The Dead Girls of Hysteria Hall

 

So my parents showed up at the airport, demanded to be let through security and practically caused a national security crisis, and then accosted Nic and me in the waiting area, where we were drinking Starbucks and keeping watch for Landon.

 

It was a super fun day.

 

Dumped, caught, and yeah—grounded until graduation.

 

Later that night, as I lay on my bed, I reached for the framed photo of Landon that smiled at me from the nightstand and flipped it facedown.

 

Next time I get a bad feeling about something, I thought, I’m going to run so fast in the other direction all that’ll be left is dust.

 

 

 

 

 

OBSERVATIONS MADE AFTER THE FACT

 

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

 

In a way, I was right.

 

All that’s left of any of us is dust.

 

Living people can be so arrogant sometimes.

 

(And I can say that, because I was one.)

 

 

 

 

 

My exploration had two main objectives: One, to see more of the building, because (creepy or not) it was by far the most impressive thing I had ever been able to claim as my own, and that provoked in me a burning curiosity to see every nook and cranny.

 

Two, I wanted to unearth more about Aunt Cordelia. The letters she’d written me were rubber-banded together in my messenger bag. I’d reread them on the car ride and noticed repeated mentions of a room that she loved—her own little office, where she felt free and peaceful. If there was some secret worth learning about Aunt Cordelia’s death, about what she’d done and why, it had to be in that room. She’d listed a few details about it: blue-painted walls, an antique lamp, and a little desk by a window where the sunlight came slanting in. So I knew that the room wasn’t in the superintendent’s apartment.

 

I decided to start in the wardress’s office, which was dim and smelled like stale library books, with wood-paneled walls and a large, fancy desk. Everything was old-fashioned and covered in a quarter inch of dust.

 

The desk was in immaculate order, not an item out of place except for a folder labeled DISCHARGE PAPERWORK—1943.

 

In that moment, it fully sank in that the charming cottage of my daydreams was an honest-to-goodness mental institution. An incredulous laugh bubbled out of me at the sheer preposterousness of it.

 

But when I picked up the envelope, revealing a perfectly dust-free rectangle on the desk’s surface, an uncomfortable tingle made its way down my neck. In more than seventy years, no one had come into this room and moved this folder?

 

A dozen yellow slips of paper spilled out when I tipped the envelope. I picked up the closest one. There was a name typed at the top: VICTORIA FOWLER, and below that, a date: JULY 18, 1943.

 

I wondered what Victoria had done, and whether being here had helped her at all. Just how troubled did a female have to be to be sent to a place with the word institute in its name, anyway? Were the patients criminals, murderers, completely insane? Or were they just headstrong women whose families decided things would be easier if they were locked away?

 

Having recently been categorized as moderately “troubled” myself, I was a little sensitive to the idea.

 

I shook off the uneasy feeling. Back to business. There was no way this was the room Aunt Cordelia had talked about in her letters.

 

A second door, labeled NO UNAUTHORIZED ADMITTANCE, opened into a little nurses’ office that contained a bed, a desk, and two chairs. On one of the chairs was a metal surgical tray, identical to the one in Cordelia’s kitchen.

 

I paused on my way through to glance at a newspaper clipping that had been left on the corner of the desk. The headline read: ROTBURG SANITARIUM TO CLOSE DOORS AFTER 77 YEARS. I scanned the first few paragraphs, which quoted a man from the Pennsylvania State Board of Medicine as saying that there had been numerous problems at the Piven Institute over the years, and the decision to close was “strongly supported” by the state.

 

The imposing stone institution has remained in the care of the Piven family since its founding, even after the 1885 disappearance of founder Maxwell Piven. Local legend speculates that Maxwell, tired of the day-to-day burdens of his role, went west to California in search of a new life.

 

Hmm. Maybe we Pivens have always been the type to sneak off without permission.

 

Next I found myself in a small back hallway. The closest door had a sign that read NURSES’ DORMITORY, and the other signs were for the kitchen, janitorial closet, basement, and patient stairway.

 

I hesitated, thinking how nice it would be to explore somewhere light and tidy, like a dormitory for efficient, white-frocked nurses. But by now I had a sense, down to my core, that what I was searching for wasn’t contained in any cheerful, well-kept rooms.

 

The kitchen, janitorial closet, and basement seemed too creepy for solo exploration. So I passed by them and started to climb the stairwell.