In the Garden of Rusting Gods

by Patrick Freivald

  Kirsten let go and let out a theatric sigh. “What planet are you on? Have you heard a single thing I’ve said?”

  Shaking her head, Molly tried a sheepish grin. “Sorry? Just a little distracted, I guess.”

  Kirsten rolled her eyes. “Yeah, well, don’t be rude.”

  They walked in together, said the Pledge of Allegiance after the bell, and suffered through thirty minutes of group work with Chad and Tom, the least mature boys in the history of ever. Their constant, childish snickering tore through Molly’s head until she just couldn’t take another moment. Her hand shot up.

  “Yes?” Mr. Brown raised his eyebrows but didn’t look up from his newspaper.

  “Can—may I go to the bathroom?”

  He looked up at the four of them, a dubious frown dragging on his expression. “Are you done?”

  “It’s an emergency.”

  She ignored Tom’s chuckle and hurried to the door the moment Mr. Brown nodded.

  Alone in the hall, she walked toward the bathroom but stopped at the first locker. Reaching out with one fingernail, she tapped a pattern. WHERE ARE YOU?

  Nothing happened. She laughed.

  What’d you expect, Mol? You’re just going crazy.

  She took two steps, and at the end of the hall a door opened with a scattershot creak more dots than dashes. A little seventh grader, wide-eyed in glasses way too big for his face, stepped out and walked her way. The door squealed closed with the same rhythm as the kid disappeared around the corner.

  Looking both ways, she pulled out her phone and put the pattern into the translator.

  Goosebumps crawled up her arms as the temperature dropped ten degrees. Something scraped against the inside of the locker, mouse-feet rustling almost too quiet to hear.

  BENEATH

  Molly reached back, hesitated, then repeated the word with her fingertip, adding a question-mark. BENEATH?

  Another pattern. She plugged it into her phone as humid air condensed on the screen.

  SO COLD

  Teeth chattering, she tapped, combining the new word with one she’d memorized. BENEATH WHERE? Her breath billowed in white clouds as she waited for a reply.

  SO COLD

  The temperature dropped again, and ice crystals crept across the windows.

  The kid with the huge glasses rounded the corner, staring at her with wide eyes. She let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. “What, kid?”

  His eyes frosted over, a cataract of ice crystals. She stumbled back and he grabbed her wrist, his touch icy daggers ravaging her skin straight through her sweater. The chittering noise that came from his mouth belonged to a world of shattered glass and pain and rocks cracking under the force of new-formed ice.

  She jerked away and ran. Locker doors thundered an unrelenting staccato FIND ME as she ran past. Windows and door locks rattled FIND ME. The air in the vents whispered underneath and around the maelstrom of noise, repeating the boy’s words in time with her throbbing wrist. Clutching it against her chest, the hall blurred through a sheen of tears.

  She busted into the bathroom, shut herself in a stall and huddled there. Squeezing her hands over her ears, in a desperate attempt to make it stop, did nothing. Even the dripping of the fountains pressed their command. FIND ME.

  She closed her eyes and replayed the boy’s message in her mind. Hands shaking, she brought up the translator and fed the pattern into the phone.

  I HEAR YOU PLAY

  Noise flooded the room, human noise, girls chatting and arguing, classes changing in the hall. She let out a relieved sigh and opened the stall, joining the typical press of girls trying to freshen up in their allotted four minutes. She washed her hands, wincing as her sweater rubbed raw on her wrist, and ducked out into the hallway without speaking to anyone.

  ~

  Heart thundering, Molly hurried past the janitor’s cart, muffling the keys’ jingle with her hand, praying nobody heard in the din of students grabbing last-minute things from their lockers and heading for the buses. She slipped the keys into her coat pocket, the metal cold against her shaking fingers, too cold, like the janitor had just been outside.

  Principal Lawson returned her tight-lipped smile with pearly teeth and a hearty, “Have a good weekend!”

  The kid’s message rang in her ears. Where could you hear her play, behind foam-covered walls and thick, noise-isolating doors? What hidden place held those answers? Only one.

