Noir (15 page)

Tw
enty-Six

Urlick

“Pull up here.” I instruct C.L. to stop the elephant behind a group of tall bushes at the base of the graveyard, halfway between the churchyard and the manse.

“But sir—” C.L. looks over at me, frantic. I can tell by his eyes he thinks I’m crazy to risk this.

“Well, he can’t come with us,” I say. I jump down from the breastplate of the elephant, carrying the child, my arms and hands bloodied.

“What are yuh doin’, sir?”

“Giving the kid a proper burial,” I answer, and stalk off across the yard, my steps heavy.

“Wait! I’ll come with you.” C.L. jumps to his feet.

“No. You stay here. If anything happens, you make the charge and come get me. I won’t be long,” I say, and lower my head.

“Will do, sir.” C.L. salutes me with his foot and sits down again.

I adjust Sebastian in my arms and head off across the open span of grass, dashing in and out of the wisps of trolling fog for cover. It feels so good to be free again, to be walking without chains. I only wish poor Sebastian could have experienced this. I’m stiff and achy, though the child weighs nothing. My heart is heavy as a hundred stone.

Silly little shit. Risking his life like that. I swallow back the tears that come. I think about what he last said. About the register and my link to royalty. The hopeful exasperation in his voice as he said it, and how with his dying breath he insisted I know where he left it for me. I can’t believe how brave he was.

I only hope that what he’s said is true, and the child has not died in vain. I steer away the tear that escapes my eye.

If it is the truth, what will it mean?

I haven’t time to think of this now. I need to lay this child to rest. I trudge on, knowing the officials keep an open grave dug in case of casualties over at the jug. I need to find it, lay him to rest, and get on my way, before things get worse.

I dash up the hill and spot it immediately. It’s shallow, ten inches deep at best, but it’ll have to do, I haven’t time to improve it. Besides, it’s far more decent than what the authorities would do if they were to find his body.

I reach the grave, bend at the knees, and the child flops forward. I roll him from my arms to the dirt and fall back on my haunches. I’m covered in his blood. It’s as though I were his murderer.

In a matter of speaking, I guess I am.

His body falls limp as I arrange him in the dirt—thin bones, a meatless middle, his tiny, gaunt face staring up at me. It occurs to me I never really saw him in the light, only that one time for a few seconds. I was right. He can’t be more than eight or ten years of age. What a tragic end to such a short life.

“Good-bye, my friend,” I say, swallowing back more tears. I reach forward, closing his eyes. Placing his hand over his wounded heart, I stand, chin wobbling, and reach for the shovel next to the grave, filling it with dirt. I wince at the sound of the blade as it cuts through the earth, thinking about my own eventual demise. Who will be there to see over me? To send me off? To say a prayer? Eyelet? Where is she?

I drop my head and say a small prayer, though I’m as far from religion as one could be—
Eyelet would be so proud
—then sprinkle the first shovelful of dirt over Sebastian’s face.

Poor child.

I mutter something more that I think Eyelet would appreciate, shake off my emotions, and get to work. I do my best to cover him evenly, with what little time I can afford, so the animals won’t get to him.

I’m nearly finished when—

“You there!” I turn into the eyes of the vicar squinting my way, struggling to make out who I am through the cloud cover. He’s not close, but he’s not far away, either. The clouds break and he spots me; his face is drawn in horror. I must look a sight. My usual repulsiveness, plus all the blood. I look down at my shirt, realizing what he must think.

“Put that shovel down!” the vicar shouts.

My heart picks up speed. “Please,” I say, starting toward him. “It’s not as it appears—”

“Help!” the vicar shouts, backing up.

“Please, sir, give me the chance to explain . . .”

The vicar stumbles into the mist, his head colliding with a gravestone. A twig cracks at the opposite end of the property, and my eyes shoot in that direction. Through a tear in the meandering fog I spot them—Brigsmen searching deep in the forest for the runaway criminal, their heads now turned my direction.

“Heeeeelp!”
the vicar shouts from his post on the ground.

The Brigsmen’s attention snaps toward the voice. Their steps halt. One more cry and the vicar will have given me away. I can’t let that happen.

I pick up the shovel and run at him. “Please forgive me,” I pray to the sky and bring the shovel down over the vicar’s head. The shocked vicar collapses in the dirt.

I drop the shovel, turn, and race for the manse, dipping in and out of the cloud cover.
Please, Lord, don’t let me roast in Hell for that.

When I reach the porch, I dive beneath it, shattering the delicate latticework that surrounds the edges. Barreling through, wood splinters flying, bouncing off my back, I skid to a stop just outside the front steps. I launch up on hand and knee and scabber about like a squirrel, in search of the register.
Come on . . . come on . . . where can it be?

