The Dead Girls of Hysteria Hall (15 page)

Janie whipped around to look in my direction. Wariness clouded her face when she caught sight of the mess.

She glanced back at the letter for a moment, then tucked it into the front pocket of her jacket and started for the door.

As she tread on the salt, there was a slight crunching sound. She knelt to look at the white line, which she’d tracked across the floor in the sole of her shoe. I hoped she would brush it out of the way so I could get closer to the desk, but instead, she very carefully repaired the line and stood up.

She took one step forward, then stopped short and swung back. She crouched down and, using her pointer finger, separated a thin line of salt from the thicker line. Then she leaned down and brushed it into her palm, until she held a decent handful of salt.

I tested the barrier that remained and found it just as strong as before.

I followed Janie out of the room and down the hall. The ghosts that had come out earlier to watch her were all gone … but the hallway still had an air of occupancy.

Something
was there with us. I just wasn’t sure what it was.

Back on the second floor, Janie disappeared into the ward just as our mother came into the day room, loaded down with her wheeled suitcase, her laptop bag, and the tote full of books.

After setting everything down just inside the door, Mom took a minute to look over the room. A shudder set her body trembling, but she took a few slow, deep breaths and seemed to calm herself down.

“You can do this,” she said softly. “It’s only a week.”

“Do what?” I asked. “What are you trying to do?”

There was a soft, cackling laugh, and I looked over at Penitence, who bent over her work.

“She can’t hear you,” she said.

“I know,” I said. “I just kind of hoped that if I keep talking to them, they’ll … understand me, somehow.”

I expected her to laugh again, but she was quiet for a long time and then said, “There are ways. But you can’t simply speak. You must be subtle.”

“Subtle how?” I asked.

“Subtle,” she said, “in a way that can only come from watching and waiting. Subtle in a way that can’t be explained.”

She turned and looked at my mother, puffed up her cheeks, and exhaled a thin whistle of air. Mom shivered and pulled the sleeves of her sweater down over her wrists. Then she hastily gathered her things and went on into the ward.

I
n her room, Room 4, Janie sat down on the bed, turned on her music, and closed her eyes. Within a minute or two, the tension went out of her arms and her breathing turned slow and even.

Dancing light came through the window and shone on the opposite wall. I looked down to see Theo outside. He waved up to me and then beckoned me to come out. I glanced over at my sleeping sister, then nodded to Theo.

The two nightgowned girls were back in the lobby. At the sight of me, they nudged each other until one of them said, in a halting voice, “Who are they? The new ones?”

“My family,” I said. “Please leave them alone.”

“We leave everyone alone!” the second girl said, and then she giggled shrilly.

“What are your names?” I asked. “I’m—”

But they’d already vanished.

Theo waited for me by the fountain with his hands on his hips and a deep frown etched across his face.

“They can’t stay,” he said.

“I know.”

“No, I’m being very serious, Delia,” he said. “You can’t let them—”

“I get it,” I said. “It’s dangerous. Well, I don’t know what to do about that. I didn’t ask them to come.”

He gazed at the ground, clearly playing out some internal debate. Finally, he looked up at me with his amber-flecked eyes. “The first time we met, you asked if I ever saw my family after … after. And I said I’d seen my brother. But I didn’t tell you what happened.”

I nodded, casting a quick glance up at Janie’s window.

“We were twins,” Theo went on. “Theodore and Edward. Theo and Ted. We were best friends; we did everything together. We were working together on the land survey and planning to start our own business, doing that kind of work for private clients—department stores, hotels. About a year after I passed, Ted came back here. I thought he was here to visit the place I had died. Just to say hello. I missed him so much. It felt like part of me was lost.”

Theo’s eyes sparkled as he spoke. Then, all at once, the light went out of them, and his expression turned dull and distant.

“He came only for himself,” he said softly. “He didn’t really think I was here. But he talked, you know, the way people talk to make themselves feel better. He filled me in: Mom’s roses won at the garden show; Dad was a deacon now … But the real reason he came was … he wanted my permission to marry the girl I’d been engaged to before I died. He told me their plans—his and Barbara’s. He gave me a story about how they hadn’t even seen each other after the funeral, only he ran into her about six months later, and they felt like being in love was the ‘right thing to do’ because in a way it was about remembering me.”

I thought instantly of Nic and Landon and wondered if they saw it that way. I wondered if they were still together. If every time they kissed, there was something in it that held a tiny piece of their memories of me.

“The dead and the living don’t belong together,” Theo said. “That’s why you hear stories about haunted houses. Because no matter what the living do, they flaunt their life. They can’t help it. And that’s what I thought Ted was doing. So I got jealous. Really jealous. To the point where I couldn’t control myself. And then …”

I tore my eyes away from my sister’s window and looked at Theo.

“I tried to hurt him,” he said. “I almost did—I would have—if it hadn’t been for the fact that Barbara came after him. She’d been waiting in the car. It stopped me from doing something terrible. But Ted knew. He knew that I was there, and that I was angry. I never saw him again. And I’ve existed since then knowing that the two people I cared most about no longer had their old memories of me. Instead, I’d let myself become a monster. Ted must be dead by now, and he died thinking I was … bad. That I hated him. So you’ve got to make them leave, before the fact of their being alive gets to you, eats away at what you used to feel for them. Do you understand?”

Theo’s voice was low and shaky, and I could tell by the roundedness of his shoulders how difficult it had been for him to tell me all this, to confess his misdeeds.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “That must have been awful.”

