Sisters of Sorrow

by Axel Blackwell

  “But, you’re responsible,” Donny said. “Anna never would have blown up the factory if…”

  “Anna blew up the factory because she chose to do so. And she chose to run off and leave every one of you to pay for what she had done,” Dolores said, staring down at the ring of girls. “Well, everyone but you, Donny. If she didn’t blow up the factory, you would have died where Joey stowed you. It was not I who put you in this peril.

  “I am not a witch. I’m not a fairy godmother either. Maybe I would help you if I could, but there is nothing more I can do for you.

  “Anna, I already told you I’m not here to rescue anyone. Sometimes there are no solutions. Sometimes there is only bad or worse. Not everybody gets to live. I have taken care of your sisters, as I told you I would. Now I must go take care of my brother.”

  Dolores stood awkwardly, brushing straw from her habit. She looked weary and subdued, but, as she turned and walked toward the hall, her face was a mask of stoic resolve.

  “You have to stop her!” Jane whispered at Anna, “We need her help.” The other girls, several crying, crowded around Anna, clamoring in whispers. “Don’t let her go!” “You can’t just let her leave.” “Make her change her mind.” “Bring her back.” “She has to save us!”

  Anna questioned Donny with her eyes.

  Donny shrugged.

  Anna jumped up and sprinted after Dolores, catching her just as she reached the door. “Please, Dolores, can’t you stay for just a moment longer?”

  “No, Anna!” Dolores’s voice cracked.

  “At least tell me your plan. We can help you, we can help each other.”

  “I can’t ask you to help me. I will not be the source of any more misery. I refuse to be responsible for any more death.”

  “You know we are all going to die here. How can we possibly hope to escape without help? They are going to burn me alive, because of you and Joseph.”

  “Because of McCain!” Dolores said.

  “Please, Dolores, let us help you defeat her. We have nothing to lose.”

  “Defeat?” Dolores scoffed. “I don’t care about defeating McCain. She is of no concern to me. This is about me and Joey, and nothing else.” She drew a key out of her pocket and inserted it into the keyhole.

  “I have to defeat her.” Anna grabbed the fake nun’s wrist. “You are bound to a task, you must free your brother. I accept that. I am bound to a task, as well. I must free these girls. The only way for me to do that is by defeating McCain.”

  “Let go of me, Anna. I don’t want to hurt you.”

  The bones in Dolores’s wrist vibrated, Anna’s palm and fingers tingled. Goose pimples sprung up her arm. She held fast. “Tell me your plan, Dolores. At least do that for me. Or tell me when you hope to face Joey. If we both move at the same time…”

  The tingling had engulfed Anna’s entire hand and now worked its way up her arm. Her palm felt as if she held a ball of buzzing needles rather than Dolores’s wrist.

  Dolores finished for Anna. “McCain will be distracted by one of us, and the other might have a better chance.” She sighed and looked at the ceiling.

  Anna nodded, releasing Dolores. Iridescent lines, like gossamer spider silk, shimmered between Anna’s palm and Dolores’s wrist, faded, then vanished. “What are you doing?”

  “I am loosing the floodgates of heaven,” Dolores said. “I’m opening the fountains of the great deep. I’m calling up a storm, Anna, one like you’ve never seen before.

  “Joey still fears letting go of this life, as awful as it is. He knows that killing will break the spell, so, he will not kill me. Even if he thinks I am McCain. Even if I have his hand right there and refuse to give it to him, he won’t do it.

  “Joey has become one with this island and its creatures and the sea around it. I will whip the sea into a fury. I will terrify the animals and shake this house to its foundation. I will stir the sea until it matches the rage that has consumed my little brother.

  “The violence of the storm and the violence of his passion will fuel each other until Joey can no longer control his impulses. Then, I will present myself to him as McCain and taunt him with his hand and he will strike. We will die together, and we will be free.”

  The room darkened and wind whistled around the frames of the windows. Dolores opened the door and stepped into the hall. “I wish you all the best, Anna, I really do. You won’t need to worry about McCain tonight. She will be very busy with the storm. Captain Everstout and his minions will drown in the sea if they try to cross over to the island tonight. If you do manage to get out of here, take your girls inland. You don’t want to be anywhere near the beach while Joey and I still live.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me this before?” Anna asked.

