The Dead Girls of Hysteria Hall

by Katie Alender

  The girl’s body vanished, and Florence’s lips curled into an ugly, triumphant smile. “You can imagine how I felt when I woke up and found that I was part of the house at last. I could live here forever—in my home, where I belong. This house loves me, and I it. What the house wants, I want. And really, how much is it to ask for? A little obedience in exchange for a comfortable home … It’s our duty, if you think about it.”

  Outside, the summer sun was high overhead, leaving the yard oddly shadowless.

  “Anyway, that’s the long way round of telling you that I’m afraid you aren’t going to be allowed to leave us, honey,” she said. “Nor your sister, nor your mama.”

  “That doesn’t work for me,” I said. “Sorry.”

  She carefully smoothed her skirts, like a warrior adjusting her armor before the battle. “Oh, I’m sorry, too.”

  I stood. We were the same height, standing eye to eye. “Florence.”

  “Yes?”

  “Let’s be clear,” I said. “I’m not afraid of some pathetic old control freak of a ghost.”

  “You’re braver than you are smart,” she said, sneering. “If you haven’t sense enough to be afraid of me, I’ll just have to teach you to be. And it looks like you’re out of salt, sweet pea.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” I said.

  Her eyes widened, mocking me. “I can’t wait to remind you of all these valiant words when you’re a crushed and broken smear of bones and blood on the floor.”

  “I’m a ghost,” I said, letting my arms relax by my sides. “I don’t bleed.”

  She was trying to seem lighthearted, but I could tell she was a little unnerved by my confidence. “You got some trick up your sleeve?”

  “I don’t need tricks,” I said. “I’m stronger than you.”

  She stepped toward me.

  I didn’t need a trick. I really wasn’t afraid of her. I knew what she was fighting with, and what I was fighting with.

  I called up the thoughts I usually fought to suppress—being trapped in the room with the smoke—watching my family drive away—Aunt Cordelia dragging herself down the driveway in the frigid morning air—Maria being hurt—Nic, pale and bleeding—my mother’s unfathomable pain—my sister sobbing with guilt, bearing the weight of my death—

  The world began to vibrate around me.

  Power filled my body as if I was summoning it out of thin air.

  At the same time, Florence exploded with light. I heard a high-pitched wail as her strength grew.

  And then we slammed into each other.

  Our arms came together, our hands clasped, and we pushed against each other—not just with our physical forms, but with the strength of our innermost souls, our deepest feelings.

  And that was how I knew I was going to win. Because I was fighting with love—to defend the people I cared about. To earn their safety and freedom.

  Florence was fighting with fear. If she lost, she had nothing. Not even the memory of having been truly loved.

  It was like arm wrestling, only with my entire being. The struggle was somehow about the right to occupy the space we were both in. To extinguish the other’s energy would leave the loser helpless against whatever revenge the winner chose to exact.

  And Florence’s vengeance would be vicious, if she should win.

  But she wasn’t going to win.

  “The house doesn’t love you, Florence,” I whispered. “It’s incapable of love. It’s only using you because you’ll do as it says. Because it can control you, like your mother controlled you … but some dark part of you knows that, doesn’t it?”

  She fought back with a burst of rage, and for a moment I was rocked backward as she almost got the better of me.

  But then she began to fade.

  “You know it won’t have any use for you if you don’t win this,” I said. “If you’re not perfect.”

  Then I made the most dangerous choice I’ve ever made—in life or death.

  I pulled my right hand out of her left hand, momentarily breaking the cycle of energy between us.

  And I reached up and dug my nails across her perfect face.

  She screamed in a way I’d never heard anyone scream, living or dead—fury and terror in a desperate mix. In the chaos of the moment, I scratched her again. Her once-flawless beauty-queen complexion was permanently raked with the marks of my fingernails.

  She reached up with both hands to feel the deep lines cutting across her face.

  I put my hands on her shoulders, completing the circuit once again, and let a final blast of energy pulse through me.

