I have the strange sensation of wanting to squeeze my eyes shut while not being able to take them off something. She’s wearing the white dress. It’s the dress that she’ll die in, but it doesn’t look the same on her now as it did then.
This girl, standing at the foot of the staircase, holding a cloth bag and watching the surprised and increasingly furious expressions of Malvina and Elias, is incredibly alive. Her shoulders are square and strong, and her dark hair hangs in still waves down her back. She lifts her chin. I wish I could see her eyes, because I know that they’re sad and triumphant.
“What do you think you are doing?” Malvina demands. She’s looking at her daughter in horror, like she doesn’t know who she is. The air around her seems to ripple, and I get a whiff of the power Thomas was talking about.
“I’m going to the dance,” Anna replies calmly. “And I am not coming home.”
“You will go to no dance,” Malvina says acidly, rising up from her chair like she’s stalking prey. “You will go nowhere in that disgusting dress.” She advances on her daughter, squinting and swallowing hard, like she might be sick. “You wear white like a bride, but what man will take you after you let schoolboys lift your skirts!” She rears her head back like a viper and spits in Anna’s face. “Your father would be ashamed.”
Anna doesn’t move. The only thing that betrays any emotion is the rapid rising and falling of her ribs.
“Papa loved me,” she says softly. “I do not know why you don’t.”
“Bad girls are as useless as they are stupid,” Malvina says with a wave of her hand. I don’t know what she means. I think her English is faltering. Or maybe she’s just dumb. I think that might be it.
There’s bile in my throat as I watch and listen. I’ve never heard anyone speak to their kid this way. I want to reach out and shake her until she gets some sense. Or at least until I hear something crack.
“Go upstairs and take it off,” Malvina orders. “And bring it down to burn.”
I see Anna’s hand tighten on her bag. Everything she owns is held in a small brown cloth and tied together with string. “No,” she replies calmly. “I’m leaving here.”
Malvina laughs. It’s a brittle, rattling sound. A dark light comes into her eyes.
“Elias,” she says. “Take my daughter up to her room. Get her out of this dress.”
My God, Thomas thinks. In the corner of my eye, I see Carmel put her hand to her mouth. I don’t want to see this. I don’t want to know this. If that man touches her, I’ll break the circle. I don’t care if it’s just a memory. I don’t care if I need to know. I’ll break his neck.
“No, Mama,” Anna says fearfully, but when Elias moves toward her, she widens her stance. “I will not let him near me.”
“I will be your father soon, Anna,” Elias says. The words make me sick to my stomach. “You must obey me.” His tongue flickers across his lips eagerly. Behind me I hear my Anna, Anna Dressed in Blood, begin to growl.
As Elias advances, Anna turns and runs for the door, but he catches her by the arm and twists her around, so close that her hair flies against his face, so close that she must be able to feel the thick heat of his breath. His hands are already searching, clawing at her dress, and I look at Malvina only to see a terrible expression of pleased hatred. Anna is thrashing and screaming through her teeth; she swings her head back and connects with Elias’s nose, not hard enough to make it bleed but hard enough to sting like a mother. She manages to pull herself free and scrambles toward the kitchen and the back door.
“You will not leave this house!” Malvina shrieks and follows, reaching out for a handful of Anna’s hair and yanking her back. “You will never, never leave this house!”
“I will!” Anna shouts, pushing her mother away. Malvina falls against a large wooden dresser and stumbles. Anna circles around her, but she doesn’t see Elias, recovering near the foot of the stairs. I want to yell to her to turn around. I want to tell her to run. But it doesn’t matter what I want. All of this already happened.
“Bitch,” he says loudly. Anna jumps. He’s holding his nose and checking for blood, glaring at her. “We feed you. We clothe you. And this is your gratitude!” He holds his palm out even though there’s nothing on it. Then he slaps her hard across the face and grabs her shoulders, shaking and shaking and screaming at her in Finnish that I don’t understand. Her hair is flying and she’s started to cry. All of this seems exciting to Malvina, whose eyes gleam as she watches.
Anna hasn’t given up. She fights back and charges forward, slamming Elias into the wall against the staircase. There’s a ceramic pitcher on the dresser beside them. She smashes it against the side of his head, making him roar and let go. Malvina shouts as she runs for the door, and by now there’s so much screaming that I can hardly make out any of it. Elias has tackled Anna and has her by the backs of the legs. She’s fallen onto the floor of the foyer.
I know that this is it even before Malvina comes out of the kitchen holding the knife. We all know it. I can feel them, Thomas, Carmel, and Will, unable to breathe, wanting more than anything to close their eyes, or to shout and actually be heard. They’ve never seen anything like this. They’ve probably never really even thought about it.
I look at Anna, facedown on the floor, terrified but not nearly scared enough. I watch this girl, struggling to escape, not just from Elias’s grip, but from everything, from this stifling house, from this life like a weight around her shoulders, dragging her down and planting her in dirt. I watch this girl as her mother bends over her with a kitchen knife and nothing but anger in her eyes. Stupid anger, baseless anger, and then the blade is at her throat, dragging across skin and opening a deep red line. Too deep, I think, too deep. I listen to Anna scream until she can’t anymore.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Behind me I hear a thud, and I turn away from the scene, grateful for the distraction. Inside the circle, Anna is no longer hovering. She’s collapsed onto the floor on her hands and knees. The black tendrils of her hair twitch. Her mouth is open like she might moan, or cry, but there is no sound. Streaky gray tears roll like charcoal-tinted water down pale cheeks. She watched her own throat get cut. She’s watching herself bleed to death, redness soaking down into the house and saturating her white dancing dress. All of these things that she couldn’t remember were just slapped into her face. She’s growing weak.
I look back at Anna’s death even though I don’t want to. Malvina is stripping the body and barking orders at Elias, who flees into the kitchen and comes back with what looks like a rough blanket. She tells him to cover the body, and he does. I can tell that he can’t believe what’s happened. Then she tells him to go upstairs and find Anna another dress.
“Another dress? What for?” he asks, but she snaps, “Just go!” and he scampers up the steps so fast that he stumbles.
Malvina spreads Anna’s dress out on the floor, so covered in red now that it’s difficult to remember that it used to be white. Then she goes to the closet on the opposite side of the room and comes back holding black candles and a small black bag.
She’s a witch, Thomas mentally hisses at me. The curse. It makes perfect sense. We should have known that the killer was some kind of a witch. But we might never have guessed it was her own mother.
Keep your eyes sharp, I shoot back at Thomas. I might need your help figuring out what’s going on here.
I doubt it, he says, and I guess I doubt it too, watching Malvina light the candles and kneel over the dress, her body swaying as she chants in whispers, soft Finnish words. Her voice is tender, like it never was for Anna in life. The candles glow brighter. She lifts first the one on the left, and then the one on the right. Black wax spills across the stained fabric. Then she spits on it, three times. Her chanting is louder, but I don’t understand any of it. I start trying to pick out words to look up later, and that’s when I hear him. Thomas. He’s speaking softly out loud. For a second I don’t know what he’s saying. I actually open my mouth to tell him to shut up, that I’m trying to listen, before I realize he’s repeating her chants in English.