Chapter 4
AVALYNNE
Isit in my assigned room on the hard plank of my bed, staring at the wooden door across from me. The lock's iron keyhole is my only glimpse into the outside world, but I can't see more than a couple of feet down the hall in either direction when I peer through it.
A well-worn leather Bible and a rosary lay at my side, and above me, a single incandescent light bulb hangs from the ceiling, steadily humming with electricity. Every so often, I look up at the tawny light, hoping the bulb will extinguish with a pop if only to end my boredom for a moment.
For over two weeks, I have been locked away like a monster confined to her cage.
I think it might be driving me insane.
Reverend Mother Graves keeps me captive when I'm not at meal or prayer, instructing me to pray for my soul and to seek redemption from God itself.
I carve lines into the wall beside my bed to measure the days, and sixteen stubby scratches now mar the gray stone to my left.
Every night, I take the metal spring I pilfered from the bed's lumpy mattress and add another mark.
It took me hours to wrestle that spring free from the bed.
My fingertips were butchered and bleeding by the time I was done, but it was worth it.
It's hard to measure days without it.
The hours dissolve together, like ocean waves mixing with freshwater, turning everything brackish and unclear. I am lost beneath that churning tide, too, and lately, it feels like I will never surface.
Buzzzzzzz.
My attention drifts to the lightbulb overhead. Sometimes, I stare at it so long that my eyes water and tears leak down my cheeks. Other times, I fantasize about wrapping the short cord around my neck and seeing if it holds.
As always, the idea dissipates before it's had a chance to truly form.
I don't want to die.
I just don't want to be here.
At least, the fantasy is a brief respite from the monotony, though.
Fingernails scrape across my chalkboard brain, making me want to scream. But I've tried that already. No one comes when I do, not even when I'm so loud my voice cracks and cleaves to pieces, leaving behind only a hoarse whisper.
Every day, Reverend Mother tells me I'm a bad girl.
She says evil has poisoned me and that I need to atone and find my path back to God.
I'm beginning to wonder if she's right.
The nuns certainly believe her. When they think I can't hear them, they whisper about me, comparing me to my distant aunt, four generations removed.
They say I'm troubled like she was, but they won't answer my questions.
They won't tell me what she did to end up here, and they won't tell me what happened to her. I've stopped asking now.
Buzz.
My gaze rises to the incandescent lightbulb again.
I hate this room.
Everything is too loud and too quiet at the same time.
Even down here in the basement, surrounded by hundreds of pounds of dirt and rock, the place reeks of incense burned by the sisters and a hint of something rotten, dead, and decaying behind the convent's walls.
This place is making me crazy, or maybe I've always been a little crazy.
Just. Like. My. Great-great-great-great-grandaunt.
Did I count that right?
Whatever.
I've pleaded my case to the sisters and begged to be allowed to speak with Grandpapa, but every one of my pleas receives no response.
One night, about a week ago, one of the sisters forgot to check the lock on the door to my room.
I made it all the way to the wrought-iron gates before Reverend Mother caught me.
She dragged me kicking and screaming back to my cell.
From then on, they have double-checked that the door is locked.
Being caught that night was probably for the best, though, if I'm being honest. I value my life, and, as Reverend Mother keeps reminding me, it's a treacherous trek down the mountain and off the island.
She says the wolves that roam the woods would eat me, or I'd die of starvation before I found civilization.
I think I believe her, but that's not what keeps me from running again.
I stood at the gates to the convent long before she caught me. Alone and curtained by nightfall, I listened as the sea raged nearby. In the darkness, it sounded mere footfalls away, and its thunderous roar froze me to the spot.
Fear and the nightmare that I'll run off a cliff and sink into the unforgiving sea keeps me here now.
Every morning, I jolt awake, clawing at my throat as imaginary vestiges of briny water pour into my lungs and smother me.
The last thing I see before the dream evaporates is beautiful white moonlight above the crest of the water, disappearing from view as I sink to a black death.
The ocean terrifies me. Always has.
I can't swim.
Isabella was the only one of us who ever managed to learn.
So I don't need Reverend Mother's scary stories of wolves or starvation to keep me confined. Not when I fear drowning instead.
Sometimes, the sisters take me to the courtyard outside the east wing. It's less of a courtyard and more of a cemetery, though, full of withered brambles, wilted rosebushes, and spindly vines resigned to a cold, cloudy life.
When it's quiet at night and the rest of the convent is asleep, I listen to the waves in the distance crash against the rocky shoreline. Even in this windowless room, the saltwater permeates the walls, coating everything in a thin, wet veil.
I'm not stupid or suicidal enough to try to run again, but I intend to leave this place soon.
There's a phone in Reverend Mother's office, black and old with a corded receiver.
I'm sure if I could call Grandpapa and plead my case, he'd forgive me.
I just have to find a way to get to it without her knowing.
I've already tried twice. The first time, the nun believed me when she caught me at Reverend Mother's office door, and I said I lost track of the turns on the way to the dining hall. The second time, Reverend Mother didn't, and the ruddy welts on my forearms attest to it.
