Yesternight

by Cat Winters

  “I thought you might have.” Bea uncrossed her legs and sat up straight against the wall. Her short hair had lost some of its shiny slickness by then, and curls blossomed behind her ears. “I don’t mean to sound like Mother and Margery,” she said, tugging on one of the curls, “but have there been any men in your life recently? Any fun distractions from work?”

  “I don’t have time for men.” I took another sip and leaned the back of my skull against the headboard with a thump. “Or fun. Or distractions.” I smiled and closed my eyes, thinking of the letters I had written to Kansas, which I supposed could have been called “distractions,” considering they had nothing whatsoever to do with intelligence tests. I pictured the envelope containing the correspondence as it passed through the rough hands of various postal workers until it landed in front of the postmaster of Friendly, two thousand miles away.

  “Bea?” I asked.

  “Hmm?”

  “When you go back to the library”—I opened my eyes—“would you mind looking up the name of another potential town in Kansas to see if it’s real?”

  She blinked at me, all the mirth draining from her face. Her mouth stiffened, and the little smile lines that marked her age—almost thirty-one years—diminished.

  “Bea, did you hear what I—?”

  “What’s the name of the town?” she asked.

  “Yesternight.”

  Her face blanched. A groove formed between her eyebrows.

  I screwed the cap onto the flask. “Have you heard of it?”

  She exhaled a steady breath through her nose. “Yes.”

  “Where is it located?”

  “Nebraska.”

  My fingers froze on the cap. “Nebraska?”

  “Near a small train stop called Du Bois. There’s a famous tale about a series of murders that occurred there.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh—a nervous, abrasive titter that buzzed inside my head. “Infamous murders occurred in a town called Yesternight?”

  “Not a town. An inn.”

  “An inn?”

  She shuddered and rubbed at her forehead. “You don’t remember discussing Yesternight when we were children?”

  The edges of my furniture blurred, and the gin suddenly tasted vile—too sweet, too close to the smell of formaldehyde. “Was this when I . . . when I hit those poor . . .”

  She swallowed, and her bowtie went a little crooked against the folds of her white collar. Her eyes pooled with tears.

  I scraped my top teeth against my bottom lip and peered down at the flask in my lap. Good God! I thought. Holy hell! Why on earth did Janie O’Daire . . . why did she identify the name of a place—a violent, bloody place—that I had spoken about as a child? Why did I speak of it?

  “The name . . .” I cleared my throat, while my fingertips sweated and slid across the flask. “It seemed to mean something to the child whom I examined. I don’t understand why it would have if . . .” I shook my head. “I asked the girl which names she liked best. She circled ‘Yesternight.’”

  “Did she come up with the name on her own?” Bea lifted her head away from the wall. “Or did you introduce her to it?”

  “She came up with—” I stopped myself and set the flask on my bedside table. A drop of gin plunked against the lace cloth that protected the wood, and I watched as the liquid bled into a stain the shape of a crooked heart. “No—it was a random name that I snuck into the middle of a list of Kansas towns, to see if she was fibbing when it came to name recognition.”

  “She must have fibbed, then.”

  “Unless she’s been there, too. Unless she believes something heinous occurred to her there . . .” I squished my face between the palms of my hands and groaned from the barrel of my chest. “Oh, Christ, I don’t know how to help that girl, Bea. Or her father. They both need me, desperately.”

  “Her father needs you?”

  “When I first arrived in Gordon Bay, he picked me up at the train depot in the middle of a diabolical storm. He had such high hopes for me. He wanted me to rule out psychological explanations for the girl’s behavior—he believes she lived a past life as a woman killed in the Great Plains. And she’s so smart, Bea. She’s written mathematical proofs all over the walls of her bedroom, and I can’t think of any psychological diagnosis for that sort of behavior other than calling her a child prodigy. An astounding, odd, perplexing, terrifying prodigy.” I grabbed the flask again and downed another drink, choking on gin.

  “Whoa!” Bea held out a hand. “Slow down there, kiddo.”