I refuse to leave without it.

I can’t.
I owe that much to Sebastian.

Boots thunder down the hillside toward the vicar. Shrill whistles spike the air. I see their boots through the broken latticework, rushing toward me.

Soon, the Brigsmen will be here.

I lunge forward, spotting a scrap of cloth lying in the dirt, tucked under the last porch step.

“Urlick!” I hear a voice behind me. I swing around to see C.L.’s feet and the glistening jeweled toes of the elephant standing next to the hole I punched through the latticework. “Urlick, we’ve got to go!”

Boots thunder again. Closing in.

“Urlick!”

I throw myself at the cloth, clawing it loose from its hiding place. It rolls open, revealing the registry bound in black leather, tied up in a purple ribbon. A goose feather marks a particular page. I yank loose the ribbon and flip open the book. “Good God,”
I gasp, running my fingers over the entry.

“Sebastian was right, it
is
me.”

Tw
enty-Seven

Eyelet

We stand swaying in lines in the centre of the common room. Livinea, in the row next to me, still holds my hand. There are hundreds of us, maybe even a thousand—inmates as far as the eye can see, an ocean of silent, dark, waving clothing. It’s haunting, really.

The room smells of blood, sweat, and sausage grease, infused with the odd waft of defecation. Someone near us has soiled his or her trousers, too afraid to leave the line. I curl up my nose, shaking inside, and pull an arm to my face, hoping to deaden the scent as I gag. I look up at the ceiling. It’s covered in thorns. Even there, escape would be treacherous.

“It’s almost time.” Livinea leans over, whispering. Her eyes squash behind the wrinkles of her smile. She bounces on the pads of her feet as if she’s a child waiting for candy, not a chance at daily torture. What is the matter with her?

They’ve packed us in so closely Livinea’s wild blonde tresses brush the collar of my chemise on the left. I’m sweating and feel like I might pass out. My neck itches. Lights beat down on us from all directions. It’s like one giant interrogation room.

I raise a hand to my eyes to try to see what’s going on ahead of us, but all I see are backs. Livinea is just that much taller than me that she can see over everyone’s heads, including a lot of the men. She’s also that much closer to the lights—she’s perspiring heavily, her face glistening.

Music seeps out from massive gramophone-horn-shaped speakers near the raised stage in front of us; someone or something is playing Chopin’s Etudes no. 12, op. 25. The graceful tickling of the keys produces a fluttering, light, buoyant, whimsical sound, in direct opposition to the moment we’re trapped in. Lab rats, every one of us. Livinea’s right.

My heart races, speared with panic. My eyes won’t stop searching for a way out.

Livinea clasps her hands. She seems overjoyed by all the strange little goings-on around us.

I’m afraid I don’t share her enthusiasm.

Curtains part over the stage, revealing a door, and my breath skips. The door has a black, oily surface just like the one I entered the building through. It begins to ripple as if disrupted by a wind that does not exist. I look around, trying to make sense of it.

“What’s happening?” I hiss to Livinea above the music.

“The choosing?” Her lips part over teeth strewn with sausage guts. “It’s about to begin!”

She claps her hands as the music crescendos, changing abruptly to something more ominous, pulling my eyes to the front.

A guard stands next to the rippling door. His dark eyes cast out over the crowd. It’s the same guard from the night before, the one who took Livinea and—I swallow down the thought. In his left hand, he holds a horsewhip. He waves to the crowd with his right. I look over to see Livinea’s reaction, feeling mine burning deep in my gut, but she has none.

Again, it’s like nothing bad has happened. I wonder if she doesn’t remember.

Slowly the guard surveys the room. His squinted eyes stop to rake over Livinea, and light up. A farcical smile teeters on the edges of his lips. He licks them and twists the ends of his vile moustache upward, and it’s all I can do not to vomit.

Livinea quickly lowers her head. Her hand trembles inside my own. Something tender pulls apart inside me. She does remember. I shudder at the thought of his lips on hers, his hands where they shouldn’t have been. I squeeze her fingers tightly. “It’s all right,” I say. “I’m here.”

I look up to see that the guard’s eyes have shifted onto me. I drop my chin to escape his arrogant leer.

“It’s all right,” Livinea echoes, her eyes darting from him to me. “I’ll never let ’im touch yuh. I swear.”

I squeeze her hand again twice as if to say
thank you
.

A sudden rushed and hollow feeling comes over me. My mind goes from full to blank. I push at my temple, unable to recall anything, not even my own name. Why can’t I remember anything? I look up and gasp for breath.

“You all right?” Livinea whispers.

