Kendall nods.
“Mrs. Fletcher, can I speak to you in private?”
“Of course.” Mrs. Fletcher gives Kendall’s knee a comforting squeeze through the blankets. Then she follows the sheriff.
When the two go off to the waiting room to talk, Hector and old Mr. Greenwood enter Kendall’s room.
It’s weird to have them here.
“Miss Kendall,” Hector says. He holds his cowboy hat in hand. “I’m so sorry for your pain.”
Kendall nods, saving her voice.
“How are you?”
She shrugs. Whispers, “Okay.”
“This seems strange, doesn’t it? But we are here for good reason. I need to tell you a story about one of my friends.”
Puzzled, Kendall just looks at them, from one face to the other, wondering what’s up. She nods and points at the chairs, inviting them to sit.
Once settled, Hector glances tentatively at old Mr. Greenwood, who sits down in the other bedside chair. He presses his lips together in a white line and stares at the floor.
Hector weaves his fingers together in his lap and gazes into his cupped hands as if he’s searching for the right words to spill forth. And then, after a few false starts, he tells a story from a long time ago. A story about a boy named Piere who was sent to live at the Cryer’s Reform School for Delinquent Boys.
He tells about the poor conditions there, and the terrible treatment the boys received, how one night this boy Piere had to sleep on his stomach because his back was in shreds, oozing with blood and pus from being whipped by the headmaster. How Piere’s best friend, Samuel, was sent for a whipping the next night, and Piere snuck out to the little white shack to watch through the crack in the door, knowing that if he were caught, he’d be punished again. But not caring. He needed to be there for his friend.
Piere watched the headmaster, Horace Cryer, bring down the whip again and again on Samuel’s back and thighs as the boy braced himself, back arched, over the whipping desk. He watched Samuel’s welts grow and turn grayish purple, the blood just under the skin, and then exploding red on the next hit when the skin broke, the blood spraying through the air, all over the walls.
Piere counted, knowing there were only two kinds of beatings from Mr. Cryer. Thirty-five lashes for minor disobedience. One hundred for everything else. . and sometimes for no reason at all.
When Mr. Cryer didn’t stop at thirty-five, Piere’s stomach clenched. After several more lashes, the silent Samuel let out a bloodcurdling scream, which only drove Mr. Cryer to bring the whip down harder.
Piere watched as Samuel’s elbows slipped off the desk, his chest and cheek smashing against it, beads of blood on his lower lip. He watched his friend’s eyes roll back and close.
Piere clutched his shirt in agony, tearing his own oozing sores open again, and then he stumbled blindly away, back to his bunk.
He never saw Samuel again.
Hector looks up at Kendall. She’s gripping the bed sheets, staring at him. The eerie numbers, thirty-five and one hundred. The whipping desk. . She tries to say something, chokes, drinks some water and tries again. “That’s a horrible story,” she says. “Is it true?”
Hector nods. “Yes. I am sorry I had to tell it.”
“Is that place. . is that where I was?”
“Yes.”
She bites her lip, thinking about Samuel. “You talked about a desk.”
Hector’s eyes glisten. His face screws up in anger, remorse. He nods. “The whipping desk. All the desks in your classroom came from the reform school. The state brought them over when they opened your school.”
Kendall just stares.
“And when Jacian told me what you said when he found you. . I am not superstitious,” he says, shaking his finger, “but I knew they should have left it there to rot. There was evil there in that place, on those grounds. Evil in the heart of Horace Cryer.”
Old Mr. Greenwood sits stone-faced, listening like he can hardly bear to hear it, denying nothing.
“Mr. Cryer beat us all multiple times over that desk,” Hector says. “Many of our friends were murdered by him. We didn’t know what he did with the bodies. We weren’t allowed beyond the gate. But now we know. . now we know. There are so many crosses.”
Hector pulls a handkerchief from his coat pocket and mops his face with it, grieving all over again. “You have to understand, we had no one. All of us either orphans or abandoned as hopeless delinquents, like me. Who would listen to us? We never talked about it, never told anyone. We only wanted to forget.” He dabs the corners of his eyes. “Make new lives once we got out.”
Kendall remains silently horrified as she tries to comprehend. The souls of the dead boys. . beaten into the desk? Trapped there, angry, their business undone. . stuck away in storage all these years, only to be set free whenever they found a body to go into? It was impossible. No one would believe it. Yet here she was, with two of the most respected people of Cryer’s Cross, and neither was denying it.
“We know about the voice,” old Mr. Greenwood says abruptly, surprising everyone. Then he glances at
Kendall, measuring her. “If you repeat this, I will deny it. But I have heard the whisper too.”
Kendall’s eyes spring open wide. “You have?”
He nods and looks back at the floor, as if he can’t look her in the eye. “I didn’t know where it came from. Didn’t pay attention to that desk in particular as I shoved the desks around.” He wipes his eyes with his hand. “Thirty-five, one hundred, buzzing around my ears, those numbers taunting me. I thought it was me. I thought I was going senile. Post-traumatic stress or something. The voice sounded like. . like
Samuel.”
“It said things to me in Nico’s voice,” Kendall whispers. “Tiffany and Nico both sat at that desk.”
“Yes, Jacian told me. We’ve pieced it together,” Hector says. “He said he heard whispers when he touched it too.” Hector looks up, out the open door to the empty hallway. “The sheriff will be coming back soon. He knows of our hunch about the desk, but he doesn’t know what to believe, doesn’t want to commit to a story so unnatural. I don’t blame him — two old coots like us with a crazy hunch. But we’re going to remove that desk. Not to worry.”
Kendall nods. “Thank you.” She is flooded with relief, so glad she is no longer alone in this.
“He’s going to ask you what you remember. It’s up to you what you want to say when he asks you questions. But as far as the people of Cryer’s Cross and the national news networks know, we’re all now looking for an elusive kidnapper and murderer.” He pauses, and his voice softens. “Maybe it’s best, for your sake, if it stays that way.”
Kendall sinks back into the pillows, feeling a little light-headed.
When the sheriff comes in with Mrs. Fletcher, Hector smiles at Kendall and squeezes her hand.
“Thank you for visiting, gentlemen,” Mrs. Fletcher says to the men. “It means a lot that you came to see her.”
Hector tips his hat. “Miss Kendall is a special girl, a good friend to me and my grandchildren,” he says, old eyes shining. “She is like family.” He gets to his feet, and old Mr. Greenwood moves to do the same.
Hector looks at him and holds out a hand. “Ready?”
“I don’t need your help,” Old Mr. Greenwood grumbles.
She told the sheriff that she didn’t remember anything, only that she felt like she’d been drugged, not in control of her actions. Tests couldn’t confirm any drugs in her body, but the reporters got anonymously tipped off nonetheless.
She sits in the hospital still, three days later, the small stream of visitors having dissipated. The local
TV news is on, and Kendall is watching people arrive for the burial service for Nico and Tiffany. It’s a big deal for southwest Montana. It’d be a big deal anywhere. Maybe seventy or eighty strangers mill around the grave site, those oddities who’d gotten sucked in by the story and feel, in some unexplainable way, connected to the two
