The Tenth Girl

by Sara Faring

  Angel holds a finger to his lips, pupils fixed. I poke my head down again. It takes a moment to make sense of the words drifting up to us like smoke.

  “Please bring her back,” she says in muted yet desperate tones. “Please, take what you must from this rock. But have mercy on the family of this house. Take what you must from this rock and bring her back.”

  It takes me a moment to identify the desperate voice of this keening figure. I watch, stunned, as her shoulders heave and she cries. The photos in front of the figure: At first, I believe they’re photos of one little girl. The tenth girl, I think, my heart raging in place.

  But no, they’re all different faces. And if I squint, I can recognize them. Christina. Diana. Isabella. Sara. Silvina. Luciana, lost to us already. Mariella with her black plaits, Gisella with her blond locks, and Michelle with her wide, trusting eyes.

  I grip Angel’s hand, certain that both of our faces are white as corpses’.

  The unrecognizable figure wailing before us is Carmela. It’s Carmela, alone in a dark room.

  * * *

  We ease the board back over the hole in the floor and sit back in silence. I drop my head between my knees, catching the words fluttering through my head and pinning them down. “‘Take what you must from this rock and bring her back,’” I echo in a whisper, peering up at Angel. After finding Carmela with Sara, I knew she communed with the Others. But I didn’t know she prayed they would take the girls all along.

  I move to rise, the wooden cell around me a shrinking blur, and in my haste, I slip against the crack in the floor. My leg bursts through with a sickening, ripping noise, and I yelp at the slick, slicing pain.

  “Who is that?” Carmela shouts from below. As I wiggle my useless leg out, metal clamors against metal below. All I can think is: Let Carmela be nearsighted and not see my leather shoe and my ankle jiggling like a dying fish. Angel yanks me up; I crumple on my bad ankle in the charming style of a rag doll in need of saving.

  “I’m going to find you,” she shouts from the depths. “They’re going to find you.” The rest of her rant is inaudible over the ferocious beating of my heart. I had told myself I wouldn’t listen to this woman’s wishes anymore; I had asked myself not to fear her. But my body refuses to acknowledge this, and my first impulse is to run.

  Angel weaves his arm under mine in support. When I peek back down over the edge, I do not see her. We look at each other, chests heaving, and Angel helps me stumble back the way we came while nursing one candle flame. I feel his bicep straining against the muscles of my back as we hear feet thumping on wood. “Where are we going?” I whisper to Angel. “We can’t go anywhere from here.”

  “We can hide,” he says. “And then we think.”

  I lean into his shoulder. “Where?”

  “I don’t know,” he says. He helps me through the hole in the wall, easing the way, hands me the lit candle, and follows me through so that we’re both standing in the closet. I’m testing putting more weight on my ankle when we hear the click of the lock on the far end of the passageway, the turning of the knob. It’s the only exit from this nightmarish apartment. Of course.

  “Stop,” Carmela says, entering through the door. “Is it you? Oh, for God’s sake, stop. There’s nowhere to go from here.” She hulks forward in the darkness, still hooded in black, lugging a thin and heavy-looking iron instrument, perhaps a fire poker.

  We keep moving forward, Angel supporting me, and I cringe from the pain shooting through my ankle. I can’t run with my damned leg. Angel squeezes my arm. “I’ll pretend I’ve caught you. Okay? I’ll pretend I’ve caught you snooping around and making a mess.”

  It’s as flimsy a plan as any. “Domenico?” Carmela pokes her hooded head through the hole and squints at us. “Domenico, is that you?”

  “It’s me,” he says, frozen in place, as Carmela crawls through the hole, as undignified a pose as I’ve ever seen her in.

  “You’ve made a mess of this. You should have opened the latch under the newspapers,” she says, standing erect. “Now the entryway will be in disrepair until I can fix it myself.” She glares at me, and I witness age’s toll on her at last. Beneath the hood, her face is free of all makeup; it looks loose and undefined, like a scored block of clay before sculpting. I don’t recognize her. Her eyelashes are so pale that she looks albino. But the oddest part is her lips, two mangled and uneven strips, overdried, like jerky. “And you. I fail to be surprised, even now.”

