The Dead Girls of Hysteria Hall (14 page)

MY FAVORITE MEMORY OF JANIE

It was almost Halloween, which is one of those holidays that’s extremely important to kids and extremely useless to parents. Mom and Dad had a history of forgetting to get our costumes until the last possible minute. When I was thirteen and Janie was eight, we decided to take matters into our own hands. So one day after school, we raided their closet.

I grabbed an old flannel shirt Mom had never thrown away and put together a nineties grunge look, but we were having a harder time finding something for Janie … until we dug through an overflowing shelf and found a ruffly apron. I remembered seeing it on pictures of my great-grandma. We hauled it out and then unearthed a full skirt and a simple white blouse.

“Voilà,” I said, tying the apron strings into a bow behind her back. “You’re a housewife.”

She wrinkled her nose at herself in the mirror. “It’s not enough.”

“Come on, then,” I said, leading her out to the kitchen and opening the pantry door. “We’ll get you some props.”

I handed her a broom, which she rejected with a sneer, so then I gave her a mop, which, for some reason obvious only in eight-year-old logic, was acceptable.

“What else?” she asked.

“You need a hand free for your candy,” I said.

“I can wear a purse on my arm and put the candy in that,” she said. “But I need more. I still don’t look like anything.”

“I know!” I said. “Wait here.”

I ran back to my room and dug through my jewelry box for a strand of fake pearls. When I got back to the kitchen, Janie was holding the mop in one hand and a teapot in the other.

“Better now,” she said.

I didn’t want to laugh at her, but I couldn’t really stop myself. “You look like you’re hosting the weirdest tea party ever.”

She set down the teapot, then opened a cabinet and pulled out a frying pan, struggling to manage everything with the mop wedged into her armpit.

“Better?” she asked. “Like, for making cookies?”

“What—?
Janie.
You honestly think cookies are made in frying pans?”

She blinked at me, clueless.

“Here,” I said, picking the teapot up and tucking it in the crook of her elbow. “Now. You’re the perfect housewife.”

For a second, she believed me, and then I busted out laughing so hard that tears exploded down my face. Janie took a few seconds to decide whether to be angry, and then she started laughing, too.

Mom came home a couple of minutes later and stared at us, confused, as we gasped and wheezed for air. “What are you girls doing?”

“What?” I asked. “Don’t you want some of Janie’s fried cookies?”

Janie waved the mop at Mom. “Come to my tea party!” she said, in a demonic, gravelly voice.
“Come to my tea party and mop my floors!”

And then we basically lost our minds laughing while our mother, who had never taught us anything about house-wifery and therefore only had herself to blame, stared at us as if we’d turned into aliens.

I
caught up with my sister on the stairs and stayed a few paces behind as she pushed open the door to the day room. She stood in the doorway for a little while, looking around. Then she circled the room, examining the chairs, running her finger along the dusty window ledge, and staring up at the ceiling. Her thoughtful curiosity read, to me, as confidence. Misplaced confidence. She ought to be just a
little
careful.

She paused by the piano and made a soft
Hm
sound.

She’d found the stack of Aunt Cordelia’s letters that I’d left there four years ago.

“No,” I said, hurrying over to her and trying, uselessly, to wrench them from her hands. “Those aren’t for you. Put them down.”

But of course Janie, lips slightly parted in surprise, carried them to the small, still-dustless table and sat down to read them.

Since I couldn’t stop her, I positioned myself to read over her shoulder.

I remembered this one. I’d felt bad for her, for not having a tree or anyone who cared enough to help her get one. In my next letter I drew her the fanciest Christmas tree I could fit on the page, complete with a generous sprinkling of glitter that, in retrospect, probably got all over everything she owned.

But what got my attention reading the letter now wasn’t her loneliness—it was the clue. Of course. I needed to find the tree, and that would be one more hint as to where her private office had been. I went back to reading:

—said the woman who spent her whole life living alone.

The rest of the letter was basic stuff: weather, mostly, mixed with her usual well-wishes for my family and me. Janie folded it and slipped it carefully back into the envelope. She opened the next one in the stack, which also happened to be the very last letter I’d received from Aunt Cordelia.

