The Evil Within

  “Hi, sweetie,” the nurse said. “You scared us.”

  No one knew how long I had lain unconscious in the snow, but Ms. Krige had noticed I was missing during her eleven o’clock bed check. It had been seven forty the last time I’d looked at my phone—

  “My phone,” I murmured.

  “You fainted. They think because of your insomnia, you just fell asleep in the snow! They were worried about frostbite,” Julie said, digging into the pocket of my army jacket, which was hanging on a hook beside my bed. She handed me my phone. I held it in my palm and quickly flicked it open. There were two new text messages. Frustrated, I shut the phone. I would have to wait until I was alone to read them.

  “Who found me?” I asked.

  “Ms. Krige,” Dr. Ehrlenbach said. “There are reasons for these new rules.”

  “I’m sorry,” I told her. I meant it. I wondered if I was still getting all the freebies—extracurricular, psych testing.

  “As long as you’re safe, that’s all that matters.” Dr. Ehrlenbach turned to Julie. “Time to go.”

  Julie hesitated. Then she held out Panda to me. Avoiding Dr. Ehrlenbach’s gaze, she tucked him beside me in the bed.

  “I’ll be sleeping in the next room,” Ms. Simonet promised.

  As soon as they were gone, I flipped open my phone again—and discovered, to my surprise, that I had five bars. Since it was the middle of the night, I couldn’t call anyone. But I did read my third and fourth texts from Troy: library=weird. had 2 go back 2 lakewood asap. i’ll check in soon.

  And the fourth one:

  miss u xo.

  Xo. Yeah, right. I texted him: OK, thx. And left it at that.

  A deep chill ran down the center of my body and fanned out. I pulled the electric blanket up to my chin and noted the crookneck lamp on a nightstand beside my bed. I reached out to turn it off, but I knew I didn’t want to lie there in the dark. I gave Panda a squeeze.

  My phone vibrated. I had another text from Troy.

  u up?

  yes.

  can call?

  Before I could type back a reply, it vibrated again. I accepted the call and put the phone to my ear.

  “Hey,” he whispered. “I went back to the library earlier tonight. Scary place.”

  “You went inside?” I whispered into the phone.

  “Yeah. God, Lindsay, I figured out what the ledger book was. I think it was a list of girls who got lobotomies. There were a few notes. ‘Difficult case. Skull damaged pick.’”

  “God,” I whispered.

  And suddenly I remembered how angry I had been—so infuriated that I could have grabbed the nearest heavy object and bashed in Mandy’s skull. I had never, ever felt so angry in my life. It scared the wits out of me now.

  “I wanted to tell you in person. But I-I had to go back to Lakewood sooner than I planned.”

  Did anyone tell you what happened to me?

  “Did you tell Mandy about them?” Before he could answer, I said, “Please don’t.”

  There was a pause. “Lindsay,” he said, “what’s going on?”

  “Please, just don’t. You want to be loyal to her, I get that. But this is . . . for me, okay?”

  “It’s not that I want to be loyal,” he argued, but then he huffed. Because, of course, he did want to be loyal to her. He did and he didn’t.

  “It’s late.” I didn’t want to have this conversation again. It bordered on whining, or implying that he had to make a choice. I didn’t work that way—even though I wished, bitterly, that he would make a choice.

  And that he would choose me. My life might actually depend on it. I began to seethe. Clearing my throat, I pushed my anger away.

  “It’s late,” I said again, more gently, “and I have POS.” Parents over shoulder, the shorthand for no privacy.

  “Julie’s up? Okay. You want to text?”

  So he didn’t know I was in the infirmary. In the same place they had taken Shayna, before she had left the campus forever. Was she really home?

  Was she even alive?

  “I have to get some sleep,” I said, even though I doubted I would sleep at all.

  “I’m sorry I had to bail tonight. Something came up.”

  Don’t lie. Please don’t lie. “No problem,” I assured him, and cut the call.

