The Dead Girls of Hysteria Hall

 

“I think I know what the work is,” I said. “There’s a black fire somewhere. I have to find it and put it out.”

 

“Black fire …” Eliza repeated. Then, staring out the window, she offhandedly recited, “‘Black flames of evil burning bright, darkening the darkest night … extinguish’d by the blood of light, day is born from endless night.’ ”

 

“What?” I said, sitting up. “What’s that?”

 

“It’s just a poem,” she said. “A little thing I had to recite in school. You’ve never heard of it? Lord Lindley. Some pompous old marquess from the seventeen hundreds.”

 

Lindley. Where had I heard that name before?

 

“ ‘Blood of light’?” I echoed.

 

“Oh, you know,” she said. “It’s quite simplistic—innocence vanquishing evil and all that. It’s designed to scare children into piety. It goes on and on. Men’s sons, mindless of evil’s blight, awaken blind to their perilous plight, et cetera et cetera … fight, white, knight … It’s amazing he found so many rhyming words. You find Lindley in a lot of stodgy old books.”

 

Books. That was it. I remembered the books on the parlor shelves, with the authors’ names in gold and silver on the spines. And among those names: Lindley.

 

“If it’s an actual fire,” I said, thinking out loud, “it could be the source of the black smoke.”

 

“But it’s not an actual fire,” she protested. “It’s just a poem.”

 

“Nothing’s ‘just’ an anything here,” I said. “I think there’s an actual black fire somewhere. It can’t be a coincidence. Maxwell liked that poet well enough to keep his collected works. Maybe there’s some connection—something to do with Maxwell’s death.”

 

“If you say so,” Eliza said. “I remain skeptical.”

 

“Yeah, surprise,” I said. “So … it can be extinguished by blood of light. That might mean that someone innocent can put it out.”

 

“Who around here could possibly pass as innocent?” Eliza asked. “Except maybe—”

 

She waited for me to say it.

 

“Janie,” I said. “She was never committed here. She was never locked in. She doesn’t belong to the house. She’s innocent.”

 

“She’s a very bright girl,” Eliza said. “You’ve got to save her, you know. It wouldn’t do to have her die here.”

 

“I know,” I said. “What do you think it means, though, the blood of light? Her actual blood?”

 

“I hope not,” Eliza said. “How ghastly.”

 

The sun grew smaller and thinner, until it was just a sliver dipping below the distant hillside—and then it suddenly seemed to expand in a moment of brightness.

 

And then it disappeared.

 

“Oh,” Eliza said in surprise, as though the answer to some riddle had just occurred to her. The bells on her wrist jingled faintly. “Delia—I think you may be right. I think maybe …”

 

I turned to see why she’d stopped speaking.

 

She was gone.

 

All that remained of her were the ghostly bells resting on the bedspread.

 

 

 

 

 

I told myself not to cry. I had to believe that Eliza was in a better place now.

 

What’s more, her last, unfinished words only convinced me more thoroughly that there was something to my theory about the poem.

 

When I reached Room 2, Mom and Janie had given up on finding their phones or the car keys. With my mother’s arm draped over my sister’s shoulder, they slowly progressed in the direction of the downstairs hallway.

 

But what would they do once they were outside? As badly as Mom wanted to be okay, she was unsteady on her feet. No way would she make it down the driveway. Janie might have to leave her behind and go to the highway to flag down a passing car. And it wasn’t safe for either of them to be anywhere on the property for much longer.

 

As they were coming down the main hall, there was a banging noise from the lobby.

 

My sister froze. “What was that?”

 

“Probably nothing,” Mom said, putting her hand on Janie’s arm.

 

“Hang on,” Janie said. “Let me go see …”

 

“Janie, no!” Mom said, and the spike of fear in her voice was sharp enough to stop my sister before she could walk away.

 

I moved past them to investigate, keeping my eyes on the walls and ceiling to look for tendrils of black smoke. What if this was a trap? A distraction? What if— There was more horrible banging on the door.

 

“Lisa? Jane?” someone shouted. Bang! Bang! “Are you in there? What’s going on?”

 

It was Dad.

 

Mom rushed forward and unlocked the door. “Brad, what are you doing here?”

 

My father’s hair was thinning. He was skinnier than I’d ever seen him but still wearing his old clothes. It was like my death had turned him into an old man—practically a stranger.