The Dead Girls of Hysteria Hall (22 page)

She fought back with a burst of rage, and for a moment I was rocked backward as she almost got the better of me.

But then she began to fade.

“You know it won’t have any use for you if you don’t win this,” I said. “If you’re not perfect.”

Then I made the most dangerous choice I’ve ever made—in life or death.

I pulled my right hand out of her left hand, momentarily breaking the cycle of energy between us.

And I reached up and dug my nails across her perfect face.

She screamed in a way I’d never heard anyone scream, living or dead—fury and terror in a desperate mix. In the chaos of the moment, I scratched her again. Her once-flawless beauty-queen complexion was permanently raked with the marks of my fingernails.

She reached up with both hands to feel the deep lines cutting across her face.

I put my hands on her shoulders, completing the circuit once again, and let a final blast of energy pulse through me.

Florence went down in a heap on the floor. She was unconscious … but maybe not for long.

I didn’t waste a single moment. I dragged her motionless form toward the back hall, then down the basement stairs. I laid her down in a corner and ran back up to the kitchen, where I grabbed as many cartons of salt as I could carry.

Back in the basement, I poured a thick circle of salt around her, in a tight outline surrounding her body. She began to stir as I finished emptying the third canister.

“What have you done?” Her eyes popped open, and her hands reached up toward her damaged face. She let out an enraged howl.
“What have you done to me?”

“Sorry, sugar,” I said, dropping the empty salt container. “Looks like you’re not the prettiest dead girl here anymore.”

She moved to get up, but the barrier slammed her back. She tried moving in every direction, but she was penned in. She had hardly enough room to get to her feet, and when she finally did, she only had an area about the length and width of a coffin to move around in.

“What now?” she wheezed. “You’re just going to leave me here forever?”

“Nobody’s staying forever,” I said. “I’ll be back to deal with you later.”

Her infuriated screams echoed behind me as I went upstairs.

Janie was still passed out on the floor of the lobby.

I reached down and rested my palm against her cheek.

“Janie,” I said. “I’m sorry I was such a jerk to you when I was alive. I know you loved me anyway. You may never understand what happened to me, but that doesn’t matter. All you need to understand is that it’s not your fault—it was never your fault.”

A faint rose tint began to return to my sister’s cheeks.

I waited until her eyes fluttered weakly open, until I saw the haziest flash of recognition in them. Then I bent down and kissed her on the forehead.

“I love you,” I said. “So unbelievably much.”

Her eyes went wide, but she could no longer see or sense my presence.

I sat back and watched her carefully for signs of injuries or lingering aftereffects from her brief possession. She seemed fine—a little dazed, but that was understandable.

She got to her feet and moved with purpose to the back stairs, stopping to look at and then pick up Mom’s purse from the bottom step. Upstairs, she crossed through the day room into the ward.

“Mom?” she called. “Where are you?”

A weak voice, heavy with relief, answered her from Room 2. “Here, Janie.”

When Janie walked in, Mom struggled to act normal, pushing herself up to a sitting position.

I glanced at the floor. Eliza was gone.

But in this moment, I had to stay with my family.

“What happened?” Mom asked. Her voice sounded like someone had taken sandpaper to it.

Janie didn’t even sit down. “I want to go,” she said. “Right now. If I have to carry you down the stairs, I will.”

“That won’t be necessary,” Mom said. “I think I can make it. Leave the bags, leave everything. We only need the car keys. They’re in my purse.”

Janie dug through Mom’s purse for a minute and then looked up, dismay etched on her features. “No, they’re not,” she said. “Where could they have gone? Who would have taken them?”

“I’m sure no one took them.” But my mother’s voice didn’t match the confidence level of her words. “I could have left them downstairs, I guess. Maybe they’re in the car. But I don’t think so.”

My sister’s eyes flashed. “What about your phone?”

“In my purse,” Mom said.

Janie’s lips parted, and after a deep inhale, she said, “No, it isn’t.”

“Well, they must be somewhere,” Mom said.

But as my sister looked around the room, I could tell she had zero expectation of finding the missing items.

She knew the house too well by now.

