The Rust Maidens Page 23

  His face bruised, Adrian pushed his way through the throng to me, as I fought off another tourist.

  “I’m sorry, Phoebe,” Adrian said, and meant it, the best he could mean anything right now. But this had all gotten away from us. The parents were at every window, every door. I tried to push my way across the lawn, but their bodies were wild and flailing and I fell backward into the dirt. Some wanted to hurt the girls, some wanted to save the girls, but none of it was good.

  “Lisa, where are you?” Kathleen wept. “Baby!”

  “Violet, please!” Doctor Ross’s voice. “You can take your pictures. Whatever damn pictures you want.”

  And then someone else, though it was hard to make out who it was. A mother, perhaps. Clint’s mother. “We’ll get those girls. We’ll show them how a real parent punishes.”

  I started to say something to Adrian, something that could get us out of this, some way to keep this crowd from tearing that house open and crushing the girls.

  But then everything in the world was blotted out by the sound of the roaring ocean.

  Not an ocean, though. It was water all right, but it came from the ground. Somebody had twisted open the fire hydrant, and it was pointed directly at the mansion.

  “Drown ‘em out,” a voice called, a voice that sounded like Betty’s. “Those girls will come to us on their own.”

  The resultant streams cascaded down the front of the mansion like thick tears. Glass cracked under the power of the water, so heavy and unforgiving. Weighing down the walls and the hidden rust inside. Weighing down everything. Bit by bit, the mansion bowed under the water. The walls had already been buckling from the decay the girls had honeycombed over all the windows. The parents didn’t know this. They didn’t know this mansion was halfway to collapse already. Now the water would bring it down the rest of the way.

  “I have to get them out,” I said, and I was suddenly running—across the sidewalk, through the people, and straight to the house. Adrian was yelling behind me, but I didn’t listen.

  The crowd parted this time, mostly because no one wanted to get too close to the water. It was so heavy, pelting the façade like fists.

  I kept going, away from the water, around to the back, and in through the door that had already given way.

  Inside, it was no longer hopelessly dark. Through fissures in the cracking walls, bits of daylight poured in. The water came too, seeping in at every turn, through the collapsing roof and the broken-out windows.

  “Dawn? Lisa? Helena?” My voice, not sounding like mine. Too manic, too strained, as if it was about to collapse as well. “Violet? Jacqueline?”

  I searched everywhere I could, even as the house moaned. It seemed to be following me, the plaster and wallpaper peeling off like flesh. It was coming down, and I couldn’t stop it, but still I searched, trying to find the girls. But there was no one here, at least no one visible.

  Upstairs, the master bedroom was empty too, as was the darkroom, where there were no more pictures. Just hollow bins where Kathleen’s chemicals used to be.

  I scrambled back downstairs to search again, but this time, the staircase couldn’t take my weight. It splintered and collapsed under me. I screamed out and fell the rest of the way down.

  When I lifted my head, I was on the floor, my bare legs bloodied, red pinstripes running down my calves. Pain seared through me as I struggled to get to my feet.

  Then, a hand in the shadows, trying to help me up. Adrian’s hand, I assumed at first, but then the fingers went right through mine. Like they weren’t there at all.

  “Hello?” I said, but my voice was lost in the symphony of water.

  I waited, still half-dazed from the fall. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught movement at the back door.

  “Jacqueline?” I couldn’t breathe. “Where are you?”

  But there was nothing. Not until I heard Adrian’s voice.

  “Phoebe?”

  “Here,” I almost whispered.

  Breathless, Adrian found me, his eyes wild. “Are you okay?” He took my arm to steady me. “Can you walk?”

  I leaned on him until I regained my balance. It wasn’t like I had a choice. Overhead, the roof lurched, and the sound like a restless child moaning set my skin on edge. From every cracking corner, daylight poured into the house, pushing its way into this place where it didn’t belong. The outside world was getting in, and all I wanted was to get out. But only if I found Jacqueline and the other girls. I wouldn’t leave them behind.

