The Evil Within (20 page)

“Hey.” He lifted my chin. “In my world, we grow up fast.”

Mine too
, I thought.
I had to grow up when my mom got sick.

“I’d like . . . I’d
really
like . . . to slow down.” The lamplight danced in his hair. His eyes gleamed with genuine kindness as he bent forward and kissed my forehead. “Let’s take our time. Okay?” He took my hand, turned it over, and his forehead wrinkled. “You’re shaking. I’m so sorry.”

I swallowed. I didn’t know how to explain, where to begin. It wasn’t him.

Mostly.

“Listen, I know things are . . . strange. I’m going to make things right.” He took my hand and waggled it. “Okay?”

“Okay.”

“After this, I can’t come over for the rest of the week,” he said, then guffawed at how that must sound—making things right. “I’m on our baseball team and we’ve got stuff to do.” He took a breath. “But, uh, there’s a dance coming up. Here, at Marlwood. Valentine’s Day.”

My stomach did a flip. I forced myself not to betray any emotion as I waited for him to go on.

He put his arms around me and hugged me. “There’s this spa resort, Pine Meadow. Near here. They’ve got a nice restaurant. I thought maybe we could go there before the dance for dinner.”

Before I could stop myself, I smiled. A date! He was asking me on a date, and on my birthday, even though he didn’t know it.
What about the dance?
I almost said, but I played it cool.

“Sure,” I said. “Great.”

He smiled back. “Let’s get real dressed up,” he said. “I’ll get a sweet car.”

“You have a sweet car,” I replied. “Just ask my dad.”

“Even sweeter.” He looked really happy. Until we heard a light thump overhead. I held still, listened. Troy gave me a questioning look, and I pointed upward.

“I heard something,” I murmured.

“The stairs are this way,” Troy said quietly, pointing to the right. “I’ll go look.”

No
, I thought.
Don’t go up there. Ever
. I shook my head. “Let’s just go.”

“But if someone’s
here
. . . ” His face clouded. “If it’s Miles . . . ”

“It’s dark, and it’s late,” I said, as icy fingers tiptoed up my spine. “And maybe . . . maybe I didn’t hear anything.”

He looked unconvinced. “Mandy told me about those birds, and those slash marks . . . ”

And the cats
. And we were supposed to go everywhere with a buddy . . .

He trotted off, and I let him. I told myself I could handle being in the room alone for a few minutes. I was sure I could.

I looked over at the little stack of books beneath the lantern. Lifting up the light, I held the top book in its glow.
The Dybbuk: A Classic of Yiddish Theater
, said the cover. My heart skipped a beat as I examined the spine. BM call letters, then numbers, and a sticker with the Marlwood crest. It had been checked out from our
new
library. By Shayna.

I looked from it to the rest of the stack. There were two more books from our library:
Exorcism Rituals from Around the World
and
Jewish Folktales and Legends.

I settled back down cross-legged and put them in my lap. I opened each one in turn, looking at the titles, the section headers, some of them in Hebrew. Did
dybbuks
only possess Jewish people? Maybe Shayna had been all wrong.

Someone was watching me. I lifted up my head, expecting Troy; and I exhaled very slowly. Celia’s face was reflected back at me from the surface of the glass front of the center bookshelf across the room. Black eyes, slack face . . . but her mouth was moving.

Dizzy, I got up and walked toward her.

“
Don’t trust him
,” she said. “
Don’t trust Troy.
”

“Why not?” I whispered. “He’s not like David Abernathy, if that’s what you’re worried about.” But I paused. Could he
become
David Abernathy?

“Did you find something else?” Troy asked me, coming back into the room.

I stared at Celia. She stared back. He didn’t see her. Then she faded away, leaving me with no clue what to do or say next.

“Linz?” he said. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.” I came to the blanket and sat back down. He joined me. My chest was tight as he took my hand again, smiling quizzically. I felt his warm skin on mine. Solid, human, normal, wonderful. He smelled like soap and cotton. Good smells.

“No one there. All clear. Find anything else down here?” he asked, indicating the books in my lap.

“Yeah, maybe,” I hedged. “What else do you have?”

He picked up another book. “
First Lessons in Female Comportment
,” he read. “There’s a zillion ones like that. They even had lessons on how to hold your fan. After a while, they all look the same. The books, I mean.”

He turned my hand over and traced my palm. It tickled. “Let me see vat I see,” he said in a singsong fake German accent. “Oh, Fraulein, youz is cuckoo.”

“
Ja, ja
,” I replied, trying to match his light tone.

I glanced over my shoulder at the glass cabinets. The merest whisper of Celia’s white face stared back at me, and I shuddered, suddenly very cold.

“What time is it?” I asked.

