Hush- next installment

Mortified, shocked, broken, awe-struck. He holds his palm over his mouth to quiet grief slicing away at his throat. All around him the girls lay in innocent slumber, completely unaware of their deteriorating late playmate. Mr. Hush's eyes are left to tears as he sits quietly on the foot of Lilly's bed. He would have to move her away from the other girls. He felt sick at the thought of any of them seeing the corpse. Tears of grief cascade Mr Hush's face, he can't seem to quiet them. He takes hold of the white bed sheet lying under Lilly's body, and wraps it around the small figure, desperately clearing the salty wetness from his sight. He carries her across the building and into one of the spare bedrooms down the hall from his own. 

Laying her down on the bed, at a loss for a better place, the solidity finally sinks, burrows its way into his skin like icy shards of pure pain. In the war, Mr. Hush had seen comrades die in...horrific ways. He had seen deaths he would give a sect of his very being to forget. But seeing this, here, this deceased child. One so innocent as to never be careless with any feeling ever to be entrusted in her. Dealt such a cruel hand in what short life she had, left with no length of time to make up for it in the slightest. Life seized from her weak and innocent hands.

The sorrow I feel is too great for me to grasp. My precious child... Oh, my sweet pleasure... if there was ever one child who deserved a future greater than you... Mr. Hush thought, sinking to the edge of the mattress.

“We'll miss you, Lil.” he sobs at a whisper. The nature of pain had never really owned an equal in Mr. Hush's life until this point. He gives a glance over his shoulder, the painful sight of the ghostly white silhouette causing sorrow's frozen breath to fill his lungs. This precious girl, who'd never known a life with a mother or father... Well, besides Mr. Hush. He'd loved Lilly. And she had loved him. He is a good distance away from the girls now, but he knows that Mrs. Gertrude is in the room to his left and across the way is Ms. Cannon, the co-headmaster of Muriel’s. Quivering, he sobs into the sleeves of his shirt, pushing them against his eyes.

It was only a month ago when she'd gotten ill. A horrible, rattling cough could be heard hollering through the hallways of the building in the days to follow the first of their kind. Progressively, over the next week, she weakened like a vegetable wilting. Dying. Mr. Hush remembers the feeling of her burning flesh, as boiling hot as if she were about to catch flame. He thought bitterly of her pain, the sour, stinging tears cascade from his eyes. He can hear the doctor's words vibrating inside his head and squeezing throngs of pain around his heart ...Tuberculosis... Fatal... no cure... she will die...

He didn't understand it. How could this have happened, when the girl had sounded and looked so well and been so capable last night when they had spoken. How was it possible? He would give more thought to the matter at a later time, when it was less painful.

I must be out of this death-filled room. Mr. Hush thinks to himself, standing forlornly and vacating the room. He didn't look back at Lilly's corpse as he went, but had he, he would've noticed a rather peculiar rustling of the sheet enveloping the unmoving, dead body.

Three knocks fill the room of Ivory Cannon, the co-headmaster to Mr. Hush. Her story was a broken one indeed, dripping with tears, and betrayal, and darkness. Leaning over the edge of depressed insanity, Ms. Cannon found Muriel's... Well, to be accurate, Muriel's found her. Mr. Hush had taken her in, seeing that she was in need of help. He'd pulled her up to where she was today, and she felt forever mentally indebted to Mr. Hush, whether or not he accepted it. Startling from her sleep, she pushes the covers off of herself and yanks away a thin, flower-stitched robe, throwing it around herself. She rushes to the door and opens it a tad, peeking one eye out to see who it is. Nobody is standing at her door. She doesn't get a chance to wonder about this, because she is distracted by Mr. Hush across the open floor landing. She notices right away that his eyes are a fleshed red color and there are glimmering tears streaming down his gentle face. She opens the door wider and pulls her gown tight around her wide hips.

“Sir?” She whispers across the way to him. He turns to her, a bit startled and she takes on the full effect of his sorrowing form. Slightly taken-aback, she softly crosses the threshold of her room and pads across the floor to him, “Mark, what is it?” She asks, taking his arm gently.

