The Dead Girls of Hysteria Hall (20 page)

“What’s the black fire?” I asked.

Maria’s uneven eyebrows rose in surprise. “It’s the bad thing,” she said. “It lives here, and it holds on to us. It won’t let us go. If you try to leave, it will send something after you.”

Like … smoke?

The room was totally quiet. “All right, Maria,” I said. “Thank you for helping Cordelia. I’ll bet she really thought you were a nice girl.”

“She did,” Maria said. “That’s why she gave me her most important letter to hide, even from herself. Because when she was a bad lady, she wanted to throw it away.”

I felt like the room was closing in on me. Words swam in and out of my mind’s grasp. “You
have
the letter?”

She nodded. “Do you want to see it?”

“Yes, I do,” I said, my heart beating so hard I could feel it in my chest. “In fact, I think she may have meant for you to give it to me.”

Maria’s rotting jaw pulled back, and her mouth formed a grotesque grimace.

It took me a minute to realize she was smiling.

“Come out,” she said, looking down at the salt.

I hesitated. Could this be a setup? Was she luring me to some dark, remote corner so she could attack me, out of the reach of my friends? Should I really believe her … ?

What choice did I have?

I knelt down and started to use the book to push the salt out of the way. To my amazement, Maria knelt, too, and began brushing it away with her fingers. A sickening smell, like burning flesh, faintly entered the air.

“No, stop,” I said, stopping myself just short of touching her charred-looking arm. “You’ll hurt yourself.”

She went on moving the salt around. “It doesn’t matter if I get hurt.”

“Most of the others can’t do that,” I said.

“Yes, they can,” she said. “Only they’re scared. I don’t get scared. I won’t cry. I never cried, not even when I was a baby. I only cry now because … I miss my mother sometimes.”

After we’d moved enough salt for me to pass through, Maria carefully filled in the line. The almost imperceptible searing sound made my chest ache.

“I need to keep them away from her nice things,” she said, by way of an explanation. “The bad ghosts, I mean.”

She stood up. And then she reached over and took my hand.

I cringed at the feeling of her paper-dry skin against my fingers, even as I braced myself for an attack. But she didn’t seem intent on hurting me. She led me out into the hallway.

It was deserted. The screaming woman, the straitjacketed girl—they had disappeared. All the ghosts had disappeared. I had an unpleasant thought of rats jumping off a sinking ship.

But before I had time to wonder where they’d gone, Maria led me through the wall, into a lavatory. It was a surprisingly spacious room, lit pale blue by sunshine that streamed through the high, mesh-encased window. A tiled shower area took up most of the floor space. There were restraints on the walls, and a splintered wood chair bolted to the floor with more restraints on it. The shower controls were on the wall near the door.

“Nurse brought me in here once,” Maria said. “But the water was too cold. I told her I wanted a bath instead.”

And a toaster,
I thought.

Then Maria pointed behind me, and I turned around, expecting to see a toilet and sink.

But the floor was completely covered with images cut from magazines and children’s books—hundreds, maybe thousands, of puppies, kittens, bouquets of flowers, letters of the alphabet, numbers, cheerful-looking houses, and babies and children and families … so many families. And tucked way back in the corner was a picture I recognized—the Christmas tree drawing I’d sent with my letter so long ago.

It looked like some surrealist art installation. If Aunt Cordelia had given her one picture every day, this must have been five years’ worth of pictures.

In the corner, tucked between a filthy, broken toilet and the wall, was a small flannel blanket, the kind tiny babies get in the hospital, with ducklings and baby rattles on it. It was soiled and limp with age.

Maria walked across the pictures without disturbing them at all. “These are my pictures, and this is my bed,” she said, carefully stretching the blanket out and sitting down on it. “Cordelia gave it to me.”

I pictured her huddled on a rag in the corner of a dark, creepy bathroom, waiting the way a lost child waits for her parents. Except Maria had been here for more than a century, and no one was ever coming back for her.

“I … like your pictures,” I said, reaching down to touch a picture of a collie.

“I love puppies. I had a dog once, named Buttons. He liked me. Nobody likes me now.” Her gravelly voice sank to weariness. “Not since Cordelia died. But I’m not angry that she left. I know why she had to do it.”

I was trying to figure out how to ask for the letter, but before I had a chance, she reached under her blanket and pulled out a stained, yellowing envelope. She handed it up to me.

The writing on the outside read
DELIA.

“Look,” I said, showing Maria. “That’s my name. You did great. That’s just what Cordelia wanted.”

She gave me a chilling grin. “I like helping. Are you going to read it? You can read it in here, if you want.”

I didn’t quite know what to say.

“I won’t snoop,” she said. “I can’t read, anyway.”

“Um … okay.” It seemed like as good a place as any. There was relative privacy and decent light.

