🕯️ THE IVORY SMILE
Chapter Four: The Girl Who Watched
~ by Alban Krane, as remembered
There's something unnatural about joy in the face of death.
Not hysteria. Not madness. Not fear.
Joy.
It unsettles me more than begging ever did.
Room 108 | Cedar Hollow | One Week Later
I arrived earlier than usual. Needed the room to myself a while.
The nurses were too polite to ask why. The orderlies just nodded as they passed. A man in his seventies asking to sit in silence with a Bible and a bag of old war medals wasn't unusual around here.
But I wasn't praying.
I was remembering.
The chairs were arranged the same as always — a half-moon around my throne of cracked vinyl. Today, only three were occupied.
Florence, notebook in lap, pen already moving before I even spoke.
Camille, sitting perfectly still, back straight, red recording light blinking.
Gus, who had begun tapping the arm of his chair every four seconds like clockwork. Rage simmered beneath his skin now.
Raymond wasn't there.
He was moved to the dementia ward after whispering a woman's full name during a fire drill. A name only I should've known.
"You'll notice," I began, "that I haven't smiled yet."
No one responded.
"It's because this one... this one still makes my hands twitch."
I held up my right hand. It trembled gently, like a leaf barely clinging to the tree.
"There's a special place in Hell for those who feel nothing. But I wonder what awaits the ones who feel too much."
The Fourth Smile
Her name was Samantha Harrow, seventeen years old.
The younger sister of one of the original five. Peter Harrow — one of the most vicious of the group. He wasn't content with destruction. He filmed it. He laughed. He kept trophies.
Samantha didn't know.
Or maybe she did.
That's the thing I still can't decide.
I found her two years after Caroline.
She was a scholarship student at a private art school — sculptures, mostly. Clay and iron and scrap metal twisted into beautiful, meaningless shapes.
She wore her hair short and red. Dyed. Rebellion in color.
I visited one of her public exhibits. She was there. I watched her from across the gallery.
She was speaking to a child about the shape of a face she'd carved — a face bent backward in mid-scream.
"It's about transformation," she said. "About what we become when we're seen for what we really are."
That was the moment I realized she knew.
I posed as a guest lecturer.
A few strings pulled. A name borrowed from a dead surgeon. A call made. And there I was, standing before her class in a black coat and gloves, teaching them about "the anatomy of movement." They thought it was metaphor.
But she stared at me with eyes that never blinked.
After the lecture, she approached.
"Are you going to kill me?" she asked.
I blinked.
"You know who I am."
"Yes."
"And what I've done."
"Yes."
"And you're not afraid."
"No."
"Why?"
She smiled.
"Because my brother made me watch."
She invited me to her studio. Said she wanted to "show me something."
I went.
The space was empty except for a single sculpture under a tarp. She pulled it off.
It was a statue.
Olivia.
My Olivia.
Down to the braid on her shoulder. Down to the chipped incisor.
"I made her from memory," Samantha said. "Your daughter was beautiful."
I fell to my knees.
"Why?" I whispered.
"Because I see her every time I close my eyes. I never stopped seeing her."
"You should hate me."
"I did. But you're the only one who ever did anything."
She walked to the far corner and opened a metal cabinet.
Inside were dozens of tapes.
Peter's tapes.
Proof. Screams. Faces. Names. Date-stamped sins.
"I kept them," she said. "No one believed me. No one ever would. But I wanted someone to see."
"What do you want from me?"
"Take me apart like you did the others. Show me how it feels."
"I won't."
"Then let me watch when you do."
And so I did.
The Girl in the Room
She didn't die.
She stood beside me as I lured in Peter Harrow three nights later, using his old email account and a tempting message: a girl, alone, in his city, wanting to play.
He came. Of course he did.
Samantha drugged him herself.
I performed the ritual.
Heart removed. Jaw dislocated. Eyes open, staring up at a sister who never looked away.
I carved the smile slow and wide. I burned the tapes in the corner while the room filled with smoke and old sins.
When I placed the poem on his chest, Samantha added a rose.
She whispered, "Thank you," and walked away.
Poem #4 – "Inheritance"
The mirror cracked with every lie,
But blood reflects its shape in full.
A sister watched her brother die,
And heard the silence turn to pull.
His mouth, now red, declares the end—
A warning smile of hollow trust.
The only truth he gave, my friend,
Was how to rot beneath the dust.
Samantha disappeared.
No record. No forwarding address. Her apartment was found empty. Art all gone. Sculpture of Olivia gone.
Sometimes, I wonder if she sculpted her way into a new face.
Sometimes, I wonder if she kept the smile.
Back in Cedar Hollow
"You let her watch?" Gus snapped.
"She asked."
"That's not an answer."
"It's the only one I have."
Florence underlined something twice. Her jaw was clenched now.
"Do you think that made her clean?" Camille asked.
"No," I said. "It made her free."
She leaned forward.
"You're grooming the world to worship you."
I grinned.
"No. I'm grooming the world to remember."
"So no one forgets Olivia?"
"So no one forgets what men like him did to her. And what it took to answer them."
I stood slowly.
"Next week," I said, "I'll tell you about the one I almost loved."
"The one who got away."
"The one who asked me to stop... and I did."
[END OF CHAPTER FOUR]