The Collector: Two

The door swung in, and with it, the dark, the evil shadows lurking in every corridor of the macabre fortress the children called home. Rennard twisted about, fearful he had been discovered by the master, only to find Jacob, soaked from head to sock, standing at the threshold. Glaring at Rennard as though he were the cause of the rain, he wrung out his damp cap before entering their shared chamber fully. Once inside, he undid his suspenders and began to take off the rest of his wet attire. Comforted to know he was not discovered, Rennard returned to the wash basin and the weak film of suds over the warm water. 

It was fortunate, he thought, that the new girl’s clothes were a dark, cobalt and knit of a material that did not stain easily. With the brush, he was able to lift away the smears and flecks of the wastewater and the other soon-to-set stains. He couldn’t quite figure exactly what all of it was, being that it wasn’t all the same shade of dark. There were thoughts that buzzed round his head like hornets about the nest, but it was the same speculation as came with any other arrival. Wherever she had come from, the marks of her passage had followed. 

They were all orphans here, no exception. Each and every one of them were runaways and cast-offs that had been collected from their horrid lives and brought to the island. It seemed almost cruel, though surely, in someone’s mind, it was freedom from a fate that would have been far less kind. Still, to never see a sibling’s face again, the friends you had known, and even your parents, regardless of their temperament, felt a punishment. All the same, it was too late. There was no way off the island and no way ‘Father’ would return anyone. Lost in thought, Rennard was only brought around when the few bubbles floating on top of the water flew into the air and the water splashed out of the basin.

Jacob was rolled up in his blankets before Rennard could turn his temper on him. All but the other boy’s undergarments had been added to the wash load as though it were his job. He hadn’t even begun on his own pants which had crossed through the river of filth and stagnate water. Yet, Rennard had to let cooler heads prevail; he couldn’t risk another fight. But he could still jab at him with his tongue, “Did you find your way back alright?”

“I didn’t need you to guide me. You fell behind anyway.”

“That’s why I didn’t get covered in cockleburs if you’d have listened,” he regarded the back of the sandy-colored mane of his roommate, wanting to strike him but found he had something better than a strike, “Hope you remember the way. We have a deal, and you won’t skirt responsibility this time.”

“You know the way and how to oil the chains. Why should I go? Father will tell you you’ll have to do it if I tell him I don’t know how.”

“Best you’ll get is me advising you, following you through the brush. Abbie was down there with her. You’d have known that if you had come down and not argued with Luna,” Rennard laughed, not the least bit bothered as he started plucking the spiked balls from the boy’s denim.

Jacob sat up now, “Liar! What would Father be doing down in the wastewater hole?”

“Well, he called for us, so he must have found her. Why he was down there if not because he knew she was there, that’s nothing I know. Abbie is a strange one. Whatever you knew of adults, wherever you came from, he’s not like any of them.”

“And stop calling him that. He is our Father; you call him that.”

“All the fathers I knew, who went by father back home, had real names too. Father Abernathy was the wretch I last dealt with, so he can be Father Abbie.”

A knock sounded at the door before Jacob could utter another word. Rennard rose and approached, expecting to see the ghoulish face staring from the black void beyond. Instead, Luna, her almost pearlescent pale hair shining like threads of starlight, illuminated the threshold with candlelight. She smiled softly at Rennard before peering past to see Jacob attempting to hide beneath the wealth of blankets on his bed. By contrast, Rennard had only two, but that was because the room was so close to the incinerator that they were hardly necessary.

“Can I come in, Ren?”

“Go away, looney Luna! I ain’t descent, and Rennard’s got work to do.”

Despite being years younger than him, Rennard was always thrown through a loop that Jacob was so willing to speak over everyone else. Offering back an inviting smile, he chose to be just as abrasive to Jacob as Jacob was to everyone else. 

As the lantern light of the room set upon the girl, Rennard could see she was, for all but the back of her head, dry as a bone. It was hardly surprising that she would have gotten into clean, dry clothes, but how she had done so and gotten to the far side of the estate was beyond him. Rennard didn’t want to rule out the possibility of more tunnels and passages that shortcut the entire manor into nothing but a hop, skip, and jump from end to end. Luna’s robe was a dull silver, almost a camouflage against most rooms in the house, save Rennard’s. Long before Jacob had come, when Dieter had been his roommate, the color of the room had been decided in its current hue, wine red. She stood out among the sanguine effects of the room just as the new girl’s flesh had been nearly glowing against the dull surroundings of the sewer. 

Luna knelt beside the wash basin where Iris’s clothes had been laid out before being set to dry, “How was she?”

“She’ll pull through, I would assume. Thecla is helping Abbie, probably sent for Simon as well. She was cold as stone but breathing when I put her in bed.”