“Here,” she said, spreading the edges of the blanket for me. I sat down next to her. “Can I help open the envelope?”

“How long have you had this letter?” I asked, handing it over.

“I don’t know … How long ago did she die?”

“Four years ago,” I said.

“Four years, then,” she answered, opening the seal and handing the sheets of folded paper to me.

“You’re a good girl, Maria,” I said.

I began to read.

I closed my eyes, resting them for a moment. Yes, I knew that feeling.

I
set the letter down.

“Was it a nice letter?” Maria asked.

“No,” I said. “But she said something very nice about you.”

Her eyes lit up. I was growing used to looking at her. My mind played along, reconstructing how she once might have looked, molding the distortedness of her features into the face of a little girl.

“So why did you try to attack me that day?” I asked. “Right after I died?”

She blinked and stared up in surprise. “Attack you?”

“When you had the sheet on. You were coming closer.”

“I only wanted to see you,” she said. “I wanted to meet you.”

“You weren’t going to hurt me?”

“Oh no.” She shook her head. “I had the sheet on because I didn’t want you to be afraid of me.”

Was everything I’d heard about Maria a lie? I recalled what Florence had told me—that the little girl had tried to kill her own father.

“Did you ever hurt someone?” I asked. “A man?”

Her shoulders slumped and her chin sank to meet her chest.

“Maria, it’s okay. You can tell me. I almost killed a person once.”

She glanced up at me. “You did? Were you naughty?”

“Very.” I nodded. “I lost my temper.”

“I was naughty,” she said. Then she raised her head and looked at me, a burning intensity in her gaze and a hint of rebellion in her voice. “I used to imagine hurting him. He wasn’t nice. He was very, very unkind to all the ladies. He told me he would take me away from my mother. And then … one day … he did. Up to the third floor.”

“Who was the bad man?” I asked. “Was it Maxwell?”

She buried her face in her hands and didn’t answer.

“Did you hurt him, Maria?”

“No!” She shrank away, as if I might roughly grab her and demand an answer. “It wasn’t me. I’m not the one who hurt him. But I’m glad he got hurt.”

“Who did it?” I asked. “Please tell me.”

She pressed her lips together. A tear glistened at the corner of her eye.

“Okay, it’s okay,” I said. “You don’t have to tell me who it was. But do you know what she did to him?”

“Of course I do,” she said. “She made a cake. But it wasn’t her fault—the other part.”

“What other part?”

“We found it,” Maria said. “Nurse Carlson and me. We were good friends. We liked cake, and we liked to explore sometimes when no one was watching. We found it in the kitchen one night, and it already had a piece cut out of it, so we thought we could have some, too. Only … it wasn’t a good cake. It was a very bad cake.”

“It was … poisoned?” I asked.

She nodded. Her sorrow seemed to fill the room, and she wilted like a flower petal. “We died. Nurse died first. She told me to run and get help for myself, but I loved her, so I couldn’t leave her there, cold and lonely. Then we both woke up, and we were … what we are. When the wardress found our bodies, she made them take us upstairs and make it look like we died in the bathroom—like I hurt Nurse. But I didn’t die in the bath. And I would
never
hurt Nurse. She was so good. She was my especial friend even when I was a baby. I don’t know why they did that.”

Probably because an insane inmate killing herself and a nurse was a lot better than two innocent people being inexplicably poisoned.

“I have hurt someone,” Maria was saying quietly. “I begged Nurse to eat the cake. It was my fault she died.”

“No, Maria,” I said. “It wasn’t. Did you ever find out who made the cake?”

She shook her head.

“All right,” I said. “That’s okay.”

I sat back, reflecting on what I’d learned about Maria’s life and death. And still trying to process the fact that Great-Aunt Cordelia, who was, like, a billion years old, had basically lived a Buffy the Vampire Slayer life, and we never had a clue.

“Wait,” I said. “The wardress that made them move the bodies—was her name Penitence?”

Maria blinked. “No.”

No, she couldn’t have been, because Maxwell was the one who committed Penitence. So it must have been someone new by that point. “Is she here—is she a ghost? The wardress?”

“No,” she said. “I don’t think so. She was here for a very long time, but they sent her away, after the other thing happened.”

“What happened?” Fresh hope bloomed in my heart. Maria obviously knew something important. I just had to coax it out of her. “Did someone get hurt? Was it the black fire?”

Maria’s eyes went wide, and then she ducked away, trying to make herself small in the corner.

“It’s okay, Maria,” I said. “You can tell me what happened. I won’t be angry.”

“But
she’ll
be angry,” she said. “If you try to put out the fire, she’ll know I told.”

“Who?” I said.

She shot me a sharp glance out of the corner of her eye. “You
know
who.”

In my shock, I dropped my coaxing voice. “No, I don’t know who it is. I really don’t.”

