The Dead Girls of Hysteria Hall (4 page)

I walked down the hall, piecing the words together as I saw each new letter.

O … N … T …

SELL THE HOUSE.

Then I noticed smaller letters, under the
E
in
HOUSE
. One last word. I held my phone closer.

DELIA.

The message was for me.

My dead great-aunt had gouged messages into the floor for me.

The light on my phone blinked out.

Adrenaline propelling me forward, I rushed back to the door, forcing the key to turn in the lock. I followed the sounds of my parents’ voices back to the dimly lit bedroom, where three silhouettes stood in the corner over a pile of luggage.

One of the silhouettes turned around.

“Honey?” Mom said.

I was too out of breath for a lengthy explanation. The words came out of my mouth in a puff.

“I can’t stay here,” I said. “I’m leaving. Tonight.”

A
s my eyes adjusted to the light, the first things I could make out were Dad’s raised eyebrows. “Excuse me?”

“I’m not staying here,” I said, gulping in another breath. “I can’t. I refuse.”

Mom’s face wrinkled in concern. “Delia, what happened? You look pale.”

“You look
crazy
,” Janie added, her eyes like little moons on her face.

I dodged my mother’s arm as she reached out for me. Then I took a moment to figure out how exactly one might go about telling one’s parents that one would rather scoop one’s eyeball out with a plastic spork than spend one more minute in this place, where something sinister oozed beneath every door, down the walls, up from the floorboards …

“I think I know why Aunt Cordelia ran away and killed herself.”

“Delia.”
My father looked annoyed. “I thought we agreed—”

“Did she really, Brad? Your aunt killed herself?” Mom interrupted.

Dad sighed and shot me a look that plainly said,
Sellout
. “Delia,” he said, “I’d really appreciate it if you would sit down, take some deep breaths, and think this over like a rational person.”

“There’s nothing to rationalize,” I said stiffly, wrapping my arms around myself. “Unless you see what I saw—unless you feel that thing watching you, following you, stalking you …”

“That’s enough,” my father said. “You’re scaring Janie.”

That much was perfectly true. My sister looked like a statue, her lips slightly parted.

Mom eased her arm around Janie’s shoulders, but Janie jumped away. “I’m not staying here!” she said. “If Delia’s leaving, I am, too.”

Normally, her copycatting would have irritated me, but in this case I was relieved. Janie might have been a total pain, but at the end of the day she was my sister. And I didn’t want her in this house.

“Tell us what happened,” Mom said. “You’re frightening me.”

I wove my fingers together and took a deep breath. “Something chased me around. With bells. And there’s this light on the wall upstairs, and a table that won’t let you put things on it. And Cordelia left a message
for me
on the floor in the main hall—
Don’t sell the house, Delia.
”

“Oh, you’re kidding. Did she carve up the hall floor, too?” Dad asked, sighing into his hand.

Really?
That
was the part that concerned him? A massive chill went up my spine, contracting every muscle in my back. I turned toward my mother. “Mom, please,” I said. “We have to leave. This place … I think it’s haunted.”

For a beat, we all stared at each other.

Then Dad crossed his arms. “No,” he said. “I’m sorry, but no. We came here for the summer, as a family, and we’re staying for the summer—as a family. I don’t know what you think you saw, Delia, but one old lady’s senile ramblings aren’t—”

He blathered on, but I wasn’t hearing his words.

No more discussing for me. I’d moved on to planning. I had to get my things and go, as fast as I could. They’d never drive me, so I’d walk myself back to town, or as far back as I needed to go to get cell service, at which point I would call Nic. She would do whatever it took to help.

I spied the pile of suitcases in the corner and moved to grab mine, an old scraped-up red bag that had been Mom’s in college.

“What do you think you’re doing?” my father asked.

I turned to face him. “Leaving.”

Dad’s slow-burning sigh seethed with frustration. “You’re not leaving.”

Our eyes met.

“Brad, maybe—” Mom said.

“Lisa, I’ve got this, thank you,” Dad said.

“
I
don’t want to leave, Daddy,” Janie said, with a golden-girl smile. Traitor.

“Janie,” he snapped, “find something else to do for a little while.”

