find my cameo?

  CHAPTER 7

  I dash through the throngs of people, but I can’t escape. The figures around me on the street are changing, hats disappearing, little boys vanishing from gutters, babies appearing pushed in funny little cradles on wheels. I throw myself into the city, faces upon faces swimming up together in the crowd, all looking through me. Do they even know I’m here? Do they even see me?

  “Help!” I cry as I run, my feet flying across puddles and over curbs and through a honking cluster of horseless landaus.

  “Outta the way!” someone shouts, and I flinch.

  “Help!” I scream again, running up to an old woman in a long dress, making her way slowly on the arm of a nurse. Neither of them responds to me at all, and when I try to put my hands on the nurse’s arm, my fingers don’t touch anything. The two women just push their way along the sidewalk, each looking inward at her own worries.

  “I don’t understand!” I wail, running away from them, dashing up to a man in a waistcoat, only it’s short in back and has no vest. He’s looking at his wrist for some reason, and takes no notice of the Masonic temple dissolving into dust directly behind him. I scrabble at his sleeve, screaming, “Help me! Somebody help me, please!”

  But he shakes me off, indifferent, and then strides with purpose across the street with a crowd of other people. The landaus all stop and wait for him, though no one is waving to them to stop.

  “Can you please help me?” I beg of a girl about Beattie’s age, who pays no attention to me, so absorbed is she in looking at some little object she holds in her hands, a few inches from her nose. She giggles at the object and walks away from me.

  “What’s happening?” I scream, throwing my head back with my arms spread in supplication to the heavens.

  The sky is blue and hot, like in summer, and instead of dirt and animal smells I taste something like brimstone in the air. Instead of roasted pears and hot corn, a cart on the street corner offers a sort of fried paste with spices I’ve never smelled before. The sign is gibberish: It says FALAFEL.

  With a guttural cry of terror I tear off down the street, slamming into a young man surrounded on all sides by dogs yapping at his ankles. I fall to my hands and knees, my palms grating bloody on the pavement, and the young man hollers, “Hey, watch where you’re going!”

  I struggle to get back to my feet, but my skirts are twisted around my legs, and the dogs are all on thongs of leather attached to the man. I’m trapped in a mesh of leather thongs, and the dogs all snarl and snap at me, lunging for my face. I cower, bringing my arms over my head. Then the dogs are pulled roughly off, and the young man goes away cursing at me.

  I’m sobbing, and I look down at the bloody scratches all over my hands. I’ll never get home in time.

  I’m lost.

  I haven’t found Herschel’s shop.

  I don’t recognize this street at all.

  When I get home they’ll beat me raw for running off when I was supposed to be packing. I’ll make everyone late, and that could be dangerous, if the Brotherhood of Luddites come for us like they say they will. And Lottie will be upset that I’ve ruined my dress.

  My dress . . .

  I look down at myself, and I’m not in the dress I put on in the morning. I’m in the evening gown that Ed is supposed to be packing for me to wear to the opening of the canal, on the corporation barge one week from today. The one with the velvet flounce.

  I glance up, looking around myself, eyes widening with bafflement and wonder.

  I’m in the middle of a quiet, leafy block, standing opposite a metal gate that is locked shut with a giant rusted padlock and chain. As I gaze upon it, the gate seems to shimmer, as though the iron had been dipped in the thinnest layer of gold. It’s just a trick of the light, but I move nearer, peering between the bars.

  The gate protects a kind of hidden garden, tucked between two buildings, and thrown completely in shadow by the raking afternoon sun. No one is inside. I lift my hand and rest it against the iron bars. They feel cool to the touch, cool and real. It looks so quiet in there. Quiet and safe. It looks like a perfect place to rest. And I’m so tired, all of a sudden. I’m so tired of running, and the rumbling, and being confused and lost and alone, and I can’t find my way anywhere I want to go, and I can’t get anyone’s attention except when I don’t want it. If I can only go in there to rest for a little while, everything will be all right.

  I lightly touch the iron bars with my hand, and the gate swings obediently open with a welcoming creak. I sigh with relief. I pass through the gate into the shadows, feeling the springy turf under my slippers, the inviting breath of the shade. I just have to sit down. I have to rest, for a minute. A few shapes loom here and there in the darkness, but I don’t pay any attention to them. I wander without any special purpose until I find the most perfect, comfortable spot, a tuft of grass and dandelions in
full white puff nestled up against the garden wall. With a heavy sigh I sink down to the earth, stretching my legs out in front of me and leaning my weight against the wall. My cheek presses against the coolness there, and I find this portion of the wall is made of marble, surrounded on all sides by brick.