She turned to face me, exasperated to the point of being offended. “The one I tried to save you from!”

“In the hallway?” I asked. “When the walls were closing in?”

“No, that was just the house being naughty.” Her expression was wounded now, as if I’d misunderstood her on purpose. “The one in the lobby. She smells like flowers.”

“Do you mean Florence?” My blood went icy in my veins. “Are you saying Florence isn’t nice?”

Maria’s voice rose to an agonized cry. “How do you think I got like this? I used to be pretty, like you!”

“Maria, what do you mean?”

“She wanted me to bring her things,” Maria said, turning away. “Because she can’t go to the basement, and I can. She wanted the fire. I tried to get it for her, but I couldn’t. Then she was angry because I failed. She said I was a bad girl, and she only likes good girls.”

Wait.
Florence
had done this to Maria? But that was impossible. Florence had always been sweet to me, since the day she protected me from Maria …

But then, Maria wasn’t actually a threat. So why had Florence been nice to me?

She only likes good girls.

Because I hadn’t tested the limits. She was fine, as long as I behaved. I remembered how she’d sat up waiting for me the night I’d been outside with Theo. Like she’d been keeping tabs on me. So what would she do to someone who
did
test the limits?

“Eliza!” I said, leaping to my feet. “Eliza doesn’t know!”

The reason Florence and Eliza had gotten along perfectly well since 1922 was that Eliza had never tried to leave the house. But as of a few minutes ago, that had changed.

Suddenly, a scream cut through the silence.
“DELIA!”

It was Penitence.

“Let’s go!” I said. Maria grabbed my hand, and we ran down the hall toward the stairs. I started to descend, but Maria stayed on the landing above me, shaking her head with tiny movements.

“I can’t go down there,” she said. “I can’t go onto the second floor.”

“It’s okay!” I said, halfway to the second-floor landing. “Go back to your room and stay there! I’ll come get you when it’s safe to come out.”

She ran away, carried on noiseless feet.

In the day room, I found Penitence wringing her hands in a panic. “She was here! She never comes to the second floor. But she came, and she attacked them, and she …”

I didn’t need to ask who. I pushed past her. “Where?”

“In Room 2,” Penitence said. “But—”

“Are they okay?” I asked.

Penitence stared at me without answering.

I raced through the day room, trying to assure myself that everything would be fine. If Florence had kept her secret this long, she was probably waiting for some big moment to reveal herself, right?

I swung into the ward hall and froze. All was quiet.

They’re fine,
I told myself.
Everything is fine.

Then I heard a whimper from my sister’s room.

I ran in. The first thing I saw was my mother, stretched out on the bed, half-asleep.

But no Janie.

A faint ringing sound broke the silence—followed by a voice so wretched and weak that I hardly recognized it. “Delia?”

I rushed to the other side of the bed, where Eliza lay on the floor. Her left arm rested limply on her side, hideously bruised and broken looking. Both of her legs looked similarly abused, and her hair seemed to be coming out in large clumps.

“Florence did this,” Eliza whispered. She shivered violently. “When I tried to leave, she attacked me. Then she came up here. She was going to hurt your mother, but Janie and I stopped her just in time.”

“Where is she now?” I asked. “My sister, where is she?”

Eliza lifted her head, and when I saw her face, I nearly recoiled. A blistered, blackened line stretched diagonally from her hairline, across a ruined eye and nose, through the corner of her discolored lips, and ended in a gaping, dark wound at the tip of her chin.

“The smoke,” she said. “The smoke took over your sister, and mesmerized her. They left together.”

I went limp. Janie could be dead by now.

“I think your sister is alive,” Eliza said. “Florence is probably using her … as bait. To catch you.”

That gave me a hint of hope. “I have to go,” I said. “I have to find Janie. But I’ll be back.”

“Go,” Eliza urged. “But be careful.”

“Penitence!” I called, running out. “I’m going downstairs. Keep Eliza and my mother safe.”

“What are you going to do?” she asked, following me to the door. “You can’t fight her! You have no idea how strong she is. She’s tapped into some kind of dangerous power.”

“Yeah, well, too bad,” I said, shoving the door open and starting down the stairs. “So have I.”

Florence was evil. She wasn’t the evil force in the house, but she was tapped into it—maybe obsessed with it, or she wouldn’t have sent Maria to bring her the black fire.

She only likes good girls.

She bullied and assaulted the ghosts who tested the limits or failed to abide by her standards. How long had she been watching me, waiting for me to make a mistake so she could punish me?

And now she had my sister.

I stopped in the kitchen, grabbed a container of salt from the pantry, and pushed open the door to the lobby.

Florence was posed on the couch, as lovely as a painting, wearing her brightest, most glittering smile.

“Well, hello there, sugar,” she said. “Lookin’ for me?”