The Dead Girls of Hysteria Hall
By: Katie Alender
“We won’t go poking it with sticks, I promise,” Eliza said. “Anyway, that’s not what’s important at the moment. For now, we’ve got to focus our efforts on getting Delia’s family off the property. Perhaps we can arrange a sewage leak or something.”
Florence flopped back, her forearm over her eyes. “Lovely,” she muttered.
“If we’re pitching ideas,” I said, “I have one that might be a little less stinky.”
*
“I’m telling you,” Eliza said, her voice straining in an effort to be patient, “this isn’t going to work. I don’t know why you won’t believe me.”
“Sorry,” I said. “But I have to try.”
After making sure I noticed her annoyed look, Eliza handed me the orange Sharpie. (We’d already been through her looking at the logo on the pen and asking me “What’s a Shar-Pie?” as if it were a blueberry pie or apple pie.) “What do you plan to write?” she asked.
We were sitting on the floor on the ward side of the door, on which I was preparing to write a message to my family. Something they couldn’t possibly ignore. My object-holding skills were still touch and go, so I’d persuaded Eliza to join me, just in case I needed help.
“Something powerful, but simple,” I said. “Maybe … Leave? In all capital letters.”
She shook her head. “Go ahead and try. L.”
“I know how to spell, thank you.” I pushed the tip of the marker against the door and paused. Then I started to make a line, the vertical part of the L.
Suddenly, the marker veered off course.
Eliza sat back. “See?”
I rolled my eyes, then raised the pen and tried again. Again, the pen seemed to jerk out from my control.
“I don’t understand,” I said. “It doesn’t make sense.”
“It makes perfect sense.” She sat back on her heels and looked up at me, having the grace not to gloat. “If we could just send messages, everyone would be doing it. You can’t cross the planes that way. It’s too literal. You’ve got to be subtle.”
Subtle. The same word Penitence had used.
“But we can control physical objects,” I said. “Why can’t we just draw a line?”
“You can draw a line,” she said, taking the marker and drawing one.
“Great!” I said. “Draw another line, and then we’ll have an L.”
She sighed, looked at me as if I were totally hopeless, and reached over to draw another line. This one went wildly diagonal.
I was silent.
“Do you believe me now?” she asked.
“I guess I have to.”
She got to her feet, leaving the marker on the floor. “We’ll find a way to make them leave,” she said. “I promise. But you’re never going to be able to communicate this way.”
I sighed. “We have to think outside the box.”
“Outside of what box?” She frowned. “Have you found some sort of special box?”
“No, there’s no box,” I said. “Forget it.”
Eliza grimaced. “I’ll go look into a sewage leak.”
Just then, the bathroom door opened and Mom emerged, wrapped in a towel. She walked right by the scribbled-on door.
“Janie?” Mom called. “I mean, Jane? Do you smell something? It’s like … a dead animal. Yuck.”
There was no answer.
Mom was quiet for a second. I assumed that by this point she was used to being snubbed by my sister and would just go back to her own room. But instead, she tensed and walked the length of the hall, peering inside every open door. Not finding Janie, she returned to the closed door of Room 1—my old room—took a deep, bracing breath, and opened the door.
There was a surprised shriek.
“Mom!” Janie cried.
“Janie!” Mom cried back at her. “What are you doing in here?”
“Sleeping,” Janie said. “Trying to, anyway.”
“You shouldn’t be in here,” Mom said, her voice firm. “You need to choose a different room. What’s wrong with the one you slept in last night?”
“I didn’t like that one,” Janie said, and I heard the hesitation in her voice as she passed over her chance to tell Mom what had happened. “Anyway, I like it in here.”
I walked over. I felt a jolt seeing Janie, her Goth-y hairstyle all mussed from sleep, in the pink bed I’d never actually slept in. The boards and broken screen had been removed from the window.
“Jane,” Mom said, with a calmness that hinted at some suppressed surge of emotion, “you cannot stay in here.”
“But—”
“I’m not debating this with you!” Mom hardly ever raised her voice, so when she went full-on angry, it was a terrible sound. “Get out of this room. And stay out.”
Janie’s face fell, and for a moment, she looked like a little girl again. “But I like it in here. I feel—”
“For once,” Mom said, seething, “just once, do as I say. God, you are so much like your sister sometimes.”
There was a heavy, painful silence.
Mom looked at the floor. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I … I’m sorry.”