The Dead Girls of Hysteria Hall

 

There was a door marked NO UNAUTHORIZED ADMITTANCE in a little alcove to my left, and another door across the room, with a dirty-looking stamped metal sign that read WARD.

 

I went through the ward door. Like the day room, the hallway was laid out similarly to its second-floor counterpart—same length and width, same number of doors—but with a few striking differences. The nurse’s station was guarded by sturdy metal mesh, bolted into the walls. The closest door was open to reveal a filthy-looking bathroom with a row of exposed toilets, three grimy sinks, and a pair of bathtubs. There wasn’t even a curtain for privacy.

 

No dignity for the troubled women on the third floor.

 

In each bedroom was a metal bed frame holding a limp, discolored mattress, most with rotting foam spilling out from their torn seams. A network of cracked and crumbling leather straps was clearly visible: two for the wrists, two for the ankles, one to go across the chest, and one to go across the upper thighs. Just looking at them gave me phantom sensations of pressure on my wrists and a tight feeling in my chest.

 

Things were much less luxurious up here, which made sense: for a woman to be confined to the third floor, she probably showed some signs of actual mental instability. Unlike the second floor, where the residents were just troublemakers, the families of the third-floor women didn’t have to do any soul-searching about leaving them at the Piven Institute. There was no need for cozy bedding or snug-looking rooms to entice guilt-ridden parents or husbands with the promise of comfort.

 

The third floor wasn’t just for show.

 

With a shudder, I walked toward the window at the end of the hall, where I stood staring outside at the moonlight luminescing off the snowbanks that covered the grounds.

 

I stepped back from the window.

 

But when I turned to head downstairs, something was wrong …

 

The hallway had shrunk.

 

Before, it had been wide enough that I could have lain down across it and still had a couple of feet between my head and the wall.

 

Now, stretching my arms out to the sides, I could reach both walls with my fingertips.

 

Just ignore it, I told myself. Ignore it. It wants you to react. It’s trying to scare you.

 

My first instinct was to scrunch my eyes shut as hard as I could and run for it, but I knew that would be a mistake. What I had to do was act like I hadn’t even noticed and sail right through the hall. Keep my head high all the way back to the first floor.

 

But when I took a step, I was immediately engulfed by a sick, dizzy feeling. My vision seemed to ripple. I rubbed my eyes to clear them, and when I looked up, the walls were even closer. With my arms extended, I could have rested a flat palm on either side.

 

Another step. Another wave of nausea rang through me like a gong.

 

If I stood still, the awful feeling subsided. If I moved, it pressed in on my face and my cheekbones and turned my stomach.

 

Two more paces forward. I leaned over and retched.

 

When I stood up, the hallway was less than three feet wide.

 

Finally, I closed my eyes, stretched my arms out in front of me, and ran.

 

I made it about ten steps before my shoulder slammed into something, and I recoiled, only to slam into something else on the other side. Now the space was only as wide as my body. And there were still six feet to the door.

 

I paused and then turned just my head to look back over my shoulder. Surely I’d see that this was all just an illusion. There would be a spacious, bright hall behind me.

 

But there wasn’t. What I saw was like a view through a fun-house mirror. The narrow walls twisted off out of view, squeezed together and distorted.

 

What’s more, they were still getting closer—as if a zipper was dragging them together.

 

As if I was the zipper.

 

I was paralyzed by fear, afraid to go forward and afraid to stay where I was. What would it do to me? Smash me flat? Leave me horribly maimed and disfigured, the kind of ghost that other ghosts chase back to the third floor?

 

I felt like a mouse being tormented by a cat. Like the house itself was batting me into a corner, playing with me—just because it could.

 

As if it was showing me who was boss.

 

Just go, I thought. They were just walls. I could get through walls. What was the problem? But they were solid against my body.

 

Suddenly, there was a blast of cold air, so cold it made my whole body ache.

 

And something slammed into me from behind, pushing me into action.

 

I plunged ahead, pivoting sideways when the walls were too tight to walk straight. I made it to the door, closed my eyes, and pushed through, throwing myself into the dreary day room in the last possible moment.

 

With no sign of what had caused it, the cold air dissipated.

 

“Hello?” I called. “Hello—who’s here? Who are you?”

 

There was no answer.

 

But there was something on the floor that hadn’t been there before—a tiny image, carefully cut out of a magazine: a little box of cat food.