Possessions

by Nancy Holder

Another picture: Miles standing behind Mandy, with his arms around her.

  And then another one of them . . . kissing, eyes closed, in ecstasy. Mandy and Miles were kissing each other in a rumpled four-poster bed. There were handcuffs on the poster above her head.

  Oh my God, what if it’s the Lincoln Bedroom?

  “Maybe it’s an automatic,” she said. “Camera, I mean.” Then she started laughing. I just stared. She went through the rest as I watched. “The rest are more of the same,” she muttered, disappointed. Then she put them back, in the order in which we’d taken them out, and laid the underwear back on top. She clicked the lock shut. Did something. Tested it. Smiled at me.

  “It’s not broken?” I asked.

  She pushed the trunk back under the bed. “She’ll never know,” she promised me.

  She turned to me with glittering eyes. “You mentioned something about the attic. Several times.”

  “But—”

  “Come on.”

  We left Mandy’s room. The air felt thick as mud as we tiptoed to the balcony in the darkness. I scanned for the front door, detecting a matte grayishness that I guessed might be the leaded window in the door. Then we turned around and faced the hall, where Kiyoko’s and Lara’s rooms were located. Sangeeta and Alis shared on the other side of the hall.

  We went down the hall. The doors were closed, and Rose slowed down, gazing at me with an impish grin.

  “I wonder what we would find in Lara’s room,” she said. “Or Kiyoko’s.”

  I was beginning to move from nervous to panicky. Ms. Krige might check on us. Rose’s housemother might give her a call.

  “Let’s go,” I said. “Let’s come back later.”

  “Don’t be such a wuss. We have to at least check the attic,” she insisted.

  “Then let’s do it fast.”

  Rose charged noisily down the hall. I wanted to hit her. She stopped at the last door on the right, and turned to me.

  “This is the turret room no one can go into,” she said, rattling the door. “And, hoohoowahaha, it is locked.”

  She put the flashlight under her chin. “Good evening, mortals. Beyond this door, we have . . . vampires, dreaming of succulent virgins. Such sad dreams. Because there aren’t any virgins at Marlwood.”

  Speak for yourself, I wanted to say.

  I thought about the books I’d seen back during that prank in the old library. The rumors that Marlwood had never been a girl’s prep school in the past, but an asylum, a reformatory for “wayward” girls. What did “wayward” even mean? And why was that book on Dr. Ehrlenbach’s desk?

  “So...we’ll pick it,” Rose said. She reached into her pocket and pulled out her tools. Then she bent over and examined the door. “Huh. Let’s see...” She traced the keyhole with her fingers and glanced back at her kit. “This stuff won’t work on that.”

  I felt unaccountably relieved. I didn’t know why. Of course I was curious to see what was in there. Just...not tonight.

  “Well, poop,” she groused. Then she shrugged and guided me to the left, and we sailed around a corner to a narrow set of wooden stairs beneath a low, angular ceiling.

  “I’m betting these were for servants,” she said, as she headed up. “Or mad scientists, wahaha.”

  “Anorexic mad scientists,” I said, trying to bolster my courage with my usual snarky jokes. My shoulders brushed the walls and my feet hit the hollow, uncarpeted stairs, creating echoes. I was glad we had taken off our boots. The sloping ceiling overhead made me feel claustrophobic.

  “Third floor, coming up,” Rose sang as we looped around and continued up. She was enjoying every moment of this. I was terrified.

  The flight of stairs ended at a plain wooden door. There were scratches down one side of it that reminded me of the cuts in Julie’s mattress. I tried to swallow, but my throat was too tight.

  “Here we go. The door at the top of the stairs,” Rose said, smiling evilly at me as she put her hand on the knob.

  Let it be locked, I thought, but as with Mandy’s room, it opened on the first try.

  I had a moment where I thought about turning back, but Rose entered and fanned her flashlight beam. All I saw were bright white plaster walls, brick floors, and an assortment of cardboard boxes. Very mundane. Very normal.

  “Okay, let’s see what there is to see,” Rose said.