My sister scowled and slipped out of the room.

“No one’s going anywhere,” Mom said, exasperated. “There’s a huge downpour practically on top of us. We’ll talk it over first thing tomorrow morning.”

Even more reason to get out. The thought of being stuck here on a dark and stormy night … “No way,” I said.

“
Yes
way,” Dad said.

My parents looked as determined as I’d ever seen them. I knew that no matter how hard I pressed, I’d lose this argument. I had a choice: try to leave now, and deal with the potentially nuclear-level fallout, or leave later, when they weren’t looking. Once they noticed I was missing, they might call the police to pick me up, but that was fine. I’d much rather spend the night in jail than in this house.

Time to re-strategize.

So I shrugged and attempted to act resigned. “Whatever.”

“First thing tomorrow,” Mom promised, her shoulders rounding with relief.

Dad nodded sharply, forced to play nice but obviously furious that I had the nerve to defy them.

I turned away, nursing more than a little fury of my own.

In the sticky silence that followed, we realized that Janie had taken my father’s instructions seriously and left the apartment altogether. Dad talked Mom out of going to look for her, but I was on edge, picturing the words on the floor, the light dancing on the walls, and my oblivious little sister in the middle of it all.

A few minutes later, she showed up, dusty but unharmed. The keys clanked as she dropped them on the table. On her face was a wide-eyed expression I couldn’t decipher. She’d always been delicate, like a ballerina. Now I had the urge to stand in front of her like some sort of bodyguard.

I went over to her. “Did anything happen?”

“Yeah,” she said, her voice hushed.

“What?” I asked.

She glanced around. “Come closer,” she said. “I’ll whisper it.”

I leaned toward her, my heart pounding, as she stood on her tiptoes and raised her mouth to my ear.

“It was …” Her voice trailed off.

“It’s okay,” I said. “Don’t be afraid to tell me.”

“It was …
BOO!
” she shouted directly into my eardrum, deafening me. Then she (wisely) rushed away as I stood frozen with rage. Her gleeful laughter bounced off the walls.

I couldn’t
believe
I’d been worried about her.

“You are such a jerk,” I hissed.

“At least I’m not a scaredy-cat!” She danced farther away. “You’re just mad because I’m braver than you.”

Then she (very wisely) ducked out of my reach and ran for the kitchen, just as Mom stuck her head out and said, “Time to eat. Has anyone seen that tray that was in here before?”

After our tense dinner of gas-station gourmet, I stood up. “So where are we sleeping?”

“We can put the air mattresses over in the corner by the TV, I guess,” Mom said.

“No, not there!” Janie said. “I found someplace better!”

She was wiggling like a delighted puppy.

“Upstairs,” she said. “I found a place called Ward. It has bedrooms. And real beds!”

I thought of the door in the day room marked
WARD
—the one I’d been too afraid to go through. Maybe Janie
was
actually braver than me (but that didn’t make her any less of a jerk).

“If there are beds up there, they’re a hundred years old,” I said. “They’re probably full of maggots and bedbugs.”

“No,” she protested. “I sat on one. It was nice.”

Mom and Dad exchanged a dubious look.

“You can’t seriously be thinking of letting her sleep up there,” I said.

“Oh, Janie, I don’t know,” Mom said to my sister. “If Delia would go, then maybe … but the rooms must be so …
old
. And dusty.”

Not
Delia doesn’t like it up there
. Just a general distaste for dust and oldness.

“We brought clean sheets,” Janie said. Then her eyes cut over to me, and in them I saw expectant curiosity, like she was waiting for my reaction.

Thirty minutes earlier she’d been scared enough to want to run away with me. Now she wanted to spend the night in some weird part of the house. This was just a bratty dare, designed to get a rise out of me, and I refused to give her the satisfaction. What difference did it make? I wasn’t planning to sleep there, anyway.

So I shrugged. “I’m beyond caring at this point.”

Maybe we’d get lucky and the ghost would eat my sister.

