The Screaming Season (2 page)

And then he became the nurse, jabbing something into my arm. I felt Celia thrashing inside me. I couldn’t tell if she was fighting the drug or fighting me. Did she want to burrow in deeper, or did she want to escape?

“No, please,” I whispered as the nurse studied my face. My eyelids were drooping. She was taking my pulse. “Please, don’t do this.”

“There. Now you’ll calm down.” Her face was tight. I was pissing her off.

Julie was standing behind Ms. Simonet. With her cute new haircut, wheat-colored hair all chopped, my roommate looked like the a slightly more grown-up version of the sweet, shy girl who had glommed onto me when I showed up, roommates and instant best friends. Her hazel eyes were smudged with smoky makeup that was running down her face. She looked so worried, not at all like the Julie who had become possessed, her eyes completely black, shouting to the others to come and get me . . .

She didn’t remember any of the horrible things that had happened. She had no idea that she’d been possessed . . . and had been set free.

I wasn’t free.

Not yet.

The nurse said to Julie, “You’ll have to leave.”

“Please, let me stay for a few minutes,” Julie murmured. She slipped her hand into mine.

I could barely keep my eyes open. I could see a blur of shadow as the nurse bent over me and opened each of my eyelids.

“She has pneumonia,” Ms. Simonet said. “She needs her rest.”

Maybe they’re going to kick me out,
I thought. Ironically, even though Marlwood was a death trap, getting booted would be the worst thing that could happen to me. Celia had made it very clear that she had unfinished business here, and I would never be free of her until she had gotten what she wanted.

But what she wanted was Mandy Winters dead.

“You have two minutes,” Ms. Simonet told Julie. I wondered why she couldn’t stay longer. It
was
the middle of the night, but so what?

My roomie gave my hand a squeeze. I tried so hard to keep my eyes open, but everything was going very blurry. I wondered if Celia would be drugged too. Or if she walked when I was asleep; if that was when she made me do things that I couldn’t remember when I woke up. If that was the case, I should be glad for getting tied down. Except, if the specter of Dr. Abernathy returned, I would be defenseless.

Julie cleared her throat and gently slid her hand away from mine. It was a little awkward; we hugged each other on occasion, but we weren’t hand-holders, that was for sure.

“Are you, um,
okay
?” she asked. “Bad dream, huh?”

“Yeah. It’s the fever,” I managed, but my tongue was too large for my mouth. My chest was too heavy to catch a breath. I felt as if someone were sitting on my chest, and I could hear deep breathing and a low, sadistic chuckle.

“You were out in that snowstorm for
hours
,” she said. “They were really worried about you.”

They still are,
I wanted to tell her, but I couldn’t make sound come out of my mouth. My hospital bed was spinning. The inside of my body was a cold block of ice—the sensation that came over me whenever Celia took charge.

“Maybe you’ll get to go home,” she said in falsely cheerful voice. “You know, your friend back home, Heather? She’s been texting you. I hope you don’t mind that I looked at your phone. It kept vibrating and I thought maybe it was Troy.”

Drifting, drowsy, I wasn’t sure I’d heard her right. Heather Martinez used to be my best friend back in San Diego. But that was before I proved my loyalty to the cool clique by publicly dissing her every chance I got. When I had gone home for Christmas, we tried to reconnect by going to a movie together. The hugeness of that blunder could not be overestimated.

Riley, my hot, sexy, lying creep jerk ex-crush, had shown up at the theater too, and there we were, the three of us, watching a Christmas horror movie like back in the old days—except that Heather had never been present at any function when Riley and I had been a couple. That night was like two different versions of my past colliding, none of it working because I was already on the verge of losing it and being there was stressful in the extreme.

“Linz?” Julie said. I tried to open my eyes. “She just texted again. She said she has to talk to you about Riley. Not in so many words, of course. Because it’s texting.”

“Lemme see,” I whispered, but I wasn’t even sure I said the words aloud. My heartbeat was slowing because of the drugs, but in reality, it wanted to pump into overdrive. It was like being artificially possessed, aware that I wasn’t all there and something else was taking me over. Not ghosts, in this case, but “modern” medicine. At least it was temporary; lobotomies were forever.