  I walked inside. Then I felt the familiar sharp iciness inside my skull, as if someone had replaced my brain with a block of ice. It hurt; I staggered over to the far wall with the intention of leaning against it. But my knees gave way and I fell forward, hands outstretched, and slammed against a pile of boxes, which hit the wall.

  “Lindsay!” Rose cried.

  The plaster gave way; the flimsy board beneath cracked, and I fell face first into a space behind the original wall. I landed hard on my palms—I heard myself shout as the bottom section of the wall remained intact, catching me in the ribs.

  Rose dropped to her knees beside me, gathering up my hair and going nose to nose with me. “Jesus, are you all right?”

  “What is that?” I asked, grunting.

  A little bit of light streamed in; I saw a hulking shape deeper in the crawl space or secret room or whatever it was. It was narrow in there, like a hallway, as narrow as the stairs had been. It took me a moment to realize that the shape within it was the silhouette of an old-fashioned wheelchair—a regular wood chair with a slatted headrest attached, and two long planks for someone’s legs. Two shorter planks were angled to create foot-rests. The wheels wore a sheen of rust, and it was swaddled in cobwebs.

  “Holy crap,” Rose said.

  She helped me to my feet, and threw down my boots. I stepped into them without lacing them; she did the same, and we both stepped over the jagged lip of the wall and minced toward the wheelchair. Sections of yellow-tinged wood peeked beneath streaks of dust—streaks that looked as if someone had recently tried to clean the chair with a sweep of the hand. But how? It had been on the other side of a wall.

  “I’m seriously freaking,” Rose reported.

  I reached out a hand against the wall as a spasm of pain rolled through my stomach. Sweat broke out across my forehead, and my lips and fingertips tingled.

  “Rose, I’m sick,” I whispered.

  “Here, sit down.” Rose plopped me into the wheelchair. “Let’s check it out.”

  “No,” I protested, but I needed to sit down. I felt dizzy, and gripped my hands in my lap as Rose began to move the wheelchair forward, into the depths of the space behind the false wall. Where was she taking me? I tried to stand up but felt weak, disoriented, the room spinning.

  She angled the flashlight down over my head. The floor was filthy, littered with mouse droppings and dust bunnies. Cobwebs draped from one side of the tunnel to the other, like party bunting. It was getting colder. I wanted to tell her to let me out of the chair, or use the flashlight to clear away the cobwebs, but I couldn’t speak. Suddenly, my head bobbed forward, brushing my chest.

  “This is so freaky,” she whispered.

  I didn’t hear another word she said. My stomach clenched so badly that I moaned; I tried to lift my hands out of my lap to wipe the sweat off my forehead but I was paralyzed.

  Words echoed off the filthy walls: Strap down Number One. Get the ice pick. It was a man’s voice.

  I thought I knew that voice.

  “No,” I murmured. “We didn’t do anything.”

  “What?” Rose said.

  My eyes slowly opened. Rose was bending over me; she’d pulled me backward in the chair, and we were back where we’d started.

  “Hey, Lindsay?” She shook me gently. “Are you okay?”

  I leaned my head back and my eyelids fluttered.

  We should hide, I thought. We should get out of here.

  Two opposing thoughts.

  She stepped around me and headed back into the tunnel.

  “Rose, no. We have to leave,” I said.

  She looked at me
. “Why?”

  “Rose.”

  “Lindsay, this is incredible,” she said, going deeper into the blackness. “This is a hidden tunnel!”

  “We’re so busted,” I said. “They’ll find it.”

  “Maybe not. We can push all those boxes in front of it. Maybe we can make it look like they fell over and caused it.”

  I was clammy. “Rose, I have to get out of here. Now.”

  She looked at me. Really looked. “Are you going to, like, faint?”

  I shut my eyes as a wave of nausea hit me. “Help me up. Please.”

  “You’re shaking. You’re really scared.”

  “Aren’t you?” I asked her, dumbfounded.

  “Heck no. This is cool.”

  I flipped up the wooden slats for my feet, and she wrapped her hands around my wrists. I planted my feet on the floor; as she tried to raise me up, the chair rolled forward. I shuddered, hard; I couldn’t stand being in it. I practically threw myself out of it, and she staggered backward from the momentum.

  “Except that you’re sick,” she said. “That is not cool.”

