“So what is the truth?” I ask.
Agnes sighs. “These are not pleasant things I speak of,” she says. “And though I was Liliana’s friend, I never . . .” She falters and breaks off.
“I know,” I say. “I can take it.”
Agnes focuses on her wrinkled hands, which rest upon the sheet. “Liliana had certain . . . beliefs. She believed that under the right circumstances, our world could be opened up to that other world. Spirits could communicate with humans, the future could be foreseen, the dead could return to life.”
I’m watching Agnes’s face, but I’m thinking of Flying V. Flying V believed in an unseen world too, but she never spoke of the dead returning to life.
“It came at first from a longing for her parents,” Agnes says. “At least, that’s what I suspect. To talk to them again. To somehow bring them back. But then the blood took ahold of her.”
I shiver.
“Go on,” Sandy tells Agnes. “Get to the juicy part already.”
“Do you want to hear it?” Agnes asks me.
Do I?
Oh dear, I do. I nod.
Agnes shifts in her narrow bed, and a musty smell wafts up from the sheets. “Well, as you know, Liliana came to us as a motherless child. Some such children might turn to a surrogate . . .”
“Like Mother Mary Josephine,” I say.
“Yes, like Mother Mary Josephine. But Liliana wanted nothing to do with Mother Mary Josephine. Indeed, she had no interest in being taken care of by anyone. She far preferred to do the ‘taking care’ of herself, though not always—or rather, never—in ways condoned by the convent.”
“Meaning what?” I ask.
“Well, Liliana was quite charismatic. She was a favorite with the other initiates. Fearless, dynamic, completely ungovernable—she brought life to the convent, and we girls adored her for it. I, especially, adored her, for unlike the others, Liliana never made me feel unwelcome. Indeed, she cultivated my devotion.”
I bite my lip, seeing how potent such attention could be.
“Quite simply, Liliana supplanted Mother Mary Josephine,” Agnes says. “Liliana became our Mother Superior.”
“How did Mother Mary Josephine take to that?” I ask.
“As you’d expect. I found it foolish that a grown woman was so threatened by a fourteen-year-old girl, until I realized that Liliana wasn’t like other fourteen-year-old girls.”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
For a moment, Agnes doesn’t answer. She plucks at the sheets just as Elsie did, and I remember that Agnes is an old lady. A very old lady.
“It started off innocently enough,” she says at last. “Simple pranks, like resetting all the clocks, or stealing apples from a nearby orchard and dropping them all at once during Mass.”
I wait. Dropping apples during Mass doesn’t sound so awful.
Agnes stills her hands. “For us, it was the first fun we’d had since we arrived at the convent. For some of us, it was the first fun ever. We all wanted to be near her . . . to impress her . . . But as I said, Liliana had an unhealthy obsession with subjects best left alone.”
“Like blood,” Sandy says.
“Why blood?” I say. “What’s so great about blood?”
Sandy laughs contemptuously. “You’re kidding, right? What’s so great about blood? We’d only die without it, that’s all.”
“‘For the life of the flesh is in the blood,’” Agnes says in a quoting voice. “Leviticus seventeen, verse eleven. Liliana believed blood could give life to the dead. A creature who comes back to life—for that is what such a being would be, no longer a man or woman but a creature—would possess great power,” Agnes goes on. “And Liliana was always . . . eager for power.”
“Who isn’t?” Sandy says. When I look at her, aghast, she says, “Oh, come on. Pretty pretty pretty, nice nice nice.” She exhales with a pfffff.
“So . . . what happened?” I say uneasily.
“There was a girl in our class named Nanette,” Agnes says. “Nanette was feebleminded, so she was given the simplest chores, such as slicing potatoes.” She briefly closes her eyes. “One day, Mother Mary Josephine found Nanette in the kitchen, covered in blood. Nanette wouldn’t stop screaming. She wouldn’t—or couldn’t—tell Mother Mary Josephine what had happened.”
“Was it . . . Liliana?” I ask. “Did she hurt Nanette?”
“Nanette never said. In fact, she never spoke again. But the blood wasn’t hers; it came from a newborn lamb. Mother Mary Josephine found the carcass behind the woodpile.”
