The Dead Girls of Hysteria Hall

 

As the slam of the door echoed in the hall, my mother pressed her hands to the sides of her face, turning her head in a slow survey of the room where I’d died. Her whole body trembled almost uncontrollably. She made a low, quiet sound, a sustained hum that kept trying to break out into something fiercer. Then she fell silent, gave herself a sharp little shake, and walked away.

 

The trail of pain she left behind was almost tangible.

 

How could I have ever thought she would forget me?

 

 

 

 

 

I slipped through the door to Room 2 as Janie was sitting down on the bed and pulling a thin tablet-style computer from her bag. She connected her phone to it with a short white cable, hooking it up as a wireless modem before opening the computer’s web browser. I was impressed—at some point, my little sister had morphed into a tech geek.

 

I watched raptly over her shoulder as she pulled up a website called Paranormal Interests and logged herself in as Need2Know.

 

A notification window popped up. You have 8 unread private messages.

 

I watched her scroll through them. Each one was from a different sender, but they all wrote as if they knew her. Are you there now? someone asked. Has anything happened, any occurrences? someone else asked.

 

She clicked through them all but stopped on one from SawW. It was written with a lot more formality than the others.

 

Dear Jane,

 

I must ask you again to reconsider. I think you are taking an unnecessary risk. There are other ways to learn about what happened to your sister.

 

 

 

Janie had been talking to people on the Internet about me and my death? I was anxious to know more, but Janie was already typing a reply to SawW.

 

Dear Walter,

 

As usual, I appreciate you worrying about me—you always have great advice and that means a LOT. I printed out the pamphlet you sent, so thanks for that, too. The thing is, I can’t reconsider because this is my last chance. My parents are selling the property in August, and I will never be able to come back. If I don’t figure it out now, then I will never know what happened, and I will never ever be okay again. Which I guess is only fair because Delia will never get to be okay, but I still need to try. For my parents’ sake as much as for mine. If I am never okay again, then they might as well have lost two daughters.

 

 

 

I bristled. Who was this Walter guy, and why was he messaging my sister? I had a horrified vision of some creepy mouth-breather. What kind of sleazebag would prey on an emotionally vulnerable fifteen-year-old?

 

She clicked Send, and not thirty seconds later, another little window popped up. This one said, You have a new private message from SawW. Next to it was a little avatar of a man who must have been Walter. To my immense relief, he looked about eighty-five years old.

 

Janie clicked on the window and winced when the text popped up.

 

IF YOU CONTINUE THIS FOOLISHNESS, THEY WILL LOSE TWO DAUGHTERS!

 

 

 

As if it could erase the ominous tone of his words, Janie quickly closed the window and sat staring at her desktop background—a photo of her and me from that perfect Halloween, the one where she was a housewife and I was a grunge rocker. In the picture, Janie was clutching my hand and laughing. I was beaming at the camera, holding her mop in my other hand.

 

With a sigh, Janie clicked on a folder icon on the desktop marked Private. It contained at least a dozen subfolders, each meticulously labeled. There was a folder called Police Files and one called Historical. She paused before selecting Floor Plans.

 

A map popped up—rather, five maps—one for each level of the building, starting with the basement and going all the way to the attic. All of the rooms were drawn out and clearly labeled.

 

What’s more, they had some sort of notation on them—a seemingly random assortment of numbered red dots. But next my sister opened another file called Incidents, which was a numbered list. I scanned it quickly until I hit a familiar name:

 

3. Maria Gorren: died 1885, 10 yrs old, electrocuted self and Nurse Carlson

 

 

 

4. Harriet Carlson: died 1885, resident nurse, electrocuted by Maria Gorren

 

 

 

I looked at the image, searching for the red dots labeled 3 and 4, and found them in the third-floor ward bathroom.

 

Perusing the rest of the list, I found Florence—

 

8. Florence Beauregard, 20 yrs old, died 1902, asphyxiation by hanging

 

 

 

I gasped. Had Florence really hanged herself? Or had she hanged herself in the same way that I’d leapt out a window—which is to say, not at all?

 

Farther down, I found Eliza. 19 yrs old, died 1922, unknown causes.

 

I flinched at #27—Theodore Hawkins, 19 years old, died 1940, drowning.