Possessions (30 page)

“Bring it,” Belle ordered her.

Above the head, Julie’s skull face stared straight at me. And then, for one second, her black eyes turned hazel, and she was Julie. Her lips parted in shock.

Then her eyes turned black again.

No one else seemed to have noticed. I kept my eyes fixed on Julie as Lara gathered up my wide, untamed hair and held tight. Alis took over, gripping my arm.

“Look,” Belle said, holding the white head at my eye level. The thing that had been on my own windowsill night after night since Julie had found it.

“No,” I whispered.

“Do it,” Belle said. “Or we’ll make you so sorry . . . ”

I tried to close my eyes. Tried so hard.

No. Stop. Don’t. I beg of you.
It was as if a voice from inside me was crying out. “
Now
,” Belle said. “Or after we’re done with you, we’ll kill little Julie.”

The thing inside Julie smiled at me. But her eyes . . . despite the blackness, they looked . . . sorry?

Julie,
I thought.

Belle moved the white head closer to my face.

Don’t look,
begged the voice inside me.

But I couldn’t stop myself.

In my head, I saw . . . girls in hospital gowns . . . I heard . . .

My love is like a red, red rose . . .

Dr. Abernathy. He’s the butcher who mutilates you. . . .

“I know you’re afraid, Celia,” Belle whispered in a crazy, seething voice. “You know the Devil’s going to eat your soul for supper.” She moved the white head, caressing it slowly with her finger, touching the forehead. Then she set it aside. “Because, dear little Number Seven, you are a mass murderess.”

Sangeeta screamed, “Set her on fire!”

“Burn her!” Rose shook her fists at me.

“I felt the skin melt right off my face, before I died,” Belle whispered, moving the head back and forth, back and forth, like a hypnotist.

He straps you down.

Stop.

“Julie, I’m so sorry,” I said, as I felt myself dissolving. I was going away. Lindsay Cavanaugh 2.0 was falling apart, just like Lindsay 1.0 had.

“Don’t worry. Your sweet little Julie’s not here,” Julie said.

“That’s how she came to us, but after that idiot Kiyoko died . . . ”

“I moved into this one,” Julie said. I heard her, but I couldn’t see her. Couldn’t understand what she—it—was saying. My gaze was riveted to her, this non-Julie. This voice speaking
through
Julie. “My name is Pearl Magnusen,” she went on. “I was born in 1874. I was sent here because I fell in love with the wrong boy. A farmhand.”

Mandy-Belle sneered. “They called her sinful, promiscuous. My uncle . . . he tried to force himself on me.” Her voice was strained. “And I fought back, retaining my honor. And they said I killed him because I was bedeviled. . . . ” Her tone hardened. “So they sent me here. To die.”

“Not me. I’m Lindsay,” I whimpered.

“They said I was too strong-willed,” Lara said. “Not ladylike.”

“Come to me. Come to me,” Belle whispered. “Breathe in, breathe out, become one of us.”

“One of us.” Lara took up the chant.

“One of us.”

I felt myself responding. Felt my lungs filling, exhaling. The iciness on my neck.

It happened that first day
, I thought.
When I was spying on them. I breathed it in. Breathed her in. I’m tied to this, to them. Somehow.

“No, no,” I pleaded. “I am Lindsay. I’m Lindsay Cavanaugh.”

“I loved him,” Julie-Pearl whispered. “My only crime.”

“You killed us,” Belle insisted.

“I didn’t mean to,” my voice said. But they weren’t my words. “Please, Belle,” the voice begged—the voice that was mine but not mine. “It wasn’t my fault.”

I am Celia Reaves. I am Celia.
I was no longer Lindsay. Or was I? I didn’t understand.

“She’s here,” Belle shrieked, rocking with glee and triumph. Her hatred burned her like a firestorm. “Let us proceed, my sweet girls. My sweet bees.”

