“I didn’t know you had an ulcer.”
“Neither did I.”
Blaire helped him up the porch steps and into St. Sebastian where he went ahead of her, lumbering up the stairs to their room.
All of the children were in their pajamas watching their Friday evening movie in the game room. In the hall, Blaire stopped for a moment and peered into the room. Vesna caught sight of her and shot the young woman a disapproving glare before returning her attention to the screen. Blaire started toward the stairs, but stopped when she noticed a dark shadow around one of Dariya’s eyes.
Blaire stepped into the room and studied Dariya’s fresh injury, but none of the children even took their eyes away from the screen to notice Blaire.
“They were playing too rough this afternoon. That is all!” Vesna said in a venomous whisper. Blaire was about to speak, but thought of Petro’s words and retired to her room quietly.
For a while Blaire sat on her bed cutting paper that she was preparing to make into elaborate masks for the masquerade party that she was planning for the children. Blaire pulled her blinds up a bit to stare out at the sea. Her fingers began to ache from all of the cutting, and she decided to go down and watch the end of the movie with the children before bed. Just as she came to the game room, Blaire’s attention was drawn up the hallway in front of her where she heard voices. As she crept through the corridor, she realized that the voices were coming from inside of her classroom, and she could hear them clearly now. It was a man and two women.
“But what shall we do with them?” Ivan said as he sat at the back of the room on top of one of the low bookshelves staring out into the water. Ivan turned his head slightly as Blaire entered the room.
“Hi, Ms. Baker,” Ivan said, revolving his focus back to the water outside.
“Hi, Ivan. What are you doing in here?”
“Nothing.”
“How did you get in here?” Blaire put her hand on the knob of the door and wiggled it.
“The door was open.”
“Who are you talking to?”
“Them,” the innocent boy responded. Blaire jumped when the vents in the floor came to life and warm air thrusted out from them in a belch.
“Who, Ivan?” Blaire persisted.
“The ones who died here.”
“What happened in the basement, Ivan?”
“They died.”
“Who died?”
“They all died,” he whispered in the voice of a child. “And you will die, too.” A foreign voice erupted from the boy. Blaire could feel the sting of hot tears building up just inside of her eyes. She was not afraid, but there was something so perversely intimate about his words that she felt as if this tiny boy had reached inside of her and shined a light on her soul, and it burned.
His gaze drifted back to the window, but he felt bad for telling her what he knew. “It’s not your fault,” he added.
“What’s not my fault, Ivan?”
“None of it. She said it’s not your fault.”
“Who? What do you mean?” Blaire asked, her voice quivering as she stepped closer to the boy.
He whipped around, and his body was forceful as he lashed out at her with his face contorted in the same way as it was in all of Danya’s photographs.
“They’ll take you, torture you, rip off your head. The children in white will tear you to shreds. They’ll circle around you until you are dead. The children in white will leave you in red!” He screamed as she stumbled back falling into a desk. He started again. “They’ll take you, torture you, rip off your head. The children in white will tear you to shreds. They’ll circle around you until you are dead. The children in white will leave you in red! They’ll take you…”
“Stop it, stop it!” Blaire cried, tears blurring her vision.
Suddenly, the boy quieted and turned back to the window.
His breathing steadied, in and out, and soon he was weeping silently. Blaire was trembling but managed to lift herself off the desk, and she crept toward the boy, reaching out her hand until it was gently upon his shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” he whimpered.
CHAPTER THIRTY ONE
The next morning Travis found Blaire in her classroom, furiously pounding away at her computer keys.
“Hey, want to go for a run?” Travis asked.
“Come inside.”
“What’s up?” Travis asked, following her instructions obediently.
“I’m going to take a trip, and I need you to cover for me.”
“Where?”
Blaire hesitated, and then started to speak before she was startled by an unexpected presence.
“Natalka,” Blaire spoke to the young girl standing in the doorway of her classroom.
Natalka carried a plate of sugar cookies decorated with pink icing.
“Breakfast,” Travis said, lifting a cookie from the plate.
Blaire grabbed the plate tersely and sat it on the desk.
“Is there anything else, Natalka?” Blaire asked. Travis silently munched his cookie taking note of the odd tension.
“No,” Natalka responded and turned, leaving the room.
“Thank you, Natalka,” Travis said. “She’s great.”
“Yeah,” Blaire responded with a certain coldness toward the girl, a coldness of what origins she herself could not quite pinpoint.
“I’m going to see Ivan’s parents,” Blaire blurted out.
“What?” Travis almost choked on his cookie. “Why?”
“Because he knows something about what happened in that basement, and, if no one here wants to tell me…fine, but I am going to find out one way or another.”
“What is it that you think happened in the basement?”
“Listen, I didn’t tell you before because with everything that has happened, I knew that you were skeptical, but Anya told me that a long time ago that some of the children were killed in the basement.”
“Killed by who?”
“Maybe the workers, I’m not sure. She didn’t want to talk too much about it, but Ivan keeps talking about what happened in the basement.”
Travis’ jaw dropped. “…uh…I…I guess I’m just not understanding what all of this has to do with anything.”
