The Screaming Season

by Nancy Holder

  A roll of thunder made me jerk. I was shaking with cold; my teeth were chattering, and I was starting to feel more bumps and bruises. I kept scanning the landscape. No ghosts, no anyone. No Miles.

  “Hey!” I called out, and my voice echoed off the darkness. I tried again. “Miles!”

  Wind wafted against my cheek like a kiss. I touched my skin, turning in a circle. All my nerve endings were crackling. Something was watching us. Something was here. And it meant us harm. We had to leave.

  “Miles!” I yelled. “Miles, come now! Now!”

  I clamped down on the handlebars, making the engine roar. Pressing on the horn, I gave it a good blast.

  Nothing.

  “Oh, God,” I whispered. We were out here with nothing, not even flashlights. I reached in my pocket and pulled out my wet cell phone. It wouldn’t turn on.

  I looked up and down the road, hoping to see an approaching vehicle. We hadn’t left the roadhouse that long ago.

  Crickets chirped. Raindrops plopped off the trees in a steady rhythm, plink, plink, plink, as if they were counting time.

  No Miles.

  “Miles!” I shouted. “Can you hear me?” I got on the Vespa and gave the handlebar a roll, moving forward. I’d never ridden a moped before, but it was fairly easy to figure out. After a couple of jerking forward motions, I wheeled around in a wide circle and rode to the edge of the berm. I looked down.

  It was pitch black. The wind rustled through the trees, but I heard nothing that sounded like a guy looking for a messenger bag. My throat tightened. If someone had run us off the road, had they gone after Miles? Had they knocked him out, or were they using him as bait to get to me?

  Run, I thought, and it wasn’t Celia talking—it was me. But never in a million years would I leave Miles out here by himself.

  “Miles, damn it,” I shouted. “Answer me!”

  I hovered on the top of the incline and thought about walking the Vespa down. I was afraid to turn it off for fear it wouldn’t turn back on—or if I had to start it up alone, I wouldn’t know how. On the other hand, I had no idea how much gas it would take to get back to Marlwood.

  First thing’s first.

  “Miles!” I shrieked his name.

  “Oh, God, Lindsay, God,” he managed, bursting through the trees. His face was scratched, and there were pine needles in his hair. He scrambled toward me, losing his balance, sliding, grabbing onto a tree branch and pulling himself up.

  I jumped off the bike and held out a hand. He grabbed it. Then he threw himself into my arms, trembling.

  “We have to get out of here now,” he said.

  “But the bag . . . ”

  “Screw the bag.” He hopped onto the seat and gazed expectantly at me. I climbed on and threw my arms around him. He wasn’t wearing his helmet.

  “Miles?” I called to him.

  He didn’t answer. I held on, peering around him, almost breaking down and cheering when a car passed us, then another. We didn’t stop and ask for help. We just flew back to school as fast as we could.

  In the parking lot, Miles killed the engine. We would have to drive farther to get to the infirmary. But we were within walking distance of my dorm.

  “I’ll take you to Grose,” he said. “You can change your clothes. Maybe get Julie to look at your head. If I take you back to the infirmary like this, Trina will have a fit.” He was distracted, raking his hair, glancing over his shoulder.

  “What did you see?” I demanded. “You have to tell me.” I wanted to hear that he’d seen something—but I was afraid to know what it was. And I was afraid he’d have a breakdown, the way Shayna did. Tonight might be the only time we had to talk about it. I was desperate for help. We’d been so close to finding answers, and then he’d lost the bag.

  He walked beside me, wheeling the scooter along rather than leaving it behind in the parking lot. He was panting and shivering. There was a cut over his right eye that I hadn’t noticed before. And he was muddy.

  “I don’t know what I saw. It was what I felt.” He looked at the ground for a long time. “It was . . . horrible.” He grunted. “It’s the shits, you know? You get clean so you can face life head-on, like a man, and life throws this kind of crap at you.”

  “What did you feel?” I pushed. He was falling apart. I had to know before he completely lost it.

  Beneath the moon, he turned and looked at me, and his face floated in the darkness. His eyes were dark sockets. He looked like a ghost, and he scared me.

