The Screaming Season

by Nancy Holder

  Maybe they didn’t need to be. Maybe somehow, Dr. Morehouse had exorcised Celia, and I was finally free.

  So maybe . . . I could leave. I stifled a giggle of joy. Oh, to be done with this. To be a normal girl, interested in free verse poetry, the cello, knitting, and guys.

  Troy, I thought, and then, Riley.

  It was all so complicated.

  A FEW HOURS later, while I was curled up in bed, there was a jaunty rap on my door. The door cracked open and a single eye peered in at me.

  “Hail, eyeball of Miles,” I said, tensing. I knew he’d been by to see me before. I just hadn’t been fully conscious for the occasion.

  “Hail, weirdness of you,” he replied, strolling in.

  He was swathed in a really beautiful black overcoat and beneath it, a jet-black European-looking sort of suit, very slouchy and cool. He was wearing black leather gloves and loafers. The clothes were amazing. He had styled his platinum blond hair into his signature retro ducktail, and there was stubble on his cheeks. I couldn’t decide if he looked good or slagged, but that was my usual reaction to Miles. Just as I couldn’t decide if he frightened or repulsed me more.

  “You’re not wearing your red thread. That way lies madness.” He pulled off his left glove and pushed up his sleeve, revealing the Kabbalah thread or whatever it was called. I’d lost the one Shayna had given me. After I lost my mind, Miles had wound a replacement around my wrist. As if it would really protect me from something.

  “I think they were afraid I might saw my head off with it.” I shut my laptop and set it aside.

  “You might have.”

  “Thanks.”

  He inclined his head. “I live to annoy you.” Cocked it to the side. “I thought sickbeds were for sick people.”

  “I have pneumonia.”

  “Some people will do anything to get out of classes.” He flopped down into the burgundy leather chair. I had on my mom’s sweatshirt but no bra. I wondered if he could tell. Probably not. Still, I felt a little weirded out.

  He put a cigarette in his mouth.

  “You can’t smoke in here,” I said. “Plus, you can’t smoke around me anywhere.”

  “Oh, you’ve grown a pair.” He let the cigarette hang off his lip, but he didn’t light it.

  “You’re just less scary than you used to be.” My voice cracked, giving the lie to my statement, and he grimaced sympathetically.

  “Well, Mandy’s scarier, these days.” He leaned forward on his elbows and searched my face. There were circles under his eyes, and he was gaunt. “And I think you know something about that, scary girl.”

  I swallowed. Hard. He was giving me a look that said, You know exactly what I’m talking about. Guilt and fear and maybe even a little bit of hope rose inside me. “Wh-what?” I croaked.

  He smiled grimly. “Lindsay Anne, don’t even try to fake me out. I’m really smart, and as a former addict, I have mad lying skills the likes of which you can’t even begin to appreciate. No one lies better than me. So don’t embarrass us both. I need to know what’s wrong with my sister.”

  “She’s a bitch,” I blurted without thinking.

  “I know that.” He took off his other glove and flapped them back and forth, studying them. He traced the stitching with his fingertips. He had very long eyelashes, and he looked vulnerable. Younger. Not for the first time, I wondered if money delayed the growing-up portion of getting older.

  “But . . . okay.” He dropped the gloves on the floor and sank his face into his hands. The overhead fluorescent light cast a halo in his hair, which I would have found laughable if I hadn’t been about to implode. Miles knew. How much, I didn’t know.

  But he knew something.

  I waited for Celia’s reaction. There was none. Had Dr. Morehouse fixed me? Was I done with her too? Could I just walk away? Maybe I didn’t need an ally. Maybe I just needed to pack. “Look, I know Mandy is your frenemy,” he said to the floor.

  “Not even.”

  “Okay, then I’m your frenemy.” He paused, still cradling his head. I said nothing. “You really aren’t going to make this easy on me, are you?”

  “Why should I? You got off on scaring me. You threatened me.”

