by Krystle Able
I waved back, not sure of what else to do, then felt foolish and stuffed my hands into my pockets. She smiled wider and patted the bed beside her. I walked over to her window instead and peered outside towards the shop. I needed to make sure she had seen what happened to number 22 before I asked her why she wasn’t scared of me. Did I imagine her nod towards the fire, the blank stare in her eyes until they lit up as I pushed the girl’s body into the oven? Was I hallucinating her kneeling in the window, watching me?
I could see everything from the window. The cremation oven, the furnace, my supply cabinets, and the preparation table were all visible from her room. She had seen it all.
I turned back to her and found her staring at me. She wasn’t smiling, but when I made eye contact her lips curled into one in an instant. I scoffed, confused about how she could be so happy after what she just witnessed. She cleared her throat, and I whirled around to look at her.
“I need some water,” she whispered.
Her voice was still quiet and hoarse. She tried to swallow, but I could tell it was hard for her. I felt conflicted. I wanted to get her water. I had already saved her life by pulling her from the creek, and since she could get up and go to the window, she was capable of moving around which meant she didn’t have frostbite or hypothermia. I cared about if she lived or died, but if she was ultimately going to die anyway, what did it matter?
I cocked my head to look at her, and she raised an eyebrow as if I were the strange one.
“Please? Can I have some water?” she asked again.
“Who are you?” I asked her again.
“Ivy. You know me,” she insisted before coughing again.
“I don’t know you,” I told her, even though something was familiar about her.
I left the room before she could say anything else and headed to the bathroom down the hallway to get her some water. When I got into the all-white room, “the purifying room,” Dr. John called it. The large bathroom with the soaking tub was where the patients would bathe and receive their new clothes before their treatment started—before the experiments began.
Memories of all the girls I had led back to that room flashed before my eyes as I pushed open the doors. Most of my father’s patients had been older teens, between fifteen and seventeen, just a few years from aging out of the system. Once their caseworkers dropped them off here, no one ever thought about them again. Lucky was the first child Mama ever brought in, and she was the last. I needed women for my projects, adults who had already become who they were going to be and had no other way to become good again. My cure for their darkness was permanent. My father never could offer such a reliable solution. But I could, and fortunately for me, the darkest souls tended to gravitate towards me.
While my father was so focused on trying to break them open and let the light out, I knew the light he so desperately wanted to see, didn’t even exist. My father’s patients would have been better off if he had just let them grow up and then turn them into the light they could never be in life. All except Lucky. My father insisted that her light was the brightest of all, it was just buried deep inside of her, and for whatever reason, I believed him, regardless of everything the little girl had done. Lucky was special.
I leaned on the counter and sighed. Thinking about her made me sad, distracted, and my mission was almost complete. Number 23 was just down the hallway, the last piece to my collection. I had spent thousands on my equipment and pondered what to do with all of it after the work was done. Would anyone want to buy a house with a glassmaking workshop? Where would I go next? I could try to find my mother in Canada, but I knew she didn’t want me. She would have stayed if she had and not fled after she testified. Coward. I felt my lip curl up at just the thought of my mother and how she left me. I had to remind myself in times like that my mother had brought Lucky home and I was able to have four years with a sister. Once my father realized her potential, he favored her, allowed her freedoms in the house the other patients didn’t get to have. I was finally allowed to have a playmate, and she had been my best friend from the time I was twelve to sixteen.
Ten years had gone. I squeezed my eyes shut again and tried to remember what Lucky’s face had looked like the day she arrived, and mama greeted her with birthday cake. I remembered her shoulder length golden blonde hair and her surprised squeal. She was small for an eight-year-old which made the shock of mama bringing her home even more surprising. I smiled as I remembered how delighted that little girl had been and then I saw her face in my mind. Just like she was there with me, I saw her chubby cheeks, her pouting pink lips, and bright blue eyes that were different than any I had seen before. They didn’t sparkle, there was no life behind them, but there was something deep inside those eyes that we all knew indicated she was unique. I would know her anywhere if I saw her again, witness protection or not.
I picked up a dusty paper cup from the bathroom counter, rinsed it out, then filled it with water to take back to number 23. My mind was swimming with a million different thoughts and feelings about what the next few days would bring, and I desperately wanted to get back outside to my shop. When I got back to Lucky’s old room, I hesitated before going inside. I could hear her moving around the room, opening and closing the empty dresser drawers like she was looking for something—or snooping. I didn’t like nosey women.
I pushed open the door and found her with leaning against the dresser with her bra and panties back on. She yelped, and a piece of paper fluttered to the floor. She bent to grab it, but I was on it first and shoved her back. She stumbled but caught herself on the dresser to keep from falling.
“That’s mine,” she croaked and reached out to snatch it back.
I jerked my hand out of her way and set the cup of water on the dresser. She grabbed it and drank it in one gulp, then discarded the cup to the floor and lunged again for the paper. I shoved it in my pocket and grabbed her around the waist. She was feisty, just like number 22 which was just my luck. I dragged her back to the bed and threw her back down.
“What are you doing in here?” I yelled at her.
