Souls Aflame (26 page)

Suddenly she clutched Julie’s shoulders. “They’re going to take my clothes. They already took my combs and jewelry out there. But they didn’t get this.” She reached inside the bodice of her dress and brought out a diamond brooch. “It was given to me by my father. It belonged to my real mother, who died having me. My stepmother will be wild with anger when she discovers I managed to sneak it out with me. She’ll come here looking for it. Hide it for me, please.”

Julie took the brooch and stared at it as she wondered where she could put it. They were allowed no undergarments, and she certainly couldn’t pin it to her gown. Finally she stooped and slid it inside her bootie just as the matron’s footsteps were heard outside the door.

“My name is Pauline Brummett,” the girl told Julie once she’d been stripped, put on her gown, and the matron had departed. “I just don’t know what I’m going to do. I just don’t know…”

She succumbed to tears, and Julie tried to comfort her, but the girl kept on sobbing. Soon, Julie hoped, Pauline would get some control of herself, but as time passed, she realized this was not going to happen.

Pauline would not eat, and after what must have been several days, she stopped talking altogether. Julie tried to coax her to take nourishment, if only for the sake of her baby, but she refused. She sat in the corner, face to the wall, the look in her eyes becoming more blank and empty with each day.

The squeaking of the door awoke Julie one morning, and she stretched as the breakfast trays of gruel were brought in. Reaching beside her to touch Pauline’s shoulder, she told her to wake up. “Maybe you can eat today,” she said hopefully.

The young girl did not stir. Julie rolled her over on her back, then screamed at the sight of the unseeing eyes, the feel of her cold, marblelike skin. Pauline was dead.

The two matrons who’d brought the trays looked up sharply at the sound of Julie’s cries, and, realizing there had been a death, they dropped the food with a clatter. The other women crawled forward on hands and knees to eat it from the floor, cackling with eagerness.

The scene was bedlam. “How’d she die?” one of the matrons demanded of Julie, then, not waiting for an answer, ordered the other one to go fetch an attendant. “We must get her out of here at once. Today’s the day some of the church ladies are coming, and we’ve got to clean everyone up and get them out in the yard.”

Julie was so saddened by the death of her only friend that several moments passed before she realized that here was her opportunity to escape. The door to the cell was standing open. The other patients were fighting with each other over the mess of food spilled on the floor. One matron had left hurriedly, and the other was still bent over Pauline, her back to Julie.

Quickly, quietly, Julie made her move, inching her way across the floor to the open door. Breathing a sigh of relief to find the corridor empty, she saw a passageway leading to the left. There was no telling where it led, but she could not risk going straight down the hall, for the main entrance was that way. The attendant would probably come from that direction.

There was a door at the other end of the corridor, but it was bolted. Behind her, Julie could hear excited voices. The other matron had brought help to remove poor Pauline’s body. Desperately Julie tugged at the bolt, but it would not budge. She slipped down to the floor, lest she be seen standing, and wondered frantically how long it would be till she was missed.

She watched with agony as they carried out Pauline’s body wrapped in a dirty blanket. Then, when the cell door clanged shut and the footsteps stopped echoing down the hall, she moved from where she had silently been crouched.

Inch by inch she made her way toward the front of the building. Finally she could see the door. But just as she was about to spring forward and make a run for it, the sound of high-pitched female voices reached her ears. Trembling, she pressed herself against the wall and hid in the shadows as she watched the church ladies filing into the entrance foyer.

“Oh, we’re so glad you could make it,” she heard someone speak, then leaned her head forward just a bit and recognized the matron she’d first encountered—the one who’d stripped off her dress that memorable day. “Suppose we take a tour this way to begin with. Our patients haven’t been up long. We let them sleep a bit late today. Had a little party for some of them last night, we did.”

Julie made a face, wishing she could just leap forward and expose the old battle-ax for what she really was—a cruel and vicious liar. But there was no time, and who would believe her, anyway? They’d think she was insane. No, she had to take advantage of the situation. The staff was running behind schedule because of Pauline’s death. They hadn’t had time to clean up the patients and get them to the courtyard.

“We have coffee and crumpets waiting,” the matron was saying. “Just follow me.”

Once more Julie found herself alone. Taking a deep breath, she made ready to lunge for her freedom—only to be forced once again to press herself back against the wall as closely as possible, for the hallway seemed to be filled with matrons and attendants, all moving quickly toward the cells.

“…have to hurry…” she heard one of them whisper nervously. “Miz Brandon said she couldn’t keep them sipping coffee and nibbling crumpets for very long.”

“We’ll change their gowns and get them outside,” another voice said quietly. “No time for a bath. We’ll just make sure none of them ladies gets close to ’em…”

As soon as they passed, Julie made her move. Hurrying to the foyer, she looked outside and felt a wave of panic at the sight of several carriages tied to the gate posts. They had obviously brought the visitors, but were there drivers waiting with the carriages? Of course, she reasoned, there would have to be. And they would see her in her soiled hospital gown and sound an alert! She’d be taken back to her cell and might never have another chance to escape!

Her heart was pounding so loudly she was afraid every one in the building would hear. She had to do something and do it quickly—but what? Then she spotted several of the drivers congregated around a water fountain. There was no way she could escape out the front door.

Glancing about wildly, she saw three other doorways. The visitors had gone through one of them. She hurried to another, opened it, and saw that it led to an office of some sort. It was not a good place to hide, she reasoned, because someone would surely be returning to it shortly.

That left the remaining door. When she opened it, a small shaft of light revealed steps leading downward. There was no other choice but to go down and hide until it was safe to go out the front door.

Carefully, cautiously, she took one step at a time, groping her way along by clinging to the damp walls on each side. Finally she reached the bottom, wrinkling her nose at the foul odors about her. It was so dark that the blackness seemed to reach out and gather her into it, and she quickly sank to the floor to wait, not daring to move about further.

