The Dead Girls of Hysteria Hall

  “I thought you hated pink,” Dad said, moving past me with my suitcase.

  That was true. And the broken dresser reminded me of a sinister, toothless smile.

  “I like the view,” I said. “Plus, it’s as far from Janie as I can get.”

  And as close to the exit.

  “I heard you!” Janie shouted from the room she’d chosen—Room 6, the one at the very end of the hall.

  After Mom and Dad headed back downstairs, I loaded up my messenger bag with everything I’d need to hit the road. It might be a long, rainy walk to town, and a suitcase would just slow me down. I wished I’d thought to bring an umbrella.

  Down the hall, Janie was singing softly to herself.

  In spite of my sister’s many (many, many) shortcomings, she had perfect pitch and a natural talent for singing. I certainly wasn’t looking forward to the day she realized just how good she was. With my luck, she’d win one of those TV talent shows and end up a millionaire, and I’d be the talentless reject sister, forgotten in the shadows. Sometimes I felt like our whole family was waiting for that to happen.

  Her voice, clear and lovely, drifted down the hall while I waited on the bed with my packed bag, watching the minutes tick by on my phone. I’d changed from my jeans and T-shirt into an old baggy burgundy sweater of Dad’s and gray leggings dotted with white hearts. On my feet were a pair of knockoff Ugg boots, and my hair was pulled up into a messy bun. It was basically a half step up from pajamas, but I figured that if I was going to spend the night in a bus station (or juvie lockup), I might as well be comfortable.

  My feet rested on the little round stool I’d pulled away from the vanity, rocking it back and forth on its uneven legs in time with my sister’s song. Her flawless rhythm and the gentle knock of the wood against the floor lulled me into a bit of a trance. I found myself following the words of her song. It was one I’d never heard before, and it was old-fashioned—a complete departure from her usual repertoire of pop songs about breakups.

  “Beautiful dreamer, wake unto me … Starlight and dewdrops are waiting for thee …”

  Her voice drifted off, like she’d fallen asleep. Excellent. This would be my best chance to sneak out. I got up off the bed, accidentally knocking over the little wooden footstool with a clatter. I hurriedly set it upright. But as soon as my fingers let go of the smooth, round edge, it knocked itself over again …

  And rolled toward me.

  I watched in silence, unable to believe my eyes.

  Then it bumped up against my foot.

  My heart racing, I scrambled backward, running into the bed and knocking something loose behind me. I turned around to see that I had dislodged a leather strap, complete with buckles, bolted to the bed frame. Lifting the bedspread, I found more straps—one for each wrist and ankle, and a big one that would fit perfectly across a torso.

  Don’t freak out, I told myself. Just go. Get your things and go.

  I grabbed my messenger bag and purse, double-checked to make sure I had my phone and charger, and started into the hall. The bathroom door gaped open, and I caught a flash of lightning through the window.

  A high-pitched scream filled the air.

  It was the kind of sound that overloads your brain, leaving you blank except for the sudden, all-consuming awareness of a person in horrible distress.

  Janie!

  I dropped my stuff and ran back to her room, gasping at the sight that greeted me—

  My sister was strapped into the bed, her thin wrists and ankles caught fast in the leather buckles. The big one was cinched tightly around her chest, although she was doing an admirable job of fighting against it, writhing and struggling like a fish in a net.

  “Janie!” I said, racing to the bed. “Are you okay?”

  “Delia!!!” she shrieked. “Get me out, get me out, get me out!”

  “I’m trying!” I said, fumbling with the buckle on her right ankle.

  “No, my hands,” she panted, wild-eyed. “Please. Do my hands first.”

  My parents’ footsteps thundered down the hall. They rushed in just as I was starting to undo my sister’s right hand.

  “What on earth?” Mom cried.

  Without waiting for an explanation, my parents each grabbed a strap and went to work. The leather was so dried with age that it cracked wherever it was bent, leaving a pattern of fine lines in the dull brown surface.