They dragged me forward; my legs gave way as Lydia and Martha ran ahead and poured liquids over the wood and trash and Anna and Henrietta dragged me toward the pyre. I knew what they were planning. They would restrain me and set the pile on fire, and watch me burn . . . Because I had let them die in the fire. It was my fault. It was all my fault. But I didn’t know.

Smoke swirled around us; heat too intense to come from a lantern blistered my skin. Screams echoed through the theater:
“The door is locked! The door! Open the door!”
But no one was screaming. Yet.

Belle laughed, fingering the white head again. The model. The dummy. What they used to demonstrate the operations on.

I gazed across to Pearl, who could not be a party to this. Who would never knowingly harm anyone . . .

“Dear God,” I begged. “For the love of God . . . ”

“Burn, burn, burn!” Belle screamed, as Martha snapped the restraining device on my right wrist.

“No!” Pearl shouted.

It was a blur: Pearl ran forward, grabbed the white head out of Belle’s hands, and crashed it down on Belle’s head. As the others reacted in confusion, Pearl grabbed the other end of the restraining device. I couldn’t keep control—

Julie flew
with me into the corridor; it was pitch-dark and I was unsure which way to go.
The right, theright, therightheright
—it was as if my heartbeat was talking to me. Julie was dragging me by the other end of the handcuffs; I was trying to catch up, she was shouting something at me but I couldn’t understand it.

I smelled fresh smoke.

I heard screams.

We flew out of the theater and missed the stairs; I sailed into space and landed on my hands and knees in the snow. Something clicked; then I hurt so badly I saw yellow behind my eyes and acid rose into my throat. Julie jerked me to my feet and I started after her as she shrieked. Through flurries of snow, I saw the cold, blue moon, casting light on nothing but tree branches and rocks; it was as if someone had shoved them together to form a wall while we’d been held captive inside the operating theater.

“You bitch!” It was Belle, only her voice roared with fury. Demonic shrieking chased after us; heavy footfalls threw snow against the backs of my legs.

Julie sobbed as she fought to keep up with me.

“Julie,” I said.

“I don’t know what happened,” she wept. “I wasn’t myself. I don’t know who I was, what I was doing.”

We raced on; wind blasted through the trees and the branches sliced at my face. I ran on pure instinct, falling and rolling, as Julie forced me on. My throat was tight and dry. I couldn’t scream no matter how hard I tried.

We crashed through the trees. The bonfire was blazing, so far away; I couldn’t see the people. The lake spread below us, black and deadly.

And then I saw a rowboat tied up next to the NO TRESPASSING sign. That’s where he’d wanted me to go. Why was there a boat there? “Julie,” I begged. “Julie, where’s Troy?”

She looked back at me as she ran down the incline, dragging me behind herself.

“Water puts us out,” she said. “That’s why . . . Kiyoko drowned. They can’t get to you on the water.”

She let go of the handcuffs. “Take that boat. Go as fast as you can.”

“Please, come with me,” I begged her.

She gestured to the bonfire with her glowing bony hand. “Go and get help.”

“No! I’m not leaving you, Julie!”

“This is the best chance,” she said.

“Kill her!” a voice shrieked on the wind.

“
Kill her, kill her, kill her.
”

The voices reverberated against the trees, sharp as axes, distorted and cunning. We separated, and as Julie—or had it been Pearl talking this whole time?—raced to my right, I scrabbled over rocks, falling again and again. If I stopped, I’d be dead. I ran on, hampered by my stupid skirt. By then I was so close I could read the letters on the NO TRESPASSING sign, and I put on a fresh burst of speed. It was unnatural; there was no way I could run so fast after what I’d been through.

I saw the rope tied around the bottom of the sign, and raced to it. It was tied to a white rowboat bobbing in the water with LAKEWOOD ACADEMY painted in dark letters on the side. The boat was half-full of snow. I fell to my knees, fingers plucking at the rope, looking fearfully over my shoulder.