As time passed, she clung to her sanity by filling her mind with thoughts of those she loved. Myles. Her mother. And yes, she thought of Derek too, praying he’d made it to safety. It seemed like years since he’d held her in those strong, wonderful arms of his, engulfing her with the awesome feeling that as long as he held her, no harm would befall her.

Myles. She could hear the voices of those taunting children as he limped along. “Here comes the gimp…look at the crip! Myles is a gimp-crip!”

He held his head high, those days when they were so young, pretending that the taunts didn’t hurt. But Julie would never let them go unheeded. “You shut your hateful mouths!” she would scream. “He got hurt saving my life. I’ll bet none of you ninnies would save anybody from a wild hog!”

Myles would tell her to be quiet, but she never paid any attention. They were hateful, cruel, all of them, and Myles was ten times the man they’d ever be—and she wanted them to know it.

She thought, too, of her mother, wondering
where
she was,
how
she was. Then it dawned on her, there in the smelly darkness, that the only person she didn’t miss, the only one she never thought about, was the man who was supposed to have been her husband—Virgil Oates. Well, she sighed aloud, when she got back home, she’d just have to tell her mother they must find another way to save Rose Hill. She couldn’t marry him. Not now. Not after Derek. Did she love him? She didn’t know. Her mind was so confused, but she was sure of one thing: Derek had awakened a need in her—a need to be loved—and Virgil Oates would never be able to fulfill it.

Julie’s back and shoulders were aching from sitting in one position for so long. Yet she dared not move, for she had no way of knowing what was around her. She could bump into something, make a noise loud enough to bring the matrons and the attendants. And she’d come too far to be discovered now.

Suddenly a thin shaft of light fell across the floor. At the same time, she heard the door above squeaking open. Someone was coming down the steps, and holding a lantern! She would be seen! Dear Lord, where could she hide?

Then she saw the space under the steps, laced with cobwebs, but she wasn’t about to let a spider frighten her now. Quickly she scurried into it. Something crawled across her foot, but she stifled the scream in her throat as she flicked the hairy creature away.

Through the slats of the steps, she could see their feet coming down—a man and a woman.

“This has been a day I hope I never see repeated,” the man was saying. “First that crazy woman dies because she starved herself to death. Then the church ladies come a’calling, and to top it all off—”

“Someone escapes,” the woman finished for him. “I’ll agree. It’s been a rough one. And Miz Brandon is fit to be tied. Nobody saw her leave, not even those drivers who were outside most of the morning. But she got away.”

He snorted. “Not for long. How long you think a loony can run loose, wearin’ a nightgown and booties and with no money? Someone will pick her up and have her back before morning. Just you wait and see.”

“Miz Brandon is going to put her in chains, she says.” The woman sounded pleased over the idea. “She won’t be getting away again. Now if only we didn’t have this dirty task to perform.”

“Miz Brummett told Miz Brandon there was a brooch missing. She wants it found,” he sighed with disgust. “Let’s search her body and be done with it. The undertaker will be here before long.”

Bile rose in Julie’s throat as she peered through the slats and saw Pauline’s body lying on a table, not three feet from where she had been crouched for hours. Swaying, she caught herself, fighting back the scream of revulsion that was struggling to escape from her throat. Not now. No, she’d come too far to lose now.

She watched with repugnance as they yanked off the poor girl’s gown. “How come we just now been told there’s a brooch missing, and she’s supposed to have it?” the woman demanded irritably.

“Seems Miz Brummett’s been out of town visiting relatives. She only got to looking for it after Miz Brandon sent her the message the girl was dead.”

“Here, you fool! Let me do that!” Julie saw the matron shove him aside just as she realized he was probing between Pauline’s stiff legs. “I’ll reach inside her to see if she hid it up there,” she snapped. “You’d probably get your jollies from poking up there, even if she is dead.”

His laugh had a nasty ring. “You like me poking in
you
, luv, and you’d probably still like it if
you
was dead.”

“Oh, shut up. I want to hurry and get out of here. This place always gives me the creeps. Smells rotten ’cause of the vegetables stored that go bad.” She shook her head and sounded disgusted as she murmured, “No, it ain’t up there. All right, it’s just gone, that’s all. She probably never had it. She was stripped when she came in. Like all the others.”

“Now we got to put her old clothes on her, the ones she had on when she first come. Miz Brandon said her stepmother didn’t want her taken out in her hospital gown. Seems her father don’t know she was in here.”

The woman picked up the lantern, using its light to guide her to the bag she’d left on the bottom step. Julie recoiled from the illumination that fell across her, and jerked backwards into the huge web of a spider. Apparently babies had recently hatched, for she realized with horror that hundreds of the tiny, scurrying creatures were swarming across her face.

She wanted to shriek, to scream, to slap at her face and hair and run from the loathsome things. But she could do nothing without being discovered. She could only cringe and stiffen, willing herself not to move or make a sound, and let them crawl about.

Once the woman moved away with the lantern, Julie quickly stifled the retching in her throat as she silently, hurriedly wiped her hands across her face, trying to knock the scrambling spiders away.

It seemed to take forever to dress Pauline’s corpse, but finally they stepped back. “That’s it. Let’s get the hell out of here. This place gives me the jeebies too.” It was the man who spoke.

They clumped up the steps together, leaving a curtain of darkness behind them.

Julie moved from beneath the steps, constantly swatting at her face and hair until she was sure she had rid herself of all the spiders. Still, she felt as though her flesh were crawling, there in the blackness with the sound of unseen things skittering about in the darkness—and the knowledge that a dead body was so close.

I’m being silly,
she told herself.
I have to get my wits about me and get out of here.