The Dead Girls of Hysteria Hall

 

 

It turns out that watching your parents bicker is just as annoying when you’re dead as when you’re alive. Anyway, I didn’t have time to stand around and pout about their behavior.

 

I had a packed schedule.

 

*

 

Penitence was bent over and focused on her invisible blanket as if nothing had happened. She didn’t even seem to notice that the walls had devoured the day room windows.

 

“What did you do with his body?” I asked. “Did you bury it?”

 

She looked up, startled, but didn’t even have to ask who I was talking about. “No. I—I burned it. In the incinerator.”

 

Black fire. Of course.

 

“And where’s the incinerator?” I asked.

 

Penitence looked pained by the memory. “In the basement. Why? They’ve since built a new one away from the main building. They had to stop using the old one because the chimney wasn’t properly sealed.”

 

“Let me guess—too much smoke seeped out?”

 

She nodded.

 

“All right, come on,” I said. “I have to show you something.”

 

“Show me what?” she shot back. “Haven’t I done enough for today?”

 

This was no time to be coy. “Your daughter’s been living alone on the third floor since she died, and I’m taking you to meet her.”

 

Penitence gasped, and I felt a little guilty for not cushioning the blow at all.

 

“No,” she finally said, shaking her head. “She went crazy. She killed herself and murdered a nurse. It was terrible.”

 

“Wrong,” I said. “That’s not what happened at all. It was a cover-up.”

 

She looked at me disbelievingly. “What would you know about it?”

 

“I know what Maria and Florence told me,” I said. “You made a cake for your father. Maria and the nurse found it in the kitchen.”

 

Penitence raised her hand to her mouth. “Oh no,” she said. “No …”

 

“They ate it and died, but the staff covered it up. You were hiding out in the basement after burning your father’s body, so you didn’t know any of this. It was a pretty grim night here.”

 

Grim enough to curse the very land.

 

“It can’t be.” She shook her head and pressed her hands over her ears. “It can’t be true.”

 

“They posed the dead bodies to look like they’d died in the bathroom, but they were poisoned by the same cake that killed Maxwell.”

 

Now she began to choke on her sobs. “No! I don’t believe you!”

 

“Believe it or not,” I said. “It’s what happened. And now she’s upstairs, and she’s lonely and scared, and she needs her mother. And I’m not trying to rush you, but I don’t have a lot of extra time.”

 

“But if what you say is true, then I can’t,” Penitence said, her voice hollow. “She must hate me.”

 

“She doesn’t hate anyone, but for a hundred and fifty years, she’s been hiding in a bathroom on the third floor. Alone. Tortured by other ghosts. The only person who was ever kind to her was my aunt Cordelia.”

 

Penitence pressed both hands to her chest, scrunched her eyes closed, and made a terrible keening sound. “I’m a bad mother,” she whispered.

 

“If you don’t go to her now, you are a bad mother. She needs you.” I was running out of patience. I reached over and grabbed her firmly by the arm. “Come on, we’re going upstairs.”

 

*

 

I stuck my head inside the bathroom. “Maria?”

 

She was nestled on her greasy blanket, rearranging the assortment of pictures on the floor. After a moment, she blinked and looked up at me. Then the spark lit up in her eyes. “You came back!”

 

“Yes,” I said, stepping almost all the way inside. “I did. I beat Florence.”

 

Her eyes widened.

 

“Maria, I have someone I want you to talk to.”

 

“No, thank you,” she said, turning away. “No one likes me.”

 

“This person likes you,” I said. “I promise.”

 

Then I pulled Penitence in behind me. I’d warned her that Maria had been through a lot, but actually seeing the little girl’s ruined face and body must have been like being punched in the gut. Penitence was silent, staring.

 

I crouched down, still holding Penitence’s hand. “Maria, this is your mother,” I said. “Do you remember her?”

 

Maria nodded but shrank away.

 

“She’s not going to hurt you. She’s come to take care of you.”

 

They gazed at each other for a long time—long enough that I began to worry that this wasn’t going to work, that too much time had passed, and too many things had gone wrong.

 

Then Maria reached out and wrapped her clawlike fingers around her mother’s hand. “Would you like to see my pictures?”

 

Penitence looked down at the floor and nodded.

 

Maria shuffled her feet. “You can have one, if you like. Any picture at all.”

 

“You choose for me.”

 

Maria bent down and picked up a picture of a mother with a small baby, and handed it to her mother.

 

“I’m sorry I’m not a pretty girl anymore, Mother,” she said. “I understand if you don’t want to be around me. Nobody likes to be around me.”