He did not smell like lavender and tobacco anymore. That scent had been scrubbed off him. He smelled of soap now, milky and nondescript. He took her hand, but he did not speak a word, and his darkness was right in front of her, pulsing, swelling like an inky thundercloud. She felt cold suddenly, terrified. They danced up the floor, down. She dropped one arm for a moment, let the red stamp slip down her sleeve and into her hand. She fingered it, felt the squelch of the ink, the prongs of the letter:
M.
M for Misha.
M for murderer.
It would stain. It would blot his collar and then it would drip over his skin, red as the blood on the staircase. She moved closer to him, close against his chest, and his darkness seemed to be flooding over her, suffocating her. He whispered something in her ear. And then she pretended to trip, and caught him around the neck, pressing the stamp hard into the back of his collar. But she was not quick enough. There was too much ink. She felt it dripping, splattering over his neck. He jerked back with an oath. And before she even realized what was happening he lifted his hand and struck her hard across the face.
The orchestra screeched to a halt. The dancers stopped, and a whisper spread through them. Misha stumbled, her eyes wide, her hand to her burning cheek. She did not cry out. She smelled the tobacco and lavender closing over her as arms took her, and his darkness was drawn away. But it was stronger now than ever, that darkness, a black flame, fuming and roiling against the gray plain of her sight.
× × ×
“Misha?” Kerstin’s face was inches from her own, her breath coming in gasps. “Misha, wake up! Wake up, hurry!”
Misha sat up with a start, her head still heavy with sleep. Her face was aching, and she could feel the purple bruise, tender under her eye. “Kerstin? Did you find it? I got red ink all over his jacket and his face, and I stamped his shirt collar, did you see who it was?”
Kerstin pulled her out of the bed and began practically ramming clothes down over her head. “I was in the kitchens until midnight, silly, of course I didn’t.”
“And no one said anything?” Misha pulled away. She’d had a suspicion of what the reaction might be. The murderer could have said anything he wanted while Misha was out, that she had been playing wicked pranks on unsuspecting gentlemen, that she deserved the slap, like an unruly child. The others would nod their heads and agree because she was not quite all there in the head, that Miss Markham, the typhoid you know, it didn’t only take her eyes. And maybe it had been stupid to stain his clothes. All it proved was that she couldn’t be trusted, that she wasn’t sane . . .
But Kerstin believed her. She prodded Misha from the room, her voice low and excited. “We’ve almost got him now. And when the inspectors are awake, I’ll back you up. I’ll say I smelled the scent too, and that it’s mighty suspicious giving everyone the same perfume as you, when that’s the only thing the blind girl knew you by. We’ll get him.”
They ran together down the stairs and through the herb garden, starting across the green. The sun had not yet risen. Misha felt the air, chilly and brisk, and the wet grass soaking her skirt. She heard Kerstin unlock a rough old door. Then they were inside the echoing cool of the wash-house, and Kerstin was hurrying about.
“The valets will have collected all the shirts the gentlemen wore last night. They won’t all be laundered yet, but Moll will have gotten a head start yesterday.” Misha heard Kerstin flipping through the racks of hangers, the whisper of fabrics. “But she won’t have gotten that stain out, poor girl. We’ll have to apologize afterward. Oh, I’m the queen of London-Town,” she began to sing softly. “The shirttails’ll all have tags on them. Room and name, or at least the valet’s name. And even if he was clever and switched the tags, the shirt will have a monogram on it. We’ll know for sure.”
Kerstin’s voice was electric. Misha wanted to join in somehow, but there was nothing she could do there, and so she said: “Hurry! I don’t know if anyone saw us, but we mustn’t be caught, not out here—”
She heard footsteps, little feet hissing through the grass. The titter of voices.
“Kerstin?” she said through her teeth.
“What?” Kerstin practically screeched over her shoulder, and then she came and stood by Misha, and let out a little gasp.
The children were there. Misha couldn’t see them, but she felt them, a coiled, watchful presence. They were simply standing, staring.
“What are you all up so early for?” Kerstin said after a moment, her voice snappish. They did not answer. Misha’s hand dug into the fabric of her dress. She tried to say something too, tried to tell them that they needed to be inside, and they needed to be careful, when all at once she heard a whistle, and they were rushing away through the grasses, and gone as quickly as they had come.
Kerstin made a grunting noise and turned back into the wash-house. “I’m just about through with those little devils,” she muttered. The sliding ring of hangers resumed.
A minute passed with no results. “How much longer?” Misha cried, her eyes straining, watchful for a shadow, a tall, dark shape.
“There are a lot of shirts, all right?” Kerstin said. “And quite a handful look like someone took red ink to them. Are you sure you didn’t splatter the entire room?”
Misha waved her hand back desperately, silencing Kerstin. Her neck craned. She thought about running, but it was too late now. There, moving along through the whiteness toward her, was the murderer.
“Get . . . back,” Misha whispered, without moving her mouth. “Hide!”