  “I can’t go,” I said. “Not yet.”

  “We can’t stay here, Phoebe.” Adrian held my hand tight and guided me toward the door. But we were too late, because it no longer existed. Where the back entrance used to be, plaster, piled waist-high, was now blocking the way. We had to go out the front or not at all.

  “Come on,” Adrian said, and pulled me away as the kitchen walls caved toward us.

  Down the hallway and into the foyer, we tried the front door, but it wouldn’t budge.

  “Back up,” Adrian said, as he reached for something on the floor and tossed it toward the window. It wasn’t until the object was halfway through that I recognized what it was. One of the girls’ carapaces. We were tossing the remnants of them out the window. This seemed all wrong, but it gave us a way out. I didn’t think they’d deny us that.

  The house swayed, almost too late. But I didn’t want to leave. I didn’t want to abandon them. They might still be inside.

  I turned back, my gaze lifted toward the ceiling. “If we could just search once more—”

  I moved toward the dining hall, but Adrian was faster than me. He grabbed me around the waist and yanked me outside, just as the whole place gave way. Floorboards and drywall and an opulent chandelier that was always too gaudy for its own good. One piece after another, cascaded into the basement, into the darkness. To somewhere that might as well have been another world.

  Wheezing, we collapsed in the front yard, the water still spilling down from the sky, saturating our clothes and choking us at the same time.

  Behind us, the mansion was nothing but a mountain of rubble. Pieces of it had collapsed into the lawn and onto the street. Hundreds of shingles and splinters of wooden siding had tumbled against Clint’s house next door, breaking out windows, dust caking everything.

  All at once, Denton Street went suddenly quiet. The water continued streaming from the fire hydrant, but I could no longer hear it. All I could do was stare at everyone’s faces. The parents stood there on the sidewalk, the ones who had been for the girls, and the ones against. They were united in something now, their cheeks colorless and drooping mouths twisted in horror. Even among the worst of them, this wasn’t in their plans. They didn’t mind the notion of hurting the Rust Maidens, slapping their wayward faces or yanking them out of the mansion by the hair they no longer had. They were okay with their daughters screaming in protest, coming home tired and angry and bruised. But this—the utter decimation of it—wasn’t what they had in mind. They wanted girls they could punish, not girls they would bury. Or, in this case, ones that had been buried for them.

  Aunt Betty took a step forward, her whole body quivering. Then with all the power left in her lungs, she cried out Jacqueline’s name. At the last moment, she understood.

  As I limped across the lawn, no one would look at me. They could barely look at each other after what they’d done. Somewhere in the crowd, my parents called my name, but when I gazed out into the mass of sobbing faces, I couldn’t find them. Maybe they were lost in the din. Or maybe I was staring right at the both of them, but I simply didn’t recognize them now. Nothing here made sense anymore.

  Adrian had broken away from me to argue more with Jeffers and Godfrey, to insist this was all their fault. Not that fault mattered at this point. The girls were gone, either way.

  Panting, I dragged myself onto the sidewalk, everything in me shivering and so sorry that I could barely stand.

  My feet moved slowly, and I watch
ed them, part of me convinced I was no longer real, no longer in this moment. It wasn’t until I reached the other side of the crumbled mansion that I saw it. Something that should have been erased by the water, but hadn’t been. A shape traced into the mud by that invisible hand.

  A triple moon.

  My throat tightened with a strange kind of hope. They’d gotten out in time. The girls had gotten out.

  And I already knew right where they were headed.

  But I couldn’t leave for the mill, not yet, not when I looked up, the only one in the uproar who saw it. The stream from the fire hydrant wasn’t pointing at what was left of the mansion anymore. Someone must have tried to twist it off again, but gave up when they couldn’t quite manage it alone. They didn’t notice that the water was now spewing against the house next door. Clint’s house. A first-floor window had shattered, maybe from the water, maybe from the debris of the collapsing mansion. Either way, I heard her inside. Those strangled cries.

  Eleanor. She was abandoned in there, where the water kept coming, unforgiving and uninvited.