  “Because I didn’t think of it until just now.” She pulled the flask out of her habit and took a sip. Mischief replaced the melancholy in her eyes and she smiled broadly. “Sitting with the girls in there, it was just too much like my life when I lived here. It makes me too sad. Here, take some of this, it really helps.” She thrust the flask toward Anna.

  “I think I better not,” Anna said.

  Dolores put on a mock pout and pocketed the flask. “Well, maybe you’ll take this instead?” She drew the blackened key out of her pocket. “I don’t think it has any magic left, but it might still open a few doors for you. Oh, and this might be fun, too.” She offered one of Hattie’s flintlock pistols. “But watch out, it’s got a hair trigger.”

  As Anna reached for the key, a bright blue spark arced across the gap between the girl and the woman, stinging Anna’s fingers.

  Dolores belted out a peel of surprised laughter. “Oooh, it’s going to be a hell of a storm! Hee hee, sorry about your fingers.” She grabbed the lip of Anna’s pocket and dropped the gun and key into it.

  “I don’t know how to work a gun,” Anna said, rubbing her fingers and stepping away from the electric fake nun.

  “Oh, I bet that Donny boy knows his way around a gun,” Dolores said. “He’s quite the little swashbuckler, isn’t he? And a looker, too, if you ignore the dirt and scabs. I imagine he cleans up real nice.” Dolores flashed a conspiratorial wink. “Be nice to that one, if you know what I mean.”

  “He’s a bit too young for me,” Anna said, “and a bit too annoying.” Feeling the key and gun in her pocket, she said, “Thank you, Dolores…”

  “Well, it’s your loss.” Dolores shook her head. “If you don’t snatch him up, one of those other girls will. But, such is life. Anyway, I have to go now. Good luck to you, little Anna, it has been fun knowing you. I’m off to kill my brother.”

  Dolores spun and strode down the hall. Her form changed, stretching taller, broadening, shrinking, wavering – and she mumbled as she went. “Now, who should I be? Tabitha is dead, but Eustace knows it. Agatha…no, she’s still alive,” shaking her head and counting off names on her fingers. “Wilma might work, but she’s just so pudgy…”

  Chapter 11

  As soon as Anna returned alone, the girls erupted in clamoring questions. They sounded like the cacophonous arguing sea birds she’d encountered near the beach. Jane and Lizzy jumped up out of the straw and rushed toward Anna. The others followed.

  “Quiet!” Anna said, holding her hands up. “Keep it down. One at a time.”

  “Anna! What are you thinking?” Jane grabbed Anna by her shawl. The older girl’s eyes flashed fever-bright, her voice cracked with desperation. “You can’t just let her go. We need help. McCain is going to let us die in here and it’s your fault. You have to go get that crazy witch nun and make her help us!”

  Several girls echoed Jane. Lizzy grabbed Jane and pulled her away from Anna. Jane tried to twist out of Lizzy’s grip while maintaining her hold on Anna. She accidently elbowed Lizzy in the chin, knocking her into Mary One. Anna, grasping Jane’s wrists, looked to Donny, who still sat in the straw with a happily snoozing Maybelle. He cocked an eyebrow and shrugged.

  Jane started shakin
g Anna. “What are we going to do, Anna? She can’t just leave us…”

  Anna had read several stories in which the hero slapped a woman who had gone hysterical. Jane was edging toward hysterical, but Anna didn’t know if that would work in real life, and Jane was much bigger than Anna. And she could hit, really hard.

  Just as Anna decided it would be a bad idea to slap Jane, Lizzy bounced up from the side and tackled the larger girl into the straw. The collision knocked Anna backward onto her bottom. Mary One sprang to her feet and rushed Jane as well. Joan, who was one of Jane’s girls, leapt into the brawl.

  Outside, and far away, thunder growled in the darkening sky, unnoticed to all but Anna. She looked at Jane and the girls scrapping in the straw, the hunger and dread from the last week turning them feral. She wanted to scream at them to stop, but felt too exhausted to raise her voice.

