Possessions (26 page)

“Then we’re agreed. We’ll have to move fast,” Mandy-Belle said. “I’ll make sure Li’l Ol’ Three has the plan.” Light flared around her silhouette. “Those two gals stick to her like glue.”

Two gals . . . My mind raced. Which two gals? Who was “Li’l Ol—?”

Kiyoko. Kiyoko was Three. And she didn’t want to have any part of this. She’d been trying to tell me. No wonder she’d been so terrified.

“And that’ll be it? Finally? You promise?” Lara said.

“That’ll be it. We’ll be free of this place. I swear it.”

The two—the five—embraced. Light blazed and shifted. It was too bright; I couldn’t see.

“And we’ll go to a better place . . . ” the Alis-thing said.

“Seven’s our lucky number,” Mandy-Belle said.

“We’ll make her scream first,” Lara hissed.

“We’ll roast her alive,” Mandy-Belle said. The light flared, blazed. It was as brilliant as . . . fire. “Number Seven must die.”

There were five in the room. Six was missing. That was Kiyoko.

Seven. The stuffed horsie.

Julie. They were going to kill Julie. Right?

Oh my God, now I really am going to scream
, I thought. I wasn’t going to be able to stop myself. My mouth was opening; my lungs were filling—

—and then I was outside the turret room, in the hall. I blinked, hard, and caught my breath.

What? How?

Lara was standing at the other end of the hall, just inches from her bedroom door. She was wearing a bathrobe over her pajama bottoms.

“Do you mind? I have to go really badly,” she said, rushing to the bathroom. I shrank back; maybe she didn’t notice. She opened the door to the bathroom and shut it behind herself. I heard her peeing.

I shook hard, afraid I was going to throw up or fall over. I looked down to see that I was wearing my boots.
When had I put them on?

What did I just see? Am I crazy? Am I hallucinating?

I seized the moment and turned to the turret room door.

The toilet flushed.

I grabbed the knob.

I heard a creak behind me and dropped my hand to my side as I whirled around.

No one was there.

The bathroom door opened and I turned and faced it just in time. Lara gestured to the bathroom and glided back into her room.

I waited until her door shut and tried the knob again. The door was locked. I pressed my ear to the door and listened. I heard nothing.
Had I even been in there? Was I dreaming?

I couldn’t feel my feet on the floor; I couldn’t tell where my body ended and the rest of the world touched it.
Oh God, oh my God,
I thought.
They are going to kill someone. I don’t know who, but it could be Julie. I have to do something. I have to tell someone.

Troy.

I looked at the phone. I was back to four bars. I could only get five inside the room.
The attic
. The words came unbidden. I didn’t even want to think them.

You have to
, I thought.
They might be going after her right now.

Then just scream. Raise holy hell.

And who would believe me? Mandy and the others would put their plans on hold. Wait until I was carted off to the asylum, and the coast would be clear.

“No,” I whispered. A tear welled in the corner of my eye.

And then I hurried to the back stairs.

To the attic.

twenty-nine

I tiptoed
halfway up the dark, narrow stairway and looked down at my phone. I had no idea how much time had passed since I’d been inside the turret room. My battery indicator was blinking. I was almost out of juice, and I only had three bars. I kept going.

The fourth bar began to shade in, fluctuating, as I took the last few stairs. It started coming in stronger as I reached the top.

The door to the attic hung open.

I pressed the flashlight function on my cell phone, and stepped into the room. I gasped. The boxes had been moved, and Rose’s crappy repair job must have broken apart, because I could see into the tunnel. Who had done it? Rose herself? Because she was one of them now?

Where’s the wheelchair?
I thought. But it didn’t matter. I didn’t care. I just wanted to call for help and get out of there.

And go where? Back downstairs?

I aimed the weak light down the secret passage. There were cobwebs and piles of trash and mouse poop, but the wheelchair wasn’t there. I straightened, turned . . .

. . . And inhaled sharply.

The wheelchair stood before me.

Between the door and me.

I backed up, covering my mouth with both hands; my flashlight beam grazed the wall, the ceiling, as I stared at the wheelchair. My mind hurtled down pathways of possible reasons
: I just didn’t notice it; tilted floor; sure, the doors open by themselves here . . . they tricked me to get me up here . . .

It’s something they rigged; there’s a wire on the door; it’s remote-controlled, ohmyGod it moved—this is all a terrible practical joke; oh, please, let it be a prank.

I studied the worn slats of wood, the rusted wheels.

“Ha ha, you guys,” I said in a low voice. “Very funny. You got me.”

My phone vibrated; at that moment, the chair rolled toward me, one revolution, and then it stopped.

A chill ran through me. I couldn’t move. Correction: I couldn’t remember how to move.

The wheelchair rolled forward. The wheels squealed.

I whimpered.

Answer the phone. Answer the phone. It’s Troy. Get help.

It rolled again.

My eyes darted left, right. I tried to judge the distance on either side of the chair, to see if I could get around it and out the door. But what if it turned? What if it came after me?

