The Dead Girls of Hysteria Hall
By: Katie Alender
Her fingertips were bloody. She was making progress on the wire. She was going to open the window and leap out—or be pushed. And I was going to have to stand there and watch because I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t save her.
“Janie!” I screamed at the top of my lungs. And then I screamed again. “Janie, wake up! Wake up!”
In a panic, I raced to the door and stuck my head through.
“Mom!” I cried, momentarily forgetting that my mother and I were on separate planes of existence. “Come quick! Mom!”
And then it hit me that my mother wasn’t even there. She’d gone into town. So she would come back to find … No.
I raced back to my sister, who by that point had wrenched the bottom third of the screen away from the wall.
This wasn’t happening. This couldn’t be happening.
Except it was happening. And I couldn’t stop it.
I circled the room, trying to move chairs and tables, desperate to get a grip on something I could use to wake my sister up … or knock her down.
But it wasn’t working. Was this an extension of not being able to send messages? Was I really not going to be able to save Janie’s life because of a technicality?
“Penitence!” I called. “Help me, please!”
But she was stuck in place. “I—I can’t. I can’t move. I can’t leave my work.”
“That’s not true,” I said. “Just get up. You can get up. Try. Please.”
Penitence’s face was a mask of regret and fear, and then she vanished.
I was alone with my sister, whose glazed eyes were a searing reminder of my own past—of being overcome by the smoky haze. That dazed, disoriented feeling that directly preceded my own death.
When Janie had managed to pry half the screen out of the way, she reached through and unlatched the window. It swung open, and she set her foot on the windowsill and ducked, intending to fit her body through the smallish opening.
I couldn’t stop her. I couldn’t do anything.
She was going to die, right in front of me. And in a little while, Mom would come into the day room and see the open window, and—
Suddenly, there was a deep, primal yell, and someone was rushing across the room toward us.
Eliza body-slammed my sister, hurling the pair of them across the floor. Janie’s head hit the carpeted ground, hard, and her eyes, which had been wide and glazed, blinked twice and then shut tightly.
She whispered, “Ow.”
Eliza got to her feet, panting.
“Thank you,” I whispered. “Thank you.”
Eliza brushed off her hands but didn’t look at me. “I tried to tell you,” she said. “I’m not a killer. I spent every day of my life haunted by my brother and sister’s deaths—and every day since I died, too.”
I nodded.
“I wasn’t crazy when I first came here. But this place … this place made me crazy. I started to believe I’d killed them on purpose. I was seventeen years old, Delia—a child. It was an accident—a terrible accident.” Her eyes met mine. “Do you believe me?”
“Yes,” I said. Shame welled up inside me as I remembered my cold self-importance from our earlier confrontation. Who was I to judge? I, who had nearly murdered my best friend?
With a start, I realized that Eliza had saved the lives of two people I loved.
I looked down at Janie, who was lying on her back, staring at the ceiling, hugging herself tightly.
“Mom?” Janie called quietly. Tears sprang from the corners of her eyes. “Mommy?”
I sat down at her side, wishing I could comfort her. But I’d have to settle for keeping watch.
“I saw the smoke, too,” Eliza said softly. “When I died. I was in the infirmary, because I’d been ill. But I was getting better. I felt good, healthy, strong. Only the stronger I felt, the more I sensed that something was … watching me. Hovering nearby. And then one day, when the nurse left, the smoke came out of the walls and surrounded me. Everything went sort of gray, and when I woke up, they were carrying my body off to the morgue.”
She gritted her teeth. “They called it a heart defect. And when they buried me out on the west lawn, no one came to my funeral, not even the nurses. There was a priest, and he read about four lines and then left.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Do you know why, at first, I didn’t want to help you find the root of evil in this house?” Eliza said.
I shook my head.
“Because,” she said. “I’m afraid of what would happen if I were to move on from here. I’m afraid … afraid I won’t make it to heaven. Because of what I’ve done, you see.”
I looked down at my sister, who had rolled to her side and curled up in a ball, sniffling sadly.
“But it was an accident,” I said.
I’d never seen Eliza look so young. She peered down at me from beneath the dark line of her bangs. “You do believe me, then?” she asked again.
Frankly, even if I didn’t, it wouldn’t have mattered. She’d saved Janie’s life. So no matter what she’d done, I owed her forever.
But I did believe her. “Yes,” I said.
She drew in a long, shaky breath. “Well, that’s something, I suppose.”