The Evil Within

“I definitely drank too much,” she concluded.

  Then she pulled the sheets up to her neck, and settled in with Panda. “Please, leave me alone, Linz. Please.” She rolled over and turned her back to the wall.

  I’d had no sleep; and I was probably going to get a horrible cold from going out in the elements; and I’d been scared to death. I blamed Mandy Winters for all of it. I was so angry. Julie, my sweet little Julie, nearly raped. And what about Rose? If I hadn’t come after Rose, she would have frozen to death.

  And then Rose tried to kill me because of the games she’d played with Mandy at her “party.” Belle was gathering her forces, getting ready to take me out—just the way Celia insisted. This was more than a one-on-one duel between us. This was war. I was beginning to understand that.

  Julie finally dozed; it was about four thirty in the morning, and as I paced, I saw Mandy’s light go on, then off. She was leaving her room. Then the front door of Jessel opened and she flew onto the porch, dressed all in black—black cap, black maxicoat, black gloves.

  Bitch, I thought. Where are you going? Are you off to celebrate with your coven of dead girls?

  White-hot with fury, I put on my jacket and climbed through the bathroom window. The air blasted me and sleety snow dripped onto my hair. I slipped on the boulder and nearly fell headfirst into mud and dirty snow littered with pine needles and crushed pinecones.

  By the time I slid off the boulder and dropped down to the ground, Mandy had crossed Academy Quad and was headed up the path to the admin building. I followed, rehearsing my ultimatum in my mind. This had to end, now. All of it. And if she didn’t swear it was over, I would . . .

  . . . I would . . .

  I’ll make her swear, I told myself. Or I’ll make Dr. Ehrlenbach listen to me. I’ll tell the media that this place is dangerous. This is over. Now.

  Mandy reached the parking lot. I wasn’t far behind. I was gaining on her, in fact. Beneath the thickening snowfall, a wicked, low-slung Jaguar was parked in the snowy lot. The passenger door opened.

  And Mandy climbed in.

  The momentum of my rage pushed me on, and I stomped toward the car. Mandy was in the front seat, her back against the window, facing the driver. Her black-gloved hands stroked his face.

  It was Miles.

  Miles, who was supposedly in Hawaii. Miles, who had attacked my best friend.

  Their faces moved close together. Were they kissing? I felt the ground shift beneath me. Everyone said they were lovers. Mandy and her own brother. Even Troy had practically implied it. Did his lips rub across hers, then nibble her earlobe? Or was he whispering into her ear?

  I was too stunned to do anything. Suddenly, I was aware of the imbalance between us—two against one, the rich against the poor, the insane against the at least marginally more sane. It wasn’t a good idea, confronting them together.

  Then Mandy turned, and saw me. We locked gazes, and I was rooted to the spot.

  The car door opened.

  Mandy got out and started walking toward me. I heard her boots thudding in the snow like small falling bodies. Bird bodies. Her breath flared around her head like the ghostly face I’d seen superimposed over Rose’s.

  Behind her, the Jag roared to life.

  “Did you get a good look?” Mandy yelled at me. “Did you take a picture?”

  I pivoted on my heel, and bolted.

  Snowy trees waved in the stiff morning breeze on the eastern perimeter of the parking lot. I ran for them. Gazing over my shoulder, I gasped to see that Mandy was charging after me, yanking off her cap. Her blonde hair came loose from a chignon and flapped haglike around her beautiful face.

  “Come back, you bitch!” she shrieked.

  Like an animal run to ground, I ran deeper into the trees, as afraid now as I had been righteously angry a moment before. Branches slapped my forehead and cheeks. I gasped as the cut on my face ripped open again.

  I couldn’t see her or the Jag, but I could hear them both—her rapid footfalls, branches snapping, animals scurrying out of her way. The Jag quietly rolling.

  “Oh, peeping Tom, where’d you go? You like the show? Want some more? Since you’re not getting any yourself?”

  Her voice dripped acid. I heard a sharp crack—the breaking of a thick branch—and I crept slowly backward, panting, trying to escape. I slid over rocks glazed with ice.

  The Jag engine purred, predatory. I thought of Julie, how I’d found her. I wondered if anyone would find me.

