The Bride of Blackbeard (18 page)

Hearing more noise, she opened her eyes. A
young ‘
other’ was thrown into the room and sprawled onto the
floor beside the old one.

“Mary, is that you?” old one said as she
moved closer to the new young one, whose hair was matted and so
long it hung below her bottom.

“No, you old caw!” younger said, swinging at
the old one’s head.

Then on their knees, they locked arms and
pushed each other until they were quickly rolling on the dirt.
Barely missing Megan, she realized they were fighting. This time
she not only closed her eyes, but covered her ears as well.

Some sounds, like a baby crying or a dog
barking, made her feel like someone was driving a stake into her
head.

Like now. The old one howled like a
wolf.

She tried not to cry, because then they
would take notice of her, and the young one might attack her
instead of the old woman.

She filled her mind with Ma and Bess, and
her puppy. They
had
given her one, just like the boys. No
one thought she noticed, because she couldn’t speak, but she would
look out her window and see the boys with their dogs, and wished
she could try to run with the dogs as they did.

Now, the young one sat atop the old one. She
held her arms down on the floor. Younger was pulling older’s
eyebrow hairs out a few at a time while the wolf-woman howled.

Megan stared. Were her eyes seeing right?
Younger had no eyelashes or eyebrows. Seemed she ran out of her
own, and decided to now pull out wolf-woman's instead.

With this howl, some of
the men
came
in.

One man grabbed the young one. She kicked
out her legs and her teeth bared like a nasty dog from home. Megan
peeked long enough to see younger bite down into his arm, and now
it was the man's turn to scream. Two other men ran in. One man held
younger’s arms across her chest in a criss-cross. She struggled,
hanging in the air between the two while a third man grabbed her
kicking feet. Carrying her off through the doorway, she arched her
back and banged her head—hard—off the door. Megan thought she must
have given up because her body went limp.

The old one cried. Megan tilted her head in
wonderment. A minute ago they were fighting, now old one was sad.
Old one picked up a doll that looked like Megan’s favorite one at
home. She sat in the middle of the dirty floor, rocking back and
forth, repeating over and over, “Mary, my Mary.”

Megan could hold her own sadness inside no
longer, her wailing filled the room and echoed through the
cell.

The man’s
head shot in her direction
and his eyes narrowed. Had he forgotten she was here?

Walking over, he picked her up. Megan didn’t
resist. She was at their mercy. He carried her down the hall and
yelled to a woman, “All right, this wee one has to get out of
there, lest the wicked sisters kill her for certain.”

~ * ~

Megan paced, her feet making sounds off the
walls as she stamped on the cold hard floor. She had her own room,
so at least it was quiet.

Then
the men
had taken her to the
food place
. While there, the two big men had begun to fight
and they were on the ground rolling. Many of the
Blackhouse
white coats jumped in and tried to separate them.

That was when she’d done it—she slipped out
the door.

I have to find a way out. A way home.

Now she walked the hallways, passing each
door, eyeing the people inside each room.

Door one: Tied to a chair, a crooked man sat
staring out the window.

Door two: Arms lifted high in the air, a
beautiful woman with grey hair down to her knees twirled as if
dancing with someone only she could see.

Door three: A girl maybe her own age chewed
at ropes tied to her wrists. When the young girl spied her, she
started to scream.

Megan ran.

She ran until she couldn’t hear the screams
anymore. Scared...she was so scared. Finally, the fear started to
go away and she realized she’d run up the stairs to the next
floor.

Slowly she walked, watching all the while
for white coats, and the
monsters
inside of them.

Then she started running again, bent over
from fear. She heard noises that meant the
Blackhouse Men
were looking for her. Opening a door she stared at steps. She
climbed to the top level of the
Blackhouse
. There were no
more stairs.

This floor was wet. Looking up she saw holes
in the roof. Why were holes up there? Water dripped from the holes
and filled the hallways. The steady drip, drip, drip, made her
shiver as she remembered the baths here. She looked in each room as
she passed, searching for somewhere safe to hide.

A
clomp
at the end of the hallway
caused her to freeze. She saw movement as something passed into the
hallway from one of the rooms. She opened a closet and closed the
door behind her, willing herself still.

Something whisked past the bottom of her
skirt and she clapped her hands to her mouth to keep from
screaming.
Just rats, just rats
, her mind repeated. They are
better than
the bugs
or the
cold water.

Then she heard the housemaid pull a bucket
past the door. The woman whistled a strange tune Megan thought
she’d heard once. Tilting her head to the side she closed her eyes,
trying to recall the song.

The door to the stairwell opened and closed.
The whistling went slowly away.

Carefully she opened the door, peeked left
and right down the hall. No humans in sight. She leapt her way
across the puddles in search of a safe place. Some of the rooms
looked awful and she didn’t even want to step into them; she hoped
no one
ever had to go into them. She found a candle and lit
it, a skill she’d learned by watching Bess.

Holding it up, she peered into the gloom.
Many mattresses were now the homes of families of rats, their eyes
gleaming in the candlelight as it shone on their shiny black
bodies. She shivered.

She continued down the hall, finally finding
a room that seemed to be animal free. At the window she stood,
seeing for miles over the beautiful grounds.

If not for the woods, it would look like a
garden...but these woods are not like those at home.

Gathering blankets she’d found for warmth,
she relaxed and her mind began to drift to home.

She thought of Mother. Not the mother that
was small and had the pinched face and wrinkled nose. That wasn’t a
mother.

At night, when everyone thought her asleep,
she would often look at the picture books in her room. Several
contained pictures of women in rocking chairs, holding children
close, reading to them from books.

THAT was a
mother.
She just knew it
was.

