The Dead Girls of Hysteria Hall

by Katie Alender

  She studiously ignored me.

  My sister carefully placed one letter back on the table.

  The woman glanced at the offending envelope, then swiped at it with a swiftness approaching violence. It tumbled off the side.

  Janie let out a nervous, disbelieving laugh, then seemed to remember how utterly freaky this was and took a few steps back.

  After a minute, she leaned forward and delicately set one of her (many) skull rings about an inch away from the edge of the table.

  For nearly a minute, nothing happened. Janie visibly relaxed. But then the woman reached out and knocked the ring to the floor, where it bounced and skittered before coming to a stop just past my sister.

  Janie gasped.

  “What are you doing?” I said to her. “Why are you just standing there? Go! Go down and see Mom! Tell her about this! Tell her you want to leave!”

  Except … my sister didn’t want to leave. She scooped her ring off the floor and came right back. This time she set the ring dead center on the tabletop. The old woman shoved it off with so much force that it shot up and hit Janie squarely in the side of the jaw.

  Enough.

  “Hey, lady!” I snapped, anger rising inside me. “That’s my little sister!”

  The woman finally looked up. “Go away! Leave me alone!”

  “Don’t you ever try to hurt her again,” I said, standing right above her. “Do you understand?”

  She scowled.

  “That scarf you’re knitting?” I said, feeling the power of my anger growing like a flame inside me. “I’ll—I’ll tear it to shreds. I’ll set it on fire.”

  The woman’s snarl turned to a confused, frightened expression, and she cradled her imaginary knitting close to her body. “It’s not a scarf. It’s a blanket. For my little girl.” She bundled it up and clutched it to her cheek. “She needs it. She’s so cold without it.”

  Her tone was so woeful that the heat of my anger cooled. “I won’t touch it,” I said. “But you need to be nice. Don’t try to hurt my sister.”

  The woman looked down at the blanket.

  “Okay?” I said. “Say okay.”

  “Okay,” she said, pursing her lips. “But I don’t see why you have to threaten me.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “You were acting pretty crazy.”

  She cracked a small smile and looked at me through eyes that looked less insane than just plain exhausted. “We’re all crazy here,” she said.

  “Yeah, well,” I said. “Maybe not all of us.”

  She inclined her head toward Janie. “You’d better keep an eye on her,” she said.

  “Trust me, I know,” I said. “So what’s your name?”

  “It certainly isn’t Hey, lady.” She gave me a rueful smile. “I’m Penitence.”

  “Delia,” I said. “Nice to meet you.”

  Penitence nodded and turned her attention back to the invisible blanket, an impossible hint of a smile on her thin gray lips.

  Janie, done playing with the forces at work near the table, stepped toward the wall and rested her palm on it. All the stubborn resoluteness went out of her. She looked like a rag doll, her eyes overflowing with tears. Her head dropped forward, and her fingers curled into a trembling fist.

  “I’m sorry, Delia,” she whispered. “I’m sorry for everything. It’s my fault.”

  “No, Janie,” I pleaded. “Don’t say that. It had nothing to do with you.”

  She rushed into the ward hall. I had to run to keep up with her. She went straight into the bathroom, splashed water on her face, and gulped in deep gasps of air.

  Then, as she stared at herself in the mirror, something in her face changed. Her jaw clenched. Her eyebrows pressed into straight lines. Like she was loading up on strength.

  What struck me the most was how practiced the gesture was. As if she’d been breaking down and then shoring herself up this way for years.

  For four years.

  From the bathroom, she went back to the day room and stood at the piano, turning the letters over in her hands. Finally, she grabbed her phone and loaded the hand-drawn map again.

  Then I got it.

  She was trying to figure out which room had been Aunt Cordelia’s.

  I watched as my sister went out into the stairwell … and started to climb to the third floor.

