The Dead Girls of Hysteria Hall (5 page)

“What happened here?” Mom asked. “What were you girls doing?”

“Now hold on,” I said, so surprised that I let go of my sister’s wrist. “
We girls
weren’t doing anything.
She, Janie
somehow got herself strapped down.”

“I did not!” Janie snapped, shaking her bound wrist at me. Mom reached across to finish what I’d started.

The thing was, I actually believed my sister. How would she have gotten herself strapped in? Even if she’d been able to buckle her own ankles and torso, how could she do
both
of her hands?

“You have to be more careful,” Mom said. “What if we hadn’t been around?”

My sister’s jaw set. “
I didn’t do it.
I was
asleep.
”

Fear started to rise inside me like an approaching tsunami. The house was closing in on us.

Mom gave Janie a dubious look. “Sweetheart, how else would you have gotten stuck in the restraints?”

“Janie,” Dad said, “you need to tell us the truth. How did this happen?”

Janie’s eyes narrowed. Her mouth began to open.

The air in my lungs turned dry and heavy and hot.

I knew what she was going to say before she said it. The impact of her words was as inevitable as two cars skidding toward each other across an icy intersection.

“Delia did it.”

OBSERVATIONS MADE AFTER THE FACT

Despite this incident, and despite everything she went on to tell herself in the coming years, what happened to me that night was not my sister’s fault.

S
he’s lying,” I said.

“Delia,” my father said, his words coming slowly at first, and then gaining speed, “the drama queen act has to stop. You have done everything in your power to ruin this for the whole family, and I for one am sick of it.”

“Ruin it?” I asked. “It
came
ruined!”

“Brad,” Mom said, clucking her tongue. “You know I hate the phrase
drama queen
.”

“Yes, and I’m sorry, but it applies.” Dad took a deep breath and turned to face me. “I know you feel like you’re some sort of victim in all this, but here’s the fact: You did something wrong. And you got caught. And now you can accept the consequences like a man.”

Mom hmmphed.

“Like a
grown-up
, then,” Dad said. “You only think about yourself. And that needs to change.”

I turned away.

“Where do you think you’re going?” he asked.

Did they seriously not understand?

“Leaving,”
I said. “So go ahead and start cooking up some new consequences.”

“Cordelia,” Dad said. His voice was as serious as death. “You’re
not
leaving.”

I didn’t even bother looking back. I threw the words over my shoulder.

“Watch me,” I said.

*  *  *

My messenger bag was right where I’d left it, but my purse was gone, and I couldn’t leave without my wallet and phone. I paused, imagining for a moment that I’d heard shrill laughter—then shook it off and went back to my room. My purse was lying limply on the floor, its contents spread out as if a wild animal had rifled through them.

I heard my parents coming down the hall, their low, tense voices punctuated by Janie’s excited outbursts. Then there was murmuring, and Janie cried out indignantly, which I took to mean that our parents were telling her, yet again, to mind her own beeswax. Loud stomping and the muffled slam of a door confirmed my suspicions.

I picked up my purse, braced myself, and looked up to see Mom and Dad standing just outside my door.

“Look,” I said. “I understand why this whole summer project thing is important to you. But I can’t spend another minute in this house.”

They exchanged a long, exhausted look, which seemed like a good sign. Like I was wearing them down—never underestimate the power of wearing your parents down.

“You’re overwrought,” Dad said.

“I’m not, though.” I set my purse on the bed and forced my voice to sound reasonable. “I’m of perfectly sound mind and body. But I don’t know how long that will last, if you make me stay here.”

Mom pinched the bridge of her nose. Her sinuses were probably going crazy from all the dust, which meant it wouldn’t be long before she ended up with a migraine. I considered inviting her to come with me. Let Dad and Janie get their weird kicks out of this twisted place. My mother and I had standards.

Then Mom reached out. I thought she was going to, I don’t know, try to take my hand or something. I made up my mind not to let her.

But instead, she ever so gently took hold of the doorknob … and ever so gently closed the door.

I stared for a second, not quite comprehending. But when I heard the jangling of the key ring, I got it. I mean, I seriously
Got It
.

They had locked me in.

“What?!”
I yelled. “What are you
doing
?”

“Honey, it’s only temporary. Until we can figure this out.” My mother’s voice was thin and brittle.

I tried to yank open the door, but it didn’t budge. Of course it didn’t—it was bolted shut. It was doing what it was designed to do. “You’re locking me up in here? Like a crazy person? Just another hysterical troubled female?”

I could practically picture Mom flinching.

“Of course you’re not crazy,” Dad said. The unhappiness in his voice was palpable. “But you need to take a little time to relax.”

“I don’t
want
time! I’m not going to relax!” I got louder and louder, until I was basically shouting my lungs out.
“I need to get out of this awful place, now!”

“Delia,” Dad said softly. “We simply can’t allow you to run off again.”

Again.
The word scraped the inside of my brain like a piece of balled-up tinfoil.

Of course they would connect two completely unrelated incidents into a pattern, as if I were a serial killer from some criminal profiling TV show.

“This isn’t like Daytona.” I managed to lower my voice but couldn’t keep my teeth from gritting. “I’m not trying to run off somewhere. I’m just trying to get out of this place.”

“But … why?” Mom asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I just
need to
.” And when I said it, I realized how true it was—how desperately I had to get away from whatever was in this house. My skin began to feel like it was crawling with insects. I rubbed my hands on my arms, trying to push the sensation away.