  “I should go to Kansas. And maybe even . . . Nebraska, was it?”

  “You have nothing to do with the murders at the Hotel Yesternight, Nell. Hell, you don’t even have anything to do with the name ‘Nell.’ You were just pretending. Don’t insert yourself into other people’s stories.”

  “I’m not—”

  “I know you, Alice. You’re looking for answers to your own past through this child, but she doesn’t have anything to do with you.” She grabbed the flask from my hands and screwed the cap back in place. “Apply to PhD programs again. Stop trekking all over Oregon, giving tests far beneath your education. You deserve to be doing the type of clinical research you desire.”

  “The children need me. And it’s not that easy . . .”

  “Try!”

  I scooted down on the mattress and curled onto my left side.

  “You’re miserable, I can tell.” Bea nudged the back of one of my legs with her toes. “Do something about it.”

  I stared at my oak dresser across the room. A needlepoint version of the prayer “Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep,” complete with an illustration of a blond-haired girl on bended knee, still hung above it in a cherrywood frame. I didn’t know why I’d never replaced the thing with a grown-up decoration. I’d been too busy in recent years to care.

  “I was tempted to sleep with the girl’s father,” I said in the direction of the prayer. “His name is Michael O’Daire, and he’s been divorced for two years.”

  Bea lowered the booze to the floor. “But you didn’t?”

  I shook my head. “No. It would have been dreadfully unprofessional of me, and so harmful to the girl’s case. I remained a chaste Mrs. Grundy.”

  “He was handsome, I presume?”

  “Quite. He even asked me to lunch once, but I turned him down.”

  “Well . . .” Bea trailed off, not seeming to know if she should praise my restraint or pity my lack of human intimacy.

  “I just left them both there . . . dangling.” I sighed into my pillow, feeling the heat of my breath. “He told me that I broke his heart. Not because I refused to step out with him, but because I didn’t know what to do about his daughter.”

  My sister reached out and warmed my right elbow with one of her hands. “Alice, your job is to test students to see if they’re receiving the education they need. That’s all. Unless a university finally smartens up and accepts you into its doctoral program—unless more men turn bold enough to hire women into their research clinics or the Department of Education pays you what you deserve—you don’t need to be doing anything beyond test administration. And you certainly don’t need to be diagnosing strange claims of past lives. Do you hear me? Despite your talent for investigating odd children, that’s not what they’re actually paying you to do.”

  I closed my eyes and squeezed my knees against my stomach.

  “You’re done with being little Alice Lind—you haven’t been her in decades. And you’re done with graduate students who acted like jackasses and all of the folks living in Gordon Bay. Let all of that go. Look ahead to the future. As George Eliot so wisely said, ‘It is never too late to be what you might have been.’”

  “That’s easy for you to say. People don’t mind lady librarians.”

  “I’m not allowed to be everything I want to be, kiddo.” She gave my right shin a pat and slid off the side of the bed. “Which reminds me, I should be getting back home. Pearl doesn’t like to b
e alone after dark. Her family’s dinner was supposed to have ended by three.”

  “Tell her ‘hello’ for me.”

  “I will.” She bent close and kissed my cheek. “Ugh! You reek of liquor. Best stay up here for the rest of the night.”

  “I will. Good night, Bea.”

  “Night-night. Don’t let the bed bugs bite.”

  I smiled and allowed my eyelids to droop shut.

  Before my sister’s footsteps had even reached the bottom of the staircase, I drifted into a hazy stage of sleep and dreamed a horrible dream about my body soaked in blood.

  CHAPTER 17

  The case of Janie O’Daire is closed at the moment, I wrote in my notebook on the Friday following Thanksgiving Day. No breakthroughs to report. No more chances to question the girl.

  I spoke to the Department of Education about forming a school for accelerated students on the northern coast, but they do not feel that the number of students who would benefit from such a school would outweigh the costs.

  I am frustrated and saddened that I failed to help young Janie. I have failed myself as well.