  * * *

  Perhaps disturbed by the presence of the living among us, the third-floor spirits crowded the hallway. Even the shiest ghosts, sad-looking girls and women wearing limp asylum nightgowns, had come to investigate. A few reached out to Janie, whispering or moaning—I watched tensely but didn’t interfere. Most seemed ultimately harmless. A couple, though, looked more dangerous—more focused.

  At one point, Maria scuttled by on all fours.

  I moved to walk in front of Janie, turning sideways so I could watch her.

  Studying her map, my sister walked to the door marked THERAPY … and started searching the key ring for the key to unlock it.

  I’d never been in that room before, so I went through the wall to check things out before my sister could get herself into trouble. But just as I stepped in, Janie got the door open.

  “Holy …” she whispered, awed into speechlessness.

  It looked like a medieval torture chamber. A wooden chair in a permanent reclining position dominated the center of the room, and next to it was a complex board covered in dials and buttons. Connected to that by wires was an elaborate frame, and dozens of wires with small electrodes at their ends dangled from the frame.

  In a dubious effort to make the room more cheerful, the walls had been painted a pale blue. But they were barely visible between the hundreds of taped-up newspaper and encyclopedia articles. Stacks of books overflowed on the counters and filled the scratched white sink basin.

  Pushed up under the window was a small writing desk, its contents neatly organized in marked contrast to the chaos of the rest of the room: a little pen jar, a box of stationery, and a leather desk blotter. A small swivel chair was neatly parked under the desk.

  Janie had found Cordelia’s office.

  I started to cross toward the desk, but halfway there, Bang! I smashed right into an invisible wall.

  An acrid scent seeped into my nose. I looked down and saw a thick line of white granules on the floor.

  I recalled Florence telling me about salt—about its power over us ghosts. Just being near it turned my stomach, so I retreated, watching helplessly as my sister pressed on toward the desk.

  Janie paused, her fingers spread wide like a spider’s legs, gently resting on the blotter. She inspected everything with a care I myself would not have used. In fact, I was beginning to grow impatient with her minute examination of the pens, the stationery, the blotter itself …

  Until her attentiveness paid off. Something I would never have noticed caught her eye. She lifted the corner of the blotter to reveal a piece of paper covered in writing that I recognized as Aunt Cordelia’s old-fashioned scrawl. Another letter.

  The first line, unmistakable even from halfway across the room, read:

  Dear Little Namesake,

  “That’s mine—bring it here!” I demanded. Without thinking, I lunged forward but slammed into the invisible barrier again. This time, the impact sent a shock of pain through me, and I stumbled backward, knocking into the counter.

  A stack of books tumbled to the ground.

  Janie whipped around to look in my direction. Wariness clouded her face when she caught sight of the mess.

  She glanced back at the letter for a moment, then tucked it into the front pocket of her jacket and started for the door.

  As she tread on the salt, there was a slight crunching sound. She knelt to look at the white line, which she’d tracked across the floor in the sole of her shoe. I hoped she would brush it out of the way so I could get closer to the desk, but instead, she very carefully repaired the line and stood up.

  She took one step forward, then stopped short and swung
back. She crouched down and, using her pointer finger, separated a thin line of salt from the thicker line. Then she leaned down and brushed it into her palm, until she held a decent handful of salt.

  I tested the barrier that remained and found it just as strong as before.

  I followed Janie out of the room and down the hall. The ghosts that had come out earlier to watch her were all gone … but the hallway still had an air of occupancy.

  Something was there with us. I just wasn’t sure what it was.

  Back on the second floor, Janie disappeared into the ward just as our mother came into the day room, loaded down with her wheeled suitcase, her laptop bag, and the tote full of books.

  After setting everything down just inside the door, Mom took a minute to look over the room. A shudder set her body trembling, but she took a few slow, deep breaths and seemed to calm herself down.

  “You can do this,” she said softly. “It’s only a week.”

  “Do what?” I asked. “What are you trying to do?”

  There was a soft, cackling laugh, and I looked over at Penitence, who bent over her work.

