The Shells Of Chanticleer (11 page)

There was something bad underneath the surface that everyone knew about but couldn’t say. If failing had a consequence bad enough to make people cry about it, why wouldn’t they tell me what it was?
Why make me wait?
I needed someone to break down and tell me and I thought that Bing might be the one.

The next morning there was still no appointment with Miss Clarice and I decided to take matters into my own hands. I would sit in the town square and catch Bing as he walked by. I would convince him to tell me everything.

At first I felt a little awkward sitting on a bench alone in the middle of all the activity. I wished that I recognized more of the faces walking by. That vague sensation that people were staring at me never went away, and it was especially strong sitting there alone. I wasn’t one of those independent girls who made up her mind and went all sorts of places alone. I should have thought to bring a book so that I looked busy.

Yet, to my advantage, my awkwardness faded in a few minutes. There was so much to look at. I saw Poppy still walking around with more books on her head. There was a boy trying to get up on a horse but failing time after time. Rafe’s poem recitation was ongoing. I waved at him and he seemed happy to see me. I saw a boy hightailing it away from a cocker spaniel that was anxious to play.
Afraid of dogs. That’s too bad.

I sensed someone looking my way. I seemed to have caught the attention of a strong presence, an older man dressed in a blue old-fashioned suit coat and black pants that cut off at the knee. Knickers, yeah, that’s what they were. He wore a red silk cravat twisted at his neck, and his long white hair was tied back in a ponytail. He looked like a walking portrait of George Washington, or a similar relic from a time warp. I thought he had to be lost, still looking for that low door in the wall that would take him back to his people.

He walked with a cane and his black shoes were so highly polished I imagined he could check his teeth in them. His wooden teeth most likely, I laughed. In his hand he held a leash on which he led a small white fox whose ears darted back and forth like a mini-radar system as it ran ahead to sniff the lampposts.

The man stopped on the sidewalk across the street from me and stood completely still, looking my way. He caught my eye and held his gaze, unblinking, as if wanting me to acknowledge him. Then, to my horror, he smiled at me, a slow smile that seemed to take forever to reveal itself. I could feel my skin flush and I quickly fixed my eyes on the ground.
Go away, weirdo,
I thought, my heart thudding loudly against its chambers.

I kept my eyes safely downcast for a good minute and when I looked up he had moved on, but my heart kept racing and I realized that I didn’t know where to go if I needed to report suspicious behavior. There had been no mention of law enforcement in the training session, and I’d seen no policemen. Who would issue the warning bulletin, I wondered, and then I laughed. That was my problem, wasn’t it? I was always afraid someone was following me. Miss Clarice would tell me that I was only imagining the man was staring at me, and then dismiss me.

Luckily, just then I saw Bing striding merrily down the sidewalk. Relieved, I jumped up to intercept him. I noticed he had a fresh staff sweater on that day, after all. I wondered if Violet had embarrassed him.

“Hello Bing!” I said, walking quickly to keep up with him. Looking over my shoulder, the strange man was nowhere to be seen.

“Macy, what a treat! It’s not our coursework day yet, but it’s coming soon, I promise.”

“Yes, I’m a little nervous about that. I need to talk to you about something else,” I said.

“I’m intrigued. I was on my way to do an errand for Miss Clarice, but I love nothing more than to go astray. You know you can come to me for anything, chickie. I’m here to help! It’s a beautiful day, so let’s take the circuit around Ch-cleer and tell me what’s bothering you.”

The circuit was a gravel footpath that crisscrossed Chanticleer. It meandered for miles and broke off into different paths that led back and forth across town. I heard about it in the training session.

As soon as we had walked for a little bit and had more privacy, he asked, “So what is it?”

I didn’t hesitate, “I want to know about the shells everyone is talking about.”

“Ah, yes. The shells.” Bing bent his head and hid behind his hair so I couldn’t see his expression while he pondered my question for a minute.

“What did you hear?”

“Only bits and pieces. Mostly that they were disgusting, that they made Violet and Zooey cry.”

“Is that so?” he remarked, and then said, “Macy, I was proud of you the other day; you succeeded at the Prime Minister’s. I thought maybe you wouldn’t so I was kind of firm with you.”