  It feels so good, to be sitting here.

  I close my eyes.

  My breath comes soft and easy.

  I sit that way for a long time. I might have drifted off to sleep, but I don’t think so. I just want to close my eyes and be quiet for a little while. And so I let myself rest against this wonderful marble wall, which seems like it was made just for me.

  • • •

  After a time the backs of my eyelids glow red, and I feel a warm sunbeam move onto my face. I open my eyes, squinting into the light and rubbing my eyes with my knuckles. I feel better. I listen, and hear no more rumbling. I heave an enormous sigh, the kind Mother pinches me for making in church, and stretch my arms luxuriously over my head. My spine pops, and I roll my head back and forth on my shoulders, stretching this way and that. I’d like to loosen the lacing that’s holding my corsetry together, but I can’t reach the laces in back. I’ll just have to be too tight for now.

  The sun has moved, and I realize I’m late, and they’ll be missing me at home. I have to get back. I’ll get a message to Herschel when we get to Aunt Mehitable’s. It’ll be all right.

  I struggle to my feet, brushing bits of grass and dandelion fluff from the silk of my dress, hoping I haven’t made myself too odious.

  I’m mid-brush when I notice that the sunbeam is falling across the marble panel in the wall where I’d been leaning my head.

  “What?” I say aloud.

  I take a step back, and slip on a clod of dirt, almost losing my balance.

  There’s carving on the marble slab, but it’s difficult to make out. It looks like the carving has been there for a long time, and has partly melted away in the rain.

  Slowly, tremblingly, I stretch my hand forward to trace the barely legible letters.

  They spell V A N S I N D E R E N.

  “What?” I say again, but it’s hard to speak because my lower lip is trembling.

  My fingertips reach forward, traveling from the shadow where I’m standing into the cheerful sunbeam. When my hand reaches the light, my eyes stretch open as wide as they can go, so wide the tears that spring to their corners dry before they can fall.

  As my hand moves into the light, the nails slowly blacken. The skin of my arm grows splotchy, and the deeper my arm reaches into the sun, the higher up the staining travels. As it moves into the sun my puffed silk sleeve deflates, the lace at my elbow dissolves into grayness and tatters. With a shudder I pull my hand back out of the light and hold both my hands up in front of my face, watching in horror as tendrils of smoke begin to coil up from my fingertips. I’ve pulled back into the shadows, but it’s too late: the mud and soot stains continue to creep up both my arms, spreading across my chest and down my dress, tattering the cloth and reeking of smoke and earth. The wave of corruption spreads over my skirt before my eyes, rotting the hem and reaching all the way to my slippers, which turn dishwater gray. In the periphery of my eyes I see the curls over my ears begin to pour smoke, and I smell burning flesh and singed hair.

  “But . . . but . . . ,” I sputter, looking in horror down at myself.

  I’m whimpering, nonsense is pouring out of my mouth, and I start to hyperventilate, but I can’t get my breath because my stays are so tight.

  “No,” I gasp. “This can’t be! I have too much to do! This can’t . . .”

  I glance through the smoke that’s drifting up from beneath my feet, and see that gentle wet-gold sheen travel over the V A N S I N D E R E N with a fairylike unapologetic gleam.

  I throw my head back and scream.

  I scream, and scream, and scream, and scream, because I’m not feverish, and I’m not mad, and this is really happening this is all really happening and I’m not in heaven I am HERE and what do I do?

  What am I supposed to do?

  My scream goes guttural, like the bellow of a cow having its throat cut, and I fall to my knees in the grass, tears bursting from my eyes, spittle swinging from my open keening mouth.

  “No,” I moan, my arms wrapping around my stomach as I rock back and forth on my heels in front of that horrible, horrible marble slab. “Oh no no no no no! Herschel! I want to see Herschel! We were supposed to be together! It’s not fair!”

  I draw a ragged breath and let it back out with a sob of despair.

  “Oh, help!” I sob. “Help! Can’t anyone help me? Please, someone! ANYONE! HELP!”

  The marble cemetery is completely silent, except for one cooing pigeon that watches me with impassive eyes. I’m all alone, and it’s not the day we leave for Aunt Mehitable’s after all.

