Chapter Twenty-Four

The Reformatory’s Dark Heart

Together we descend the stone staircase from the clock tower. It’s a struggle because we’re both feeling battered and bruised after the events of the night. But dawn light glimmers through the high windows at the far end of the corridor and with it, the atmosphere in the reformatory feels changed. I wouldn’t say that it’s actually warm in here, but it’s not as cold, either – if that makes sense?

I know that Victoria feels it too. She looks up and down the corridor with a serene expression on her face. She breathes in and out slowly and steadily, as if savoring the air. I try it too, and feel calmer already. It’s hard to believe that just a short while ago we were being pursued in this very same corridor by visitors from beyond the grave, hell-bent on harming us.

Victoria must have caught the look on my face because she appears thoughtful and says, “Did it really happen?”

“Did what happen?”

“Saffy, Lena, and the others. Coming after us. That horrible gray girl. Attacking me like that.” Victoria puts her hand to her head again, as if in a daydream. “It seemed so frightening and real back there, in the dark. But in the warm light of day I’m not so sure…. You know?”

“I know.”

It is indeed the weirdest feeling in the world, but I also feel that our mutual understanding requires no further comment from either of us. Enjoying the silence, I watch the dawn light as it begins to creep slowly across the corridor floor, and then up the wall opposite us. The light sun-kisses the gray paintwork, giving it a peach-colored glow. A warm section of a rainbow. I walk toward the light, following its progress as it spreads.

“What’s up?” Victoria asks.

“I just…I can’t really explain, but I need to check something.”

“Okay,” Victoria says quietly and reassuringly. “Whatever you got to do, just do it.”

I reach out and hesitate before my fingertips touch the wall.

The gray girl was as much a part of Greyfriars Reformatory as she was part of me. She was definitely gone from the clock tower, and we couldn’t see her on the ground below it, but now I need to know if she’s still part of this building. I take a breath and steel myself.

I place my fingers on the spot where the sunlight meets the gray of the wall, at the intersection between the light and the darkness. The wall feels cool and indifferent to my touch. And then, as the sunlight spreads across the rough surface, a warmth grows beneath my fingertips. There’s no thrumming of energy anymore, only the settled molecules of bricks and mortar. The gray girl is no longer here, and it’s as though some aspect of the building, the part that was alive, has died with her. The reformatory’s dark heart has stopped beating.

I let my fingers fall from the wall and I turn to watch sunbeams dance further along the corridor. Eager to be amidst their warmth, I follow them.

“Where are you going now?” Victoria asks.

“To see,” I reply.

“To see what?”

“To see what we can see,” I say.

Victoria chuckles at that and begins following after me.

The reformatory is so quiet and still as we move through it that I almost feel the need to chat with Victoria to break the silence. But I do like the silence too. There’s a clarity to it that I’ve never noticed before. As we walk, I replay Principal Quick’s—

(I still can’t bring myself to think of her as ‘Mother’.)

—tour of the building in my mind. I remember how adrift I felt, and how the ringing in my ears was a bell calling me home, to my safe place in my psyche. I don’t need it anymore. The silence is no longer threatening to me. If anything, it now feels calming. Ordinary. I begin to bask in that normality, and to focus on the sounds of our breathing, as I lead Victoria in the direction of the main entrance.

Our path takes us to the door of the med store. The door hangs open and I pause for a moment, and then look at Victoria. She nods, and that silent gesture gives me all the courage I need to step inside and check it out.

I find that it’s empty. Lena is nowhere to be seen.

And not only that – someone has done one heck of a clean-up job in here. There are no hypodermic needles on the floor at all. I glance around at the shelves, with their boxes of bandages and other medical supplies. Everything is neatly packed away and organized. The place looks, and smells, dusty and unused.

“Weird,” I say.

“Totally,” Victoria replies.

She looks disturbed, and I’m not surprised by that. I feel it too, seeing the empty space where Lena had lain bleeding.

“Let’s get out of here?” she asks, with a slight tremor in her voice.

“Yes. But I just want to check around the building first.”

“Do we have to?”

“If Lena’s not here then….”

It’s difficult to articulate my feeling that the other girls might still be alive in the building and hiding somewhere. Luckily, I don’t have to, because Victoria takes my hand and leads me out of the storeroom.

“We’re near the recreation yard. We’ll check it out, together. Agreed?”

“Agreed.”

We begin walking in that direction.

“Emily, if we don’t find Annie there – do you think that means – well, I don’t know exactly, but do you think we might have completely lost our minds?”