  ON SATURDAY, I heard the distinctive flap of the brass mail slot in my parents’ front door and the whoosh of envelopes hitting the floor mat. Immediately, I pounced upon the mail and searched for a Kansas return address.

  “What are you doing down there?” asked Mother from behind me. I turned and witnessed her standing there with her hands planted on her hips. She gasped and laughed a little at the sight of me down on the floor on hands and knees, rifling through mail like a dog digging through trash.

  “I told you”—I resumed my hunt—“I’m waiting for correspondence that’s highly important. Darn!” I pushed myself to my feet. “It’s not here.”

  “When it arrives, shall I open it and read it to you over the telephone?” asked Mother.

  “No!”

  “It’s not a letter from a young man, is it?”

  “Not everything revolves around young men.” I bent down and picked up the scattered envelopes. “It’s related to a child who requires my assistance, and if you don’t contact me about it—”

  “I already told you, I’ll make certain you get the letter. Please settle down about it. What’s gotten into you, Alice? You’re not yourself this weekend.”

  “Please don’t say that.” I tossed my parents’ mail onto the hall table. “Don’t make me feel as though I’m going out of my mind.”

  “That’s not what I said at all. What’s bothering you so terribly? You’ve been prickly and short-tempered ever since you walked through the front door.”

  I closed my eyes. “Mother,” I said with a sigh, “will you please answer a question that’s been troubling me for a long while?”

  She didn’t respond.

  I opened my eyes and peered straight at her. “Will you tell me honestly, without running away or dodging the subject, what was wrong with me when I was a little girl? What happened that made me so violent?”

  Mother shifted her face away and didn’t say a word. Her chest rose and fell, but the only audible sound in the house was the chair at my father’s desk upstairs, squeaking against the floorboards.

  “Did something traumatic happen to me when I was young?” I asked. “Did someone hurt me, or . . . or kidnap me?”

  She shook her head. “No. We all kept you perfectly safe.”

  My skin chilled over how much her words echoed the O’Daires’ insistence that no one had ever harmed Janie.

  “Then why did I behave the way I did?” I asked.

  Mother’s brown eyes dampened; the edges of her nostrils turned pink. “I honestly don’t know.”

  “Did you ever take me to receive mental help?”

  “No,” she said with a terse laugh. “People didn’t do that sort of thing back then. The neighbor children’s parents questioned what was wrong with you and suggested we send you away somewhere, but . . .”

  I shrank back. “Were you tempted to send me away?”

  She rubbed the right sleeve of her plum-colored dress across her eyes.

  “Were you, Mother?”

  She sniffed. “Most of the time you were a perfectly wonderful, bright young child. You often lost your temper when someone vexed you, but I have no idea why, at one point, you suddenly lashed out with such terrible violence.”

  “What did you think was happening to me?”

  “Oh, Alice, don’t ask that.”

  “What did you think, Mother?”

  She fingered her lips, her hand trembling, so much so that it blurred like the wings of a hummingbird. “I thought . . .” She sniffed again. “Quite honestly, I worried . . . that you might have been possessed by the devil.”

  I tightened my arms around myself. “Bea said that I asked to be called Nell around then.”

  “Yes, you did.”

  “Did that ever frighten you?”

  “Yes, I suppose so. Sometimes you insisted quite vehemently that your name wasn’t Alice.”

  I pursed my lips together and reheard those last words a hundred more times. You insisted quite vehemently that your name wasn’t Alice.

  “Tell me, honestly . . .” I said, my voice breaking. “I won’t laugh, and I won’t tell Father, but you must tell me truthfully, did you ever believe I’d once lived a past life as another person?”

  She clutched her chest with a whimper, and her skin suddenly looked so weathered and pale and paper thin, I feared I’d aged her in an instant with that single question.

  “I know it sounds preposterous,” I continued, “but did you ever believe in that possibility? Did you wonder if—?”

  “Yes!” she said, her hand still braced against her chest. “I thought that all of the time.”