It only moved because the floor is warped,
I told myself.

It inched forward.

I lost it, completely. I didn’t think I was going to, but I did. Mindlessly, I staggered backwards; my heels hit the broken section of wall and I stepped in—

What are you doing?

The wheelchair squealed and rolled another inch. And I saw something on the floor, a weathered piece of newspaper in all the trash and mouse droppings. There were faces . . . faces I recognized, from the mantel downstairs. The headlines swam before me as I shined the light of my phone toward it to read:

Belle Johnson, an inmate at Marlwood Reformatory for Young Women, and six others were the victims of a terrible accident on the grounds of the reformatory owned by Edwin Marlwood. . . .

A fire.

We’ ll roast her alive. Number Seven. Belle Johnson and six others. Who was Number Seven? It was Julie, right?

As I stared at the clipping, trying to make sense of it all, the wheelchair began to roll. I tried to scream; I couldn’t. I couldn’t do anything but mindlessly run.

Down the passageway.

It wants you to go into the tunnel; it wants to trap you and run you down—

“Help,” I whispered, but my voice was bone-dry. I fled, through cobwebs and fragments of rusted metal dangling from the ceiling. There were hooks along the walls, sticking outward in the dark—

My foot connected with an object on the floor and I kicked it out of my way. I bounced to the left and thrust out my arm to keep my balance. Pain sheared through me like a poker as one of the hooks sliced my palm.

I ran; the floor canted down sharply and I nearly fell over my own feet as I ran. I kept going, registering that the phone was vibrating. I put it to my ear and yelled, “Help!” but no one answered. No one was there.

The passageway wound down, down, like an exit in a parking structure. I was so scared I couldn’t stop, and my feet went faster than my body; I couldn’t slow down and I didn’t know where I was going.

Like Alice in the rabbit hole I went down, down . . .

. . . And my cell phone went flying. It rolled away like a fireworks pinwheel and hit the wall, the faceplate casting a beam . . .

. . . Over an image that hovered in my way. It was completely white, the figure of a girl shorter than me, in a long buttoned-up nightgown, with black hair trailing over her shoulders. Her eyes were black; her mouth was a black hole.
It was the face.

She looked like she was reflected on the wall, in the light cast by my phone. But she was moving. And I was still tumbling forward. She held out her arms as I tried to stop from colliding with her, tried to scream, but it came out as a cross between a grunt and a sob; I was about to make impact.

From head to toe, I gasped as ice water engulfed me, knocking the breath out of me, making me go blind. The shock paralyzed me, and I began to flail. Where was I? What was happening—?

Then I was on my hands and knees, gasping, panting, weeping.

I smelled smoke, thick and acrid; my skin prickled. My face was on fire.

“
Tie her down
,” said a voice in my head. A voice I didn’t understand.

Wedged between my palm and the filthy brick floor, my phone vibrated. Whirling around on my knees, I grabbed it with shaking hands.

It was Troy.

“Hello?” I sobbed, putting the phone to my ear. “Troy! Help me!” But I had missed the call. I pressed redial and willed the phone to ring.

Cold hands rested on my shoulders, burning like dry ice. As I panted, they moved to my upper arms and helped me up. I whimpered again; then my head fell back and I almost fainted as something
slid
into me through my back, centering inside my body, as if I were a cocoon.

“Oh my God,” I said, weeping. “Please.”

And a voice inside my head . . .
inside my head
. . . echoed,
Please. Help me, please.

Cold air wafted against my face. Something moved my feet as if I were a doll, a puppet . . . moving stick-legged, I staggered through the frosty air . . . and out into the night. The night: the cold, whispering sky, the hard, black surface of the lake. Trees huddling together, making their plans.

And me, tears freezing on my cheeks. My lips were chapped and my head ached as if I had eaten half a gallon of ice cream by pushing it up my nose.

I lost time.

When I came back to myself
, I was staggering along the lake. My boots were covered with mud and my pajama bottoms were sopping. My hands stung; they were covered with tiny cuts. I shambled past the boulders and saw the NO TRESPASSING sign, and a Lakewood rowboat tied up to it. I blinked rapidly, trying to remember how I’d gotten out there. The wind caught my hair and ruffled it.

I was crying, and panting; why was I—?

I saw the white shape bobbing half in the lake, half on shore, about twenty feet past the sign. I saw a shadow stretch across the shape, and I began screaming because I knew it wasn’t a
shape
. I knew exactly what it was. And I knew the shadow was Troy.

He turned and focused his flashlight on the shape in the lake as I screamed and screamed and ran toward him. He caught me, hard, and I kept screaming.

“Lindsay,” he cried. “Oh my God.”

We both stared at Kiyoko.

Washed up from the icy lake.

Dead.

December: The Trap

“The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.”

—William Shakespeare,
Julius Caesar

—Jeremiah 5:26

thirty

possessions: me

possessions: them

possessions: Mandy