She heard footsteps retreating into the wash-house, a quiet exclamation. Misha backed into the room, her hands sliding over the walls, the equipment, searching for something, anything to use as a weapon. She turned her head, slowly. He was standing in the doorway, a pillar of darkness, darker than the pre-dawn outside, darker than the fog of her vision. He was standing there, watching her. She went so, so still, but the stillness was all he needed and he took a step toward her. She made one last desperate attempt for a weapon, but her fingers closed on air. Her hands were empty.
“Good morning,” he said, and it was his real voice now, no more rough country tones, no more gravel and earth. She didn’t move. Not a muscle. Not an eyelid. Outside, the children were singing again:
J is for Jamie, alone in the park
K is for Kerstin, who’s good for a lark
“You tried, old girl. You did. But perhaps you should have left well enough alone. Perhaps you should have been grateful for your spared life and run away with it. You’ll join the others now. Essa Beet and Ginty Willoughby.”
L is for Louis, who douses the spark
M is for Misha, who squirms in the dark
It was too late now, too late to tell anyone, too late to scream. She knew who it was: Cousin Jamie from London. She remembered him from long ago, a tall pale boy with a sharp face. He had been in the garden, in that childhood memory of the white smocks and the painfully green grass. Ginty Willoughby was there, ten years old, and sallow from influenza, and several other children too. And Essa Beet, wizened as ever, had been meant to watch them, but she had fallen asleep against the roots of an apple tree. Misha remembered a prank being played, how Jamie had rallied the children, how he’d had them carry old Essa Beet softly and silently to the old barn as she slept. How Jamie had tied her wrists and held bees to her skin by their wings. Essa Beet woke up when they stung her. She had screamed. Misha had begun to cry. Later, Jamie had been beaten for it. Lady Thorpe had wept and Lord Thorpe had threatened to send him to India, and yet Misha remembered watching Jamie during all this, standing like a pallid spike in his dark suit, tall and nervous and smug. He had not looked sorry. He had simply been interrupted.
His hand was growing tighter and tighter around Misha’s own, and she could feel the sweat spring up in his palm like cold needles––
She stood b
olt upright. In one swift motion she tore her hands from his and leaped toward the door, or what she thought was the door, but the man caught her hair and jerked her back savagely. She swung about, pummeling his face. He caught her fingers a second time, and they squeezed in his hands like wet twigs until she thought they would break. She tried to scream. His hand clamped over her mouth.
“Now, now,” he said, and his voice was maddeningly patient, a gentle scold. “Quietly. We wouldn’t want to frighten the children.” And then he dragged her to the door and closed it, and the sound of its latch was like an anvil strike.
“How did you know?” she gasped, struggling against his grip. “How did you— ? Kerstin didn’t tell you, she never would have!”
“Oh, Kerstin didn’t say a word. She is a good and loyal girl. And no one else knew. But the children did. The children know everything.”
Misha tried to scream again, but her throat would not allow it, and her voice box let out nothing but a dry crackle. Get away, Kerstin, she thought desperately. Get out, get out, don’t let him find you!
“So,” the man went on, and his breathing was coming quick again. He swallowed thickly. “Let’s have some fun, shall we?” And here she heard the snick of a blade being drawn from its sheath.
Misha screamed into his palm, flailed wildly, but he only clamped down harder until her jaws ached. She felt cold metal on her neck. Somewhere out in the gardens the children shrieked with laughter.
And then, behind them, there came the rattle of hangers parting and the pounding of shoes, and something struck Jamie with a metallic thunk so heavily, Misha felt it in her own bones.
“Kerstin?” Misha wriggled out from behind the hand. The shuddering thunk came again, again, whizzing through the air, and Misha knew it was Kerstin, wielding a pressing-iron the size of a birdhouse. She smashed it into the shadow’s head. Misha heard the knife skittering out of his hand. He collapsed, but in an instant he was up again, and she saw his darkness coming at Kerstin, his shoulders hunched. Misha launched herself from the floor, following the sound of his blade as it slid across the boards. Her hand found it. She flew at the dark shape.
“Help us!” Misha screamed. “Help us, someone, he’s killing us!” But he wasn’t. They were killing him, and he was curling on the ground beneath their blows, and Kerstin had the knife now, and Misha’s fingers were over the man’s mouth, and she felt a liquid sliding between them, hot as the blood pooling on the stairs . . .
When the inspector woke up, he would see the dots—a gentleman, brutally murdered, an orphan recluse, a lowly country maid of questionable reputation. He would not see the lines, though, that connected them, or the spaces between, where the truth lay. Perhaps Misha and Kerstin would be brought to an insane asylum for deranged females. Perhaps they would be hanged. But not then. Not that day. When the deed was done, and Jamie no longer moved, they took each other’s hands and ran from the wash-house and the gardens, away into the morning sunlight. Behind them the children began to sing again, a new song, and a dark one:
J is for Jamie, who gave us quince pies
K is for Kerstin, who stabbed out his eyes
L is for laughter that flew through the green
M is for Misha, who stifled his screams . . .
THE GIRL WITHOUT A FACE*
MARIE LU
Out of all twelve bedrooms in the new house, Richard’s was the only one with a closet locked from the inside.