  Florence went down in a heap on the floor. She was unconscious … but maybe not for long.

  I didn’t waste a single moment. I dragged her motionless form toward the back hall, then down the basement stairs. I laid her down in a corner and ran back up to the kitchen, where I grabbed as many cartons of salt as I could carry.

  Back in the basement, I poured a thick circle of salt around her, in a tight outline surrounding her body. She began to stir as I finished emptying the third canister.

  “What have you done?” Her eyes popped open, and her hands reached up toward her damaged face. She let out an enraged howl. “What have you done to me?”

  “Sorry, sugar,” I said, dropping the empty salt container. “Looks like you’re not the prettiest dead girl here anymore.”

  She moved to get up, but the barrier slammed her back. She tried moving in every direction, but she was penned in. She had hardly enough room to get to her feet, and when she finally did, she only had an area about the length and width of a coffin to move around in.

  “What now?” she wheezed. “You’re just going to leave me here forever?”

  “Nobody’s staying forever,” I said. “I’ll be back to deal with you later.”

  Her infuriated screams echoed behind me as I went upstairs.

  Janie was still passed out on the floor of the lobby.

  I reached down and rested my palm against her cheek.

  “Janie,” I said. “I’m sorry I was such a jerk to you when I was alive. I know you loved me anyway. You may never understand what happened to me, but that doesn’t matter. All you need to understand is that it’s not your fault—it was never your fault.”

  A faint rose tint began to return to my sister’s cheeks.

  I waited until her eyes fluttered weakly open, until I saw the haziest flash of recognition in them. Then I bent down and kissed her on the forehead.

  “I love you,” I said. “So unbelievably much.”

  Her eyes went wide, but she could no longer see or sense my presence.

  I sat back and watched her carefully for signs of injuries or lingering aftereffects from her brief possession. She seemed fine—a little dazed, but that was understandable.

  She got to her feet and moved with purpose to the back stairs, stopping to look at and then pick up Mom’s purse from the bottom step. Upstairs, she crossed through the day room into the ward.

  “Mom?” she called. “Where are you?”

  A weak voice, heavy with relief, answered her from Room 2. “Here, Janie.”

  When Janie walked in, Mom struggled to act normal, pushing herself up to a sitting position.

  I glanced at the floor. Eliza was gone.

  But in this moment, I had to stay with my family.

  “What happened?” Mom asked. Her voice sounded like someone had taken sandpaper to it.

  Janie didn’t even sit down. “I want to go,” she said. “Right now. If I have to carry you down the stairs, I will.”

  “That won’t be necessary,” Mom said. “I think I can make it. Leave the bags, leave everything. We only need the car keys. They’re in my purse.”

  Janie dug through Mom’s purse for a minute and then looked up, dismay etched on her features. “No, they’re not,” she said. “Where could they have gone? Who would have taken them?”

  “I’m sure no one took them.” But my mother’s voice didn’t match the
confidence level of her words. “I could have left them downstairs, I guess. Maybe they’re in the car. But I don’t think so.”

  My sister’s eyes flashed. “What about your phone?”

  “In my purse,” Mom said.

  Janie’s lips parted, and after a deep inhale, she said, “No, it isn’t.”

  “Well, they must be somewhere,” Mom said.

  But as my sister looked around the room, I could tell she had zero expectation of finding the missing items.

  She knew the house too well by now.

  When I emerged into the hall, Penitence came up to me. She was studiously calm, her eyes wide and concerned.

  “I moved Eliza into Room 4,” she said, and in her voice I heard the rhythm and inflection of not just a helpless bystander but of a woman of authority—a wardress. “I thought she’d be more comfortable. Go see her, and I’ll keep watch here.”

  Eliza was lying on top of the covers, her eyes open but unfocused—so unlike her that a chill went through me.

  Someone’s walking on my grave.

  “Never thought I’d end up back on the ward,” she said, trying to smile but managing only a grimace of pain.

  I knelt beside her. “You’re going to be all right.”