But at the end of the letter, where the important announcement should have been was a little bit of backtracking and a promise that she would tell me “everything” the next time she wrote.

Only there never was a next time. I guess I got too busy to write back to her. I was busy with summer camp, and hanging out with my friends … without the bonus of getting extra credit, writing letters just didn’t seem like a priority. Cordelia must have assumed I wasn’t interested, because she never did tell me her important message.

Janie scanned the rest of the letters, pausing when she came to the one with the description of Aunt Cordelia’s little “sanctuary.” She studied the page carefully, then set it on the table and pulled out her phone, examining the familiar hand-drawn map.

As she stared at the lit-up screen, there was a rustling sound.

All of the letters had fallen off the table.

Janie cocked her head, like a curious puppy, and leaned down to pick them up. She set them in a neat pile and went back to the map.

Flutter flutter.

She jerked her head up to see the empty surface gleaming in front of her.

Again, the letters lay in a pile on the ground. Some invisible ghost was messing with my sister. The same ghost that had messed with me years earlier, pushing my sweater to the floor.

“Who’s there?” I demanded. “Who’s doing this?”

“Sh!”

The sound seemed to have no source, but suddenly the light on the other side of the table began to waver.

Then there appeared a woman who looked to be in her early forties. Her gray-streaked black hair rested in a large topknot at the crown of her head. Her dress was dull blue, floor length, and partly covered by a dingy white apron with threadbare edges. A pair of wire-frame reading glasses rested on her nose. She was one of those people who could have been pretty, if there had been any spark of light or joy in her eyes. But instead, there was an aggressive kind of bitterness, and it made her look plain and tired.

She glared at me, then went back to her work, moving her hands in intricate motions, making delicate adjustments and small, pulling gestures. It was some kind of knitting … only without any actual needles or yarn. Her movements were hypnotic, and I lost myself in watching her fingers deftly maneuver their invisible tasks.

She studiously ignored me.

My sister carefully placed one letter back on the table.

The woman glanced at the offending envelope, then swiped at it with a swiftness approaching violence. It tumbled off the side.

Janie let out a nervous, disbelieving laugh, then seemed to remember how utterly freaky this was and took a few steps back.

After a minute, she leaned forward and delicately set one of her (many) skull rings about an inch away from the edge of the table.

For nearly a minute, nothing happened. Janie visibly relaxed. But then the woman reached out and knocked the ring to the floor, where it bounced and skittered before coming to a stop just past my sister.

Janie gasped.

“What are you
doing
?” I said to her. “Why are you just standing there? Go! Go down and see Mom! Tell her about this! Tell her you want to leave!”

Except … my sister didn’t want to leave. She scooped her ring off the floor and came right back. This time she set the ring dead center on the tabletop. The old woman shoved it off with so much force that it shot up and hit Janie squarely in the side of the jaw.

Enough.

“Hey, lady!” I snapped, anger rising inside me. “That’s my little sister!”

The woman finally looked up. “Go away! Leave me alone!”

“Don’t you
ever
try to hurt her again,” I said, standing right above her. “Do you understand?”

She scowled.

“That scarf you’re knitting?” I said, feeling the power of my anger growing like a flame inside me. “I’ll—I’ll tear it to shreds. I’ll set it on fire.”

The woman’s snarl turned to a confused, frightened expression, and she cradled her imaginary knitting close to her body. “It’s not a scarf. It’s a blanket. For my little girl.” She bundled it up and clutched it to her cheek. “She needs it. She’s so cold without it.”

Her tone was so woeful that the heat of my anger cooled. “I won’t touch it,” I said. “But you need to be nice. Don’t try to hurt my sister.”

The woman looked down at the blanket.

“Okay?” I said. “Say okay.”

“Okay,” she said, pursing her lips. “But I don’t see why you have to threaten me.”

“Sorry,” I said. “You were acting pretty crazy.”

She cracked a small smile and looked at me through eyes that looked less insane than just plain exhausted. “We’re all crazy here,” she said.

“Yeah, well,” I said. “Maybe not all of us.”

