The Dead Girls of Hysteria Hall

by Katie Alender

  But when she lifted her face, there wasn’t a speck of doubt left. Despite the dark, asymmetrical hair and the eggplant-purple lips and the eyes ringed with smoky circles of gray makeup, this was definitely Janie. My Janie. I was so enthralled by the sight of her that I stood about a foot away and stared at the curves of her cheeks, the slight upturn of her nose.

  “She’s not a little girl anymore,” I said out loud. “Look at her. She’s so …”

  “Scary,” Theo said. He had come up behind me.

  “Beautiful.” I shot him a cool look. “She looks like a model.”

  “Well … not like any fashion model I ever saw in my time. But if you say so.”

  I went back to studying my sister. How old was she now … fifteen? Nearly the age I had been when I’d died here. If I’d lived, I would have been twenty. An unexpected zap of jealousy went through me. Janie was growing up. Soon she’d be older than I ever got to be. Then she’d go to college, have a career, start a family.

  Stop it, I scolded myself.

  “Don’t forget your mother,” Theo said. “She’s here, too.”

  After another few seconds spent staring at my sister, I turned to look for Mom. At first glance, she looked as she always had. Her hair was the same, she wore the same pale rose shade of lipstick, and I even recognized the gray T-shirt she was wearing as one she’d owned back when I was alive. But when I got closer, I realized that my initial impression was wrong. She’d changed. Something was different.

  Something was … gone. It was like a piece had been removed from her soul. When she looked warily up at the house, I could see that some part of her was far away, searching. Sad.

  Because of me.

  Instinctively, I looked around for my father. Then it hit me—if Mom and Dad had separated three years ago, he was probably completely out of the picture by now.

  “Why do you think they came back?” Theo asked me.

  I didn’t really care, honestly. They could have been there to start a bunny-worshipping cult, and I would have been thrilled to see them. I felt buoyantly happy, and was suddenly struck by a strange and wonderful idea.

  “What if they’re going to live here?” I said.

  The scenario unfolded in my mind: Mom needed a change of scenery. Maybe she’d decided to finally work on the novel she’d always wanted to write. And this place was sitting empty, so they figured why not? Stranger things had happened, right?

  “That would be terrible,” Theo said. “Don’t even wish for it.”

  My mother put her hands in her pockets. “I guess we should get everything inside.”

  Janie shrugged and trudged through the knee-high weeds toward the front steps, but Mom called out to her. “Jane? Could you help me with the bags?”

  Jane? She went by Jane now?

  It’s fine, I thought, even though it felt like the floor had just dropped out from underneath me. Kids grow up. She’s not a baby anymore. She’s a teenager.

  But Janie—sorry, she’d never be Jane to me—didn’t hurry back to help our mother. Instead, she froze, her shoulders rigid, and stared at the door for a second before she spun around, stalked back to the car, and wordlessly waited for Mom to pop the trunk.

  “I know this isn’t your first choice—” Mom started to say. But Janie cut her off.

  “I just don’t see why I have to be the pack mule when you’re the one who decided to bring almost everything we own.” She hoisted a bag over her shoulder and frowned. “Where are the keys?”

  Mom’s lips pressed into an unhappy line, but she handed over the key chain. Then Janie reached back into the trunk and pulled out a scraped-up red suitcase.

  I gasped. That had been my suitcase.

  Trying desperately not to show that the stuff she was carrying was almost too heavy for her, my sister tottered up the steps and unlocked the front entrance. Then she went inside. The doors gaped open behind her, and I quickly moved to follow her into the house.

  “Delia, hold on,” Theo said softly. “I think we should talk.”

  I glanced back at him. There was something like worry in his expression. The prospect of spending time with Theo was tempting. But I didn’t have time to chat. I had my family back.

  By the time I got inside, Janie had opened the door to the superintendent’s apartment and set down her bags. Mom came in carrying everything else—cleaning supplies, groceries, her laptop, pillows, sheets, blankets, a tote full of books (my mother never went anywhere without books). Then she ducked into the kitchen to put the food away.