  “Not in so many words.” He lowered his hands and sat up straight. The cigarette still dangled from his mouth. “Okay, I did. I’m a creepy, stalkery jerk and I did get off on scaring you. But something is really wrong with Mandy. Really wrong.”

  “I’m not sure you can be a former addict,” I said.

  “If you can recover from a nervous breakdown, I can stop being an addict,” he insisted.

  We looked at each other, and I felt a weird electricity zap between us. Miles was the epitome of those “layers of individuality” that Dr. Morehouse had talked about. My committee wasn’t fond of him. But as before, there was something about Miles that extended past pure loathing. I hadn’t screamed for my life when he had cornered me in the shadows on the night of the Valentine’s Day dance. Instead, we’d danced the tango. And I wasn’t screaming now, even though I was alone with the guy who could be the Marlwood Stalker.

  Unless I was.

  “Here’s a thought, Lindsay Lou,” he said. “If you help me declaw my sister, she won’t be able to scratch you.”

  “She’s a hundred percent claws,” I retorted.

  “She didn’t used to be,” he said. He scratched his cheek. “I’ve kept an eye on you, L. You’re scared, and you need help. From the way you tried to pound in Troy’s head with that hammer, I’m guessing he’s too dumb. I’m the smartest guy you know. And I . . . happen to believe that what is going on is more bizarre than anyone realizes.”

  That caught me off guard. Way off guard. He must have sensed it.

  “If you won’t tell me what’s wrong with Mandy, maybe you’ll tell me what’s wrong with Marlwood. Because there’s something really, really wrong here. Am I right?”

  Still I remained silent. But I could feel myself daring to hope that he did know that something was wrong with Marlwood. That I wasn’t alone in this. But joining forces with Miles Winters? Was that just too whacked?

  “How about a twofer?” he pressed. “You help me with Mandy and I help you with Marlwood.”

  “What’s in it for me?” I asked. “I’m on scholarship.”

  “Something’s keeping you here,” he said. “You’re no dummy. Having Marlwood on your college app’s will keep you from night classes at the community college while you work retail by day.”

  “What a jerky thing to say.” I was stung.

  He gave his head a little shake, extracted the cigarette, and tapped the filter on the arm of the chair. “We don’t have time for this. You need my help. And I need yours. Let’s table everything else. Now.”

  My lips parted. I was about to tell him no when I realized I was thinking about saying yes. I was actually considering joining forces with Miles Winters.

  “Where are you staying?” I asked him, trying to stall so I could regain my sanity.

  “Guest house here on the grounds. I think Dr. Ehrlenbach’s trying to conveniently forget that while she’s gone. When your family’s buying the school a sports complex, you get a few extra perks.”

  He didn’t smirk. He just stared at me, willing me to agree to his demand. He pulled out a pack of matches from his pants pocket and looked at me. I shook my head. Sighing, he put the matches back in the pocket.

  “No smoking, just for you,” he said. “Now come on, baby. Gimme something in return. Or I can go.”

  A thrill of anxiety shot up my spine and I surrendered. I needed help. Even if it came from him.

  “Okay.”

  He caught his breath.

  “See ? I knew you were smart.” He nodded at me. “Go. Start.”

  I licked my lips. My stomach clenched, and I felt exactly the same way as I had trying to jump off the high dive last year in P.E.

  “A few people know bits of what I’m going to tell you,” I began. “But no one k
nows all of it, except me. And if I tell you, you’re just going to have to believe me, all right? There’s no way to convince you.”

  He took the cigarette out of his mouth and rolled it back and forth on his palm. Then he peered up at me through his eyelashes, and I realized he was giving my request serious thought before replying.

  “Okay.” He bobbed his head. “I will suspend my disbelief.”

  Where to start? First I wanted to burst into sobs. Or laughter. Of all the people to tell this to, I had never imagined it would be Miles Winters.

  “C’mon, Lindsay,” he said. “I’m listening.”

  “You already know about the fact that this was originally a home for wayward girls,” I said. “People dumped their female relatives here because they were willful or disobedient. Or boring, or had no dowries. One girl got sent here for killing her uncle when he attacked her.”

