The Screaming Season (18 page)

A ghost. In Grose. That someone else had seen. More proof.

There was another long silence between us. As Claire cried, my mind raced. Thunder rumbled and I glanced up. Gray clouds were scudding across the sky, smothering the last of the sunlight and casting us in nickel-plated shadow. A sharp wind schussed, stinging my face, and I shivered.

That seemed to trigger something in Claire. She wiped her face with the back of her hand and exhaled sharply.

“Dr. Morehouse says I externalize my fears,” she ventured. “That’s why I’m having the nightmares and I—I’m sleepwalking.”

Alarm bells clanged, but I kept calm. I counted to ten before I spoke again.

“But you were awake just now.”

“Oh, my God, it was horrible!” she screamed. “I really saw it, I did. It was there. I don’t care what he says!” She pawed at me, as if she could climb inside me and hide.

The way that Celia had.

“Please, tell me what it looked like,” I said. “Because . . . I’ve seen things too.”

She jerked as if someone had shocked her. She looked away from me and stared hard at the ground. She caught her breath again and I looked down too. She was staring into the puddle.

My hair rose straight up. I saw nothing in the water, but that didn’t mean that there was nothing there. Something that Claire could see. Was she possessed? When she looked back at me, would I see that her eyes had turned completely black?

I was afraid of her. But she was in such anguish that I made myself stay planted beside her. I cleared my throat.

“Claire,” I pressed gently.

“She was floating in the air,” Claire whispered. “She was white, everything white, except her eyes, and she had a hole in her head.”

“A hole.” My voice was hoarse. I tried to clear it again, but my throat was so tight I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to breathe.

“She was there,” Claire said. “He says it’s stress. He’s seeing a lot of it. Because of Kiyoko. There’s so much pressure on us, from our families . . . ” Could I confide in her? She was so terrified, torn between her own reality and what shouldn’t, couldn’t be real. Was it better to know there really were vengeful ghosts that could possess you and force you to do evil, horrible things?

You don’t know that,
I thought.
You don’t know if Celia made you do anything bad.

“I just want to scream,” Claire whispered, holding on to me. “I want to go home.”

As I hugged her, more wind whipped up, blowing straight through me, as if I weren’t solid. Miles was scowling at the empty turret room window.

“We’ll go get a security guard,” I suggested.

“No.” She grabbed my hand. “They won’t see anything.
You
didn’t.” Squeezing so hard that my knucklebones scraped together, she searched my face. “Did you?”

“I’ll go back and take a look,” I said, sounding far calmer than I was. “Why don’t you go somewhere where there’s people?” Night was settling around us. “The commons might be open for dinner. Or you could go to the library.”

“I don’t want to go anywhere,” she said. “I can’t move.”

“I’ll check it out,” I promised.

She looked through her hair at Miles. Her face changed into a hard mask of anger. “He did it. The Winterses think it’s so funny to scare people. I’m sure it’s something he worked out with Mandy. That’s why he was in our dorm.”

I realized then that my offer to call for help could backfire. The grown-ups didn’t know what was happening or, if they did, could never admit it. They might just get in my way.

“Go ask Miles if they were pranking me.” Her voice was a hoarse croak. “Make him admit it.”

I turned to go; she grabbed me hard, shaking. Her hands were like ice, but so were mine. The air was frigid. She had no jacket. Neither did I.

“I’ll go ask him,” I told her. “Stay here.”

I worked at her fingers; she couldn’t seem to let go. Her lips were gray, her face very white. She almost looked like a ghost herself.

Aware that she was watching and that Mandy might have been too, I crossed back to Miles. He had just lit a cigarette. He drew in, held it, exhaled.

“Where does Mandy want to meet me?”

“In the conservatory.” He held out the cigarette to me. “During study period.” Smoke trailed upward, meeting the last moments of sunlight.

He gestured with his head at Claire. “Did she really see anything? Or is that an existential question best left for the sages among us?”

“Oh, my God, you’re so screwed up,” I said, sounding as angry as Claire. “I’ll go see Mandy on one condition.”

