The Dead Girls of Hysteria Hall

 

 

She was trying to seem lighthearted, but I could tell she was a little unnerved by my confidence. “You got some trick up your sleeve?”

 

“I don’t need tricks,” I said. “I’m stronger than you.”

 

She stepped toward me.

 

I didn’t need a trick. I really wasn’t afraid of her. I knew what she was fighting with, and what I was fighting with.

 

I called up the thoughts I usually fought to suppress—being trapped in the room with the smoke—watching my family drive away—Aunt Cordelia dragging herself down the driveway in the frigid morning air—Maria being hurt—Nic, pale and bleeding—my mother’s unfathomable pain—my sister sobbing with guilt, bearing the weight of my death—

 

The world began to vibrate around me.

 

Power filled my body as if I was summoning it out of thin air.

 

At the same time, Florence exploded with light. I heard a high-pitched wail as her strength grew.

 

And then we slammed into each other.

 

Our arms came together, our hands clasped, and we pushed against each other—not just with our physical forms, but with the strength of our innermost souls, our deepest feelings.

 

And that was how I knew I was going to win. Because I was fighting with love—to defend the people I cared about. To earn their safety and freedom.

 

Florence was fighting with fear. If she lost, she had nothing. Not even the memory of having been truly loved.

 

It was like arm wrestling, only with my entire being. The struggle was somehow about the right to occupy the space we were both in. To extinguish the other’s energy would leave the loser helpless against whatever revenge the winner chose to exact.

 

And Florence’s vengeance would be vicious, if she should win.

 

But she wasn’t going to win.

 

“The house doesn’t love you, Florence,” I whispered. “It’s incapable of love. It’s only using you because you’ll do as it says. Because it can control you, like your mother controlled you … but some dark part of you knows that, doesn’t it?”

 

She fought back with a burst of rage, and for a moment I was rocked backward as she almost got the better of me.

 

But then she began to fade.

 

“You know it won’t have any use for you if you don’t win this,” I said. “If you’re not perfect.”

 

Then I made the most dangerous choice I’ve ever made—in life or death.

 

I pulled my right hand out of her left hand, momentarily breaking the cycle of energy between us.

 

And I reached up and dug my nails across her perfect face.

 

She screamed in a way I’d never heard anyone scream, living or dead—fury and terror in a desperate mix. In the chaos of the moment, I scratched her again. Her once-flawless beauty-queen complexion was permanently raked with the marks of my fingernails.

 

She reached up with both hands to feel the deep lines cutting across her face.

 

I put my hands on her shoulders, completing the circuit once again, and let a final blast of energy pulse through me.

 

Florence went down in a heap on the floor. She was unconscious … but maybe not for long.

 

I didn’t waste a single moment. I dragged her motionless form toward the back hall, then down the basement stairs. I laid her down in a corner and ran back up to the kitchen, where I grabbed as many cartons of salt as I could carry.

 

Back in the basement, I poured a thick circle of salt around her, in a tight outline surrounding her body. She began to stir as I finished emptying the third canister.

 

“What have you done?” Her eyes popped open, and her hands reached up toward her damaged face. She let out an enraged howl. “What have you done to me?”

 

“Sorry, sugar,” I said, dropping the empty salt container. “Looks like you’re not the prettiest dead girl here anymore.”

 

She moved to get up, but the barrier slammed her back. She tried moving in every direction, but she was penned in. She had hardly enough room to get to her feet, and when she finally did, she only had an area about the length and width of a coffin to move around in.

 

“What now?” she wheezed. “You’re just going to leave me here forever?”

 

“Nobody’s staying forever,” I said. “I’ll be back to deal with you later.”

 

Her infuriated screams echoed behind me as I went upstairs.

 

Janie was still passed out on the floor of the lobby.

 

I reached down and rested my palm against her cheek.

 

“Janie,” I said. “I’m sorry I was such a jerk to you when I was alive. I know you loved me anyway. You may never understand what happened to me, but that doesn’t matter. All you need to understand is that it’s not your fault—it was never your fault.”

 

A faint rose tint began to return to my sister’s cheeks.

 

I waited until her eyes fluttered weakly open, until I saw the haziest flash of recognition in them. Then I bent down and kissed her on the forehead.

 

“I love you,” I said. “So unbelievably much.”