by Nancy Holder
“Hey,” he said, gazing down at me, “you said you were going to be a ghost, but I thought you’d be a little sexier.”
I suddenly realized we had a case of mistaken identity, and I wondered who he thought I was. “How do you know what I’ve got on under the sheet?” I replied tartly.
He let go of me and jumped back. I took pity on him and whipped off my disguise. And to my intense delight, he smiled broadly, obviously happy to see me.
“Whoops,” he said, with an evil grin. “No harm, no foul?”
“I’ll never wash my ass again,” I retorted, and he burst out laughing.
We shared a little amused moment. I was a little deflated, because he obviously had a girlfriend, or some girl he was expecting to meet tonight. But I knew things like that could change. They had changed on me.
“You. Are. Trouble. Casparrrrr.” He gestured to the corridor. “You going in?”
I half-turned. Saw the darkness. Smelled the smoke and the disinfectant. And then I was stymied again.
Not now, I begged myself. Act normal.
“It’ll be fun,” he said, misreading my fear for shyness. Maybe that was all it really was.
“C’mon.” He took my hand—he took my hand!—and propelled me forward gently.
“It’s downstairs,” he said. “In the basement. Vere ve perform zie autopsies.”
“Dissect here often?” I asked, concentrating on his hand. Warm. Big. Nice veins. Bulgy muscles. I was okay. Pretty much. I was having a little trouble breathing, but . . .
“Yes, as a matter of fact,” he said. “Well, we don’t dissect, but we do come over here. We row over. Lakewood bought new rowboats two years ago, and we know where they keep the old ones.”
It was intriguing to think of him sneaking around on our side of the lake. “Why don’t you drive? And what do you do when you come over?” I asked.
He snorted. “Because we’re supposed to be snug in our cubicles, studying. And what do you think we do when we come over?”
“Not going there,” I said, feeling my face warm up.
He chuckled. “You crack me up.”
“Then my work here is done.” After Riley broke my heart, I’d thought I would never flirt again. But it really was like falling off a bicycle.
“Here we go,” he said, turning me to the right. His flashlight grazed a dark rectangle, and I stiffened as the stench of cooked meat mingled with the odor of disinfectant and the smoke.
“Oh my God, that stinks,” I said.
He looked at me, then raised his chin and sniffed the air. “What? I don’t smell anything.”
I blinked. “You’re kidding.” Then I had a terrible thought. What if there was a fire down there? Maybe someone knocked over a candle, and the flames caught on someone’s costume; Julie had a hurt leg and . . .
. . . And what if he was pretending not to smell anything because he’d been prepped to help out with a prank and he didn’t know the fire was out of control?
“C’mon, be serious, Troy,” I ordered him. “You smell it, right?”
He cocked his head. “I really don’t.”
I exhaled and cradled my forehead in my free hand. Was I losing it? Going crazy?
“Do you have allergies?” he asked me.
“What? No,” I snapped at him. I looked past him to the door. Something was wrong. I could feel it. I knew it.
“I smell smoke,” I insisted.
“Okay, let’s go see.” He was humoring me. He walked through the door and started down some stone stairs. The gothy music grew louder; someone hit a sour note and I realized it was live. The hum of conversation grew louder. And the smells became more powerful. Troy looked at me over his shoulder as if to say, “See? There’s nothing to worry about.”
I could barely make out his features, and I knew he couldn’t see mine. He couldn’t see that I was sweaty and terrified.
The stairs led to a brick floor. He turned and waited for me, but he didn’t take my hand again. He hung a left.
We were staring into low dark room, lit with oil lamps and candles, dotted with antique tables and round-backed chairs that looked too nice to be operating theater relics. I saw Julie standing with Mandy and the others around a high table with a tile center. About twenty feet beyond them, two girls were playing violins and a boy with long blond hair was sawing at a beautiful cello. I looked at the instrument with longing, recalling my five years of lessons and recitals.