  In another story Anna read, a barkeeper stopped a brawl by firing a gun at the ceiling. Anna pulled the flintlock out of her pocket. It was a dainty gun, almost ornamental, and fit easily in her hand. She pointed it in the air. Donny was shaking his head “no” and calling out to her, but she pulled the trigger anyway.

  Nothing happened.

  Now, Donny rushed to her. Maybelle, behind him, stared bleary-eyed at the chaos. Donny took Anna’s free hand and helped her to her feet, then pointed to the large hammer on the side of the gun.

  “Ya’ gotta cock it first, silly. An’ you only git one shot, so don’t waste it,” he said. “Here, watch this.” He cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled, “Its Abbess McCain!”

  The girls froze, snapping their attention to the door. Seeing no one, they looked back to Donny and Anna. Anna still held the gun above her head and the girls, who had not seen it before, were awe struck.

  “Lizzy!” Anna said, “put my girls in order. Jane, put your girl in order. Dolores is helping us. I have a way out of here, a plan. But you have to get ahold of yourselves, we are not savages.”

  Silence fell over the room as the girls stared back at her. Some appeared shamed, some confused, some cautiously hopeful.

  Then, Lizzy burst out in cackling laughter. “Savages!” She tumbled out of the girl pile and rolled up onto her elbows. “You are the most savage looking thing I think I ever saw!”

  The littlest girls, Lilly and Norma, giggled first. Then the next oldest, and soon, the whole pile relaxed into tentative snickering. Jane tried valiantly to stay angry, Anna watched her struggle against the giggles, but in the end, even Jane smirked.

  “Anna, put that gun down,” she said, choking back a laugh, “you look absurd.”

  “There’s a storm coming,” Anna said, once she and Jane had collected all of their girls in the straw. The room had darkened to almost twilight. “A big storm. If you listen, you can hear the thunder already. The men that were coming to help McCain, they won’t make it here tonight. Dolores said if they try, they’ll all drown in the sea.”

  “I hope they try,” Lizzy said.

  Anna ignored the impulse to scold her. “Dolores is going to find Joseph. She’ll be looking for him near the factory. She’s not coming back from that meeting. Whatever happens down there will cause quite a ruckus. Between that and the storm, we should be able to sneak out without getting caught. Donny and I know how to get out through the basement. We’ll shelter in the woods until the storm passes.”

  “Then what?” Jane asked. “We’ll still be stuck on the island. Where are we supposed to go? Who will feed us? I’m telling you, Anna, you need to make Dolores help us.”

  “How?” Anna said. “She’s got her mind set. She won’t listen to me. Besides, she’s crazy and drunk and we don’t need her.”

  “I think we do need her,” Jane said. “She’s the only reason any of us are still alive. You ran off and left us, and we got blamed for it. The only thing that saved us was Dolores. She told Sister Eustace that you escaped. She said that I reported you.”

  “That’s how they knew to come looking for me…” Anna said.

  “We would have all got the lash if we didn’t tell,” Lizzy said. “But Dolores gave you a two hour head start. That should have been plenty of time.”

  “That doesn’t matter now,” Jane said. “The point is she saved us, not just then, either. We’d have froze to death and starved without her. We can’t just let Dolores die…because then we’ll die.”

  “Jane, I’m sorry I left like that, I had to, and you know it. But I’m here now. I got out, we can all get out.”

  “What do you think, Donny?” Lizzy asked.

  Donny blushed as all eyes turned to him, then shrugged. “I think Dolores gots bats in her belfry, just as likely to do one thing as another. But she knows how to handle an ax, and that could come in handy.”

  “Why are you asking him?” Jane asked, eyeing Lizzy.

  “An ax?” Lizzy asked, ignoring Jane.

  “Donny!” Anna snapped. “No more of your gruesome stories. Not now. We’ve got to settle this.” To Jane she said, “Dolores isn’t coming back. I wish, with all my heart, that she would, but she won’t. We have to make do without her. When the storm gets fierce, we head for the basement, then to the woods. There’s a rowboat on the beach, a big one. Before first light, if the sea has calmed, we will take the boat to the mainland.”

  The room lit, briefly, as lightning fell somewhere over the churning ocean.

  “And if it hasn’t calmed?” Jane asked.