  IN THE MORNING, when Ms. Krige escorted me back to the dorm, Julie, Claire, Ida, Marica, and the other girls from my dorm gathered around me, hugging me, and told me that I was lucky to be alive. I had picked a bad night to pass out alone in the fog: last night, while I was freezing to death, deep slash marks had been found in the trunks of several pine trees on campus. A search by security had yielded even more, on the outskirts of the forest. The administration talked about mountain lions, or maybe even bears. But we talked about the Marlwood Stalker.

  The other girls left, but Julie stayed behind, glancing over her shoulder before she bent over the bed.

  “Oh my God, Lindsay,” she whispered. “The security guys nearly found Spider and me.”

  I was alarmed. “Found you? When? Where?”

  “Sevenish, I think. Spider had permission to go off campus and we were, um, kind of making out.” She giggled and covered her cheeks.

  “Jules, that would have gotten you expelled,” I reminded her, even though I, of course, had been planning to do much the same thing with Troy. I wasn’t sure Dr. Ehrlenbach would have actually expelled Julie. All that tuition down the drain? “You have to be careful,” I continued. “It’s dangerous out in the woods. As you can see.”

  “I had Spider to protect me. As you can see.” Her voice was dreamy and gushy, and I tried not to make a face. My days of believing that guys were knights in shining armor were over, pretty much.

  Then her face changed. “But, um . . . ”

  I looked at her; she lowered her eyes and moved her shoulders. I waited, wondering if this was how moms felt while they were waiting for the rest of the story.

  She sighed a little, very ill at ease. “Well, Spider thinks that you and Troy are seeing each other . . . behind Mandy’s back.” Before I could respond, she looked up at me. “I think you two would be great together, Linz. Really. I’d like it. But . . . Troy should break up with Mandy first, you know?”

  “I know,” I agreed.

  She nodded. “I don’t like Mandy anymore. She’s a real snot-head.” I smiled faintly at Julie’s choice of insults. “But she’s still his girlfriend. It would make you look skanky.”

  It so would. “Plus,” I said, “if Troy prefers Mandy, he’s insane, and who wants a crazy boyfriend?”

  “You got that right,” she said, smiling. Her smile faded. “I hope you’re not angry.”

  “Naw. I know you’re just looking out for me.” And watching me. Good to know. But I couldn’t hold it against her. “Thanks.”

  “Welcs,” she said, relaxing. “Oh my God, Spider is such a good kisser.”

  Back to the matter at hand.

  “Be careful in the woods,” I said. “Please.”

  NINETEEN

  January 25

  Another dead cat was found. There were more slash marks on our trees. Girls screamed in the middle of the night, shrieking that someone was looking through their windows.

  On the Sunday morning following my collapse, I gazed down into Searle Lake, listening to Celia.

  “She’s making her plans,” Celia insisted. “She’s setting it up so no one will suspect her when she comes after you. You have to strike first. With all you’ve got.”

  “I can’t just . . . kill her,” I said, weaving with weariness. I felt as if I were being worn down to a nub, forced into a black place where no one and nothing would be able to touch me . . .

  “You can, and you must,” Celia replied. “Until then we can’t be free.”

  I picked up a stone and dropped it into the center of her reflected face. Her face became harmless ripples, and then it disappeared.

  Shivering in the cold, watching my br
eath, I trudged back to Grose just as Troy called on our landline, identifying himself as usual, as my stepbrother. Maybe we’d been sloppy using that as our code. Julie knew my stepbrothers were very young.

  “Mandy told me—I heard that things are getting worse with the Stalker,” he said. “I want to get over there, but I’ve got all these practices. I can’t get away.”

  “It’s okay,” I murmured.

  “No, it’s not.”

  FOR A FEW MOMENTS, news of a Valentine’s Day dance overshadowed the gossip about the Marlwood Stalker. A school calendar of events had been handed out at the beginning of the year, and there had been no Valentine’s Day dance on it. I wondered if the dance was an attempt to distract us. It worked, as girls got on phones with designers and fitters halfway around the world—a dance required a new dress, the best dress—a killer dress. Amounts were flung around—five grand, ten grand, fifteen grand. For starters. Then there were shoes and bags and tiaras to buy.