  The crowd, still arguing, still dangerous and confused, closed in around me, but I slithered between them, even as they pulsed closer, doing their best to suffocate everything on the street. Some of the parents hollered like fools, others sobbed, inconsolable at what they’d done. What we’d all done.

  I left them behind. Up the porch stairs and past that milk crate where Eleanor had babbled only weeks ago. Somehow, the baby was safer then.

  With all my weight, I shoved the front door open and searched the house. Inside, there were no more cries, no sound at all except that water, still flowing in where it didn’t belong.

  The nursery waited at the end of the hall. The door was closed, but liquid leaked under it. All this water, drowning everything. Drowning her. I threw open the door. The room was filled with bits of fallen debris from the mansion, everything wet and gray. All the larger pieces had missed Eleanor, but not the water. It had saturated her cradle. With my hands shielding my face, I rushed in and lifted her from the unlikely grave. This baby, this troublesome little baby who wasn’t going to cause anyone trouble anymore.

  Falling back into the hallway, my own weight too much, her weight too much, all of it too much. Eleanor’s face was blue, and she wasn’t breathing. This tiny thing in my arms was no different than a paper bag of groceries, or a pile of garbage destined for the curb. Nothing in her living. She was lost to me.

  On the hardwood floor, I placed her on her back, my hands wet and useless. I didn’t know what to do next. I didn’t know how to fix her, or if she even could be fixed.

  “Eleanor.” I pressed on her small chest, again and again, convinced I’d crush every one of her ribs, but not knowing any other way. “It’s okay. Come back. Please come back.”

  But she wouldn’t come back. She stayed gone, just like her mother, just like all of the Rust Maidens. We’d lose everything tonight, and there was nothing I could do about it.

  “Eleanor,” I whispered and lifted her again, this time draping her over my shoulder, and patting her soft back, over and over, each time a little bit harder until I was sure I’d shake everything in her loose.

  But it worked. She choked in my arms, her pale lips in the shape of an O, gasping like the last dying fish in Lake Erie.

  “That’s it,” I said and pulled her so close to me that I thought we both might suffocate.

  The water leaked further into the hall, threatening to destroy us yet. I had to get us out of here. I had to get us to the girls.

  Back on the street, there was no Clint to take his only child. I couldn’t trust him, anyhow. I couldn’t trust any of them to care for her in the ruckus. I wouldn’t have had to rescue her in the first place if they were up to protecting her.

  I crossed my arms over Eleanor so they couldn’t see that I had her. She’d come with me, to find her mother and the other girls.

  Through the crowd, my head down, I rushed off with her, past faces both familiar and unfamiliar.

  “Phoebe!” Adrian somewhere nearby, already sensing I knew something. That I knew where to go. His gaze followed me, followed my direction as I ran across the backyards. Toward the steel mill.

  He called my name again, but I didn’t look back. I ran, Eleanor nuzzling against me. Quiet, as if she understood. As if she knew the only way we could reach her mother was if we were both smart and silent.

  The rusted chain-link fence was peeled back at the corner. They were already inside. My throat went dry, and I feared I was too late. They could be gone. This could all be for nothing.

  But I had to try.

  They were in the center of the mill when I found them. The five of them, their misshapen silhouettes stark against the daylight. Their backs were to me, blending into the rot of this town, and it was a struggle to keep them straight, which one was which. It shouldn’t be hard to recognize my best friend, but it was, and that made my chest ache with a sorrow I couldn’t comprehend.

  What I did know for certain: they were ready. The transformation was complete. Nothing could change that, and nothing could change that they had to be here. The cold furnace in the center of the factory awaited the girls, this place that had given our lives form all these years. It had given our fathers purpose. Now it gave the girls purpose too. The blooming decay was like them, and they understood that. They belonged here. They belonged in these spaces that others wanted to discard. Spaces they wouldn’t forget.

