A Girl's Guide to Guns and Monsters - Martin Harry Greenberg [17]
“Oh,” she said. The young priest looked at her. Really looked. She paled, crossed her arms, and turned back around.
“What is that you’ve got there? What are you doing?” Mother Mary Patrick asked me sharply.
The room grew silent. Everyone was looking at me. I gathered up the stole and clutched it against my chest. If I lost it again, I would die. I felt it as strongly as hunger.
Weeping, I turned and ran out of the room; I stumbled down the dark passageways, meaning to go to my dormitory, grab my suitcase, and leave. Instead, I found myself in the chapel. I had no idea how I had wound up there but I ran inside, claiming sanctuary.
Annabelle’s coffin sat before the altar. It was a simple pine box, not an elegant ebony coffin with gleaming hinges like my father’s. Large white candles on either side of the altar cast flickering light on a lid. A spray of pink roses and a shiny silver cross were arranged on the lid. Unnerved, exhausted, I pulled out the kneeler and folded my hands, threading the stole through my fingers like a rosary.
I closed my eyes and prayed for her soul. I prayed for my own, and I prayed for help, and for food. It had been stupid of me to leave the dining room. I was so hungry I could barely stand it.
Hail Mary, full of grace . . .
A soft scratching sound interrupted me. I figured it for a mouse and tried to resume my prayer. I concentrated on the soft fur of my stole, remembering days when my mother and I would dress up in our furs, gloves, and hats, and meet friends in tea rooms and at bridge parties.
The sound was louder this time, scritch, scritch, scritch . . . was it coming from the coffin?
“Annabelle?” I cried, but my voice was a dry husk. I jumped to my feet and raced to the coffin, moving aside the cross and the roses and setting them on the altar. I leaned over it, spotting a brass handle, and realized what I was about to do. As the candles flickered, I gazed at the entrance to the chapel, then back down at the coffin lid. I should fetch someone; I should call for help . . .
Instead, I wrapped my fingers around the handle and yanked back the lid. The wood let out an awful creak. Chills ran down my spine and I flinched and looked away, then back . . .
... at nothing.
The coffin was empty.
I blinked, not understanding, looking in again. Footsteps rang on the stone floor and I half-expected to see a young girl—Annabelle—laughing as she came toward me, telling me it was all a joke. The footfalls grew louder. I shut the lid and replaced the flowers and cross, then scooted back to my pew, where I sat unsteadily down. I didn’t know why I was being so secretive. Why I was shaking even harder. There were reasons why the body would not be inside the coffin—perhaps she’d died of a contagious illness. Maybe she had begun to smell . . .
“Hello,” said a voice. I turned, to see the young priest standing in the doorway, holding a bowl of soup. I got to my feet again, holding on to the back of the pew as I turned to face him.
“Sorry,” he said, walking toward me. Steam rose from the bowl; I smelled meat, barley, carrots, and potatoes and nearly screamed. “I didn’t mean to startle you.” He held out the bowl with one hand and touched my face with the other. “Poor Bess.”
I stared at the soup as if I had forgotten how to eat. It was thin, and there were no vegetables or meat. Maybe I had only imagined their bouquet.
“Annabelle. She-she’s gone.”
He blinked. Studied me.
“Her . . . she’s not in there,” I tried again. My mouth was watering.
“No. She’s not,” he said. “We’ve already buried her. There was some concern about contagion.” He took me by the arm and sat me down, gesturing for me to eat.
I slurped the watery soup, trying to eat like a lady, unable to stop making so much noise. I sounded like a dog lapping up water.
“We didn’t tell anyone about Annabelle,