  I backed away from the chair. But Rose shone her flashlight over it, examining it, then took a step forward. “What does it feel like—?”

  “Don’t,” I begged her. “Rose, let’s go.”

  Rose took off her jacket and took a few swipes at the floor to conceal our footprints. Descending the stairs, I kept my arm on Rose’s shoulder. We tiptoed out of the attic, down the stairs, hurried down the hall to the balcony, and then we were on the ground floor, and out the door. Rose made sure she still had the key and then we flew across the quad. My heartbeat roared in my ears; I couldn’t help but look over my shoulder, up at Mandy’s window.

  There was no one there. Of course.

  We crept into Grose, still panting as the saint on the table by the door waved hello; then we got past Ms. Krige’s door, and into my room. By mutual consent, we didn’t turn on the light, only flopped onto my bed side by side in the dark, heaving.

  Rose said airily, “That was so weird. What happened to you?”

  “I don’t know.” I shivered. I couldn’t stand to think about it.

  “I’m thinking black mold. My aunt had a reaction like that. Just muttered to herself and passed out cold. She was flat on her back for months until they tore out a wall in the bathroom and, oh my God, it was all over the place.”

  I rubbed my head. “I heard voices. Something about an ice pick.”

  “No way,” she said. “You know what this means.”

  “That Mandy planted that wheelchair?” I asked, rather desperately. “That she made Kiyoko tell me about the attic and then let you steal that key? And this is all one big stupid practical joke?”

  “Maybe,” Rose said. “But what I was going for, was that we have to go back again tomorrow night.” She smiled and waggled her eyebrows. “And take pictures. Of ze pictures. And ze wheelchair.”

  “Why, so we can make sure there’s evidence to confirm that we broke in?” I was bewildered by her reaction. “Are you, like, a psychopath or something?”

  “Lindsay, we went in there to find out why Mandy’s acting so crazy. Maybe she’s crazy because she’s having sex with her brother and the black mold is doing a job on everybody who lives in Jessel. Like in Salem. Historians now think the girls who accused all those people of being witches were having hallucinations.” She held up a finger. “Which they got from eating moldy rye bread. Mold.”

  “Why do you know all this stuff?”

  “I read a lot,” she said simply. “I have a high IQ, remember?” She folded her arms. “Okay, so, what’s your theory?”

  “Maybe . . . maybe it’s a haunted house,” I said. There. I had said it out loud. My face burned and I felt stupid. But I didn’t take it back.

  “Oh.” Rose swung her head toward mine. She blinked at me. “You believe that. You really do. That it’s haunted.”

  “I just told you that I heard voices.” And I’ve had nightmares. And I’ve seen faces.

  And Mandy knows I had a nervous breakdown. And it’s probably drugs that make their eyes go black; and maybe they’ve slipped me some, too.

  She shrugged. “You’re impressionable.”

  “Are you saying that you think I’m crazy?” I heard the edge to my voice. “Or that Mandy’s crazy?”

  She crossed her legs. Then she got up and rested her hand on top of the white head. “It’s just like Lara said that night they practically drowned Kiyoko. Stare into the lake long enough, and you see things.”

  She patted the head. “Sometimes I think this thing moves,” she admitted. “It totally creeps me out.”

  “But you’re touching it.”

  “I know it’s just my imagination.” She looked so superior. If Mandy had told her about my breakdown . . .

  “So . . . we’ll go back and investigate some more,” she said. “Don’t you want to go down that tunnel?”

  I shook my head. “No.”

  “Where’s your sense of adventure? Oh, never mind. I’ll go by myself,” Rose said.

  “Rose, don’t,” I pleaded. “We’ve done enough as it is.”

  “And we can undo it.” She cracked her knuckles. “We can fix the wall and no one will ever know we were there.”

  “Fix it? How?”

  She thought a moment. “Maybe we could get a ride into San Covino and buy stuff. Whatever we need. Boards, paint.” She grinned at me. “Know anybody with a car? Say, a T-bird?”

  “I think Troy went home,” I said, trying to sound ignorant.