“I know.” He tapped my palm with his finger. “We have to go back.”

I didn’t argue. We both got up, he lifting up the lantern. I was still holding Shayna’s books and he didn’t seem to care or notice as he led the way back into the hall. Light bounced off spiderwebs and skittering insects in bulging, off-kilter circles.

Celia’s warning irked me.

“I really do have to go,” I said.

He looked at the ceiling. Then he sighed as he gave in. “I’ll walk you back to the main part of the campus. As close as we can get without Dr. E’s
guards
catching us anyway.”

Taking my hand, he began walking me out the front door. Once we were outside, he studied the windows, his jaw clenched, his eyes narrowed. His face changed. Hardened.

“Someone should just shoot that guy,” he said.

“Miles?”

Troy didn’t reply. But his hand around mine became too tight, and my finger bones rubbed painfully together.

“Ow,” I protested.

“Oh, I’m sorry.” He wrapped his arms around me and kissed me. “Sorry, Lindsay.” He kissed me again. “I’ll miss you.”

“Same here.”

“But we’ll have a great time.” In my head I heard Celia’s words again:
Don’t trust Troy.

In the shadows, he left me, brushing another kiss across my mouth. I walked back to Grose alone, turning my head automatically toward Jessel.

Mandy’s mannequin was dressed in a camouflage jacket and a pair of jeans. It was hanging out of her window, its bare feet nearly brushing the top of a thorny bush in the yard.

And there was an expertly tied hangman’s noose around its neck.

February 8

I didn’t know if I was glad that Dr. Melton had to cancel our next appointment. As I started reading Shayna’s library books, I began to obsess over alternate ways to get rid of Belle and Celia. Some of the rituals seemed so silly—pouring salt across your threshold—but others held what felt like a germ of truth—smashing all the mirrors in your house. Some said that restless spirits took control of the “sinful minded”—that would be Mandy—or those whose will had been weakened in some way. I thought of my bid for popularity and how I had bowed my will to Jane. I watched Mandy as she continued to pull pranks on my fellow Marlwood girls, forcing them to humiliate themselves to prove their desire to be one of her followers. Breakdowns in the making. Like mine.

And Shayna’s.

Knowing now that someone—Shayna—had watched me from afar and figured me out, I shut down a little more each day. Celia was wild inside me; I could feel her impatience—and sense Mandy’s eagerness for . . . what? For something to happen to me?

I felt like I was going crazy, or craz
ier
. . . sweaty and panicky, unsure of what was really happening . . .

. . . except for the occasional landline calls I got from my “little brother Sam,” and the friendship of my sweet Julie, who, I could see, was getting more and more worried about me.

And my nightmares . . . they were real.

THEY TIE US DOWN
to the table. They press cloths soaked in chloroform over the faces of the lucky ones; but those who have been especially bad, those girls get no help at all.

He picks out the victims, Edwin Marlwood does, and he gives us numbers, like cows to the slaughterhouse. He gives the list to David Abernathy, who does the dirty work for him. Belle is Number One, and I am Seven; and between us are the girls who love Belle and hate me. The girls who have nearly drowned me, for her sake, to force me to deny my love for David.

What do I care of them? Marlwood and his henchmen have moved us into the cells inside the operating theater, Numbers One through Seven. The others have come back slack-faced and empty of all care and all passion. They’re like dead things. That’s how he wants us, Edwin Marlwood. That’s how David leaves them, on his orders.

Belle has been flirting with Mr. Truscott, the young orderly. She’s after a way to escape; and if that is the case, I say, God send His angels to her aid, and release us all from this pit of vipers. But I fear that I will not benefit from her acts of cunning; I will be left behind, to suffer the wrath of Marlwood. Unless, of course, David can manage to free me. My hated father sends money to ensure my continued imprisonment. If Dr. Marlwood were forced to tell him that I have escaped, surely my father would exact his revenge. I believe that it is only fear of scandal that keeps me alive, as it is.

I hear the clank of the keys, the thud of men’s footfalls; and distantly, I hear Lydia’s screams. Oh God, they’re coming for us! That’s why we’ve been moved. They’re going to strap us down and wheel us into the operating theater.

The stench of smoke slides down my throat like sorghum molasses. The fire is the whirlwind of hell. Now Pearl is shrieking. And Martha. Anna, and Henrietta. But I hear laughter, and singing.
My love is like a red, red rose.
Am I fleeing, or am I dancing, in his arms?

Am I . . . am I really dying? Or is the hot wind carrying me up to the stars, the cold, unfeeling heavens, where I am saved? I feel so cold. I am so icy, in the hellstorm.

She is pushing me under. Belle is pushing me under . . . in the tub? Or below the depths of the lake, where phantoms swim, and grab at me? And kill me?