  “Delia, honestly.” She made a cross face at me, and her mood actually seemed to lift. “Your optimism is truly colonial.”

  “I’m so grateful for what you did,” I said, reaching down to smooth what remained of her hair. “You saved my sister and my mother.”

  “I told you I would,” Eliza said, a hint defiantly. “I seem to have a thing for playing the hero, don’t I? If only I were a more competent fighter.”

  A seizure-like convulsion shook her body. But after a few seconds, she opened her eyes. “Don’t look at me like that. Ghosts don’t die from injuries like this. I’m not going anywhere … anywhere at all, I suppose. Ever again.”

  I leaned over, meaning to take her hands, but they were wrecked and limp, as if all the bones had been crushed. “I’m so sorry,” I said.

  “Oh, don’t be maudlin,” Eliza said. “Now my outsides match my insides. Damaged soul, damaged body.”

  “You’re wrong,” I said. “Your soul is perfect.”

  She slumped against the pillow, staring out the window at the sinking sun.

  “I don’t think I’ve watched the sunset in seventy-five years,” she said quietly.

  “I imagine it gets old after a while,” I said, pulling up a chair and sitting next to her.

  “It shouldn’t, though, should it? How could something so incredible get old?” She sighed weakly. “Shouldn’t you go look after your family?”

  “In a minute,” I said. “Penitence is with them.”

  Eliza tried and failed to stretch, then gave up and settled uncomfortably back against the bed. “So what happened with Florence? You won?”

  “She’s been neutralized,” I said.

  “You do keep astounding me, Delia.” She sighed and looked back out the window. “How terribly sad, though. I thought she was my friend.”

  “She’s been very lost for a very long time,” I said.

  Eliza clucked quietly. “Haven’t we all?”

  “Maybe,” I said. “But I’m going to fix things, if I can.”

  She nodded, and then there was a long pause. When she spoke again, her tone was soft and sad. “I know it’s foolish, but … I’d sort of hoped this would have redeemed me. I thought perhaps my business was to help you, and then I could drift off into the ether to the sound of angelic trumpets or something. But … I suppose not. There must be more work to do.”

  In spite of her attempt to sound breezy, there was palpable, painful disappointment in her voice.

  “I think I know what the work is,” I said. “There’s a black fire somewhere. I have to find it and put it out.”

  “Black fire …” Eliza repeated. Then, staring out the window, she offhandedly recited, “‘Black flames of evil burning bright, darkening the darkest night … extinguish’d by the blood of light, day is born from endless night.’ ”

  “What?” I said, sitting up. “What’s that?”

  “It’s just a poem,” she said. “A little thing I had to recite in school. You’ve never heard of it? Lord Lindley. Some pompous old marquess from the seventeen hundreds.”

  Lindley. Where had I heard that name before?

  “ ‘Blood of light’?” I echoed.

  “Oh, you know,” she said. “It’s quite simplistic—innocence vanquishing evil and all that. It’s designed to scare children into piety. It goes on and on. Men’s sons, mindless of evil’s blight, awaken blind to their perilous plight, et cetera et cetera … fight, white, knight … It’s amazing he found so many rhyming words. You find Lindley in a lot of stodgy old books.”

  Books. That was it. I remembered the books on the parlor shelves, with the authors’ names in gold and silver on the spines. And among those names: Lindley.

  “If it’s an actual fire,” I said, thinking out loud, “it could be the source of the black smoke.”

  “But it’s not an actual fire,” she protested. “It’s just a poem.”

  “Nothing’s ‘just’ an anything here,” I said. “I think there’s an actual black fire somewhere. It can’t be a coincidence. Maxwell liked that poet well enough to keep his collected works. Maybe there’s some connection—something to do with Maxwell’s death.”

  “If you say so,” Eliza said. “I remain skeptical.”

  “Yeah, surprise,” I said. “So … it can be extinguished by blood of light. That might mean that someone innocent can put it out.”

