Sisters of Sorrow

by Axel Blackwell

  Anna said nothing, trying to keep her eyes from wandering back to the glass doors.

  “No matter,” Sister Eustace said, recomposing herself. “No matter. The Church has seen fit to entrust us with the care of the most incorrigible and deviant urchins, and I am sure we are up to the task. Whatever mischief you have sought out has certainly come back to you today, child.

  “There is a decidedly nasty bit of work that needs doing, and Abbess McCain named you as the girl for the job. You will be cleaning the cistern overflow pipes today, Anna,” Sister Eustace concluded with a hint of triumph in her voice.

  Anna looked at her with blank confusion, which clearly disappointed Sister Eustace.

  The nun grunted, then elaborated, “The storm we had three weeks ago washed a great quantity of debris into the overflow pipes. With the constant rain, all our cisterns are nearly full. If the debris is not removed from the pipe, soon we will have rain-water flooding the factory.”

  “I’m sorry, ma’am, I don’t understand.”

  “Of course not. But there’s not much to understand, and the job is simple enough. You do know that The Saint Frances de Chantal Orphan Asylum stands on an island, don’t you?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Well, why else would we have brought you by boat?” Sister Eustace demanded.

  “I don’t know, ma’am.”

  “That is right, you don’t know. There is much you don’t know. And you’d do well to keep that in mind.

  “But as I was saying, because we are on an island, we have no fresh water but the rain which we collect in underground cisterns. It is our good fortune that it rains so frequently here. We seldom want for water, but sometimes the excess is a problem. As it is now. There are pipes that drain this surplus into the sea. But, as I said, these pipes have become blocked.

  “The cisterns lie directly beneath the factory and the rotunda. If the blockage is not removed, the factory will flood, and you and your little charges will not be able to work.” Sister Eustace pointed her crop at a framed bit of needlework that hung on the wall behind her desk. If a child will not work, neither shall he eat, it proclaimed in dainty little cross-stitched X’s.

  “You will need to crawl down the pipe and clear the blockage. I would have preferred to select one of the boys, but any that are competent to handle the task are also too broad in the shoulders to fit down the pipe.

  “You, Miss Anna, have proven yourself quite capable of squeezing into tight spaces and operating under cover of darkness. Abbess McCain specifically requested you for this assignment. She thought it would be a natural match for your talents. She also thought it would serve as a reminder that she still has her eye on you.” Sister Eustace said this last piece sternly, pointing the crop at Anna.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Anna said, looking at the floor.

  “Very well, then. Sister Elizabeth will take you below and show you the cisterns. But first, this is Maybelle Lawson.” Sister Eustace motioned to a girl seated in the corner. She looked to be about six years old. Her eyes were red and swollen. She had apparently been seated there the entire time Anna had been in the room but had not made a sound.

  “Maybelle is to be one of your charges. Her parents have been jailed for some depravity which was particularly embarrassing to their extended family, none of whom felt obliged to care for little Maybelle or her unfortunate brother. Her brother, Donald, was also to be housed here, but he passed away quite suddenly, leaving little Maybelle truly alone.”

  Anna nodded at the girl. Maybelle stared back but did not acknowledge her in any way.

  “She hasn’t spoken since her brother passed,” Sister Eustace said. “But she seems bright enough, not an idiot, anyway. We certainly do not lack for idle chatter around here, do we Anna?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “So, if she does remain a mute, perhaps I will consider it a blessing. In any case, she will be in your care during her stay with us. I will have Jane situate her tonight, as you will likely still be working in the pipes, but after that, she will be your responsibility.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Sister Elizabeth!” Sister Eustace called. Sister Elizabeth appeared in the doorway, holding a burlap potato sack. “Would you be so kind as to show Miss Anna to the work I have assigned her?”

  “I would be delighted, Sister Eustace,” Sister Elizabeth said with a sardonic grin.

  Anna followed Sister Elizabeth out onto the mezzanine balcony and back to the narrow service door. The service door was a flat panel set flush into the walls around it. When closed, it blended with the surrounding walls and almost disappeared. Though everyone at the orphanage knew of it, Anna liked to imagine it was a secret door. In a structure as old and eccentric as The Saint Frances de Chantal Orphan Asylum, Anna imagined there must be many secrets.