  “Don’t go,” I said, and together, they turned toward me. Even looking straight at them, their forms were obscure, shifting like an illusion. I kept looking, kept trying to understand what they’d become. Scraps of rusted metal jutted out from their knees and elbows and shoulder blades, and the glitter of glass shimmered across their naked bodies. But somehow, past the gray pewter of their cheekbones and their long hair slick with crude oil and seaweed, their faces still had the shape of them, as though the same girls we knew were hidden somewhere in there. Eyes wide and dark and unblinking, they saw me now. Jacqueline saw me.

  Dawn saw me too, and saw Eleanor. At the sight of the baby, she brightened for a moment. It was so strange to see it, the way for an instant she just looked like a girl, too young to be a mother, but one nonetheless.

  When we were close enough, Eleanor reached out for Dawn’s finger, the same way she had in the mansion, but there was nothing for her to grab. The girls were no longer flesh and blood. They were made of things too insubstantial to hold, water and rust and shadow.

  Dawn shook her head sadly and tried to coo to her baby, but Eleanor just bleated out a cry that could cut a heart in two.

  It didn’t matter. Dawn couldn’t stay. She turned away, tears of gray water running down what was left of her face.

  The girls joined hands. They couldn’t hold us, but they could hold each other. This was the way it had to be.

  I wanted to go with them. I wanted to be one of them. But I wasn’t. This summer had taught me that much. My arms quivering, I held Eleanor tighter to me, her eyes wet and red and desperate, an infant who knew beyond reason that she was about to lose her mother.

  The girls looked at the door to the blast furnace, and then Jacqueline looked back at me.

  “Phoebe,” she whispered, her voice a gentle whir like a distant forge. Like she was already too far away to reach. “Could you help us?”

  “How?” I asked, staring at her, and then at last, I understood.

  This door. It was new, not rotted out like the rest of the mill. They couldn’t touch the things that weren’t like them. If they wanted to go into the heart of the factory, they’d need someone to help them.

  I heaved out a sob. “You can’t possibly ask me for this.”

  “But you’re the only one I can ask, Phoebe,” Jacqueline said. “You’re the only one who would do this for us.”

  I stood there, staring at her, staring at my best friend. I could say no. I could deny them this. But all they wanted—all I wanted for t
hem—was to be able to choose. And this was their choice. The one thing I could give them.

  With Eleanor held tight across my chest with one arm, I cried out with everything in me as I swung open the door. Rot and rust and the future waited within.

  “Thank you,” Jacqueline said.

  The girls went toward the darkness, and already I could see it was eager to devour them. Or maybe the girls were eager to devour it.

  As the rest of them wavered between this moment and whatever came next, Jacqueline turned and watched me quietly.

  “Goodbye, Phoebe,” she whispered.

  With the weight of my whole life bearing down, I gritted my teeth and turned my face away.

  I wouldn’t say it back. I wouldn’t bid her farewell.

  But it didn’t stop her, either. Nothing could do that now.

  Together, as one, the Rust Maidens moved toward the darkness and decay. I watched them go, desperate to invent the right words to stop them. But there were no words. There was nothing that could change this. It was as fated as the sunrise.

  Sirens blared in the distance, and a shivering Eleanor sobbed helplessly in my arms, her body so small and heavy.

  One by one, starting with Lisa, the girls fused into the rust that made them. Their bodies contorted into the shadows and metal, popping and writhing in ways that made my own bones ache. But the girls didn’t cry out. Instead, they smiled. Their fingers and arms went first, the glass cracking through the steel, and then their legs and torsos twisted into the dark until only their faces remained. Even once their lips and ears and cheeks melded into the furnace, I swore I could still see those eyes looking out at me, dark and strange and somewhere too distant to fathom.

  Jacqueline was last. I wanted to call her name, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t say anything at all.

  At the heart of the blast furnace, she looked back once. As the darkness consumed her, she smiled at me and, in spite of myself, I smiled back. It was the most beautiful and horrible thing I’d ever seen, watching her become all that she was meant to be.

  I blinked into the shadows, and she was gone. Away from the mill. Away from this city. Away from me.