  “Who around here could possibly pass as innocent?” Eliza asked. “Except maybe—”

  She waited for me to say it.

  “Janie,” I said. “She was never committed here. She was never locked in. She doesn’t belong to the house. She’s innocent.”

  “She’s a very bright girl,” Eliza said. “You’ve got to save her, you know. It wouldn’t do to have her die here.”

  “I know,” I said. “What do you think it means, though, the blood of light? Her actual blood?”

  “I hope not,” Eliza said. “How ghastly.”

  The sun grew smaller and thinner, until it was just a sliver dipping below the distant hillside—and then it suddenly seemed to expand in a moment of brightness.

  And then it disappeared.

  “Oh,” Eliza said in surprise, as though the answer to some riddle had just occurred to her. The bells on her wrist jingled faintly. “Delia—I think you may be right. I think maybe …”

  I turned to see why she’d stopped speaking.

  She was gone.

  All that remained of her were the ghostly bells resting on the bedspread.

  I told myself not to cry. I had to believe that Eliza was in a better place now.

  What’s more, her last, unfinished words only convinced me more thoroughly that there was something to my theory about the poem.

  When I reached Room 2, Mom and Janie had given up on finding their phones or the car keys. With my mother’s arm draped over my sister’s shoulder, they slowly progressed in the direction of the downstairs hallway.

  But what would they do once they were outside? As badly as Mom wanted to be okay, she was unsteady on her feet. No way would she make it down the driveway. Janie might have to leave her behind and go to the highway to flag down a passing car. And it wasn’t safe for either of them to be anywhere on the property for much longer.

  As they were coming down the main hall, there was a banging noise from the lobby.

  My sister froze. “What was that?”

  “Probably nothing,” Mom said, putting her hand on Janie’s arm.

  “Hang on,” Janie said. “Let me go see …”

  “Janie, no!” Mom said, and the spike of fear in her voice was sharp enough to stop my sister before she could walk away.

  I moved past them to investigate, keeping my eyes on the walls and ceiling
to look for tendrils of black smoke. What if this was a trap? A distraction? What if—

  There was more horrible banging on the door.

  “Lisa? Jane?” someone shouted. Bang! Bang! “Are you in there? What’s going on?”

  It was Dad.

  Mom rushed forward and unlocked the door. “Brad, what are you doing here?”

  My father’s hair was thinning. He was skinnier than I’d ever seen him but still wearing his old clothes. It was like my death had turned him into an old man—practically a stranger.

  Then his face twisted in frustration and anger, and I thought with relief, There’s Dad.

  “I get out of a seminar, and I have half an incoherent voice mail from Jane saying you’re here—why would you ever come back here?—and then I couldn’t reach either of you on your cell phones. I paid six hundred bucks for the next flight from New York, rented a car in Harrisburg, and—”

  He was so busy working himself up that he didn’t notice my sister until she’d thrown her arms around him.

  “Daddy, you came!” Janie cried, tears streaming down her cheeks. “You came …”

  My father was utterly disarmed by her reaction. His tone, when he spoke next, was significantly subdued. He glanced at Mom. “Lisa … what’s going on?”

  “Nothing good,” Mom said grimly. “You said you rented a car?”

  “Yes,” Dad said.

  “Great. We’ll explain on the way.”

  “On the way where? Where are your things?”

  “Forget our things,” Mom said. “Let’s go.”

  Dad nodded, bewildered, but the way Janie clung to him silenced his questions. “I’m parked right out front,” he said. “Are you all right, Lisa?”

  “She’s sick,” Janie said. “She can’t really walk.”

  “Here,” Dad said, and he and Janie wrapped their arms under Mom’s arms to help support her weight. The three of them went quickly through the lobby to the main doors.

  Only, by the time they got there … the doors were gone.

  I don’t know how to explain it, except that it was as if the walls had simply stretched over the space where the door had been.

  Dad basically turned white. “What’s going on?”

  “Oh no,” Mom said. “Oh no—the window! Hurry! Get out! Get Janie out!”