“Would something have happened to me if I had failed that day?”

“It would have shown us that we had a lot of work to do with you,” Bing explained. “But nothing would have happened to you. Not right away, anyway.”

I pushed, “But later?”

“Possibly. If things continued to go bad,” Bing said.

“What would happen, Bing? I want to know.”

He looked at me steadily, weighing a decision in his mind.

“You are awfully new here. I don’t want to overwhelm you with the oddities of this place. Sometimes a slow drip of information is easier to digest.”

“But I don’t feel that way,” I pleaded, looking at him sweetly, trying to force him into telling me by pitying my confusion. “I feel out of things. I need to know.”

“I want to tell you. But you might regret knowing, afterward. They keep you in the dark here for a reason. I don’t know if you can handle it.”

“I can,” I said, my impatience rising to the surface. I was on the cusp of discovery. I wasn’t going to give up.

“Then I think it is better for me to show you than to try and use words to explain it. I don’t really have words for it anyway.” Bing sounded serious. “Come on then, but you can’t speak a word of this to anyone. We could both get into great trouble. I’m not sure it would be tolerated. So first you have to promise me.”

I did.

He turned around and we headed back toward town, only to break off from the main path again in a different direction. Bing chatted as we walked. He saw no great sin in being informed, he said. He would want to know too, he reasoned, if he was in my position.

“I want you to succeed here, Macy. It’s important to me. Maybe this will help you.”

“Yes, I’m sure it will.” I would have agreed to anything to get my way and find out about the shells.

We walked for maybe an hour, picking up the circuit as it wound playfully past open parklands full of tall grass, yellow fields, and then into the shady woods once again.

I noticed that, unlike other offshoots of the circuit, there was a paved roadway next to the footpath, used for service vehicles and the like. The road signs urged caution. Then I saw a sign that read RESTRICTED AREA. SECURITY CLEARANCE REQUIRED. I paused but Bing breezed right by as if the restriction did not apply to him. I thought that so far out from town the area would be deserted, but it appeared the roads were used often.

We soon came to a stark building unlike the other structures in Chanticleer. Shaped like a lacquered white box, the building had no windows. A driveway wound around the side.

“This reminds me of our field trip to the art museum,” I said.

“Yes, it is something a little like that. Only completely different.”

Bing sauntered up to the unlocked door. I stepped into a deserted, hushed lobby. Spotlights in the ceiling shed circles of light onto black marble floors. The anteroom was somber; there was no welcome desk or gift shop, no people milling around. Why build something so modern and unlike the other buildings in Chanticleer?
Why is it hidden out here?
Bing, now my docent, paused a minute before going further.

“What you are going to see here are our failures. This is where we keep them, as a reminder. Now, don’t be afraid. Actually I think it is good for you to see the shells earlier in your stay here, rather than later, so you can keep everything in perspective. So with that said, come on, here we go.”

He walked to a large metal door and swung it open. I walked through behind him. We were in a large hallway flanked on both sides by floor to ceiling glass cases. Inside the cases were vignettes of the familiar streets and scenes, the buildings and rooms of Chanticleer itself. They had recreated the birch tree forest where that hut was. The cases were softly lit but the center hall was pitch dark. I could barely see the back of Bing’s head and he was right in front of me.

“This is a museum after all,” I said. “Why is it so dark in here, Bing?”

Being there felt forbidden and a little exciting. I walked up to the glass of the display case and pressed my nose up against it. What I saw was strange. It was a figure of a child sitting upright in bed, dressed in a striped nightshirt. I recognized the setting. It was a replica of one of the bedrooms in Summer Hall. It was just like the bedroom I slept in. As I looked closer I saw it was a real girl, her skin yellow and transparent. Her fur bedcovers were pulled up to her chin but her fingers lay stiff and unnaturally curled on top.

Her thick dark hair floated up and away from her head, suspended in the air as if she was floating in water. She looked unhealthy, like she had been locked in a cupboard all night and was starved for fresh air. Her eyes stared straight ahead, unblinking, her lips pursed together in a grimace. She was as stiff and calcified as a cracked old eggshell. She was dead, I decided.

