The Dead Girls of Hysteria Hall

 

 

I glanced around the dormitory. It was a simple room painted pale yellow, with four bunk beds in a neat line, separated from one another by plain white dressers. Every surface was bare except the farthest dresser, on which was a single figurine. I wandered over to look at it. It turned out to be a little clown with Xs for eyes, someone’s old toy. Creepy. Without thinking, I reached over to pick it up. My hand went right through it.

 

I looked back at Eliza and Florence, who were watching me.

 

“When do I learn to do that?” I asked them. “Pick things up?”

 

“It took me a year,” Eliza said briskly. “So don’t get your hopes too high.”

 

Florence was now curled up on one of the beds, her legs tucked under her. “Well, let’s see … I died in March, and in December I knocked over the wardress’s Christmas tree. So about nine months? ’Course, I didn’t spend six of those months lying in the front yard like you.”

 

I sighed at the thought of more helpless months stretching before me. “What’s the trick?” I asked.

 

Florence frowned. “I wouldn’t say there’s a trick. It’s kind of like going through the walls.”

 

Eliza tilted her head to one side. “My first time, I’d been sitting and thinking about something else, and I got distracted and reached for a handkerchief, meaning to wipe my nose. I don’t know who was more scared—me, or the living, breathing nurse whose handkerchief it was. She deserved it, though—she was a thoroughly horrid woman.”

 

There had still been living people here in the institute when Eliza and Florence had died. “You were both around when this place was still in business,” I said wonderingly. “I forgot that.”

 

“All of us were,” Eliza said. Her easy tone tightened a little. “Except for you.”

 

All of us. How many spirits were there? And how many were more like Maria than like Florence, Eliza, and Theo? “Is the whole world just, like, full of ghosts?” I wondered out loud.

 

“How would we know?” Eliza asked. “We can’t leave the house.”

 

“Why not?” I asked, remembering what Theo had said. “Why can I go outside but the rest of you can’t?”

 

They both looked baffled.

 

“Have you ever even tried to leave?” I asked.

 

Florence looked shocked by the mere suggestion. “Leave?” she repeated. “Why would we want to do that?”

 

Dread seemed to pour down my spine like cold water.

 

“You don’t want to leave this place?” I asked. “Not even to see your family?”

 

“Not particularly,” Florence said. “Our families have passed.”

 

“But before they died,” I said. “You never thought about getting out of here?”

 

They were both staring at me as if I’d suggested we all cut our hair into Mohawks and start a mosh pit.

 

“I tried to go out the front doors one time,” Eliza admitted. “I failed rather spectacularly. It was … unpleasant.”

 

I remembered being knocked to the ground outside, my strength completely drained, wondering if I’d ever be able to move again. “Unpleasant” was one word for it.

 

“Besides, why should we leave?” Eliza asked. “We don’t know what’s out there. We don’t know what would happen if we were to get off the property. Say we managed to go, and then we couldn’t come back. What then?”

 

“Then …” I looked around helplessly. “At least you wouldn’t be stuck anymore.”

 

Florence laughed quietly. “Sugar, this is our home. We don’t mind being ‘stuck’ here, as you say.”

 

“But …” I fell into silence, trying not to show how disconcerted I was by their quiet acquiescence to captivity. Was it really possible that they were content here? It was almost as if they’d been brainwashed, but I didn’t say so. First, because I doubted they even knew what that term meant, and second, because if I started criticizing them, I might find myself friendless for all eternity. “What about Maria? Are there others like her? Bad ghosts?”

 

Florence shrugged. “Sure, there must be a couple. But don’t you worry about that. Mostly everybody keeps to themselves. It feels more natural, you see, to stay in the part of the house where you died.”

 

“But I can go anywhere—and you said Maria is from the third floor. She came downstairs.”

 

Florence arched an eyebrow in disapproval. “Not everybody has the decorum to conduct themselves suitably. All we can do is avoid the unseemly elements and trust things will work out for the best.”

 

I tried not to take her comment personally—as a hint that, if I observed proper decorum, I wouldn’t be wandering all over the house and grounds just because I could.

 

“Oh, I don’t mean you,” Florence said. “But it’s for your own safety, hon. Look at us—we’ve been here forever and nothing evil has ever gotten to us.”

 

I shuddered. Evil. Suddenly, I remembered it—the creeping dark smoke that had overcome me in my room. Right before I fell out the window.

 

No. I didn’t fall. I was pushed.