The Dead Girls of Hysteria Hall
By: Katie Alender
Everything was centered on me. The rug began to crawl inward, dragging its tassels against the dusty floor. The dresser, bolted in place, stretched and strained in an effort to break free. The room was alive—or something was alive in there with me.
I inched back as far as I could, until I was standing against the wire barrier that covered the window.
Behind me, the window flew open, filling the room with a miniature tempest.
Faintly, from across an endless distance, there was more shouting.
As if my shoulders were being gently guided … I turned around.
The wire barrier between the window and myself had been torn away.
I looked wonderingly down at my hands, which were crisscrossed in cuts and soaked in blood.
The slippery smoke was now up to my neck. It squeezed lightly on my throat, and then the warmth of it stroked my chin before slipping, sweet and smoky, down my throat. It seemed as if the fingers of a gentle hand softly shut my eyelids for me and coaxed the breath out of my lungs.
I tried to open my mouth.
I tried to call for my mother.
But there was only silence.
And deep, deep darkness.
I jolted awake. The storm had quieted, leaving behind only a strange glowing quality in the evening light.
Mom and Dad were arguing outside the door. “Where were they?!” Dad demanded. I heard clumsy fumbling with a set of keys.
“In the day room!” Mom’s voice was an octave higher than normal. “On the floor next to one of the tables! I don’t know how they got all the way out there!”
“You guys, relax,” I called, backing away from the window. “I’m fine.”
I watched the door because (sue me) I wanted to enjoy their expressions of fear and regret. They should feel regret. They’d locked me in here and then apparently lost the keys—during a huge, scary storm, no less.
I had my line all ready to say. Parents of the Year, guys.
So when the door flew open, I spread my arms wide. But in the moment, I couldn’t bring myself to taunt them. Instead, I said, “Are you ready to listen to reason now?”
But they didn’t speak. Mom stared to my left, mouth agape.
“The window …” she said. Her voice was soft and strained.
“Okay, sure, don’t worry about me,” I said. “Worry about the window. I’m just your daughter.”
Neither of them answered me. Their arms hung limply at their sides like a pair of broken puppets. They were fixated on the window, and I wondered if there was more damage than I’d realized. Repairing old windows like this would probably cost a fortune. But when I turned around, I saw the window swinging open, perfectly intact.
I felt a little wave of relief.
But something was still wrong with my parents. Very wrong.
“Oh no,” my mother said as she approached the open window. “Oh no, oh no, oh no.”
She dropped to her knees, still repeating no, no, no. Dad stayed frozen, standing above her.
Not gonna lie, I was getting a little freaked out. “You guys, it’s okay. It was only a storm. I’m not even that mad.”
They didn’t look up.
“Just … answer me.” I was suddenly so cold I couldn’t stand it. “Why won’t you answer me?”
And then my mother made this sound that I wish I could scrub out of my brain, this strangled half cry, half moan that meandered and twisted and turned to a wail, and then to a scream, and the scream just went on and on.
Then, in one swift motion, Dad grabbed my mother by the arm and pulled her out of the room. I heard their footsteps galloping down the hall.
In the silence, I stepped closer and looked out the window.
On the ground twenty feet below, sprawled and broken like a doll, was a body.
The eyes were open, but there was no spark of life in them.
I know that person, I thought.
But from where? The answer was buried in my head somewhere, like the lyrics to a song you haven’t heard in years. I just had to catch the answer, the way you catch one word in your memory and then the whole song comes flooding back.
I know that sweater.
Burgundy. Baggy. It was my father’s sweater. I remembered a Christmas card photo of him wearing it.
My thoughts slid together in a confused mush. I knew I should know who that was down there, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. I rubbed my face with my hands, feeling dizzy.
Janie? Oh God. Could that be my sister? Could it—
No. I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to remember.
Dad handing me a folded burgundy bundle after I borrowed it for the bazillionth time. Telling me to wear it with pride and restore it to its former coolness. Mom laughing and saying it was never cool, but it might have a chance now …
Now that Delia will be wearing it.
So … wait. That was my sweater? And was that my face? But why was my face down there?
Why was my face attached to a dead body?
It hit me with a pop!—the instant, horrible, irrefutable truth:
That wasn’t some random dead body.
That was my dead body.
I stared down at my dead self.