  After descending the back stairs into the factory, Sister Elizabeth led Anna out through a riveted iron door, into rooms forbidden to the orphans. A warehouse and loading area lay beyond. Wooden crates stood stacked to the ceiling on one side of the room. Ream after ream of shoe leather lined the other. At the far end, two carriage style doors opened to the outside.

  Anna stood mesmerized. Out these doors, the bright blue sea stretched to the horizon, flashing in the early morning sun. A pier and dock dropped down the beach and into the water. A boat of some sort bobbed alongside it. Black smoke wafted out the top of the boat’s stack. Seagulls wheeled in the air above the boat and squabbled over prime perches on the dock’s pilings. The sea air smelled fresh. Waves splashed under the dock and lapped the shore.

  Then, SNAP! and a fiery sting bloomed across the back of her thigh. Anna spun to face Sister Elizabeth. Before she could beg forgiveness, Sister Elizabeth struck her across the face with the crop. Anna staggered backward and fell into the wall. Blood filled her mouth. Her tongue found a gash on the inside of her cheek.

  “Get up!” Sister Elizabeth bellowed. “What is the matter with you? Do you think you are on a tour? Sightseeing? Slothfulness is a sin. The worst sin there is here at Saint Frances.”

  Anna got to her feet, cowering against the wall. “I’m sorry, Sister…”

  “Lying is a sin, as well. You are not sorry for anything you have done. I tell you what, you little demon, if I was the one who caught you trying to climb out that window, I would not have pulled you back. I’d have shoved you right through!” Sister Elizabeth advanced on Anna, raising the crop. “And if I had been the one with the knife when we caught you and Rebecca, I wouldn’t have stopped with your little finger.”

  She swung the crop in a quick forehand SNAP backhand SNAP at Anna’s face. Anna threw her hands up, catching both lashes on her forearms. She sank into a half squat.

  Sister Elizabeth raised the crop again, then lowered it. “Stand up.”

  Anna stood.

  “I should beat you more, you deserve it, but there is work to do, and I am tired. If you give me any more trouble today, even the least bit, I give you my holy oath, I will drown you in that pipe.” She thrust the crop at Anna. “Do you doubt me? It is not the righteous nuns who get sent to Saint Frances de Chantal. Don’t you know that by now?”

  “No, ma’am,” Anna said, her eyes wide, her back still pressed into the wall.

  “Then you are a fool,” Sister Elizabeth sighed. “And I have no patience for fools. But, take me at my word, Anna, you wouldn’t be the first little rat to drown in that pipe… or to be eaten by whatever lives down there. You do as I tell you and give me no sass. Have I made myself clear?”

  Anna nodded, slowly, keeping her eyes fixed on the sister, “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Very well, then. Carry that.” She nodded at the potato sack she had dropped. “Walk in front of me. It’s not far now.”

  They exited the warehouse through a low arched passage. Before closing the warehouse door, Sister Elizabeth opened a box on the wall and withdrew an odd contraption; a round, concave mirror – slightly larger than a baseball – attached to
a brass cylinder. She shook what looked like gray pebbles out of a paper sleeve and dropped them into the cylinder, then poured a bit of water in as well.

  “It’s a miner’s lamp, child. Watch carefully. This will be your only light down there.” She pointed to a small metal wheel on the inside of the concave mirror. “This is how you relight it, if it goes out.” Sister Elizabeth flicked the little wheel. It spat sparks and a yellow flame popped to life at the mirror’s center.

  Anna nodded.

  Sister Elizabeth grinned. “After you.”

  The passageway slanted downward, its angle increasing until the floor broke up into steps, a stairway that curved and then spiraled around itself as it descended into the lowest foundations of the structure.

  The stairs ended at an iron door with a large lever in its center and a peep window near its top. Sister Elizabeth slid open the peep and peered in. After a brief hesitation, she snatched the lamp from Anna and shone it through the peep window, trying to see around it into whatever lay beyond.