In a rush it all came together. They killed you when you failed here and then stuffed you in the case to rot. You never got back home. I never saw police here, once, ever. They got away with it, of course. No wonder the girls wouldn’t tell me. No wonder it made Zooey cry.

The room was lined with the display cases; there were not just one or two shell people here. There were more than I could count. Each had come to Chanticleer unwittingly and each had met their death. In a moment their rotting stench would fill my airways. I gasped and backed away from the case.

But Bing was right behind me, his hands resting on my shoulders gently, and in a calming voice he whispered in my ear, “It’s not what you are thinking. It’s not a graveyard.”

His words intrigued me. Somehow, even at that horrific moment, I still felt safe. I withdrew my hands from my eyes and slowly inched my way back to the glass.

“This is Helene. I mean, Helene’s shell. It was cast of her when we regretfully concluded she did not possess the willpower and discipline to get over her fears. I think she liked being weak. She was particularly afraid to sleep without a light on. That’s why they set her up here, in her bedroom, the source of her troubles.”

There was a plaque on the floor by her display that read Helene S.

“We spent three months trying to work with her, but she was full of resistance. She simply would not advance. She’s back in her own home now, of course, safe and sound, destined to let her fears determine her future.”

“So that’s only a copy of her?”

“Right, it’s her shell.”

We moved on. Next in the case was a boy; his curly wisps of yellow hair floated away from his head too, suspended in air. His skin was also slightly yellow as if jaundiced, his eyes closed. He was wearing the Chanticleer sweater and sitting upright on a bench in a replica of the town square. I read the plaque. “Jimmy B.”

“He would not get over his fear of spiders, among other issues.” Bing pointed to the boy’s hand in which he held a fragile daddy longlegs. Bing sighed. “We did not expect him to fail. He started off so promising, but I don’t know. Nothing ever seemed to stick with him from day to day.”

We continued to walk down the hall. I peered into the cases, fascinated.

“They are so lifelike,” I murmured.

“Exactly. That’s because they are exact replicas, cast directly from computer images of the actual person. But they are hard, like an eggshell. Here, come take a look.”

Bing walked ahead to the side of the display case and pressed his hand against the bottom of the side panel. The panel unlocked and Bing swung it open. “Come on in,” he motioned me.

I followed him onto the floor of the display case, unsure if I wanted to look closer, sure that I couldn’t resist. “Everything looks so real,” I said.

“That’s because it is real,” Bing said. “The shells are real. Here, feel it.” Bing took my hand and pressed it against the cheek of the Jimmy shell. It was cool to the touch and hard, just like an eggshell. “Tap your nails against it. Go on, no one’s home inside,” he laughed.

I tapped my fingernails against the hard shell of Jimmy’s face. It felt like a hard-boiled egg. I touched the ends of his hair that floated out from his head. It felt like real hair. I wove my way among the frozen corpses, touching the abandoned blazers, the floating hair, waving my hand in front of the vacant eyeballs. I couldn’t decide what was more hideous, the yellowish, brittle legs that stuck out from under the plaid shorts or the tapering, claw-like fingers. Their expressions were morbidly set in stone. Real people who once walked these streets, still here, sort of, but not real anymore.

“Let’s get out, it’s a little cramped,” Bing complained. I had seen enough close up.

We crawled out of the display case and Bing shut the door.

“Go ahead, take your time,” he urged me, as I crossed over to peruse the display case on the opposite wall. Chanticleer had its fair share of failures, Bing said. It was not uncommon to want to keep your fears. He pointed out the ones who were afraid to be home alone, to take tests, afraid of thunder, or to swim. There was a girl grabbing a handful of dollars who was afraid that if she spent her money she’d be poor, and a young girl with what looked like an oblong wet spot on the floor next to her.

“Afraid of her shadow,” Bing explained. “There are so many more failures that we can’t necessarily represent here. Afraid to hear or tell the truth; afraid of being abandoned; afraid to show your feelings. Afraid to be yourself; afraid to do anything other than what is expected of you. Those are hard nuts to crack and hard to illustrate, too.”