  She shuffled toward the exit then cut right, through the internal fire doors and around the corner to the band room. After a soft knock, she pushed her way through.

  “Hello? Mr. Stevens?”

  With no answer, she pulled her practice sheets from her cubby, a tiny space for music and spare sticks dwarfed by those for the saxophones, trombones, and tubas. She stuffed the loose papers into the bottom of her bag, under her textbooks and folders. That done, she walked over to Mr. Stevens’s desk, grabbed a sheet of paper from the printer, and opened the top drawer for a pen.

  A silver oval caught her eye, the dull metal held by a beaded chain. She picked it up and read the dog tags. MARTIN, JAMIE E. The letters scraped their way through the shelf in the back of the room as she read them; she didn’t have to look them up, didn’t have to translate them.

  Hands trembling, she took a picture, put them back, and wrote a quick note.

  ~

  Mr. Stevens,

  I lost my practice music.

  Can I get another copy on Monday, please?

  Thanks,

  Mol

  She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and turned toward the far wall. Between the two practice room doors a black metal shelf held a legion of dusty trophies dating back sixty years. From tarnished brass to cheap plastic, they chronicled the victories of every competition and ignored the countless others where they found only defeat. She slid the shelf to the side, legs screeching against the floor to reveal the portal behind.

  Marked AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY in bold red letters, the peeling paint gave her an indication of how often anyone used it.

  She pulled the ring of keys from her coat, the jingles spelling out HERE HERE HERE as she searched for the one that matched the number on the lock.

  Her fingers blistered as frost rimed the metal, and she shivered in her coat at the bitter cold. Jamming the key into the lock, she hissed against the pain and turned it. A jerk, a sigh of freezing cold air, and darkness yawned in front of her.

  A steel ladder descended into a square hole in the concrete floor, the bright yellow paint faded from years of neglect. Black mold smudged the walls with angry splotches. Breath frosting, she pulled out her phone and used the flashlight app to blast the bright white LED down the hole.

  Molly gasped.

  A skeletal hand rested against the bottom rung. Beside it lay a caved-in skull on patchy gravel. She rubbed her wrist and frowned at the rusty handcuffs linking the arm to the unyielding metal. The body wore the tattered remnants of a uniform, dull gray-and-white camouflage just visible in the mold and rot. Her eyes grew wide as the finger twitched, the signal ringing out on the metal.

  RUN

  She stumbled back and slammed the door, groping for the keys. The ring fell from her fingers and clattered to the floor. She knelt to pick them up but instead grabbed the shelf and jerked it back into place. A trophy tottered as the band room door opened. She caught it and set it down next to the blazing heater. Suddenly too hot she swooned, light-headed. Pushing the keys under the shelf with her foot, she stood.

  Mr. Stevens raised his eyebrows at her, the exact look he gave anyone late to class, or goofing off instead of playing. “Looking for something, Miss Fitzgerald?”

  She swallowed, and tried not to gasp in a breath, instead pulling it slowly through her smile. “Hi, Mr. Stevens. I can’t find my practice music. Was j
ust leaving you a note.”

  He pulled the cart loaded with music stands the rest of the way into the room, let the double-doors close, then pushed it against them. Wiping his hands on his shirt, he walked forward. “From the floor?”

  A nervous giggle escaped her lips. “No. My shoelace came untied. The note’s on your desk.”

  He glanced at it, picked up the pen, clicked it a couple times. “From my drawer?”

  She shrugged. “I didn’t have one.”

  “You saw the dog tags, then.”

  “Dog tags?” Playing dumb never came easy to her, and he didn’t look convinced.

  He took another step, picked up the trophy, and then leaned in too close. Staring down at her, he licked his lips. “You’re not special. She talks to me, too, you know.”

  She met his eyes, blank brown orbs, flat under the fluorescent light. “What?”

  He brushed his knuckles across her cheek, then settled the hand on her shoulder and tapped, his fingernail sharp against her neck. He spoke the words as they seared across her nerves. “I. Loved. You.” His grip tightened on her shoulder, twisting her coat until it pulled tight under her arm. “She looked like you, a little. I mean, not anymore.”

