“Are you hurting?” she whispered.
He nodded woefully and said, “My knees.”
“Okay, let me help,” Blaire pulled the boy’s legs from beneath his thick new blanket. His feet were knotted and worn. Blaire began massaging the boy’s knees and legs lightly.
Rodent scampering drew Blaire’s gaze to one of the vents in the corner. Sergey’s expression melted into terror as his eyes attached themselves to the vent.
“It’s just rats,” Blaire assured him.
“It’s no rats.”
Blaire looked at the vent, and then back to Sergey. “Well, what is it?”
“I can’t say.” His voice was barely audible
Blaire felt a dense lump clog her throat, she didn’t know quite what to make of his response, but suddenly she wanted nothing more than to get out of that room. “You feel better?”
Sergey didn’t answer. Blaire tucked the boy back into his bed and headed for the door, stopping and turning back for one last look at the vent; it was silent. She then looked to Sergey, and all she could see were the large, round whites of eyes that were alert and waiting as she brought the door to a close. Blaire took the stairs two at a time then walked speedily to her room, where she flipped the lock on the door before crawling under her covers and willing herself not to see or hear another thing that night.
Long before sunrise, Blaire woke again to the noise of the rats. Tossing to a new position she closed her eyes and dozed before the incessant scratching began burrowing into her head, washing away any chance of sound sleep, especially with Travis’ snoring adding to the maddening cacophony. A few moments later, she noticed the scratching growing louder, as if it were in the room. She flung the blanket from her head and sat up.
Blaire jumped when she heard a scattering noise, like little feet dashing across a floor. She jumped out of bed and grabbed the flashlight from the windowsill. Blaire reached for the keys on the dresser where she usually left them, her heart dropped as she pulled back her empty hand. It felt as if someone opened her mouth and dropped a weight inside. The keys were gone. Blaire shot her flashlight beam up to the ceiling, where she heard the scampering once again.
Someone was on the roof.
Tiny beads of sweat were crowning her as she opened the bedroom door and peered down the hall. The door to the roof creaked open, and her keys were dangling from the lock.
“No!” she said with a gasp as she raced to the doorway and stood looking up the dark, steep flight of stairs that seemed to lead straight into the starry night sky. The door at the top of the steps flapped lightly in the night breeze. She stumbled back when a tiny figure galloped across the doorway. It was one of the children.
Blaire raced up the stairs, but slowed as she approached the top. Realizing how high she was after catching a glimpse of the tree tops, she froze.
“Who’s out here?” she asked, stepping onto the small deck. The roof suddenly came alive with the ripple of little feet.
Blaire went to the right end of the deck and called out, “Who’s out here?” She could not see beyond the chimney that was blocking her view.
Laughter taunted her. With little hesitation, Blaire climbed over the small wood railing that separated the deck from the rest of the roof. Beyond the deck the rooftop was slanted deeply, and Blaire had to focus to preserve her good footing. Keeping her feet pressed tightly to the roof, Blaire maneuvered around the large chimney. Sea winds blew her sleep-tangled hair into her face, and she pushed it back but still saw no one. Blaire reached out for the iron grating that lined the perimeter of the roof and shook it lightly to test its sturdiness. When she was sure that the grating would not give out, she grabbed it and leaned over the side of the building to be sure that no one had fallen.
Jump! Lacey shouted in her ear, causing Blaire to throw herself back against the safety of the roof.
Never before had she considered herself afraid of heights, but being this high up with little protection inspired new fears. Blaire noticed a shadow beginning to cover her and gasped at the sight of Ivan standing over her where the slants of the roof came together and offered a small platform of about one foot wide across the top.
“Ivan! Get down from there,” Blaire yelled, extending her hand up to the boy who was several feet away. Ivan stared at her blankly, his silhouette cutting a distinct shape in the night sky.
“Ivan, please give me your hand. It’s not safe up here.”
Blaire stood on her toes to extend her hand further. Ivan began to lift his tiny pale hand out to touch hers, but he stopped just short as if he were about to speak, as if he had to tell her something before she could take his hand, before she could save him.
Blaire heard Ivan’s voice, a garbled phrase, but the words were not coming from his mouth. The words surrounded her, though she could hardly hear anything except the crashing of the waves which were deafening now.
“What?” she shouted.
Again, she heard his words, but his lips never moved. It was louder this time, but fought with the sound of the wind in the trees, the beat of her heart, the blink of her eyes, and the rustling of her hair over her head. Every sound and movement seemed to be amplified in the moments that she waited for his hand to connect with hers.
“There’s something in the basement!” Ivan’s voice finally came through clear and strong and seemed to enter directly into Blaire’s bloodstream rather than her ears.
“Give me your hand!” Blaire screamed. She lifted herself higher on her toes when she felt the roof shift under her. Blaire looked down and saw a piece of the paneling sliding under her bare foot, and hardly had time to do anything except listen to herself scream, as she slid along the side of the roof through one of the gaps in the iron grating.
The laughter of the Frightening Four poured into her, and she grasped frantically for anything to hold on to as her body sailed into the air.
