The Dead Girls of Hysteria Hall

by Katie Alender

  Four massive bangs, as if there was a rabid gorilla trying to get through the door.

  “—I bind you,” she said.

  Everything was silent.

  And then Janie—who once spent an hour and a half on the kitchen counter because she thought she may have seen a cockroach on the floor—opened the basement door and started down the stairs into near-pitch darkness and the company of a terrifying supernatural creature.

  Part of me admired her. Part of me wanted to cuff her in the back of the head.

  I quickly grabbed the metal measuring cup, praying that my sister wouldn’t turn and find herself being haunted by a floating container of salt. I followed her to the center of the room, where she used her cell phone as a flashlight and looked around. Aside from my faint blue glow—which she couldn’t see, anyway—the LED was the only light in the room. Its small circle seemed inadequate against the looming darkness.

  I stayed as close to her as I dared, scanning the room for the shadow creature, which I knew must be studying our every move. Whatever spell or incantation Janie had read seemed to have some effect—but for how long, I didn’t know. I wondered if she even knew.

  The basement was apparently the institute’s long-forgotten deep storage. It was cavernous, lined with floor-to-ceiling shelves holding every possible type of domestic item: a herd of mops and brooms, teetering piles of old pots and pans and cooking utensils, decaying metal tins of soap powder, and even an entire array of old silverware and serving platters. I kept an eye out for wrenches.

  As we went deeper into the blackness, I heard a sound that sent a shot of cold fear through my body. “Delia …”

  I couldn’t tell where it had come from.

  I tensed and tried to ready myself for a fight. But a few steps later, illuminated by my pale blue glow, I saw a smoky body silently slamming against an invisible barrier. It was totally freaking out—flailing its legs, even bashing its head into whatever was holding it back. This shadow was bigger and meaner looking than the one upstairs. Its teeth were longer and more jagged in its gaping mouth, and the fog swirling within its outline seemed thicker and heavier.

  Oblivious to its presence, Janie stood not two feet away, looking around. There was a wary look in her eyes, but behind it was that familiar dogged spark.

  She walked a little farther into the darkness.

  The shadow hurled its body against the barrier. But this time, something was different. Instead of just bouncing off, it almost seemed to catch on something. And that got its attention, big-time. It focused all its energy on that one spot, until I could see that the boundary was stretching, weakening.

  My sister was still only a couple of feet ahead of me. If the monster broke free, it would go after us—first me, then her.

  I would have preferred to wait until Janie had rounded the corner, so there was no chance she might turn and see what was happening. But as the creature started to make real progress toward escape, I made the call.

  I drew back the measuring cup and tossed the salt onto its trapped form.

  Its shriek was an otherworldly mix of agony and fury and a hint of helplessness. Shockingly, the sound gave me a healthy stab of guilt, right in the center of the heart.

  This creature had been shut up in here for who knew how long—hungry, lonely, angry, and growing more so with every passing year. It hadn’t chosen what it was, any more than I had.

  It collapsed to the floor in a quaking heap, and I stared down at it until it went still.

  I’d never killed anything bigger than an ant when I’d been alive, and now twice in a single day I’d brought down these beasts.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. Tears stung my eyes. I hoped that maybe now it would find some peace, even if that meant not existing. Maybe the absence of torment was its own kind of peace.

  Meanwhile, my sister hadn’t noticed a thing. I set the empty measuring cup down on an old wooden crate and followed her to the back of the room, where the whole wall was lined with ancient gray file cabinets.

  I stood in awe for a moment. Judging by their sheer number, I guessed that these were the records from the entire history of the institute. Every girl who came in was probably notated in here—her treatments, symptoms, illnesses … maybe even her death.

  Janie went straight for one in the middle and pulled it open, revealing olive-green file folders. She thumbed through the yellowed tabs, and, not finding what she wanted, closed that drawer and went farther left. More file folders. Still the wrong ones.