“The kids, there is something happening to them mentally and physically. Their bruises and injuries are getting worse and I don’t know if it has anything to do with the basement or not, but it’s the only thing that I have to go on right now.”
“But you heard what Petro said.”
“I know what I heard from Petro, and I am not going to snoop around here. I’m going to snoop around in a completely different city, Cruslav. No one here will ever know,” she whispered as if the blank white walls could hear. “Travis, you don’t think that this place is weird? These people are weird? These children are weird?”
Travis took a deep breath and looked around nervously, as if he wanted to speak but was being held back.
“What?” Blaire said.
“Well, it’s really nothing, but…”
“But what, Travis? Tell me!”
“I told you before that I have noticed strange injuries while treating the children.”
“Yeah…” Blaire said, hanging on Travis’ every word.
“And it was nothing major, just bruises and cuts, that they always tell me happened while playing or something. I didn’t think much of it but I agree with you, the injuries are becoming worse and more frequent, and there have been other things.”
“Like what?” Blaire pressed.
“Again, nothing major,” Travis said, slightly frustrated. “It’s just the scratching at night, lights suddenly going off in a room, things moving and missing, and sometimes in room 3C…a…a…” Travis was having trouble articulating.
“A what, Travis?” Blaire pushed.
“A…” Travis tried again.
“The humming?” Blaire spoke.
“You hear it, too?”
“Yeah, I h
ear it too.”
“It’s probably just the pipes.” Travis took a seat at one of the desks.
“Probably…” Blaire said with no emotion. “But what does it hurt to be sure? And what about this?” Blaire said, as she threw a handful of photographs across her desk.
Travis sorted through the photos. “What about what?”
“Look at these pictures that Danya took when we first arrived.” Blaire picked up some of the older photos and showed them to Travis.
“Yeah, so, these are just irregularities in the film,” he said, as he studied the pictures of themselves with odd blemishes in the background or one of their features slightly drawn out of place.
“Fine,” Blaire said. “Then what about these? These are more recent and on a completely different roll of film.” Blaire handed him photos from a second package that showed more pronounced deformities, and, finally, she placed into his hands the most recent photographs, where their faces were almost completely unidentifiable.
“It’s like the longer we’re here, the more this place changes us.” Blaire was almost whispering.
Travis eyed her incredulously. “Oh, come on, Blaire.”
“Stop it!” she yelled. “Stop trying to explain it all away.”
“Last night Dariya had a black eye, and I found Ivan in my classroom during movie time. He told me that he talks to the ones that died here, and that we will die, too.”
“And what is that supposed to mean?” Travis asked.
“I don’t know, but maybe if I can talk to Ivan’s parents, I can find out. I got an address from his file and I talked to Anya, and Cruslav is just a quick day trip away. I have to take the train to Kerchaviv, and then a bus from there to Cruslav. I will find a place to spend the night, and I will be back tomorrow.”
“What makes you think they will want to talk to you?”
“Nothing, but I have to try.”
“Do you want me to go with you?”
“No, if we’re both gone, they’ll get suspicious. I just need you to stay here and hold down the fort. I will tell Marko that I have a friend who is traveling abroad and will be in Kerchaviv today, and that I am going to meet with her and stay over in the city. Will you be okay?” Blaire asked.
“Of course, I’ll be fine. I just don’t think this is such a good decision,” he responded.
“Don’t worry. I make bad decisions all the time. It’s kind of part of my charm.”
The day was unbearably cold, so Blaire had bundled up in a heavy coat, gloves, and a hat. Out the train window, she saw the same landscape as she had the day she arrived in Borslav for the first time. The same little dilapidated cottages that were once charming were now dismal. Vast acres of bare land that had once sparked Blaire’s imagination now just made her look away.
After several hours, she was finally on the last leg of the trip, on a bus that would drop her in the heart of Cruslav. Growls of hunger from her insides routinely interrupted the silence of her quiet surroundings. Drizzles of dirty rain water salivated unto the windows every once and again, and Blaire suddenly realized that she had no umbrella and hoped the weather would clear before her stop. She retrieved the map upon which she had traced directions from her drop-off point to the approximate location of the home of Ivan’s parents.
Blaire pulled out a package of peanut butter crackers and unwrapped them as quietly as possible. Next to her, an older woman, who had slept the entire trip, rose from her coma-like nap and coughed, “Hello.”
“Hello,” Blaire greeted in kind and forced a smile.
“You visiting family?” the lady asked.
“No. Just some friends, but they don’t know that I’m coming. It’s a surprise,” Blaire lied.
“A surprise? That’s nice,” the lady told her. “It’s nice to have friends and family.”
“Yes,” Blaire said, agreeing as she turned her head from the woman.
“Are you married?” the woman continued.
“No, I’m not.”
“I was married for thirty-two years. Thirty-two years I was married, and then one day, he was just gone.”
“That’s unfortunate,” Blaire responded.
“Every Sunday it rains,” the woman said, as she shifted her depressed glance out the bus window.
Blaire turned away once again, ignoring the woman’s seemingly illogical statement.
