Comes the Night (8 page)

McKenzie’s story—so the schoolyard gossip went—was that he’d applied for several principalships, but found himself second-best man for the job every single time. And every time, he’d been beaten out by a woman. Apparently this pattern of losing to women only helped cement him as a total misogynistic prick. McKenzie loved to grill the girls on the tougher questions. Then he would sigh and roll his eyes when they flustered over the answers, or better yet, got them completely wrong. If he found a crier in the class, the man was reputed to be relentless. It had taken Maryanne all of two days in his class to realize this guy’s rep was bang on.

But still, even after nearly being caught daydreaming, she couldn’t keep her mind on the class today. Not for 6.78 seconds. Not that she tried very hard. She found her head turning and her gaze drifting back to the window and the gray day beyond. She couldn’t concentrate on what he was saying. Not with everything happening in her world. And of course, not with this being a Jason day.

Jason. Her dead little brother. It was another counting day.

Maryanne had woken this morning shortly after 6 a.m. as she always did, glanced at the calendar and saw it was the 15th of the month. Another monthly anniversary of Jason’s death. Tonight at approximately 9 p.m. would mark the last time she’d heard his cry.

Despite what she’d told them.

Maryanne knew that right about now in Burlington, Ontario, her mother would be riding the GO train in to work, no doubt with the newspaper opened in front of her. But she wouldn’t be reading a single word of it. Her father would already be in Jason’s room, most likely. Perhaps determined to finally take the crib down. Skip Hemlock hated that crib. Standing there silently in that boy-less room, that mournful piece of furniture owned him now. Which was why Maryanne knew the chances were that it would still be there when this counting day rolled to an end.

As for Maryanne herself... well, she’d get through this day somehow, in her own way.

Ty Piper waved a hand from his desk and Maryanne caught the movement in the periphery of her vision. Ty smiled widely. Oh, crap! From his seat by the windows, it must have seemed like Maryanne had been staring at him rather than the outside world. Now what?

Ty was one of the few local boys who actually attended the Streep Academy. He was a tall, gangly farm boy who stuck out hopelessly, with his shy quietness and slightly-too-small school clothes. Obviously smart—brilliant, actually—he shared several other classes with Maryanne. And right now, his face was glowing red as he waited on Maryanne’s acknowledgement of the wave and smile that must have cost him to toss her way. Maryanne offered what she hoped would be construed as a ‘friendly’ smile, not an ‘I’m interested’ smile. Then she looked up again at the board. Guys were the furthest thing from her mind this year.

“Ms. Saunders? The answer... ”

“Nine?” Brooke ventured in a bored voice.

“Wrong!” There was true glee in McKenzie’s voice.

She shrugged. “Okay, how about
sixty-nine
, then?”

There was a short-lived chorus of snorts and giggles.

Mr. McKenzie’s face burned. Brooke would be the absolute
last
one in this class he could reduce to tears. Or rattle. He should have learned by now to stop trying. And despite her apparent inattention in class, Maryanne knew Brooke was fine with math. Not a whiz, but comfortable enough that she’d pass. And that seemed to be all she was looking for.

As if feeling Maryanne’s stare, or maybe just to share the moment, Brooke turned in her seat. She smiled at Maryanne, but as always it slid to a slightly snide expression before she turned herself back around. It was as if Brooke couldn’t help it. Or as if she raced to get that snide look in, before anyone else trumped her on it.

Maryanne was truly grateful for Brooke’s intervention the other night when those local girls had surrounded her. And Brooke, of course, had delighted in administering the shitkicking. Had grinned all the way home. But Maryanne had seen the anxiousness rising in Brooke as she told the story to Alex. It climbed even higher as Brooke elaborated on the fast one she’d pulled on Seth—proclaiming their mutual STD before his new girlfriend. Maryanne recognized that anxiety. Hard as it was to believe of Brooke Saunders, the girl desperately wanted to be liked, to belong. And it made the other girl spill her words out quickly, even while she somehow tried to bite them back.

That anxious desire for friendship had crept out again before the three girls left their third floor room at Harvell house this morning. They’d stood in the middle of the quiet room, beds made behind them, book bags at their sides as they looked from one to the other. And they’d stood there with the promise that this evening, they’d return to the attic.

