All The Pretty Dead Girls

by John Manning

  Tish sat up and clutched a pillow to her chest. She pointed at Sue. “Let this be a lesson to you, Susie Q. You’re a freshman, aren’t you?”

  Sue nodded.

  “Don’t ever do someone a favor if it means breaking the school’s precious rules, no matter how much you feel sorry for them. It will come back and bite you in the ass every single time.”

  Tish fell back onto the bed and stared glumly up at the ceiling. “I felt sorry for Bonnie. Does that make me a bad person? Does that mean I should be expelled? She had to work, for God’s sake. She couldn’t afford to lose her goddamned job. They should have excused her from the stupid welcome ceremony. We should all be excused from the stupid welcome ceremony. It’s so lame. So I agreed to sign her in. Big fucking deal. How was I supposed to know she was going to disappear or run off or whatever the hell happened to her?” Tish rolled over onto her stomach. “I had to spend the past three days talking to the cops. Then Dean Gregory starts in yelling at me—and today Oosterhouse!”

  Sue was getting ready to stand. “Well, nice meeting you. I should be—”

  “Sue thinks she may have seen the ghost of Room 323,” Joelle said.

  “Really?” Tish set down her glass of wine and stared at her. “What did you see, Susie Q?”

  Sue felt her face start to redden. “I don’t know…”

  “Go ahead and tell her, Sue.” Joelle waved her hand, and winked at her. “Tish is one of those girls who’s heard the screaming herself.”

  Suddenly, Sue looked at Tish with new eyes.

  “Joelle acts like I’m crazy.” Tish was glaring at her roommate. “But I know what I’ve heard, and I’ve heard someone screaming in that room.” She shivered. “Before and after Bonnie’s disappearance.”

  “You’ve really heard a girl screaming in there?” Sue asked.

  Tish nodded. “Yep. Screaming for her life, I am telling you.” She shot a look over at Joelle. “And I wasn’t stoned either, Miss Know It All.”

  “Then why hasn’t anyone else heard it?” Joelle scoffed, rolling her eyes.

  “Do I look like Agent Mulder?” Tish snapped before turning back to Sue. “It was last semester, and it was scary as hell. I was the only person on the floor pretty much. I was just sitting in here minding my own business studying, and I heard this screaming.” She shivered. “Oh, it was just terrible, horrible, like someone being murdered. I went out in the hall, and it was coming from Bonnie’s room…only I knew Bonnie wasn’t there, she was at work. I didn’t know what to do, so I went down and got Mrs. Oosterhouse, and of course when we went into the room there was nothing there.” She sighed. “Of course, Oostie thought I was nuts.”

  “And you’ve heard it since Bonnie went missing, too?”

  Tish nodded. “Yep. First day of classes, in fact. Middle of the afternoon. I kept running around asking girls if they heard anything, but they all said no.”

  “I first saw the face at the window that day,” Sue told her.

  “It’s not that I don’t believe,” Joelle said. “Especially not with the fact that I am certain Bonnie was the victim of some witchcraft ritual.”

  “Well, that much is pure speculation,” Tish told her, finishing her wine.

  “True. But if they slashed her up in front of the school, why take the body?”

  “Evidence,” Tish said.

  Sue wanted to get back to the screaming from the room. “Other girls have heard it, though, right? Maybe no one recently, but others have…”

  “Oh, yeah,” Tish said. “A couple years ago, a girl claimed to hear the screaming so often, she finally forced the dean to agree to transfer her not just to another floor, but to another dorm entirely.” Tish laughed. “She was a stoner, though. But maybe she smoked all that weed because she was so scared. Maybe the cause and effect is reversed.”

  “Well, something’s queer about that room, that’s for sure,” Joelle said, “if Sue is saying she’s seen someone screaming in the window.” She gave Sue another wink. “And you appear to be perfectly sane. And no telltale aroma of weed on your clothes.”

  Tish had moved around on the bed so that she was lying on her stomach, her chin in her hands, staring at Sue. “Did you get a good look at the face at the window?”