“It’s awful every day,” he said.

He seemed so abjectly miserable that I wanted to give him a big hug, but I wasn’t sure what the 1940s hugging rules were.

So I lamely patted his shoulder. “Thank you for trusting me enough to tell me. But I swear that’s not what’s happening here. I’m
trying
to make them go.”

“Well, for your own sake, as well as theirs,” Theo said, standing up straight once again, “see that it doesn’t take too long. All we are is energy. All we’re made of is the suggestion of what we were. And the longer you’ve been dead, the easier it is to forget who you were. Who you wanted to be.”

“I’ve never been who I wanted to be,” I said. “Even when I was alive. I think I might actually be a better person now … for all that’s worth.”

Theo blinked at me and reached his hand out, as if he were going to touch my arm. But at the last moment he pulled it away.

“Whoever you are,” he said, “whoever you were, I—I like you.”

Just put your stupid hand on my arm,
I thought.

His expression turned stern, and the moment was gone. “But you still need to be careful.”

Then he vanished.

*  *  *

That night, I sat on the hallway floor between my mother’s and Janie’s rooms until they both clicked off their lights.

Mom called, “Good night, Jane. I love you.”

After a short silence, Janie reluctantly replied, “Good night.”

I closed my eyes and curled up on the floor, blurring my thoughts and memories, trying to fool myself into thinking that I was back among them, one of the family.

It almost worked. I was lulled into a deep, soft place, and something at the back of my heart began to blossom like a shy flower. For the first time in years, I felt warm, and loved, and safe. Even if it was just an illusion.

Then I heard a noise.

I shot up, ashamed that I’d let my guard down for even a few minutes. My family’s safety—not my loneliness—had to be the number one priority. I felt a wavering awareness that this might be the first sign that I needed to heed Theo’s warning.

I sneaked into Janie’s room and found her in bed, curled up under the covers. Her breath seemed even, and her eyes were lightly closed. I sighed with relief; she was perfectly fine. Still, no more resting for me.

I spotted the stack of Cordelia’s letters on the vanity table near the window. Laid flat next to them was the newest letter. I bent down to read it.

Okay, so she knew this place was messed up. But what did she want me to do about it? I looked back up at the date and my heart sank—she’d written this on February 25. Only a couple of weeks before her death. If things were really as bad near the end as I suspected they had been, when would she have written the rest of her message?

She probably never did. Which meant that any answers she might have shared with me had died with her.

As I sat back and prepared to mope about it for a couple of minutes, I caught movement from the corner of my eye—a shadowy form slipping along the edge of my sister’s bed.

“Who’s there?” I said.

It—whatever “it” was—heard me and hunched over. Moonlight touched the sloping curve of its spine and outlined its back against the window.

I stepped away.

This wasn’t like the rest of the ghosts I’d seen here—not even Maria. This was something else entirely. Even if it had ever been human, it wasn’t now.

Slowly, it raised its head on a slender, too-long neck, and I found myself staring into a pair of hollow, endlessly dark eyes. Eyes that didn’t really seem to exist, but also seemed to look right through me.

The mere suggestion of its shape was terrifying. I could see lean, muscular arms hanging from its narrow shoulders, and the back was abnormally round, with a large hump that made the backbone more prominent. The way its legs were attached to its body was more doglike than human.

But more than that was the fact that it was … a shadow. It was made of mist, nothing more. Black smoke swirled inside the outline of its body.

In the moonlight, I saw the swish-swish-swishing motion of a tail.

Neither of us moved.

“Go away,”
I said, keeping my voice firm. I tried to remember how Florence had acted with Maria. The only problem was that I didn’t know how to hulk out the way Florence had—not on command, anyway. For all I knew, this thing could chew me up and spit me out.

But I wasn’t going to let it mess with my little sister.

I clapped my hands and stomped my feet, and the creature reared back a little, surprised. Then it opened its mouth—an enormous mouth that stretched from one side of its face to the other—and hissed at me. Its short, sharp teeth looked like a jagged row of broken black glass.

Okay.
I tried to calm myself.
Reevaluate. Take things slowly.

It hissed again, surprising me so much that I jumped backward, knocking into the dresser. Something clattered to the floor behind me.

“Hello?” Janie sat up so quickly I doubted she’d been asleep at all. When she saw her phone on the floor, she started to climb out of the bed. But something stopped her.

“What … ?” she said. There was a thunking, clinking noise, and she pulled the blanket away, exposing her lower legs.

One of her ankles was bound in a leather restraint.

With a frightened gasp, she looked around the room—of course not seeing anything.

“Stay calm, stay calm, stay calm,” she murmured to herself, her slender fingers working to unfasten the buckle. “The important thing is to
stay calm
.”

Kicking her leg free, she slipped off the side of the bed, pausing to grab something from her nightstand, and hurried into the hallway.

The creature started to follow, and I went after them both. But just as she crossed into the hall, Janie bent down and moved her arm quickly across the doorway. The creature lunged for her, but then with a bloodcurdling howl scrambled away from the door and slinked under the bed.

I decided to use this chance to get away—except I couldn’t.

When I reached the door, an invisible wall bounced me back into the room. A short
zap!
vibrated through me. I didn’t even have to look down to realize what my sister had done.

Smart girl. Using the salt she took from Cordelia’s office, she got herself out and locked the shadow in.

The only problem was … I was locked in with it.