I could feel Jane’s eyes on me. The kind of gaze that makes you feel like someone’s looking directly into your soul—or you have a piece of food in your teeth.
“You should really make a Burgerville pamphlet or something,” Jane said. She playfully kicked my foot underneath the table.
“Wait,” Simon said to Jane. “If Ray’s Mr. Burgerville, doesn’t that make you Mrs. Burgerville?”
Jane seemed to really consider this. She moved the food around her plate with the same focus she gave her drawings in biology. “I guess,” she said, “but can I keep my own last name?”
By the end of the meal, Mary and Simon had inched closer to each other and their legs were touching. Simon smiled like a miracle was taking place.
The waiter brought over the check and laid out four fortune cookies in the center of the table.
Mary unwrapped the first cookie, broke it in half, and retrieved the little strip of paper from the center. She read it and smiled.
“What’d it say?” Simon asked.
She passed it to Simon. “The one you love is closer than you think,” Simon read. Simon looked around the restaurant, now practically empty, then returned his attention to the table. “Do you know any of the busboys or waiters?”
“No,” Mary said. “Why?”
“No reason,” he said. Following Mary’s lead, he unwrapped his cookie, but instead of breaking it apart, he went straight for a bite; the fortune hung out of his mouth as cookie crumbs fell onto the table.
“I got one of those motivational fortune cookies for depressed people,” he said. He read from his fortune: “You are pleasant to be around.”
“At least it’s true,” Mary said. Simon beamed like a kindergartner who had just received a gold star.
“Maybe there’s something to this whole fortune cookie thing after all,” I said. I cracked open my cookie: Be on the lookout for coming events. They cast a shadow beforehand, it read.
I ripped it in half and put it in a glass of water.
Simon looked at me funny. “What’d it say, Ray?”
“Nothing. What about yours, Jane?” I asked in an attempt to change the subject.
Jane took her fist and smashed it on the last remaining cookie. Shards of mutilated wafer showed through the flattened plastic.
“That’s what I think of fortunes,” Jane said. As we got up to leave, I pocketed the smashed cookie, curious to see for myself what was in store for Jane.
133 DAYS BEFORE, CONT’D
THE MCCALLEN MANSION
We left the restaurant and walked out into the cold air, shivering but feeling relief from the oppressive fried food miasma of O’Reilly’s.
“I have an idea,” Jane said as we stood in the parking lot. “Simon, you have the Red Rocket, right?”
Simon nodded.
“Great. Ray, flashlights?”
“Cellphone should do the trick.”
“Mary, are you afraid of ghosts?”
“Only my grandmother’s,” Mary said. “She always said she was going to haunt me when she died.”
“Wait,” Simon said. “You can’t mean—”
“The McCallen Mansion,” I said solemnly. “It’s been on the list for a few months. But tonight? Are you sure?”
“There’s no time like the present,” Jane said.
“What’s the McCallen Mansion?” Mary asked.
“Only the most haunted house in Burgerville,” I said.
“Of course Burgerville has a haunted house,” Mary said.
“The haunted house,” Jane said. “You probably don’t know this, but Burgerville actually began as a hospital for the mentally ill. Back when Burgerville was just farmland, this guy A. J. McCallen came here from Ireland to start his utopia.”
Jane smiled at me. She must have read Roger Lutz’s book about the McCallen Mansion. “But they weren’t attracting the most reputable settlers. Right, Ray?”
“Yup. Early Burgerville was populated mostly by criminals and vagrants.”
“So McCallen had no choice but to open what’s come to be known as the world’s first humane asylum in order to treat all the—how can I put it nicely?—interesting people that settled here.”
“Like my great-great-grandpa,” Simon said.
“Okay,” Mary said, sounding skeptical, “but what about his unfinished business? Why’s he haunting the place?”
“Ray?”
“He . . .” I didn’t want to say.
“Go ahead, Ray,” Jane said.
“He killed himself. Right inside the mansion. He was so busy treating his patients, he never got the help he needed. Ever since then, there’s been sightings of him wandering around the mansion, forever trying to cure Burgerville.”
“He’s got his work cut out for him,” Jane said.
* * *
• • •
“You’re not afraid, are you?” Jane asked Simon on the way over.
“No,” Simon said, glancing at Mary. “Of course not.”
“Good,” Jane said. “Then you can go in first. Who knows what’s in that house.”
As we drove, we all sat in silence, the expansive night sky above our heads, stars hidden behind dark clouds. Jane and I reclined in the backseat, while Mary rode up front with Simon.
“It’s supposed to snow,” Simon said, sounding worried.
“If we get stranded, I call not being the first one eaten,” Mary said.
“Damn it,” Simon said. “Well played.”
With that, as if to test our resolve, the first snowflake hit Simon’s windshield. But McCallen must have been calling to us, because no one even suggested we turn around.
By the time we reached the house, a couple inches of snow had already piled up.
