Eighth Grave After Dark

“Beatrice!” I said, calling out to her. I’d lost her again and I needed to catch my breath. But before that could happen, she appeared beside me. My heart tried to leap out of my chest. I pressed a hand to hold it in and took a few deep breaths. “All right, Sister. What are you trying to show me?”

She pointed down. I followed her line of sight to the ground beneath me and realized I was standing on slats. Wooden slats. I knelt down and brushed the dirt and leaves away. I couldn’t be certain without a flashlight, but it could have been a well.

“What’s down there, sweetheart?”

Her gaze dropped to her saddle shoes, her hands wringing nervously.

“Is it you?” I asked. Did the priest kill her and dump her body in a well?

Without looking at me, she shook her head.

It hit me then. I sat back on one leg. “Is it him?” I asked her. “Is it the priest?”

She closed her eyes as shame consumed her. I had to admit, I didn’t expect that. Did she kill him? Or maybe he attacked her and she’d defended herself. It could have been any number of situations.

“Can you tell me what happened?”

She stepped forward and held out her hand. I took it, but wasn’t sure what she wanted until she nodded and closed her eyes. She was allowing me access to her memories.

They catapulted me back to a moonless night slick with freezing rain. I saw her journey through her eyes as she ran. Fear thundered through her. As she climbed as high and as fast as she could, her shoes slipped in the mud. But someone caught her wrist. Someone else was with her. Another young novice like herself. One whom she loved with all her heart and soul. It was hard to see her clearly through the rain, but the nun had features similar to Beatrice’s. And she was just as scared.

Beatrice’s fear paralyzed me. Her heart beat so hard, it hurt. He was going to kill her. He was going to kill them both. One of them, and he didn’t know which, had written to the bishop, accused him of forcing himself upon her. He’d been drunk, he said. He didn’t remember doing it, he said, let alone which girl it was. But he was not about to lose his entire career, his livelihood, over a whore. And since he didn’t know which one he’d accosted, he was going to kill them both. They saw it in his eyes when he asked them for help with a pen outside. They’d gone with him, feeling safe since there were two of them. They’d been wrong.

He swung a hammer, hitting Beatrice’s friend on the temple, and they ran into the night. Holding hands, they found a spot and hid from him. But he was not about to give up the search easily. He kept at it for what seemed like hours. Eventually, he found them.

The girl she was with motioned for her to run and then lunged at the priest. Beatrice couldn’t, though. She couldn’t run. She couldn’t leave her friend. Instead, she attacked the man from behind. He was choking her friend. She beat his head with her fists and scratched at his eyes, but he elbowed her in the face. The force knocked her back against a tree and she lost consciousness for a precious few seconds. When she came to, her friend lay motionless, his fingers so tight around her throat, she’d turned blue.

He shook the girl, squeezing the last remnants of life out of her as hard as he could, then let her go and came after Beatrice. She no longer cared. She gaped at her friend, unable to process the fact that she was gone. The priest walked toward her slowly, suddenly interested in her again. He would have his way with her before he killed her. Or after. Either way, he would win.

No, she thought. She brought out the knife she’d taken from the kitchen. The one she’d been carrying around since that night. To use on him. To protect herself. But she decided to use it on a part of him instead. The baby he’d left inside her body. He stopped and watched as she took the knife into both hands and plunged it into her abdomen.

He watched for a while, surprised, then shrugged. She’d done the work for him. When she fell to her knees, a searing pain paralyzing her, he walked back to the girl and dragged her higher up the mountain. Beatrice watched as he pulled back a wooden cover of some kind and dropped her friend into a well. He turned to come back for her, but the rain had softened the ground. He slid, caught himself, then slid again and toppled over the side and into the well.

She heard him groaning at first; then he came to and started yelling for her to get help. Instead, she crawled to the well, her hands and stomach covered in blood, and pushed the wooden cover with all her might until it canopied the entrance. His screams faded as the barrier slid into place, but they were still audible. So she worked for an hour, dragging dirt and grass and tree branches to cover the wood. To insulate the sound.

Finally, his screams were barely a whisper on the wind. With grief consuming her, she walked farther into the woods until the sun came up and drenched her in its light. Dreaming that it was God. Dreaming that he would forgive her, that he would touch her face as gently as the sun and welcome her home. She took her last breath thinking only of one person. Her twin sister. The girl lying at the bottom of a well with a murderer.

Her heart contracted for the last time, and then she was no longer cold.

I jerked away from her, fought to catch my breath, struggled to keep at bay the wetness threatening to spill over my lashes. I lost. Fat, hot tears streaked down my face as I looked at her.

“Beatrice, I’m so sorry.”

She shook her head. Pointed to herself, and finger-spelled, “Mo.”

“Mo? That’s Beatrice in the well?”

She nodded.