  “No, not really.” Sue held up her hands. “I was out front on the sidewalk by the parking lot, and I just happened to look up, and I saw someone—a girl, I know that much—and then the next minute, it wasn’t there anymore. So I thought I’d come up here, you know, knock on the door and make sure everything was okay.”

  “That room is haunted.” Tish said, holding out her glass for another refill. “I told you so, Joelle.”

  Sue thanked the girls for their stories and bade them good-bye. Back in the hallway, she looked again at the door to Room 323.

  What is it about that room?

  What am I on the verge of discovering?

  19

  After dinner that night, Malika went to the library to study, leaving Sue alone in their room.

  Might as well get it over with, she thought, picking up her phone and pressing her grandparents’ number.

  Her grandmother answered on the third ring. “Hello?”

  “Hey, Gran, it’s me, Sue.”

  “Sue, darling.” Gran’s voice seemed very far away. Sue guessed it was a bad reception. “How has it been going? Did the car do all right? Did you have any trouble?”

  “Slow down, one question at a time!” Sue laughed. “Things have been going great. I like my classes. And I like the girls here.”

  “Wonderful, wonderful! We knew you would.”

  “And the car and the drive were great, too. I really enjoyed myself. Thank you again for the car.”

  “I’m so glad, dear,” her grandmother said. “I have a feeling you will do very well at Wilbourne.”

  “I hope so,” Sue said.

  But her mind was still troubled by that room on the floor above her. She kept hearing Tish say, I heard someone screaming, like they were being murdered in that room. And then Joelle: The girl who lived in that room twenty years ago was raped.

  She became aware there was silence on the line. “Gran?”

  “Yes, I’m here, dear.”

  “You don’t have to worry about anything. I know you probably are.”

  “I’m certain you’re well looked after, Sue.”

  “No.” Sue actually found herself a little annoyed about how obtuse her grandmother was being. One would think she’d have brought up Bonnie’s disappearance right away. “I’m talking about that girl, Gran. Bonnie Warner. The one who disappeared.”

  “Oh? I wasn’t aware of any girl disappearing.”

  Sue found that hard to believe. “Well, I’m sure Granpa has heard. It’s been on the TV. Fox News has been sensationalizing it, like it sensationalizes everything, and I know he’s always watching Fox News.”

  “Well, your grandfather has been very busy lately. I’m not sure he’s had much time for television.”

  “I just thought you might be worried.”

  “Well, we always worry, Sue. But we know you’re well looked after.”

  Part of Sue wanted her grandmother to express some worry. “She went missing,” she said about Bonnie. “They found her bike covered with blood.”

  “Oh, how terrible,” said her grandmother.

  “So I didn’t want you freaking out and trying to get me to leave school or anything. I know how protective you both can be about me, and I appreciate it, but really, Gran, everything is very safe here. I’m sure the dean is going to be sending letters assuring families that we are all well protected.”

  “Of course you are.”

  How very odd Gran seemed. Once, she’d hovered over Sue, a constant presence, ever fearful that someone might hurt her—that they’d lose their granddaughter the way they’d lost their beloved daughter. But now…she seemed so calm.

  Sue should have been glad that Gran wasn’t freaking out, that she and Granpa were
n’t planning to drive up here and take her back this very night. But she seemed to want to provoke something from Gran—something to prove she cared.

  “They’re not saying so,” Sue said, “but everyone’s pretty certain Bonnie is dead.”

  “What a terrible world we live in,” her grandmother said softly. “I’ll pray for her.”

  Sue sat there for a moment. That was all. There was no “You need to come home immediately, young lady, enough of this nonsense, you can live here and go to school in Manhattan, it’s too dangerous up there for a girl alone, you need to come home, you’re all we have left and we can’t take that kind of risk.”

  What had happened to her grandmother?

  “All right, dear,” Gran was saying. “Look at the time. My committee is stopping by in a few moments—you know, that fund-raiser we’re doing for the museum. But darling, I’m so glad you called. Call me later this week and I’ll have more time and we can chat longer.”

  “Okay.”

  “Toodles, Sue.”