  She went all the way to the leftmost cabinet and opened it.

  Instead of folders, this one held large, leather-bound books whose covers were coming off in chunks and strips. Janie pulled out the top one and shone her light on it. In faded gold leaf, the cover read PIVEN INSTITUTE, 1866–1873. These were the very earliest patient records, before they moved to a more organized alphabetized system.

  Flipping page after page, Janie examined the entries, each of which bore the name of a different patient, her age, and a note about her life pre-institute—Hilda Hargreave, 29, mother of 4, housewife. Catherine Scales, 67, dressmaker, spinster. They were handwritten logs with messily scribbled notations.

  Most of them had a large note scrawled across the top: DISCHARGED, and a date. But a few of them didn’t—the ones that were labeled DECEASED.

  About a third of the way through the book, Janie stopped and leaned to get a closer look at the text, her interest caught.

  I looked over her shoulder at the name that had grabbed her attention:

  Penitence Piven, 36, mother of 1, widow, former wardress of the Piven Institute.

  Piven? Push-everything-off-the-table Penitence was a Piven? She and I were related?

  I thought of Aunt Cordelia’s unsent letter, where she mentioned that the institute had been founded by a man so cruel and controlling that he’d locked up his own daughter, just because he could.

  Janie was making her way down the notes on Penitence’s page of records. The first five, all made in different handwriting, were the same:

  Remains uncooperative. Insists on seeing child.

  But the sixth was different.

  TREATMENT: Water therapy. 1st sign of acquiescence.

  The next note made Janie draw in an indignant breath.

  DIAGNOSIS: Female hysteria.

  “Of course it was,” Janie muttered. She turned the page again and came to the end of the notes about Penitence. The very last one read simply, in very clear handwriting, Died, natural causes. There wasn’t even a year listed.

  My sister suddenly raised her nose and sniffed the air. The putrid scent of the dead shadow had crossed over to her plane of existence and was filling the room.

  That motivated her to wrap things up. She replaced the book in the cabinet, then brushed her hands on her jeans and walked back to the stairs.

  I watched her climb safely back to the first floor, but I stayed downstairs. I needed to find a wrench. And since I figured I should wait a couple of minutes before trying to sneak it upstairs, I decided to do a little research of my own.

  I went to the files and flipped through the Bs until I found Beauregard, Florence. But her file, and those around it, were so damaged by age and dampness that the ink was illegible. All I could make out was the typewritten DECEASED at the top.

  Next, I looked through the D drawers until I came to Duncombe, Eliza. I pulled the file and began to read.

  * * *

  “How did it go?” Eliza asked eagerly, appearing in the hall. “Did you find a wrench to hit the pipe with? What about the shadow?”

  “Killed it,” I said, walking past her.

  She began to follow me. “Wow. Great. Impressive. Next, we need to—”

  “We,” I said, turning on her, “are not going to do anything. You are going to stay away from me and my family. Understand?”

  Eliza’s face fell.

  My initial plan had been to storm away, full of righteousness and cold fury, but I couldn�
�t pass up the chance to express my anger. “You’ve lied to me the entire time I’ve known you,” I said. “This whole time, you’ve pretended to be some innocent victim.”

  Eliza seemed practically frozen. Her voice was a whisper. “What did you find down there?”

  “Everything,” I said. “Your patient records, the news articles …”

  She turned paler—her whole body became more transparent. “But … but those are kept in the attic. At least, they used to be.”

  “Well, now they’re in the basement,” I said. I started to walk away, then stopped to stash the wrench on an open shelf near the stairwell entrance.

  She followed, hot on my heels. “Don’t you dare judge me, Delia! You’ve no idea what really happened—”

  “No idea?” I said. “Pardon me—did you or did you not kill your own brother and sister?”

  She didn’t answer. A shudder passed through her entire body.

