The Dark Remains (44 page)

You don’t have to do this, Grace
. The shadow pulsed around her, thick and hungry.
You don’t have to live through this, not again. Just let the flames come. That’s the way it ends. You’ve got to let them burn
.

But there was something important here—something she needed to remember. Grace surrendered to the dark. Somewhere owls wept. She was thirteen again.

Floorboards creaked above her: old pine sagging under a ponderous mass. That would be Mrs. Fulch, going to the bathroom after her bedtime glass of tea and gin. Her room was on the third floor, although Grace never understood why. It took Fulch ten minutes just to get up the stairs.

Then again, all of the faculty had rooms up there—the wardens, the nurse, the housekeeper, the groundsman, Fulch the cook, and Mr. Holiday, the director of the orphanage. Maybe that made it easier to keep the children out. The third floor was strictly against the Rules. Once,
when she was eight, Fulch had caught Grace with her shoe on the first step of that staircase and had dragged her to the kitchen to spank her with one of the big wooden spoons she used to stir the soup kettles. Grace had never tried to climb to the third floor again.

Somewhere above her, a door shut. Seconds later came a grunting sound, followed by a labored
whuffling
. It made Grace think of a
National Geographic
special they had let her watch once on the orphanage’s flickering black-and-white television. She liked
National Geographic
, even though Mr. Holiday said scientists were all godless sinners. The show had been about animals in Africa. A water buffalo wallowing in a mudhole had made the same exact
whuffling
. It seemed Fulch’s own cooking had disagreed with her. Again. That meant three or four more times that night the sound of her waddling to the bathroom would wake Grace up. That was, if Grace had somehow fallen asleep.

“Grace …”

The whisper was barely audible, drifting on the air of the dormitory.

“Oh, Gracie …”

Giggles.

Grace went stiff. Talking after lights out was against the Rules. So was getting out of bed, no matter how much listening to Fulch made you have to pee.

Bed-wetting itself wasn’t against the Rules—and there was lots of it there. Some days the yellow-spotted sheets flew on the clothesline behind the orphanage like flags. All the same, messing your bed was good for a swat or two from Mrs. Murtaugh, the housekeeper, or maybe from her husband, the groundsman, if she was too busy to do it herself—and Mr. Murtaugh’s big hands were rough and hard from work. Grace had learned not to drink too much before bed.

“We’re coming for you, Gracie.” More giggles, quickly stifled. Another whisper, falsely shrill. “It’s me, Mrs. Fulch,
and here’s Mr. Holiday.” Slurping, kissing noises. “We want to make you our most special girl, Gracie.” Hands reached from the dark, groping for her nightgown.

Grace sat up. “Leave me alone.”

She did not whisper the words, even though Mrs. Broud, the second-floor warder, would be sitting in a chair just outside the door.

The hands recoiled.

“You little—” A word Grace didn’t understand. “—you’d better shut up.”

That was Mattie Winter. She liked to use words she learned by lurking within earshot of Mr. Murtaugh. The groundsman had a habit of uttering a constant stream of curses as he worked; he never seemed to notice it.

“Did she hear us?” came a thin and piteous whisper. Lisbeth Carter. She could only speak in whines; it had something to do with her nose being too narrow inside to breathe right. These days she was Mattie’s shadow.

Grace could just make out their outlines in the gloom: one tall and thick, the other a knobby rail. When she came to the orphanage two years ago, Mattie had crowned herself the queen of the girls’ second-floor dormitory, and none of the other girls had ever disagreed—at least not without getting Mattie’s fist in the stomach as reward. Grace avoided Mattie when she could, but a few months ago the other girl had seemed to tire of Grace’s silence. Since then, she had worked nonstop to get a rise out of Grace. She hadn’t succeeded yet.

“I said leave me alone.” Grace did not lower her voice.

A muffled squeal. Lisbeth again. “Oh God, I
heard
something! Was that the door? What are we going to do, Mattie? Broud hears
everything.
”

“Like your sniveling,” Mattie hissed. “Shut your trap before I do it for you.”

Lisbeth choked on a sob. Her skinny shadow crept away across the room, to a bed on the far side.