  When she came out, she looked around.

  “Jane?” she called.

  No answer.

  “Jane!” I detected thinly-veiled panic in her voice. Could you blame her? Alarm rose inside me, too, like a tiny, quaking creature.

  Mom dashed out to the lobby and threw open the front doors to look outside—was she making sure the car was still there? Then she went back inside and down the main hall, pausing to listen for any sign of my sister. Finally, she climbed the stairs and walked across the day room to the ward door. I trailed close behind her.

  In the ward, she made it almost all the way to the end of the hall before stopping outside Room 4 and letting out a massive sigh. Over her shoulder, I saw Janie sprawled on the bed, her eyes closed and earbuds in, with tinny music spilling out of them.

  “Jane,” Mom said loudly. My sister lazily opened her eyes, and plucked out one of her headphones. “Honey, why didn’t you tell me you were coming up here? You can’t just run off by yourself. You could get lost in this place.”

  Not likely. I remembered the hand-drawn map on Nic’s phone. At some point, my sister had done some unauthorized exploring.

  “Please,” Janie said. “I’m not a little kid.”

  “Why don’t you come downstairs?” Mom asked.

  But Janie just stuck the earbud back in her ear.

  “Why on earth have they returned?” Eliza asked, popping in by my side.

  I looked at my mom, who was clenching her fists in an effort not to lose her cool.

  “To get the place ready to sell, I guess,” I replied.

  “How would you know? Have they said?” Eliza turned her reproachful gaze toward my mother. “Surely someone else could have handled the details for them.”

  “Who knows?” I said. “Maybe they don’t have enough money to hire people.”

  After all, with Dad out of the picture, Mom was having to make ends meet with one salary instead of two.

  But a plaintive, embarrassed voice deep inside me said, To see me. To be near me. I mean, sure, I was dead, but wouldn’t they naturally want to spend time at the place I’d died? To sort of … cherish my memory or something?

  “Well,” Eliza said, bells jingling as she placed her hands on her hips, “I hope for their own sakes that they don’t stay long.”

  I bristled with indignation.

  “Oh, don’t get grumpy,” Eliza said. “You know what I mean. This place isn’t safe.”

  I turned on her. “And yet you keep saying it’s fine.”

  “I don’t—” She colored slightly. “It is fine, in some ways.”

  “Like if you’re dead?”

  “I suppose.”

  “Yeah, well, news flash,” I said. “I wasn’t dead until I came here.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “What’s a ‘news flash’?”

  “Forget it,” I said.

  “Anyway, whose side are you on?” she asked. “Do you want them to stay or leave?”

  I stared at Mom for a beat. She and Janie had just finished a mini-argument that left them both hurt and angry.

  The answer was blindingly obvious.

  My mood sank instantly. “To leave,” I said. “They need to leave and never come back.”

  “All right, then,” Eliza said. “What are we going to do to make that happen?”

  I looked at her, feeling equal parts gratitude and confusion. “We?”

  The pink in her cheeks intensifie
d. “I couldn’t help you,” she said. “I might as well do what I can for your family.”

  * * *

  Mom cooked dinner in the superintendent’s kitchen and served it on paper plates. Janie took her food and went to eat by herself on the couch while Mom sat at the table with a paperback. After they’d finished eating, my sister got the red suitcase and started for the door to the hallway.

  Mom jumped to attention. “Are you going upstairs now? I’ll come.”

  “Mother, could you just … not?” Janie said. “I’m fine. I can be alone for five minutes without you fawning all over me.”

  Mom tried to look light and carefree, but the effect was miserable. Her face contorted like a sad mask. “Sorry. Are you sure you’re okay up there alone?”

  “Relax,” Janie snapped. “You’re making me so nervous.”

  Mom was silent, and my sister relented.