“Here. Look.”

More shadows shifted; I was pretty sure Julie was holding the cell phone close to my face. Her head was a white blob, and behind it, darker shapes floated through the room. Something crept along the wall, sneaking a look at me now and then. Light glinted.

The ice pick.

“She left you a voice message. Do you want me to play it?”

I couldn’t speak, couldn’t utter a sound.

Don’t leave me,
I wanted to beg her.
I’m so afraid I won’t wake up.

“I’ll put it in your hand,” Julie said. “And maybe I can loosen these things.” She began to fumble with my restraints.

If she untied me, I could fight
him
off. But if Celia wanted to roam, I wouldn’t be able to stop her.

I felt the coldness moving inside me, almost as if Celia were waking up too. I hated the feeling. Hated her. She was evil, insane, and she was using me.

“You have to go now, Julie,” Ms. Simonet said.

Julie’s hand jerked, and the phone slipped from my rubbery grasp. I groaned. Something soft and fuzzy moved against my forearm.

“Here’s Panda,” Julie said. “Remember that I brought him for you?”

Julie had gotten the stuffed animal for Christmas. It was so sweetly sad to me that she was still excited about little toy dogs.

Christmas. Christmas was when Celia’s white face had appeared in my swimming pool, and she had told me I had to come back here, to Marlwood, or I would never be free of her. That if I stayed safely in San Diego, my friends would die, one by one—as payback, revenge. It seemed so long ago.

It seemed like it had happened to someone else.

I was so drugged up and freaked out that I didn’t feel like anyone at all. I was floating in an endless sea of identities or souls or loose, unbound emotions, and none of them were mine.

“Julie, it’s time.” The nurse’s voice was gentler. She
liked
Julie. My roommate was like the baby of the Marlwood family, agreeable and cute. I’d always thought nice girls got stomped on, but Julie’s charm ...
charmed
people. That was a kind of power that sarcastic chicks with wild hair and bad clothes were denied.

“Okay, sorry. Sweet dreams, Linz.” I smelled Juicy Couture as she leaned over me, maybe debating about kissing me good night. I was going so numb that I didn’t think I’d be able to feel it if she did.

I heard footsteps. Julie murmured, “Does she have to sleep tied up like that?”

Ms. Simonet replied, but I didn’t hear what she said. I assumed the answer must have been yes, because no one came to free me.

Then the door to the clinic opened and I heard the wind. I didn’t want Julie to go out in the cold. I wanted her safe, always.

But who could ever be safe, here at Marlwood?

I continued drifting on icy currents, wondering if I would ever be warm again. There was truth to the saying,
Cold as the grave.
Ironic, that someone who had burned to death could chill me to the bone.

Something vibrated against my side, and I started. I was so out of it that at first I couldn’t figure out what it was. Then I realized it was my new phone. My old one was rusting at the bottom of Searle Lake, where I myself had nearly wound up. I had a new number, and not that many people had it. I could count them on one hand.

Was it Heather? Why was she calling me all of a sudden? Had something happened to her or my family?
No more,
I begged the universe.

“Yes, Dr. Ehrlenbach, she’s been sedated,” Ms. Simonet was saying, and I grunted, startled by the sound of another human voice. Had my scary headmistress arrived to check on me? “Yes, have a good trip.”
She’s leaving? Abandoning us?

The room went silent again. Ms. Simonet must have been talking on the phone to Dr. “Ehrlenfreak,” as we called her. I envied my headmistress; she could get out of here. Then I thought of everything hanging on her shoulders—Kiyoko’s death and the school’s reputation. The wealthy parents
had
to be asking if Marlwood Academy was safe enough for their blueblooded children. For them, Marlwood had been one choice among many when it came to posh boarding schools that cost around fifty thousand dollars a year. For me, a scholarship student given late entry from the wait list, it had been my only escape.

I screwed up again,
I thought, tears sliding across my temples.
I had a breakdown in San Diego, sure, but here, away from civilization . . . I tried to kill my boyfriend with a hammer.

Only, Troy wasn’t my boyfriend. And when I had tried to kill him, I had thought he’d been possessed . . .