“Did Nanette do it, or did Liliana? Or did Liliana make Nanette do it?”
“How do you make someone do something?” Sandy says contemptuously. “Only if that person doesn’t have a mind of her own.”
Which Nanette didn’t, I think.
“Mother Mary Josephine suspected that Liliana was responsible for what happened. But since she couldn’t prove it, Liliana went unpunished.”
“Not for long,” Sandy says in a singsong voice.
“No, not for long,” Agnes says. Unlike Sandy, she sounds sad. “Liliana grew more audacious with every day that passed. She thought she was invincible, and for the most part, she was.”
In my mind, I see a young girl tumbling from a third-story window. I see blood on the flagstones below. I’m starting to get the lightheaded feeling of being outside my body, and I put my hand on the mattress to steady myself.
Agnes, who is watching my face, seems to intuit this isn’t fun and games and a yummy ghost story for me. In a voice that’s carefully neutral, she says, “Sandy, dear, can you get me some water?”
“Huh?” Sandy says.
“Water, please. I’m feeling a bit parched.”
“Oh. Sure.” She heaves herself up and goes to Agnes’s bureau, where she picks up a pink plastic pitcher. “It’s empty.”
“Will you fill it for me, dear? The water fountain’s in the hall.”
“I know where the water fountain is,” Sandy says. “Geez.” She strides out of the room, plastic pitcher swinging by her side.
The moment she’s gone, Agnes’s whispery fingers tighten on mine. “You have it too, don’t you?” she says. “The gift to see beyond our world.”
I open my mouth to deny it . . . but why bother? Liliana obviously wants something—wants it from me—and maybe Agnes can explain.
I nod.
“Quickly then, pet,” Agnes says. “There’s something I’d like to show you.”
pen the top drawer of my bureau,” she instructs. She glances at the open door. “Hurry.”
I rise and do as she says, tingling with apprehension. This is a peculiar turn of events.
“In the very back corner—do you feel it?”
I pat the soft and silky garments, assuming a nightgown isn’t what she wants. In the corner, beneath a beige slip, I feel something hard. I pull out an exquisite cloisonné box and say, “Is this what you mean?”
“Bring it to me,” Agnes says.
I deliver it to Agnes, and she draws it to her chest. Her eyes close as if she’s praying. Then she opens her eyes and speaks intently.
“Liliana wanted a blood sacrifice. She wanted it from . . . a human.”
“That’s crazy,” I say.
“Yes, indeed. But as I’ve told you, she could be quite persuasive.”
I sit back on the bed.
“There was another girl in our class,” Agnes says. “A very devout girl. Her name was Elizabeth.”
Uh-oh, I think.
“Liliana spent a great deal of time with her. We were all jealous. She whispered to Elizabeth endlessly . . . and Elizabeth listened. One day, Liliana and Elizabeth went off together into the woods, and when, by evening, they hadn’t returned, Mother Mary Josephine sent me to find them. Which I did.”
“What were they doing?”
“Elizabeth was bound to a roughhewn cross. She seemed to be experiencing a sort of rapture.”
I grow cold.
/>
“Liliana had a knife. Nanette’s knife, from the potatoes. I screamed. Elizabeth startled from her trance. She screamed as well.” Agnes trembles, and I take her hand.
“But . . . she was all right?” I say. “Elizabeth?”
“All right?” Agnes repeats. “No. She was never the same. As for Liliana . . .”
I squeeze her frail fingers.
“Liliana was to be locked away until she repented,” Agnes says quietly. “Locked away for life, if need be, and Mother Mary Josephine would have the full support of the Church.”
“That’s terrible,” I say.
Footsteps sound in the hall. Agnes and I glance up, and there’s Sandy with the pink plastic pitcher.
“I’m baaaack,” she says. “Miss me?” As she pours Agnes her water, Agnes slips the still unopened cloisonné box beneath the covers, where it makes a small bump.
“Thank you, dear,” she says. She takes a long sip, telling me with her eyes that the box is our secret.