  I moved faster—or tried to. The underbrush caught at my shoes like grasping hands, and fear made me awkward. The trees grew together so densely they formed a wall; as I tested them for weak spots, I found no way out. My lungs burned as I kept trying, pushing, now kicking.

  “So,” Mandy said behind me.

  I whirled around, slamming my back against a tree. It knocked the wind out of me, and for a moment, I reeled, too dizzy to see.

  She was standing less than five feet away with a jagged stick in her hand. She was panting as hard as I was, and her face was red.

  “Spy,” she hissed. “Just what do you—”

  “You disgust me,” I flung at her, scared past common sense. “You think you’re so sophisticated and powerful? You’re just pathetic! You’re a crazy, stupid loser!”

  “Shut up,” she spat. “Just shut up!”

  “Wait until Troy hears about—”

  That set her off. Her mouth dropped open and she flew at me, flinging her stick at me, grabbing my hair. She gathered it up and pulled. The pain was like fire; she was yanking it out by the roots.

  “Whore! Slut!” I screamed at her. It wasn’t my voice. It wasn’t my hand that reached down for her stick, and found a rock instead, and brought it up over my head. Not my legs that propelled me toward her, as she backed away, screaming for help. And—

  I knew they would take the worst ones first; I knew they were coming, that they would take me and grind a hole through my forehead and let out all that was I, Celia Reaves, before I could tell them what Belle was, what she was doing. Murderess, liar. If they carved a hole in her head, no soul would pour out. Belle had no soul.

  Even then she leered at me, laughing and dancing, as she often did on the upper floor of the library, where she would steal away—

  —steal him—

  She didn’t know he was going to save me.

  But now . . . we are here, now, finally, and we can stop her:

  “You cannot live!” I shriek, and I close the space between us. She is no match for me. The rock is big and heavy and I grab her around the waist, whirling her in a circle till she falls to her knees. I rake my fingers through her hair and yank back hard; I’ll hit her in the face with it, break that pretty nose, drive in those eyes.

  “Lindsay, free us now!”

  I felt Mandy squirming, heard her sobbing.

  “No,” I gasped. “I’m Lindsay Anne Cavanaugh. I’m Lindsay.”

  “—No, Lindsay, do it now, hit her! Beat in her face! Quick, in the name of all that is holy, do this thing and drive this evil from the world—”

  Celia’s desperation overwhelmed me. I couldn’t hear myself thinking; couldn’t feel myself moving. I had no choice.

  “Oh, dear God, I beg you, do this, do it—”

  “No,” I rasped. Then I, Lindsay, leaped away from her.

  Her face yanked back, her skull-face clicking and slashing at my hand, Belle screamed.

  “You took my love from me!” Belle shrieked. “And then you killed me! Damn you to hell, Celia Reaves! You killed me!”

  As Celia stared into Belle’s black eyes blazing at her from Mandy’s face, she dropped the rock.

  We dropped the rock. I dropped the rock.

  Celia was squirming and shifting inside me, agonized and confused. I felt her. I was her.

  “What are you saying? I didn’t,” Celia said, in her voice, although it came from my mouth. “You killed me. And you want to kill me still.”

  “Why would I bother
?” Mandy retorted, and I didn’t know who was answering me, Mandy or Belle.

  “Because you loved him. And he loved me. He chose me.”

  Then Celia fished in my jacket and pulled out the locket. And as she did it, a wave of dizziness rushed through me; I saw the locket in a blur, as if someone had wiped Vaseline over my eyes. Mandy’s face stretched and glowed, becoming the skull again, as she threw back her head and laughed in a bizarre, mewling way, like a cat falling down a well. And somehow, I fell down that well with it. Celia was here; and I was . . . gone.

  “I have the sister of that locket, harlot,” Belle said. “I sent that poor child into the statuary to retrieve it. To proclaim David’s love for me among these ridiculous, posturing tarts!”

  Celia was thunderstruck. “But he said that he loved me.”

  Belle stared at her, placing her hands on her hips, shaking her head. “Why would he? You’re insane, and loose, while I—”

  “Who was mad, you or I? You tortured me at every turn, to force me to give him up. It was your madness that killed you. You set that terrible fire—”

  “I didn’t,” Belle insisted. “It was you. I was there. You did it.”