Julie was drinking from what looked to be a whiskey bottle, and Mandy the witch-ho and the others were dancing to the music as they clapped and cheered her on. Mandy faced me; Lara and Kiyoko gyrated with their backs to me. Shaking her hips, Alis was feeding Sangeeta what appeared to be a Jell-O shot in a little plastic cup.
I headed straight for them. To my surprise, Troy stayed with me.
Mandy was the first to notice us, and her face broke into a huge smile. I tempered my smile; I wasn’t pleased to see her, especially not when she was encouraging my fifteen-year-old roommate to get drunk.
Like you were so innocent last year, I reminded myself.
“Well,” I said to Troy, but he scooted ahead of me. Mandy struck a pose, thrusting out her hip and placing her right hand on it and her left hand behind her head. Then she let her head fall back as he gathered her up, bending her backward until her hat fell off, and kissed her hard on the lips.
Oh, crap.
So that was Troy’s girlfriend. Queen Mandy.
I ignored Mandy and Troy as best I could and headed for Julie.
I walked straight up to her. She flushed and started to set her bottle on the table, then picked it up again as if to underscore the fact that I was not the boss of her.
I took that in and moved on to Lara, who was undulating her arms like snakes.
And what I saw . . . I didn’t know what I saw. Lara’s eyes were black.
And so were Alis’s, and Sangeeta’s. And Kiyoko’s, as they danced. Their beat was off—all of them, out of time with the music . . . as if they were hearing other music . . .
Then Lara caught her breath, jerked her head, and stood statue still. She closed her eyes. When she opened them again, they were her usual brilliant green. She began to dance again, this time to the beat.
I ticked my attention to Kiyoko, who was swaying easily, back and forth. Her eyes were normal, too.
“Stop, I can’t breathe,” Mandy squealed.
“She can’t breathe. Call the doctor,” Troy yelled. He hadn’t seemed to notice the weird eyes, but he was playing along with Mandy’s theatricals. He was probably used to it. I wondered briefly how long they’d been together.
As they straightened back up, he lifted up his stethoscope. “Oh, wait, I am the doctor.” He placed the metal circle at the curving top of her bustier.
“That thing is cold,” she told him with a sexy scowl.
“I’ll warm it up.” He took it back and blew on it, then rubbed it between his fingers and placed it on her chest again. “There, let’s see . . . ach, nein, you don’t gotta heartbeat . . . Oh, whoops.”
He laughed and stuck the earpieces in his ears. “Wow, Manz, I really can hear your heartbeat. It’s very fast.”
The room was swaying. I felt something closing in on me, the room darkening. I was unbelievably cold.
“Julie, I need to go,” I said in a quiet voice. “Would you come with me?”
I moved a bit away. Julie followed. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m not feeling good.” It was the truth.
She made a face and glanced over her shoulder at the others, who were drinking, laughing, and having a great time. “We just got here. I need to rest my ankle. Besides . . .” She looked around wistfully. “Spider hasn’t shown yet.”
I gathered up my hair and let it fall. “Listen, Julie, I need to leave. And if Mandy tries to pull a prank . . . ” I knew how preachy this was sounding. “I just mean she might not realize how badly hurt you are.”
Julie’s mouth drop
ped open. “I don’t believe you. Do you think I’m retarded or something? You know, I actually lived through six weeks here without any help from you.”
A cork popped; a tall guy wrapped like a mummy held a champagne bottle over his head. Girls gathered toward him and opened their mouths.
Something was creeping closer. I looked over my shoulder, at the faces of the partygoers. A girl began to guzzle champagne as the others squealed and laughed. What was happening?
“Julie, please,” I said. “It’s . . . things are . . . ”
“Let’s check your brainwaves,” Troy said in a loud voice to Mandy. He put the end of the stethoscope on her forehead.
Mandy started screaming. The musicians stopped. People whirled around to stare, and Troy grabbed Mandy as she tumbled backward, nearly hitting the floor.
“Manz, what’s wrong?” he shouted. “What’s the matter?”