“I always wanted a vegetable garden,” the woman continued the conversation. Blaire sighed to herself at carrying the burden of this lonely woman’s life.
“…but my husband would never let me have one. Plenty of yard for it, you know? But he never wanted me to take up any space with my things. His mother would always tell me that the lawn was the husband’s place, you know?”
Blaire nodded, only half-listening and giving as little eye contact as possible.
“There was always room for his things, but never any room for anything of mine, and if I ever tried to make room, he would just yell and go on, sometimes even giving me a slap or two, and soon I stopped fighting. I fought with him less and less, but I never stopped wanting my garden, just a little peaceful place for myself. Nothing that I wanted to do more than to sit outside on a Sunday afternoon and watch my garden grow.”
“I’m sorry,” Blaire said.
“Scared I would eventually go mad, but one lonely Sunday I woke up and the old son of a gun was gone, just like that,” she said with a snap of her knotted fingers. “Sunday is the loneliest day of the week. I looked for him for a while. He didn’t have much family except for his mother, and she was even meaner than him. She came by a few times looking for ole Henry, and the police came to see about him too, but everyone just figured he run off somewheres with one of those women he spent his time with. Not long before people completely forgot about him, and I was sad for a while, but just a short while, until I realized that I could finally have my garden. You know what?”
“What?” Blaire asked.
“I dug a nice little plot in the backyard where I planted my seeds and vegetables, and they grew up so lush and ripe. People say I must have the best dirt in town, and they ask me what my secret is, and I tell them that if I told them, then I would have to kill them.” The lady burst into a startling cackle. “My tomatoes are so delicious that even Henry’s old rattlesnake of a mother loves them so much that she hardly ever asks about him anymore. They quench her thirst for him if you know what I mean.” Her wanton smile faded, her eyes wandered, and she became lost again. “But ever since…seems like it always rains on Sunday.”
For a few moments the bus was silent, and Blaire let her eyes close as it bumped up the damaged road.
Henry’s wife spoke again startling Blaire, “So you here to visit your mother and father? It’s nice to have family.” Her story began again.
Blaire closed her eyes pretending not to hear the woman who was speaking to herself and had been all along.
A few stops later, Blaire stepped off of the bus into a gust of wind that filled her hair making it rise like a ghost from the darkness. Blaire rummaged through her bag and found the hat which she drew onto her head as she looked around and studied the small city carefully. Kitsch trinkets, half-hidden under layers of dust, were perched in the windows for sale on the store-lined street. Blaire began to follow the path on her map. As she reached the outskirts of town, she was overwhelmed by doses of dread that filled her now that she was so close to talking to Ivan’s parents. It was another ten minutes before she saw the first home and five more minutes before the little cottage, which she knew belonged to Ivan’s parents by the numbers on the front, came into view.
It was not at all what she thought it would be, as the home looked…normal. For an orphan, she imagined an impoverished walk-up, overrun with rodents or crawling things, or maybe a rickety farmhouse set crookedly upon dying land, but this was nothing like that, nothing like that at all. The home was modest but clean and well maintained. A stream of smoke rose up from the chimney, and as she moved closer
, there was the light aroma of something delicious. It seemed impossible that unwanted children were produced in a place like this. This was a place where sweet cakes rose in ovens and happily ended stories tucked children into their beds at night, but it could only be assumed now that, ultimately, the unwanted were everywhere.
Blaire heard children playing in the backyard. Ivan did not fit in here, was not, nor could he have even been a member of this household. She was shaking, but it was no longer from the icy cold, but from her own nerves. Blaire knocked on the front door, unsure of how she would be received, considering that she had given them no warning of her arrival. She was afraid that they would not want to revisit the ugly episode from their past.
Blaire was taking in the landscape when a petite woman answered the door and looked suspiciously upon her unsolicited visitor.
“Mrs. Andrich?”
“Yes, that’s me,” the woman said, smiling and lowering her guard just a bit on the knowledge that her visitor must not have been a complete stranger. Mrs. Andrich was a regal-looking woman with a mane of shiny hair framing her perfect face in soft, chocolate waves.
“Hi, my name is Blaire Baker, and I am with St. Sebastian orphanage, and I wanted to speak to you about your son, Ivan,” Blaire said with a gulp.
The woman’s eyes swelled with a jumble of emotions, and she pulled the door wide open.
“Is Ivan alright? Has something happened to him?” Her voice shot up to an unforgiving pitch.
“No, he’s fine. I’m his teacher.”
“His teacher?” Mrs. Andrich looked confused.
“Yes, and I just wanted to know if I could speak to you for a bit?” Blaire asked.
Despite her shock, Mrs. Andrich stepped aside and allowed the young woman into her home. “Of course, come in.” The woman took a look around to make sure that no one was watching before she closed the door tightly behind Blaire and flipped the lock.
“Would you like some tea?” Mrs. Andrich offered nervously.
“Sure,” Blaire said as she sat down on the couch in the living room not far from a roaring fire. Mrs. Andrich went into the kitchen and began clanking objects around in the chore of properly hosting her guest.
The Unwanted (Black Water Tales Book 2) Page 18