To read more from Connie’s diary.

Maryanne hadn’t seen the old diary since the night Alex’s accidental... adventure. She was quite sure that Brooke hadn’t seen it either. Though she was equally sure Brooke had searched for it amongst everyone’s things in their shared room at Harvell. But there were stretches of time when Alex would be gone for an hour or more at night. Only to return ashen and quiet and so lost in thought. Maryanne expected she had been reading the words of Connie Harvell. From the little she already knew, that was one sad tale.

Once, when Alex had crept into the room and crawled into bed well after lights out, Maryanne had heard soft crying from the other side of the room while Brooke gently snored and she herself pretended to be asleep. She had said nothing, of course. Not then and not the morning after when Alex had awoken with her gray-blue eyes red-rimmed.

Jason’s eyes had been gray-blue.

“I’ll ask you again, Ms. Hemlock!” McKenzie snapped his pointer on the whiteboard, bringing it down hard on the triangle’s lower corner. “What is the answer?”

Maryanne started. Crap! Had that question been directed to her? Had she been that zoned out? But ten studying seconds later, Brooke answered for her:

“Seventy-two degrees.”

With obvious disgust, Mr. McKenzie cast a dirty look at both Maryanne and Brooke before he turned back to the board.

And that was a very good thing because if he’d stared at her for one minute longer, he might have seen the tears welling in her eyes. And she didn’t want him to think they were because of him.

The tears that threatened were for her little brother, not this jerk of a teacher. They were for this counting day. And maybe too, a bit for herself.

At least tonight she would have some distraction. She, Brooke and Alex had agreed that they would sneak up to the attic again after lights out to hear more from Connie’s diary. But they wouldn’t stop there. This morning in their room as they’d prepared to go off to school, they’d agreed to simultaneously tap on that window and beg to fly out through the pane as Alex had done once before. As Connie Harvell had done. If that couldn’t distract her, nothing could.

Much as part of her yearned for it, Maryanne was terrified of what the night might bring.

I bet poor Jason was terrified that night, five months ago today.

One tear slid slowly down her cheek, followed by another. It was just a small mercy that Mr. McKenzie didn’t turn around to see. But shy and quiet Ty Piper was watching her, she saw through tear-filled eyes. A couple others too, no doubt. More than anything right then and there, Maryanne wanted out of that classroom.

She just wanted out.

Alex

G
OD
,
SHE HATED
it here. Hated the very air in the room. Hated everything about it.

Alex felt her throat constrict as she ascended the final step and walked the length of the dim attic. The candlelight flickered crazily as her hand trembled. Just like every other time she’d entered this room since waking here that awful morning, the almost-memory hammered at her. Rhythmically, relentlessly pounding outside the barrier of her mind as she looked around at the now familiar space. Dresser, rocking chair, crib, cot, musty trunk, old coat tree... Something would surely trigger a memory. But it didn’t. As she stood there—right
there
on the very spot where it must have happened—she still had no recollection of the attack. No picture of her attacker.

“Spooked out?”

For once, Brooke’s voice didn’t have that taunting edge.

“Scared stiff,” Maryanne breathlessly confessed.

Alex didn’t doubt it. She was scared herself, and she’d already done it once before; they hadn’t. And though she’d loved the exhilaration of joining in with the night, loved knowing that part of her had slipped through the stained glass unscathed to fly into the darkness, it was still a frightening prospect. A slip into the unknown. Yet as this week had passed, Alex had thought about little else, and the niggling craving to do it again had grown into an itch. She wanted to do it again.

She would.

The three girls placed their candles carefully, strategically, so no flopping bodies would knock them over. Two on the dresser to their left, one on an old trunk to their right. Then they sat down in front of the window. Between the candles and the wide wash of moonlight falling through the window, there was plenty of light. Alex and Brooke sat easily cross-legged, while Maryanne sat with knees drawn up and arms wrapped around her legs.

Brooke leaned to peer out the window. “Not a cloud in the sky.”

Alex followed her gaze. Brooke was right.