  “I’ll be fine,” Janie said, flipping her hair the way she used to—only now it was habit, not affectation. “It’s fine.”

  Her niceness seemed to soothe some wild fear in our mother. “Okay,” Mom said, her face still plasticky bright. “See you in a bit, sweetie. I guess you can text me if you need anything. Thankfully they put in that cell tower up the highway. It’s like we’re living in the twenty-first century again!”

  “Sure,” Janie said. Then she walked out.

  My mother gave a little sigh and went back to her book.

  MY FAVORITE MEMORY OF JANIE

  It was almost Halloween, which is one of those holidays that’s extremely important to kids and extremely useless to parents. Mom and Dad had a history of forgetting to get our costumes until the last possible minute. When I was thirteen and Janie was eight, we decided to take matters into our own hands. So one day after school, we raided their closet.

  I grabbed an old flannel shirt Mom had never thrown away and put together a nineties grunge look, but we were having a harder time finding something for Janie … until we dug through an overflowing shelf and found a ruffly apron. I remembered seeing it on pictures of my great-grandma. We hauled it out and then unearthed a full skirt and a simple white blouse.

  “Voilà,” I said, tying the apron strings into a bow behind her back. “You’re a housewife.”

  She wrinkled her nose at herself in the mirror. “It’s not enough.”

  “Come on, then,” I said, leading her out to the kitchen and opening the pantry door. “We’ll get you some props.”

  I handed her a broom, which she rejected with a sneer, so then I gave her a mop, which, for some reason obvious only in eight-year-old logic, was acceptable.

  “What else?” she asked.

  “You need a hand free for your candy,” I said.

  “I can wear a purse on my arm and put the candy in that,” she said. “But I need more. I still don’t look like anything.”

  “I know!” I said. “Wait here.”

  I ran back to my room and dug through my jewelry box for a strand of fake pearls. When I got back to the kitchen, Janie was holding the mop in one hand and a teapot in the other.

  “Better now,” she said.

  I didn’t want to laugh at her, but I couldn’t really stop myself. “You look like you’re hosting the weirdest tea party ever.”

  She set down the teapot, then opened a cabinet and pulled out a frying pan, struggling to manage everything with the mop wedged into her armpit.

  “Better?” she asked. “Like, for making cookies?”

  “What—? Janie. You honestly think cookies are made in frying pans?”

  She blinked at me, clueless.

  “Here,” I said, picking the teapot up and tucking it in the crook of her elbow. “Now. You’re the perfect housewife.”

  For a second, she believed me, and then I busted out laughing so hard that tears exploded down my face. Janie took a few seconds to decide whether to be angry, and then she started laughing, too.

  Mom came home a couple of minutes later and stared at us, confused, as we gasped and wheezed for air. “What are you girls doing?”

  “What?” I asked. “Don’t you want some of Janie’s fried cookies?”

  Janie waved the mop at Mom. “Come to my tea party!” she said, in a demonic, gravelly voice. “Come to my tea party and mop my floors!”

  And then we basically lost our minds laughing while our mother, who had never taught us anything about house-wifery and therefore only had herself to blame, stared at us as if we’d turned into aliens.

  I caught up with my sister on the stairs and stayed a few paces behind as she pushed open the door to the day room. She stood in the doorway for a little while, looking around. Then she circled the room, examining the chairs, running her finger along the dusty window ledge, and staring up at the ceiling. Her thoughtful curiosity read, to me, as confidence. Misplaced confidence. She ought to be just a little careful.

  She paused by the piano and made a soft Hm sound.

  She’d found the stack of Aunt Cordelia’s letters that I’d left there four years ago.

  “No,” I said, hurrying over to her and trying, uselessly, to wrench them from her hands. “Those aren’t for you. Put them down.”

  But of course Janie, lips slightly parted in surprise, carried them to the small, still-dustless table and sat down to read them.

  Since I couldn’t stop her, I positioned myself to read over her shoulder.