  “What happened here?” Mom asked. “What were you girls doing?”

  “Now hold on,” I said, so surprised that I let go of my sister’s wrist. “We girls weren’t doing anything. She, Janie somehow got herself strapped down.”

  “I did not!” Janie snapped, shaking her bound wrist at me. Mom reached across to finish what I’d started.

  The thing was, I actually believed my sister. How would she have gotten herself strapped in? Even if she’d been able to buckle her own ankles and torso, how could she do both of her hands?

  “You have to be more careful,” Mom said. “What if we hadn’t been around?”

  My sister’s jaw set. “I didn’t do it. I was asleep.”

  Fear started to rise inside me like an approaching tsunami. The house was closing in on us.

  Mom gave Janie a dubious look. “Sweetheart, how else would you have gotten stuck in the restraints?”

  “Janie,” Dad said, “you need to tell us the truth. How did this happen?”

  Janie’s eyes narrowed. Her mouth began to open.

  The air in my lungs turned dry and heavy and hot.

  I knew what she was going to say before she said it. The impact of her words was as inevitable as two cars skidding toward each other across an icy intersection.

  “Delia did it.”

  OBSERVATIONS MADE AFTER THE FACT

  Despite this incident, and despite everything she went on to tell herself in the coming years, what happened to me that night was not my sister’s fault.

  She’s lying,” I said.

  “Delia,” my father said, his words coming slowly at first, and then gaining speed, “the drama queen act has to stop. You have done everything in your power to ruin this for the whole family, and I for one am sick of it.”

  “Ruin it?” I asked. “It came ruined!”

  “Brad,” Mom said, clucking her tongue. “You know I hate the phrase drama queen.”

  “Yes, and I’m sorry, but it applies.” Dad took a deep breath and turned to face me. “I know you feel like you’re some sort of victim in all this, but here’s the fact: You did something wrong. And you got caught. And now you can accept the consequences like a man.”

  Mom hmmphed.

  “Like a grown-up, then,” Dad said. “You only think about yourself. And that needs to change.”

  I turned away.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” he asked.

  Did they seriously not understand?

  “Leaving,” I said. “So go ahead and start cooking up some new consequences.”

  “Cordelia,” Dad said. His voice was as serious as death. “You’re not leaving.”

  I didn’t even bother looking back. I threw the words over my shoulder.

  “Watch me,” I said.

  * * *

  My messenger bag was right where I’d left it, but my purse was gone, and I couldn’t leave without my wallet and phone. I paused, imagining for a moment that I’d heard shrill laughter—then shook it off and went back to my room. My purse was lying limply on the floor, its contents spread out as if a wild animal had rifled through them.

  I heard my parents coming down the hall, their low, tense voices punctuated by Janie’s excited outbursts. Then there was murmuring, and Janie cried out indignantly, which I took to mean that our parents were telling her, yet again, to mind her own beeswax. Loud stomping and the muffled slam of a door confirmed my suspicions.

  I picked up my purse, braced myself, and looked up to see Mom and Dad standing just outside my door.

  “Look,” I said. “I understand why t
his whole summer project thing is important to you. But I can’t spend another minute in this house.”

  They exchanged a long, exhausted look, which seemed like a good sign. Like I was wearing them down—never underestimate the power of wearing your parents down.

  “You’re overwrought,” Dad said.

  “I’m not, though.” I set my purse on the bed and forced my voice to sound reasonable. “I’m of perfectly sound mind and body. But I don’t know how long that will last, if you make me stay here.”

  Mom pinched the bridge of her nose. Her sinuses were probably going crazy from all the dust, which meant it wouldn’t be long before she ended up with a migraine. I considered inviting her to come with me. Let Dad and Janie get their weird kicks out of this twisted place. My mother and I had standards.

  Then Mom reached out. I thought she was going to, I don’t know, try to take my hand or something. I made up my mind not to let her.