W
hen I emerged into the hall, Penitence came up to me. She was studiously calm, her eyes wide and concerned.

“I moved Eliza into Room 4,” she said, and in her voice I heard the rhythm and inflection of not just a helpless bystander but of a woman of authority—a wardress. “I thought she’d be more comfortable. Go see her, and I’ll keep watch here.”

Eliza was lying on top of the covers, her eyes open but unfocused—so unlike her that a chill went through me.

Someone’s walking on my grave.

“Never thought I’d end up back on the ward,” she said, trying to smile but managing only a grimace of pain.

I knelt beside her. “You’re going to be all right.”

“Delia, honestly.” She made a cross face at me, and her mood actually seemed to lift. “Your optimism is truly colonial.”

“I’m so grateful for what you did,” I said, reaching down to smooth what remained of her hair. “You saved my sister and my mother.”

“I told you I would,” Eliza said, a hint defiantly. “I seem to have a thing for playing the hero, don’t I? If only I were a more competent fighter.”

A seizure-like convulsion shook her body. But after a few seconds, she opened her eyes. “Don’t look at me like that. Ghosts don’t die from injuries like this. I’m not going anywhere … anywhere at all, I suppose. Ever again.”

I leaned over, meaning to take her hands, but they were wrecked and limp, as if all the bones had been crushed. “I’m so sorry,” I said.

“Oh, don’t be maudlin,” Eliza said. “Now my outsides match my insides. Damaged soul, damaged body.”

“You’re wrong,” I said. “Your soul is perfect.”

She slumped against the pillow, staring out the window at the sinking sun.

“I don’t think I’ve watched the sunset in seventy-five years,” she said quietly.

“I imagine it gets old after a while,” I said, pulling up a chair and sitting next to her.

“It shouldn’t, though, should it? How could something so incredible get old?” She sighed weakly. “Shouldn’t you go look after your family?”

“In a minute,” I said. “Penitence is with them.”

Eliza tried and failed to stretch, then gave up and settled uncomfortably back against the bed. “So what happened with Florence? You won?”

“She’s been neutralized,” I said.

“You
do
keep astounding me, Delia.” She sighed and looked back out the window. “How terribly sad, though. I thought she was my friend.”

“She’s been very lost for a very long time,” I said.

Eliza clucked quietly. “Haven’t we all?”

“Maybe,” I said. “But I’m going to fix things, if I can.”

She nodded, and then there was a long pause. When she spoke again, her tone was soft and sad. “I know it’s foolish, but … I’d sort of hoped this would have redeemed me. I thought perhaps my business was to help you, and then I could drift off into the ether to the sound of angelic trumpets or something. But … I suppose not. There must be more work to do.”

In spite of her attempt to sound breezy, there was palpable, painful disappointment in her voice.

“I think I know what the work is,” I said. “There’s a black fire somewhere. I have to find it and put it out.”

“Black fire …” Eliza repeated. Then, staring out the window, she offhandedly recited,
“‘Black flames of evil burning bright, darkening the darkest night … extinguish’d by the blood of light, day is born from endless night.’ ”

“What?” I said, sitting up. “What’s that?”

“It’s just a poem,” she said. “A little thing I had to recite in school. You’ve never heard of it? Lord Lindley. Some pompous old marquess from the seventeen hundreds.”

Lindley
. Where had I heard that name before?

“ ‘Blood of light’?” I echoed.

“Oh, you know,” she said. “It’s quite simplistic—innocence vanquishing evil and all that. It’s designed to scare children into piety. It goes on and on.
Men’s sons, mindless of evil’s blight, awaken blind to their perilous plight,
et cetera et cetera …
fight, white, knight
… It’s amazing he found so many rhyming words. You find Lindley in a lot of stodgy old books.”

Books. That was it. I remembered the books on the parlor shelves, with the authors’ names in gold and silver on the spines. And among those names:
Lindley
.

“If it’s an actual fire,” I said, thinking out loud, “it could be the source of the black smoke.”

“But it’s not an actual fire,” she protested. “It’s just a poem.”