  “Let’s find out,” she replied.

  twenty-three

  November 21

  The next morning, I stood on Jessel’s porch and called Troy. His number was listed in my messages. Standing in the frosty air, I listened to his cell phone ringing and crossed my fingers. I couldn’t decide if I wanted him to answer or not. Rose was on a mission. She was already talking about other ways to get to San Covino if Troy didn’t work out—such as asking to be taken to a movie by a driver, then making a side trip to a store to buy some materials for “a project.”

  This is a very bad idea, I thought. Both versions.

  Rose had gone around to the kitchen door of Jessel and let herself in, though with the key or her lock-picking tools, I had no idea. She was upstairs in the attic, assessing the damage and making a list of things we would need to buy in San Covino.

  “Hey,” Troy said. He sounded surprised and pleased to hear from me. Also, kind of muzzy, as if I had awakened him. I tried not to picture him in bed. Did he wear pajamas? Did he go commando?

  “Lindsay?”

  “Yeah. Hi, uh. About yesterday . . . ” What was I doing?

  “It’s all good,” he said quickly. “I know things are, well, complicated. . . . ” He trailed off. Then he said, “I’ll row over.”

  No, I thought, but before I knew what I was doing, I was saying yes.

  “Okay, then,” he said. “I’ll come over in about an hour.”

  And that was that. I flipped the phone shut and waited for Rose. And waited. I sat down on the porch and sighed. I called Julie, but I got her voicemail. I called my dad. The same.

  I thought for a moment about calling Heather, my old best friend. My finger hovered over the buttons. I’d left without telling her. But by then, we weren’t speaking anyway. I couldn’t exactly call her in the middle of a crisis and expect her to be there for me.

  Ms. Krige opened our front door; I quickly put my phone to my ear and pretended to be talking to someone in case she noticed me on Jessel’s porch. She’d pointed out, quite reasonably, that we could use the landline to call out. When I’d told her I’d rather use my cell because I had unlimited minutes, that made sense to her.

  The sun had risen over the top of Grose by the time Rose appeared inside the privet hedge, looking rather pleased with herself. She joined me on the porch and we moved quickly away from Jessel, as if we both were eager to put some distance b
etween it and us.

  “He’s coming over here, but I am not okay with asking him to take us to San Covino,” I said. “He’s Mandy’s boyfriend. You don’t think he might mention to her that he took us to Home Depot to buy some lumber and paint?”

  “No worries,” she declared, posing as if to say ta-da! “Did you know they kept tons of props from the haunted house? Props and building supplies? They’re stashed in an empty bedroom and I mean stashed, girlfriend. I used all their stuff. I got a couple boards and a staple gun and some tape and I actually painted over it.”

  “You put the wheelchair back in the tunnel, right?”

  She shook her head. “No, I left it out in the middle of the room for them to notice.” She leaned in and waved at me. “Hello? Do I look like a moron? Of course I put it back.”

  “And . . . so . . . ”

  “And so it looks . . . bad, but then I pushed all those boxes in front of it. By the time anyone notices it, they won’t be able to connect it to us.”

  “So you hope,” I murmured, but I had to admit, this was good news.

  She gave the back of my head a playful bat. “There you go again with the pessimism, Lindsay. What am I going to do with you?”

  Troy came over, and this time I met him at the lake. He rowed to the little inlet he had mentioned by the NO TRESPASSING sign, and I watched him move like an athlete. I thought about all the things I had told him yesterday and I was sorry I had. He must have thought I was a whiny loser. Boys liked winners.

  He looked over his shoulder at Jessel, as if he, too, was worried that Mandy was there, watching us. Then he shrugged and smiled at me, just me.

  I didn’t like walking along the same stretch of lake where Mandy had done her Exorcist routine but I kept it to myself. We climbed over some wet rocks and I nearly slipped; Troy caught my hand and kept holding it, like the day before.

  I wanted to say, What’s your deal? Are you cheating on Mandy with me? But I didn’t. He brought his camera this time and took pictures of me, and the sky, and the lake. He had a good eye.

  “I heard from Julie,” I told him. “She and Spider went riding with, um, Mandy.” I had forgotten that I would have to mention her in the telling of the story. “They had a great time.” Although I would have rather bitten off my own tongue, I added, “That was nice of Mandy.”