The Dead Girls of Hysteria Hall

 

“No, Maria,” Florence said, her voice low and threatening. “Leave her alone.”

 

The sheet took one more step toward me.

 

“What is it?” I whispered.

 

“It’s Maria.” Florence frowned. “She’s not a nice girl.”

 

The ghost whipped its head toward her and uttered a menacing sound, almost a growl.

 

“I’m not afraid of you, honey,” Florence said, lifting her chin imperiously. “Don’t you remember what happened the last time you tried to bother me?”

 

Another growl.

 

“Back to the third floor, where you belong. Go! Scram!” Florence stepped forward, stomping her feet and clapping her hands, as if to frighten off a stray dog.

 

I felt a little guilty watching her. Maria was clearly just a child. How dangerous could she be?

 

“Delia, stand behind me. Back against the wall, as far as you can,” Florence said. “Maria’s in a bad mood. Something’s got her stirred up. I don’t want you getting hurt.”

 

“Ghosts can get hurt?” I asked.

 

Florence looked at me like I was crazy. “Of course we can,” she said. “Now do as I say.”

 

I started to back away, but Maria kept coming for me.

 

“All right,” Florence said, tucking her hair behind her ear. “I guess it’s come to this, then.”

 

A noise began to fill the room. It started as a low rumbling but got higher and higher pitched, until my head ached and my ears rang.

 

Then Florence seemed to explode into light, a violent strobe surrounding her body in a vibrating aura. Her eyes went black and her mouth hung open—the skin seemed to be peeling away from her bones. And slowly, she rose up off the ground, flickering like a phantom from a horror movie.

 

Without warning, she charged at the little ghost.

 

It sounded like a velociraptor and a tyrannosaurus coming together in battle. Maria matched the high-pitched sound with her own terrible roar, and for a moment the air around the two of them became blurry and unclear, like a dust storm made of light. I stood helplessly to the side and caught glimpses of arms grappling, heads thrashing.

 

Then, suddenly, Maria flew back across the room and landed on her back, motionless, with her legs stuck through the wall like the Wicked Witch who’d been crushed by a house in The Wizard of Oz. The sheet was in a heap on the floor.

 

In the next moment, Florence was back to her usual, lovely self—only clearly exhausted. She panted and held up her hand, looking like she was about to fall over. I went to her side and wrapped my arm around her waist just as she began to collapse. She leaned into me.

 

How can we possibly be dead? I wondered. We had weight. We felt pain.

 

It took another minute before Florence could speak. “Thank you,” she whispered.

 

“No, thank you,” I said, trying not to act too freaked out. “You saved me from … What is she?”

 

“She’s Maria,” she said flatly, as if that were all I needed to know, before pulling away and smoothing her dress. Then she inspected her arms and muttered, “Oh, perfect.”

 

I took a step closer and looked at her left wrist, which now had a very clear pattern of tooth marks on it.

 

But they didn’t look like human tooth marks. The points of entry were all just that—points. Not the lines that a human bite would leave.

 

“Are you going to be okay?” I asked. “Is that going to get infected or something?”

 

“Oh, I’ll be all right,” she said, sounding pretty gloomy. “I just try not to get all marked up. You only get one incorporeal body, you know. Might as well take care of it. Do yourself a favor and don’t go tumbling down the stairs.”

 

“All right,” I said.

 

Florence continued to inspect the tooth marks, more upset than she wanted to let on. Then she gave me a frustrated, self-conscious smile. “Sorry—Mama always did say I was a touch vain.”

 

“What is she?” I asked. “Maria?”

 

“Want to see?” Florence walked across the room, grabbed the legs that were sticking through the wall, and tugged them until Maria was back in the room with us.

 

I almost cried out.

 

The only thing about the figure before me that resembled a human child was her height—and her feet.

 

The rest of her was a grotesque mess. The skin of her face was cratered with black sores. Her eyelids were crisscrossed with the scars of old cuts. Her cheeks and lips had begun to rot away, revealing the decaying interior of her mouth—pitted gums and an uneven row of sharp teeth. It gave her the otherworldly perma-grin of a great white shark, even when she was unconscious.

 

Her arms were just patchy skin over bone, her fingers curled painfully into claws. Her torso, where I could see it through rips in her dress, was twisted and burned-looking.

 

“Rumor has it she was ten years old when she came here,” Florence said. “Killed her father some time in the eighties. She only lasted a few months before she electrocuted herself and a nurse. Nice kid.”