  “The years have burned away what little was left of your brain,” Celia decreed. She held out the locket. “It was for him that you burned us all alive. If you couldn’t have him, you wanted no one to. Especially not me. Your rival. The victor.”

  But as she spoke, Celia’s hand shook. Suddenly, she was not as clear on the events of the past as she once had been. The memory of the flames—the pain, the agony—feeling such sharp regret, and remorse for the evil she had done. Reaching as the flames licked her flimsy hospital shift dress for her locket; her skin cracking and peeling away from her bones as she felt around her neck, screaming, “Where is it? Where is it?” Wanting to die with it in her hand.

  Feeling again her tears turning to steam as she became the moth that soared full tilt into the flame.

  “Lockets are cheap, Celia. Think, girl,” Belle said, shaking her. “If he gave you one, and me another . . . and then we perished in a fire . . . think . . . ”

  “No,” Celia whispered, shaking her head from side to side. “David loved me. He said . . . ” Her mind slid inside the brain of the girl she had possessed. The girl who was so like her—passionate, raging against the injustices of her life; and yet afraid of the power of the world and its capacity to harm her. Wrenched from her mother, as Celia had been. Sent to a strange place, as Celia had been. Tortured by a girl of means, a wanton, spoiled, privileged girl who had been granted favors by another . . . a lackey she had charmed—coffee, blankets, while Celia and the others froze and starved.

  But David . . . he had seen how horribly she suffered, and pitied her; pity turned to softness; and softness to love.

  David Abernathy had loved Celia.

  And Celia only.

  “Me only,” she said aloud. “Me!”

  “Then he was the liar!” Belle shrieked. “His promises sealed our deaths! You fawning, weak fool, don’t you see? He tricked us!”

  She hit Celia hard, on the shoulder; and again, on the arm. Then Celia grabbed her fist and forced her to stop. Belle lurched forward, then backward, and started sobbing.

  “He lied to us,” Belle ground out. “He did, Celia.”

  “No, not David. He would never—”

  “He did, and if he loved us both, or didn’t . . . it wasn’t fair. We weren’t ready to die.” Belle wrenched her hand away from Celia. “Do you hear me? It wasn’t fair!”

  And those words penetrated; like pleas for mercy bouncing against the icy bricks of a well, they surrounded Celia. They wound around her like ropes, piled like stones in her pockets. I felt my body get heavy, like I was sinking.

  It wasn’t fair. What had happened to her . . .

  An ocean of sorrow, rage, and terror closed over her head. Over my head. Not fair, not fair . . .

  Waves of dizziness overcame Celia as she sank into the snow, settling back into the girl, Lindsay, for whom life had been so terribly unfair; she was overcome. Collapsing in the snow, her eyes fluttered half-closed as she gazed over at Belle Johnson, in the person of Amanda Winters, who was sobbing as if her rotted heart were breaking.

  Celia wept, too. The wind blew across her lashes and cheeks; she could hear herself but she couldn’t feel herself. Belle looked as if she were dying. Her lips were turning blue and her eyes were closed.

  TWENTY-TWO

  February 14, 1889

  “Celia Reaves, Celia Reaves . . . you wear your heart on your sleeve, Celia Reaves.”

  David Abernathy kissed her. Newly out of surgical college, with his sandy hair parted down the middle and his rough chin stubble, a pensive look in his eyes, just three months at Marlwood and so beautiful in his frock coat and white surgical apron. She was about to learn, as she knelt beside his library desk and wrote in his journal, that he had discovered her name on Edwin Marlwood’s list of girls scheduled for the calming operation. But first he pulled the ribbons from her hair and kissed her on the center of her forehead. Then his hand moved toward the cameo at her neck, so fine and fair an object, the only memento she had of her life before this wretched place. Her father had come at her, and she had stopped him; and for daring to raise a hand against such an important man, they had exiled her to this hell.

  She touched the cameo, suddenly shy and unsure. Smiling at her modesty, he reached into a drawer and pulled out a small velvet box. Opening the lid, he gazed at her with lovesick eyes.

  “A token,” he whispered huskily, “of my feeling for you. Of my love.”