  It’s not the day I sneak away from the house before we flee and Herschel gives me my cameo. The day when he tells me he loves me and he wants to be with me forever. The day that everything changes.

  I was just remembering that day.

  I was lost.

  Overcome, my heart dissolving into dust, I slump over onto my side, weeping, my knees drawn up to my chest and my hands over my face. I let the sobs come, rolling up and breaking over me like ocean waves. Lifting me up and carrying me out to sea.

  I don’t know how long I lie like that. But I suspect it is a very long while indeed.

  • • •

  The question, I ask myself as I lie in the dandelions, is what do I do now?

  Slowly I push myself up to a sitting position. My throat is raw from screaming, and my face feels hot and swollen. But my tears have finally stopped. I’ve run out. I wonder, actually, if I will ever cry again.

  I look around myself with eyes that are newly clear.

  I’m sitting in a small cemetery, protected by a locked gate. It looks like it’s been locked for a very long time. Beyond the gate, I see passersby going about their business, all as it should be except for the strangeness of their dress. They’re all practically naked. I try to conceive of how much time has gone by, but I can’t think about it just yet. At least a year, but something tells me it’s much more than a year. I can tell from the light and the heavy pressure of the heat that it’s summer, so going practically naked is probably a relief.

  A boy lopes by in baggy short pants and a loose-fitting shirt with no collar or sleeves. I smile, as his outlandish clothes remind me of my figment.

  Wes.

  When I think of his name, my eyebrows shoot up.

  Wes! Wes came out of the fog to talk to me!

  Wes isn’t a figment at all. He’s real!

  His was the first new conversation I’ve had since my nightmare began.

  And Wes can talk to me.

  But how do I find him? He didn’t wait for me, when I asked him to. I don’t know where he went. I could try to find him at my house—the thought of my house causes a wave of nausea to curdle in my stomach—but I don’t know where in the city I am, or how I got here.

  I struggle to my feet, stumbling on weak legs, and then pace to and fro in front of the marble slab with my name on it. I can’t bring myself to look at the name on the slab. I can’t bring myself to think about what’s inside. That won’t do anyone any good. The idea crowds in on me—the monster that I saw in the mirror when I was getting dressed—but I push it away. I have to think. I have to think. I can’t succumb to horrifying myself on top of everything else.

  When I first tried to leave the house, I was confused by the fog. It turned me around and brought me back where I started. But later, I was able to leave. I could walk the streets. The fog was gone.

  Can I leave now?

  I tiptoe up to the cemetery gate and peer through the bars. I don’t see any fog. Two boys go trotting past, tossing a large oran
ge bouncing ball between them and laughing. I retreat into the shadows of the gate, afraid that they’ll see me. I’m afraid of what I might look like.

  I reach my hands up slowly and touch my fingertips to my cheeks.

  They feel warm and smooth. Like my cheeks always do.

  I close my eyes and swallow hard.

  I make up my mind that I will at least try. I’m going to leave. Wes can see and hear me. Wes offered me his help. So that’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to go find Wes.

  Except when I put my hand on the gate and touch it to make it open, it’s locked.

  “Huh,” I say aloud.

  Of course, it was locked before, when I got here.

  I grab the iron bars and rattle them.

  They don’t budge.

  Drat.

  “Hey!” I call to a couple of girls striding by outside, talking together. Their legs are so bare, it’s dizzying. “Hey!” I stick my arm between the bars and wave to catch their attention.

  They don’t see me. My arm droops with dismay as they pass.

  I pace back and forth behind the locked cemetery gate, thinking.

  Maybe I can climb over the wall.

  I go over to the brick wall and stare up at its blank face. It’s probably ten feet high. Maybe higher. A few dull windows look down over the alley, and there’s a roll of nasty-looking wire coiled along the top of the wall. It looks like it’s covered in razors. I suck my teeth, thinking about how much that would hurt. Just to see how hard it would be, I curl my fingertips into the grooves between the bricks and try to lift myself up. I grunt and scrabble with the effort, splitting a nail and then skidding back down the few inches that I gained.

  I stick my injured fingertip in my mouth. It tastes of blood.

  I prowl the periphery of the cemetery, looking for a door or a loose window or something, anything that might offer a chance of escape.

  There’s nothing.

  I give the gate a sullen kick as I pass, and its chain rattles in response. Then I sit down with a sulk.