“Please,” I said. “Please just let me out.”

“We will,” Dad said.

“When?”

I could feel their helplessness radiating through the door.

“We’re not sure,” Mom said lamely.

I tugged on the seam of my sweater, my rage and indignation rising, until the pent-up energy propelled me toward the door. I slammed into it with my shoulder.

Mom let out a little surprised yelp, and I bashed into the door again.

Not for the first time (or the last, it may be worth noting), my emotions were starting to get the better of me.

“Now hang on, sweetheart,” Dad said, and I could tell by the
sweetheart
and the note of anxiety behind his words that he was heartily wishing the situation had progressed differently.

Smash
. When I hit the door for a third time, a shooting pain went down my left arm. I clutched my elbow and backed away, my breath coming in heavy huffs.

“You have to understand,” Dad said. “After what happened with spring break—”

“Go away.” My voice was low, but I knew they heard me.

Mom spoke in her most conciliatory tone. “Honey, we’re going to go call Carol, and then we’ll come back and work this out.”

Carol was the family therapist my parents had insisted we start seeing after the spring-break incident. She was nice enough, but mostly I just sat in her office staring at her collection of exotic conch shells while my parents tried to goad me into sharing my feelings.

“Yeah, do that,” I said. “Tell her you locked me up in an insane asylum. She’ll love it. Very empowering.”

There was an uncomfortable, shuffling pause. Then Mom’s voice piped up, faint and hesitantly hopeful. “Delia, if we opened the door now, what would you do?”

“Run,”
I said. “As far from you people as I can get.”

I should have just lied. But seriously—what no one seemed to believe anymore was that, at heart, I’m actually an honest person.

My parents sighed in unison.

Then I spoke the last words they would ever hear from my earthly person.

“I hate you,” I said. “And by the way, tell Janie I hate her, too.”

After a moment of wounded silence, their reluctant footsteps led away.

OBSERVATIONS MADE AFTER THE FACT

I hate you. And by the way, tell Janie I hate her, too.

Let me tell you something.

On a cold and loveless night, when the silver moonlight drinks the color from the earth and the grass tumbles in the wind like waves tossed on an endless, angry sea …

That is not the kind of memory that keeps you warm.

I
frothed and fumed by the door for a few minutes, but that kind of anger really saps your energy. It wasn’t long before exhaustion set in.

I walked over to the window to take a look at the storm. Clouds boiled on the horizon, gray upon gray piling together into a churning darkness. Rain had begun to advance across the vastness of the property—you could see it pulsing its way over the hills. Sharp, sudden bursts of wind shook the old glass panes in their frames.

Just at the crest of the hill, a dozen spidery tendrils of electricity emerged from the cloud like writhing fingers. Then thunder struck, so loud that my ears went momentarily numb. It came in rolls, constant and deafening, rumbling all the way into the center of my chest.

I stepped away from the window.

I started to have the odd feeling that this was, on some level, weirdly personal.

No, Delia. It’s just a storm. An act of nature.

But the room around me grew darker.

And it wasn’t the kind of darkness that comes with nightfall.

Something caught my eye at the seam where the ceiling and wall met above the window. A dark, oily-looking fog crawled along the plaster, winding its way down the vines on the wallpaper—as if it were part of the design.

Slowly, I turned around.

A pulsing layer of black smoke filled the room.

I watched as the smoke descended the walls, its movements hypnotic. It seemed to breathe, somehow—pausing with each inhale, going a little faster with each exhale …

I lost myself in watching it slide down toward me.

Then I became vaguely aware of a horrible creaking noise, like the building was going to collapse. Thumping footsteps in the hall outside. Shouting.

But all I could focus on was the smoke.

It reached the floor and sinewed along the grains of the floorboards and through the intricate weave of the carpet toward my feet. It began to coat my skin. I could feel it on my legs, even through my leggings—an irresistible velvety softness.

Though my thoughts had grown swirling and vague, some part of me knew this wasn’t good. I tried to back away, away, away from the grasping mist.

From a far-off place: banging on the door. Voices raised in panic.

But I wasn’t panicking. I wasn’t thinking at all.

Somehow the smoke found its way between the bricks and through the invisible seams in the plaster. It worked its way under the floorboards and baseboards, rippling beneath the wallpaper. The bed gave a short, sharp jerk, and the little stool fell to its side and rolled wildly around the room. Bells rang, and rang, and rang, and then cut off suddenly.

Everything was centered on me. The rug began to crawl inward, dragging its tassels against the dusty floor. The dresser, bolted in place, stretched and strained in an effort to break free. The room was alive—or something was alive in there with me.

I inched back as far as I could, until I was standing against the wire barrier that covered the window.

Behind me, the window flew open, filling the room with a miniature tempest.

Faintly, from across an endless distance, there was more shouting.

As if my shoulders were being gently guided … I turned around.

The wire barrier between the window and myself had been torn away.

I looked wonderingly down at my hands, which were crisscrossed in cuts and soaked in blood.

The slippery smoke was now up to my neck. It squeezed lightly on my throat, and then the warmth of it stroked my chin before slipping, sweet and smoky, down my throat. It seemed as if the fingers of a gentle hand softly shut my eyelids for me and coaxed the breath out of my lungs.

I tried to open my mouth.

I tried to call for my mother.

But there was only silence.

And deep, deep darkness.