  Click.

  “I love you, too,” Sue said into the receiver.

  How strange.

  How very, very strange.

  She had homework to do, but right now, she couldn’t concentrate on it. She sat there for a few moments at her desk just staring straght ahead.

  She pulled opened her top drawer.

  Joyce Davenport’s face stared up at her.

  Reluctantly, she picked up the book. She looked down at Joyce’s face.

  Twenty years ago, the girl who lived in that room was raped.

  Twenty years ago, her mother—and Joyce Davenport—had been students at Wilbourne College.

  If the story of the rape was true, then Joyce would know all about it.

  She probably also knew about the room supposedly being haunted.

  She’d also be able to tell Sue if Room 323 had been the room she’d shared with her mother.

  Sue opened the book to the title page, and stared down at the phone number written with a black Sharpie.

  She picked up her phone.

  No. Not yet. She wasn’t ready to call Joyce yet.

  I’ll send her an e-mail tomorrow, Sue decided. Just to thank her for the book, and see how she responds to that.

  She opened the book and started to read.

  20

  I am going to explode at any minute, Pierre deSalis thought, biting back the urge to shout at his wife, “Shut the Hell Up!”

  Maddie was muttering to herself as she clacked through her rosary beads, hunched in her chair, leaning over Bernie’s hospital bed. Her incessant muttering of Hail Marys and Our Fathers was driving Pierre crazy. But instead of telling her to quit it, he simply gripped the armrests of his chair and squeezed until his knuckles ached.

  What he really wanted to do was put his fist through something—a wall, a door, some unknown person’s face—but that wasn’t an option. I want to just grab Bernadette and get the hell out of here, get as far away from this goddamned hospital as we can go.

  He had a raging headache that felt like someone was driving a nail through his right temple. He was tired. He hadn’t slept a full night since that morning when they’d brought Bernadette here. Every night since then, he’d only gotten to sleep by consuming a six-pack of beer in the living room, flipping through the TV channels without stopping on any of them for longer than a minute or two. Even then, when he finally made it upstairs, he’d stare at the ceiling for most of the night, drifting in and out of sleep. Maybe I oughta switch to Jack Daniel’s.

  Pierre didn’t buy his wife’s argument that all this was a wonderful miracle. It was a nightmare—and it was Maddie’s fault. Her devotion to the Church, to the saints—somehow, some way, she’d been filling the poor girl’s head with so much nonsense that it led her into this hysterical state. That’s what the doctors called it—hysteria—with one psychiatrist telling him that such feverish belief can cause the body to react in certain ways. That explained the stigmata that had appeared on Bernie’s wrists. But the big-shot priest from the diocese, some decrepit old Irishman, proclaimed that Bernie was “God’s miracle.” That was all Maddie needed. “My baby is a saint chosen by Our Blessed Mother,” she had gushed. Rarely had she left Bernie’s side, praying over her with those infernal rosary beads, forgetting she had three other kids—and a husband—at home.

  Pierre glanced over at his daughter in the hospital bed. When did she become so crazy with this stuff? When did she turn into a carbon copy of her mother? Bernadette’s eyes were closed. She was absolutely still—other than her fingers feverishly working the rosary beads Maddie had placed in her hands, seeming to follow her mother’s recitations.

  “It’s possible,” one doctor had told him when they first brought Bernie in, “that the girl made these wounds herself.”

  “You see?” Pierre shouted at his wife. “It’s nothing miraculous. She cut herself!”

  “Then why don’t they heal?” Maddie shrieked back at him.

  In fact, they were healing—but yesterday some of the wounds started releasing new blood, and that only convinced Maddie further that they were divinely caused. Bernadette’s semiconscious state precluded her from being sent home, so for now the nurses had bandaged her wrists and feet tightly and tried to keep as close an eye as possible on her. But often Maddie was in the room alone with the girl, and she had plenty of time to—Pierre hated the thought—to unwind her daughter’s bandages and break the scabs if indeed they were starting to heal.