Mattie’s eyes glittered in the faint light oozing beneath
the door. She was listening. Grace listened, too. Broud was a desiccated old woman whose gray hair was pulled back in a tight bun to display long ears like a donkey’s. And if she heard a noise in the dormitory, she would barge in, flip on the searing overhead lights, and bray like a donkey as well.

Silence. Not even the dry sound of Broud turning the pages of a yellowed volume of
Reader’s Digest Condensed Books
.

And why should I read anything newer?
Broud had said once in answer to Grace’s question.
Nothing decent has been written in fifty years. Perverts, that’s what authors are today. They spew out filth like a sewer and call it
literature
. Well, I don’t need
Reader’s Digest
for that. I can condense it all to a single word, I can
.

She never said exactly what that word would be, but Grace had a feeling Mr. Murtaugh knew it.

There was no sound from the other side of the door. Mattie leaned close, her breath hot and sour on Grace’s face. She groped for Grace’s chest, found her nipple, pinched it.

“Nice little tit you’re getting, Gracie. Do they twist it until you scream? Is that when they do it to you?” She pinched harder.

Grace clenched her jaw, willing herself not to cry out. Not so Broud wouldn’t hear. She didn’t care; the old woman’s braying couldn’t hurt her. It was nothing compared to the other things. She just didn’t want to give in to Mattie.

Mattie snorted and let go. Then, in the gloom, Grace saw the other girl make a furtive movement. Mattie’s hand went to her own breast, squeezed. Again.

Grace couldn’t breathe. Didn’t Mattie understand? She reached out a trembling hand and touched the other girl’s arm—

—and in that moment, as if a wire connected them,
she felt it. The hatred, the disgust … the yearning. In the last two years they had come for Grace, and Lisbeth, and Sarah Feynman and Nela Barnes. But they had never come for Mattie.

It was as if Grace had stuck her finger into one of the orphanage’s bare electrical sockets. How was she seeing this? How could she know exactly what Mattie was thinking?

But sometimes Grace did know things.

Mattie batted Grace’s hand aside. The wire was broken.

“You
bitch.
”

Grace knew
that
word. It sounded like Mattie was crying, but that was impossible.

“You skinny little—” Another word Grace had never heard before. “What did you do to me?”

“You want it,” Grace said, and that time she did whisper, because sickness strangled her. “You want them to come for you. But that doesn’t make you special, Mattie. It makes you …”

Grace could find no word to explain it. Because maybe, in the end, it made you into nothing. Maybe that was the only way you could stand it—to be completely and utterly empty. In the dimness, Mattie’s eyes shone with rage and hurt. And want. Then, with a sound that could have been a snarl or a sob, she slunk back to her bed.

Grace lay back and stared again into the dark. She forced herself to stop thinking. Once upon a time, at night, she would think about the people who might come someday to save them—people from the government. But then one day a man did come, and his eyes had been red and bored, and his suit rumpled and dirty, and Mr. Holiday had showed him around, smiling broadly, ruffling the hair of kids who passed, and the man had made some notes on a clipboard and left. And life returned to normal.

Of course, Grace had learned early on that life at the
Home was anything but normal. Normal kids didn’t lie awake at night, waiting for the soft creak of floorboards, and the hands reaching out of the dark.

Except they had come for her less and less of late. Something had begun to change six months ago. She knew it had to do with what Broud called—her long donkey nose wrinkled—
the monthly woe
. But that was only part of it.

It was not that she resisted them. She did not struggle or cry out when they came for her. She simply watched them. And they seemed not to like that. So she watched them harder. Then, one night a few months ago, the one who had come for her stepped back before he began. She couldn’t see his face—always they wore the masks—but his hands had been callused and strong. The hands of a workman.

Stop looking at me like that, you little Jezebel
, he had snarled.

Like what, Mr. Murtaugh?

She hadn’t even said the words aloud, but all the same his eyes had widened behind the slits of the mask. He shook a fist at her, as if to strike her, but did not.

You’re not better than me, you little harlot. You think you can harm me with your spells, but you’re wrong. You’ll pay for this sin!