He raised a brow, as if he had any power in this situation, as if he could grant favors. He took another puff on his cigarette.

“You have to tell me right now if you did anything to Claire’s room to make her see things.”

He frowned. I held up my hand.

“You’re her brother. I’m sure she sent you pictures of the haunted house Jessel made for our Halloween carnival. She had help from friends at Disney, for God’s sake.”

“It was spectacular,” he murmured, smiling faintly.

“How can you smile?” I demanded. “Look at Claire. She’s losing it.”

“How can you not smile?” he countered. “Don’t you feel more than one thing at a time? That’s what insanity is, trying to feel one way. That’s why it feels good to go crazy. Or to be addicted. It’s so much easier than feeling several things at once.”

“You, you’re . . . ” I said. I looked away from him. “Tell Mandy I’ll meet her.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he replied, sweeping a little bow.

“And stay in your guest bungalow,” I ordered him. “You can’t creep around all the time. It’s scaring everyone.”

“They should be scared. But not of me.”

I walked past him and headed back to Grose. I didn’t want to do it; I was scared too. As I reached the door, Marica and Elvis sauntered up. One glance at me and they traded a look.

“What’s wrong?” Elvis asked me.

I pointed down the hill at Claire. “She thought she saw something in her room. She’s scared. I told her I’d check it out.”

Elvis and Marica glanced in Claire’s direction. Elvis did a double take. “Hello? Marlwood Stalker? Could it by chance have been
Miles
in her room?”

“Don’t think so,” I replied, hedging.

“Oh, my God, are you insane?” Elvis stared at me, then took off back down the path toward Claire, who had moved to the center of Academy Quad, huddling against the cold. Keeping his distance, Miles was smoking. Marica stayed with me.

“If there’s someone in her room, we should call for help,” she said reasonably.

“Marica, she thought she saw a ghost,” I told her.

Marica sighed. “She’s been very worried about the meeting that she had with Dr. Morehouse. She talked a little bit about the stories that Marlwood is haunted. She wants to go to Harvard, and she’s afraid they’ll think she’s too unstable.”

She made a slicing motion across her neck. “I told her next time just to say that she is great.”

Next time? Stories? I wondered if I had been mentioned. Lindsay Anne Cavanaugh, freak show. The weird poor girl who kept flinching at the reflections of mirrors and windows.

“So it’s best not to call security,” she finished.

“Okay,” I said. “Then let’s go.”

I was grateful that she was willing to come with me and that she didn’t ask any questions, or remind me that I had been raving about ghosts and possessions during my breakdown in the operating theater—a Valentine’s Day prank gone horribly wrong.

Valentine’s Day was my birthday. My mom had always said I was the best valentine she could have ever asked for. That was one thing I had—my mom’s eternal love.

We entered the dorm, striding past the little table where a figure of a saint or a shepherd or something kept watch over our incoming and outgoing mail. On the whiteboard, Ms. Krige had scrawled,
Ms. Shelley ill. I am covering phones.

I was striding down the hall, propelled by fierce emotions I couldn’t even name. Marica kept up with me. I smelled her perfume; she was always made up, even in the middle of a crisis.

“In here,” I said, opening the door.

As I entered Claire’s room, I was hit with the scent of geraniums. I took a step backward in surprise, bumping into Marica. She caught me by the shoulders and walked around me, looking around the room and then at me.

The scent grew stronger. Was Memmy with us ? Had Claire actually seen my mother?

But Memmy didn’t have a hole in her head,
I thought.

“You smell it too, don’t you?” I asked, and when she inhaled deeply, her forehead wrinkling, I knew her answer. She didn’t.

Did I hear a sigh brush my ear?

Did someone touch my cheek? “My perfume is awfully strong,” Marica said, apologizing.

She wasn’t aware of the presence in the room. I didn’t know what to say or do. If it was my mom, oh,
God
, if it was my mom . . .

“Lindsay?” Marica said.

Then it was over. All I smelled was Marica’s perfume. All I sensed was her presence.