  That’s how crazy she is, Pierre thought to himself. She’ll actually keep our daughter from getting well because she wants so badly to believe this is a sign from God.

  He had no proof she was doing anything of the sort. Right now, Bernie’s bandages were pristinely white. The bleeding had stopped. If only she’d snap out of this state she was in—this half-awake, half-asleep religious delirium.

  When had she become as crazy as her mother? Pierre thought again.

  I wasn’t paying enough attention, he told himself, recalling those nights when Maddie would insist their daughter kneel with her and pray for hours before they went to bed. I should have been more aware of what was going on in my own house. But God help me, I didn’t see any harm in Maddie being so religious…I never realized how far she was gone, and now it may be too late for Bernie. Why didn’t any of the boys say anything to me?

  Except maybe they had tried.

  “I’m out of here,” P.J. had said to him the very day of his high school graduation. “I need my own place, Dad. Mom—well, I just can’t take her anymore.”

  P.J.—Pierre Jr.—had looked at him that day and told him quite plainly that Maddie was crazy. Pierre just wasn’t ready to hear it.

  “Dad, I love her, but she drives me nuts with all her God talk. She knows she can’t get anywhere with us boys, but she’s always after Bernie about sin and hellfire and all that shit.”

  “Aw,” Pierre said, “going to church is a good thing. It gives your mother some comfort.”

  When Bernie had been admitted to St. Agatha’s Hospital a few days ago, P.J. had come by to see his little sister. She didn’t seem to recognize him. Pierre noticed that P.J. didn’t say a word to his mother. Since moving out of the house, he rarely visited. Pierre wondered if his other sons were counting the days until they, too, could escape.

  I’ve failed my children, he thought, overwhelmed. He looked down at his little girl in the hospital bed. She’s lost her mind.

  Either that, or she actually saw the Virgin Mary.

  And Pierre couldn’t believe that.

  No, this was all because of Maddie—Maddie and her goddamned saints and prayers. Maddie and her goddamned rosary—which she continued to clack away at sitting at her daughter’s bedside.

  “Stop it!” Pierre finally shouted. Unable to take it anymore, he reached over and grabbed Maddie’s hands.

  She looked up at him. “Let go,” she whispered calmly.

  Pierre didn’t want a scene
in the hospital room. So he let her hands go and she started again.

  What was really uncanny, Pierre thought, looking once again down at his daughter, was the way Bernie’s hands had stopped twitching on her own rosary the very moment Pierre had halted Maddie’s.

  Her eyes were closed. She couldn’t have seen him do it.

  She spoke to me, Papa. She told me that I am blessed.

  Three days had passed since that morning, three days that seemed a lifetime ago. When the ambulance arrived, instead of going to the local hospital. Maddie had insisted they whisk Bernie off to St. Agatha’s in Senandaga. Her daughter had to go to a Catholic hospital ninety miles away—no other hospital would do. The EMTs had looked over at Pierre to see if he agreed. He hadn’t been in a mind-set to argue with his wife, so he’d nodded his consent.

  Ever since, he’d spent as much time as he could in Bernie’s hospital room. He’d taken time off from work—his supervisor was understanding, telling him to take as much time as he needed—but that couldn’t go on forever. And unlike Maddie, Pierre remembered they had other kids, too, so he made sure he got the boys off to school every morning before heading over to the hospital. Maddie had often spent the night in the chair next to Bernie’s bed. Usually, when Pierre arrived, Maddie was clacking away at her rosary or consulting with some visiting priest or nun, and she wouldn’t even greet him. She was like a different woman, one Pierre did not know. Whatever had happened to Bernadette, it had finally pushed Maddie over the edge.

  Pierre jumped a little as the door behind him opened. A slight woman, Indian by the look of her, came into the room. She was wearing a white lab coat over a pair of brown slacks and a matching blouse. Her hair was jet black and pulled into a bun behind her head, her skin was a rich brown, and her eyes were round and dark. “I am so sorry I am late,” she said to Pierre and Maddie, offering a smile. Her English was perfect, her voice low and quiet. “I am Dr. Vaid.” She held out her hand.