The Dead Girls of Hysteria Hall

 

“I get out of a seminar, and I have half an incoherent voice mail from Jane saying you’re here—why would you ever come back here?—and then I couldn’t reach either of you on your cell phones. I paid six hundred bucks for the next flight from New York, rented a car in Harrisburg, and—”

 

He was so busy working himself up that he didn’t notice my sister until she’d thrown her arms around him.

 

“Daddy, you came!” Janie cried, tears streaming down her cheeks. “You came …”

 

My father was utterly disarmed by her reaction. His tone, when he spoke next, was significantly subdued. He glanced at Mom. “Lisa … what’s going on?”

 

“Nothing good,” Mom said grimly. “You said you rented a car?”

 

“Yes,” Dad said.

 

“Great. We’ll explain on the way.”

 

“On the way where? Where are your things?”

 

“Forget our things,” Mom said. “Let’s go.”

 

Dad nodded, bewildered, but the way Janie clung to him silenced his questions. “I’m parked right out front,” he said. “Are you all right, Lisa?”

 

“She’s sick,” Janie said. “She can’t really walk.”

 

“Here,” Dad said, and he and Janie wrapped their arms under Mom’s arms to help support her weight. The three of them went quickly through the lobby to the main doors.

 

Only, by the time they got there … the doors were gone.

 

I don’t know how to explain it, except that it was as if the walls had simply stretched over the space where the door had been.

 

Dad basically turned white. “What’s going on?”

 

“Oh no,” Mom said. “Oh no—the window! Hurry! Get out! Get Janie out!”

 

They all ran toward the window.

 

But before they could reach it, the walls had swallowed the window, too.

 

Dad was on the verge of freaking out. “I don’t understand,” he said. “What’s happening?”

 

What was happening was that the house really didn’t want them to go.

 

“The superintendent’s apartment!” Janie said, running for the main hall.

 

“Jane, wait—” Dad said.

 

But she’d already run through the door.

 

Dad raced to grab it before it closed … but before he could reach it, the place where the door had been was transformed into a smooth expanse of red wallpaper.

 

“No!” Dad shouted. “No! Jane, come back!”

 

Mom joined him, banging on the wall with her fists. “Janie!”

 

I had the advantage of being able to move through walls, so I slipped into the hall, where my sister stood staring at the spot that, until about ten seconds earlier, had been a door. Then she leapt into action, pounding on the wall.

 

“Mom? Dad?” Her voice rose. “Mom! Dad! Help me! I’m stuck!”

 

In the lobby, my parents were shouting themselves hoarse. I slipped back out to see them.

 

Finally, Mom stepped away from the wall. “Brad,” she said, “stop. We need to think. We need to be smart about this.”

 

“Smart?!” he yelled. “This house just trapped our daughter! Janie’s locked in there, just like—”

 

Suddenly, he froze and just looked at Mom, stared at her with an expression so horrified that you would have thought he’d just seen death itself.

 

“Just like Delia was,” he whispered. “Delia was right. She was right. There’s something here. She knew that, and she wanted to leave, but we didn’t let her. My God, Lisa, she was right.”

 

Mom didn’t answer. Her mouth a hard line, she turned and surveyed the room. “Come on,” she said. “We’re going to get Janie out if it kills us.”

 

In the hallway, Janie sat with her back to the wall, sobbing. I hated to leave her, but I had to get a better look at the situation. So I dashed outside.

 

When I got about fifteen feet from the house, I turned and looked up at the side of the building. It was just as I feared—there wasn’t a single window or exterior door left in the entire structure. Only solid stone walls.

 

“What’s going on?” Theo appeared beside me, staring up at the house.

 

“My family’s in there,” I said. “I need to get them out.”

 

He stared at the bizarrely solid sweep of stone and shook his head. “How?”

 

“Not sure,” I said. “I guess I’ll tear the place to pieces by hand if I have to. Want to help?”

 

“But aren’t you afraid?” he asked. “Of what it could do to you?”

 

“Actually,” I said, “that’s the least of my concerns.”

 

I don’t know if he tried to say anything else. I was already back inside. In the lobby, Dad was trying to make a call, but he couldn’t get a signal. Finally, he chucked the phone across the room in frustration.

 

“Brad, we have to stay calm,” Mom admonished. “We have to make a plan.”

 

“Tell me what happened today,” Dad said.

 

“I don’t know, exactly,” Mom said. “Something went after Janie, and then … the day has been a blur for me.”

 

“What does that mean?” he demanded.