She crossed her arms and narrowed her eyes at me. Her lips were closed tight, and I knew she was done talking. I stormed out of the room and slammed the large wooden door shut and locked her inside. I could feel the anger building and paced the hallways up and down, practicing the breathing treatments Robert taught me. Artists must be able to have a clear mind; he would say so that they could soak up inspiration all around them. He would tell me that the only hope I had of becoming the artist I wanted to be was to let go of my anger.
My rage blocked creativity and held me back. I knew it was true. I often had periods where I was edgy, angrier than usual and I didn’t create during those times. I didn’t have the urge too. My anger consumed me and burnt up any inspiration, any desire for a muse that I had. Even the prostitutes on the streets who would’ve readily gotten into my vehicle and come back to the manor with me, easy targets, didn’t appeal to me.
I felt my pulse begin to slow and my thoughts to clear from my head. I took in another deep breath, counted to four, and let it out slowly to four counts. The woman, number 23, was infuriating but my supplies were ready in the hot shop, and my fingers were itching to have tools in them.
Chapter Thirteen
Nearly three hours had passed since I had put number 22 in the oven. I turned off the furnace and pulled on the industrial mitts. I pulled the lever to open the oven door and slid the tray out. A length of grey ash and charred bone was all that was left of number 22.
I scraped the ash into a large bowl. Chunks of bone and tiny pieces of metal, probably a few tooth fillings or an old retainer, clanged against the metal. I checked the molten glass in the furnace next and smiled. It was ready. Grinding the ash and bones was one of my favorite parts of the process. I found it therapeutic.
I sat at my workbench with a large mortar and pestle set made out of marble. They were one of the few things left in the house that wasn’t
broken or stolen when I was able to move back in. I dumped the ash in little by little and used a magnet to draw out any little pieces of metal that were left behind. I pulled two fillings out of the first load and set to grinding it down into a fine powder. The work was methodical and tedious but the most vital part of making my glass art.
I ground her body and thought about the first time I saw her. I was taking the pipes into the gift shop. I remembered catching the way she looked at me as I came through the front doors. I knew right away she wanted me, and all it took was a whisper from another employee, and my secret was out. She found out who I was, who my father was, and there was no getting away from her. I knew the type of girl she was before her boss, Melinda, the gift shop owner, warned me. She didn’t know Amber was precisely the type of girl I was always looking for.
I usually ventured out further than Bloomington which was only two hours from home to find my muses. I had never taken a girl from somewhere I was connected to before, but I was so close to the end at that point the thrill of doing something a little more dangerous was a temptation I couldn’t resist.
I remembered how her eyes traveled down my chest and lingered on my crotch when I set the box of pipes on the countertop and introduced myself to her. I was wearing basketball shorts that day, and apparently, she had liked what she saw because her reply to “Hey, I’m Carter” had been, “I’m so wet for you right now.” Just like that, blatant, out in the open. She was a slut, a whore, and she didn’t care who knew it. I was surprised she didn’t have a scarlet letter tattooed on her forehead like a goddamn medal of honor.
She clocked out fifteen minutes early and fucked me against the dumpster in the alley behind the shop like the trash that she was. She even let me pull out and cum in her mouth before she had orgasmed herself. She was the type of girl who liked to please, who needed attention, who wanted to be important to someone. I would give her exactly what she wanted.
I asked if she worked the next day and she told me she’d call off. I asked if she wanted to spend a weekend up north with me in the infamous McCourt Manor and she pleaded for me to take her. She had made it so easy until she realized what was happening to her and decided to fight back. Putting that girl in the cage had not been easy, but there her remains lay, turned to dust and ash all the same.
I dumped the last of the fine powdered ash back into the large metal mixing bowl and carried it over to the furnace. I wiped away the sweat that was beading on my forehead with the back of my arm. I had premixed the silica, sodium dioxide, lime, barium, and zinc for the glass the day before. I added a pinch of gold chloride to turn the glass red, then turned the crucible to mix the ingredients. I was disappointed that all number 22 would be is pipes, but I was happy to make something that I knew would get done quickly so that I could go back to the girl, Ivy, upstairs.
When the mixture was charged, I grabbed my iron blowpipe and stuck one end of it into the 2000-degree furnace. I pulled it back out to find a beautiful glob of red, hot molten glass on the end and quickly stuck the opposite end in a cool barrel of water. I took off my fire-safety gloves and tested the wet end to make sure it was cooled enough to start working the glass.
I blew through the tube, and the glass blob on the end began to bubble and balloon a bit. I sprinkled a bit of number 22 ash across the marver then rolled the glass piece across it to pick up the ash and elongate the glob and worked the glass, alternating between my block, and my favorite tool—the bladed tool called a jack. Every so often I had to stick the piece back into the furnace to add more layers. I turned the parison round and round, pulling and shaping the glass until the ash swirled through it like stardust, which is precisely what I told people was in my pieces. Not glitter, stardust from ground meteorites. Gimmicky, sure, but believable and a great sales pitch, especially for folks stopping through town on the way to the border crossing.
