Sarah Sparrow - A Guide for Murdered Children

After a while, she recovered enough to say that she wanted to go to her sanctuary. Rayanne said she didn’t think that was a good idea—the den was all the way downstairs, too far from their bedroom—but the girls wound up camping there, with quilts that Mom provided. Rayanne slept alongside them, or tried to for an hour or so before Honeychile kicked her out.

Unchaperoned, the girls proceeded to eat about a gallon of rocky road. On their third trip to the kitchen, this time to make popcorn in the microwave, they were overtaken by a mood of giddiness and abandon.

“Oh my God, Honeychile, I wish I had taken a picture of you on the floor!” said Zelda. “You totally looked totally dead.”

Something was wrong.

Something had felt wrong for weeks now and it wasn’t just her interrupted sleep (which hadn’t really occurred since chemo) that was the culprit. Rather, Annie felt the source of her discomfort lay in the nature of the anomalies she had begun to encounter during her rounds on the night train.

Last night, for example.

A rowdy girl appeared in one of the cabins, causing havoc. She was almost completely out of control. Occasionally, such a thing happened with new arrivals—Jasper, her mentor, called it “transition anxiety”—though in most cases, fright quickly dissipated into agitated calm. This one was different; it was as if she didn’t belong there, and knew it. When the girl fled from the dark-paneled cabin, Annie was forced to summon help. Thankfully, the ancient, shadowy beings called Subalterns—the train’s rarefied equivalent of sentries—were always close at hand. After she was forcibly led back to her room, Annie brought a tray of lemonade and cookies that she naively thought would soothe, but the hellion sent it flying.

There was something else that caught the Porter’s attention. Most of Annie’s wards on the train were between the ages of five and eleven—sometimes a twelve-year-old would find their way—but this one was a full-blown adolescent. Short and odd-looking, the fearsome interloper was physically deformed as well, though there’d been precedents for that. Annie remembered a boy a few years ago who appeared in his cabin in a wheelchair. (He had a taste for pizza with chocolate sprinkles.) There was no rule that said so, but able-bodied children had been the norm.

What did it mean? That she’d soon be hosting murdered teens and young adults? The middle-aged? And if that were true, what difference would it make? As if she had a say! Had she become complacent and arrogant in the mysteries of her custodianship? Did she dare to believe that the incomprehensible could ever become familiar? She was there for one thing only: to serve. Nothing that went on was up to her, nor ever had been. It’d been a long while since Annie felt the astonished apprehension of her vocation, and now she scrambled to reclaim that sacred feeling because she knew it was essential. One must stay humble or go mad.

She lit incense and knelt before her mentor’s cabinet, bracing herself with a prayer of humility.

Yet still…

She felt aged out and in over her head.

She was contemplating the freakish new normal when the physician came to the examination room and invited Annie to his office. That was where he told her the cancer had returned.

He was startled yet relieved when a smile came to her face. It was always better when the patient, by denial or disposition, didn’t break down in front of him. He had walked this woman through her illness for twenty years and gotten to know her as best as anyone could. He’d never met anyone like her. She was an open book and a riddle all at once. He didn’t know what she did for money—knew nothing, really, about her life. What she had told him was contradictory. She once mentioned an inheritance but the doctor knew that she lived in a building on Skid Row. She said she was a volunteer in the pediatric wing of Macomb General. He had a friend on staff there who confirmed Annie was a “legend,” beloved by all, though apparently she had resisted the hospital’s overtures to put her on salary.

Her type of cancer was of the unlucky variety that can never be declared cured. When he showed her the CT scan of inoperable tumors, her reaction was the same as in the past, when he would tell her, “Annie, you’re good as gold. See you same time next year.”

She cried on the bus ride home, not with self-pity, but from gratitude. Jasper had told her this day would come and now it was here. He also said that when her time as Porter was nearing a close, she would begin to experience “turbulence,” but she never pressed him about what that meant. Now the anxiety of the last few weeks made perfect sense and filled her with a measure of relief. Looking out the window on the familiar, rain-slicked streets that grew more derelict as she got closer to home, Annie understood. She took solace in a sudden, secret knowledge, no longer hidden, that help was on the way. Someone was heading to the station—her replacement. She could feel it. She would do for them as her mentor had done for her…

How honored she was.

Walking from the bus stop to her apartment, she was greeted by shouts and tender whispers of “Mother” by the scavengers and outcasts. Each asked if there was anything she needed, eager to provide a service, any service—the service of Love. The whole wide world was filled with mothers and fathers and it made her heart thrum. The children of the train were mothers and fathers as well, and teachers too, long after their lives had abruptly ended. Love was deathless. The fruitless children of the train had parented her.

She showered in the hallway’s communal bath. When she returned to her room, Annie took special care in front of the mirror as she prepared for sleep. She put on the dress she was wearing when she and Jasper first met (Annie hadn’t worn it since), then riffled through drawers to find the necklace he gave her on the day that he died. With loving thoughts of the one who had rescued her from obscurity and madness, the Porter lay atop the bedcovers. She smiled to herself, thinking she must look like a corpse at a wake.

That night, when she boarded the train in full dress, the Subalterns emerged from the shadows, as if in respectful salute. They knew. It sent shivers down her spine.

It was the one time—and the last—they would dare to show her their faceless faces.

1.

It was a long while since he’d been back—and the feeling wasn’t good.

If Rafael had been a tad more enthusiastic about seeing him, Willow might have been in less of a funk. But what did he expect? He’d left Cold Case under shitty terms and the terms were shitty still. It was likely Rafael knew why he was coming to see him, but at least he had the decency not to get into any of it over the phone. Or maybe it was indecency , because if not being rehired was a done deal, the pilgrimage to the city would be a humongous jack-off. Groveling was humiliating enough, made worse by a monster toothache. He’d been popping four Advil every two hours since he left home, to no effect. If his kidneys shut down, so be it.

Abandon Port Hope, all ye who enter here!

My life is fucking absurd.

The appointment at the precinct was a few hours away and his best idea was to find an AA meeting. It made no sense but Willow suddenly got paranoid about running into anyone he knew; say, a cop in recovery. His life being the absurd one it was, of course he ran into a familiar face: a confidential informant straight out of the Way Back Machine. They nodded to each other, and throughout the hour their eyes furtively met. As was his habit, Willow bolted to the street right after the Lord’s Prayer, but the CI caught up.