“Nothing’s ‘just’ an anything here,” I said. “I think there’s an actual black fire somewhere. It can’t be a coincidence. Maxwell liked that poet well enough to keep his collected works. Maybe there’s some connection—something to do with Maxwell’s death.”

“If you say so,” Eliza said. “I remain skeptical.”

“Yeah, surprise,” I said. “So … it can be extinguished by blood of light. That might mean that someone innocent can put it out.”

“Who around here could possibly pass as innocent?” Eliza asked. “Except maybe—”

She waited for me to say it.

“Janie,” I said. “She was never committed here. She was never locked in. She doesn’t belong to the house. She’s innocent.”

“She’s a very bright girl,” Eliza said. “You’ve
got
to save her, you know. It wouldn’t do to have her die here.”

“I know,” I said. “What do you think it means, though, the blood of light? Her actual blood?”

“I hope not,” Eliza said. “How ghastly.”

The sun grew smaller and thinner, until it was just a sliver dipping below the distant hillside—and then it suddenly seemed to expand in a moment of brightness.

And then it disappeared.

“Oh,” Eliza said in surprise, as though the answer to some riddle had just occurred to her. The bells on her wrist jingled faintly. “Delia—I think you may be right. I think maybe …”

I turned to see why she’d stopped speaking.

She was gone.

All that remained of her were the ghostly bells resting on the bedspread.

I
told myself not to cry. I had to believe that Eliza was in a better place now.

What’s more, her last, unfinished words only convinced me more thoroughly that there was something to my theory about the poem.

When I reached Room 2, Mom and Janie had given up on finding their phones or the car keys. With my mother’s arm draped over my sister’s shoulder, they slowly progressed in the direction of the downstairs hallway.

But what would they do once they were outside? As badly as Mom wanted to be okay, she was unsteady on her feet. No way would she make it down the driveway. Janie might have to leave her behind and go to the highway to flag down a passing car. And it wasn’t safe for either of them to be anywhere on the property for much longer.

As they were coming down the main hall, there was a banging noise from the lobby.

My sister froze. “What was that?”

“Probably nothing,” Mom said, putting her hand on Janie’s arm.

“Hang on,” Janie said. “Let me go see …”

“Janie, no!” Mom said, and the spike of fear in her voice was sharp enough to stop my sister before she could walk away.

I moved past them to investigate, keeping my eyes on the walls and ceiling to look for tendrils of black smoke. What if this was a trap? A distraction? What if—

There was more horrible banging on the door.

“Lisa? Jane?” someone shouted.
Bang! Bang!
“Are you in there? What’s going on?”

It was Dad.

Mom rushed forward and unlocked the door. “Brad, what are you doing here?”

My father’s hair was thinning. He was skinnier than I’d ever seen him but still wearing his old clothes. It was like my death had turned him into an old man—practically a stranger.

Then his face twisted in frustration and anger, and I thought with relief,
There’s Dad
.

“I get out of a seminar, and I have half an incoherent voice mail from Jane saying you’re here—why would you
ever
come back here?—and then I couldn’t reach either of you on your cell phones. I paid six hundred bucks for the next flight from New York, rented a car in Harrisburg, and—”

He was so busy working himself up that he didn’t notice my sister until she’d thrown her arms around him.

“Daddy, you came!” Janie cried, tears streaming down her cheeks. “You came …”

My father was utterly disarmed by her reaction. His tone, when he spoke next, was significantly subdued. He glanced at Mom. “Lisa … what’s going on?”

“Nothing good,” Mom said grimly. “You said you rented a car?”

“Yes,” Dad said.

“Great. We’ll explain on the way.”

“On the way where? Where are your things?”

“Forget our things,” Mom said. “Let’s go.”

Dad nodded, bewildered, but the way Janie clung to him silenced his questions. “I’m parked right out front,” he said. “Are you all right, Lisa?”

“She’s sick,” Janie said. “She can’t really walk.”

“Here,” Dad said, and he and Janie wrapped their arms under Mom’s arms to help support her weight. The three of them went quickly through the lobby to the main doors.

Only, by the time they got there … the doors were gone.