  Molly screamed. He swung the trophy and the world exploded in hot white light. Pulling herself from the floor and unsure how she got there, her eyes came to focus on the line of red drool hanging from her lips. Searing pain shocked through her chest as his shoe impacted her ribs, again and again. He dragged her to her tiptoes, her scalp on fire, one hand tangled in her hair, the other still holding the bloody trophy.

  Feet dangling, legs useless, she tried to reach him, tried to claw or hit, tried to scream through the iron tang of blood in her mouth.

  “No one can hear you, Molly, not through these walls.”

  She knew it. The sound-proofing and thick wooden doors did more than prevent dead spots. Words came, thick and hard to understand around her swollen tongue.

  “Please, Mr. Stevens. I don’t know—”

  His face twitched, a spasm gone as fast as it came. “Don’t play dumb. You’re smarter than that, and it’s … it’s insulting. Jamie insulted me, near the end, after all we had and all we went through. She said she loved me, lived for me, but didn’t show it, not after a while. Little niggling, nagging, grating insults, day in and day out. That’s not love.” He shoved her backward without letting go and she tried to protest around her fat lip. A tooth shifted and a jolt of pain shot up her jaw.

  “Please, Mr. Stevens. Please, don’t.”

  “Too late for that. She talked to you, you listened. You think you’re the first? You’re not. You’re not special. You’re not first. Just the first to find her. Maybe she wants company.”

  He pulled a handful of pills from his coat, pried open her mouth, and stuffed them in, jamming his fingers past her bite, forcing them to the back of her tongue. Tilting her chin up, he plugged her nose and rubbed her throat. She tried not to swallow, but swallowed. He held her against the wall, cruel hands crushing into her neck, until the world swam and her tongue grew thick in her mouth. A cloud bore her to the ground.

  Dark eyes stared down at her. “Goodbye, Molly.”

  ~

  Cold. Too cold to shiver, too cold to breathe. She reached out in the darkness for something, anything to hold on to. Her fingertips brushed something smooth. She stretched, reaching, and pulled the orb toward her. It scraped across the floor in the pitch black, and a tear escaped as her fingers traced over the top to the brow, eye sockets, empty nasal cavity, and ruined teeth.

  February break. Friday afternoon through the following Monday morning. Ten days, give or take. Ten days before anyone would look for her in school, and no one to miss her at home. Ten days in the frigid dark, with black mold and Jamie Martin’s skeleton for company.

  She couldn’t feel her toes, and her ankles burned through her socks.

  The skeleton next to her shifted, a faint rustle almost too quiet to hear. Its finger rang against the ladder, staccato taps she couldn’t put together without the translator. Molly reached for her phone, thrust her fingers deep into empty pockets, and let out a sob.

  Frigid air slithered through her lungs, stagnant and precious proof of life.

  Jagged shards of white-hot agony shredded her chest as she tried to lift herself from the ground. She collapsed next to the skull, panting. She’d broken her leg in Pee-Wee soccer a long time ago. This felt like that, only all over.

  Cheek against the ice-cold floor, she reached out one-handed, feeling in the dark for anything that might help her. Brittle clothing crumbled at her touch, revealing naked bone beneath, jagged and splintered where Jamie’s ribs had fractured. An old belt, stiff in the cold, the metal buckle frozen to the floor, but no bags, no tools, no walkie-talkie or phone or radio.

  She moved higher, tracing the outstretched arm over the handcuffs to the twitching hand, tapping away a fervent message too fast and too long for her to understand. It calmed as her hand covered it, and it tapped a single word.

  WARM

  She tried to speak, but no sound escaped her ravaged throat. Instead she slid her index finger past and tapped a memorized phrase on the ladder. WHO ARE YOU

  Images flooded her mind, a young woman in an Air Force uniform, short red hair and a beautiful smile. A helicopter ride over the desert. Mr. Stevens in uniform, on his knees, holding an open box with a gold ring inside. Fighting. Broken bones, a shattered jaw. Wounds hidden from family and friends back home.