  “Looks clear,” she said at last, handing the lamp back to Anna. “You go first.”

  Sister Elizabeth pushed down on the lever. Four bolts, one at each corner of the door, slid free of the door’s frame. Flecks of rust drifted down from each bolt hole as they slid. The door was heavy, and its hinges rusted. It screamed like a banshee as Sister Elizabeth pushed it open.

  Anna shone the lamp into the room beyond. It was hardly four feet on each side and very short. She could have touched the ceiling if she stood on tiptoe. Three of the walls were stone, like most of the orphanage’s walls. But the wall to her right was made of iron. It looked like one of the older machines in the factory. A system of large gears and ratchets lined one corner of the iron wall, and a heavy chain hung from the ceiling, a lift chain of some sort, Anna guessed. A riveted iron plate covered the top half of the wall. Water dribbled around its edges.

  Dripping echoed through the chamber. Other sounds echoed as well. Some from behind the iron wall, others ambient, seemingly without source – distant voices and the sounds of the factory, the surf on the beach and the eerie cry of seagulls. These sounds, all very faint and distorted by distance, blended in the echo chamber of the cisterns.

  Anna shuddered.

  “You’re looking at the wrong wall,” Sister Elizabeth whispered behind her. Anna turned. On the left wall, near the floor, a two-foot diameter brick pipe descended away from the room.

  “This pipe,” Sister Elizabeth explained in a low voice, “runs straight out to the beach. There is an iron grate near the end of the pipe to prevent little troublemakers like you from sneaking out. And to keep other things from coming in.” She looked at Anna with a gleam in her eye, “Trolls and such. If you should find that the grate is missing or broken, you must come tell me at once. Do you understand?”

  Anna looked into the pipe. A spectral, wispy mist hovered around the opening. It leads to the sea. The whispering voices of the cisterns felt like a dream language. The susurration of the sea and the crying seagulls spun out of the pipe and into her head.

  “Do you understand?” Sister Elizabeth did not raise her voice.

  She is afraid, Anna thought. She nodded at the sister, wide-eyed. “Come tell you if the grate is open.”

  “Your tools are in there.” Sister Elizabeth nodded to the burlap bag. “Crawl down the pipe until you reach the blockage. Fill this sack with whatever you find, and drag it back here. While you are doing so, I will fetch a cart to haul the debris up to the dock and dump it.”

  “You’re not staying with me?”

  “Ha!” Sister Elizabeth startled herself with the loudness of her laugh. She continued in a quieter voice. “I never thought I’d see the day that you were eager for the comfort of my company.”

  “It’s just…”

  “Shut up. The task is before you. It is simple enough.” Sister Elizabeth slapped her crop in her palm. The snap called to fresh life the welts on Anna’s face and forearms.

  The nun pulled a pair of gloves, a trowel and a tin miner’s hat from the burlap bag. She took the lamp from Anna and secured it in a socket on the helmet, set it on Anna’s head and cinched the chinstrap. It was ridiculously large on Anna’s small head.

  “In you go.” Sister Elizabeth waved her crop in the direction of the pipe. “Get on with it!”

  Anna knelt and placed her hands on the slimy stone floor. She peered into the pipe. The lamp on her head illuminated only ten or fifteen feet. Mist swirled and churned in the darkness, creating the illusion of movement just beyond the reach of her light. The dank air smelled of rot. The bricks were red, but the crumbling mortar between them had turned a moldy black. Green algae lined the bottom of the pipe.

  She placed a hesitant hand on the lip of the pipe and crept forward. There was a rustle and swoosh behind her. Snap. Fire flared again across her left thigh.

  “Move!” the nun hissed.

  Anna screamed and leapt forward. Her helmet struck the top of the pipe and slid off her head. She scrambled into darkness. Her hands slipped in the algae and shot out from under her. She sprawled face-first into the sludge. Her scream, distorted, dismembered, echoed back from the depths of the cistern’s labyrinth.

  Behind her, Sister Elizabeth laughed hysterically. She paused for a moment to yell, “Boo!” into the tunnel, then burst out laughing again.