  Dear Little Namesake,

  I hope you had a nice Christmas. It was very cold here and I did not have a tree. By the time I thought to get one, I had run out of time. Anyway, it doesn’t signify much because there would be no one to enjoy it but myself. There is a lovely fir on the lawn that I can see from my desk as I write this, so I pretended that was my tree. Although if Santa Claus left any gifts beneath it, I’m afraid the squirrels must have taken them!

  I remembered this one. I’d felt bad for her, for not having a tree or anyone who cared enough to help her get one. In my next letter I drew her the fanciest Christmas tree I could fit on the page, complete with a generous sprinkling of glitter that, in retrospect, probably got all over everything she owned.

  But what got my attention reading the letter now wasn’t her loneliness—it was the clue. Of course. I needed to find the tree, and that would be one more hint as to where her private office had been. I went back to reading:

  Did you ever decide which jacket you wanted? Red and purple are both lovely colors. I don’t blame you for having a difficult time with the choice. It’s all right if you decided based on what your friend Nicola wanted. Friends are an important part of life. It’s perfectly fine to depend on others, once they have earned your trust.

  —said the woman who spent her whole life living alone.

  The problem sometimes is learning who you can trust, and who you can’t. Always remember that those around you aren’t always what—or who—they seem to be.

  The rest of the letter was basic stuff: weather, mostly, mixed with her usual well-wishes for my family and me. Janie folded it and slipped it carefully back into the envelope. She opened the next one in the stack, which also happened to be the very last letter I’d received from Aunt Cordelia.

  Dear Little Namesake,

  It’s wonderful that you are so excited for summer, and that you are hopeful for good marks from your teachers. I was never a very good student. I always wanted to be doing something else besides reciting and memorizing. I do believe things are different now, that they are more aware of what children like and how they prefer to learn.

  I have been pondering whether to tell you something very important, and I think I have decided that I will, in part because your excellent grade card demonstrates a good deal of maturity. So I will include it either here or in my next letter. I haven’t made up my mind yet.

  But at the end of the letter, where the important announcement should have been was a little bit of backtracking and a promise that she would tell me “everything” the next time she wrote.

  On
ly there never was a next time. I guess I got too busy to write back to her. I was busy with summer camp, and hanging out with my friends … without the bonus of getting extra credit, writing letters just didn’t seem like a priority. Cordelia must have assumed I wasn’t interested, because she never did tell me her important message.

  Janie scanned the rest of the letters, pausing when she came to the one with the description of Aunt Cordelia’s little “sanctuary.” She studied the page carefully, then set it on the table and pulled out her phone, examining the familiar hand-drawn map.

  As she stared at the lit-up screen, there was a rustling sound.

  All of the letters had fallen off the table.

  Janie cocked her head, like a curious puppy, and leaned down to pick them up. She set them in a neat pile and went back to the map.

  Flutter flutter.

  She jerked her head up to see the empty surface gleaming in front of her.

  Again, the letters lay in a pile on the ground. Some invisible ghost was messing with my sister. The same ghost that had messed with me years earlier, pushing my sweater to the floor.

  “Who’s there?” I demanded. “Who’s doing this?”

  “Sh!”

  The sound seemed to have no source, but suddenly the light on the other side of the table began to waver.

  Then there appeared a woman who looked to be in her early forties. Her gray-streaked black hair rested in a large topknot at the crown of her head. Her dress was dull blue, floor length, and partly covered by a dingy white apron with threadbare edges. A pair of wire-frame reading glasses rested on her nose. She was one of those people who could have been pretty, if there had been any spark of light or joy in her eyes. But instead, there was an aggressive kind of bitterness, and it made her look plain and tired.

  She glared at me, then went back to her work, moving her hands in intricate motions, making delicate adjustments and small, pulling gestures. It was some kind of knitting … only without any actual needles or yarn. Her movements were hypnotic, and I lost myself in watching her fingers deftly maneuver their invisible tasks.