I like to think Isabella is already home, giving Grandpapa hell for leaving me here. Deep in my heart, though, I know that can't be true because if my sister was home, nothing in this world would stop her from coming for me, just as nothing would stop me from her.
I was stupid to hope the priest or the nuns would help me, and I have no choice except to find my own escape from this miserable place.
The Greeks called it Tartarus, the deepest and darkest prison for the most wicked on earth. I know for a fact that the darkest part of Hell isn't below us in a fiery pit, though. It's here beneath the imperious reign of Reverend Mother and the inescapable loneliness of solitary confinement.
Buzzzzzz.
I ignore the humming lightbulb and reach across the bed for the worn leather Bible. I flip to the dog-eared page, desperate for something to pass the time, but the first verse kills my motivation to read more.
Blessed the one who seizes your children and smashes them against the rock.—Psalm 137:9.
I sigh, letting my head fall against the wall behind me. I've counted every hairline crack that runs through the stones of my prison—396, to be exact.
I've gone through a hundred or more versions of what I'll say to Grandpapa when I finally speak with him.
And I've prayed over and over again to wake up from this nightmare.
Grandpapa has always been a devout man, and it's no surprise he sent me here to fix me.
He's visited the diocese on occasion, and priests and deacons regularly called on him at home.
He's donated a lifetime's fortune to the church, but I have to believe if he knew what this place was like, he would see reason and take me away from here.
He would never allow anyone to treat me this way.
The backs of my hands are marked with ugly pink welts from the unforgiving snap of Reverend Mother's wooden ruler, and my thighs bear the bites of her cat-o'-nine-tails.
She says I have to learn to obey.
To be a good girl.
To repent.
But I feel less good and more savage by the minute.
I try and fail to focus on another page three times before footfalls sound in the hall. It takes me a long moment to realize I'm not imagining them. It's too early for the sisters to come get me for morning prayer, or, at least, I think it is.
I watch the back of the door as the footsteps grow near, yet I still flinch when the door opens, flooding the room with light from the hallway.
My eyes sting at the assault before Reverend Mother darkens the doorway, her heavy black habit sweeping the floor as she glides into the room.
"Stand up, Ms. Immorier," she snaps.
As the words leave her mouth, another figure crosses the threshold, and I stand, the bottom of my white skirt meeting the floor and covering the tops of my bare feet. Cold from the stone leeches into my toes as I blink away the blinding light, and the figure comes into focus in front of me.
It's someone new.
A man.
He's tall, a head above me, at least, with long, inky hair skirting his eyes and dropping straight to his shoulders.
I take in his polished black loafers first, spotting my reflection atop the toes of his shoes when the light hits them just right.
My gaze climbs to his pressed dark slacks and then his white Oxford shirt.
Who is he, and why is he here?
Would he help me speak with my grandfather? Do I risk asking him?
Reverend Mother grabs my elbow and jerks me a step forward, closer to the man but still far enough for propriety's sake. When my gaze finally lifts to his face, I find his dark eyes already on me.
Ice skewers my middle as my heart heaves into my throat.
It's unnatural to have eyes so dark they appear black.
"Shoulders back," Reverend Mother scolds, her bony fingers pinching into my flesh.
I do as she commands, but I still stare at the mirage before me. Only I don't think I've been in this room long enough to lose my mind, not yet at least, and I don't believe the gaze of a mirage can send frost through your veins and incinerate your breath at the same time.
I am cold and warm, flushed and unable to breathe.
Yet the man seems unaffected, regarding me with mild indifference.
He's too pretty and too well-dressed to be here. He carries himself with an air of aristocracy that reminds me of Grandpapa's friends, and I have the distinct impression he's more comfortable in a world of rare artwork and affluence than vows of poverty.
But why is he here?
The longer we stare at each other—his coal-black eyes locked on me—the more I wish I had never looked at him at all.
I find no compassion in his gaze, no worry for the person in front of him.
He is arctic apathy, his blood no doubt as frigid as Reverend Mother's.
"What did you do to it?" he asks her as he looks at me.
Reverend Mother scoffs, and I can't decide if he's insulted me or made a poor joke at my expense. Either way, I don't like it.
"Only what I am required to," she answers.
Finally, his gaze tears away from mine and scrolls lazily to hers. Something unspoken crosses between them before his black-eyed stare returns to me. He regards me up and down, from my frumpy habit to my frizzy hair peeking out of the veil and coif Reverend Mother requires me to wear.
He scowls at me yet speaks to her.
"We'll start tomorrow," he says, his full lips pursed into a frown.
Start what? I want to ask, but the welts on my skin, still pounding with every heartbeat, remind me to keep my mouth shut.
"Very well." Reverend Mother clasps her hands, folding them atop the rope cinched around her waist. "Her grandfather will be most pleased."
Abruptly, the man turns and exits my room. Reverend Mother follows him as I stand there, the door shutting behind them and the lock clicking into place.
I am, once again, left alone in my cage.