The headlights cast a spotlight on the dilapidated exterior of the house. The gray shingles were chipped in some places and completely gone in others. The windows on the top floor had been boarded up, which made it seem like the house had its eyes closed to the world. A plaque was placed next to the front door sometime in the 1970s that read: The McCallen Mansion, Est. 1862. It was too far away to read, but every true citizen of Burgerville knew the inscription by heart: Give us your tired, your hungry, your mentally ill.
Jane slid open the car door and stared at the imposing façade. I climbed out of the minivan and stood a few feet behind her; she looked tiny in front of the imposing structure of the mansion.
Simon got out of the car and, in a move that shocked both Jane and me, extended his hand to Mary. Together, they walked toward the house. Jane and I followed a few yards back, arms at our sides.
We crept quietly toward the front door. The wind picked up; snowflakes swirled wildly around our heads. When we reached the front steps, we stopped as if an invisible force field barred our entrance.
Jane lightly pushed Simon. “Good luck,” she said.
“It was your idea.”
“I’ll do it,” I said, feeling brave for no particular reason.
“I heard people come here to have sex,” Simon said.
Mary looked frightened.
“Not us,” Simon quickly added.
I walked to the front door, unsure what to expect. My mom had been warning me about the McCallen Mansion for years. The few times Simon and I had planned on going there, something in the news always kept us away. Like the time an escaped prisoner was found hiding there, or the bear that was discovered hibernating in the kitchen, or, of course, the continued rumors of spiritual activity.
Taking a deep breath, I turned the doorknob. It didn’t budge.
“Try this,” Jane said. She joined me on the porch and threw a rock at the window. It shattered, the sound reverberating in the night.
“Now we’ve all just committed a felony,” Simon said. “I won’t make it in prison.”<
br />
This was all apparently way more than Mary bargained for.
“I shouldn’t be here,” she said. “I’m almost an honors student.”
Jane stuck her hand through the windowpane, found the lock, and opened the front door.
“At least let’s go inside,” she said.
The four of us huddled closely together and slowly began walking through the house.
The place was empty save for a couple of lawn chairs, old food containers, beer bottles, and various scattered debris. There were holes in the walls, a stain that eerily matched the outline of a human body, and of course, a necessary feature of all haunted houses, a bathtub placed randomly in the corner of one of the rooms.
Every sound became magnified tenfold. The wind whistled through the cracks in the windows. A tree limb banged loudly against the side of the house, forcing us closer together.
“I think I just peed a little,” Simon said, forgetting he was on a date.
“Me too,” Mary said. “Okay, a lot.”
Our four cellphone flashlights moved around the room, barely piercing the darkness. We took the collective power of the light and shined it on a wall at the back of the house.
“Hieroglyphics,” Simon said, pointing to the wall full of spray-painted insignia.
Together, we went over to get a closer look.
“What were they trying to tell us,” I said, looking at the penises and various other vulgarities.
“It’s in an ancient dialect,” Simon said.
“Who is this Carl, and what type of good time does he have in mind?”
By the time I turned around, Jane had disappeared.
“Jane?” I said tentatively.
I heard the stairs creak.
“Grandma?” Mary said to no one in particular.
My heart started racing, and I walked over to the stairs, intent on retrieving Jane, even if it meant fighting through a barrage of paranormal activity.
“Jane,” I whispered at the foot of the steps.
“Come on,” she said. I saw the light of her cellphone at the top of the stairs.
I reluctantly followed, trailing the light of her phone.
Once I reached the top, Jane and I tiptoed through the hallway, holding hands, every noise making us tighten our grip. We stopped at a closed door all the way at the end, which I assumed was McCallen’s bedroom, the inner chamber, the source and cure of Burgerville’s insanity.
I felt Jane’s breath on my neck.
“Should we?” she said, tilting her head toward the closed door.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I said.
Something banged against the door, like it was trying to get out.
“I guess he’s waiting for us,” Jane said. She reached for the doorknob. The door slowly creaked open, revealing a pitch-black interior.
Jane angled her flashlight into the room and walked in. I peered through the doorway. In the middle of the room, there was an old pair of boots, as if someone had just disintegrated mid-step.
I followed Jane, not sure what to expect. The wind picked up, slamming against the wooden boards covering the windows. “Were you expecting an appointment with McCallen?”
Jane shrugged. “I didn’t know what to expect. That’s part of the fun.”
“You know, we do have real therapists in Burgerville,” I said. I tried to make it sound like a joke, but the minute I said it, I knew I’d made a mistake. My voice betrayed my true intentions; the shaky delivery, fake laugh. So much for subtlety.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing. Just making a joke.”
Jane paced around, examining the debris on the floor, kicking the rubble with her black boots. “Have I ever shown you a picture of Ellie?” she asked.
I shook my head. Jane scrolled through a few photos on her phone and then handed it to me, the screen frozen on a picture of two girls.
For so long I’d wondered about what Jane was like before moving to Burgerville, and now, there she was. The same dark hair. A little bit more makeup. Slightly younger. But there was something about her that looked lighter.