I don’t know how to explain it, except that it was as if the walls had simply stretched over the space where the door had been.

Dad basically turned white. “What’s going on?”

“Oh no,” Mom said. “Oh no—the window! Hurry! Get out! Get Janie out!”

They all ran toward the window.

But before they could reach it, the walls had swallowed the window, too.

Dad was on the verge of freaking out. “I don’t understand,” he said. “What’s happening?”

What was happening was that the house
really
didn’t want them to go.

“The superintendent’s apartment!” Janie said, running for the main hall.

“Jane, wait—” Dad said.

But she’d already run through the door.

Dad raced to grab it before it closed … but before he could reach it, the place where the door had been was transformed into a smooth expanse of red wallpaper.

“No!” Dad shouted. “No! Jane, come back!”

Mom joined him, banging on the wall with her fists.
“Janie!”

I had the advantage of being able to move through walls, so I slipped into the hall, where my sister stood staring at the spot that, until about ten seconds earlier, had been a door. Then she leapt into action, pounding on the wall.

“Mom? Dad?” Her voice rose. “Mom! Dad! Help me! I’m stuck!”

In the lobby, my parents were shouting themselves hoarse. I slipped back out to see them.

Finally, Mom stepped away from the wall. “Brad,” she said, “stop. We need to think. We need to be smart about this.”

“Smart?!” he yelled. “This house just trapped our daughter! Janie’s locked in there, just like—”

Suddenly, he froze and just looked at Mom, stared at her with an expression so horrified that you would have thought he’d just seen death itself.

“Just like Delia was,” he whispered. “Delia was right. She was right. There’s something here. She knew that, and she wanted to leave, but we didn’t let her. My God, Lisa, she was right.”

Mom didn’t answer. Her mouth a hard line, she turned and surveyed the room. “Come on,” she said. “We’re going to get Janie out if it kills us.”

In the hallway, Janie sat with her back to the wall, sobbing. I hated to leave her, but I had to get a better look at the situation. So I dashed outside.

When I got about fifteen feet from the house, I turned and looked up at the side of the building. It was just as I feared—there wasn’t a single window or exterior door left in the entire structure. Only solid stone walls.

“What’s going on?” Theo appeared beside me, staring up at the house.

“My family’s in there,” I said. “I need to get them out.”

He stared at the bizarrely solid sweep of stone and shook his head. “How?”

“Not sure,” I said. “I guess I’ll tear the place to pieces by hand if I have to. Want to help?”

“But aren’t you afraid?” he asked. “Of what it could do to you?”

“Actually,” I said, “that’s the least of my concerns.”

I don’t know if he tried to say anything else. I was already back inside. In the lobby, Dad was trying to make a call, but he couldn’t get a signal. Finally, he chucked the phone across the room in frustration.

“Brad, we have to stay calm,” Mom admonished. “We have to make a plan.”

“Tell me what happened today,” Dad said.

“I don’t know, exactly,” Mom said. “Something went after Janie, and then … the day has been a blur for me.”

“What does that mean?” he demanded.

“I mean, I was coming down the stairs and everything after that is a blur,” Mom said, a note of irritation underlying her words. “I’m not being purposefully obtuse.”

It turns out that watching your parents bicker is just as annoying when you’re dead as when you’re alive. Anyway, I didn’t have time to stand around and pout about their behavior.

I had a packed schedule.

*  *  *

Penitence was bent over and focused on her invisible blanket as if nothing had happened. She didn’t even seem to notice that the walls had devoured the day room windows.

“What did you do with his body?” I asked. “Did you bury it?”

She looked up, startled, but didn’t even have to ask who I was talking about. “No. I—I burned it. In the incinerator.”

Black fire. Of course.

“And where’s the incinerator?” I asked.

Penitence looked pained by the memory. “In the basement. Why? They’ve since built a new one away from the main building. They had to stop using the old one because the chimney wasn’t properly sealed.”

“Let me guess—too much smoke seeped out?”

She nodded.

“All right, come on,” I said. “I have to show you something.”

“Show me what?” she shot back. “Haven’t I done enough for today?”