“Did you get to the end?” Sandy asks. “Did you tell her about the cage?”
Agnes hands the cup to Sandy, who puts it on the bedside table. “The room Liliana was kept in was called the isolation chamber, but yes, it was little more than a cage. Four walls, a hard floor, a single, cramped window.”
“No human contact,” Sandy says. “We’re talking a tiny room on an empty third-floor corridor, no light except what came from the window, and the only people who could visit her were Mother Mary Josephine and you. Right, Agnes?”
“It was my job to deliver her meals,” Agnes affirms.
“Guess what Mother Mary Josephine’s job was?” Sandy says. “Agnes came in the day; Mother Mary Josephine came in the night. And she brought her whip.”
“Her whip?” I say.
“Miserere mei, Deus,” Agnes murmurs.
“For months Mother Mary Josephine kept her there,” Sandy says. “For months she told the others that Liliana required further mortification of the flesh before she could be released.”
I have mixed feelings for this long-dead girl, who in my imagination I see tensing at the nightly rap on her door. Or, no. Why bother with a rap? The slither of iron slipping into iron, the thunk of a bolt sliding free.
My key. From the third floor of Hamilton Hall. Of course.
I rub my temples.
“Liliana came up with a plan,” Agnes says. Tears well up, round and glassy, and she swipes them away. “Ghosts in my eyes. Forgive me.”
“She wanted to poison Mother Mary Josephine,” Sandy informs me, and though she tries uncharacteristically to be solemn, there’s pleasure in the telling. “She hid a piece of rye bread in the corner of her chamber and added her own saliva. The mold that grew was called ergot. Agnes was to mix it in Mother Mary Josephine’s nightly glass of warm milk.”
“Ergot?” I say.
“First would come convulsions, then blindness, then death,” Agnes says.
I blanch.
“But I couldn’t do it,” Agnes says. “I couldn’t!”
“I’m glad you couldn’t,” I say.
“Liliana wasn’t,” Sandy says. “Liliana was P.O.’ed. When she realized Agnes had failed her, when Mother Mary Josephine came yet again with her whip . . . that was the night Liliana flung herself from the window.”
On the pillow, Agnes’s head lolls toward me. “I was the one who found her,” she says. “I couldn’t sleep . . . I knew Liliana would be displeased . . .” With her eyes, she pleads with me. “I heard the sound when her body—when her skull . . .”
“Shhh,” I say. “It’s over. It happened long, long ago, and now it’s over.”
“So sad,” Sandy says. “So sad. So, so sad.” She shifts positions and frowns. She rummages under the sheet, and it’s just like Sandy to fail to realize how inappropriate she’s being. “Hey, what’s this?”
It’s the cloisonné box.
“Give it to me,” Agnes says, pulling her hand from mine and holding it out to Sandy.
Sandy lifts the lid. “Eww. What is it?”
“Give it to me,” Agnes demands.
But Sandy doesn’t, and I lean close and peer inside. I can’t help myself. And then I recoil, because what lies within is shriveled and black. It’s small, maybe an inch long, and it looks like a finger, the way it’s curled in on itself. Only it can’t be a finger, for attached to it are long strands of hair.
Human hair?
“I couldn’t just walk away,” Agnes says, as if imploring us to understand.
Sandy moves to pluck the thing from the box, and Agnes cries, “No!”
I give Sandy a hard look and snatch the cloisonné box. I snap the lid shut and hand it to Agnes, who clutches it to her chest.
“I had to honor her,” Agnes says. “Don’t you see?”
“What is it?” Sandy asks. “A piece of her scalp?”
Agnes’s eyes blaze. “It’s what came free. I wasn’t . . . I didn’t have time to be picky.”
“Agnes, that’s disgusting,” Sandy says gleefully.
As for me, I’m slogging through the horror of my thoughts. Liliana died . . . she jumped from the window and her skull smacked the ground . . . and Agnes kept a piece of her?
“Go now,” Agnes says. “I need to rest.” Her expression—eyes averted, lips tight—tells me she regrets saying so much.