  It was a golden locket, shaped like a heart. He took it out of the box, laid it across his palm, and pressed it open. There was a daguerreotype of him in one oval and lock of his hair in the other.

  “Once we are free, you may wear it,” he murmured. “Until then . . . ” He closed the box and placed it back in the drawer.

  And the strapping young physician reached for her. This time, she did not stay his hand.

  “I love you and only you, Celia, my darling. Now listen, my girl, we must make a plan.”

  “BELLE JOHNSON, Bella mia, Bella fortuna.”

  Fine young David Abernathy stole his hand down the opened bodice of Belle’s blouse. Beneath, the whalebone of her corset shaped her heaving bosom, and his fingers knew where every tingling nerve lay in the land of her soft skin. He braised her flesh with the fire of passion. He was her love, and her lover; and he had promised to take her away from this nightmarish asylum, this bedlam, this chamber of horrors.

  “I will come for you and steal you away like a thief in the night. I will not let them have you. You are mine. We’ll be together soon. . . .”

  “Promise me,” Belle moaned, clenching the locket he had given her, and was keeping safe for her, in his desk.

  “I promise you. Now, come to me.”

  “SING TO ME,” Celia whispered, in the darkness beside the lake, where they rendezvoused.

  “My love is like a red, red rose . . . Let me, my love. Love me.” He swung the locket, as if to mesmerize her. But she was hypnotized already, by serious blue eyes.

  She put her arms around him. “Promise me.”

  “I pledge you my word. Now . . . come to me.”

  But his only promise was death.

  And the flames rose, licking at my skin, her skin, the white-hot fire searing us. The pain, the awful pain . . . who locked the door?

  I CAME BACK to myself.

  It was like my dreams—or memories—had mingled with Mandy’s—or Belle’s. I didn’t know how else to explain it—except that I had been somewhere else, living in Belle and Celia’s time and place—experiencing things that Belle had seen and done, and hoped, and dreamed . . . Two girls, locked in so much yearning, and wanting . . . Did it make Belle go crazy? Had it dogged her relentlessly from beyond the grave?

  Footfalls crunched in the snow, and I—Lindsay Cavanaugh—forced my eyes open. Miles Wi
nters was staring down at me and Mandy both. My heart stopped. He could hurt me. No one would see. No one would know.

  The wind ruffled his light blond hair as it whistled across the valley where Marlwood School squatted like a hunchback. But Miles was tall, towering over me, and there was something, some kind of energy, that I felt as he locked gazes with me. His eyes seemed to darken, like the stormy sky and he smiled, thinly, oddly.

  Snow fluttered onto the crown of his bare head. His blond hair was disheveled. There was a scar on the right side of his jaw. I’d never noticed it before.

  I heard my heartbeat thudding in my temples. I was afraid, but I was also . . . fascinated. I couldn’t explain it. I didn’t want to feel it. But I couldn’t break his hold on me. I couldn’t stop staring at Miles Winters, or feeling as if I had just received the most powerful shock of my life.

  “Well, Lindsay,” he said, in a husky, low voice. He looked at me for one more long, measured beat, and I stiffened, sure that he was coming to some sort of decision about my fate. I still couldn’t move. It was as if he had hypnotized me.

  Then he bent down, scooped his arms beneath Mandy’s neck and knees as if she weighed nothing, and straightened.

  He cocked his head at me, and for a second he looked very, very sad. His full mouth drooped, and snow dotted his lashes as he blinked.

  Then he turned and carried Mandy away.

  The spell broken, I gasped as I picked myself up from the snow.

  “He played them,” I said aloud, looking around me at the deserted woods. Played them and betrayed them. Promised them both his love if they would give him what he wanted. So did he kill them? Lock the door to be rid of both girls at once?

  My heart was beating so hard I was afraid I was going to pass out again. It all made sense. Unfinished business. Terrible business. That was why a dybbuk had found a home in Mandy. If Belle had not killed for love, had she died for it—a love that was not returned? A false love?

  I knew that kind of betrayal. I knew that kind of anger. The same thing had happened to me with Jane. But rather than deal with it, I had had a nervous breakdown. Whereas, in an attempt to deal with it face-on, Belle Johnson had wormed her way into Mandy Winter’s soul . . .