Speaking to Skull Kings

by Emily B. Cataneo

  There are also several peculiarities in our appearances, but it is rude to point these out.

  On the eighteenth day, Grace sorted through shards of pottery patterned with blue cornflowers. Bell prowled along the far wall of the Recreation Room, frowning through her magnifying glass at the curtains and muttering to herself.

  Then Bell grabbed Grace and placed her magnifying glass over the black hole that stands in for a right eye on our youngest sister’s face.

  “Does it hurt?” Bell pulled Grace’s head towards hers and squinted. Her index finger skirted the edge of the hole—its edges were puckered like chapped lips.

  “Leave me alone.” Grace twisted away from Bell. Bell repositioned the magnifying glass and held Grace still with one hand. Grace wriggled and screamed.

  “Bell Henley, what are you doing?” I said. “Stop bothering her.” “Don’t tell me what to do,” Bell said.

  “Grace has to prepare for Christmas. It’ll be here any day now.”

  “Really? We’ve been here for nineteen days—”

  “Eighteen days.”

  “—and you keep saying that. I don’t think you have any idea what you’re talking about, and I think you’re making up that,” she jabbed her finger at this etiquette book, “as you go.”

  I slapped Bell’s finger away. You see, this is what comes from remarking on such things as Grace’s eye. This is why it’s impolite to point out the ring of livid purple bruises on Bell’s long neck, or the gash smiling on my arm.

  * * *

  5. If you are not a Henley sister, you may not visit our chambers.

  * * *

  On the twentieth day, I awoke in the tub with my cheek pressed against Grace’s shoulder blade. Bell was nowhere to be seen.

  I crept out of our bedroom, careful not to disturb sleeping Grace. In the hallway, Bell crouched in front of a door opposite our bedroom, running her fingertips over the door’s peeling white paint.

  “What on earth—”

  “Shh,” Bell said. “I woke up and I heard—”

  Something shuffled on the other side of the door, and a smell like a cave breathing crept into the hallway.

  “Bell, get away from there.”

  But Bell’s fingernails scratched against the wood, and her hands moved as though peeling open an invisible barrier covering the wooden door. I pressed the back of my hand against my nose as the stench grew stronger.

  Then the door creaked open, and a woman stepped into our hallway. Her lined face might have once been nut-brown but it had taken on a gray pallor. Her hair was matted in clumps of sticky darkness.

  She extended one hand and croaked, “You helped me get out.”

  “You stay away from my sisters,” I said. “Don’t you hurt them.”

  “Stop, stop,” rasped the woman. She coughed something sticky and wet into her hand. “I’m not going to hurt you,” she said. “I’m Adriana. I think...” Her fat face crinkled around the words. “I think I used to watch over you...you little ladies. You look...”

  “Where did you come from?” Bell said.

  “Below.” Adriana pointed at the warped floorboards.

  “There was a staircase, like that one.” She gestured at the staircase leading up out of the hallway.

  “You came up the staircase?” Bell turned to me and Grace, who had emerged from the bedroom and stood with her tinsel dragging from her hand and her eye blank and annoyed. “You know what this means?”

  “It means it’s time for matins,” I said.

  “If you climbed those stairs, that means we should be able to climb our stairs,” Bell said. “I’ve been trying to get out the windows—that’s what I’ve been trying to do. But the stairs—maybe I should have tried—”

  “It’s time for matins.” I grabbed Grace and pulled her into the Elephant Room, where I sat her in front of the elephant, bowed my head and pressed my hands together. But Bell didn’t follow.

  “I’ve been using my magnifying glass.” Bell’s voice trailed into the Elephant Room from the hallway. “I can’t find any way out, though.”

  “I used something that looked like that, little lady.” Adriana insists on calling us little ladies, which I find impertinent.

  I peered around the doorjamb and watched her rummage in her pocket and produce a pair of bent-framed spectacles. She balanced them on her nose. “They helped me find my way up the stairs.”

  “But how?”

