Red Soled Shoes

Raveena had gotten blood on her sandals. Again. 

That was the only thought that seemed to form as a complete sentence in her head, the sticky red liquid coating the front of her shoes. It was the only thing her brain seemed to want to process. Her shoes had been ruined, the flickering flames of the fireplace stretching their shape into long shadows. 

The dim light and shadows engaged in an elaborate dance across the room, reflection casting the room back into itself through the window panes. Sharp shadows cut across everything in harsh lines, burrowing into the girl that lay flayed in front of Raveena’s feet. She tried to summon her ebbing strength to call out, but only managed to writhe, the barest gurgle escaping from her lips with her last breath. 

A log slipped in the fireplace, crackling and spraying flashing embers on the ground. Raveena snapped into motion. 

Her shoes stuck to the ground a little with each pounding step. The door slammed open with a jerk. The only light that cast out into the narrow hallway was the fireplace, which flicked off the moment the door shut behind her with a snap. Raveena screamed. 

No response. She slammed herself against the nearest door. Raveena knew this hallway by instinct. She may have even been more familiar with the boarding house in the dark, the names on the plaques replaced by memory. “Catherine!” It came out like a plea or desperate prayer. “Help!”

The door swung open urgently, but no light filled the room. When she stumbled in, her heart stopped at the squelching sound her shoes made as she moved. She braced to run back out into the hallway. 

The fire came to life in the hearth that sat at the end of the room. She snapped back to a recent memory, each flicker of the flame flashing an image she had tried her best to bury. 

The sickly sweet scent of summer. The taste of lemon still sharp on her tongue. The sound of buzzing cicadas and rushing water. Smoke rising in a tower above the flames they had built by the riverbank. 

She looked down at her shoes, the red caking vibrant tufts of grass. 

The floor was covered in blood. Raveena staggered backward, willing herself not to look. Her arm braced on the doorway. 

She looked. Catherine had been dead longer than the last girl, flayed just the same. A chunk of her skull had been torn out, what remained of her head lolled to the side. An absent eye stared through Raveena’s chest.

The back of Raveena’s throat burned. She choked back the tears threatening to blur her vision. 

Sharply, a voice rose through her thoughts, like an accusation on Catherine’s lips. You did this.

“No!” The door slammed in front of her as she took a step back. “No, no, no, no, no.”

She tried more doors, more names, more screams. Her hair slipped out of its tie where it had been piled on her head. Her heart raced, blood rushing into her head. No answers. 

When she banged on the fifth door, her hands came away sticky. She let out a strangled sound she didn’t even know she could make. When she moved back, her foot met flesh, coming down so suddenly she heard a crack. 

Before she could fall, a hand tugged her back by the hair. Spots appeared in her vision. Pain seared through her skull. She felt her body collide with the ground. A door slammed. 

She tried to scream, but the hand closed around her mouth. “Shhh, it’s safe here. You’re safe.”

Raveena blinked to clear her vision. 

Candles dotted the floor in the room. Dim light illuminated stacks of books, furniture pushed aside to the walls, and chalk marking a circle on the floor in odd, twisting patterns. A girl knelt before her. 

Her face was shaped like a heart. Streaked brown hair circled her head in a thick mop of curls. With a smattering of freckles across her nose, she looked just like her. Raveena’s heart picked up from where it had stopped. 

Catherine had caught her staring at the girl a week earlier in class, and had leaned over to whisper. Half of the words hadn’t managed to snag in her mind. Sister. Showed up yesterday. No one knew.

 “Leona.” The name sounded like an accusation coming from Raveen’s lips. She hadn’t intended it in that way. 

Leona’s eyes raked over her, from the blood covering her sandals to the ends of her hair. She worried her lips. When she was satisfied by what she saw, she leaned back and sat on the floor with her in the circle. Tears began to well in her eyes. “I’m sorry,” the words came out in a rush, “I’m so so sorry, I-”

The books, the chalk circle. Raveena sat up. “You did this.” It sounded too similar to the accusation from before. Her blood ran cold. 

“I just wanted to talk to my sister.” Leona trembled. “I didn’t imagine she would be-” She choked on the next word. 

“Dead.”

She nodded, taking a breath before speaking again. “I thought it was odd when she stopped,” she waved to the chalk circle, ”getting in touch. I thought maybe I would find her here, or at least be able to make contact.”

Her brain struggled to catch up. “She never mentioned any family.”

“She was always ashamed of us.” Leona cast a glance around the room. “That’s why she always stayed here even in the summer.”