  “You kept hoping someone from your family would come back for you?” I asked. “Really? Is that actually what you’ve been telling yourself all this time? Because I have news for you. They were never going to come, Eliza. You killed children. And you should have been hanged for it, but your father pulled some strings—”

  “No,” she said, her voice dull. “I wouldn’t have hanged. They’d changed over to the electric chair by then.”

  I didn’t reply.

  “How do you know all this?” she asked. “What did you find?”

  “There were newspaper articles in your file,” I said. “After your father arranged for you to be committed here, he and the rest of your family went back to England. That’s why they never came to visit, in case no one ever told you. They weren’t even in this country.”

  “Ah,” she said faintly, biting her lip and nodding. “No, I didn’t know that. No one ever told me.”

  “You lied to me, Eliza. You’re a murderer … You’re as bad as Maria.”

  Eliza’s face seemed to crumple, and her mouth opened. She took a gasping breath in, and it came out as a sob. “No—worse than Maria,” she said. “She only killed adults. I killed innocent children.”

  Disturbing, disturbing, disturbing. I didn’t need to hear this.

  “But it was an accident,” Eliza said. “You have to believe me.”

  “You ‘accidentally’ set their bedroom on fire?” I asked.

  “They weren’t supposed to be sleeping in there!” she cried. “They always, always slept in the night nursery with Nanny. I only needed a small distraction so I could sneak out of the house to meet Arthur. But they—”

  “Stop,” I said. “Please, honestly, just stop. It makes me sick to think about it.”

  “How do you think it makes me feel?” She wept uncontrollably, from someplace deep inside herself. The way you might cry if—just for instance—you’ve held a horrible secret inside for almost a hundred years and it was suddenly laid out before you.

  “Stay away from me,” I said. “And my family. Okay?”

  “You don’t … you won’t … are you going to tell Florence what I’ve done?” Eliza sobbed.

  I felt a mixture of pity and frustration, and turned back to look at her. “No,” I said. “If you want to go on lying to your best friend, that’s your business. But you’re done lying to me.”

  Then I walked away.

  * * *

  Janie was in the day room, sitting at the piano, tapping out a slow melody of flat, tired notes.

  “Penitence,” I said, standing over her table. “I know you’re here.”

  But she didn’t appear.

  “And I know who you are,” I said.

  The notes from the piano slowed slightly, and I turned to check on my sister. She seemed fine, though, and when I turned back, Penitence was sitting at the table.

  “You were the wardress here?” I asked.

  She didn’t look up from her work. “I don’t talk about my life. Or my death.”

  “Your father built this place, didn’t he?”

  Her lips flattened.

  “When did he die?”

  She shook her head. “No one knows. He went out one night and never came back.”

  “But you must know if his spirit is here. Is he the one who killed me?”

  “His spirit?” Her eyes went wide. “It couldn’t be.”

  “Why not?” I asked. “He wanted to control people, didn’t he? Maybe he’s controlling all of us.”

  She looked up at me through miserable eyes. “What’s here,” she said, “what’s in the house … is bigger than my father. And he was an evil man, but what’s here is more than evil. What’s here is …”

  A sound caught my ear. Or, more precisely, a lack of sound.

  Janie had stopped playing the piano.

  “It’s hungry,” Penitence said. And then she vanished.

  I looked at Janie as she closed the piano and ran her finger along the top, collecting a big pile of dust and then closing her eyes and blowing it away, as if she were making a wish. After a moment, she opened her eyes, and, staring out the window at the hillside, began to hum.

  I knew every note of the song. Every single note. It was “Beautiful Dreamer.”

  Then she started to sing, her soprano voice filling the room. “Beautiful dreamer, wake unto me …”

  Something was wrong.

  She walked toward the window, still singing, her eyes focused on some spot in the distance.

  Something was terribly wrong.

  When she reached the window, her eyes never wavered from the view, but her fingers began to claw at the metal grate that covered the glass.

  “Janie!” I gasped.