  My appointment with Dr. Rahmani was scheduled; it would take place during extracurriculars. I still didn’t have an extracurricular, so it was no great loss. I hiked toward the admin building, anxious and exhausted.

  My horrible fury overhearing Mandy and Troy outside of Jessel the other day had frightened me. It wasn’t like me to be that angry, to take pleasure in imagining doing horrible things to someone. Now, by light of day, it sickened me.

  I knew Celia was thrilled by it. Nothing would please her more than for me to lose control and . . . I could barely think it now . . . kill Mandy. But I was barely functioning under the pressure I felt. I was so scared that Celia was right—that Mandy was going to make her move—that I couldn’t think straight.

  THERE WAS A PORTABLE HEATER in Dr. Rahmani’s office and I pulled my chair close to it as she whipped through screens of data, showing me tables, graphs, and charts about different schools and analyzing my parents’ financial data in relation to different aid “packages.” I was shocked that she knew so much about us. She said the fact that my mother had died would be “useful and helpful,” but she touched my shoulder when she said it.

  “Please don’t think me insensitive,” she added. “When one is contemplating the Ivy League, one must be a barracuda.”

  She gave me a pile of handouts, including an enormous questionnaire all about me, and some not-so-subtle suggestions on how to properly fill it out. Then she consulted with Ms. Shelley for another appointment. Dr. Melton was going to see me in early February. Apparently, he had a very full counseling plate, trying to keep the high-achieving heiresses around me from going nuts.

  THE NEXT DAY, Mandy formally invited Rose to her next séance, set for that evening. Rose leaped at it. I begged her not to go.

  “Jeez, what’s happened to the Linz I picked locks with?” she jibed, grinning at me. “Hark, woman, the game’s afoot!”

  I realized Rose was going to the séance so that I could do recon behind Mandy’s back. She thought she was helping me out. That and another thing I’d learned about Rose: she was drawn to trouble—whether uncovering it or taking part in it.

  “Rose is going to a séance with the Man-demon,” Ida told me later that day. She sounded indignant . . . and perhaps a little wistful that she had not been included. No matter how much they all claimed to hate her, they still wanted her seal of approval. An invitation from Mandy raised a girl’s cool factor by thousands.

  “Good, I guess,” I replied, trying to sound unconcerned.

  “I think it’s ridiculous,” Ida insisted, with an unconvincing scowl.

  As the day darkened and girls made use of the lull between extracurriculars and dinner for homework and gossip, I made use of the current Marlwood library. I still wanted to find another way to stop Mandy, and Rose’s invitation galvanized me into action. I searched for books about dybbuks. There had been four, but all of them had been checked out by Shayna Maisel. They had not been returned. I checked Wikipedia. It was as Shayna had said: dybbuks were souls who needed to find a way to make amends.

  To pay, I thought, as another surge of anger washed through me and my hands pushed down hard on the keyboard, leaving a row of 1s on the screen. Mandy should pay.

  I took my hands off the keys and twisted them together under the library desk. That wasn’t what I wanted. It couldn’t be. I was too nice. I wanted Mandy stopped, and I wanted to be safe.

  So I kept reading online. Apparently, you had to ask the dybbuk why it was troubled. Make it confess, and own up to its sins. Once it faced the horror of what it had done, it was free to go on.

  I deflated, disappointed and confused. Mandy would never do that. And I don’t think Belle Johnson would, either. She doesn’t believe she did anything wrong. She blames me.

  At dinner, Rose flounced up to me and fluttered her lashes.

  “Hola, bonita. Séance time in three, two, one. And we’re going to the lake house to do it. Bwahaha.”

  No. No, don’t go. Please, Rose, please.

  “Cozy,” I said.

  “So you can snoop around in peace,” she said, in case I’d missed the point.

  After we got back to Grose, Julie changed into sweats and a hoodie for a late goalie session with Coach Dorcas, which was handy because it got her out of my way. While I packed my cell phone and a flashlight, I watched Jessel for signs that Mandy and the others were leaving again. Julie returned, worn out and chattering about the upcoming spring competitive season against other private schools. Soccer might give her the edge she needed to get into her top-tier universities.