When summer rolled in and the heat in the boarding house became too much to bear, the girls would leave their windows open and pack a picnic to bring to the river in the woods nearby. They would drink through pitchers of lemonade and talk about classes and the latest novel in trend and everything in between. Everyone was careful to tiptoe around the subject of home. No one that resided in the house in the summer ever seemed to want to talk about home. 

They were on one of their picnics. The day she died. 

“Even dead,” Leona didn’t seem used to the taste of that word, “I didn’t expect her to be so… angry.”

Raveena flinched. “It was an accident.”

“What?”

It was Raveena who had sought somewhere more scenic. Their little party had followed, gasping in awe at the cliff and the clear water rushing below. They had laid out their picnic as they always did.

“We didn’t know there were rocks at the bottom. She wanted to dive into the water.”

They had just laughed at her suggestion. Raveena had goaded her. She was famously the daredevil of their party. It wasn’t until they heard her screaming that they realized something had gone very, very wrong. 

She wasn’t dead when they had rushed down and found her clawing at the mud by the riverbank. There was blood. So much blood. 

“We didn’t know.” Tears started to choke down the rest of her words. “I swear I didn’t know, I-”

She had cried for help. Everyone was paralyzed. By the time they would have brought her back to the house, she would have been dead. They would have all been in so much trouble. 

It was Raveena that had snapped out of the trance first. It was Raveena that had picked up a rock resting at the base of a tree. It was Raveena that had ignored her dying pleas. 

The blood had gotten all over her shoes. 

“I didn’t know what else to do.”

The girls that hadn’t gotten blood on their clothes had run back to the house to fetch the kindling for the fire and new dresses. They had been lucky the matron was out on errands. It had given them enough time to burn her few belongings, craft the excuse of her having to run off for a family emergency. No one knew enough about her family to question anything in the first place. 

The rest of their summer days had been fraught with tension, but soon enough her name had been scratched out of the roster as the term began anew. Cool autumn air settled in and calmed their nerves. They had gotten away. 

Then Leona appeared, and for some reason, she had kept quiet. 

“I was worried she had run away. I’m sure you know how she is. I wanted to talk to her before causing a ruckus.” She blinked back her own tears.

Raveena’s fell freely. “I’m so sorry. I loved Adeline so much.”

A scream tore through the hallway. Leona’s eyes widened.

Raveena got on her feet immediately, starting for the door. “Someone needs our help-”

“Stop.” Her tone made her halt immediately. “Trust me, you don’t want to help.”

“Why-”

“Leona!” The door rattled so hard it might have fallen off its hinges, markings etched into the wood. A chill slid up her spine. It was her voice, shrill and full of malevolence. “Leona l know you’re hiding her in there!”

“You shouldn’t have said her name.” Leona reached for a piece of chalk, making another set of markings. Each stroke seemed to land like a lashing, eliciting a gut wrenching scream from outside the door, making it rattle harder. Raveena backed away to the other side of the circle. 

“What do we do now?” The door settled. 

“There’s a way we can get rid of her, but we need a third person to complete the ritual.” 

“Leona, I’m gonna kill this one too!” There was banging on the door this time. Adeline had brought back a body. “I swear I’ll stop! Just give me the one you have!”

Raveena cast a terrified glance over at Leona. She shook her head. 

“Then how do we get our third person?”

“We wait for the next one she isn’t focused on.” Her mouth settled into a grim line. 

They settled in for the next few minutes. Leona kept her eyes trained on the door. Every once in a while it would rattle and Adeline would come back with another threat. Another plea. How could you do this to me? How could you let them forget me?

After the second victim, Raveena whispered aloud the thought that sat between them. “Why not just give me up?” 

That broke her concentration for a moment. “I brought her here.” She lifted her eyes to meet Raveena’s. “None of us are saints. We need to live to make up for our mistakes.”

A scream for help came from the end of the hallway. Leona’s attention snapped back to the door. “There.” She turned back. “You need to hold my hand while you’re still in the circle. I’ll drag her in.”

They locked fingers, she kept her other hand trained on the doorknob. 

The banging outside grew louder. The girl screamed, speaking in delirious sentences. Her steps grew closer. Closer. Closer. 

“Now!” Leona threw the door open. Raveena jerked forward unexpectedly.

Everything went still. The screaming stopped. 

“Leona?”

She turned around, pupils dilating. Her mouth twisted into a grimace. When she spoke, her voice was not her own. “Raveena.”

Raveena looked down. 

The chalk was stained red. The blood had rubbed off of her shoes.