An abrupt jolt made her gulp. Somehow she had clenched the bottom of one of the iron posts. Blaire dangled from the side of the massive building like a tiny wind chime. Her chest tensed painfully when she looked down and saw the hard ground welcoming her. The high grass in the unkempt lawn swayed, enthusiastically cheering for her decent. Her fingers tightened around the post, but she was quickly discouraged. She had only been hanging a couple of seconds, and she was weakening fast.
Jump, jump, jump, they taunted. Blaire tried to block their memory, but they were there, surrounding her, daring her. Anger filled her, but, as she looked down at the ground below her, she supposed that their hecklings were not so merciless. They dared her not only to jump, but to be free. For a moment, she considered letting go, allowing her fingers to relax their grip around the cold, iron post just like she had that day on Grammercy Bridge, but what about Ivan? What would happen to him?
Blaire pushed her free hand up, making a clumsy attempt to get a grip on one of the other posts. With breathy strain, she wiggled her fingertips toward their destination, but it was just out of reach, and her anchored hand was weakening. Ivan had slid down from the highest point on the roof and was standing over her now, his white nightshirt billowed under the influence of the breeze. Her hand was wet with perspiration, and it slipped further. Blaire hesitated to talk or scream, afraid to exert any of the energy that she needed to hold on.
Ivan looked down on her, the dark patches of skin under his eyes making him look inhuman.
“Ivan, get help.” she finally cried out, feeling all the strength draining from her limp body.
Ivan’s small hand stretched out over the bars, as she shot her free hand up once again, but it was just out of Ivan’s juvenile reach. He climbed onto the railing and reached down further, pressing his cool palm against hers and locking her tightly in a grip that seemed unfit for a fragile boy. He jerked her heartily, lifting her several inches, and her mouth gave a bemused gape at his abnormal strength.
“Put your foot on the window frame there,” he instructed. She looked down and saw that a window fr
ame was now under her foot. A flickering relief set in once her foot found the solid resting place.
“Come on now,” Ivan said, refocusing Blaire. She reached for the boy’s hand once again, and when his palm was pressed firmly against hers, she felt a numbing sensation rush through her. She closed her eyes and the vision of ruby blood drops splashing across the rungs of a crib penetrated her.
Blaire snatched her hand back from the boy.
“Come on,” Ivan spoke in a commanding tone. Blaire’s shaking hand grabbed Ivan’s again, as he yanked her with even more raw power than the first time. For a moment, she was not sure if he was pulling her to safety or dragging her back into something more dreadful than falling to her death.
Planting her knee onto the edge of the roof, she was able to get a sturdy grip on the top of the grating with both of her hands. Blaire threw one of her legs over, and then the other before she turned and pressed her back into the slanted roof. She placed her forearm over Ivan’s chest, pushing him back against the roof next to her.
Adrenaline and fading waves of fear pulsed through every part of her body. He stared at her, and his eyes traveled down her body to her thighs, which were covered as they always were. He cocked his head slightly, and then lifted his eyes back to hers as if he were disappointed in some way, and Blaire knew exactly what he was looking at, what he was seeing through her pants. But how could he know? How could he possibly know?
“Blaire!” she heard Travis’ voice coming from the deck.
Vesna was waiting for them in her robe at the bottom of the stairs, a splenetic frown set deep in the wrinkles of her face.
After securing the roof door, Travis ushered Blaire and Ivan safely down the stairs to the third floor hallway, where he locked the door to the roof securely, turning to Blaire to speak in a whisper, “What the hell happened?”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED?” Marko exploded, giving the same spine-tingling effect as the sound of a glass dish crashing onto a hard floor. Blaire jumped. Her nerves were not helped by the fact that she had not slept since coming off the roof the night before.
“Marko, I am so sorry! I don’t know what happened.”
“What were you thinking?” Marko slammed his hand into his desk.
“I don’t know. I must have left the keys in one of the rooms when I did the bed check. I don’t know how I missed them.” Her confession was muddled by her profound attempts to recall the point at which she had left her keys behind, but it was useless and mattered little. Anxiety rose in her like it would in a chained magician who had somehow forgotten the trick in a tank full of rising water.
“This is why we have strict rules when it comes to the children! This is why their doors are locked at night! And if I didn’t know better, I would venture to say that you may have left the door unlocked on purpose in some misdirected protest to what you consider inhumane!”
“No. God, no! I swear that was not it!” Blaire cried out while wondering if she had subconsciously allowed her personal views to intervene on her conscious action.
“Marko, it was not intentional, I swear. I made a mistake.”
“A mistake?” he interrupted.
“An enormous mistake.” Blaire updated the seriousness of her foul in her admission. “A completely idiotic, ridiculous, careless, mindless, crazy mistake that will never, ever happen again if you give me another chance. I’m so, so sorry,” she concluded with no other self-loathing insults left in her repertoire for the pathetic apology.
Marko looked at the young teacher and grunted deeply like an animal in the wild, giving up a fight with an already defeated foe before turning, mercifully, away.
“You put one of my children at risk, Ms. Baker.”