  “I felt . . . I felt that if I didn’t leave there then, I would never leave,” he whispered. “I felt like I was . . . dead.” He shook. “God.”

  I put my arms around him. His heart was pounding so fast I was afraid he would pass out. He hesitated, and then he put his arms around me. We clung to each other so hard I was afraid one of us would crack apart. I was holding Miles Winters. He cupped my head and leaned it against his chest. I heard his heart beating way too fast.

  “I kept calling you,” I said. “I didn’t see you anywhere.”

  “I fell into . . . I think it was a grave. It was full of mud and rocks, but I just knew . . . I thought I was lying on bones . . . ” He pressed his forehead against the top of my head.

  Celia’s grave? I thought. The one I dreamed about?

  Body parts?

  “But why didn’t you answer me?” My voice was shrill.

  “I didn’t hear you,” he replied. “I couldn’t hear anything. I was screaming at the top of my lungs, but I didn’t even hear myself.”

  I couldn’t imagine how terrifying that must have been for him. Even thinking about it made my stomach clench and my knees wobble.

  “That place was haunted,” he said. “Wasn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  He shook his head. “It was . . . interesting. Fun. Ghostbusting. Another Miles and Mandy adventure. Until this.”

  “Welcome to my world,” I said wanly.

  He exhaled. “I need a cigarette. And a bottle.” He smirked. “And a hookah and a bong and stuff you’ve never even heard of, Snow White.”

  “What happened to the messenger bag?” I asked him.

  His smirk faded. “God, I screwed that up.”

  “Yeah, you did.” I couldn’t help my deep, red fury. “Miles, we had the answers. And you just freaked out and . . . ”

  “You freaked out too,” he accused. “Okay, you pissed me off. I have anger management issues.” He shook his head. “I sure could use that joint right now.”

  I batted at him, tears spilling. “Damn it, you’re my backup. You’re all I’ve got!”

  He let me hit him. Then he grabbed my fist and said, “It’s freezing out here. You’ll get sick. Go inside.”

  “We have to go back to look for the bag,” I said.

  “Not tonight. Soon.” He made a steeple with his fingers and pointed them at me. “Promise.”

  Then he turned and headed back toward the parking lot, and I pushed into the door. I shuffled down the hall as quietly as I could, whispers like the hushed conversations of ghosts following me every step of the way.

  “Oh, my God, we have to tell Linz right away,” Julie semishrieked.

  Or maybe just the whispers of dorm mates.

  I pushed open the door to the room I shared with Julie to find everyone there, sitting in the dark on my and Julie’s bed. The white head glinted, as if it turned to look my way.

  “What?” I asked.

  Julie would have screamed if Marica hadn’t slapped her hand over her mouth.

  BOOK TWO: DEEP DARK SECRETS

  Anger is a wound gone mad.

  —Vanna Bonta

  If you don’t break your ropes while you’re alive, do you think ghosts will do it after?

  —Kabir, 1440 – 1519

  NINE

  February 24

  possessions: me

  my shame

  my fear

  my secrets

  my hope: can we stop this? or will it sto
p us? do I have what it takes to see this through? or will I fall apart and bail? will they win?

  haunted by: knowing I could die at any second. Or I could go crazy. I could stop being me altogether—the worst fate I can imagine.

  listening to: the screams in the forest and the screams in my head.

  mood: freaked, confused, chaotic. hopeful.

  possessions: them

  there are so many “thems” now, all having different things:

  things they don’t want

  things they can’t have

  things that they are

  haunted by: the distressed dead, the enraged, the infuriated.

  listening to: the bumps in the night.

  mood: bedeviled.

  “GOD!” JULIE WHISPERED as Marica uncovered her mouth. “Linz, you scared me half to death.” She leaned backward and flicked on the lamp on the nightstand between our beds. My friends stared at me as if I were a ghost, and I couldn’t help but turn around and look behind myself to make sure there wasn’t a ghost behind me.

  Julie hopped up from the bed. “Linz, what happened to you?” she cried. “Did Mandy beat you up?”

