The Dead Girls of Hysteria Hall

 

 

“She did,” Maria said. “That’s why she gave me her most important letter to hide, even from herself. Because when she was a bad lady, she wanted to throw it away.”

 

I felt like the room was closing in on me. Words swam in and out of my mind’s grasp. “You have the letter?”

 

She nodded. “Do you want to see it?”

 

“Yes, I do,” I said, my heart beating so hard I could feel it in my chest. “In fact, I think she may have meant for you to give it to me.”

 

Maria’s rotting jaw pulled back, and her mouth formed a grotesque grimace.

 

It took me a minute to realize she was smiling.

 

“Come out,” she said, looking down at the salt.

 

I hesitated. Could this be a setup? Was she luring me to some dark, remote corner so she could attack me, out of the reach of my friends? Should I really believe her … ?

 

What choice did I have?

 

I knelt down and started to use the book to push the salt out of the way. To my amazement, Maria knelt, too, and began brushing it away with her fingers. A sickening smell, like burning flesh, faintly entered the air.

 

“No, stop,” I said, stopping myself just short of touching her charred-looking arm. “You’ll hurt yourself.”

 

She went on moving the salt around. “It doesn’t matter if I get hurt.”

 

“Most of the others can’t do that,” I said.

 

“Yes, they can,” she said. “Only they’re scared. I don’t get scared. I won’t cry. I never cried, not even when I was a baby. I only cry now because … I miss my mother sometimes.”

 

After we’d moved enough salt for me to pass through, Maria carefully filled in the line. The almost imperceptible searing sound made my chest ache.

 

“I need to keep them away from her nice things,” she said, by way of an explanation. “The bad ghosts, I mean.”

 

She stood up. And then she reached over and took my hand.

 

I cringed at the feeling of her paper-dry skin against my fingers, even as I braced myself for an attack. But she didn’t seem intent on hurting me. She led me out into the hallway.

 

It was deserted. The screaming woman, the straitjacketed girl—they had disappeared. All the ghosts had disappeared. I had an unpleasant thought of rats jumping off a sinking ship.

 

But before I had time to wonder where they’d gone, Maria led me through the wall, into a lavatory. It was a surprisingly spacious room, lit pale blue by sunshine that streamed through the high, mesh-encased window. A tiled shower area took up most of the floor space. There were restraints on the walls, and a splintered wood chair bolted to the floor with more restraints on it. The shower controls were on the wall near the door.

 

“Nurse brought me in here once,” Maria said. “But the water was too cold. I told her I wanted a bath instead.”

 

And a toaster, I thought.

 

Then Maria pointed behind me, and I turned around, expecting to see a toilet and sink.

 

But the floor was completely covered with images cut from magazines and children’s books—hundreds, maybe thousands, of puppies, kittens, bouquets of flowers, letters of the alphabet, numbers, cheerful-looking houses, and babies and children and families … so many families. And tucked way back in the corner was a picture I recognized—the Christmas tree drawing I’d sent with my letter so long ago.

 

It looked like some surrealist art installation. If Aunt Cordelia had given her one picture every day, this must have been five years’ worth of pictures.

 

In the corner, tucked between a filthy, broken toilet and the wall, was a small flannel blanket, the kind tiny babies get in the hospital, with ducklings and baby rattles on it. It was soiled and limp with age.

 

Maria walked across the pictures without disturbing them at all. “These are my pictures, and this is my bed,” she said, carefully stretching the blanket out and sitting down on it. “Cordelia gave it to me.”

 

I pictured her huddled on a rag in the corner of a dark, creepy bathroom, waiting the way a lost child waits for her parents. Except Maria had been here for more than a century, and no one was ever coming back for her.

 

“I … like your pictures,” I said, reaching down to touch a picture of a collie.

 

“I love puppies. I had a dog once, named Buttons. He liked me. Nobody likes me now.” Her gravelly voice sank to weariness. “Not since Cordelia died. But I’m not angry that she left. I know why she had to do it.”

 

I was trying to figure out how to ask for the letter, but before I had a chance, she reached under her blanket and pulled out a stained, yellowing envelope. She handed it up to me.

 

The writing on the outside read DELIA.

 

“Look,” I said, showing Maria. “That’s my name. You did great. That’s just what Cordelia wanted.”

 

She gave me a chilling grin. “I like helping. Are you going to read it? You can read it in here, if you want.”

 

I didn’t quite know what to say.