  Adriana told Bell that she had stood on the second-to-top stair, ankle-deep in mud, and felt every inch of air with her fingers, groping for an edge, a hinge, some crenellation that she could pry open. She had held the spectacles to her nose and scrutinized the space in front of her, looking for a glimmer of light, of air, for a doorway.

  She didn’t know how much time passed during her search, but finally a seam in the air caught her eye. It was no thicker than sewing thread, but it gleamed a lighter gray than the dank air around it.

  She scrutinized the seam, breaking her nails on its sharp edges, trying to pry it open, until she heard someone moving on the other side. She shouted at the person to find a crack, to pull, and this time, when she dug her fingernails into the crack, the darkness folded back like a shutter. She caught a breath of fresher air, then she stepped up to the door, creaked it open and emerged into our hallway.

  “We have to find the same kind of opening in this staircase,” Bell said. “We have to. Then maybe we can figure out what happened.”

  “I thought we were supposed to spend matins looking at the elephant, Elisa,” Grace said.

  “You’re right, Gracie,” I said. “We are.”

  * * *

  6. When crossing the hall from the Recreation Room to the Elephant Room, extend your arms for balance, and circumnavigate the tangle of coats and reeds and offal by placing one foot in front of the other, heel to toe, heel to toe. Climb carefully over the grandfather clock leaning against the wall. Do not pause by the staircase.

  * * *

  “Bell,” I shouted. “Adriana. Grace.”

  I heard them rattling around in the Elephant Room.

  “You’d better not be bothering Grace with your foolish ideas.” I hurried out of the Recreation Room into the hallway. I put my left foot at an angle between the jagged edge of a picture frame and the leg of an upturned stool. I spread my arms for balance and I placed my right foot between the swampy mess of coats.

  The black beam of the grandfather clock loomed before me, and I was about to slip my hands over its edge and then swing my legs over and continue on to the Elephant Room, when I looked at the staircase.

  I stood frozen, my arms extended and one foot trailing off the ground. Twilight, bordering on darkness, leaked over the colorless runner on the six stairs I could see.

  Something is up there, I thought. And questions lit up my mind: why is the light outside always in the gloaming? Why does Christmas never come? How did we get here? Did we always worship that elephant?

  But I shook off this creeping feeling, climbed over the grandfather clock and walked into the Elephant Room. Such questions, such feelings, would only lead to trouble.

  This is why a sister of Henley House should never pause by the staircase: because it will lead her thoughts down dark and dangerous paths.

  * * *

  7. Magnifying glasses, spectacles, and any sort of special glass should be used only to examine horned beetles or interesting pottery—never for any sort of larger quest. If they are used for other purposes, they will be confiscated.

  * * *

  I sat in the Recreation Room on the twenty-fifth day, listening to their low voices—Bell’s insistent and shrill, Adriana’s still raspy—as they searched the staircase. Grace had fallen asleep, and I shook her shoulder—it was recreation time, after all—but she grunted and didn’t wake.

  I walked into the hallway. Adriana leaned against the drooping, peeling wallpaper, holding her spectacles. Bell wielded her magnifying glass as she bent over, examining the
air for some kind of gap.

  “Bell, you’re not allowed to use your magnifying glass for that.”

  “I smell something along here.” Bell squinted through her magnifying glass at the air just above the third step.

  “Do you need my help, little lady?”

  “Don’t call her that. Bell, I order you, give me the magnifying glass.” I tugged on the wooden handle; Bell tightened her grip and leaned away.

  I yanked it out of her hand.

  “Give it—”

  I smashed it against the wooden railing. The handle shuddered and a maze of cracks spread through the glass.

  “No,” Bell shouted, punching me in the shoulder. “Elisa, what the hell—”

  “Don’t you speak to me that way. It’s for your own good.”

  “Don’t worry, little lady, we still have the spectacles,” Adriana said. “Elisa, apologize to Bell for breaking her magnifying glass.”

  “No. You’re not even supposed to be out here. It’s recreation time.” I stalked back to the Recreation Room and tried not to listen to their muttering in the hallway.