  “What? I had an accident,” I said. I hadn’t thought through what to tell them. I figured my outing with Miles had better stay a secret. But I didn’t know what else to say.

  “An accident? What kind of accident? Where did you go? Did you fall out of your hospital bed?” Claire asked me. The others shushed her, and I shut the door. Our housemother hardly ever checked up on us, but if she did investigate the ruckus, I would be busted.

  “I . . . found a motor scooter,” I said. “Outside the infirmary. And I took a ride. And I skidded.”

  “Your forehead is all bumpy,” Julie said, reaching out to touch it. I instinctively pulled away, but she gently took my hand and walked me closer to the nightstand. I saw the white head, its porcelain forehead gleaming. Sometimes David Abernathy drilled right through the forehead to do the lobotomies. Had he believed the bone would grow back? Or did his victims have little holes there forever? Is that what killed them?

  “Did you black out? Because blacking out is bad,” Ida said. “Do you feel sick to your stomach?” She moved her hand in front of my face; and as she did so, I swore the head moved. I kept that to myself too. They hadn’t seen it. They never saw things like that. And if I brought it up, they would take it as proof that I had some kind of brain injury.

  “I just need to sit down,” I said, and Julie eased me down onto my own bed, positioning me as if I had lost control over my arms and legs. I was shaking hard. I sneezed.

  “You should get out of your wet clothes,” Julie said. “I’ll get your pajamas.”

  “What were you guys talking about? And why would Mandy beat me up?” I asked as she crossed to my dresser and Claire yanked up my bedspread and wrapped it around my shoulders. Though I acknowledged her kindness with a nod, inwardly I winced. Now my beautiful antique coverlet—compliments of Marlwood—was caked with mud. How would I explain that to our housemother?

  I pulled back the covers and started to take off my sopping clothes. The layers peeled away like sheets of ice. There was a big bruise on my left forearm and a large scrape on my shoulder.

  “Well, while you were out joyriding,” Claire said, “so was Mandy. Well, not with any joy.”

  “No joy,” Elvis agreed.

  “I’m getting some bandages from the first aid kit in the kitchen,” Julie announced, leaving the room.

  I raised my brows and looked at Claire, waiting to hear the rest. The others girls were nodding at me, as if I had missed the dish of the century.

  “Troy broke up with her,” Claire said. “And she went cuckoo.”

  “He what?” I asked. My heart actually leapt. I felt it. He’d done it. I’d stopped believing that he actually would.

  “Yeah. He said she was too messed up,” Claire reported. She was grinning like a fox on a hunt, or a vampire contemplating a nice big neck vein filled with the blood of fantastic gossip. This was huge, and even better, it had happened to Mandy Winters. Extra bonus: they knew Troy and I were crushing and that only his lack of spine—his officially breaking up with Mandy—had kept us from being a couple.

  Until now.

  “Mandy left campus,” Ida added. “We figure she went to cry on Miles’s shoulder. Which is six kinds of skanky, but there it is.”

  “No,” I began, almost telling them that Miles had been with me, but I stopped. I replayed what had happened: Miles had told me his car was in the shop. But what if Mandy had it? He had taken me to the roadhouse to paw through her things, but he’d been incredibly careless with them. What if there was nothing but a pile of fake “clues” that he and Mandy had created together?

  And why drive over there in the first place? What if she had waited for us on the rainy, dark road and Miles had crashed on purpose? Would he deliberately risk getting hurt like that? If he wanted to help his sister scare you to death, then yes, given how crazy he is, I told myself. Scare you, or . . .

  . . . kill you.

  I shuddered even harder.

  “How do you know all this?” I asked, and my voice cracked.

  Claire raised her hand. “I was in the bathroom. I saw the light go on in her room. Lara was in there and Mandy was going just crazy, throwing things.”

  “No way,” Julie said. “What about their housemother?”

  Claire snorted. Our housemothers were legendary for doing as little as possible, especially if it came to getting in the way of rich girl self-expression.

  “So I crawled out the bathroom window and snuck over there. I had made it to the hedge when they came outside. I hid and listened. And I heard everything.”