She inclined her head toward Janie. “You’d better keep an eye on her,” she said.

“Trust me, I know,” I said. “So what’s your name?”

“It certainly isn’t
Hey, lady.
” She gave me a rueful smile. “I’m Penitence.”

“Delia,” I said. “Nice to meet you.”

Penitence nodded and turned her attention back to the invisible blanket, an impossible hint of a smile on her thin gray lips.

Janie, done playing with the forces at work near the table, stepped toward the wall and rested her palm on it. All the stubborn resoluteness went out of her. She looked like a rag doll, her eyes overflowing with tears. Her head dropped forward, and her fingers curled into a trembling fist.

“I’m sorry, Delia,” she whispered. “I’m sorry for everything. It’s my fault.”

“No, Janie,” I pleaded. “Don’t say that. It had nothing to do with you.”

She rushed into the ward hall. I had to run to keep up with her. She went straight into the bathroom, splashed water on her face, and gulped in deep gasps of air.

Then, as she stared at herself in the mirror, something in her face changed. Her jaw clenched. Her eyebrows pressed into straight lines. Like she was loading up on strength.

What struck me the most was how practiced the gesture was. As if she’d been breaking down and then shoring herself up this way for years.

For four years.

From the bathroom, she went back to the day room and stood at the piano, turning the letters over in her hands. Finally, she grabbed her phone and loaded the hand-drawn map again.

Then I got it.

She was trying to figure out which room had been Aunt Cordelia’s.

I watched as my sister went out into the stairwell … and started to climb to the third floor.

*  *  *

Perhaps disturbed by the presence of the living among us, the third-floor spirits crowded the hallway. Even the shiest ghosts, sad-looking girls and women wearing limp asylum nightgowns, had come to investigate. A few reached out to Janie, whispering or moaning—I watched tensely but didn’t interfere. Most seemed ultimately harmless. A couple, though, looked more dangerous—more focused.

At one point, Maria scuttled by on all fours.

I moved to walk in front of Janie, turning sideways so I could watch her.

Studying her map, my sister walked to the door marked
THERAPY
… and started searching the key ring for the key to unlock it.

I’d never been in that room before, so I went through the wall to check things out before my sister could get herself into trouble. But just as I stepped in, Janie got the door open.

“Holy …” she whispered, awed into speechlessness.

It looked like a medieval torture chamber. A wooden chair in a permanent reclining position dominated the center of the room, and next to it was a complex board covered in dials and buttons. Connected to that by wires was an elaborate frame, and dozens of wires with small electrodes at their ends dangled from the frame.

In a dubious effort to make the room more cheerful, the walls had been painted a pale blue. But they were barely visible between the hundreds of taped-up newspaper and encyclopedia articles. Stacks of books overflowed on the counters and filled the scratched white sink basin.

Pushed up under the window was a small writing desk, its contents neatly organized in marked contrast to the chaos of the rest of the room: a little pen jar, a box of stationery, and a leather desk blotter. A small swivel chair was neatly parked under the desk.

Janie had found Cordelia’s office.

I started to cross toward the desk, but halfway there,
Bang!
I smashed right into an invisible wall.

An acrid scent seeped into my nose. I looked down and saw a thick line of white granules on the floor.

I recalled Florence telling me about salt—about its power over us ghosts. Just being near it turned my stomach, so I retreated, watching helplessly as my sister pressed on toward the desk.

Janie paused, her fingers spread wide like a spider’s legs, gently resting on the blotter. She inspected everything with a care I myself would not have used. In fact, I was beginning to grow impatient with her minute examination of the pens, the stationery, the blotter itself …

Until her attentiveness paid off. Something I would never have noticed caught her eye. She lifted the corner of the blotter to reveal a piece of paper covered in writing that I recognized as Aunt Cordelia’s old-fashioned scrawl. Another letter.

The first line, unmistakable even from halfway across the room, read:

“That’s mine—bring it here!” I demanded. Without thinking, I lunged forward but slammed into the invisible barrier again. This time, the impact sent a shock of pain through me, and I stumbled backward, knocking into the counter.

A stack of books tumbled to the ground.