  “Boo,” repeated up and down the pipe, mingling with the nun’s mad laughter. It came from ahead, then from behind, then from both at once, before finally fading into the constant background echoes.

  “Boo,” Sister Elizabeth said again, still chuckling, then, “Don’t forget this.” She threw the sack into the pipe. It landed across Anna’s legs.

  Anna tried to turn around for the sack, but the pipe was too narrow. It pinned her shoulders, trapped her hands in front of her.

  “Oh, and this…” Sister Elizabeth threw the trowel in at her. It bounced off the top of her head and clattered into the sludge near her hands. “Now stop dawdling. You’ll be safe from my crop while you’re in the pipe, but unless you intend to sleep down here tonight, I suggest you be quick to your work.”

  Anna dragged herself forward into the dark. The lamp on her tin hat still burned, but the hat dangled upside down from its chinstrap, shining most of its light underneath and behind her. Her eyes were too filled with tears to see anything, anyway. She inched forward, not daring to breathe until Sister Elizabeth was gone. The door screamed closed. When the bolts slipped into their holes, Anna collapsed again into the algae, sobbing violently, choking on her tears.

  Chapter 3

  Anna recovered herself before Sister Elizabeth returned. She backed out of the pipe to retrieve the gloves and sack, and to adjust her hat. The water dribbling around the edges of the iron plate formed pools on the floor. She caught her reflection in one of these. I look like the cover of a Jules Verne story. She touched the dented metal cap with its glowing yellow eye. In the uncertain mirror of the puddle, the swelling weal on her cheek looked like native war paint.

  The thunk thunk thunk of a cart rolling down the stairs prompted her to move. She quickly squirmed into the tunnel, keeping her elbows beneath her. The pipe was just wide enough that, if she pressed her back against its top and scraped her elbow against its bottom, she could extend one arm out before her. The cold green sludge soothed the stinging welts on her arms, but it chilled the rest of her body.

  She exhaled plumes of fog with each breath. And with each breath, the vapor obscured more of her vision. By the time she heard Sister Elizabeth unbolting the door, she could see no more than two bricks ahead of herself. The mist thickened into a tangible thing, like a cold blanket around her head and chest. The yellow lamp reflected off the vapor, solidifying it. It sucked the energy out of her, cinching around her ribs like a creeping constrictor.

  Noises, furtive movement, whispers churned in the fog. A scream echoed, very distant. Was that her own scream, still trapped in this catacomb? The ghost
of her own pain entombed forever in this darkness? She trembled at that thought.

  But if it wasn’t her scream, that meant someone else was down here, and they were screaming. That thought made her shudder all the way to her bones. She already wore a skin of goose-flesh from the cold, but suddenly her goose pimples were sweating. The wall of yellow-tinted fog before her seemed as solid as the bricks on either side. Anna reached a trembling hand into the mist. The tips of her fingers disappeared behind its curtain.

  “Hello?” She whispered. There was silence, as if the mist had consumed her voice completely. Then the fog twitched, something disturbed its even flow. Something moved nearby. Anna snatched her hand back. A distant, terrified voice whispered, “hello?” Another voice, farther away, sounding as if it were below her, “hello?” Then a third “ello?” Then a flurry of fainter and fainter “O?”s.

  Only echoes. Only echoes. But she could not move. The fog and the bricks and her fear wound a tight cocoon. The mist drifted this way, slid that way, like a magician’s sleight of hand, proving that it hid something by refusing to reveal it. She breathed through her open mouth, to be as quiet as possible, and strained her ears. So many little sounds, elusive noises. What waited for her in the fog?

  Then, behind her in the drainage chamber, Sister Elizabeth opened the door. In Anna’s stillness, the screech was as loud as a train whistle. She didn’t jump or scream this time, but stiffened, arching her back into the top of the pipe. A draft moved through the tunnel, from behind Anna, sucking the mist away from her in a horizontal whirlwind. Sudden vertigo struck her. She felt as if she were falling head first into the pipe – a bottomless pit opening beneath her.

  The most disconcerting discovery, as the fog dissipated, was that she was alone in the pipe. Nothing waited for her. Her miner’s lamp illuminated only the red bricks and green slime.