  “Go, Claire,” Elvis said appreciatively.

  “Mandy was completely freaking out. She said she was going to go kill someone.”

  “No,” I whispered. By then I had stripped out of my wet clothes and pulled on my fleece bathrobe.

  “Your name was not mentioned,” Claire assured me. “I figured she was going to kill Troy.”

  “But we like Troy,” Marica argued. “Now he can be Lindsay’s novio.”

  “Well, we’d rather have her kill him instead of Lindsay,” Claire said, and Marica nodded. “Anyway, then she split. I wasn’t about to follow her in my pajamas and flip-flops.”

  Elvis huffed. “I don’t know why not. I mean, we’re all dying to know what she did next.”

  “No, we’re not,” Julie said firmly, returning with a roll of gauze, a box of bandages, some tape, and a pair of scissors. “I don’t care at all what happens to her.”

  Julie did care. She had moved into Mandy’s charmed circle for a time, then been tossed back out. Despite her loyalty to me, she had enjoyed her moment in the sun. But in the bipolar ways of mean queen bees, Mandy had abruptly yanked away the privileges she had bestowed on Julie. She ditched her to go skiing with Miles during winter break, and then she drove back to Marlwood without her, even though Julie—and her parents—had been counting on the ride.

  As for me, I was grateful down to my soul that Mandy had dissed Julie. Because Julie had been full-on possessed, and now that she was free of Mandy, she was free of the possession. Hurt and embarrassed because of it, but Julie nonetheless.

  “I wonder why Lara didn’t go with her,” Ida said. She stood up to help as Julie began to wrap gauze around my head. I wasn’t sure what they were hoping to accomplish.

  “Maybe she doesn’t want to go to juvenile hall?” Julie asked, sniffing.

  “Oh, please, as if any of them would ever get busted for anything they did,” Claire said. “Look at Kiyoko.” Everyone fell silent. I had looked at Kiyoko. I was the only person in the room who had seen her dead body. Her eyes had been shiny and silvery, like fish scales, a sure sign that she had drowned. But by the time she washed up onshore, she was frozen. Her hair was so brittle it broke off when they laid her in the body bag, zipped it up, and Life Flighted her away.

&n
bsp; “Chicas, we are taking away from Lindsay’s joy,” Marica declared. She beamed at me. “Troy did it!”

  “Yes.” I finally let myself smile. Several of my layers of individuality were more thrilled about Troy’s manning up than they were terrified about what happened earlier in the evening. Handsome, wealthy, funny, warm Troy, who had tried much harder than Riley ever had to be honest in his dealings with the fairer sex. Troy, who had whispered, “I love you,” when he thought I was asleep. To me. After I had hit him with a hammer. That Troy.

  “He’s trying to talk his parents into spring break in San Diego,” I told the others. A couple of them cheered softly, Ida and Julie doing the grinning-teasing-eyelash-fluttering thing girls did when one of their own moved from unrequited crush to victorious coupledom.

  “We are so going to have to double-date,” Julie crowed. “Spider wants to take me to a party at the Stinking Rose restaurant in Beverly Hills. It’s all garlic. They have a private room called Dracula’s Grotto.”

  “Cool,” I said, beginning to shake off my fear in anticipation of good times to be had with Troy. This could end happily. I had almost stopped believing in the notion of a good time without a catch.

  “There,” she added, stepping away from her handiwork as she cut the gauze with the scissors and tucked the loose end into the headband she had created for me. Then she frowned slightly at me. “Ooh, creepy.”

  Marica grimaced. “She’s hurt worse than it looks.”

  “What’s wrong?” I asked. I got up and moved to the mirror over my dresser—roses etched into the antique glass—and peered at myself. With the heavy bandage around my head, I looked like a wounded colonial soldier. Directly in the center of my forehead, a circle of bright red blood was seeping through the layers. The lobotomy zone. Did it mean anything?

  I stared at it, bracing myself for a wave of fear and panic, but I felt . . . okay. Almost detached. I did have a bump on my forehead. It was bleeding. There was nothing supernatural about it.