They were coming. Glowing white shapes elongated and distorted over the bodies of Mandy and the others as they ran toward me. The shapes grew, rising over their heads, blurring and spreading across the sky—skulls and bones and whirls of luminescent fog.

The rope was too tight; I couldn’t find a loose piece. I briefly considered trying to break the signpost, but knew I couldn’t. I ran to the boat and found the cleat the rope had been wound around, and started working on that.

The shapes expanded, riding the wind; they crashed forward like waves, like galloping horses. I kept unwinding. Belle was no more than twenty feet away. Beneath the glow of the skull, Mandy’s face was crisscrossed with scratches. Her hands were bleeding. Her clothes had been half-ripped off.

And still she came. I could smell her—smoke, sweat, and blood—I saw her eye sockets.

And then the rope went slack. I had unfastened it from the cleat. I let it drop, shoved off, and leaped into the boat. I hit snow. I saw the oars. It took a lifetime to secure them into the oarlocks.

The boat rocked crazily as freezing water splashed me. I was panicking, unable to coordinate my rowing motions. Oh God, what if I drowned like Kiyoko?

Belle stood on the shore, not four feet away. “Damn you, Celia, come back!” she shrieked. She started forward.

“No,” the blazing white skeleton beside her shouted, grabbing onto her. It was Lara—or whoever she
really
was. “Not in the water.”

“Let go of me. I curse you to hell,” Belle screamed at her. She slammed herself into Lara, who released her.

With a loud splash, Belle jumped into the water and started swimming. The ghostly image seeped into the water, lighting it . . . slithering toward the boat.

“Belle, no!” the others cried, as they massed on shore, shouting; but no one else jumped in. They were a blaze of glowing white, intertwining, thinning, undulating, blossoming.

Wind pushed against the stern of the boat. I rowed, sparing no more glances at the water or what was in it. I couldn’t feel anything. Everything slid away. I was numb.

The moon beamed down on the shore. The white glow shrank as I put more and more water between the boat and land. The white in the water thinned, winked out.

Thank you for this boat, Troy, thank you
, I thought, afraid for him.

I kept rowing, unable to feel my feet. Then I looked down, and realized that the snow was rising around my thighs.

I was taking on water. There was a hole in the boat.

Trap
, I thought.
No, oh, please.
Had he done it?

Then, amazingly, my cell phone vibrated in my sopping jacket. I grabbed it.

It was Troy. I tried to press the connect button. My hands were shaking too badly. I tried again, yelling, “Troy!”

And then I dropped it, and it plunked into the water in the boat. I searched for it, my hand plunging into the ice water.

I had to let it go for now. The water was rising. I was exhausted, and so cold. I looked around. The moon was too weak to show me the shoreline; a vast expanse of ebony blackness stretched in all directions. I tried to stay calm. I had to think.

I had been a lifeguard. I could swim. But the water was freezing.

I had to get out. Maybe I could flip the boat and use it as a flotation device.

I would freeze to death.

I looked in the direction I had come. I couldn’t see anything. Would they make their way to the other side of the lake?

I couldn’t stay out here forever.

I closed my eyes for a brief moment and tried to find the phone. No luck. Then I rolled myself to the right hard, and knocked the boat on its side. It sank beneath me and I slid into the water.

My skirt was so heavy. I tried to get out of it but I couldn’t.

I started doing the breaststroke, but the water pulled on me. I tried, so hard.

I lost time, so much time. I knew I went under the water a dozen times, a hundred.

I’m dying
, I thought.
Will I see my mom?

thirty-four

I couldn’t move
and it was coming and it was here.

I was panting, screaming, clawing.

Sweat rolled off me. The back of my neck was cold but my forehead . . . my forehead, oh God. I couldn’t move and it was crawling toward the bed; one hand was on the mattress oh—

Come to me come to me come to me come to me come to me.

It was on my chest, it was pressing down, it—

thirty-five