His parents couldn’t figure out how it happened. The closet’s doorknob had no keyhole, for one, and the door didn’t seem rusted shut; when Richard peered through the side of the door, he could see that the bolt was pulled straight across, as if done purposefully. Odd. It didn’t seem like anything was in there. He couldn’t see any shelf or chair legs when he looked through the slit under the door.
Dad joked about it for a while, in the lame, awkward way he had of saying exactly the wrong thing at the wrong time. “A trick door!” he said, nudging Richard in the ribs and giving him an exaggerated wink. “I’ll bet the last owner accidentally locked himself in there all the time. Couldn’t you picture that? Probably got himself stuck in there for days on end, hollering . . .”
Dad’s joke trailed off once he saw Richard’s face. They ended up staring at the door together in an uncomfortable silence.
Why did it have to be the closet door that couldn’t open? It was as if the universe wouldn’t leave him alone about closets. And in a giant house this expensive, on a street where doctors and politicians lived, you’d think all the doors would be well-crafted, top-of-the-line. Not made like shit.
Still— “It’s fine,” he said. “I’ll use the dresser,” he said. Hoping his parents would agree and just forget about it.
They didn’t. At first, they tried halfheartedly to open it. Then they tried in earnest. No good. The hinges refused to pivot. They couldn’t even get it to budge. The jokes turned into grumbles about needing to break the whole thing open. They ended up moving Richard to a different bedroom, and that worked for a few days, until the second bedroom’s closet door started jamming up too.
“Sorry, honey,” Richard’s mom said to him. “Must be the cold weather. We’ll get a contractor to look at these. You could switch again, if you—”
“Forget it,” Richard said, waving a hand. He didn’t start a brand-new year in a brand-new house just to dwell on old news again. “No big deal.”
In the rush of moving in, the closet situation was forgotten. A month passed, and January became February.
After a while, Richard started getting the distinct impression that someone was watching him sleep. There was a strange weight in his room, as if the furniture or the walls weren’t aligned quite right, and sometimes he would feel that weight press against his chest like a stone. At first, he would get up in the middle of the night and rearrange his things. Honor roll plaques. Golf trophies. Decathlon ribbons. His Harvard University early action acceptance letter, encased in a thousand-dollar frame. He would move and move until it all seemed right, and then he would go back to bed.
The next night, though, the weight always returned. He tried not to think about it.
Once, in the middle of the night, winter wind slapped tree branches hard enough against his window to wake him up. He scrubbed a hand over his face, then looked around, puzzled. No, there had been some other sound too. A rustling, maybe. He looked around the room. Everything seemed untouched and in place.
Then the rustle came again. It sounded almost like the shuffle of feet.
He tilted his head, listening for the source.
Nothing again.
Finally, he went back to sleep. As he drifted off, he realized that the shuffling sound seemed to come from behind the closet door.
The next night, he had a dream. In the dream, he was walking down an empty street that he didn’t recognize. Fog shrouded the road, blurring the streetlamps. His steps echoed. Up ahead, he saw the faint shape of a girl walking slowly ahead of him. She had long, pale hair, and even though a cold wind blew around him, it didn’t seem to stir a single one of her strands. He could tell he was walking faster than her, but he could never seem to catch up. She stayed ahead, right at the edge, where the fog started to swallow everything whole. She never turned around.
Richard jerked awake. Outside, a weak rain had started. He let himself lie still for a while, listening to the storm, until the sweat on his body had dried. Then he looked over at his locked closet.
The door was open.
He frowned. Then he propped himself up on his elbows and squinted into the darkness for a better look.
The door was wide open, swung all the way out so that the doorknob touched the wall.
Standing in the middle of its entranceway was the girl. She kept her back turned to him, so that all he could see of her was her long hair.
A strange tingle traveled up his neck and
over the back of his head. He sat up. Then he swung his feet over the side of the bed, put on his slippers, and got up. Thunder rumbled outside.
“Hello?” he whispered, keeping his eyes on the girl.
She didn’t move.
He took a step forward. Then another. The closet drew closer, and his heart started to pound. He stopped a few feet away from her. He reached a hand out to touch her shoulder.
Before he could, she started to move. She walked into the closet, where it was so black that he couldn’t see any of its inner walls, and then she turned to the right and disappeared abruptly into the darkness.
Richard bolted upright in bed.
He had never woken up from his first dream. His eyes darted over to the closet—he half expected the door to be wide open again, and the girl to be standing in front of it, her back turned to him. The faint light of dawn had already started filtering in through his window.
The closet door was locked, as it had always been. When he walked over to it and tried again to pull it open, it stayed tightly shut.
Just a dream. Richard stared at the closet door for a moment longer, then shook his head and started getting ready for school. A poor night’s sleep meant a long day ahead.
His friends shrugged it off.
“Was she hot, at least?” one of them asked as they ate their lunches on a bench outside school. For a moment, Richard couldn’t even tell who said it—they all looked the same under this slant of winter light, identical in their uniform navy sweaters and scarlet ties and khakis, the crest of their academy embroidered on their right sleeves.
Slasher Girls & Monster Boys Page 27