“Father didn’t tell you to keep her original clothes, did he?”

Rennard became a bit nervous but remembered how easy it was to trust Luna, “No. But it can’t hurt. I’m the one to fabricate new bits and pieces for everyone, so why not salvage what I can.”

“Did you watch him peel them off her and then, so kindly, offer to dispose of them?” Jacob interjected rudely, his face half pressed to the warm brickwork wall.

At this, Rennard flushed a bit, “Not exactly.”

“Thecla?” Luna looked curiously at her friend.

Scratching his calf with the opposite ankle, Rennard half-confessed, “She came after the girl was in bed. Abbie was off getting supplies too.”

“You didn’t,” Luna remarked before Jacob sat full up, his eyes wide.

“You had to do it!” he exploded into a laughing fit, “Oh, I’d oil every darn contraption on this island one hundred times over to have been a fly on the wall there. You probably were red as a rose, redder than the room.” 

The room went silent save the hoarse breaths of Jacob sucking what air he could into his eternally damage lungs. Rennard felt scandalized even though Luna looked at him with a warmness that belied the notion what he had done was sweet and not sick. Despite it, the boy couldn’t help but feel like anything but a cretin for having to undress a younger girl, or anyone for that matter, even at the behest of the master. It wasn’t different than Sophie, undressing, bathing, cleaning her when she was messed and mother was gone and father who knew what about. He felt the same way about the new girl as he did his kid sister and almost every other child on the island except Luna. 

Trying to force the shamed expression from his face, Rennard looked at Luna, who had started to hang Iris’s dress and tights beside her stocking on the iron brackets set at the foot of the empty bed. When she was done, she still held a serene and calming smile that said he had done the right thing, not because he was told to, but if he hadn’t, the girl could have passed. Between the two of them, Luna and Rennard knew that those brought to the island did not always survive. There had been times Father had insisted one of the older children help, and even if they had given it their all, there was no telling what would happen.

In that quiet moment, both Rennard and Luna, the eldest of the children, reflected on those that hadn’t made it. They had been without names. The boy found bleeding to death on the shore. Their stories were unknown. The toddler suffering some sort of allergic reaction in the valley. To both the world they had known and this island, they were lost. The twins found on the high balcony, poisoned. It was easier to say some of them just could not be saved. The many starved found in the tunnels. 

Jacob let out an obvious cough, “Well, did you get her name? Where she’s from?”

“It’s hard to do that when someone is unconscious. We’ll know in time, and if we don’t, it’s better we don’t have a name,” Rennard sighed, looking past Jacob and thinking of the incinerator. There was no notion in his head, not even the vaguest estimate, how many skeletons were charred, blackened, and burnt to a fine powder in that oven. Father Abbie had said it was quicker and cleaner that way. With no grave and no one to mourn the names of the lost, all wounds would heal in shorter time. That comforted Rennard little, but he would keep that truth to himself. His hands were dirtied with the task, his mind no better, but he could keep others from that dreadful reality. Should anything go wrong, he would be putting any number of their new family members to the flame. And were it to be him, he could only guess Luna would be made to carry out the deed.

Chiming in once more, ignoring the other boy, she asked, “How was she? Hurt, bleeding? Was she okay?”

“Cold. Very, very cold. I couldn’t tell, maybe bruised, there was some blood, but she was very cold. Thin, she’s thin, not malnourished, but on her way. She’ll recover, I would bet, if all that is needed is warmth and food.” 

“Is she…,” Luna led off, again fussing with the drying clothes and refusing to face Rennard. 

Regardless of how nervous the girl made him, Rennard knew what she asked, “She might be seven years old, I’d say six or five even, but that might have been with how thin she was. I’d say no older than Jacob.”

“I’ll have to ask Father if she should have the extra bunk in my room. We’re running low on space on the girl’s side. I’d hate to think the poor thing would have to share a room with one of the more brutish boys. But then again, Jacob already has a roommate,” Luna grinned back at Rennard.

Throwing off the blankets, Jacob stamped, “I’m right here. Stop talking about me like I’m not!”

Rennard cleared his throat as Luna stifled a laugh before Jacob remembered his lack of anything but undergarments. Shrieking, he tossed himself back under the sheets, hiding away a body still fettered with baby fat that clung on tight. He buried his head under a pillow and continued to howl for Luna to leave him alone. Despite being his elder, she complied, giving Rennard a pat on the shoulder as she exited. That wasn’t what she wanted, not what she intended. She wanted to embrace him, give him a kiss like mother always had done for father when he had been in doubt. But he was standoffish at best and did not seem capable of reciprocating any emotions she might offer. Yet, she felt the day would come when fear would not overawe her, and she might reach out and touch the warm life and vitality in those soft emerald eyes.