  But instead, she ever so gently took hold of the doorknob … and ever so gently closed the door.

  I stared for a second, not quite comprehending. But when I heard the jangling of the key ring, I got it. I mean, I seriously Got It.

  They had locked me in.

  “What?!” I yelled. “What are you doing?”

  “Honey, it’s only temporary. Until we can figure this out.” My mother’s voice was thin and brittle.

  I tried to yank open the door, but it didn’t budge. Of course it didn’t—it was bolted shut. It was doing what it was designed to do. “You’re locking me up in here? Like a crazy person? Just another hysterical troubled female?”

  I could practically picture Mom flinching.

  “Of course you’re not crazy,” Dad said. The unhappiness in his voice was palpable. “But you need to take a little time to relax.”

  “I don’t want time! I’m not going to relax!” I got louder and louder, until I was basically shouting my lungs out. “I need to get out of this awful place, now!”

  “Delia,” Dad said softly. “We simply can’t allow you to run off again.”

  Again. The word scraped the inside of my brain like a piece of balled-up tinfoil.

  Of course they would connect two completely unrelated incidents into a pattern, as if I were a serial killer from some criminal profiling TV show.

  “This isn’t like Daytona.” I managed to lower my voice but couldn’t keep my teeth from gritting. “I’m not trying to run off somewhere. I’m just trying to get out of this place.”

  “But … why?” Mom asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I just need to.” And when I said it, I realized how true it was—how desperately I had to get away from whatever was in this house. My skin began to feel like it was crawling with insects. I rubbed my hands on my arms, trying to push the sensation away.

  “Please,” I said. “Please just let me out.”

  “We will,” Dad said.

  “When?”

  I could feel their helplessness radiating through the door.

  “We’re not sure,” Mom said lamely.

  I tugged on the seam of my sweater, my rage and indignation rising, until the pent-up energy propelled me toward the door. I slammed into it with my shoulder.

  Mom let out a little surprised yelp, and I bashed into the door again.

  Not for the first time (or the last, it may be worth noting), my emotions were starting to get the better of me.

  “Now hang on, sweetheart,” Dad said, and I could tell by the sweetheart and the note of anxiety behind his words that he was heartily wishing the situation had progressed differently.

  Smash. When I hit the door for a third time, a shooting pain went down my left arm. I clutched my elbow and backed away, my breath coming in heavy huffs.

  “You have to understand,” Dad said. “After what happened with spring break—”

  “Go away.” My voice was low, but I knew they heard me.

  Mom spoke in her most conciliatory tone. “Honey, we’re going to go call Carol, and then we’ll come back and work this out.”

  Carol was the family therapist my parents had insisted we start seeing after the spring-break incident. She was nice enough, but mostly I just sat in her office staring at her collection of exotic conch shells while my parents tried to goad me into sharing my feelings.

  “Yeah, do that,” I said. “Tell her you locked me up in an insane asylum. She’ll love it. Very empowering.”

  There was an uncomfortable, shuffling pause. Then Mom’s voice piped up, faint and hesitantly hopeful. “Delia, if we opened the door now, what would you do?”

  “Run,” I said. “As far from you people as I can get.”

  I should have just lied. But seriously—what no one seemed to believe anymore was that, at heart, I’m actually an honest person.

  My parents sighed in unison.

  Then I spoke the last words they would ever hear from my earthly person.

  “I hate you,” I said. “And by the way, tell Janie I hate her, too.”

  After a moment of wounded silence, their reluctant footsteps led away.

  OBSERVATIONS MADE AFTER THE FACT

  I hate you. And by the way, tell Janie I hate her, too.

  Let me tell you something.

  On a cold and loveless night, when the silver moonlight drinks the color from the earth and the grass tumbles in the wind like waves tossed on an endless, angry sea …

  That is not the kind of memory that keeps you warm.

  I frothed and fumed by the door for a few minutes, but that kind of anger really saps your energy. It wasn’t long before exhaustion set in.