  “We hide and wait. I know a couple places on the island. Donny and I found a few shelters. We can camp out for a day, even two if necessary. When the sea is calm, we’ll go.”

  “And you don’t think they’ll come looking for us in the woods?” Jane asked.

  “Didn’t work out too good for ‘em last time they tried that,” Donny said.

  Lizzy giggled.

  “This place is falling apart, Jane,” Anna said. “If you could have seen it from the outside…”

  “I saw it,” Joan said, “the night of the explosion. I got out, just for a few minutes. I thought the tower was going to topple. You surely did a number on this place, Anna.”

  “When that boiler went up…” Mary One said, “well, we didn’t know it was the boiler. I couldn’t think of anything that could have made a sound like that. Mary Two said she thought God had stomped on us. That’s what it felt like.”

  “What I’m trying to tell you,” Anna continued, “is that McCain and her helpers, they can’t stay here forever. This place isn’t safe to live in. The only reason they are still here is because McCain is obsessed with catching Dolores and Joseph…”

  “And you,” Donny put in.

  Anna scowled at him, but continued her thought. “Once Joseph and Dolores are dead, McCain will abandon the island. She’ll have no reason to stay.”

  Jane opened her mouth to speak, but Anna held up her hand and said, “Jane, I just told you what I’m going to do, me and my girls…”

  “And me,” Donny said.

  “And me,” Lizzy said.

  “If you want to do something else,” Anna continued, “if you have a different idea, you and Joan can do that. But I’m not arguing about it anymore.” Anna stood. “Have Donny tell you a story or something, I’m taking a nap. Wake me when the storm hits.” She walked out of the circle.

  “What?” Donny said. “Anna, I don’t know no stories.”

  Anna kicked at the straw, fluffing up a thick pile in the corner.

  “Tell ‘em ‘bout the time daddy shot the neighbor’s piglets ‘cause they got into his whisky mash,” Maybelle said.

  “Well, you kinda jus’ told ‘em the whole story, sis.”

  “Bet Donny would have told it better,” Lizzy said.

  Jane scoffed. Her heels clicked away to the other side of the dormitory. Thunder grumbled like an irritable giant whose sleep had been disturbed. Anna snuggled into her straw nest, oddly comforted by the familiarity of this bed, draped the heavy coat over her face and closed her eyes.

 
She dozed to the sound of Donny’s voice, “…glowing key…somethin’ swimmin’ aroun’ down there with us…eyes like headlamps on a carriage…”

  Chapter 12

  …Chinese monkey on a bicycle... Anna awoke. She hadn’t slept long, half an hour maybe, but outside, the sky was black as night. Lightning flashed as she surveyed the room. Someone had taken a candle down from the chandelier. It’s flame danced in the storm driven draft. Donny and the seven girls sat around the candle on the floor.

  For a wonder, Donny was not talking. Lizzy was telling him about the needle machines, her dark eyes wide and sparkling in the candlelight. Wind whistled around the frames of the windows and fat rain tapped randomly at the panes. Thunder, still muted by several seconds distance, rumbled through the hall, seeming to seep up through the floor.

  “Hey, look,” Lilly said, “Anna’s up.”

  “What time do you think it is?” Anna said, to no one in particular.

  Jane laughed out loud.

  “The bell hasn’t rung since you blew the place up, Anna,” Lizzy said. “Could be ‘bout any time.” It seemed to Anna that Lizzy had picked up a bit of Alabama drawl.

  “Early afternoon, I’d reckon,” Donny said. “Kinda hard to tell time with no sun, though.”

  “Is it almost time to go, Anna?” Lilly asked, turning her six-year-old doe eyes up at Anna. Her innocent trust hurt Anna’s heart.

  Lightning flashed again. Hard, sporadic rain rattled out drumrolls on the windows. Anna counted forty-five seconds between the flash and the boom. The thunder rolled out across the hall, taking its time.

  “Not yet, Lilly. We have to wait until the storm gets here. You should rest, nap if you can. It could be a few hours yet,” Anna said, then looked to the rest of the girls. “All of you need to rest up. Once we leave here, you may not get a good rest for a few days.”

  “Anna!” Lizzy said. “We’ve been trapped in here for five days. All we’ve done is rest, and sleep, and fret. We’re ready to go. Now.”