Kate’s blue eyes surveyed the huge cavern. Stalactites hung overhead. Between them were hundreds of holes, just like the one from which she had fallen. Signs hung above each hole. She could not read them from the floor. A wooden catwalk crisscrossed the ceiling about five feet below the holes, and offset just enough so that things could fall out to the pools below. Hundreds of pools. Something screamed from two of the holes. Flesh-colored lumps splashed down before her. In seconds, two thirteen-year-old girls popped to the surface, gulping air. I’m not the only one. Four gray lizard hands grabbed Kate’s arms and legs, carrying her flailing, screaming body to a bonfire at the cavern’s center. A part of her mind detached itself from the shrieking portion and asked: Are they going to cook me? Eat me? Tears gushed across her face; her nose became congested. She wished she had a tissue. She would have to snort like the street people she had seen behind dumpsters downtown. She realized one’s dignity evaporates quickly without clothing and comforts.
Through the gremlins’ sharp teeth huffed smells of something sickly sweet, like the rotten steak Kate had helped her mother throw into the trash last week. Kate’s stomach churned. She wondered where these things obtained their meat.
There at the center of the cave, before the raging fire, an old female gremlin with sagging breasts waved a baton like an orchestra conductor. A thousand human girls chanted. The girls sat on crude wood benches in concentric, stepped semicircles around the grandam. This is like a movie theater or band shall, thought Kate. The fire warmed her skin, calming her gooseflesh. Her two overseers sat her down on a seat at the end of a bench by the other chanting adolescents. What are these girls saying? Kate frowned. The multitude of voices made it hard to understand.
Gradually Kate interpreted the mind-numbing chanting around her.
Hundreds of girls in the amphitheater mindlessly repeated this litany, their glazed eyes registering a trance. The other children were mostly nude, but tattered nightgowns and T-shirts clung to a handful of them. All were wet.
A hundred gremlins moved through the crowd of mesmerized adolescents. The beasts lifted their armpits, spraying numbing purple cinnamon gas. Kate held her breath and chanted with the other girls:
“Wear clean underwear in case of an accident and you go to the hospital.
“Oh, you kids are just impossible.”
Her two gremlins passed with their noxious purple pits opened. Kate continued holding her breath for at least a minute, giving the fog time to dissipate. With her reddening cheeks puffed out like Louis Armstrong playing the trumpet and her blue eyes bulging, she finally sucked in a fresh breath, then another and another. She remained conscious.
I always wondered where girls learned all that stuff women know—how to be moms. I never imagined… The gremlins moved, working the far side of the crowd. Kate saw her chance. Running from the amphitheater to the cavern’s side wall, she scampered up a rickety wooden stair, her small, unrestrained breasts bouncing. Its steps were smaller than she was used to; she climbed two and three at a time. In moments, a shout rose from the amphitheater, unintelligible shrieks from a score of gremlins, dismayed at her defection. They tucked their arms and legs, becoming huge dirty tennis balls, rolling after her. Right up the stairs they came, emitting little “Oofs” and “Arghs” as they bounced up the treads. Kate ran along the catwalks frantically, searching for escape.
“Milwaukee” read a sign above her.
“Detroit” said another.
The signs were posted above tunnel holes in the cave’s ceiling. Where’s Muncie? Her heart beat loudly in her ears, like when she ran the mile once a year in gym class. The catwalk divided, one path left, the other right. Gremlins behind. Without thinking, she felt the right path was the correct choice.
“Evansville.”
“Indianapolis.”
“Fort Wayne.”
“Muncie!”
Kate smiled grimly and jumped to the railing Damn, a splinter in my toe! and jumped up into the hole. It ascended at an angle, so she clambered through it on all fours. Her delicate, pampered skin was chafed and scraped, but she ignored the pain, squeezing her body through, hoping she could squirm fast enough, God it has to be fast enough, has to be… Heavy breathing at the hole’s entrance below her. Got to go faster! Clammy sweat peppered her brow; grit clung to her damp naked skin. Strange gibbering behind. Faster! Clawing sounds. Darkness.
An alarm shattered the cold morning air. Kate sprang out of bed. Got to… What? My, what’s all this dirt? I’m filthy! Kate jumped into the shower, the layer of dirt turning to mud, then washing away, swirling down the drain. The warm water stung her abrasions at first, like old-fashioned Mercurochrome on a hundred knife gashes. She sucked in her breath and tensed her punished back, leg and arm muscles. Gradually the water’s soothing wet warmth calmed her complaining body.
“Cleanliness is next to Godliness,” she singsonged as she turned off the water. Kate selected a modest matching plaid outfit her mother had purchased for her birthday. She dressed, cleaned her teeth, brushed her hair back from her face, and decided against the heavy makeup she normally wore. Although she usually skipped breakfast, she looked forward to it today.
She opened her bedroom door. Her mother walked by. “An apple a day keeps the doctor away,” Kate chanted. Her mother beamed at her appreciatively. Kate’s little brother Kevin zoomed down the hall, half clothed. Mrs. Kraft opened her mouth, ready to reprimand him, but Kate beat her to the punch. “Kevin!” ordered Kate, “march back to your room, young man. Put some decent clothes on. And brush your teeth.”
In Kevin’s betrayed gaze was the understanding that his relationship had changed in some fundamental way with his sister and all females past her age. “Geez! Where do you girls learn that stuff?”
THE HYACINTH GIRL
by Mary Ann Mitchell