http://www.kysoflash.com/Issue8/GesellRetribution.aspx
Here are the first 5 pages of a long (53 page) short story I've been working on the last few weeks. I've submitted it to an anthology of ghost stories, so cross your fingers for me that they might want it. It's dark, creepy (I hope as that's my intention at least), set in 1974:
The
Volunteer
The St. Mary’s
School for Troubled Girls looked exactly as it should. Creepy as fuck. It
loomed through the trees as Hazel guided her 1964 Rambler along the gravel road
to the school where she would be volunteering. She drove with the windows down
and let her chopped brown hair whip around her face.
St. Mary’s School
for Troubled Girls got bigger and darker when she turned onto the drive and
stopped at the gate. Bushes cut like elephants and horses littered the lawn and
the November sun suddenly disappeared behind blackened clouds enveloping the
school. How stereotypical, Hazel thought. She reached out the window to buzz
the bell to the gate, but it creaked open before she could touch the button.
The gate was tall—over twelve feet, she figured—and attached to a brick wall,
just as tall, covered with wire that hummed
quietly. Electric.
Hazel parked in the
lot in front of the school, threw her backpack over her shoulder, grabbed her
suitcase from the backseat with her right hand, squeezed a red stress ball in her
left hand, and walked to the door. It opened before she had a chance to knock.
She entered the
building and set her suitcase down so that she could put her sunglasses on her
head. An old woman with sunken cheeks shuffled out from behind the door and motioned
to take Hazel’s bag. “No,” Hazel told her, certain the woman wouldn’t be able
to carry the suitcase anyway, “I’ll keep it. Are you in charge? My parents sent
me here to volunteer for a week.” They sent me here to “volunteer” so that I
realize “how good life is,” she added in her brain.
The woman said
nothing, but raised her hand, pointing a bent and gnarled finger down the hall.
Hazel’s eyes followed the finger. The entire room was dark wood, almost black.
Lamps hung from the walls at intervals like streetlights, barely illuminating
enough space to feel lit, let alone feel like a
place where Troubled Girls could grow and prosper. Hazel had no idea where the
old lady was pointing, other than down the hall, but Hazel picked her suitcase
back up, rolled her shoulders back, and set off.
She didn’t have to
go far before reaching a door with Headmistress Davis on a plaque outside.
Hazel raised her hand to knock, but the door opened before she could
strike. Again Hazel entered a room
without seeing who held the door for her. Headmistress Davis stepped into view,
offering her hand to Hazel. “You must be Miss Pickett.”
Hazel set her
suitcase down and took the headmistress’s hand, wanting to gag at immediate
touch. The hand was huge—meaty and cold and totally unfitting the
average-looking woman in front of her. A flutter of warm air danced on the back
of her neck and Hazel reexamined the woman in front of her.
“You may call me
Headmistress Davis,” Davis said and, though she still stood only as tall as
Hazel—five foot five—and was no wider than thirty seconds ago, the headmistress
seemed to take up the entire room.
Hazel shivered
before she could stop the spasm running up her spine. It felt like someone was
breathing on her. She resisted the urge to rub her neck and, instead, crushed
the stress ball with her left hand and held the headmistress’s gaze.
“You will be
staying in the quarters with the high school aged girls. They’re your age chronologically,
but most of them will not act it.” Headmistress Davis dropped Hazel’s hand and
moved forward. Hazel backed out of the way and the headmistress exited the
office still talking. “St. Mary’s has a long history of housing girls. We pride
ourselves at giving these girls a decent home in Christian charity where some
will learn skills to be functional in the real world. Others our best hope is
to give them a place to stay and not be a burden on their parents until the
state assumes responsibility for them either in jail or an asylum for adults.
We do not practice any physical instruments of change like you might hear of in
horror stories, but we do believe in firm discipline and structure.” The
headmistress kept two steps ahead of Hazel. Even when Hazel tried to speed up
and walk side by side with the woman, the pace was unreachable, like the
hallway carpet was pulling the headmistress along and working against Hazel in
the opposite direction. A slight pressure built in her chest. She tensed and
released her grip on the stress ball and tried to keep her breath steady.