  My eyes expanded. “Did . . . did I ever say I had killed anyone in that past life?”

  “Oh, Alice, stop.” She turned on her heel and clopped down the hallway, away from me. “Let’s stop speaking about this immediately.”

  “Did I?” I hounded her into the back of the house, smacking the kitchen door open with the flat of my hand when it swung toward my face. “Did I ever say that I murdered a woman?”

  “Stop it, Alice.”

  “Did I?” I slammed my hands against the worktable in the middle of the room, launching a cloud of flour into the air. “Tell me, did I speak of murdering a person named Violet?”

  “I don’t remember,” she said, kneading the skirt of her dress between her fingers. “I don’t remember any names.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You bragged about killing dozens of people, Alice.” She stepped back, still shaking, still pale, her eyes streaked with atrocious red veins. “You said there were dozens.”

  UP IN MY bedroom, I composed another letter.

  November 28, 1925

  Dear Sir or Madam:

  I apologize in advance for the rather peculiar nature of this letter. I work as a psychologist for the Oregon Department of Education, and I have come across a small child who claims to have visited the Hotel Yesternight. Normally, I would not think it unusual for a child to say that she has visited a hotel in another state; however, this little girl’s parents insist that the child has never traveled to Nebraska, and the child’s sanity is in question.

  Would you be so kind as to confirm whether the Hotel Yesternight still exists somewhere in the vicinity of Du Bois? If so, does it still operate as an inn? Obtaining this information will dramatically assist me in solving this case.

  Thanking you in advance, I am,

  Yours truly,

  A.M. Lind

  I addressed the letter to the postmaster of Du Bois, Nebraska, and I promptly marched it out to the nearest neighborhood mailbox. I shoved the envelope halfway into the slot, but my fingers froze, refusing to let the letter go. The paper quavered in my hand, the edges fluttering against the metal slot with the flit-flit-flit of a fly caught between a window and a screen. I remembered all the advice Bea had just given me Thanksgivi
ng evening.

  Don’t insert yourself into other people’s stories, she had said. You’re done with being little Alice Lind—you haven’t been her in decades. And you’re done with graduate students who acted like jackasses and all the folks living in Gordon Bay. Let all of that go. Look ahead to the future.

  My breath rattled through my teeth.

  I yanked the envelope back out of the slot and tore it down the middle.

  No matter what had prompted me to speak of a place called Yesternight and brag about killing dozens of people—whatever inspired me to beat children over the head with a stick that I could scarcely lift with my four-year-old hands—it was over now. The modern me wasn’t a killer. Whether someone had molested me, or beaten me, or inflicted some other harm upon my body, whether I’d lived another life as a monster who took countless lives, possibly even Violet Sunday’s, it was done. Best to brush the ashes from the past off my shoulders and press forward into the future.

  The problem was, I realized as I pocketed the torn letter, the future looked to be either dull or frustrating. An endless sea of intelligence examinations. Weeks spent in boardinghouses and other unfamiliar beds that smelled of other people. Applications to doctoral programs declined. Dreams postponed. Relationships nonexistent. Advanced studies of memory suppression long delayed.

  That’s why I needed Janie O’Daire.

  She made life instantly fascinating. She was precisely what I was looking for when I first entered the field of psychology with wide-open eyes and an urgent need to find someone who had suffered what I’d suffered.

  CHAPTER 18

  December 17, 1925

  A letter arrived from Kansas.

  The letter.

  Mother had telephoned during the weekend of December 12 and said that the envelope appeared in the mail that afternoon; she told me she would forward it straightaway. I almost didn’t believe in its existence. Mother may as well have said, You’ve just received a postcard from a fairyland, Alice. Can you believe it?

  And now, there the crisp letter lay in my lap in another musty cloakroom inside another one-room schoolhouse. The postman had delivered the mail halfway through the school day, and it wasn’t until after the children had filed out of the classroom with their lunch pails clanging against books, after I closed the examination booklet, that I allowed myself to drink in the sight of the envelope.