“No.” I shake my head. “I can’t seem to remember anything suddenly.”

“Don’t
wor-ry
,” she says. “It’ll pass. Or it won’t.” She straightens. “It’s always like this.”

“What do you mean?” When she doesn’t answer, I pinch my eyes shut and concentrate as hard as possible. Was there something in the food this morning? All at once, bits and pieces start to come back to me, shuffling like cards through my head. “The freak train,” I say aloud before I realize it.

“Shhhhh!”
Livinea scolds me. “We aren’t to talk in line.”

The spot in the woods. The hidden factory . . . C.L.
C.L.? What’s happened to him?

Why haven’t I thought of him before just now? Where has that memory been? What have they done to me? I clasp my forehead in my hand and close my eyes, and more images come flooding back:
the Brigsmen, the professor, the Loony Bin wagon—the look on C.L.’s face as I pulled away.
The wagon, that’s how I got here. Penelope. She’s the one who sent me. I mustn’t forget this. I’ve got to hold on to it.

Urlick! His name finally surfaces. I’m here to save Urlick.

I look around.

I’ve got to get out of here.

“What day is it?” I ask Livinea.

“Shhhhh!”
she hisses.

My memory. What’s happened to my memory? It seems to come and go. Perhaps that’s what’s happened to Livinea. Perhaps that’s why she’s so inappropriately cheery. Perhaps they’ve sucked all the depth of her memories away with all their tortures and left her—I’ve got to get out of here.

A trumpet sounds, causing me to jump, belting out long, sharp notes over our heads. My chin snaps up, as does every other chin in the building. Inmates click their heels together, shoulders back, spines ramrod straight. I look around and follow protocol, my skin prickling.

The trumpeter finally ends his wail and dismounts the soapbox, and the door behind the stage begins to shimmer. The image of a woman appears, a silhouette of black behind the liquid doors, as if someone were almost but not quite there. A pair of hands presses on the opposite side of the door, pushing their way through to our side. The skin of the door begins to slosh and jiggle. The figure leans and the membrane stretches out toward us, growing lighter in colour and ever thinner, like an expanding balloon about to pop. I wince—everyone winces—waiting for the explosion, trying to figure out what’s going on, when all at once the hands push through. The murky membrane snaps. It coils back around the figure; it looks like a person emerging face-first from a stream. The woman, dressed in the black mourning gown, steps from the illusion onto the stage, flicking bits of sticky residue from her fingertips. She turns, yanking her veil in behind her, as the door globs shut.

She steps up onto a soapbox, faces the crowd, and, shockingly, lifts her veil. Her features are for the first time clearly revealed.
“Rapture,”
I breathe.
Only she’s not wearing any glasses.

“How do you know her name?” Livinea whispers.

“Penelope? Her name is Penelope Rapture.”

“No.” Livinea’s brows twist. “Parthena. Parthena Rapture.”

Parthena?
I turn my attention back to the front, focusing on the mole on her lip. Livinea’s right, the Rapture I know doesn’t have a mole—but someone else I knew did. My mind shifts to Flossie.

The mole. The hair. Her torn mouth. Her pink, pudgy lip.

Parthena waves her hands, and the music abruptly stops.

“Good morning, inmates.” She grins. Her tone is harsh and slightly lower pitched than I remember Penelope’s to be, and not half as frantic. She’s also more graceful than Penelope is, and her cheek doesn’t twitch when she speaks. Other than that, and the absence of bottle-bottom glasses, this woman could be Penelope’s . . . “Twin,” I say under my breath.

“What?” Livinea turns her head.

“Nothing.” I shake my own.

“Welcome to your daily torture choosing.” Parthena’s voice crackles over the gramophone speakers. She brings her hands into a reverent fold across her chest. “May you all choose well.” She pulls her lips into a tight, smug smile. “As always, when you hear your name, step forward into the shower chamber to my left.” She tilts her head. “From there, you will sign up for the torture of your choice.” She flits a hand behind her, and a massive, sawtooth steel door separates. Its jaws pull apart from the top to the bottom of the room, revealing a large shower facility behind it. Lilac steam pours out from the bottom set of teeth in hurried, whirling puffs. The cloying bouquet of smells is both sweet and noxious, and cool to the tongue.

Camphor. Methanol. A mild anesthetic.
Benzene
. Is that benzene I’m tasting?

They’re dousing us in benzene.

I suck in a breath and hold it tight, motioning for Livinea to do the same.

“Oh, it’s not ’armful.” Livinea waves my efforts off. “It just makes the mind a bit sleepy, that’s all.”

