The Dead Girls of Hysteria Hall (23 page)

M
om and Dad had dragged the sofa to the center of the room and flipped it like an animal carcass. They seemed to be trying to disassemble it, with Dad’s car keys as their only tools.

In the main hall, Janie had calmed herself enough to walk around, testing the walls and looking for a way out. She’d peeled away huge sections of the wallpaper, to no avail. She tried the remaining doors that lined the hall, but they were all locked.

Suddenly, she cut short her inspection and turned around.

“I know someone’s here,” she whispered. “You’re trying to help me, aren’t you?”

I nearly fell through the wall.

“Who are you?” she asked.

Collecting myself, I walked past her to the far side of the rug, and in one quick motion, I pulled the corner up—just enough to reveal my name scratched into the floor.

DELIA.

The rug flumped back down disapprovingly.

My sister was quiet for a long time.

“I knew it was you,” she said at last. “Can you help me get out of here?”

I could, actually. In fact, I needed her to come with me—it was part of the plan. Passing through the wall, I unlocked the door that would lead her to the service hallway and down to the basement.

Janie heard the click and pushed the door open, wonder and wariness in her eyes.

She followed me through, trailing a few feet behind, waiting as I unlocked and carefully opened each subsequent door. We passed Rosie and Posie, staring as always, and I paused.

“Thanks for stealing all their stuff, guys,” I said. “Really helpful.”

The one on the right blushed, and the one on the left scowled.

“Have you ever thought of maybe using your powers for good instead of annoyingness?” I asked. “Never mind. I have to go.”

Then I opened the one that led down into the basement.

“What are you doing down there?” the girl who had blushed asked.

“Trying to save us all,” I said. “You can thank me later.”

The girls vanished.

Janie hesitated at the top of the steps, and I didn’t blame her. The basement smelled like a dead skunk had been rotting in there for a year. The dead shadow creature, its smoky form significantly paler than before, was piled near the center of the room. And then there was Florence, still trapped.

Not much of a welcome wagon.

“You!” Florence struck at the barrier between us, but she was helpless to escape. “I’ll kill her! I’ll tear you both to shreds!”

“Yeah, yeah, go ahead and try,” I said.

She snarled and filled up with light, but she was powerless against the six-inch-wide pile of salt. Still, her manic, evil energy added a heavy feeling to the air, and I could tell by the way Janie’s shoulders hunched closer to her ears that it was having an effect on her.

Careful not to draw my sister’s attention in Florence’s direction, I knocked over a few small objects on my way to the back of the room, to indicate that she should follow me.

Janie stopped, considering a scratched-up metal box attached to the pillar at the bottom of the stairs. Finally, she popped it open and flipped a switch inside. Dim light spilled from the old bulbs hanging from the ceiling at random intervals.

“Probably should have looked for that last time,” she said.

Then she followed me.

The old incinerator room, walled-off with bricks and guarded by a barred metal door, was off to the right, positioned perfectly so that its leaking chimneys would permit the evil fog to penetrate the rooms at the front of the house. I took a few steps toward it before noticing that my sister wasn’t behind me. I turned to look for her, and saw that she was frozen in place.

There was something wrong with this room, and she sensed it.

But I couldn’t afford to lose her trust now.

“Delia, is it really you?” she asked into the air. “Can you find some way to tell me it’s you? Knock twice?”

I reached for the nearest hard object, an old crate, and tried to knock on it. But my knuckles passed silently through the wood.

Janie was asking for a specific message. I couldn’t do that.

I had no way to tell her it was me.

“I’m sorry. It’s just, I … I don’t know if I can do this,” Janie said. “It kind of feels like those slasher movies you and Nic used to let me watch with you. What if you’re not even Delia? What if you’re something evil pretending to be her? And you’re luring me to my doom? Give me a sign. Any sign.”

She wanted a signal, but what if I couldn’t send her one?

Of course, she was completely right—I could be any ghost, misleading her, tricking her.

We were so close, and the situation was so frustrating that, without thinking, I turned and knocked over the nearest knock-overable object.

It happened to be a mop.

Janie gasped.

Yes!
A mop.
I remembered her housewife costume from Halloween and searched the surrounding shelves for the other objects I needed.

Almost giddily, I knocked a stocky-looking metal teapot off the shelf. It hit the ground and bounced heavily one time, then rolled onto its side.

My sister held her breath.

Next, I swept an entire stack of frying pans to the floor with a deafening
crash!

Then there was silence.

Janie swallowed hard and balled her hands into determined fists. “All right, Delia,” she said. “What now?”

I felt a swell of joy and had to remind myself that this wasn’t the time for celebrating. I walked across the room and opened the door to the incinerator room.

Janie came and stood in the doorway. We were practically shoulder to shoulder, not that she’d know it.

The incinerator itself hulked in the corner, a six-foot-tall, eight-foot-long, and six-foot-wide fortified box of iron and brick. The air smelled stale and faintly burnt—a sweet blend of toast and smoke.

I stepped inside, flipped up the lever on the incinerator’s two-by-two-foot-square metal hatch, and pulled it open.

Janie’s eyes went wide. “No way, Delia! I’m not going in there.”

There was a petulance in her voice that made me feel like we were just two normal sisters trying to figure out how to glue together a broken vase before our parents came home.

“I never said you had to,” I said. “Nobody’s going inside the incinerator.”

But when I opened the door and peered down into the belly of the structure, I could see nothing but pitch darkness. Which meant that one of us
was
going in, and since I was the only one of us who could produce her own light, it was probably going to be me. Better me than my sister—but still.