I stuck the rod into a different compartment in my furnace—the glory hole, to soften the glass, and finish the mouthpiece. I liked to imagine that the silver swirl of ash was their soul, trapped inside the glass forever and immortalizing the morally corrupt, evil women, forever. I detached the glass pipe from the rod and put it on a small tray lined with a heat protectant pad. My kiln was in the basement and getting the pipe to the kiln in the cold, wintery weather was risky. If the glass cooled too fast, it could crystallize. The key was to let the glass cool slowly over time by reducing the temperature little by little so that there is no strain or tension in the glass.
I picked up the tray and power walked carefully to the doors. The temperature inside the hot shop was sweltering—part of the reason I didn’t want all three parts of the heating system for the glass in the same building. The kiln had been a bitch to ventilate out of the basement, but it also helped warm the manor. The temperature difference outside could render this piece useless if I didn’t hurry to the kiln.
I pulled open the door and rushed across the yard carrying the tray in my hands. I took the steps of the cellar quickly and grabbed the tongs that hung on the wall next to the furnace kiln. I used the tongs to pick up the piece and move it to the kiln, then I set the temperature and headed back outside to start the next piece.
I pulled out my phone when I realized the moon was already three-quarters of the way across the sky and saw that it was already an hour past midnight. Exhaustion hit me like a wave, and I teetered on my feet. The cold air wasn’t enough to invigorate me. I wondered if Ivy had gone to sleep yet and I looked up to the dark window. No one was there. I sighed and went out to the hot shop to shut everything down for the night. I was tired and working with fire and glass when tired was never a good idea. Cleaning up the area took almost an hour, and after I sealed the ashes in a mason jar and put them in a cabinet, I trudged my way back down the cellar. The kiln was on a timer and would turn off on its own, but I wanted to double check the timer. When I was sure everything was safe, I climbed up to the kitchen, but rather than go through the foyer to the central part of the manor where my room was; I clomped up to number 23’s room.
The door creaked as I pushed it open, but no other sound came from the room. I stepped inside and squinted in the dark. A sliver of light shone through the slightly parted curtains and cast a glow upon the sleeping woman’s face. She looked peaceful, happy, innocent, but something told me she was none of those things.
“Carter?”
The whisper was barely audible, but I saw her lips move.
I stepped forward.
“Carter,” she said again, less like a question this time.
I stood over her and watched her face. Her eyelids were still, but I could see the rapid movements of her eyeballs beneath them. She was dreaming, about me, it seemed. Her lips began to move again.
“Mama Ester,” was the name she whispered this time.
Mama Ester, not Ester McCourt or Mrs. McCourt, wife of infamous psychologist and serial killer Dr. John McCourt. No, this woman whispered the name that our patients had called her. A name that had died or disappeared with the twenty-two girls who didn’t end up back in the hands of the government in witness protection like Lucky.
Lucky.
I narrowed my eyes and glared down at the woman. This girl couldn’t be her. They didn’t even have the same name for one. For two, they looked nothing alike. Granted, I couldn’t remember much about what the little girl had looked like, I still thought I would’ve recognized her if I ever saw her again. Right away. The woman I had pulled out of the creek had hair much darker than Lucky’s, although still blonde, and her eyes were different. Lucky’s eyes were the truest blue I had ever seen, and Ivy’s eyes were grey. I could close my eyes and picture each color distinctly. They were not the same person. How then could she know my mother’s name?
“Dr. John, stop, please, stop! No!”
The woman thrashed with each outburst as though she were in pain. Tears rolled down her face, but her eyes never opened. I sat on the edge of the bed and shook her arm to try to wake her. I d
idn’t want to hear screaming and crying all night and hadn’t brought any of the tranquilizers upstairs, but I was too tired to go back down and get it. I figured I could rouse her enough to exit her dream, but she jerked her arm back quickly when I touched her.
“Ivy, wake up,” I told her and grabbed her arm to shake her again.
She didn’t hear me, or at least she acted like she couldn’t but my grip on her arms seemed to soothe her, and the longer we sat there, the calmer she became. After a few minutes, her breathing became regular, and she settled back into her sleep patterns. I loosened my grip on her arm, and she sharply inhaled.
I knew what it was like to have nightmares. I suffered from them myself for the two years I was forced to stay with Robert and his family, but as soon as I was allowed to come to my home, to the manor, they had disappeared. Nearly eight years had passed since the last bout of nightmares, but unfortunately, insomnia had taken its place and sometimes I thought the sleepless nights staying up pondering my father and Robert’s lessons, everything I had done, and all that I still had left to do, was the worse curse.
I realized I hadn’t slept in three days—not since bringing Amber back here and my eyes were finally growing heavy. I knew I wouldn’t make it back to my room before sleep took hold of me, so I kicked off my boots and laid down side-by-side with number 23. I kept one hand on her arm and drifted into a deep sleep.
Chapter Fourteen
“Carter, hey! Wake up!”
Lucky’s tiny voice startled me from my afternoon nap. When I opened my eyes, she was giddy, and her bright blue eyes were filled with mischief. Mama had done her hair in pigtails that day, and her curls bounced on her shoulders as she shifted from foot to foot anxiously waiting for me to crawl out of bed.
