"When you find me in the morning, hanging on the warning, oh-oh-oh – the joke is on you." Pleasant. We all love jokes, don't we?
Chapter Ten: One Little Indian, Left All Alone
Velma caught her breath and organized her thoughts. Now that she had stopped grinning and gotten herself under control again, she acknowledged the twinge of hunger clamoring for attention in her stomach. Daphne wouldn't be in the house. She'd locked all the doors last night. That fact set in her mind, she unlocked her bedroom door and slipped out. She smiled as she opened first Jennifer's door, then Marianne's, and worked her way down the hallway. Her hand hesitated on Shaggy's door, but she forced herself to open it and hurried past. Reaching the end of the hall, she turned and walked back to the staircase. "I made it," she sang out, "I made it through alive."
She was just excited enough to slide down the banister. Hopping off the end, she did a little dance on the way through the games room. The front hall made her pause. That curious painting looked a little bit different now. She couldn't quite put her finger on just how, but something was off. She cocked her head and stared at it.
If anyone had seen her there, head tilted and standing completely still in the middle of the front hall, they would have thought her mad. Of course, it didn't hurt that she was.
Snapping out of her stillness, she strode over to the painting. The motion looked funny on her small frame, but she didn't notice. The painting was different. "What happened to you there?" she asked the man with the tortured expression. "Don't you look nice with the pretty new necktie." She laughed. The noose around his neck didn't scare her – she'd made it out alive. She was fine.
The brunette gave the painting an indifferent flick on the trunk of the tree to show what she thought of its scare tactics now and opened the door to the dining room. The smile froze on her face. One little Indian boy stood alone in the centerpiece, facing her. She swallowed.
"So it is me…" Then where was Daphne's body? Probably out somewhere on the island, she decided, because I locked the doors. She can't be inside. "But it's me," she countered, "so I could have unlocked the door and brought her inside. Not that she would have followed me." She looked down at her bare arms and adjusted the sleeves of her t-shirt. She was strong enough to have dragged a dead body inside, she concluded, but she would go looking for the corpse after breakfast. "I'm a serial killer." The smile returned to her face. "I'm a serial killer." It wasn't such a bad thing to be.
After all, she could be dead.
She made her way around the table, swiping a finger across the face of the Indian as she passed him. The kitchen door swung open when she pushed against it. Now the only problem was: what to have for breakfast?
"What would the other personality like?" She pretended to curtsy when something else odd caught her eye. Four long pale fingers poked out of the oven door.
That's when the fear caught up with her.
She let herself drop to her knees, sat back on her heels, and tugged the oven open. A charred, glistening object tumbled forward, a tiny lock of red hair unharmed on a somewhat spherical part of the object. She observed this as calmly as if it were a normal occurrence to have a burnt body fall out of one's oven. The glistening, she recognized, was where the blood vessels had split open under the pressure of the heat. Since the skin was missing in most places, the blood could be seen, along with other parts of internal organs she remembered from anatomy class. "Hello, Daphne." Her voice held a tremor that gave away her fear. She had done this. This was her work. "You must be feeling a bit like the witch from Hansel and Gretel. That's quite understandable, don't worry." She slowly rose to her feet again. The only other part of the body not burnt or destroyed were the four fingers on the left hand, presumably because they had not been exposed to the extreme amounts of heat generated by the oven. The abrupt change between natural skin and burnt skin made the fingers look heavy in comparison with the rest of the corpse.
Lovely. She backed away one step at a time, slowly, then faster until she rammed into the doorframe of the pantry. Velma whirled, eyes flickering down to the bottom shelf. Breakfast, yes, right. She still needed to eat. She stepped in and picked out a slice of bread and a banana. The toaster still worked, she would have to assume.
It did. She wasn't sure how to move Daphne up to the redhead's room without destroying the body, save those four haunting fingers. As she sparingly buttered the toast, she thought about it. She couldn't carry it, that much was for sure. Maybe she could gently transfer it to a sheet and then drag that up the stairs and at least get it into the room, possibly onto the bed if she was careful enough. It would be difficult, but it was doable. If she'd knocked her out and put her in the oven she could drag her up the stairs. She sat down in the same seat Dorothy Pickett had occupied just a few days ago and set the toast beside the banana.
She looked at it for a moment. They're crooked.
So are you.
Am I? Or is it the rest of the world that's crooked, and I'm the only one going along my way evenly?
You're the one that's crooked.
You sound so sure.
Because I am. Don't you know by now that Mother always knows best?
She laughed out loud. I think you should know by now that I never listened to you.
And look where you are now thanks to that life choice. On an island, all alone, with nine dead bodies. You've killed nine strangers. Why?