  Her voice descended to a rasp. “Starlight and dewdrops are waiting for thee …”

  Then a movement above her caught my eye. A faint, swirling black fog had begun to seep out of the seam where the ceiling and wall met.

  Oh no.

  “Janie!” I said again, rushing to my sister’s side. I tried to shove her, to wake her up somehow, but my hands went right through her body.

  Why now? How could I fail now?

  I could do this. I knew I could. I had to.

  I kept pawing at her, trying to grab her attention … and I kept failing.

  Her fingertips were bloody. She was making progress on the wire. She was going to open the window and leap out—or be pushed. And I was going to have to stand there and watch because I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t save her.

  “Janie!” I screamed at the top of my lungs. And then I screamed again. “Janie, wake up! Wake up!”

  In a panic, I raced to the door and stuck my head through.

  “Mom!” I cried, momentarily forgetting that my mother and I were on separate planes of existence. “Come quick! Mom!”

  And then it hit me that my mother wasn’t even there. She’d gone into town. So she would come back to find … No.

  I raced back to my sister, who by that point had wrenched the bottom third of the screen away from the wall.

  This wasn’t happening. This couldn’t be happening.

  Except it was happening. And I couldn’t stop it.

  I circled the room, trying to move chairs and tables, desperate to get a grip on something I could use to wake my sister up … or knock her down.

  But it wasn’t working. Was this an extension of not being able to send messages? Was I really not going to be able to save Janie’s life because of a technicality?

  “Penitence!” I called. “Help me, please!”

  But she was stuck in place. “I—I can’t. I can’t move. I can’t leave my work.”

  “That’s not true,” I said. “Just get up. You can get up. Try. Please.”

  Penitence’s face was a mask of regret and fear, and then she vanished.

  I was alone with my sister, whose glazed eyes were a searing reminder of my own past—of being overcome by the smoky haze. That dazed, disoriented feeling that directly preceded my own death.

  When Janie ha
d managed to pry half the screen out of the way, she reached through and unlatched the window. It swung open, and she set her foot on the windowsill and ducked, intending to fit her body through the smallish opening.

  I couldn’t stop her. I couldn’t do anything.

  She was going to die, right in front of me. And in a little while, Mom would come into the day room and see the open window, and—

  Suddenly, there was a deep, primal yell, and someone was rushing across the room toward us.

  Eliza body-slammed my sister, hurling the pair of them across the floor. Janie’s head hit the carpeted ground, hard, and her eyes, which had been wide and glazed, blinked twice and then shut tightly.

  She whispered, “Ow.”

  Eliza got to her feet, panting.

  “Thank you,” I whispered. “Thank you.”

  Eliza brushed off her hands but didn’t look at me. “I tried to tell you,” she said. “I’m not a killer. I spent every day of my life haunted by my brother and sister’s deaths—and every day since I died, too.”

  I nodded.

  “I wasn’t crazy when I first came here. But this place … this place made me crazy. I started to believe I’d killed them on purpose. I was seventeen years old, Delia—a child. It was an accident—a terrible accident.” Her eyes met mine. “Do you believe me?”

  “Yes,” I said. Shame welled up inside me as I remembered my cold self-importance from our earlier confrontation. Who was I to judge? I, who had nearly murdered my best friend?

  With a start, I realized that Eliza had saved the lives of two people I loved.

  I looked down at Janie, who was lying on her back, staring at the ceiling, hugging herself tightly.

  “Mom?” Janie called quietly. Tears sprang from the corners of her eyes. “Mommy?”

  I sat down at her side, wishing I could comfort her. But I’d have to settle for keeping watch.

  “I saw the smoke, too,” Eliza said softly. “When I died. I was in the infirmary, because I’d been ill. But I was getting better. I felt good, healthy, strong. Only the stronger I felt, the more I sensed that something was … watching me. Hovering nearby. And then one day, when the nurse left, the smoke came out of the walls and surrounded me. Everything went sort of gray, and when I woke up, they were carrying my body off to the morgue.”