  “She can’t hear you,” she said.

  “I know,” I said. “I just kind of hoped that if I keep talking to them, they’ll … understand me, somehow.”

  I expected her to laugh again, but she was quiet for a long time and then said, “There are ways. But you can’t simply speak. You must be subtle.”

  “Subtle how?” I asked.

  “Subtle,” she said, “in a way that can only come from watching and waiting. Subtle in a way that can’t be explained.”

  She turned and looked at my mother, puffed up her cheeks, and exhaled a thin whistle of air. Mom shivered and pulled the sleeves of her sweater down over her wrists. Then she hastily gathered her things and went on into the ward.

  In her room, Room 4, Janie sat down on the bed, turned on her music, and closed her eyes. Within a minute or two, the tension went out of her arms and her breathing turned slow and even.

  Dancing light came through the window and shone on the opposite wall. I looked down to see Theo outside. He waved up to me and then beckoned me to come out. I glanced over at my sleeping sister, then nodded to Theo.

  The two nightgowned girls were back in the lobby. At the sight of me, they nudged each other until one of them said, in a halting voice, “Who are they? The new ones?”

  “My family,” I said. “Please leave them alone.”

  “We leave everyone alone!” the second girl said, and then she giggled shrilly.

  “What are your names?” I asked. “I’m—”

  But they’d already vanished.

  Theo waited for me by the fountain with his hands on his hips and a deep frown etched across his face.

  “They can’t stay,” he said.

  “I know.”

  “No, I’m being very serious, Delia,” he said. “You can’t let them—”

  “I get it,” I said. “It’s dangerous. Well, I don’t know what to do about that. I didn’t ask them to come.”

  He gazed at the ground, clearly playing out some internal debate. Finally, he looked up at me with his amber-flecked eyes. “The first time we met, you asked if I ever saw my family after … after. And I said I’d seen my brother. But I didn’t tell you what happened.”

  I nodded, casting a quick glance up at Janie’s window.

  “We were twins,” Theo went on. “Theodore and Edward. Theo and Ted. We were best friends; we did everything together. We were working together on the land survey and planning to start our own business, doing that kind of work for private clients—department stores, hotels. About a year after I passed, Ted came back here. I thought he was here to visit the place I had died. Just to say hello. I missed him so much. It felt like part of me was lost.”

  Theo’s eyes sparkled as he spoke. Then, all at once, the light went out of them, and his expression turned dull and distant.

  “He came only for himself,” he said softly. “He didn’t really think I was here. But he talked, you know, the way people talk to make themselves feel better. He filled me in: Mom’s roses won at the garden show; Dad was a deacon now … But the real reason he came was … he wanted my permission to marry the girl I’d been engaged to before I died. He told me their plans—his and Barbara’s. He gave me a story about how they hadn’t even seen each other after the funeral, only he ran into her about six months later, and they felt like being in love was the ‘right thing to do’ because in a way it was about remembering me.”

  I thought instantly of Nic and Landon and wondered if they saw it that way. I wondered if they were still together. If every time they kissed, there was something in it that held a tiny piece of their memories of me.

  “The dead and the living don’t belong together,” Theo said. “That’s why you hear stories about haunted houses. Because no matter what the living do, they flaunt their life. They can’t help it. And that’s what I thought Ted was doing. So I got jealous. Really jealous. To the point where I couldn’t control myself. And then …”

  I tore my eyes away from my sister’s window and looked at Theo.

  “I tried to hurt him,” he said. “I almost did—I would have—if it hadn’t been for the fact that Barbara came after him. She’d been waiting in the car. It stopped me from doing something terrible. But Ted knew. He knew that I was there, and that I was angry. I never saw him again. And I’ve existed since then knowing that the two people I cared most about no longer had their old memories of me. Instead, I’d let myself become a monster. Ted must be dead by now, and he died thinking I was … bad. That I hated him. So you’ve got to make them leave, before the fact of their being alive gets to you, eats away at what you used to feel for them. Do you understand?”