  I held up my hand so that he wouldn’t remind me he knew all this. Since the Winters had offered to bankroll the multi-million-dollar Winters Sports Complex to replace our outdated gym, Miles had done a lot of research on Marlwood. I was betting he knew more of its sordid history than even I did. But I had to get it out in one coherent fashion. It was like taking the walk down the path with the committee, one foot in front of the others.

  “You also know that a doctor named David Abernathy performed lobotomies on a lot of the inmates. He would take an ice pick and wiggle it around to sever the connection between two parts of their brains ‘to calm them.’” I didn’t bother with air quotes.

  He nodded. “And thank God that’s out of fashion, because they would have done that to me.”

  I believed him. Gossip was that he’d been to so many rehabs and clinics that his parents had invested in a special portfolio of mental health care stocks.

  “So far, you’re rehashing,” he reminded me. “Stalling.”

  “Here’s the new part, then,” I said. “Our glorious founder, Edwin Marlwood, would pick out the victims, and David Abernathy would cut open their brains for him. But Dr. David messed around with them, too.”

  His interest perked up. “The brains? Or the broads?”

  “He’d play them off each other. Make them compete to be his special little playmates.”

  Miles smirked. “Rehab-boy says, ‘Not surprised.’”

  “Stop interrupting me.” He made a show of sitting up straighter, putting his hands on his knees, and politely raising his chin.

  “There were two specific girls I know about who were in love with him. He promised each of them that he was going to get her out of here. Without telling the other one, of course.”

  “Nice,” Miles said.

  “One of them started a fire, and it got out of control. It killed seven girls. I have a news clipping,” I added.

  He took that in. “No way. I never saw that, and I even used our research firm. Heads are gonna roll.”

  “She said she set it to stop the lobotomies, but really, I think she wanted to kill her rival.” I heard what I was saying. “According to what I’ve read.”

  “That’s pretty hot stuff. I have to see that.”

  I’d gone too far. None of that was written down in the news clipping. I knew it because I had experienced it, in terrifying dreams and visions . . . and by confronting Belle herself. Nearly killing the girl she possessed, which was what Celia wanted.

  Revenge.

  And as for the girl I’d nearly killed . . .

  “You’re still holding out,” he accused me. “Your body language is screaming at me. Lying skills, remember?”

  I had been trying to tell him just about Mandy. I didn’t know what Celia would do if I told about her. But I had to take that chance.

  “The one who started the fire was a girl named Celia Reaves.” I lowered my voice and braced for Celia to react. She was quiet.

  And so was he. He was chewing his lower lip. I heard him sigh slowly. Saw him swallow, hard.

  “Mandy mentioned . . . that name. In a southern accent.”

  And there it was. There it was, finally. My confirmation. From someone who was not me, and not MIA—missing in action—like Shayna. Someone who was here, now, and relatively sane. He had heard what I had heard, and I hadn’t told him about it first. He’d come to me with the information on his own.

  The southern accent would be the voice of Belle, coming through Mandy.

  “Go on,” I rasped, but I was thinking, Thank you, Miles, thank you, thank you.

  “When we dropped her off after winter break, I found some stuff she’d forgotten in the limo, and I took it over to Jessel. I went in the front door, and I heard her laughing.

  “I called out, but no one heard me. There was just more laughter. It was Mandy, Lara, and Alis DeChancey. I thought they were on something.” He chewed his lip again.

  “I didn’t want their housemother to hear them, so I went on up the stairs. They were in one of those turret rooms. The one on the right, farther back. It looks out on the lake.”

  Despite my relief, my blood ran cold. I knew that room. Oh, did I know it.

  “I stood in the hall and they were all talking in different voices, with different accents. About ‘number seven,’ and making sure she got what was coming to her. Then Mandy came out into the hall and saw me. She stared straight at me and her eyes were black. She started flirting with me and she called me ‘sweet bee.’”

  I nodded, flooding with intense relief, and he frowned. I gestured, indicating for him to keep going. “She kind of . . . jerked.” He imitated it, as if he were stepping on a live wire. Or getting electroshock therapy. “Then she lowered her head for a moment and looked back up at me. She looked surprised to see me.”

