🕯️ THE IVORY SMILE
Chapter Three: The Smile Without Touch
~ by Alban Krane, as remembered
There's something that happens when someone asks you to kill them.
It's not fear you see in their eyes.
Not courage either.
It's something more haunting.
A kind of gratitude.
Room 108 | Cedar Hollow | One Week Later
The rain had passed by the following Thursday. The sky above Cedar Hollow was clean and flat and cold, like the polished face of a scalpel. Sunlight slid through the blinds and painted white bars across the linoleum floor.
The chairs were already waiting.
So were the eyes.
Florence. Gus. Camille. Norma Jean didn't return. She'd filed a request to be moved to another wing. Can't say I blame her. She still believed in a gentle God.
Raymond was humming something tuneless. Florence sat with her pen poised. Gus stared at the wall, his jaw set in stone.
Camille sat with her legs crossed, her recorder resting on her knee like a sacrament.
I didn't smile that night.
"This one," I began quietly, "was different."
The Third Smile
Her name was Caroline Faust.
She was twenty-five, soft-voiced, with veins like rivers beneath her pale skin. She wore long sleeves even in summer, and heavy eyeliner that couldn't hide the exhaustion in her bones. The kind of girl who looked haunted even while standing still.
She was also the niece of Carter Faust — one of the five who did what they did to Olivia. Carter had fled the country years ago. Disappeared. No closure. No corpse.
But Caroline hadn't run.
She came to me.
It was 1995. I was living under one of my better names at the time: Victor Harrow, a widowed preacher in rural Ohio. A face in the pews. A man who kept to himself and brought lilies to the cemetery every Tuesday.
One morning, I found a letter in my mailbox.
"I know who you are."
"I know what you've done."
"I want to talk."
The return address was typed. The paper smelled faintly of lavender.
I burned it.
Three days later, she showed up at the church.
I was walking the inner courtyard — you know the type: little fountain, stone benches, an angel statue that never quite smiled — when I saw her standing in the doorway.
She didn't look afraid.
She looked… resolved.
"You're the one," she said. "The one with the poems."
I didn't speak.
"They said you left hearts. That you cut them like music."
I said nothing.
"I need you to do it to me."
I studied her face. She didn't flinch.
"Why?" I asked.
"Because I dream about her," she whispered. "The girl they killed. Olivia. I dream about her every night. I see her face. And I think… if she could scream, she'd be screaming inside me."
She sat down on the stone bench. Her wrists were lined with scars like tally marks. She had tried before.
"He made me watch," she said. "My uncle. When I was ten. And again when I was twelve. He made me clean it up. Told me what would happen if I ever spoke."
I remember the silence that followed.
Even the birds stopped.
"I'm already dead," she said. "You're the only one who can bury me properly."
The Ritual of Mercy
I refused her that night.
I told her to seek help. Go to the authorities. She laughed like someone spitting blood.
"They wouldn't believe me. He's still out there. Living in Panama. Married. Two kids."
She returned every week.
We didn't speak. She would just sit in the last pew, watching me as I cleaned the chapel.
After the fifth visit, I left the back door unlocked.
The altar was already prepared.
Clean linens.
A basin of water.
The Bible, open to Romans 12:19 — "Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord."
She lay down in silence.
I prayed beside her.
"Do you accept this as judgment?" I asked.
"Yes."
"Do you carry sin?"
"Yes."
"Do you believe you are beyond forgiveness?"
"Yes."
"Then I will carry the pain for you," I whispered. "And you… will sleep."
I kissed her forehead.
And I began.
The first incision was at the base of the throat, angled downward in a mirrored crescent — a soft stroke, meant not to mar her but to guide. The blood was thick. Slow.
She didn't scream.
I opened her chest with reverence. She watched me the entire time. Until her pulse began to fade.
"Thank you," she mouthed.
I carved the smile last — not as a punishment, but as a farewell.
A softer arc. Less grin, more sigh.
I didn't pose her. She chose her posture.
Hands folded over her ribs. Eyes closed.
Peace.
I placed the parchment in her palms.
Poem #3 – "The Smile Without Touch"
She begged the blade and called it grace,
A choir silenced in her chest.
No prayer could cleanse the poisoned lace
Her blood had sewn beneath her dress.
So I became her final breath,
A sculptor born from borrowed pain.
And as she grinned through gentle death,
She washed away Olivia's stain.
I buried her in the woods behind the chapel. No marker. No name.
Just lilies.
Back in Cedar Hollow
"You murdered a victim," Camille said.
"No," I replied. "I buried one."
"You could've saved her—"
"Could I?" I turned to her, eyes narrowed. "Do you think I ever saw myself as a savior?"
She looked down.
"You enjoyed it," Gus growled.
"No," I said softly. "Not that time. That one felt like sewing my own mouth shut."
Florence wrote a single word in her notebook.
"Willing."
Raymond muttered something beneath his breath.
"Angels weep when we do God's work for Him."
Nobody spoke for a long time.
The air in Room 108 felt heavy. Like confession.
"You think that absolves you?" Gus asked.
"No," I replied. "Nothing does. But she asked. And I listened."
I stood. My joints cracked like old hinges.
"Next week," I said, "I'll tell you about the one who didn't die alone."
"Because her sister watched… and smiled."
[END OF CHAPTER THREE]