2
One Saturday morning María woke before dawn and found Laura sleeping next to her, sucking her thumb. She must have climbed into María’s bed at some point during the night.
Laura was six years old, one of the youngest girls in the ward. As there were more girls assigned to the dormitory than there were beds, the younger ones often shared beds with the older ones. Laura, however, usually ended up sleeping on a pillow on the floor by herself because she was a bed-wetter and nobody allowed her in their bed—nobody except María.
María was about to go back to sleep when she realized her nightgown was wet. She peeled back the quilt, sat up, and swept her legs to the floor. There was a damp patch in the center of the mattress.
She shook Laura awake. The little girl looked at her tiredly.
“You wet the bed,” María whispered.
Laura sat up slowly, rubbing her eyes.
María pointed to the damp patch.
“I didn’t mean to!” Laura’s chin began to tremble.
At that moment the door to the dormitory opened and Sister Vallín entered, rapping her cane against the wall loudly. She was a sturdy woman with beady eyes and a permanent scowl.
Almost immediately all the girls roused themselves, yawning and stretching and taking their places next to their beds. María and Laura did the same.
Sister Vallín moved down the line of beds, examining each mattress. She stopped at the foot of María’s. Bright malice lit her beady eyes.
“Bed-wetter!” she crowed triumphantly.
An excited rustle passed through the other girls: anticipation at the entertainment in store for them.
Sister Vallín smirked at Laura. “You just can’t help yourself, can you, 53? This is, what, your third bed-wetting so far this month? You are a filthy little girl, a filthy, disgusting little girl—”
“It was me,” María said, not really knowing what she was doing. “I couldn’t hold it in.”
“You?” Sister Vallín said, surprised.
“I’m sorry.”
Sister Vallín glared at her, and María was convinced the nun knew she was lying, could read her thoughts. But all she said was: “Bring me the sheet.”
María peeled the sheet from the bed and handed it to her.
“Take your places, children,” Sister Vallín instructed. “You know how we discipline bed-wetters.”
The girls formed a big circle, each of them swallowing the smiles wanting to worm their way onto their faces. Sister Vallín draped the sheet over María’s head. The smell of pee was strong. All she could see was white.
Then a sharp pain tore across her backside as Sister Vallín struck her with her cane. María yelped. She heard laughter erupt from the other girls. The nun struck her again and again, parading her around the circle, calling her everything from “child of the devil” and “enemy of God” to “unclean animal.” This went on until María’s behind hurt so badly she began to limp. Eventually she could no longer remain on her feet and collapsed to the floor, where she curled in a ball, sobbing in humiliation and pain.
Distantly she heard Sister Vallín speaking to the girls, heard them lining up before the wardrobe, heard them changing into their day clothes. Then they filtered out of the room, heading downstairs to the dining hall for breakfast.
A long time passed, and just as María was beginning to forget what she was doing on the floor, she heard the door to the dormitory open. Footsteps approached. The sheet was torn away.
Scowling down at her, Sister Vallín said, “The one thing God despises more than a filthy little girl is a filthy little liar.” She raised her cane.
“Don’t—”
The cane struck María on the side of her head. Stars exploded across her vision, and she was already spinning into unconsciousness as the nun struck her again and again and again.
3
María came around in a bed in a room she didn’t recognize. Vivid light shone through the tall, arched windows, making her squint. Vaguely, she made out Sister Vallín and Father Pardavé. They were standing by some metal filing cabinets, speaking to each other. They seemed somehow very far away, and she could only catch snippets of their conversation:
“…becoming difficult…deceitful…”
“…mentally deficient…”
“...fits…dazed, unresponsive…”
“…God’s mistake…”
“…no friends…Laura…”
“…equally unfortunate…”
“…her disobedience…aggression…”
“…American doctor…operation…very successful…”
María could no longer keep her eyelids open, they fluttered and shut, and then there was nothing but darkness once again.