  “And her eyes weren’t black anymore,” I filled in.

  He looked at me through half-closed eyes. “They weren’t black. But I still thought . . . maybe not such a big deal.”

  “Yeah, well,” I replied.

  “Mandy and I . . . we’ve pushed the envelope. Maybe you’ve heard a few things.”

  “Yes, I have.” Stories about them sleeping together in the Lincoln Bedroom, in the White House. Together, together. And I’d seen pictures of them, far too cuddly, in a box of pictures Mandy hid under her bed.

  “When you’re as rich as we are, you don’t have a lot of boundaries.”

  He wasn’t bragging. It was true.

  “Ergo, designer drugs are easy to score,” he concluded. “So Mandy’s gotten hold of something?” He wasn’t telling me. He was asking.

  “I thought that for a while too. That it was drugs,” I said. I took another deep breath. “But it’s not drugs.”

  Pushing himself up, he got out of the chair. I pulled back a little, and he held out his hands to his sides, almost as if he were showing me that he carried no concealed weapons. But he did: his mind. He was brilliant.

  He walked around the room, like someone who was admiring the pictures in an art gallery, only here, the only art was what my dormies called “hotel room art”—a forest landscape—and some posters about sexually transmitted diseases and the food pyramid.

  He stopped at the poster about STD’s and scanned it. “In the operating theater, when Troy faked that brain surgery, you lost it—but Mandy lost it too. You two were screaming at each other, and neither of you was making any sense.” He turned his head toward me. “Or so I thought at the time. But you actually were.”

  “We were.”

  He didn’t speak. He blinked rapidly at me, looked at the poster, scratched his cheek. “Okay, LA, what exactly are we talking about here?”

  A beat. Two. As with Heather, the time had come. My impulsive decision to trust him was beginning to fade—or was I just chickening out?

  “If I tell you, what are you going to do?” Go to Ehrlenbach? Hire the world’s most expensive ghost busters?

  “I’m going to help my sister. And I’m going to help . . . you.”

  “I’m not sure you can do both.”

  He raised
his chin. “I am.” He scratched his chin. “So, just say it, damn it. Did Mandy, what, buy herself some voodoo magic?”

  A beat. Two. It was as if silence had a sound of its own. Or was that my heart pounding?

  “Yes.” My voice was steady. “She did.”

  He didn’t speak for a long time.

  “Voodoo to do . . . ” he asked leadingly.

  Believe me. Please.

  “Okay, then, here it is. Mandy is possessed by the spirit of Belle Johnson. A dead girl.”

  His answer was silence as agitated as my own had been. He was holding his breath.

  “And Belle wants revenge. Against Celia Reaves, the girl who started the fire and was the other girl, er, woman, in their triangle.”

  More silence.

  “Number seven.”

  I could tell he was trying hard to absorb it, believe it. I didn’t know how I felt, telling him. Telling anyone.

  “Is this . . . bullshit?” he asked.

  I shook my head slowly. Was Miles going to think I was crazy, too? Of all the people I had to confide in, Miles was not my first choice. He wouldn’t have been a choice at all. But I reminded myself that he had heard Mandy speaking like Belle. Independent of me. And Shayna had known about the possessions. She had.

  And then she had gone insane.

  “Why are you an addict?” I asked. “I mean, what happened to you?”

  “What?” He stared at me. “How did this become about me?”

  I began to shake all over, feeling sick, tired, scared. I needed someone to trust.

  Maybe I should stop talking to Miles. Maybe I could level with Dr. Morehouse, I thought. A shrink. Right.

  “You can’t stop now,” Miles said, pursing his lips and crossing his arms. I jerked. Had he read my mind? “Absolutely no way. I will totally screw you over if you don’t finish this.”

  I believed him.

  “I was spying on Mandy my first day here,” I said. “It was so foggy. I—I snuck to the hedge in front of Jessel because I heard her doing something—something interesting.”