“She's...she's...Lilly's...She's dead.” He struggles. Ms. Cannon is shocked, a resonating surge of discomfort spreads throughout her body. Her jaw falls numb.

“Wh-what?” She squeaks.

“She has passed away.” Mr. Hush weeps again. His shoulders are trembling violently and uncontrollably as he tries to stifle the heaving sobs. Ms. Cannon shakes off her perpetual shock and takes him in close, embracing him consolingly like a mother would a frightened kin. She leads Mr. Hush into her room. She sits him onto the edge of her bed, sitting down, herself, next to him in comfort. She eases one hand into his and covers it with her other. Mr. Hush looks at her appreciatively and lets loose his grievances in her company.

Later that morning, at around Ten O'clock, Ms. Cannon calls the police and the coroner’s office to come take care of the body. They arrive within a few hours.

“Mr. Hush, Ms. Cannon,” the coroner addresses them as he steps from the room into the hallway where they stand, “Lilly Farline; age Four years and three months, born on September Twelfth is pronounced dead on October Seventh, Nineteen-Thirty-Four. Time of death has been distinguished as being approximately 8:00pm yesterday evening.”

“Wait, I'm sorry, did you say 8:00 yesterday?”

“Yes, Sir.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“That's impossible.”

“Might I ask why you disgrace my profession?”He demanded, stiffening the flat-bottomed, black mustache across his lip. 

“No, it's just that the fact of the matter is, I talked to Lilly this morning far past midnight! She was alive and well all the way through yesterday evening. I could've said without uncertainty that she seemed to be regaining her health! She walked all the way in to my office, after all!”

“Illogical, Mr. Hush, I assure you. The corpse is undergoing Livor Mortis, a term describing the congealing of the blood that only occurs within twelve full hours of being dead. If you're describing an event that actually took place, it would only have been about six or seven hours. Human blood most definitely will never congeal in that amount of time, you see?”

Mr. Hush's head is pounding and spinning with confusions. He had spoken to Lilly this morning. He's certain of it. But, what the Coroner had said to him did make more sense than what he thinks he knows. He stumbles back into the chair behind his desk, pressing and rubbing his temples as his mind continues to reel.

“See here, Mr. Hush,” The coroner says a bit more gently, “the stress of the morning probably has got some things all jumbled up inside your head, now, isn't that right? Yes, surely you are mistaken. Perhaps it would be best to take a bit of rest, eh? Get some things sorted out.”

“Sir?” Ms. Cannon asks, gingerly putting a hand on his shoulder. Mr. Hush is deeply lost in a pool of thick thought of which he only managed to offer back to the coroner a stiff nod. Ms. Cannon turns to the two men with an affectionate, thin smile, “He does work long into the night at times...lack of sleep may be wearing on the Head-master's poor nerves,” she extends a perfectly-curated arm, palm up, in the direction of the left staircase, gesturing to the Officer and the Coroner, leading them out of the room and down the stairs, eventually making their way out the front door of Muriel's. Ms. Cannon's heeled shoes clack loudly against the bronze-colored linoleum floor. She startles at he sight of a little girl standing in the hallway behind her, watching the two men go with curiosity.

“Why was the Police here, Ms. Cannon?” The little girl asked, her 's' sounds whistling through a large gap in her front-most teeth. Ms. Cannon approaches the child and bends down a little, anchoring her hands between her knees.

“Don't worry about that now, sweet-heart. Go and be with the other girls, I'm sure they need help with the chores. Don't forget your book for reading at Twelve O'clock, okay?”

“Okay.” The girl turns and begins to climb the right staircase, headed for the commons. As Ivory Cannon straightens up and takes a step in the direction of the left staircase with the intent on re-joining Mr. Hush in his study, she glances down the hallway running down the middle between the stairs. Her eyes fall across the familiar face of Lilly. At first, Ms. Cannon thinks nothing of it, but just as she remembers the complete mortality of the girl she's just seen, she glances back and the hallway is vacant. A mere head turn ago, there had been a thin, blonde girl in a nightdress, her head cocked as if to question something.

Don't be silly. Ms. Cannon thinks to herself, continuing up the stairs, You're just imagining things, Ms. Ivory.