  Warmth and sorrow slithered into her, a life wasted and dumped in the eternal cold, seeking release. Seeking justice. Comfort. Warmth. With the memories came patterns she hadn’t had enough time to learn, the dots and dashes like second nature to a Signals Intelligence officer.

  She tapped on Jamie’s shattered skull. HOW DO WE GET OUT?

  The skeletal hand tapped on the rung.

  FIND ME

  Molly joined her, and they tapped together.

  FIND ME

  Again and again in the dark, desperate, until hope faded and the cold took her and plunged her into hard, unrelenting nothing.

  ~

  Molly woke in the darkness, alone and too warm, unnaturally warm. Her skin burned, liked chapped lips from too much skiing, but everywhere and nowhere, a disembodied pain that encompassed her entire world. Pushing through the agony, she felt but couldn’t see her breath frosting against the back of Jamie’s skull, the dead girl silent for the time being.

  “I’m f-freezing. Can you—can you h-help me?” A piteous voice rasped from her throat, sore like poisoned needles in the back of her mouth.

  The skeleton made no reply.

  Jamie repeated the phrase.

  Its finger twitched under her palm, lifted to the rung, and tapped.

  HELP ME

  “Yes. C-can you? Help me?”

  HELP ME

  “No, you don’t understand. I n-need you to help me. I need to get out.” The last phrase faded to nothing as her voice failed, throat too damaged to continue.

  Jamie tapped.

  GET OUT HELP ME HELP ME HELP ME GET OUT

  Molly groaned and tried to stand. Her body protested, every motion a new study in just how much damage Mr. Stevens had done. She couldn’t move her legs enough to sit, even pushing against the wall. She couldn’t lift her arms enough to push up, and even trying sent spasms through her body.

  Tears froze in her eyes. Words formed on her lips, too quiet for even the dead to hear. “You brought me here to die with you.”

  WITH YOU

  WARM

  WITH YOU

  She closed her eyes, and slept.

  ~

  “Hello?” A man, somewhere above, muffled and too quiet.

  Frost crusted her eyelids, held them shut. She couldn’t move, not even to lick her li
ps, as the voice called again.

  “Molly Fitzgerald, you in here?”

  Voices bantered back and forth, strong male voices, Principal Lawson and others she didn’t recognize.

  “She has to be. Cameras show she came in here, never came out.”

  ‘‘—her necklace in his car. We took him down to—”

  “—nothing here.”

  “Maybe she—”

  She tried to scream, to make any noise, but nothing came out. She tried to reach for the rung, but her hand didn’t move. Her lips moved against the ice-cold skull, a desperate plea with her last shred of energy, movement without sound. “Help me.”

  A faint rustle and the skeleton shifted. Then bone rang on metal with sharp peals.

  HELP ME

  HELP ME

  HELP ME

  A voice above responded. “Do you hear that?”

  “Morse code?”

  Jamie tapped on, repeating the phrase again and again while Molly lay still, broken and unable to move.

  “Is that a door?”

  “Help me move this thing.”

  She tried to open her eyes, hold them open long enough to see the light, but the tapping faded and she knew no more.

  ~

  The screaming wouldn’t end. High, then low, then high, it shook her body and threw her side to side. She only knew pain, and unending screams. It hurt to move, it hurt to lie still. It hurt to breathe.

  But she breathed, sweet country air tinged with bleach and the acrid bite of medicine.

  I’m alive.

  “She’s waking up.” A male voice, soft but urgent.

  “Good. They’ll want her statement at the hospital, if she’s up for it.”

  Divine light blinded her, white and pure, and the shrieking faded to an ambulance’s unsteady wail.

  “Molly, can you hear me?”

  “Yes.” No sound came out of her raw throat. She tried again, and again, and squeezed her eyes shut against unbidden tears, hot on her skin. He shushed her.

  “You’re going to be okay. You’ve got some frostbite and hypothermia, a lot of broken bones, but we’re keeping you warm and giving you fluids. They say you know Morse code. Can you tell us what happened?”