Next to her, their faces smooshed together, there was a girl with dark skin and red-streaked hair, just like Jane’s. She had on a Bigfoot T-shirt that said: Don’t feed the wildlife.
I handed her back the phone.
“Why don’t you two hang out anymore?”
“I moved to Burgerville,” she said.
“Yeah, but it doesn’t seem like you two talk. What happened?”
“We just don’t talk, okay?”
I let it go. I was worried if I kept pushing, Jane would stop telling me anything at all.
The light from her phone flickered across the walls, the ceiling, the debris on the floor. “This is where he hanged himself, isn’t it?”
“That’s what they say.”
“We look back and know that using leeches and draining people’s blood was a bad idea. That you can’t just pray for a cure. But with depression and stuff, people still act like something’s wrong with you. That you’re choosing it or something. But they’re not. I’m not, okay?”
“I know,” I said, though if I’m telling the truth I didn’t really know. I didn’t know anything. “I never said you were.”
“Because if I could choose, trust me, I wouldn’t choose to be stuck with this.”
This. I still wasn’t even sure what this was for Jane. I didn’t know what to say. I was beginning to realize that Jane needed more help than my random images.
“Maybe you should tell McCallen,” I said.
“Tell him what?”
“What you would choose.”
“I wouldn’t wake up feeling sad,” she said quietly. “I’d stop feeling like such a bad luck charm. I’d—”
Just then, we heard a car pull into the driveway. A look of panic spread across Jane’s face, and I almost joined Simon and Mary’s club of people who pee their pants. Okay, fine, it wasn’t almost.
With barely any time to think about what was happening, we sprinted down the stairs, where Simon and Mary waited at the front door. The red and blue lights of a police car flashed outside, bathing the house in intermittent bursts of color.
“I’m going to surrender,” Simon said.
“This isn’t a shootout,” I said.
“My parents are never going to let me go on another date with you,” Mary said, her voice wavering.
“You wanted to go on another date?” Simon said.
“Stay calm,” Jane said. “Follow my lead.”
Two flashlights approached, zeroing in on the broken window.
“We’re in here, Officer,” Simon yelled.
Jane glared at Simon. “I said follow my lead.” She walked to the front door and opened it, no different than if she were hosting a dinner party. Two police officers stood there, a fat one and a skinny one, their flashlights shining directly into Jane’s face.
Jane shielded her eyes.
“There was something up there,” Jane said. “It was terrible.” She started to cry, a theatrical sob that sounded similar to a child who thinks they’ve seen the bogeyman. Simon and I looked on, baffled. Mary was on the verge of tears herself.
The officers exchanged glances. “What’d you see?” the fat one said.
“The ghost of McCallen,” Jane said.
“Is he the one who broke the window?” the skinny officer asked.
“Are any of you carrying drugs or a weapon?” the fat one said. We all shook our heads as if being controlled by a puppeteer.
“I have to take pills for gas,” Simon said. “Just in case,” he added, turning to Mary.
“Everything out of your pockets,” the skinny officer said.
We all did as we were told, dumping t
he contents of our pockets onto the floor: keys, Simon’s pills, our wallets, the fortune cookie I’d taken from the restaurant.
Simon seemed reluctant to take an item out of his pocket.
“Let’s go,” the skinny officer shouted at Simon.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Simon said.
“Now!” the skinny officer barked.
Simon pulled out a bright yellow wrapper and let it fall to the floor.
We all gasped as the light from the flashlights hit the square package. The police officers laughed. Mary blushed.
“It was my dad’s. I didn’t think anything was going to happen,” he said, assuring Mary.
The condom had lightened the mood enough to allow Jane to distract the officers once again.
“Can we get out of here?” she asked. “This place gives me the creeps.”
The skinny officer called into his radio. “Four teenagers, broken window, apparent sighting of the ghost of A. J. McCallen.” He raised his eyebrows.
“This house isn’t a safe place,” the fat one said. “And I don’t mean because of ghosts. There could be people using drugs, squatters, anything. You have to be more careful. Especially you, Latex.”
Yes, we absolutely called Simon Latex for the next few weeks.
Relieved that we weren’t in handcuffs, we followed the police officers outside.
The police took all of us home that night. My mom was waiting for me at the front door in her bathrobe, her hair tangled and matted like an old wig someone had found in the basement and put on crooked. After the inevitable lecture on responsibility and good decisions and how guilty I would have felt if Simon was eaten by a bear, I received my punishment: snow-shoveling duty for the rest of the year—for the whole street, helping out Gus the Partially Blind Snowman. I’m not being offensive; it was actually written on his truck.
For the rest of the night, I tossed and turned, but it wasn’t the ghost of McCallen haunting me. It was Jane, her face lit up like a jack-o’-lantern, standing inside the dark unknown of McCallen’s bedroom. Hiding something. Needing something I didn’t know how to give her.
The History of Jane Doe Page 13