  I walked over to the window to take a look at the storm. Clouds boiled on the horizon, gray upon gray piling together into a churning darkness. Rain had begun to advance across the vastness of the property—you could see it pulsing its way over the hills. Sharp, sudden bursts of wind shook the old glass panes in their frames.

  Just at the crest of the hill, a dozen spidery tendrils of electricity emerged from the cloud like writhing fingers. Then thunder struck, so loud that my ears went momentarily numb. It came in rolls, constant and deafening, rumbling all the way into the center of my chest.

  I stepped away from the window.

  I started to have the odd feeling that this was, on some level, weirdly personal.

  No, Delia. It’s just a storm. An act of nature.

  But the room around me grew darker.

  And it wasn’t the kind of darkness that comes with nightfall.

  Something caught my eye at the seam where the ceiling and wall met above the window. A dark, oily-looking fog crawled along the plaster, winding its way down the vines on the wallpaper—as if it were part of the design.

  Slowly, I turned around.

  A pulsing layer of black smoke filled the room.

  I watched as the smoke descended the walls, its movements hypnotic. It seemed to breathe, somehow—pausing with each inhale, going a little faster with each exhale …

  I lost myself in watching it slide down toward me.

  Then I became vaguely aware of a horrible creaking noise, like the building was going to collapse. Thumping footsteps in the hall outside. Shouting.

  But all I could focus on was the smoke.

  It reached the floor and sinewed along the grains of the floorboards and through the intricate weave of the carpet toward my feet. It began to coat my skin. I could feel it on my legs, even through my leggings—an irresistible velvety softness.

  Though my thoughts had grown swirling and vague, some part of me knew this wasn’t good. I tried to back away, away, away from the grasping mist.

  From a far-off place: banging on the door. Voices raised in panic.

  But I wasn’t panicking. I wasn’t thinking at all.

  Somehow the smoke found its way between the bricks and through the invisible seams in the plaster. It worked its way under the floorboards and baseboards, rippling beneath the wallpaper. The bed gave a short, sharp jerk, and the little
stool fell to its side and rolled wildly around the room. Bells rang, and rang, and rang, and then cut off suddenly.

  Everything was centered on me. The rug began to crawl inward, dragging its tassels against the dusty floor. The dresser, bolted in place, stretched and strained in an effort to break free. The room was alive—or something was alive in there with me.

  I inched back as far as I could, until I was standing against the wire barrier that covered the window.

  Behind me, the window flew open, filling the room with a miniature tempest.

  Faintly, from across an endless distance, there was more shouting.

  As if my shoulders were being gently guided … I turned around.

  The wire barrier between the window and myself had been torn away.

  I looked wonderingly down at my hands, which were crisscrossed in cuts and soaked in blood.

  The slippery smoke was now up to my neck. It squeezed lightly on my throat, and then the warmth of it stroked my chin before slipping, sweet and smoky, down my throat. It seemed as if the fingers of a gentle hand softly shut my eyelids for me and coaxed the breath out of my lungs.

  I tried to open my mouth.

  I tried to call for my mother.

  But there was only silence.

  And deep, deep darkness.

  I jolted awake. The storm had quieted, leaving behind only a strange glowing quality in the evening light.

  Mom and Dad were arguing outside the door. “Where were they?!” Dad demanded. I heard clumsy fumbling with a set of keys.

  “In the day room!” Mom’s voice was an octave higher than normal. “On the floor next to one of the tables! I don’t know how they got all the way out there!”

  “You guys, relax,” I called, backing away from the window. “I’m fine.”

  I watched the door because (sue me) I wanted to enjoy their expressions of fear and regret. They should feel regret. They’d locked me in here and then apparently lost the keys—during a huge, scary storm, no less.

  I had my line all ready to say. Parents of the Year, guys.

  So when the door flew open, I spread my arms wide. But in the moment, I couldn’t bring myself to taunt them. Instead, I said, “Are you ready to listen to reason now?”