  I remembered when Bell’s magnifying glass had stayed in her pocket, when it had been just us sisters, sitting before the elephant, examining pottery, braiding our curls, and falling asleep together in the tub, before this obsession with the staircase began, before Bell started asking questions.

  * * *

  8. If Henley sisters raise their voices to each other, they will be banished from our bedroom. They will no longer be considered sisters of Henley House.

  * * *

  Grace and I were curled in our white marble tub when the bedroom door opened and Bell stormed in, her face drawn and her hands trembling.

  “What do you want?” I said.

  Bell threw herself onto the floor and splayed out her long legs. “Adriana’s still looking, but she told me to come in here and rest for a while.”

  “You should be sleeping,” I said. “It’s past bedtime.”

  “Oh my gosh, Elisa, are you serious? We have more important things to worry about now, you know, Adriana and I are going to find the way up the stairs—”

  “And then what?” I shouted. Grace grunted awake and fixed me with one indignant blue eye, but I ignored her. “What then?

  What do you think is going to be up those stairs, exactly, Bell?”

  “The truth about why we’re—”

  “The truth about what?” My voice echoed around the tile room.

  “Will you keep it down, please?” Grace said.

  “The truth about why we’re stuck here,” Bell said.

  “We’re not stuck. We have a perfectly good—”

  “It’s all lies, lies and fake rules that you made up to try to keep me and Grace under control,” Bell said. “Not anymore.

  I’m going up those stairs, and Adriana and I are going to find it tonight, you’ll see.”

  “Find what?” Grace said.

  “Get out.” I advanced on Bell. “Get out of our bedroom. Don’t you dare—”

  Bell’s bare foot kicked against my shin. I shoved her towards our bedroom door.

  “I’m done with you—you’re not a Henley sister. Stop trying to corrupt us.”

  “Fine. I don’t want to be in here, anyway. Adriana’s a better sister than you are.” Bell stalked out of the hallway and shouted, “But when I find a way up, I’m taking Grace with me.”

  I slammed the door, and an already crooked lithograph of potted flowers broke free from the crumbling plaster and shattered on the floor.

  Now Bell and Adriana are stomping out on the stairs. I can hear them muttering, hear their footsteps creaking on the wooden boards.

  Bell is now a lost cause. She’s gone over to Adriana’s side, and she’s no longer one of us.

  But if she thinks she’s going to bring Grace through her horrid door, she’s very much mistaken.

  * * *

  9. There are no more rules.

  * * *

  I had only left Grace for a moment, to step into the kitchen to replace the horned beetle under the drinking glass, when I heard a shriek from the staircase, followed by a guttural sound of approval. I dropped the glass—it shattered on the floor—and then I ran into the hallway.

  “Adriana, I couldn’t have done it without you!” Bell shouted, one arm slung around Adriana’s shoulders, the other hooked in midair as though Bell were holding a door open.

  Adriana shook Bell’s shoulders. “Well done, little lady.”

  Bell placed her right hand next to her left. Her shoulder blades contracted and her fingers scraped along the invisible hinge. Then the air rippled, and she stumbled forward, gasping.

  “What’s going on?” Grace had appeared, her tinsel trailing behind her.

  “Nothing, Grace. Go back—”

  “Grab her,” Bell said. Adriana snatched Grace and set her down at the entrance to Bell’s door.

  “Don’t you dare—” I lunged towards them, shoving past

  Adriana, but Bell was already racing upwards, Grace in tow.

  “Stop. I’m ordering you to stop. Bring her back.”

  Bell and Grace disappeared around a corner at the top of the stairs.

  I raced after them, emerging into a hallway that stank of dirt, but where the carpet was clean and pictures hung on pristine wallpaper: pictures of a woman, with cropped hair and Bell’s freckles, and a man, with Grace’s eyes and a fat mustache.

  I stumbled against the wall: I had met that woman, who was called Mom, and that man, called Dad, in this hallway before.

  “Bring Grace back down.” I raced after them to a room at the end of the hallway. Bell was shoving a chair beneath a skylight; weak silver sunrays poured onto her curls.

