The Dead Girls of Hysteria Hall
By: Katie Alender
“Prince Charming’s not coming here,” I said. The only man we had access to was Theo, stuck outside. And something inside me went cold at the thought of Florence turning her considerable wiles on him.
“Don’t I know it,” Florence said. “I’m so sick of women I could spit. Present company excluded, of course.”
We all laughed a little, and I began to feel like they were warming up to me.
“Did it work, when you were alive?” I asked. “Did you catch a man?”
“Well, lots of boys came calling on me, of course. But none of them really got my attention. Then there was one who was different from the others.” Florence leaned back and stared at the carved plaster ceiling. “He set my very soul on fire. I would have done anything for him. The problem is … he married someone else.”
“Oh dear,” Eliza said.
“Oh dear is right,” Florence said. “Talk about a troubled woman.”
Then we all laughed, harder this time.
I sat back, contemplating whether what Landon and I had had was even real. It certainly paled in comparison to Eliza’s aliveness and Florence’s fiery soul.
Maybe that was why he was the one I missed the least.
“Will you tell me more about what it was like to live here?” I asked, still curious. I tried to imagine Eliza arriving and being shown into the wardress’s office. My eyes traveled instinctively to her wrist. “Like, why …” I trailed off, not sure if the question would offend her.
“My jingle bells?” Eliza’s voice darkened. “I kept trying to get away—I was quite good at it, actually; I’d learned how to pick locks from my older brother, Ernest. Eventually they strapped the bells on. Completely mortifying. I’m like a cat. A naughty cat.”
“They’re not so bad,” I lied.
“You know, my family never came back for me,” Eliza said, looking at the floor. “Not even to visit.”
“That’s pretty harsh,” I said.
She thought for a moment before speaking again. “Yes, I do think it is. What about you? What was your life like? Aside from the fact that your family doesn’t like one another.”
I flushed, annoyed. “We do like each other; it’s just … complicated. Different from when you guys were alive. Families don’t always get along.”
“That’s not different,” Florence said with a small laugh. “That’s the way it’s been since Cain and Abel.”
“What’s different, I think, is that everyone seemed so rude,” Eliza said. “The way you treated each other.”
“We weren’t always like that,” I protested. “I was having a really bad day.” Which was a bit of an understatement.
No one spoke for a long time, and when I glanced back over at Florence, she was gone. Eliza was beginning to fade, too.
“How do you do that?” I asked. “Fade in and out.”
“It’s not just us,” she said. “You do it as well. It’s like … when you’re alive, you can walk into a room and not attract any notice. And then you say hello or spill your drink, and people notice you. For ghosts, it’s a bit like that, only you fade in and out.”
“So you can’t always see me, even when we’re in the same room?”
“Not always,” Eliza said. “But I should warn you, I hate surprises. So don’t creep up behind me.”
“Fair enough,” I said. I was starting to think she found me just tolerable, which was a big step up from before. Her next words floored me.
“What color was the smoke?”
I looked up at her, startled.
“The smoke you saw before you jumped—I mean, fell,” she said. “What did it look like?”
“It was dark, practically black,” I said.
“And it was almost … shiny?” she asked. “Like a piece of oiled metal?”
I nodded and saw a gleam of recognition in her eye. I waited for her to say more, to tell me why she’d asked. But instead, she nodded curtly and disappeared.
*
I was worn out, too, but I felt stubbornly determined to accomplish something. So I went through the hall door and down the dark corridor, illuminating it with the pale blue glow that emanated from my body. I’d been through every door except the one at the far end—the visiting parlor—so that was where I headed.
The room was large and gracious-looking, with wood floors and a fancy sofa against one wall. Apart from the superintendent’s apartment and the lobby, it was the nicest room I’d seen in the house, which made sense, considering it was for visitors.
There was a large bookcase against one wall, and I let my eyes drift across the authors’ names embossed in gold on the spines—Byron, Tennyson, Dickinson, and a whole row of dark green texts with gleaming silver spines—The Selected Works of Lord Lindley. I tried to remember the last book I’d read as a living person, and cringed as I realized it had been the Cliffs-Notes of something my teacher had assigned at the very end of the school year. Maybe someday I’d be able to pick up and read these books. Maybe even today.
I bet for something as noble as poetry, I’ll be able to touch the books, I thought. Eyes closed, I slowly reached my hand toward the shelves.