The Dead House

(AL): You need to free her, Kaitlyn. You need to let her go. You need to stop being a crutch. She has to heal.




(CJ): You want me to just… die?




(AL): [Pause] Yes.




[Lengthy silence]

[End of tape]





I celebrate myself, and sing myself,

And what I assume you shall assume,

For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

—Walt Whitman





You are the music

While the music lasts.

—T. S. Eliot





18



Additional raw footage filmed by Naida Chounan-Dupré was discovered in an external hosting site linked to MalaGenie.com. One such clip has been unencrypted and transcribed below. It is believed that this short clip is the first recorded and has been included because of two revealing details.



Naida Camera Footage (Raw)

Date and Time Index Missing

Naida’s Dorm Room



Camera, blurry, spins and jostles, but in a few of the frames, we can see that we are in a dorm room. Shots of scarves pinned to the wall reveal that it is Naida’s room.

“How do you get this stupid thing to work?” she says, peering down into the lens so that we see her eyes large and distorted.

“Give it here.”

Scott takes the camera, which angles in on his face, and messes with the lens. The picture refocuses, definition sharp. He turns the camera on Naida, who reaches for it.

“Give it back, Scott! It’s new. Hand it over, or I’ll give you a nutshot and upload it onto the school website.”

Scott laughs. “I thought that making a little ‘Scott’s bollocks’ voodoo doll and sticking it full of pins was more your style?”

“Push me, Scotty-boy, just push me.”

Scott hands back the camera, and Naida wipes the screen with her sleeve. For a moment a shadow passes over the shot—behind Naida.

“You adore me too much for that,” Scott says.

“Your balls, maybe. Ugh, forget it. I need to fiddle with it some more.”

“Fiddle with this,” Scott says, but the camera turns off before we can see Naida’s reaction.



[END OF CLIP]


Close analysis of the frames in this clip reveals two things. First, there is a sound, perhaps only static or something brushing against the microphone as Naida wipes the lens, or perhaps what it sounds like, whispering. Second, a person is standing in the closet behind Naida, the dark form of someone looking out, two pinpricks of light glinting off their eyes.





19


124 days until the incident




Diary of Kaitlyn Johnson


Friday, 1 October 2004, 12:24 am

Elmbridge

Tricks, trickery, manipulations.

Lies.

They are all lying to me.

Lansing is a master manipulator.

Liar.

Trying to put space between Carly and me.

Part of the “integration process.”

She’s a murderer! She wants to kill me.

If Carly doesn’t write to me, then she won’t need me.

Tricky tricky tricksters.

Carly.


3:00 am

I saw something by the

I’m not really sure what I saw

I’m not going to let Lansing and her psycho-drugs get to me. I wish Carly would stop taking them!

Searched for the Viking again online. Nothing. Always nothing.

Wrote in the Message Book:



Carly, Lansing scared me.

Where are you?

Why are you so quiet?

Lansing said—God, Lansing will do anything. Please answer.

What happened to our plan? Elmbridge, then out, remember?

Lansing… she said—she said—just write something nice. Tell me you love me. Tell me you need me. You believe I’m here. Please. Please, Carly.

Where are you??




Message Book Entry

Saturday, 2 October 2004, 7:18 am Everything’s going to be okay, Kaitie. I promise.





20



The “Forgotten Garden” area of which Kaitlyn speaks in the entry below is the graveyard outside St. Martha’s Chapel on the hill above Elmbridge High, where Kaitlyn and Ari first met. Petitions to have a children’s play area built near the site were denied thirteen times in the twelve years following the incident. No petitions have been filed in the last eight years.



Diary of Kaitlyn Johnson


Monday, 4 October 2004, 4:42 am

Forgotten Garden

There are places. Abandoned places. Forgotten places. These are the places I like to be.

Elmbridge has one of these places. Once, it was beautiful. You can tell that right away. The rain-stained gravestones among the dying grasses; the fence, rusted and half-hinged, with coils of wrought iron—once painted black or a very dark green—now flaking away; the overgrown footpath, which now leads into the impenetrable grasses that stand dry and still. A dead yellow sea.

I figure it’s either a holy place, or cursed. Either way, I guess I belong here.

Redemption or Punishment.