And in that moment, Alis, Sangeeta, Kiyoko, and Lara whipped around to face her. Face me. Their eyes were completely black. All of them.
Mandy was screaming and people were shouting and I thought, Julie. I can’t leave her there.
So I turned around and bellowed, “Julie, come on! Now!”
Her back was to me, and she, too, was comforting Mandy. She turned around—
—I held my breath—
—but her eyes were normal.
She didn’t say anything, but I knew she was going to stay.
“I can’t,” I whispered. “I just can’t.”
I bolted and ran, the screaming and laughter bouncing off the walls behind me. I pushed open a door and stepped into . . . ashes. Piles and piles of ashes. It was a mess; I started to turn back around when I saw moonlight pouring into a hole in the roof up ahead. I shuffled through the piles as if they were autumn leaves.
The bricks were black with soot; at the far end, a square of moonlight revealed that a door had once stood there. I walked through and saw I’d been in a tunnel, partly submerged into the ground. I smelled smoke and now there was another smell . . . kerosene, like for camping lanterns . . .
What’s going on? I wondered as I raced back along the trail through the woods, toward the main campus.
Books on reforming girls with bad behavior. Mandy and her friends with their eyes going all black like that. All the elaborate hazing just to be a part of their little in-crowd. I couldn’t understand it. The flashes of cold, the uncertainty I felt whenever I was around Mandy.
I didn’t know what all of it meant.
But I was more determined than ever to find out.
November: The Bait
Worldly wealth is the Devil’s bait.
—Robert Burton
A dimple on the chin, the devil within.
—Pope Paul VI
thirteen
To my intense relief, Mandy’s freakout killed the party. People started leaving, and Julie, half-carried by Rose caught up with me in the woods. Julie was bummed because she hadn’t gotten to see Spider; also because rather than share in the drama of calming Mandy down, Mandy asked her to go back to Jessel and make sure things were going okay—asked Julie, who couldn’t even walk on her own. Ms. Psycho wanted to take a minute to compose herself before she and “the girls” resumed their haunted house hostess duties.
It was obvious that Julie wanted to stay with Mandy and the others. Be one of the girls. Not tonight. Not any night, hopefully.
Rose and I somehow managed to get Julie through the forest, a wobbly, pouty Tinker Bell. She swore to me that she would get crutches in the morning; her ankle was throbbing and she was in tears. So once again, I skipped the carnival and got her to our dorm, taking off my filthy high-tops and walking in my stockinged feet down our hall. Julie sniffled as she took off her costume. I knew she was in pain and her feelings were hurt, and she was embarrassed. That kept her attention off me, which was fine with me. Because I was really losing it.
The white head was still on the windowsill of our room. Where else would it be? Across the quad and down the hill, the Jessel haunted house party was still going strong. Julie urged me to go back out, but there was no way. I got in my pajamas and helped Julie; and our big night officially ended.
I crawled into bed. I was trembling. Black eyes. What did that mean? Drugs. Had to be. These girls could hire scientist geniuses to design drugs for them. Mandy had had a bad trip. That must have been it.
I shifted to Troy. God, how could he be Mandy’s boyfriend? Was there a chip in his brain? Was she that good in bed?
Could I steal him?
Don’t even think that, I admonished myself. Jane Taylor had stolen my crush, and it had pretty much pushed me over the edge. I could never do that to another girl, not even Mandy Winters.
After a while, I began to drift, going in and out of a heavy doze. My body weighed a thousand pounds; my chest barely rose and fell. The little finger on my left hand twitched.
Drifted, dozed, sank.
Goosebumps rose along my body. I was cold. Had I kicked off my blanket and sheets? I tried to move my hand to gather them up, but I couldn’t move.
And I knew, without a doubt, that someone else was in the room.
I fought to open my eyes. A cold breath brushed the crown of my head. I tried to move again . . . and drifted . . .
“You,” someone whispered in my ear. No, not in my ear; inside my head. And it wasn’t a whisper, but an echo, a wisp of a word braiding and unbraiding deep in my dreaming mind.