Only she hadn’t paid. She had run back to her bed, and they had not come for her again. Nor had they come for any of the other girls. Sometimes, even without looking, Grace could feel them watching her: Broud as they spoke their prayers at night, or Fulch in the cafetorium. She would look at them and smile. Grace was watching, too, in her way.

Sometimes, as she walked downstairs to the first floor, she would hear voices arguing, quickly stifled when she came into view. And a few times, one of them had stared at her with a funny, squinty look. It was only when she saw the same look on one of the smaller girls that Grace finally understood what it was.

Fear.

Somehow that look made Grace smile. Last week, she had smiled at Fulch in the cafetorium.
Stop it, you horrible girl
, Fulch had said, wheezing for breath. Then she had waddled out as fast as she could, hand pressed to her mouth, and Mr. Holiday came in to tell them Mrs. Fulch was ill, and he served them lunch himself that day.

Silence again. Mattie must have crawled back into her bed, and Lisbeth, too. Sarah snored, and Nela was quietly sobbing in her sleep. She always cried in her sleep, even though the next day she never remembered it.

Creaks from above again. Fulch was lumbering back to her room. Floorboards groaned. A door squeaked as it opened. A long moment of quiet.

Crash!

Grace sat up straight in bed. She saw Sarah and Nela rise up as well, faint ghosts in their white nightgowns.

“
Shit
,” Mattie spat. “What was that?”

Lisbeth squealed. “They’re coming for us!”

Mattie reached out to hit her. Lisbeth crumpled on her bed, stifling her sobs with a pillow.

Grace cocked her head, listening. There was another sound, duller than the first. Like something soft and terribly heavy falling to the floor.

“Fulch,” she whispered.

“What is it, Grace?” Nela said, her small, dark hands clutching the sheet to her chin.

Grace said nothing as she slipped from her bed. She put her hand on the doorknob.

“Grace!” Sarah whispered. “You can’t go out there!”

Silence again. No, that wasn’t true. There was a faint humming sound, like the vibration of the tuning fork Broud used before she sang carols in her dry voice at Christmas dinner.

“
Grace!
”

She turned the knob, the door swung open, light spilled through.

A battered
Reader’s Digest
sat on Broud’s chair. The old woman was nowhere in sight. Grace hesitated; leaving the dormitory at night broke so many Rules there weren’t enough spoons in Fulch’s kitchen. But something was out there. She drew in a breath and stepped into the corridor. There was no need to tell the others to stay. She could hear Lisbeth’s blubbering. None of them would follow her.

She walked a few steps down the hallway. There—a scraping sound. It came from above, like rats on wood. She thought she heard a voice speaking soft, foul words.

Grace moved down the corridor. Doors slipped by. None of them opened. A hush had fallen again over the orphanage. Except for the humming. Grace could feel it vibrating along her jaw.

An opening yawned before her. Steps led up into darkness. The staircase to the third floor.

Grace clutched the worn banister knob and stared upward. Her knees turned into rubber bands. She should run back to bed now, before Broud caught her. This was worth a beating. More than a beating. But she couldn’t go back. Something was happening. She felt it, like she had felt Mattie’s hurt.

As if of its own volition, her right foot rose and brushed the first step. Above her, livid silver light welled forth. It rolled down the steps like glowing mist.

Do it, Grace
.

The humming rose to a high-pitched whine. Grace opened her mouth, but no sound came forth. The hum was the only sound. The light spilled down the steps, pooling around her ankles; it was cool against her skin.

You’ve got to go up the stairs. You did it once, when you were thirteen. You can do it again
.

Gripping the banister, Grace set her foot down on the step—

—and the world turned into fire.

No, this wasn’t right. The flames hadn’t come yet, not until later. Not until she had seen. She had to go up the stairs.

But the fire roared all around now. Grace curled into a tiny ball on the steps and wept the tears, not of a thirteen-year-old girl, but of a grown woman. Then the shadow swelled all around her and pressed out the fire.

Travis pushed back heavy curtains, letting bright October light pour into the room. He moved back to the bed and sat on the corner.

“Grace,” he murmured.

A soft moan escaped her lips, and her head rolled against the pillow, but her eyes were clasped shut. She was dreaming.

No, not dreaming, Travis. It’s more than that. She’s there again, living it. The shadow of the past
.