Don't ask me. Ask the other personality.
I would if I knew how, but because I don't I'm asking you.
She opened her eyes to find herself standing in front of the kitchen door, facing into the kitchen as if she'd just come into it from the dining room. The banana peel was in her hand and the toast was missing. "I hope it tasted good," she mumbled, addressing no one in particular but herself. Velma tossed the peel into the trash and made her way through the still-messy kitchen to the servants' quarters. The Picketts wouldn't be needing their spare sheets, just lying there. Then again, she thought, neither would Daphne, really. She avoided looking at Pickett's two halves that the sheet pulled over him couldn't disguise.
The closet held stacks and stacks of extra linen sheets on its shelves. She blinked. She only needed one sheet for this job, and it didn't seem right to use a good linen sheet for shuttling a charred corpse up to its room. There, on the top shelf. She stood on her toes, somehow managing to pull down a regular cotton sheet, accidentally unfolding it in the process. Well, that saves some time, she nodded. Not much, but it does. Velma went back into the kitchen and spread the sheet onto the ground. Then she awkwardly hauled Daphne's body onto it and bent over double, holding the edges of the sheet, to drag it through the house and up the stairs.
This might take a little while.
Might? Little?
Will! Will, okay? Will. It will take a long while.
That's what I thought.
Are you sure you aren't the other personality?
Of course I'm not. You wouldn't be talking to me in your head if I was. You shouldn't have an awareness of the other one for all practical purposes. It's not right.
So what?
So plenty! Stop talking to me now and get back to reality. You always end up zoning out when we have these conversations, don't you?
"Blah blah blah," she said under her breath, but saw she was halfway up the stairs. At least the other personality seemed to be cooperating. Daphne's room was only three doors down the hall. After pulling the sheet with the body up onto the hallway floor she let go to stretch out her back. Walking backwards while bent over tends to cramp one up dreadfully, reflected Velma as she stooped to resume her task.
Once in Daphne's room the last obstacle proved to be the hardest. She struggled to lift the corpse's sheet without knocking a limb off. She had to think awhile before actually trying anything. Wouldn't want to ruin evidence for the police and all, she told herself dryly. In the end she accomplished the undertaking by wrapping the sheet around Daphne's scorched carcass and then lifting the whole thing onto the bed, leaving it wrapped for the sake of not having to see it again.
She exhaled. Now that that was done with, she reasoned she had better get prepared for the ferry master's arrival and pack up what she'd brought. She certainly didn't have as much as some people. She raised an eyebrow at the purple suitcases that still looked in need of unpacking stacked high. And she'd thought Gram liked clothes. Leaving Daphne's room, she returned to her room and swung the door open.
There she stopped. A fishing net, knotted with painstaking care into a noose, was hanging from her ceiling and swinging gently in the breeze from the open window. Her eyes followed the makeshift rope up to the top, where it was tied onto a hook in the bottom of the centerpiece. The last little Indian boy, broken cleanly off the base of the centerpiece, stood on her desk, staring hopelessly at her as if saying she should have known she'd had it coming all along. "So that's why I couldn't find a hook," she whispered. "It was on the bottom of the centerpiece the whole time. Now, why didn't I check that for any clues?" She wondered how it had gotten up onto the ceiling like that, and how it was staying in place. Perhaps there was some sort of sticky substance on the ceiling to keep it firmly attached?
The net serving as the rope swayed, as though it was beckoning to her. She could hear her mother's voice coaxing in her head. It's your turn, my dear. The rhyme still needs to be finished, after all, and there's only you left to complete it. It's your turn now.
It barely registered that she was moving the chair from the desk to the spot underneath the noose. "One little Indian left all alone…" She climbed onto the chair and slipped the necklace into place. "She went and hanged herself, and then there were none." Laughter surged up in her throat. "I'm the last one." The laughter was coming harder now, verging on hysterical. "I'm the last one! I'm the last one – and it isn't me!" The other personality could take over, could take the blame, could take it all. She didn't care anymore.
Down on the jetty a flock of white and grey seagulls, startled by the sudden sound of wild laughter reaching them on the wind, flew off squawking to each other about the disturbance. Then the laughter was cut off abruptly, and in the house the only sound was that of a chair creaking as it fell onto its side.
Ten little Indians all summoned to stay on Manse Island. It was only for one weekend. But not one of them lived to tell the story. It was probably for the best. The ferry master had been told not to come back for a week and a half anyway.
"What a nice long leash, what a nice tight noose – never worked for me but it sure does look good on you. You've waited all your life; your wish is coming true. Bless your heart for beating me right out of you!" And the last little Indian finished the rhyme…right?