“You.”
I fought hard to wake up; there was a stone on top of my chest and my eyelids were glued shut. The weight on my chest pressed me against the mattress, and I couldn’t breathe. I floated, sank; my sheets enfolded me like splashing waves. The bed was a sinking anchor; I was going to drown.
“You.”
“Must.”
When Julie woke me up at midnight, she said I was sobbing uncontrollably.
“Stop.”
fourteen
November 2
“Yes, stress,” Julie said, as she and I sat on our beds, facing each other. She had just awakened me from another nightmare. It was my fourth, or fifth. Or maybe sixth.
“You just left home. You’re up here in the mountains with a bunch of girls you don’t know. And it’s getting to you. So, nightmares,” she finished.
“So are you,” I replied. “New to all this. And those girls . . . Mandy . . . are stress-maniacs.” I took a chance. “And Mandy is insane.”
Julie pulled her wrapped ankle onto the bed and scooted backwards. “Don’t try to change the subject. I don’t have to defend them. Or myself.” I could see the hurt in her eyes, and the uncertainty—a small victory. She was confused about Mandy. That was a start. I pressed on.
“Okay, not insane. But they were high on Halloween,” I insisted. “Their pupils were so dilated I couldn’t even see any color.”
“I didn’t see that.”
“It only lasted a couple of seconds.”
She snorted.
“I’m not trying to BS you, Julie.”
Silence filled the chasm. Then she took a breath and cleared her throat.
“You told me they have séances,” I said, trying another angle. “Kiyoko’s got a bookmark from an occult store in San Francisco.”
“Oh, what a horrible thing,” Julie mocked, covering her cheeks. “Kiyoko has a bookmark. They do séances. So that makes them crazy.”
“I’m not saying I believe that they do anything superweird, but being interested in the occult is weird, when you’re our age. C’mon, do you know anybody back home who still does stuff like that?”
She ran her fingers along Caspi’s eyelashes. “I don’t know that many people,” she said. “When you’re a stable brat, you kind of have a different focus.”
She’d had to sell her horse. So did that mean she didn’t have any friends, either? Like me? That we were each other’s best and only friends?
“You know, if this were a horror movie, it would turn out that I’
m right and you’re wrong.” I tried to make it sound like a joke, but I heard the hurt in my voice. “They would be possessed by Satan, and you would die a hideous death.”
“This is definitely the location for it,” she volleyed back, with a weak smile. “No cell phones, adults who let us do whatever we want.”
“Yeah.”
“Anyway, Mandy bluffs,” she said. “She would never really do anything to anyone.”
I let the sentence hang there. After all, she was the one who’d gotten hurt. And Kiyoko had probably been about a minute away from hypothermia last week at the lake.
“Just . . . be careful. Be careful, because you’re my friend.” I took a deep breath. “My best friend.”
“Oh.” She was a rosy little cherub. “Same here.”
We hugged. Caspian kissed my cheek. I was a bit embarrassed but I made a little kissy noise in his general direction.
“Okay. Next item on the agenda is, I have to pee,” I told her.
I trundled down the hall past the bad art and the portrait with the eyes that followed you and . . .
Come to me . . .
I flicked on the bathroom light and did my thing, then walked past our five huge bathtubs and turned on the sink. I didn’t look at myself in the mirror. I had always thought that fluorescent lights made people look ugly.
That’s why I’m not looking, I told myself.
I adjusted the hot water. And I forgot I was avoiding the mirror and looked up at myself, and I saw . . .
—Oh God—
“Nothing,” I insisted, shuddering as I stared back down at the water. “Nothing is there.”
There was no pale reflection staring back at me, with darkened eyes. I hadn’t seen that.
The distortion in the mirror was due to the overhead fluorescent lights. Those stupid lights would make anyone look . . .
. . . Dead.
I ran-walked out of there as fast as I could. I wasn’t even sure that I had turned off the water.
I went back into our room. Julie smiled at me.
Maybe I had imagined the whole thing.