  Theo’s voice was low and shaky, and I could tell by the roundedness of his shoulders how difficult it had been for him to tell me all this, to confess his misdeeds.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “That must have been awful.”

  “It’s awful every day,” he said.

  He seemed so abjectly miserable that I wanted to give him a big hug, but I wasn’t sure what the 1940s hugging rules were.

  So I lamely patted his shoulder. “Thank you for trusting me enough to tell me. But I swear that’s not what’s happening here. I’m trying to make them go.”

  “Well, for your own sake, as well as theirs,” Theo said, standing up straight once again, “see that it doesn’t take too long. All we are is energy. All we’re made of is the suggestion of what we were. And the longer you’ve been dead, the easier it is to forget who you were. Who you wanted to be.”

  “I’ve never been who I wanted to be,” I said. “Even when I was alive. I think I might actually be a better person now … for all that’s worth.”

  Theo blinked at me and reached his hand out, as if he were going to touch my arm. But at the last moment he pulled it away.

  “Whoever you are,” he said, “whoever you were, I—I like you.”

  Just put your stupid hand on my arm, I thought.

  His expression turned stern, and the moment was gone. “But you still need to be careful.”

  Then he vanished.

  * * *

  That night, I sat on the hallway floor between my mother’s and Janie’s rooms until they both clicked off their lights.

  Mom called, “Good night, Jane. I love you.”

  After a short silence, Janie reluctantly replied, “Good night.”

  I closed my eyes and curled up on the floor, blurring my thoughts and memories, trying to fool myself into thinking that I was back among them, one of the family.

  It almost worked. I was lulled into a deep, soft place, and something at the back of my heart began to blossom like a shy flower. For the first time in years, I felt warm, and loved, and safe. Even if it was just an illusion.

  Then I heard a noise.

  I shot up, ashamed that I’d let my guard down for even a few minutes. My family’s safety�
�not my loneliness—had to be the number one priority. I felt a wavering awareness that this might be the first sign that I needed to heed Theo’s warning.

  I sneaked into Janie’s room and found her in bed, curled up under the covers. Her breath seemed even, and her eyes were lightly closed. I sighed with relief; she was perfectly fine. Still, no more resting for me.

  I spotted the stack of Cordelia’s letters on the vanity table near the window. Laid flat next to them was the newest letter. I bent down to read it.

  Dear Little Namesake,

  It has now been years since we were last in correspondence. I apologize for writing out of the blue, most especially because of what I must write. But it is unavoidable, as I hope you will see and understand.

  First, my confession. In all the letters I ever sent you, I never told you the real truth about myself. I can’t recall what I wrote, but I’m sure it must have been a lot of fluff. I was thrilled to have someone to write to, and I didn’t want to scare you away. I can honestly say that our period of letter writing was one of the nicest and least lonely times of my life. Now, I don’t say that to make you feel bad that we stopped … If you’ll remember, I never wrote back to you, either. We’re even on that score.

  But now you are a young woman, not a child anymore, and very soon I am going to share something with you that is of a rather serious nature. It concerns me, and you, and our family history. And my home.

  It is no ordinary home. It was once known as the Piven Institute for the Care and Correction of Troubled Females—or Hysteria Hall, if you were one of the local residents of Rotburg. The facility opened in 1866 with the aim of, well, caring for and correcting troubled females. It was started by my great-great-great-great grandfather, Maxwell Piven, immediately following the end of the Civil War. (I suppose a lot of women were left without husbands or suitors following all the bloodshed, and many of them may have been seen as troubled—or perhaps troublesome—to their families.)

  Maxwell Piven was not, unfortunately, a tremendously nice man. He was rumored to be ruthlessly strict and abusive to the inmates here. At one point, he even institutionalized his own daughter, who up until that point had been the wardress, a female warden who oversaw the patients and their care.