Elizaveta
1
Lucinda’s bedroom was furnished with a small, plain dresser and an iron-framed twin bed. A candle sat on the dresser, the stout yellow flame staving off the encroaching darkness. Nitro had hung Pepper’s purple blazer from a hook on the wall to dry. Lucinda lay on the bed on her side, a ratty red sheet pulled to her chin.
“How is she doing?” Elizaveta asked, moving next to Nitro, who remained bare-chested, not an ounce of fat on him. She studied Lucinda. The woman’s eyes were closed, her face gaunt and insipid. Her breathing had developed a burr, a phlegmy rasp, as though she had been a two-packs-a-day smoker for twenty years.
Nitro shrugged. “We need to keep her warm. But there’re no covers, nothing, only these sheets.”
Elizaveta looked at the dresser.
“Empty,” he said, “except some socks and underwear.”
“Where are Solano’s clothes?”
“He was a hermit. He probably only had one outfit.”
“What about the wound in her back?”
“Bleeding’s stopped. Not much more we can do.”
She raised the bucket. “Can she drink water?”
“Not while she’s unconscious.”
Elizaveta frowned, frustrated. She wanted to help, but there was nothing for her to do. She looked around the room for something warm, for something Nitro might have missed. Her eyes fell on his backpack. He’d taken it off and set it on the floor against the wall.
She recalled the way he had acted when Jack caught him with the pistol in his hand: surprised, guilty. How he’d quickly stuffed it away.
Why hadn’t he told them he had it earlier? What was the big secret? It wasn’t like they’d turn him in.
She felt Nitro watching her and said, “Will you stay here?”
“For a while,” he replied. “Need to keep an eye on her. Make sure she doesn’t stop breathing or go into shock.”
“Shock?”
“From loss of blood.”
“Oh…” Elizaveta hesitated, still wanting to help. “Is there anything I can do?”
He shook his head. “Go get some rest.”
2
Jesus and Pita were seated in the two rattan chairs at the table, speaking softly to one another, Pita smoking a cigarette and appearing agitated. Elizaveta let them be and went to the far side of the room, where she found a spot against the wall to settle down. Her clothes and undergarments clung wetly and miserably to her skin. A hearth would have been wonderful right then, the heat of the fire and the musky smell of burning wood divine.
At least there were candles, she thought. It would have been horrible to have to sit there in midnight blackness, the only sound the violent wind and rain, not knowing where the others were, not knowing whether someone had slipped into the cabin with them.
Elizaveta cleared her throat and reigned in her imagination. She lit a Camel, noting she only had four left in the pack. She took a drag, held the smoke in her lungs, almost as if this action would warm her up, then exhaled slowly, reluctantly.
Unlike the Spartan bedroom, the main room was filled with Solano’s personal belongings. Alongside the countless dolls, there were primitive-looking farming tools, miscellaneous items of the variety you might find
in a homeless man’s shopping cart, an incongruous car seat, and wood carvings of, unsurprisingly, miniature dolls. These were colorfully painted and reminded her of matryoshka dolls, a popular toy of Russian children for much of the last century.
Elizaveta hated matryoshka dolls. They reminded her of the orphanage and of a man named Yevgeny Popov. Yevgeny had been part of the staff at the orphanage. At first Elizaveta liked him. The other care-workers were indifferent and cruel to her. They were trained to be like this, products of a cold-hearted system, for orphans were as stigmatized as the disabled and the elderly and femininity in the Soviet Union: a problem to be dealt with in the shadows far from the public eye. Yevgeny, however, always smiled and waved at her. Sometimes he would sneak her a piece of chocolate when no one was looking. He also told her lots of haunted stories concerning the orphanage, strange things that had happened to him, such as lights mysteriously turning on in certain rooms and footsteps sounding behind him, even though when he turned around nobody was there. These tales gave her nightmares, but she eagerly awaited the next one. Life then was bleak and routine, and they relieved the doldrums.