“The rest of you will go immediately to the exercise room,” Parthena continues, and that’s when I notice Parthena and the guards are protected inside boxes made of glass that couldn’t be seen before. Individual boxes; one for each staff member. They move and the boxes float along with them, on a thick, roiling cushion of white steam. The steam curls outward, repelling the purple haze away from their airspace, sparing them from breathing it in.

I reach down and tear a piece of the hem off my inner skirts and wrap it around my face, leaving only my eyes exposed. “Here!” I say, quickly passing a piece to Livinea. “Tie this around you, quickly!”

Livinea laughs. She raises her nose to the air and breathes deeply, chokes a little, then smiles.

“Livinea, no!” I slap a hand over her mouth.

I look around at the other inmates all breathing deeply, as if they’ve been trained. They cough and choke, then heave in again. “That’s right, my pets,” Parthena sings. “Drink it in. Drink it all in . . .” She rolls her hands in the air as if conducting a symphony.

“No, stop, please! Livinea, you have to listen to me—” I tug her arm.

“
Shhhhh
, or we’ll miss our names.” She scowls.

Parthena turns her almond eyes toward the crowd and holds out a list. It unfurls to the floor. She starts reading out names, lilting her voice enthusiastically as if they were recipients of a grand prize. “Anthony Stocking. Harland Hertz. Eleanor Gillow . . .” The music returns, a soft but crescendoing background. “Esther Islington, Gladys Jefferys, Mahala Machester . . .”

One by one the inmates break from their lines and race toward the front. Some of them shriek and wave. I hold my breath, my heart pounding outside of me as Parthena nears . . . “Livinea Langtry . . .”

My heart stops. Livinea pulls her hand from me.

“No!” I grab at her. “Don’t go in there!”

“Don’t be sil-ly.” Livinea leaps to her toes, clapping her hands. “We has to go in there when our names are called. It’s the rule. ’Sides, I’ve been in there a million times before.”

She moves forward, and a streak of terror bolts through me.

I clutch at her sleeve. “No, Livinea, you don’t understand.”

“Not to wor-ry.” She smiles and tugs her arm from me. “I just go in, pick out me torture, sign me name on the paper, and then I’m free to go to the common room for walkabout.”

“Livinea Langtry!”
Parthena repeats, forcefully this time. Her almond eyes scan the crowd. The guard next to her reaches for a strange-looking steam-powered bow.

“I’ve got to go.” Livinea tugs away from me. “If I don’t, they’ll shoot me dead.”

She hikes up her skirts and she’s away before I have the chance to stop her, shouting back to me over her shoulder.

“I’ll meet you in the common room la-ter.”

Inside my head, the terror that’s bitten me is screaming.

“Eyelet Elsworth . . .” I hear my name faintly in the distance.

A seizing coil of horror burrows through my chest.
Was that? Did she? She called my name . . .
My throat numbs, my tongue, my legs. I couldn’t move if I wanted to. All at once I realize, perhaps there’s another reason I can’t. Perhaps the silver’s got me.

Parthena Rapture’s eyes lock onto me in the crowd. I struggle to find my breath. Her penetrating stare courses through my frozen veins. “Eyelet.
Elsworth
,” she says again, this time with harrowing conviction.

The guard at her side raises his steam arrow.

Gasping for breath, I somehow find my legs and will them to move forward, catapulting myself reluctantly toward the front. It’s not the silver, after all. My shoulders rivet with every step. I look around for a way to escape, but there doesn’t seem to be one. Guards stand with steam arrows aimed at me from every mount—staircases, stage, widow’s walks.

I slow my step as I reach the bottom of the door that juts up out of the floor like teeth. I look back over my shoulder one last time and bite my lip, my heart heavy with desperation, then step into the steam-filled shower room.

Thoughts of destruction whirl in my head.

Is this how I’m going to die? Willingly, like this?

I think of Urlick about to be dipped in wax and hanged, or perhaps it’s already been done. Perhaps I’m too late, for both of us. Tears blur my sight.

Inside the shower room, amid the frolicking purple mist, inmates fall into rows, lined up behind wooden tables manned by clerks dressed in full gas-masked hazard gear—rubber-and-canvas suits that cover them head to toe, held together at the joints with brass clamps—like the costumes deep-sea divers wear. Tiny hoses protrude from the tanks on their backs, leading to the giant fishbowl helmets they wear on their heads.

From behind their glass visors, guards bark directions at the inmates, passing out papers with white rubber-gloved hands. Behind the guard tables sits an assortment of torturous devices. Things I’ve never seen before, except as drawings in books.

Among the assortment are some medieval apparatuses that we were taught about in our obedience classes back at the Academy. Forms of torture the Commonwealth leaders adapted from the Middle Ages, used commonly nowadays to reform criminals—or murder them.