  “Stop,” I said, but memories bloomed, unleashed by the second floor:

  The man called Dad hanging the painting of pastel flowers above the bed in this room, Mom spraying herself with the fluted perfume bottle on the dresser. Adriana vacuuming the unstained beige carpet and telling Bell to stop jumping on the blue paisley-covered bed, and Bell sniping that we were too old for a babysitter.

  We had lived in this house with Mom and Dad and Adriana; we had eaten stew for dinner, and played checkers, and thrown tennis balls for our dog, Jake, on the lawn. It had been almost Christmas.

  Bell lifted Grace onto the chair, climbed up next to her, cranked open the skylight and lifted Grace through, onto the roof. Then Bell’s legs disappeared off the chair as she clambered up after Grace. I followed them, pulling myself towards the warmth of sunlight, squinting against the view: flat sunblade at the horizon, a sheen of water to our left, and sagging house after sagging house stretching off towards a line of barren trees and dark pines.

  The roofs before us were a parade of smashed-in, broken shingles and exposed rafters. Broken boards, shattered trees, abandoned car tires littered the sunlit streets.

  It had been almost Christmas, and there had been a storm. The announcer said on the radio that we’d be all right if the dam held, and the dam was expected to hold.

  Mom had brought home a box of books from the library, and I had leafed through an old manners guide, and I’d said I liked all these rules, and Dad said of course I did, and he told me that people invent rules to keep back the bad things under the bed. I didn’t understand. Mom and Dad had gone to bed upstairs, and Bell and Grace and I had spread our sleeping bags on the floor of the living room, as we did sometimes.

  “No,” I choked, up on the roof. But Grace’s single eye already swept the landscape, and Bell looked at me with horror written in her wide eyes.

  The water had been heavy. A roar leapt into my sleep, and I was shaking off my dream when the windows broke, and I rolled over onto Bell and tried to breathe and found only cold muddy water, and then so much water was slamming into me that breathing became a secondary concern, and I couldn’t move, and I writhed there waiting for the water to stop and somehow knowing it never would...

  “Mom? Da
d?” Grace said, as the sun inched further up the horizon and found the bruises that covered her cheekbones.

  “Elisa.” Bell slipped her hand into mine. “I am so sorry, so, so sorry—I never should have...”

  “No, you shouldn’t.” I fell with a thud back into the bedroom and shoved past Adriana. I walked down the stairs to our former haven, now our coffin. I climbed over the grandfather clock and walked into the Elephant Room.

  I remembered now: the elephant, our silent god, was nothing more than a statue Dad had brought home from a business trip. I looked at its laughing eyes, the joyful curve of its mouth, and I swiped it onto the floor, where its head snapped from its body and one tusk rolled away under the kitchen table.

  This will be my last entry in this etiquette book. Because what good are rules for three dead girls? How can an elephant-god make us forget our sister’s missing eye? How can we spend nights in the tub when we once had beds, and slippers, and stars outside our windows?

  THE RONDELIUM GIRL OF RUE MARSEILLES

  The Rondelium Girl performed at the Exposition Universelle in the first year of the new century. Maybe you saw her there.

  She wore black velvet, and as she sang, her silk-and-cheesecloth wings rose above her head, shimmering in turquoise and azure, magenta and ochre. The glow from the wings played over her smooth forehead, the delicate moles on her cheeks. The audience held its breath and I squeezed Andrei’s smooth hand.

  As she crescendoed into the song’s finale, she closed her eyes, bent her knees, then rose into the air. Her velvet shoes floated two, three, four feet above the stage’s wooden floor. The tops of the wings soared above her head, while the bottoms coiled around her ankles. The audience gasped, and she rose higher, pointing her toes and raising her arms as she hit that final note.

  I didn’t know what that moment would mean to me someday, that I would return to it again and again throughout my life: that sensation of sitting in the dark watching the Rondelium Girl fly.

  Because I never saw her fly again. That night, she disappeared.

  * * *

  You still see rondelium girls once in a while, around the city. Some of them dance for coins in Montmartre, their wings ripped from years of pounding rain. One of them begs outside Notre Dame, her wings limp on the pavement around her.