  I swallow hard.

  “I caught her sneaking around,” says Angel, taking my wrist and positioning himself between me and her.

  Carmela’s fingers curl around the fire poker still in her grip. “I see.” Her swollen and bloodshot eyes—as if she’s been sobbing—narrow; the eye sockets are scaly and red-flecked. “Go on. Explain to me why you are here, Domenico. Indulge me with one of your poorly crafted stories. Perhaps you came here to gratify yourself with that.” Those horrific lips—paler, even, than her skin, now—stretch into the emptiest smile I’ve ever seen, an expression of a mad criminal at trial. “It wouldn’t be the first or last time.”

  Angel extends the candle, illuminating her better. “What are you doing with the fire poker? Are you okay, Mother?”

  Her smile convulses into a wretched grimace, exposing the raw, gummy space inside her mouth where her perfect row of teeth should be. Has she been wearing false teeth all along? Or have her depraved dealings with the Others caused her to disintegrate, too? “Mother?” She sucks on her nubs and spits on the ground, a bloody starburst, then dabs the edge of her mouth with haughty delicacy. “Okay?” she says, fingering the edge of the rod like it’s insufficiently sharp, eyes landing on me, then Angel. “Your concern warms my soul.”

  Angel clears his throat. “Carmela—”

  Carmela steps closer, the fire poker still in her grip, and cocks her head, eyes focusing. “You are not my son,” she says, a pure statement of fact. With a wild flash of her eyes, she brandishes the fire poker as if to strike Angel, her arm hitched in its socket, and he lunges forward, wrenching the rod from her hands and casting it aside with a vicious toss. It hits the floor with a heavy clang.

  Carmela’s hands tighten into fists; her eyes take on an unhealthy gloss. Catching her breath, she falls into herself, that old and sustaining pride collapsing into base distress. For a moment, she watches me, seeking something beyond my comprehension. It isn’t sympathy—that much I can understand. It’s an animal call to action, a call to show strength, since she cannot. I look away.

  “You’re not my son,” she repeats. She folds her arms around herself, and her gray eyes water, retreating back into her skull. “You’re one of them.” She looks so vulnerable for a moment that I nearly forget her flash of violence and her general beastliness. This fragile shell of a woman, lent so much heat and energy by her rage. “You must think me such a fool.”

  Angel and I meet eyes. She catches our exchanged look, her hollowed face a mask of restrained anguish. “You haven’t been Domenico for some time, I gather,” she says, pulling her hood around her throat primly. She examines me, imperious as ever. “And you. What game are you playing, you ungrateful wretch? I took you in knowing full well you were the child of guerrillas. The goodness of my heart saved your life.”

  “The goodness of your heart.” I scoff, simmering with rage. “You brought the girls here to sacrifice them to the Others. Was I a sacrifice, too? Were we all?” I shake my head, thinking of every lost soul she invited here, promising such grandeur, as hot tears fill my eyes. I am proud to be a pioneer. We all are.

  “You were pawns. It was—and is—unfortunate. But you, Miss Quercia, made yourself his pawn all on your own.” Her eyes catch mine before flicking over to Angel. “Tell me: What has he promised you? And what must you furnish him with in return?”

  “He has already given me his help for nothing at all,” I reply crisply, wiping at my eyes before folding my trembling arms. “He would never relish behaving with s
uch cruelty, as you do.” He would never dedicate himself to destroying others, even if given an existence that demanded exactly that.

  She stiffens. “You believe I take pleasure in devoting my life to this iniquitous business? Are you mad?”

  I say nothing, clamping my teeth shut—for yes, I did believe it so. My contempt for her must be obvious, because for the first time since I’ve known her, Carmela’s eyes widen with shock.

  “You believe that I, Carmela De Vaccaro, am so empty-headed, so thoughtless, that I could be cruel for cruelty’s sake, like a slavering beast? Like a ghoul?” She blinks at me, hard gray eyes wet with tears, her shell cracked open at last.