. . . by the ghost who, at that very moment, might be creeping around my room in the infirmary. Out of body, not in someone’s else, like Celia was in mine. I sensed frosty shadows moving against the wall, then dripping down onto the floor and sliding toward my bed. I had dreams of someone crawling over me, pinning me where I lay. Dreams both waking and sleeping .

“Count backward from ten to one,”
whispered the ghost of Dr. Abernathy,
“and I’ll make it all better. You will never, ever be afraid again.”

I shook with fear as he floated closer. I was alone in the bed, unable to call for help.

“I’ll make it all better,”
he said again.
“I’ll make it stop.”

And in my hazy desperation, I was tempted to obey.

“Ten
,
”
he prompted.

Nine,
I thought.

And then I heard Celia screaming.

TWO

“WRONG.”

“You are so wrong, and so stupid,”
Celia hissed as I shifted and twisted in my bed. I was sinking into the mattress. Something was wrapped around my neck. I couldn’t call out to Ms. Simonet; I couldn’t push the little button attached to the bed.

“You have no idea what’s been going on out there while you hide.”

She was
pissed
.

“You know what you have to do. You know how to set me free. And instead, you lie in here . . . ”
Darkness engulfed me. I was frozen to the bone; I could see nothing but blackness. I couldn’t touch anything. Smell anything. There was dirt in my mouth, and mixed in with it was something burnt.

“This is where I lie. This is my soft bed and my pillow. And these are my visitors.”

Razor-sharp pinpricks sliced my face as furry paws ran over my cheek and across my nose, down the center of my forehead to bite my cheek. Rats. I fought to move my arms or shake my head, but I could do nothing to protect myself. They kept biting and scurrying.

My hair was coated with mud, and I couldn’t breathe. I had been buried alive.

“It’s not even as good as a grave,”
she said spitefully.
“It’s a garbage heap, in the forest, on the road. It’s where I am. And it’s where you’ll be if you don’t help me. I swear it, Lindsay. You will end up here. For the rest of eternity. Awake. Aware. And suffering.”

“Like me.”

I finally managed to gasp, opening my mouth. My nostrils were clogged with dirt. Something wriggled against the roof of my mouth. I wanted to kick and scream, but I couldn’t move.

Then she yanked me out of the dirt and down a lane. Smoke surrounded me. The black trees to my right bobbed as I passed, as thunder rumbled. Branches encrusted with jet-colored ice began to pump up and down as if heavy objects were tied to them.

The forest is trying to grab me,
I thought. I glazed over . . .

. . . and saw phantoms sitting in the boughs of the trees: glowing blurs of girls in linen shifts, with skulls for faces and bones for arms, shrieking. They leaned toward me as I ran past, extending their arms, wailing and sobbing. From a tree on my left, a figure dangled from a noose around her neck, rocking back and forth, back and forth, like a bell. Her bony fingers grabbed at the rope. A crack shot through the darkness, and her neck broke.

She screamed. Everyone was screaming.

I was screaming.

The trees began to thin, and the figures dropped from the trees like rotten fruit. The hanged girl vanished. Other girls appeared on either side of the road, standing in rows and banging on walls I couldn’t see. They were screaming; all around me; the world was nothing but one giant scream.

The wind mixed up all the shrieks and I heard the desperation, the terror and fury. I heard them dying. White shapes, white figures; the mountain was alive with the ghosts of dead girls, enraged by their fate.

The screams stretched into echoes. Clouds crossed the moon, throwing me into darkness as the girls glowed and winked out, reappeared, sizzled with white light. Their shifts disintegrated into tatters; their skull faces shattered; something of them became nothing more than a weak, shining mist in the darkness.

But I kept screaming.

“Stop it, Lindsay!” Ms. Simonet yelled. The lights flared on.

Dream. Oh, God.

“I’m sorry, sorry,” I managed, weeping. “Please, please.”

She did something to my arm. It hurt.

I slid down deeper.

The screams came back.

THREE

“FEELING BETTER?” Ms. Simonet asked me, trying to sound like she cared. She was checking on me in the shower room, where she had brought me to clean up.