The stars shone against the beautiful blackness. The half-moon hung brilliant and unobscured. She knew it was cold out, though. That crisp cold you get with a clear autumn night. She could feel the chill just sitting here so close to the heavy glass. A tiny shudder skated over her skin and she shook it away.

The single candle to the right flickered, causing their shadows to dance.

Maryanne had bought three candles—one for each of them—at a local craft shop. They were wide and white and stood on their respective perches without worry of tipping. Brooke had suggested that big, heavy-duty flashlights or Coleman lanterns might have been a better choice when she’d seen Maryanne’s purchases, but Alex and Maryanne had overridden her.

They both understood. Connie had lived by candlelight as a prisoner in this attic. They could ask for no more. It just wouldn’t feel right.

And as Alex looked over at Maryanne in this moment of reflection, it struck her again how tired she looked. More lost than usual today. Was it just the revelations of Connie’s diary? The dark secrets of Harvell House? That was a big part of it, no doubt, but it wasn’t the whole story. There’d been something lost about Maryanne from the moment she’d stepped into Harvell House. Something that had come with her.

“Want me to read tonight?” This from Maryanne, but not asked with any real belief she’d get a positive answer.

Oh, crap! Alex had been staring at her. No wonder the girl thought something was expected of her. Alex shook her head. “No, I’ll read.”

She opened the book carefully. She wouldn’t dream of dog-earring a page, and so the tiny slip of paper she’d inserted as a bookmark earlier, now drifted down to the floor as she found the spot she’d chosen to read from tonight.

The guilt arose the moment she angled the book toward the light and looked down at Connie’s small, compact writing. Just like last time, something deep inside balked at sharing Connie Harvell’s words.

“Why not start where we left off the last time?” Brooke asked. “September 9, 1962.”

“That was the night Connie first flew out.” Maryanne wrapped her arms a little tighter around her knees.

“
Cast
out,” Alex corrected. “Connie calls it casting out, which is as good a term as any, I guess. And she called her body on the floor her
original.
” She aimed a quelling look at Brooke. “And no, we’re not picking up where we left off because there’s more to understand. There’s more to know about Connie and how... how everything came to be. What was happening to her. Not just how she cast out. Not just the parts—”

“That serve us,” Maryanne finished for her in a quiet voice.

“She was being raped,” Brooke said. “By this guy Billy. We know that and—”

“And there’s more!” Alex snapped. She glared at Brooke, who now wore a defensive expression. “If we’re going to do this—if you want to learn this casting thing—we’re going to do it my way. End of story. That’s it.”

It was Brooke who was first to avert her glaring eyes. “Fine! You’re the queen of those bloody scribbles. The keeper of the sacred text!”

“Don’t mock her!” Alex felt her fingers digging into the diary and forced herself to relax them so she wouldn’t damage the delicate binding. “You don’t know what she’d been through. You—”

Maryanne sighed. “Oh come on, you two! Are we going to do this or not?” It wasn’t a question and she didn’t wait for an answer. “Alex, read from wherever you want to. Then... ”

She couldn’t finish. And Alex wasn’t sure she herself wanted to articulate what they’d promised this morning.

Brooke did it for them, without even the smallest hesitation. “Then we all try to cast out.”

“Yeah,” Alex agreed, calming down. “Then we try to cast out.”

Alex began.

August 14, 1962

Sometimes I pretend I’m in a fairy tale locked away in this attic. Rapunzel was trapped in a tower. But her hair was longer than mine.

I know I’m too old for such childish thoughts. I’m sixteen, for God’s sake! But I can’t help it. I think of my father—my real father—and imagine him rushing in to save his only daughter. He’s been dead three years now. He was a good man.

Mother should never have married again. She must see that now. He made me call him ‘father’, right from the start. Stepfather. That’s what he is. Jailor. And if the devil could walk in human form with a bible shoved up in his armpit, then he’d be that too.

No. I guess that would be his son, Billy.

It scares me to think this way.

It really does! I know he’s not the devil—not the one that my stepfather preaches of who waits for me in hell, to carry my ‘whore self away to be his bride in the fiery pit’.