No matter what anyone else said, the one
they called Stanzy—she was Mother. She wanted so much to see her
now. Mother would often hold her on her lap and whisper
words...words she didn’t understand, but by
how
she spoke
them to her, she knew they must mean something good.

I want to go home, I want to go home. Please
let me go home.

Megan cried again, but more softly this
time. She drew her legs up to her chest and began to rock. Finally
she fell asleep.

She awoke to dogs barking.

Close.

Shaking her head to clear it, she
listened—her one sense that worked
really
well. Tree
branches scratched the window. Was a storm coming? A single cricket
chirped outside. Now... now she heard dogs clawing at the floors
below in search of her.

Scared, she searched for an escape. She saw
something she recognized from home. She walked over to it and eased
open its hatch. Dishes and glasses were still inside, so she
quietly pushed them aside just enough to squeeze her body in. The
dumbwaiter slowly began to rumble down, but it squeaked
noisily.

She could hear the dogs’ barking move away
as she felt herself falling farther and farther down.

At last it hit the bottom with a thump, and
she sat...listening. No sounds—she cracked the door open a
little.

What she saw next made her close her eyes
and rub them vigorously. Surely she must be having a nightmare.

In a room filled with beds and comfortable
looking chairs, unlike any she’d seen before in the
Blackhouse,
sat human statues. Climbing out of the
dumbwaiter, she slowly began to walk through the room, fearing if
she moved too quickly it might awaken them. And who knew what they
would do—perhaps claw at her.

One beautiful woman with black hair sat in a
chair at the window, her back straight, an arm raised, her head
tilted to the right—posed as if listening. Megan moved around to
the front of the chair and stared intently into her face. The woman
stared unblinking. In a brief flash, she wondered if this were how
she looked to others when she crawled into her mind.

She waved her hand in front of the woman’s
face, but the breathtaking statue didn’t stir or blink. Her
fingernails had grown so long they curled from each finger.

An old man sat on a chair with both arms
raised to the heavens. The man’s head and neck were so tilted that
Megan looked up to see if the answer might be on the ceiling. A
feeling she didn’t like raced down her spine and she stepped
back.

It seemed people could act like this no
matter what age or whether a man or a woman.

An older woman lay curled on a bed like a
baby. Megan got closer and was tempted to touch her to see if she
still drew breath, but she couldn’t make herself do it.

Scratching on the floor overhead awakened
her to the current danger. They were coming.

She bolted as quickly as her legs would
carry her into the hall and ducked into another room.

Where am I? Where are all the people who
act like Ma and Pa? Why do they act like they cannot see me? Have I
disappeared
? She reached down and patted herself all over to
make sure she was still solid.

In the next room all the people moved, but
they looked really strange.

Everywhere her eyes beheld old women—all
holding dolls in their arms. Several stood in a circle, their
weight shifting back and forth in unison, as one sang a lullaby.
Others sat in rocking chairs, cradling the dolls to their bosoms
and whispering sounds to babies that weren’t real.

The room was filled with a blend of
whispering and lullabies at a pitch that made Megan’s ears sting in
pain. Covering her ears, she shook her head back and forth, losing
touch with reality for a moment. This happened to her when her
world became too loud or too bright or too much of anything.

I cannot stand the noise. It hurts my ears.
It hurts too much.

She fought the urge to leave and crawl
inside herself, but she knew if she did, they would find her and
things would be much worse.

She willed her legs to move, but they stayed
rooted to the spot. Her mind was too focused on blocking out the
sounds for her to move her legs.

“Stop it!” she finally yelled and all the
old eyes instantly turned to her.

The sounds ceased and, as if by magic, her
legs were freed. She fled as one woman reached for her, but
missed.

They are near. If they find me, it is
back into the water or worse.
The barking dogs were so close
she could hear them sniffing.

She reached a room that had a strange rope
arrangement across it that reminded her of a spider web. Small
enough, she easily slid under one of the gaps in the ropes.

The people in this room wandered. A man
walked in circles over and over again, never stepping off his
unseen path.

A young woman opened and closed, opened and
closed a door.

A young man sat and hummed to himself as he
continually watched a music box spin.

She hid behind one of the rockers, and held
her breath.

~ * ~

“Where could she be? We have searched every
one of the floors, four times over.”

“Heads will roll if she is not found!
Continue the search!”

Two men in white jackets peered into the
repetition room
, the candles they held making their faces
look scary.

Megan sat as still as one of the statue
people until their lights faded to darkness.

She lay down on her side in the room and
curled into a ball. Somehow she wasn’t frightened in here. She
didn’t believe these people would even notice her.

Megan waited for what seemed like hours.
Sneaking out of the repetition room, she headed up the staircase to
the next floor. The dumbwaiter had carried her almost to the
basement level of the
Blackhouse
.

This floor was decidedly colder, and she saw
no one. Most of the rooms she passed were empty. In a few, older
people were lying in beds—they appeared to be sleeping.

At the end of the hallway, she saw a door
that had a rope net over it to keep the occupant inside. Looking
up, she saw at the very top of the door, a small space between the
net and the ceiling. Inside the room a woman sat rocking, softly
humming a haunting tune. Her room was different from the others.
Pictures hung all over her walls, and she even had a beautiful
polished tea set.

Stomach rumbling, Megan looked hungrily at
the tea tray. They hadn’t let her eat anything for two days. Since
the forced vomiting, her stomach made noise almost continually. In
the silence, the sound was truly loud.

The woman must have heard for she turned and
looked at Megan. Smiling, the woman beckoned to her.

Megan realized she remembered this woman
from the last time she’d been here, only then the lady had eaten
with everyone else. She’d given Megan part of her food and held her
on her lap. The only five minutes of her last
visit
that
she’d felt safe had been in this woman’s arms.