  My own face has fallen. “Why should my opinion matter to—”

  “I did this so my Marie would be returned to me, you foolish girl,” she snaps, interrupting me. “Your tenth girl, as you refer to her. How it has appalled and sickened me to hear you call her that, when she is so much more than another in a string of pale souls.”

  “Marie,” I repeat, feeling myself deflate. “Your daughter.”

  “Yes, Marie,” she says, her voice breaking. So the lost, ruined ghost girl I saw was, indeed, her dead daughter. We watch in hot silence as tears track down her cheeks—even as her proud jaw remains fixed. “I am sorry, Miss Quercia, if your brushes with love have been limited to encounters with creatures like him,” she says, nodding at Angel, who has taken my hand. “I am sorry if you have never adored someone enough to understand that minor cruelties are justified in the service of that greatest love. But when Marie was born, my need to protect her was etched into my soul. She was so small, so sweet-smelling, so vulnerable. And she bloomed into a girl of impossible kindness. Her childhood dream was to become a polo player like her late father—she wanted to ride a Manipuri pony, like him. A Manipuri from India. They’re very rare now. Ancient stock. When she was only seven years old, and very ill indeed, we brought a Manipuri pony to the hospital grounds for her to ride. The owner could only spare him for the day between competitions. It was incredibly expensive. But she asked that all the other children have turns before her. There were a hundred and fifty sick children in the ward. Can you imagine? She made us promise, and she never did receive her turn. We brought her other gifts, too, before then. A gift a day, some of the most spectacular handcrafted children’s gifts you’ve ever seen. A glove made from real Pygmy skin. Another fortune. And when we would return, we’d find each lavish token at a different child’s bedside. It’s as if she knew she wasn’t long for this world and wanted her beautiful possessions to enrich the lives of others with more of a chance.” She clears her throat. “I cannot say that I believe all human lives are of equal worth and potential. I know that my life is not worth one hundredth of Marie’s life. If I could have sacrificed myself alone, I would have done so endlessly. I brought her here, you know, earlier this year. I thought the country air would do her good, and I proposed we reopen the school so she might recuperate here. And she loved it here, she did. But after our visit, her condition worsened considerably. When she required transplants of my own flesh, I leaped at the chance to give them to her.” She raises her shirt, exposing several raw and jagged scars along her belly, and I flinch. “But they weren’t enough.” She lets the fabric drop. “I knew that I had failed her in my effort to help her—this cursed place had stolen the last of her spirit. After she passed, I was told by someone I trust with my life about the Zapuche sacrifices to the Others—I came to believe I could work with them to reclaim my Marie. It is unfortunate, Miss Quercia, that the Others require what they do in exchange for her. But it only increases my certainty that the Marie I receive in return will have been worth every last sacrifice.”

  “The Marie you receive in return,” I repeat, as another brutal truth dawns on me. “So you haven’t even seen her? You have no idea what the Others might bring back of her?”

  She breaks my gaze.

  All of this, for a chance at retrieving a pale copy of her daughter. A ghost of her daughter. It’s the kind of blazing, destructive love that sends a shiver of fear and want through me.

  “Help us leave this place before it’s too late,” I whisper to her. “Honor your daughter’s memory—”

  “Oh, hush,” she snaps. “I won’t leave this rock until Marie is returned. This is precisely why I told no one of my plan. Better to inspire fear and loathing, better to be dubbed evil and heartless, so no one can try to stop me.” Her eyes probe mine. “You saw her, didn’t you? You weren’t lying?” She clears her throat. “We should speak freely, now. You told me she warned you to leave this place. How like her, to think of others’ safety before her own. My darling girl. What else did she say?” she asks, eyes manic as she steps closer. “How did she seem?”

  I look at Angel cautiously, and he looks drained, nervous. “I saw a lost little girl,” I say. “She told me she was a memory. She told me the school never should’ve reopened.”

  Carmela’s mouth quivers, even as her eyes harden. “I don’t believe you.”

  I don’t know if stating the obvious truth will break her: Why would her beloved girl show herself to us, and never once to her?