She followed the
headmistress up a flight of narrow stairs. The dark wood closed in even closer
than in the hall. Where were all of the girls, Hazel wondered. It was Sunday.
Surely the girls weren’t in classes on the weekend too at this school?
Shouldn’t there be shrill voices and laughing and, well, human noise? Even deep
in the belly of the old house she could hear the wind groan outside. The
pressure from her chest moved to her stomach and she felt seasick, like the
stairs shifted beneath her feet and she tripped, reaching for a handrail,
finding none, and landing with her palms and shins banging against the steps.
“Whoa, there.”
Headmistress Davis reached to help Hazel, but the girl recoiled at the thought
of the woman’s touch.
“I’m fine,” Hazel
said.
“Should’ve grabbed
the handrail.” The headmistress looked down her long nose at Hazel then turned
and continued up the stairs.
Hazel, again, felt
that warm breath across the back of her neck. There was a fucking handrail? She
crawled back to stand, forced herself to swallow and push down any panic or
annoyance that bubbled up from her stomach, and followed the headmistress.
Davis led her to
the highest part of the house. The stairs stayed still and the handrail
followed them all the way up to the attic.
“This is the
biggest room in the house. Since most of our girls are high school aged, they
take this room as their living quarters. You’ll stay here with them.” The
headmistress opened the door and the chit chatter that spilled out sounded
foreign, after only hearing the wind beat the
house, even though Hazel had been listening for the sounds of girls earlier.
The prater didn’t last long. As soon as the headmistress’s shadow fell past the
doorframe, the girls hushed.
Hazel tipped her
chin up to see over Davis’s shoulder. The room reminded her of the twisted
version of the Madeline books her
nanny, Rhonda, used to read her at bedtime. Rows of cots to tuck girls in at
night, but the girls scattered around the room were not cute little French
schoolgirls wearing yellow hats and dresses. No. These were Troubled Girls.
Two of the dozen or
so girls were, clearly, very pregnant. Several of the girls looked to be showing varying degrees of mental retardation and
were mixed about the room reading, playing with dolls, doing puzzles, or
sitting alone. Nearest the door, there were two girls, one with sunken eyes and
yellow skin and one with a long scar down her right cheek, that looked alert
and took a long survey of Hazel when the Headmistress step to the side, exposing Hazel to the room.
“Ladies,”
Headmistress Davis said. “This is Miss Pickett. She is going to be volunteering
with us for the next week. She’ll be staying with you. She’ll be here to help
you with your studies or any of your needs. As with anyone whom you encounter,
treat her as you would like to be treated and, when appropriate, share with her
God’s goodness.”
The entire room of
eyes took in Hazel’s person. Hazel didn’t smile. She didn’t raise a hand to
wave or nod. She picked up her suitcase and took two steps into the room.
Headmistress Davis slipped behind Hazel and out of the room closing the door
behind her.
There was a beat of
silence during which, in her mind, Hazel heard the Headmistress say volunteer
again. Sarcastically. Like she thought Hazel was like these girls and belonged
here longer than a week. Like Hazel was a Troubled Girl.
The two girls near
the door turned back to their conversation. Some of the others went back to
their playing. One of the retarded girls walked, with a limp, up to Hazel and
stood in front of her. The girl wore denim overalls that were too short. Her
hair hung in greasy pigtails and one side of her upper lip seemed stuck curled,
exposing a snaggletooth. Her hands were ridged claws at her chest. The girl
stared at Hazel.
“Hey,” Hazel said.
The girl shrieked
and snorted and put one of her knotted hands over her mouth.
“Jesus, Julie. Get
out of her face.” One of the girls near the door, the one with the scar, walked
toward Hazel. She rubbed her forearms as she gave Hazel a slow once over.
Hazel took the girl
in as well. Scars zig-zagged across the girl’s forearms like she’d stuck them
through a barbed wire fence over and over, but Hazel assumed that wasn’t true.
Hazel had tried pills. Rhonda found Hazel and gagged her while they waited for
the ambulance. Hazel wondered if a razor would’ve worked faster.