And kill me?

But I cannot burn . . . I cannot die.

I burn already . . .

. . . For David . . .

“David, help us,” I whispered, as I woke up.

I was swaying inside the operating theater, in my pajamas and my Doc Martens. Half-frozen, teeth chattering, body quivering with cold, I had no memory of getting out of bed and walking there. None.

I had nearly died there, two months before. Once a round, two-story structure of wood, slate, and metal, it had collapsed in on itself decades before. The balconies where eager young doctors and ghoulish spectators had watched Marlwood’s brilliant surgeon at work on the helpless inmates were rusted ribbons of iron and straight-backed seats. A basement sprawled, containing the cells where they had imprisoned their victims—Celia and the others—and the burned-away corridor with its missing door, still covered with ashes—the ashes of the dead, unmourned girls.

My Doc Martens were coated with ash.

I turned and gagged, and fell to my knees in complete, blind panic, on more ashes. I heard myself wheezing as if someone had drilled holes in my lungs, and I threw up. From the hole in the ceiling above me, the moon glowed down on everything that remained of the fire that Mandy and the other five had set last semester, trying to burn me alive.

“Why did you bring me here?” I croaked, crawling as fast as I could over scraps of metal, bottles, and memories. “I know we’re in danger, I know, I know . . . ”

And the word became “
No, no, no
” echoing and ricocheting off all the walls, girls screaming for their lives; hitting me like solid fists, knocking me over on my side. I smelled the smoke and as I sprawled, dazed, transparent flames shot up from the floor like geysers, flickering at first, then hotter. One licked at my hand and it
burned
. I smelled singeing hair—mine.

“Don’t lock it!” I yelled, “Please, don’t!” and then I was racing up the stairs to the second level, as the floor of the theater crackled and girls screeched in agony. I barreled through the passageways, bashing into walls, slamming into rotted posts and tripping over piles of rubble. Heat engulfed me . . .

. . . And then I flew outside, throwing myself into the snow. For a moment I could only pant; then I flipped over on my back to look at the building. It stood beneath the moon, no smoke, no fire, which is what I had expected.

“Oh
God
,” I whispered, pounding my fists into the snow. “Just stop it.”

Then I got up and ran as fast as I could—which wasn’t very fast, because I was half-frozen—back to Grose. I tore off my pajamas and wadded them in the trash. I cleaned up in the kitchen, and made myself some tea. No way was I going to go to bed.

I picked up
Exorcism Rituals from Around the World
.

And a card fell out. I picked it up. It was a calling card, like some girls used, with SHAYNA MAISEL, her email address, and her phone number.

Her phone number.

It was only eleven; I raced back into the kitchen and dialed it, wincing at the sound of each ring, hoping that she, and not her dad or her mom, would answer the phone.

“Yeah,” she murmured.

“Shayna, oh my God, Shayna,” I blurted. “It’s me, Lindsay.”

There was a pause. For a minute I thought she had hung up.

Then I heard weeping. “Lindsay,” she said. “Lindsay, they think I’m crazy.”

“You’re not.
You’re not
,” I promised her, listening to her sad, low keening. I wanted to ask her what had happened to her. I wanted to know if Mandy and Lara had done anything to make it worse.

Instead, she said, “Tell me what’s going on.”

So I did, filling her in on everything, including tonight’s visit to the operating theater. She listened intently; when I was done, she exhaled.

“Oh God, I’m sorry I’m not there to help you,” she said. “If only you had told me, Lindsay.”

Please come back, Shayna. I need you to come back.

“I-I saw a man in the library. A ghost,” Shayna said. “He was sitting down, like at a desk, only no desk was there. And he was crying. It scared me so badly I just lost it. That’s what happened to me, Lindsay. That’s why I left.”

“Oh,” I said, “Oh, Shayna—”

“He was young. And he was holding a piece of jewelry.”

Maybe it was one of those lockets, the ones David Abernathy gave to both of them.

Shayna was quiet, thinking. “Maybe the ghost wants to say he’s sorry. Maybe he needs to be forgiven, so he can move on.”

“Do you think . . . do you think that he’s possessing Troy?” I asked.

“Possible. Look at him, torn between you and Mandy. Celia and Belle. It’s the same triangle.”

“I-I really like him.”

“Then you should finish it. Stay in it, and force it to be over.”

“But what if—”

“You have to,” she cut in. “Do it for Kiyoko. And for yourself, and everybody you care about.” She took a deep breath. “And do it for me. Because I can’t sleep. I never sleep anymore.”

She hung up. I figured one of her parents had walked into the room. I stayed up pacing, counting down the minutes, waiting until it was a decent time to call her back. Shayna was back, and she was going to help me.

But when I dialed her number again, it had been disconnected.