The Dead Girls of Hysteria Hall

 

 

For a split second, I felt oddly vindicated. Then I remembered that my parents had just had their lives ruined, and I felt guilty.

 

“I heard the house is cursed,” said a female paramedic with a long red braid.

 

“Yeah,” the first guy said. “My granddad was part of the government team that came here to scout for copper during the Depression. His twin brother got sucked into a ditch and drowned … only there was no water in the ditch. They never figured out how it happened.”

 

“Well, clearly,” the redhead said, forming her hands into creepy claws, “it was a haunted ditch. Boogedy boogedy.”

 

From behind me came the authoritative clearing of a throat, and the paramedics jumped to attention at the appearance of a man in a dark suit who walked past them and over to my parents, seated on one of the sofas. He introduced himself as Detective Kinsella, then began to ask them questions—like why I’d been alone in the room, what they’d observed in the house, and then more and more small questions that grew from the big ones like branches. He was after every detail.

 

And then he went for it. “So you say you were angry with your daughter,” he said slowly. “Did you … strike her?”

 

Mom looked up, agape. “Strike her? You mean … hit her?”

 

“We’ve never touched our daughters in anger in their entire lives!” My father’s voice was almost a roar, and he started to get to his feet. “And for you to suggest otherwise is inviting a lawsuit—”

 

Detective Kinsella remained totally unruffled. He held up his hand. “Mr. Piven—”

 

“Dr. Piven,” my father seethed, apparently not too grief-stricken to be all high and mighty about his PhD.

 

“Dr. Piven,” Kinsella said. “Please understand that these are standard questions that must be asked. Because your daughter’s condition is somewhat alarming.”

 

“Of course it is.” Mom broke into fresh sobs. “She’s dead.”

 

Dad exhaled through his teeth. “She fell out a window—”

 

“Fell,” the detective repeated. “Forgive me, I know this is difficult. But … did you happen to see her hands?”

 

“What are you saying?” my father asked.

 

The officer sighed. “That she seemed to have worked quite hard to detach the wire screen from the window. Did your daughter seem upset to you at all? Had she been in treatment for any mental disorders, had any traumatic breakups—”

 

Dad leapt to his feet. “My daughter did not kill herself!”

 

“She was in therapy, but we all were,” Mom said. “Not for any specific disorder. Lately, we’ve just had some … communication issues within the family.”

 

The officer nodded and made another note.

 

“I’m telling you,” Dad said. “Delia didn’t jump from that window. Maybe she wanted some fresh air and lost her balance—”

 

“But her hands were covered in blood,” my mother whispered. “I saw them. She opened that screen herself.”

 

Then she just sort of—I don’t know, melted. Her shoulders rolled inward and her head hung low on her neck. She seemed to shrink to the size of a child. “Why did she do it?” Mom asked softly. “Why didn’t she come to us?”

 

“This is ridiculous!” And then my father made a fist, hauled back, and punched the wall so hard he made an actual indentation in the wallpaper.

 

“Excuse me, Mr.—Dr. Piven,” the detective said, standing up and grabbing him by the elbow. “Why don’t we all go get some fresh air?”

 

I’d never seen my parents like this—Mom totally unhinged, Dad aggressive and belligerent. It made me feel a little jittery, so I walked away, toward the door that led to the wardress’s office. A few minutes of peace and quiet would do me good.

 

Part of what bothered me was that I didn’t actually remember what had happened. Did I pull that protective screen away from the window? It seemed unlikely that they’d be wrong about something that evident.

 

Did I really …

 

I shied away from the question, trying to suppress it under a bushel of other, marginally less troubling thoughts, but it popped back up anyway.

 

Did I really jump?

 

I couldn’t stop myself from asking, but I could refuse to answer. I was at the door to the wardress’s office. Instinctively, I reached for the doorknob, but my hand went right through it.

 

I tried again, but the same thing happened.

 

“Sorry, sugar, that’s not how you do it.”

 

Startled, I looked up and saw a girl watching me. She was a few years older than me and so breathtakingly beautiful that for a second I forgot to think about being dead.