One day Elizaveta had been in the girl’s dormitory rec room. It had a vaulted ceiling with twelve windowed eves and had once served as the chapel before it moved to the administrative building. She was alone, cleaning; all the children had daily chores that rotated on a weekly basis. Yevgeny arrived, crouched before her, and told her he had a surprise for her. Smiling, showing his crooked and yellow cigarette-stained teeth, he presented her with a matryoshka doll. He told her it was her birthday present, even though her birthday wasn’t for another month. Regardless, she had been thrilled. She had not had a toy of her own since her parents vanished and she was taken from her home.
Yevgeny told her to go ahead, play with the doll. Elizaveta sat on the floor and studied the outer layer. It depicted a woman dressed in a sarafan. She separated the top and bottom of the doll to reveal a smaller figure of the same sort inside. There were three more in total, each hidden inside the previous, the smallest being a baby turned from a single piece of wood and non-opening.
While she played with the dolls, Yevgeny began massaging her shoulders with his strong hands. She didn’t like this, though she didn’t know why. It simply made her feel uncomfortable. Even so, she didn’t say anything; she didn’t want to hurt his feelings. He was her friend, one of her only friends in the orphanage, so she let him knead her shoulders all the while wishing for him to stop. Then his hands moved down the front of her chest. She was twelve then and had started to develop breasts. His hands moved around the small mounds, then over them, rubbing. She told him to stop. He didn’t, saying he wasn’t doing anything, they were just playing. His fingers pinched her nipples. Jumping to her feet, leaving the matryoshka doll behind, she hurried from the rec room. She thought Yevgeny would follow her, but he didn’t. She went downstairs to the inner courtyard to be with the other children. She didn’t tell anyone what Yevgeny did. She didn’t think anyone would believe her. Plus, she still wasn’t sure what actually happened, or if it was wrong. She just knew she didn’t like the feeling of Yevgeny’s hands on her.
After that day she hoped Yevgeny would go back to being the old Yevgeny. He didn’t. He stopped smiling and waving at her…even though he rarely took his eyes off her. She became afraid of him, and afraid of being alone in the orphanage, yet sometimes the latter couldn’t be helped. Twice, Yevgeny caught her on her own, exiting the bathroom. The first time she managed to dash past him to safety, but the second time he blocked her escape. He tried to give her the matryoshka doll again. She refused to accept it. He slapped her across the cheek, knocking her over. He slid his hand up her dress, between her legs. She screamed, which scared him off—but not before he threatened to kill her if she told anyone what happened.
Elizaveta didn’t tell anyone. She believed his threat. Nevertheless, a few days later the headmistress, Irina Igorevna, summoned Elizaveta to her office and asked her why she hadn’t been eating anything at mealtimes. Elizaveta broke down and confessed what occurred outside the bathroom. Irina Igorevna listened stoically, asked a few specific questions, then told Elizaveta a story she would never forget. It was about an Auschwitz survivor, a young Jewish woman who Elizaveta would many years later come to suspect had been Irina Igorevna herself. Although imprisoned under inhuman conditions, the young woman was the only one in her ward to wash her stockings each day, as she had done each day before the war. The other inmates shrugged their shoulders at her routine, having abandoned any attempt at hygiene to conserve energy. Yet when a typhoid epidemic struck the camp, the young woman was the only person to survive and to eventually find freedom at the hands of American soldiers.
“The world you enter after your time at the orphanage will be a very challenging place, Elizaveta,” the headmistress concluded. “You will encounter others like Yevgeny Popov, men who would take advantage of you or worse. You can bow to their superior strength and hope they grow tired of you and leave you alone, or you can stand up for your core dignities, remain true to yourself, even if this means making difficult choices. You stood up for yourself today by confiding in me what happened, and it will be up to you whether you continue to stand up for yourself in the future, whether you choose to merely survive, or refuse to survive and live.”
