Page 11 of The Library at Hellebore
“They’re a better person than you ever were,” said Gracelynn like that was enough, like that was all the answer needed. And I thought,Yes, Kevin was that.There’d been no pause. Kevin had not faltered when the faculty washed from the podium, they only stood to shove Gracelynn into my arms, resolve in their expression.Don’t let Gracelynn look back,they told me.
“They’re alsodead.” Adam laughed, sounding like Christmas had come early for him. He practically sang the next words. I didn’t know someone could make an accusation sound so frolicsome. His attention pinballed through the room before it set itself on me. “You know, I’d heard rumors about you but I’d thought they were all lies. Then you got that one kill just under the wire. Although killing your roommate seems rather cliched, doesn’t it? Was it jealousy? Was it because she was prettier than you?”
“It’s more complicated than that,” I said.
It was.
“I know I’d love to hear all about it,” said Rowan.
“Wait, wait, Alessa did what now?” Eoan turned his doleful gaze on me, some of that habitual misery leaching away so horror could overtake his face instead. “Johanna—no, she was a joy. She was the brightest thing in the school. She can’t be dead, no.”
“As a doorknob,” said Rowan with suicidal affability.
“Butwhy?” demanded Eoan.
“She might be dead, but I don’t believe Alessa did it,” said Gracelynn, raising their head again. “That’s not who she is. She wouldn’t.”
“Actually, I would,” I said. Unlike Adam, I didn’t believe in taking credit where it wasn’t due. “But like I said, it was complicated—”
“It’s Hellebore, after all,” said Minji from her perch. “We’re all monsters here.”
Gracelynn’s face lost its color, went as pale as their brown skin would permit. They shook their head, lavender bangs clinging to their forehead. Like the rest of us, they were soaked in other people’s insides, a nice shared souvenir from our recent troubles. “No, no. That’s not… Alessa, tell them—”
“Makes you question everything, doesn’t it?” said Adam ecstatically.
“Shut up,” rose Portia’s voice. “And look.”
It was then we all saw that a note, written in our headmaster’s very officious hand, had been slid under the door and was being waved at us. When we fell silent, whoever was on the other end gave the paper a little push, and it fluttered fully into the room.
“What the fuck?” said Rowan.
Adam squatted down, picking up the note. He read through it several times before crumpling it in a hand and tossing it on the floor.
“What the hell does it say?” I asked.
“That only one of us can survive this,” said Adam, with no expression at all. “And the winner gets to leave Hellebore.”
We all scrambled for the crumpled paper, in case Adam was fucking with us, liar that he was. Rowan managed to grab it first, plunging onto his belly to seize the paper, and we relented—none of us wanting to risk bumping up against him. Bad enough we were trapped here. No one wanted to add dying of accelerated sepsis on top of it all.
Beaming triumphantly, Rowan rose and unfolded the note, holding it out for us to read. There it was, in the headmaster’s unmistakable scrawl:
Finish the job. Last one alive will be allowed to leave Hellebore. Be quick. You have three days.
DAY ONE
Let no one tell you it doesn’t suck to be in close (former,I suppose) acquaintance with everyone’s favorite people pleaser. Johanna had fans, many of whom I suspect were really just nostalgic for her prescience, her eagerness to do whatever they wanted at any given time: codependence absolutely could work if both parties had an interest in feeding the other’s appetites.
Eoan and Gracelynn mostly just wept for answers for beloved Johanna. Rowan snarked. Portia stared at a point in the rafters, rocking slowly in place. Minji ignored us, more preoccupied with watching Ford attempt a recreational bout of self-enucleation. (Eyeballs weren’t traditionally used in haruspicy; they were too prone to just disintegrating into a slather of aqueous humor. It’s possible Ford was trying to scoop one out for legitimate reasons, but I maintain he was doing it for fun.) As for Adam, he was having the time of his life, goading the rest to ostracize me, distrust me,killme first. His joy in watching us fracture was ironically one of the purest things I’d witnessed. It made sense, though. He was one of Satan’s countless sons, after all.
My patience, never generous to begin with, gave out when Gracelynn and Eoan began bickering for the umpteenth timeabout whether I had misremembered the events leading up to Johanna’s death and whether maybe, just maybe, I was a victim of implanted memories. Maybe there was a conspiracy worse than the one that had penned us in here. Maybe it was more chicanery on the faculty’s part. We had no idea they were going to reveal themselves to be a horde of ravenous aberrations. The notion of them fucking with my mind didn’t seem far-fetched, not after that first climatic reveal. And god, it didn’t help that Adam was laughing like a coyote and Rowan’s chain-smoking was filling the stagnant air with smoke. Had things gone slightly differently, there might have been a few early casualties—only the gods know whether it’d have been me or them, but I wanted blood to drown out the noise. Then a sound, a moist one, like a stubborn Band-Aid being slowly peeled from skin, broke through the tableau.
I turned to see Portia gnawing on her wrist. No, no, not gnawingon.Memory softens the truth too much. That wasn’t right, wasn’t what I witnessed. No, Portia was gnawing a flapthroughthe skin around her wrist, tugging at the flesh with her fingers even as she chewed more of it free. I saw the wet shine of bone as it came undone like a ribbon. Portia then delicately wadded up her work and laid it on the red tip of her tongue, sighing, eyelids fluttering. I watched as she swallowed it whole, shuddering with a voluptuous, almost masturbatory relish, and it felt almost voyeuristic to witness this act of autophagy.
Rowan cleared his throat. “What,” he said, “the actual fuck?”
“I was hungry,” said Portia, as if that was all the explanation anyone could need. It was perhaps a mercy that whatever transformation Portia was undergoing had also clotted her blood, leaving it jammy and curdled and dark, too viscousto spray over us. “I’m so damned hungry. Isn’t anyone else hungry? Must be all that adrenaline.”
“Must be,” said Rowan, backing up.
