Torn

Daphne gasped at the sound. She shook her head rapidly to free herself of it.

“God!” Anne said. “Ever hear of a volume knob?”

“Silence,” the Headmistress ordered.

“Great idea,” Anne replied. “It’s free, and it’s for everyone. Try some.”

“Anne,” both Daphne and Mary said in warning.

“How dare you!” the Headmistress roared, reaching out to grasp Anne by the arm. “Your petulant mouth will get you a night in the Red Room.”

“She didn’t mean it.” Daphne rushed forward to defend Anne. She knew the terrors of the Red Room. So did Anne, but the black-haired girl must not be thinking straight.

Anne looked from Daphne to Mary, who remained sitting. She looked back at the Headmistress, her expression still sour. “Yeah, right. I didn’t mean it. Talk all you want. That’s your thing. Enjoy. Just let me go.”

“I’m not done with you, yet.”

“The hell you’re not.” Anne yanked her arm hard and managed to free herself. She stumbled back a step, and then turned to escape, but she wasn’t nearly fast enough. The Headmistress shot forward and again grabbed hold of Anne’s arm.

“You little beast!” the Headmistress hissed. “You will behave.”

“Stop,” Daphne begged. “Please stop. Anne’s just worried about Shirley. Really, she is.”

“Shirley,” Anne spat in disgust. “I couldn’t care less about that whiny freak.” She turned to the Headmistress. “And I couldn’t care less about you. I’m tired of taking orders from you. We’re dead. Do you get that? We’ve done our time. You have no right to tell me what to do. None. So go play Mommie Dearest with someone else, and get out of my face.”

“Anne, please,” Daphne pleaded.

Mary continued to fuss with the hem of her dress, unable to look up at the fight. Her mind raced. She wanted to help Anne. She really wanted to, but she couldn’t stand up.

If she did, it would have dire consequences for them all.

So she remained on the floor, pretending to be absorbed by her gown.

The Headmistress pulled Anne close with one hand, while pushing Daphne away with the other. “Upstairs,” she said, her eyes burning into Anne’s.

“Screw you!” Anne cried, returning the Headmistress’s gaze with equal fury. “You’re not my mother or my master.”

“You have no mother, child,” the Headmistress said. “That’s why you were brought here. As for being your master…”

The Headmistress blew apart into a cloud of vapor. Thin tendrils whipped out from the shadowy accumulation and wrapped around Anne’s arms, her chest and her face. The girl’s eyes grew wide with terror as more and more of her body became entwined by the misty ropes.

“Don’t!” Daphne shouted.

“Let me go, you bitch!” Anne screamed.

She kicked her legs and thrashed her arms, but her struggle was futile. The dark mist had her bound; then it gagged her mouth. Only her eyes moved, looking desperate in her capture.

“Oh, Anne,” Daphne whispered, hopelessly.

Then the cloud moved away, taking Anne with it. Across the great room. To the stairs. Up and up, until the only disturbance came from the storm wailing above the orphanage.

The girls fell silent.

Shirley, wearing her pink flannel gown, descended from the ceiling, walking like a crab down the flaking walls. She paused for a moment, searching the great room for the Headmistress, but all she saw was Daphne by the sofa, one hand covering her eyes, and Mary sitting on the floor, playing with the edge of her nightgown.

“Where is she?” Shirley whispered, too frightened to leave her place on the wall.

“She has departed,” Mary said. “Like the unforgiving tide, she has crashed to the shore, taken her due, and withdrawn.”

“Where’s Anne?”

Mary opened her mouth to answer, but Daphne spoke first. “She went back upstairs. Just for a while.” She knew the truth would upset Shirley, probably make her disappear again.

But Shirley already knew the truth.

“She’s being punished, isn’t she?” Shirley said, scurrying two feet up the wall. “Oh no, we’re all going to be punished, aren’t we? We shouldn’t have come down here. We shouldn’t have. It’s against the rules. Oh, why did I let you talk me into this?”

“Calm down, kid,” Daphne said, fully aware that it was just such an outburst from Shirley that had called the Headmistress in the first place. “Losing your head isn’t going to help Anne now. It isn’t going to help anything.”

“But what are we going to do?” Shirley wondered aloud.

“We’re going to keep cool heads,” Daphne replied. “Now, come join us.”

“We’re not supposed to be down here.”

“Fine,” Daphne said, exasperated and in no mood for another argument. “You go on back up, and we’ll meet you in the classroom.”

Shirley looked around the room, seeming unsure. Then she raced back up the wall, disappearing into the ceiling as she had before the Headmistress’s arrival.

Daphne crossed to where Mary sat on the floor. She looked down, perturbed at her friend. Through the whole ordeal with the Headmistress, Mary had done nothing. She’d just sat there. Such cowardice wasn’t like Mary, and Daphne was greatly disappointed with her.

“Do you mind telling me why you were acting like a bump on a log while the forest was burning down around us?”

“I had to,” Mary said quietly. She shifted slightly on the floor, getting her legs under her. She stood, brushing at the back of her nightgown. When she stepped to the side, Daphne saw Mary’s excuse for keeping still.

On the floor, in the place where Mary’s nightgown had pooled, sat a vermillion bag, the Clutch, and five small bones, still splayed out from their game. The tiny skull resting at the center lay on its side, one eye socket looking upward. It reminded Daphne of a wink.

She lunged forward and wrapped her arms around Mary. “Quick thinking. I’m sorry I questioned you.”

“The Headmistress just appeared so fast. I didn’t know what to do. The bones were all over the place, and the Clutch, and there just wasn’t time to pick it all up. So I covered them, like a hen protecting her chicks.”

“You’re wonderful,” Daphne said with a relieved chuckle. “Let’s gather up those chicks and go find ourselves a chicken.”

They found Shirley in the second-floor classroom. She sat in a shadowy back corner, her hands clutching the desk before her.

The room was even more dismal and depressing than the dilapidated great room below. Down there was dust and rot and general disarray, but up here…

Twenty weathered desk chairs sat in the gloomy space, four across and five back. A large oak desk faced the chairs from the front of the room. Against the wall on the left, a broad map hung from ancient pins. The window across the room was broken, webbed with cracks; a fist-sized hole was punched through it, low and to the right. Wind rushed through. Everything here was filthy, but it was not otherwise different from the way it had been, unlike downstairs where vandals had overturned and damaged the furniture. It was the basically untouched appearance that gave the room its particularly horrific quality.

Once, children sat at these desks. They dreamed in these seats, looking through the window at the great world from which they were delivered. Now, the arched-back chairs were empty and frosted with dust. Gray like granite. They reminded Daphne of tombstones, marking the passing of countless young lives.

And did I once occupy one of these desks? Daphne wondered. Did I learn here? Did I dream? Why can’t I remember? Why can’t any of us remember?

“There’s our delicate child,” Mary said, pointing to where Shirley sat at the back of the class.

“What happened to Anne?” Shirley whispered. “What did the Headmistress do to her?”

“The Red Room,” Daphne said. There was no point in lying about it. Shirley would pitch a fit, but it couldn’t