The next morning at breakfast the children learned that Yevgeny died in his sleep. No explanation was given, though over the following days rumors swirled he had taken his own life.
Elizaveta didn’t believe this, but she never spoke of her suspicions to anyone.
3
Jack emerged from Pepper’s bedroom, closing the door behind him. Despite the crazy stuff happening on this island, he stood tall and strong and confident. It might be selfish, but Elizaveta was very glad he was stuck here with her. She no longer trusted Nitro, not completely, Pita was a mess, and Jesus…well, he might control a boardroom, or a meeting with millionaire investors, but he was out of his element here. She knew him too well, could see past the brave front he put on. There was a sharpness to his eyes, a jerkiness to his movements, an uncharacteristic air of indecisiveness.
Elizaveta ashed out her cigarette, then went to Jack. “Where’s Rosa?” she asked.
“I put her in bed next to Pepper,” he said.
“She really likes you.”
“Because I’m so handsome.”
“Yes, you are handsome man.” This came off sounding sincerer than she’d intended, and he gave her an inquiring look. She cleared her throat. “I joke, Jack. Please.”
“Pepper says he’s cold,” he said…and was he trying not to smile? “He needs something warm, but there’s nothing in the dresser.”
“There was poncho in dresser there.” Elizaveta indicated Lucinda’s bedroom. “But Lucinda needs it.”
“That was all?” Jack said. “One poncho?”
“And some socks and underwear.”
“Where the hell are all Solano’s clothes?”
“Nitro says hermits probably only own one outfit.”
Jack grunted. “He has an answer for everything, doesn’t he?”
Elizaveta wasn’t sure whether he was being sarcastic, or whether he was implying something.
He lowered his voice. “What do you think…?”
She assumed he was asking what she thought about the fact Nitro had a pistol in his possession. “I don’t know, but—”
“What are you guys whispering about?” Pita asked, standing up. She glared at them suspiciously.
“Pepper’s cold,” Jack said. “He needs something warm.”
Jesus said, “What about the rug you’re standing on? It’s dry.”
Jack and Elizaveta glanced at the rug beneath their feet. It was green with a beige pattern, natty, sullied. But Jesus was right. It was dry.
“Better than nothing,” Jack told him. “Eliza, give me a hand.”
They moved off the rug, took a corner each, and folded it back.
&
nbsp; Elizaveta blinked in surprise. “Yo-moyo!” she said. “What is this?”
4
Jack and Elizaveta set the rug aside and knelt next to the trapdoor they’d uncovered. Jesus and Pita hurried over, Jesus limping because of his injured ankle, both of them clamoring loudly at the discovery. A moment later Nitro emerged from Lucinda’s room, asking what all the fuss was about.
Elizaveta wasn’t paying attention to them. She was focused on the trapdoor. It wasn’t much larger than a manhole, square, and flush with the floor. A cord of rope nailed to the hatch opposite the hinges served as the handle.
Jack reached for it.
“Whoa, chavo,” Nitro said. “Maybe you don’t want to open that.”
“Why?” Jack said, cocking an eye at him suspiciously. “You know what’s down there?”
Nitro turned to Jesus. “What do you think?”
Jesus shrugged. “We should check it out.”
Jack tugged the rope. The hatch had torqued a bit, and he had to tug a second time with both hands. This time the hatch lifted, revealing a dark hole and a crudely hewed wooden ladder. Cool, stale air wafted up.
Elizaveta couldn’t see the bottom. She fetched a nearby candle, returned, and lowered the candle into the hole, careful not to move too quickly and extinguish the flame. “It’s not so deep,” she said, the bottom visible now. “Two meters maybe.”
“And then what?” Jesus asked. He, Nitro, and Pita were looming over her. Jack held onto her shoulder so she didn’t fall down the hole.
“I don’t know,” she said. “It’s dark, but I think…maybe there is…how do you say…?”
“Crawlspace?” Jack said.
World's Scariest Places: Volume Two Page 38