“Delia?” Janie asked, stepping close. “Are you going in? Be careful. Are you sure it’s safe?”

Nope. Not sure at all.

What, Delia, you’re going to give up now?

Of course not. There was no fire in the incinerator. It wasn’t even hot. It was just dark.

I repeated those facts to myself—
not hot, just dark
—as I moved through the thick brick wall.

“Are you okay?” Janie asked.

I looked around, a very bad feeling rising in my stomach.

I was not, in fact, okay.

I was surrounded by fire.

The flames reached as high as my head. They looked like normal fire in the way they jumped and leapt, but instead of being bright orange, they were the fathomless, velvety black you’d expect to find in a black hole. And, like a black hole, they devoured the light that radiated off of my ghostly form, until parts of myself were missing and I started to get pretty worried that I was being burned alive by the dark flames without even knowing it.

But no. If I moved my arm, the invisible parts became visible again—even if only for a moment. And I didn’t feel any burning—not from heat, anyway. They were actually quite cold, like on a frosty night, when the wind goes right through your clothes.

Any relief I felt was only temporary, though. Because immediately I was faced with the reality of being surrounded by dark flames and having no way to put them out except apparently spilling the blood of my little sister, which—call me crazy—I had a feeling she wouldn’t be totally cool with.

And then disaster struck.

“Delia, I’m coming in!” Before I could stop her, Janie climbed up and propelled herself through the incinerator hatch, landing clumsily inside with me. “What … What’s happening in here? What’s … Is this
fire
?”

Her voice faded out as she held her hand in the light that spilled in through the hatch, studying the way the flames made it vanish.

“Am I dead now?” she asked. “Am I a ghost?”

To be honest, I wasn’t sure. I stepped between her and the opening. “Can you see me? Can you hear me?”

She looked around wildly. “Delia? Are you still here?”

I practically crumpled with relief. If she were dead, she’d have been able to hear me. And the oily smoke didn’t seem to be gathering around us—yet. At least there was that.

“Okay, this was a bad idea,” she said. “I’m willing to admit that.”

Janie stepped toward the hatch and tried to climb back out.

Then she grunted in confusion and looked down toward her feet.

I knelt closer, using my glow to see what was happening.

The flames had begun to wrap themselves around Janie’s legs, like a mummy’s bandages. What’s more, they’d begun to wind up my legs, too—trapping me just as effectively as my sister.

My sister let out a scream and tried to slap the tendrils away, but it didn’t work.

“Delia?” she cried. “Are you still here?”

“Of course I am,” I said.

From the darkness came a succession of pitiful sniffles. Then one big sniffle. “Don’t panic,” Janie whispered to herself, a hint of steel in her voice. “Just don’t panic.”

I was overcome with love and admiration for my brave little warrior of a sister. Maybe I’d have been nicer to her, all those years ago, if I’d known that a fighter’s spirit resided inside her. I should have encouraged her, nurtured her, tried to bring out her hidden strength—instead of looking down on her for being different from the rest of us.

But she’d become this person on her own—and maybe, in some weird way, it had been my death that brought those qualities to life.

“Wait!” Janie said, her voice alive with hope. “Maybe I can … how did it go? By the authority of nature … by the forces of—um, creation. By righteousness and … and … Aw,
shoot
.”

I held my breath.

“The power of good!” she burst out. “Through the power of good, I bind you, I bind you, I—
mmph
.”

Before she could finish speaking the incantation, the flames had wound all the way up to her mouth, high enough to gag her, holding her words in.

She struggled and grunted, but it was impossible. She couldn’t speak. I wondered for how long she’d even be able to breathe.

Could
I
do it?

I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to remember the words. The supple fingers of flame reached my waist, and I knew I was almost out of time.

I had to go for it.

“By-the-authority-of-nature-by-the-forces-of-creation-by-righteousness-and-through-the-power-of-good—”
The flames raced up my body now, trying to reach my mouth, so I spat the words out as fast as I could—
“IbindyouIbindyouIbindyou!”

It worked.

Janie gulped in a huge breath of air as the flames fell away from her mouth. “I bind you!” she yelled.

“It’s cool,” I said. “I took care of it.”

Reaching down, I found I could peel the flames off my body as if they were strips of pantyhose. Then I reached over and pulled off the ones from Janie’s legs, too. She realized what was happening and started to help.

“You’re still here,” she said softly. “I knew you’d stay.”

“Like I’d leave you,” I said. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”

She was already climbing out. I followed her, and then we both stood staring back into the yawning darkness. The dark fire was subdued for the moment, but it still burned—and I was positive it was struggling and fighting to break free of the spell, just as the shadow creature had.

“We totally failed,” I said. “Awesome.”

“We’re going to figure it out,” Janie said.

Suddenly, the silence of the room was interrupted by a
thwack thwack thwack
sound coming from the stairs.

My sister took a few tentative steps closer, to see if someone was there. I hurried ahead of her, in case we’d been joined by someone unpleasant.

But there was no one—just a book, lying haphazardly on the floor after apparently being bowled down the steps.

As I walked over and looked at its shiny silver spine, I heard a pair of high-pitched giggles from the hallway.

It was
The Selected Works of Lord Percival Lindley 1757–1789.

Unbelievable. They’d actually helped for once.

“Thank you, Rosie and Posie!” I called.

Janie reached carefully for the book and flipped it over in one swift motion, her eyes already searching the page.

It had fallen open to the black fire poem.

“Read it,” I said. “Please, read this page.”