“I know.”
“You put yourself at risk. I just cannot have that here. Do you know what would have happened if one or both of you had fallen from the roof? Not only would you have been severely injured, if not killed, but this place could be shut down. The other children would have nowhere to go. I don’t think that you understand the gravity of what could have happened last night.”
“I do, Marko. I have learned an invaluable lesson from this.”
“I’m not here to teach lessons, Ms. Baker. I am here to provide for the children.” Marko’s voice cut through her self-pity swiftly and without remorse.
“I understand. Nothing like this will ever happen again. I assure you,” Blaire pleaded.
“You are here voluntarily, and I know that your work is important to you and even more importantly…we need the help; therefore, I am not going to let you go.”
Blaire tried to find an appropriate reaction to the news that she was not being fired from her volunteer job, but it was difficult.
“Thank you so much.”
“One more chance, but if anything like this happens again—”
“I know, I know,” Blaire stated, not allowing him to finish, feeling that just the speaking of the incident, the voicing of the details, would reopen the event like tearing stitches away from a wound long before it healed. “It won’t happen again,” she added.
Marko sat behind his desk, nervously fiddling his hands, raising his eyebrows, and then letting them fall again.
“Fine, but from now on we keep all of the rooms locked at night, do you understand? All of them, including yours. I don’t want anyone getting hurt,” he said waving her away. It was a gesture she would have usually protested immediately, but in this situation she felt lucky that he had forgiven her negligence and took the dismissal in submission, like a naughty puppy.
“I will apologize to Ivan,” she said.
“Don’t!” he stopped her sternly. “You have done enough when it comes to him. Vesna will look after him for today, and you should probably keep your distance for now. I’m sure you scared him to death.”
Back in her room, Blaire rifled through her bottom drawer until she found her cigarette box, but it was empty. She threw it back into the drawer and continued sifting through things until she uncovered a little pouch. She opened it and sighed in relief when she discovered an unopened pack of cigarettes.
Blaire locked herself in the bathroom and began unraveling the wrapping that covered the box. She patted her pants for a lighter, but was disappointed when she realized she had put on a long, cotton, pocketless skirt that morning. Blaire put the cigarette in her mouth and spotted the lighter in her pouch just as a glimmer caught her eye. Carefully, Blaire pulled out the straight razor. Like a great lover mistaken for dead, suddenly turning up on her doorstep, she eyed it with peculiar affection. She thought that she had gotten rid of all of these and had not noticed it when she packed the little pouch for her trip. Blaire worked hysterically to lift her skirt as if her history would disappear. There would be no escape, no one escaped, no one ever escaped.
There they were on her thighs, stripes of comfort and of shame. Defacing by the razor’s edge started a couple of years after the accident. Initially, her legs were scarred by shards of glass lodged into her during the accident. Those scars had always been meaningful, as they were the scars of a survivor and they healed over time, but no one ever told her about the scars that were on the inside, the ones that never healed. Those inner scars were so excruciating that all you could do to numb the pain was to create more pain, pain that sprung fresh and created red flowing fountains that instantaneously allowed the poison that was on the inside to seep out as one watched in relief. They too were external scars that she had earned, extensions of the ones she received on the day of the accident, scars that were a road map of the person she was on the inside. The most recent scar was months old. Blaire stopped this ritual shortly before coming to St. Sebastian as a testament to the changes that she was making in her life, shortly before picking up the smoking habit. Things would be different here.
She closed her eyes and pressed the rusty razor into her thigh, not hard enough to do any damage, just enough to feel the sweet, lusty tingle flow dow
n her spine, teasing herself with the dangerous opportunity to, once again, take the pain out of her heart and put it somewhere it could heal. She pressed harder and felt the initial pierce, the pain of the skin breaking, the high of her emotional tensions preparing to pour out of her body.
BLAIRE. She heard her mother calling to her in a deep voice choked with ashes and smoke.
Blaire’s eyes popped opened, and she threw the tool into the toilet’s mouth in a rush to flush the object as if it were an animal that would fight to get back out like a frightened crab in a pot of boiling water. Frantically, Blaire pulled out waves of white tissue paper from the dispenser and pressed the soft white mound against the small laceration on her thigh. Sinking into the corner of the stall she smoked two cigarettes.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
As soon as Blaire stepped out of the front door, the birds began chirping loudly, and the sun shone so brightly on her face that she had to block it with one hand. The world outside the walls of St. Sebastian was so unlike the one inside. Blaire stationed herself in several random spots in front of the building, attempting to get enough reception to phone Emma.
She crisscrossed the side of the building, looking as if she were playing a bizarre game of red light, green light, but could never gather enough bars to place the call. She gave up for the moment and decided to poke around the shed for more things for her classroom, and then maybe she could get some reception by the pool.
Shielding her eyes from the sun, Blaire looked up to the spot on top of the building where her life had hung in the balance just two nights before. She shook off a chill before continuing toward the shed. At the end of the drive, she stopped and looked down the backside of the building, eyeing the place where the cement steps led underground.
The Unwanted (Black Water Tales Book 2) Page 11