  Soon she was sleeping soundly, and I got up, dressed, and waited. Around eleven, Jessel’s lights went out. Then, from the side of the hedge, a flashlight flicked on, off. I saw Rose’s face highlighted by the beam as she gave me a little wave.

  I waited a while longer, until nearly eleven thirty, pulling a black knitted cap over my hair, and putting on my Doc Martens. Then I crawled out of the bathroom and snuck down to Jessel, with its dark windows and castle turrets. Blending as best I could with the darkness, I crept onto the porch and gave the knob a try. It was locked, which is what I would have expected.

  Refusing to be thwarted, I walked around to the left, to the kitchen door. It was locked, too. I tried to peer in through the panes of glass, but it was dark. But as I stood there, I could hear the TV of their housemother, Ms. Meyerson. Yikes. If she was still awake, it was just as well I hadn’t tried to pry open a window, which had been on my to-do list.

  I skulked around the outside of the house, shivering, feeling waves of anxiety just being near it. I hated that place. It was filled with ghosts and horrible memories. A chill went down my spine as I reached the back door. Facing Searle Lake on the cliff below, it was also the exit to a secret tunnel that led to the attic. The attic was the epicenter of all that was wrong with Jessel—a cursed room. So I was just as glad that that door was locked, too.

  With no way to get inside Jessel, I decided to go back to the statue garden and look around for Mandy’s locket. She was still on Charlotte’s case about losing it. I could feel myself tensing as I walked through the quad, past the commons, and stared hard at the white statues. With their bases covered in snow, they looked like they were hovering above the ground, phantoms of another age haunting our present. Like Belle . . . and Celia.

  I gathered my army jacket and sweatshirt more tightly around myself. I should have put on the parka CJ had given me. As my boots crunched through the snow, I watched my breath flow out with each chuff chuff. I looked for the moon, but the snow made me blink, and I turned on my flashlight. The beams hit the face of a male statue holding a spear. I didn’t know which god he was. His name was covered up. But as my flashlight passed over his features, I could have sworn he smiled.

  I jerked and moved away from him. Maybe this hadn’t been a good idea. What did I care about Mandy’s stupid locket? I only wanted to get Charlotte off the hook and—

  I felt Celia’s icy grip against the back of my neck, urging me to move to the left
. And then forward. I pursed my half-frozen lips at this reminder that I had to care about things that mattered to Mandy. I had to find a way to free her, and myself . . . or the next statues I saw might be angels weeping over graves.

  Our graves.

  “Okay, I get it,” I said aloud, as Celia guided me forward. The statues were white blurs as I trudged past them, nervously avoiding their posed, outstretched hands. What would I do if one of them moved? Would I start screaming and babbling? Would they haul me away? The thought was more than tempting.

  Then I stumbled over something beneath the snow, and fell onto my knees. I cushioned my fall with my gloved hands as I sank deeply into the powdery white.

  There was something underneath my right hand. Something sharp.

  I jerked up my hand, then grabbed my flashlight and shone it into the indentation I had made. Kneeling, I peered into the circle of yellow light.

  There was something shiny. The locket!

  I bent to retrieve it. It was stuck on a twig, and I felt the fragile rusted chain break as I picked it up. I lifted it to my face and shined the flashlight on it.

  Sure enough, it was a gold locket, etched in silver. There was a little clasp on the side; I pushed it, and the lid popped open.

  A small tea-tinted photograph of a man stared back at me. Dark, deep-set eyes, short hair parted in the middle and slicked down with oil. And afterward, some refreshing rosewater. I could smell it. He had a thick, lustrous moustache and when he kissed—

  I gasped. I knew him. I knew he had kissed me. And his name was—

  I jerked, hard, and dropped the locket on the ground. Quickly, I picked it up; the photograph was really a thick disk, and it fell out in my hand.

  For dear Celia,

  David Abernathy,

  June, 1886

  It was the same name as had been in the ledger book Troy had found. I examined the face again. Was he the lobotomy doctor? But why would Celia love him then?

  I wanted for more response from her. But there was nothing.