“Aw, Agnes, don’t be like that,” Sandy cajoles. “I think it’s great you kept a souvenir. Really, really gross, but great. Can I see it again?”
“You may not,” Agnes says sharply.
I lurch from the bed, afraid I’m going to throw up. I place both hands on the dresser and bow my head.
“What you girls saw, what I’ve kept safe for all these years . . . it is a relic,” Agnes says. “It should be revered.”
I turn from the bureau to see Sandy’s fingers twitching toward the box. Agnes slaps them away.
“Why should it be revered?” I say. “It’s a piece of a dead girl.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” Agnes says. “You see, Liliana lives on.”
My stomach, already hollow, drops to my toes. “What do you mean? Like . . . as a ghost?”
Agnes offers no denial—and why would she? I already knew it to be true.
“Have you really seen the ghost of Liliana?” Sandy says.
“Don’t be absurd,” Agnes says.
Sandy’s face falls.
“I feel her,” Agnes says with dignity.
“For real? Because I want to too. You know I do.”
“Other times, I smell her.”
“Yuck,” Sandy says happily, clearly oblivious to the sudden trace of citrus in the air. Agnes’s eyes find mine. She knows I smell it too.
“I snuck her lemons when I could,” she confesses. “She always loved lemons.”
I press my hand to my stomach. If I had a lemon, I would not suck it. I will never suck a lemon again.
With discernible effort, Agnes composes herself. She holds out the cloisonné box and says to me, “Put this away now.”
I shake my head. I’m not touching it.
“I’ll do it,” Sandy says, nabbing the box. “But first can I . . .?”
“Put it away!” Agnes says shrilly. “In the top drawer of my dresser. Put it there now!”
“Sheesh, have a cow, will you?” Sandy grumbles. She lumbers off the bed, and the mattress springs up. Agnes bobs on the wake.
“Move,” Sandy says to me. I step back, but keep a close watch, because I don’t want her trying the same trick she pulled on Elsie. The box is enfolded in Sandy’s thick fingers, but when she pulls her hand from the drawer, there it is on top of Agnes’s undergarments. Silky slips, stiff conical bras, a medieval-looking girdle, none of which Agnes will ever wear again.
Sandy sneezes. She thrusts her hand in her pocket, but comes up empty. “Anyone have a tissue?”
Agnes hands her one from her bedside table.
“Thanks,” Sandy says, blowing her nos
e with a honk. “Too much dust in here.”
“Not dust,” Agnes says. She closes her eyes. “Go now, girls.”
“You don’t want me to play my harp for you?” Sandy says.
I’d forgotten all about Sandy’s harp.
“Not today,” Agnes says.
“Okey-dokey, you’re the boss.”
Sandy lugs the harp from the corner of the room, pausing when she reaches the door.
“Bye, Agnes,” she says.
“Yeah,” I say. “It was, um, nice to meet you.”
But Agnes has fallen asleep, or she’s pretending she has. She doesn’t respond.
oward the middle of November, our school counselor gets the idea of herding all the students into the gymnasium for a series of lectures on acting responsibly and not doing drugs. In other words, not becoming hippies. The Tate-LaBianca murder trial continues to dominate the news, and Charles Manson is portrayed as the worst sort of hippie of all—a hippie who holds such little regard for rules that he kills for the sport of it.
Also, President Nixon has just instructed the Air Force to place additional B-52 bombers on ground alert, and thousands of hippies demonstrated in protest. I saw footage of the marches and wondered if Mom and Dad were bummed they were missing out.
At any rate, the lecture series isn’t much of a success, at least not in the way it’s intended. Practically everyone either falls asleep the minute the lights are dimmed or passes the time by writing notes to their friends.
On the last day of the program, the topic is dangerous behaviors. Like if someone sips a beer, the speaker tells us, it’s really a cry for help. Or if we have a friend who tries marijuana, or attends an antiwar rally, we should tell an adult we trust.
“Rebelling against society is a sign of disconnection,” the speaker says, and I think about Liliana. Does it count as rebelling against society if she wanted to create her own society? Does an obsession with blood constitute a cry for help . . . or does it just mean Liliana was a sociopath?