My throat tightened, my chest constricted, and I made a show of walking around the room, calling out to Memmy in my mind, and in my heart, to come back. Marica trailed after me, tilting her chin thoughtfully as she came to Claire’s framed hideous Hawaiian art. She said nothing, only moved on, picking up a book, setting it down.

“There’s nothing here,” she announced.

My mind was racing. In my fantasies, I was already offering to come stay with Claire, getting a Ouija board, trying to contact my mother. I felt totally out of control. I could call back my
mom
. Maybe even become possessed by her.

Marica walked out of the room. Trembling, I lingered, furious with Miles all over again for losing Mandy’s notes.

Then I realized what I was thinking: They were
Mandy’s
notes. Mandy was the one who had contacted the dead in the first place. The one who knew how.

I walked out of the room. The door clicked sensibly shut, and I looked at Marica. Then I leaned against the door as if to force it to stay shut.

There were other doors that I could open.

I would keep that date with Mandy.

FIFTEEN

JULIE CAME BACK from her meeting with Dr. Morehouse to announce that she was the captain of the Blues, an exalted position considering that she was only a freshman. The list had been posted while she was in session. If we’d had juniors and seniors, that might have been even more exalted, but I kept that thought to myself and toasted her in the commons with sparkling apple cider provided by the staff. There would be Cristal champagne later, after we were supposed to be snug in our beds. Most of the girls had the most incredible stashes of liquor, chocolates, and munchies. There was a seemingly endless supply.

But first there was dinner, and then it was study time. Mandy time. I told Julie I was going to the library and scooted out of the front door. But I remembered the scent of geraniums, and felt the tender bruises on my forehead, as I walked in the direction of the conservatory. Crickets scraped, and an owl hooted a melancholy warning to nearby rodents.

As if in reply, there was scurrying in the dirt behind me. Maybe what I was doing was foolhardy. I hadn’t told anyone that I was meeting with the great Satan, but maybe Mandy’s posse of evil knew. Maybe this was an ambush.

Wind whistled hard, pushing away some of the layers of clotted mist. I kicked up piles of it as I walked past the staring horse heads. Above me, to my left, the iron, tulip-shaped cupola of Founder’s Hall stood out in bold relief; behind it, the admin building floated gauzy and dreamlike.

After a few minutes I stood outside the conservatory, in the same location where I had stood before after I’d spied on Dr. Morehouse and Rose. Yes, spied. That was the only word for it. Then Celia had come out to play. A chill shot down my spine. Maybe this wasn’t the best of my ideas. Not that any of them of late had been much good.

A small light flared inside the Victorian-style structure of glass and wood. I glimpsed a strand of platinum hair behind the yellow flicker. Mandy’s face glowed as she set the candle in a black candleholder on the same glass table where Julie, Claire, and Ida had played cards. There were other things on the table, but I couldn’t tell what they were.

Moving back into the shadows, I found the outer door to the conservatory and turned the knob. It was locked.

There was a click. The door opened, and Mandy faced me on the threshold. She was wearing pencil-leg jeans, heeled boots, an emerald cashmere sweater, and a black leather jacket. A candle flickered beneath her chin, casting goblin angles and hollows on her face. Bruises splotched her fabulous complexion—on her forehead and high on her left cheekbone.

She actually looked glad to see me.

“I thought you weren’t coming,” she said. Her voice was high, shrill. Scared. I wasn’t sure if I should find that comforting. Probably only if it was me she was scared of.

“Who else knows you’re here?” I asked her.

She frowned at me. “Why?”

“Everyone knows I’m here.” That was a lie, but I wasn’t about to tell her that. “They’ve got the place surrounded. One false move and they’re taking you out.”

Rolling her eyes, she reached around me and shut the door. I was a bit dashed that she seemed unconcerned about my nonexistent backup.

Soundlessly she led the way back to the table. There was a Ouija board with the letters of the alphabet,
A
through
Z
, in a semicircle. The numbers from one to nine were printed in a straight line below.
GOODBYE
was printed beneath the numbers;
YES
in the left-hand corner, and
NO
in the right. In a black votive candleholder, another candle sat—unlit, and some books stacked beside a bottle of red wine and two glasses. Both were full.