  “What about Domenico?” Angel asks softly. “Don’t you love him enough to want to take him from here?”

  Carmela snaps to look at him. “If you must know, the same need to protect him marked me when he was born, years before Marie. But I failed him in a catastrophic way. Only he, my husband, Marie, and I shall ever know what Domenico did to demonstrate my failure. My husband has since died, and I can only pray Marie has forgotten the brunt of what Domenico did. But I shall never forget my failure. There are many mothers who would perish from shame after such a series of events. Many more would lock such a child away for good. And yet I kept him here with me, ever hopeful the emptiness inside him could be filled. Suffice it to say that I am not surprised your kind filled it with such ease.” Her red eyes, furious and imperious despite her repressed tears, travel across my face as if it’s physically unreachable land. “And now that you have filled him, I have failed him for the final time. I have lost him, and I have nothing more to lose.”

  She turns to face Angel, clasping her hands as if in prayer. “If you could please entreat your kind to be satisfied with what I’ve brought them, and furnish me with Marie,” she begs, this woman who once crushed corporate titans. This woman who sought out an army of spirits her own ancestors barely escaped. “I know how hungry you are. You take, take, and take. I suppose I should have considered you might never be satisfied. Not unlike death itself.” She stares out in the direction of the lone kitchenette, a refuge for a daughter who can never return as she was. “But I cannot accept that.”

  28

  ANGEL: 2020–3300

  As solemnly as the leader of a funeral procession, Carmela escorts us back through the broken-down hole, into the dusty crawl space, through the once-locked door at its end, down a rickety set of stairs, and into the shrine—candles still flickering. She pauses to kneel and blow each of them out one by one. We shiver as we wait, hostages to this creepy ritual. But I do understand it: It’s meant to give someone a feeling of control in a time of chaos. I wonder if it soothed her, when her faith in seeing Marie again wavered.

  When we’re pitched into smoke-filled darkness, she leads us away from the shrine and toward a door that was invisible to us. It opens directly into her bathroom: I can see the sink from where I stand, with its golden knobs and white marble. So this secret wing is where she spent her time, praying for her daughter and constructing this elaborate set of private rooms for her, the crazed widow building her lost kid a custom dollhouse. Her meticulousness depresses and impresses me. I guess kids can be symbols to their parents—representing a specific failure or success, or a shade of their own character they aspire to or abhor. Carmela worships at the altar of pure little Marie, and she hates Dom’s guts as a human being for an unnamed sin he’s committed. But Carmela also blames herself for failing Dom, and beyond that, s
he misses him as a son, as true a sign of unconditional love as I’ve ever seen, and that’s what wrecks me. She loves him even though he’s the worst. It would’ve been the same with me, Rob, and Mama. Any one of us could have fubared and still felt the others’ undying love.

  I glimpse a black-and-white photo of a dark-haired boy and an infant with a gummy smile in a silver frame on her vanity. Domenico and Marie reads the inscription, and I remember the framed footprint in her office marked M. Dom’s got a troublemaker’s smile, but she’s a cute little thing, totally elated (I can hear her laughing just by looking at her) with two carefully combed wisps of black hair. Someone’s taken the time to pop in two teeny-tiny bows. She looks well cared for—spoiled, even. I wonder when they figured out she was sick—which symptoms showed up first. For Mama, it was the weight loss and nausea, which we all thought were stress-related for the longest time.

  I help Mavi through the bathroom on her bad ankle as Carmela sinks onto the edge of her king-size bed and lowers her hood, murmuring faintly to herself. Her thin hair is matted to her head; I can see her pasty scalp.

  “She should’ve returned within weeks, not months. I suppose she might’ve lied about them,” she whispers, scratching at the roots of an unruly clump of hair. “She might’ve lied.”

  Returned within weeks, not months. She could mean only the return of Marie. But who could have initially told her about the Others and their sacrifices? Who does Carmela trust with her life? There’s another force at play, a person Carmela takes for her word. Someone who knew about the darkness in this house long before Carmela did.