“I’d be inclined to think so,” I say.

“That is the most Emily answer I could ever have hoped for,” she replies.

And I see that she has tears in her eyes but quickly brushes them away and attempts a laugh. It doesn’t sound all that convincing, I have to admit.

We near the door to the recreation yard in what feels like no time at all. That lovely, peachy, orange light streams in through the windows. I pause as soon as I step into the light, and Victoria waits with me. We both look to each other for moral support before walking on through the door to the yard.

The tree is bare. No Annie, no jump rope, nothing. The way the bare branches of the tree describe twisted shapes against the dawn sky is something approaching beautiful. I’ve never seen it look that way before. As the clouds roll by, the sky becomes brighter with each second that passes. The small patch of soil beneath the tree glistens with morning dew, tiny beads of water, air, and twinkling light.

We move on and check the refectory, and then the kitchen. Both look completely untouched, just the same as the med store. Then we go to the dormitory and find the beds neatly made and lined up in rows. No sign of Jess, nor anyone else for that matter. Not one of the beds looks like it’s been slept in, let alone used as a barricade against the forces of darkness trying to penetrate the door. The place really is empty, deserted. We’re the only living souls here. And now there’s only one place left on our itinerary.

Principal Quick’s office.

I can tell from Victoria’s body language as we approach Principal Quick’s office door that this is the room that scares her the most. And she has every right to be scared. I experience a vivid memory of Quick’s dead body, puppet-walking down the length of corridor we’re now standing in. I wince, remembering the terrifying way that her body dropped to the floor to reveal the insane puppet master that was the gray girl standing behind her. But I refuse to be rattled, so I don’t dwell on such things. Instead, I choose to focus on the here and now. On the facts in the warm light of day:

The corridor is clear. Fact.

The bunch of keys that were dropped on the floor are nowhere to be seen. Fact.

Principal Quick’s lifeless body is gone. Fact.

And the gray girl, too. All facts.

But if we want to get out of here, we do have to check the office first.

We both pause for breath at the door.

“Listen,” I say, “we didn’t find hide nor hair of the others. So we know Principal Quick isn’t going to be in there, don’t we?”

“Yes,” Victoria says.

I wonder if she really believes it.

“But if she is,” I say, “then we just get the hell out of there, together, okay?”

“Okay,” she says, and I can see beads of sweat have formed on her brow.

We have to do this, and now, before either of us loses our nerve. So I grip the office door handle. I twist it and open the door.

We step into an unoccupied room.

The musty smell is gone. Principal Quick’s manuscript lies open on her desk. Atop that, I see her bunch of keys. I walk over to the desk and retrieve them. As I grasp the keys, a passage from the exposed pages of the manuscript catches my attention—

Girl A is presenting something new and exciting to the field and treatment must be exploratory and experimental. It is my intention to expose the subject to an extensive program of hypnosis, alongside social experimentation built around my formative thesis on nurture/nature and the role that peer groups inform the retreating (and projected) self….

Words. They’re just words. They’re not me. I’m me. My thoughts and actions make me who I am. I’m no more a series of tests and measures than I am my own mother. And yet, I still can’t shake the feeling that her thoughts and her actions still have some kind of a hold on me.

“Let’s get out of here,” I say, before closing the manuscript.

“One second,” Victoria says, and then takes the phone from its cradle. She holds it to her ear and listens. “Line’s still dead.”

We’re halfway to the door, when I see the closet door. It’s closed. I stand still.

“Should we check in there, do you think?” I ask.

Victoria looks at the door for a moment, then at me. “Oh fuck no,” she says.

I grip the keys tighter and we leave the office.

* * *

A couple of minutes later and we reach the front door. No phantoms on our tail, no ominous gray shapes moving from the shadows. The building’s foyer feels bright and airy for the first time since I’ve been in the reformatory – starkly different to the rainy day when I made my bid for freedom and gave Principal Quick a well-deserved bloodied nose in the process. I picture her look of surprise as I outwitted her before sprinting off into the wilderness. Of course, her smug superiority had returned just as soon as I had, mud-bedraggled and soaked through from the rain. But that was then, and this is now. I rifle through the keys on the ring and try a few until I find the right one to unlock the door.

“Hit it,” I say to Victoria, before nodding at the gate release button mounted on the wall.

Victoria reaches up and slams the flat of her hand against the button.

With a click of the final bolt I push the main door open and a shaft of daylight greets us.

“Shall we?” I ask.

“We shall,” Victoria answers.

We link arms and step into the light.