*  *  *

The ward hall, which I’d expected to be starkly institutional, with concrete and metal and straitjackets, appeared to be a perfectly normal hallway—the kind you might find at a posh boarding school. There was a communal bathroom and six individual patient rooms, which Janie had actually been right about—they seemed pretty nice, furnished with matching dark wood nightstands, dressers, and vanity tables. The closest one to the bathroom—Room 1—had a pastel-pink bedspread and a dresser with a missing drawer.

“I’ll take this one.” The words left my mouth before I knew they were coming.

“I thought you hated pink,” Dad said, moving past me with my suitcase.

That was true. And the broken dresser reminded me of a sinister, toothless smile.

“I like the view,” I said. “Plus, it’s as far from Janie as I can get.”

And as close to the exit.

“I heard you!” Janie shouted from the room she’d chosen—Room 6, the one at the very end of the hall.

After Mom and Dad headed back downstairs, I loaded up my messenger bag with everything I’d need to hit the road. It might be a long, rainy walk to town, and a suitcase would just slow me down. I wished I’d thought to bring an umbrella.

Down the hall, Janie was singing softly to herself.

In spite of my sister’s many (many, many) shortcomings, she had perfect pitch and a natural talent for singing. I certainly wasn’t looking forward to the day she realized just
how
good she was. With my luck, she’d win one of those TV talent shows and end up a millionaire, and I’d be the talentless reject sister, forgotten in the shadows. Sometimes I felt like our whole family was waiting for that to happen.

Her voice, clear and lovely, drifted down the hall while I waited on the bed with my packed bag, watching the minutes tick by on my phone. I’d changed from my jeans and T-shirt into an old baggy burgundy sweater of Dad’s and gray leggings dotted with white hearts. On my feet were a pair of knockoff Ugg boots, and my hair was pulled up into a messy bun. It was basically a half step up from pajamas, but I figured that if I was going to spend the night in a bus station (or juvie lockup), I might as well be comfortable.

My feet rested on the little round stool I’d pulled away from the vanity, rocking it back and forth on its uneven legs in time with my sister’s song. Her flawless rhythm and the gentle knock of the wood against the floor lulled me into a bit of a trance. I found myself following the words of her song. It was one I’d never heard before, and it was old-fashioned—a complete departure from her usual repertoire of pop songs about breakups.

“Beautiful dreamer, wake unto me … Starlight and dewdrops are waiting for thee …”

Her voice drifted off, like she’d fallen asleep. Excellent. This would be my best chance to sneak out. I got up off the bed, accidentally knocking over the little wooden footstool with a clatter. I hurriedly set it upright. But as soon as my fingers let go of the smooth, round edge, it knocked itself over again …

And rolled toward me.

I watched in silence, unable to believe my eyes.

Then it bumped up against my foot.

My heart racing, I scrambled backward, running into the bed and knocking something loose behind me. I turned around to see that I had dislodged a leather strap, complete with buckles, bolted to the bed frame. Lifting the bedspread, I found more straps—one for each wrist and ankle, and a big one that would fit perfectly across a torso.

Don’t freak out,
I told myself.
Just go. Get your things and go.

I grabbed my messenger bag and purse, double-checked to make sure I had my phone and charger, and started into the hall. The bathroom door gaped open, and I caught a flash of lightning through the window.

A high-pitched scream filled the air.

It was the kind of sound that overloads your brain, leaving you blank except for the sudden, all-consuming awareness of a person in horrible distress.

Janie!

I dropped my stuff and ran back to her room, gasping at the sight that greeted me—

My sister was strapped into the bed, her thin wrists and ankles caught fast in the leather buckles. The big one was cinched tightly around her chest, although she was doing an admirable job of fighting against it, writhing and struggling like a fish in a net.

“Janie!” I said, racing to the bed. “Are you okay?”

“Delia!!!”
she shrieked.
“Get me out, get me out, get me out!”

“I’m trying!” I said, fumbling with the buckle on her right ankle.

“No, my hands,” she panted, wild-eyed. “Please. Do my hands first.”

My parents’ footsteps thundered down the hall. They rushed in just as I was starting to undo my sister’s right hand.

“What on
earth
?” Mom cried.

Without waiting for an explanation, my parents each grabbed a strap and went to work. The leather was so dried with age that it cracked wherever it was bent, leaving a pattern of fine lines in the dull brown surface.