This was no time to be coy. “Your daughter’s been living alone on the third floor since she died, and I’m taking you to meet her.”

Penitence gasped, and I felt a little guilty for not cushioning the blow at all.

“No,” she finally said, shaking her head. “She went crazy. She killed herself and murdered a nurse. It was terrible.”

“Wrong,” I said. “That’s not what happened at all. It was a cover-up.”

She looked at me disbelievingly. “What would you know about it?”

“I know what Maria and Florence told me,” I said. “You made a cake for your father. Maria and the nurse found it in the kitchen.”

Penitence raised her hand to her mouth. “Oh no,” she said. “No …”

“They ate it and died, but the staff covered it up. You were hiding out in the basement after burning your father’s body, so you didn’t know any of this. It was a pretty grim night here.”

Grim enough to curse the very land.

“It can’t be.” She shook her head and pressed her hands over her ears. “It can’t be true.”

“They posed the dead bodies to look like they’d died in the bathroom, but they were poisoned by the same cake that killed Maxwell.”

Now she began to choke on her sobs. “No! I don’t believe you!”

“Believe it or not,” I said. “It’s what happened. And now she’s upstairs, and she’s lonely and scared, and she needs her mother. And I’m not trying to rush you, but I don’t have a lot of extra time.”

“But if what you say is true, then I can’t,” Penitence said, her voice hollow. “She must hate me.”

“She doesn’t hate anyone, but for a hundred and fifty years, she’s been hiding in a bathroom on the third floor. Alone. Tortured by other ghosts. The only person who was ever kind to her was my aunt Cordelia.”

Penitence pressed both hands to her chest, scrunched her eyes closed, and made a terrible keening sound. “I’m a bad mother,” she whispered.

“If you don’t go to her now, you
are
a bad mother. She needs you.” I was running out of patience. I reached over and grabbed her firmly by the arm. “Come on, we’re going upstairs.”

*  *  *

I stuck my head inside the bathroom. “Maria?”

She was nestled on her greasy blanket, rearranging the assortment of pictures on the floor. After a moment, she blinked and looked up at me. Then the spark lit up in her eyes. “You came back!”

“Yes,” I said, stepping almost all the way inside. “I did. I beat Florence.”

Her eyes widened.

“Maria, I have someone I want you to talk to.”

“No, thank you,” she said, turning away. “No one likes me.”

“This person likes you,” I said. “I promise.”

Then I pulled Penitence in behind me. I’d warned her that Maria had been through a lot, but actually seeing the little girl’s ruined face and body must have been like being punched in the gut. Penitence was silent, staring.

I crouched down, still holding Penitence’s hand. “Maria, this is your mother,” I said. “Do you remember her?”

Maria nodded but shrank away.

“She’s not going to hurt you. She’s come to take care of you.”

They gazed at each other for a long time—long enough that I began to worry that this wasn’t going to work, that too much time had passed, and too many things had gone wrong.

Then Maria reached out and wrapped her clawlike fingers around her mother’s hand. “Would you like to see my pictures?”

Penitence looked down at the floor and nodded.

Maria shuffled her feet. “You can have one, if you like. Any picture at all.”

“You choose for me.”

Maria bent down and picked up a picture of a mother with a small baby, and handed it to her mother.

“I’m sorry I’m not a pretty girl anymore, Mother,” she said. “I understand if you don’t want to be around me. Nobody likes to be around me.”

“I do,” I said.

Penitence stood to her full height, which I’d never actually seen—she’d always been hunched over like an old woman, but she was half a head taller than me. “Maria, we’ll never be apart again. I’ll always be here with you. Is … is that all right?”

Maria nodded.

“Then let’s go,” Penitence said. “We must go downstairs.”

And then, with Maria clutching her mother’s skirts like a security blanket, we made our way back to the second floor.

“What will you do now?” Penitence asked, as Maria ran happy circles around the day room. “I—I can’t help but feel that I owe you.”

“You don’t owe me anything,” I said. “Stay here with Maria. If I do what I hope I’m about to do, I want you two to be together when it all goes down.”