The Screaming Season

by Nancy Holder

  He was huffing and puffing, getting winded. I tried to pound on his back, but at that moment he stumbled, and I had to hold onto him instead.

  He forked left, and as he stumbled on, I turned my head and saw the hulk of the building towering above the hill. The moon glowed on the hollows in the walls. I shook my head, eyes watering, trembling.

  Then we reached the back, halfway around the giant circle of the foundation. A huge part of the wall had fallen away, and he ducked inside. I could feel Celia inside me, thrashing, so frightened she was incoherent. Still, I couldn’t stop her as she flailed at Miles, totally losing it. Miles slammed against the wall, groaning, and slid to the floor.

  “Miles,” I said, crouching beside him. He didn’t respond. I couldn’t see him. My little purse still dangled from my shoulder. With shaking hands, I opened it and grabbed the lighter. I flicked it on. His head dipped forward onto his chest. I grabbed his head and my fingers came away wet. Blood. I gasped.

  The lighter went out.

  “Miles.” I eased his chin up and flicked the lighter on again. His eyelids were flickering.

  “I’m okay,” he said thickly. “There’s a flashlight in my coat.” He reached into one of his pockets and pulled it out. After a couple of attempts, it came on.

  “Where’s Riley?” I asked.

  “I think he went to the infirmary,” he said.

  “We can’t stay here. This place is haunted. We have to go.”

  His eyes focused on my hand. He blinked and said, “Harvard.”

  I jerked. “What?” “That’s the Harvard logo on that lighter.” He tried to get up.

  I stared at the lighter. “I think this was given to me. As a clue.”

  He shook his head. “Clue . . . ?” I opened my purse again and took out the squares. He plucked one from me and bit into it. “Nicotine gum. Cinnamon.”

  “Are you . . . what?”

  “Been there. Tried that. To quit.”

  “Dr. Morehouse went to Harvard,” I said.

  “Maybe he smokes Dunhills, too,” Miles said, his voice a little faint.

  “And he told Mandy . . . he told her that he had something to give her that would make the pain go away.”

  I started to cry. “And he would give it to her tonight. Oh, my God, he’s possessed by David Abernathy. Miles, he killed Mandy.”

  He didn’t answer. The flashlight fell from his hand and rolled onto the floor.

  “Miles?” I picked up the flashlight and peered at him. His eyes were half closed, his mouth slack. I touched his shoulder and then cupped his chin.

  “Miles, can you hear me?” Nothing. I felt the walls close in, the night push down as I realized he needed help and I was the only person who could get it for him. I hadn’t been able to help his sister. But he was still alive. Where could I go? What could I do?

  My heart pounded. I looked wildly around, every muscle tensing, my senses on high alert. If I went to the infirmary, someone would come back for him, take care of him. Dr. Morehouse—Dr. Abernathy—should have no reason to harm him. The attack of the Vespa must have been aimed at me.

  But what if Dr. Abernathy did want to hurt him? What if by leaving him here, I left him to die?

  Celia was lying in the snow, more dead than alive, unaware of the cold or of any pain. She was completely numb. She was breathing shallowly, her chest fluttering, and the night sky above her gleamed like a burnished dome of ebony. She could hear the screaming through the snowy earth she lay on.

  She drifted, and drowsed. She dreamed she was on a white horse, riding into a place of shadow. Then a shaft of white light flared in front of her, expanding; people in long white robes held out their arms, smiling in welcome. She would be warm there. She would be loved.

  She began to ride toward it.

  “Oh, God,” someone said. It was David Abernathy.

  She tried to shrink away. She was hideous; he had made her hideous. But perhaps he had come to save her, and to beg her forgiveness.

  He crouched over her, with his handsome, strong features and his fine, short beard; he rubbed his fists into his eyes and his shoulders heaved. He was crying.

  He said nothing to her. Maybe he didn’t realize that she was awake. But he stood, and walked away. She tried to call out to him: I’m alive, I’m alive!

  He came back with something long in his right fist. For a confusing moment she thought it was a sword. Then her vision sharpened.

  It was a shovel.

  He slammed it into the dirt and lifted it, then tossed it to the side. He built up a rhythm. Dig, lift, move. Dig, lift, move. She tried to grunt, to signal that she was alive. She watched him. His tears had dried up. His face was set with firm resolve.

  She drifted.

  Then suddenly she was hoisted up by one arm and one leg. David was wearing gloves. She felt featherlight; her head lolled. Then she turned toward the sky one time, upward . . .

  . . . and then he tossed her like a bundle of oily, burned rags into the hole he had dug.

  “No, for the love of God,” she pleaded. “I’m alive!” But her words were unspoken and he didn’t hear her.

  As she lay shrieking in silence, he filled the shovel with dirt and snow and spilled it over her face.

  I woke, weeping. That was how Celia had wound up in a shallow grave on the highway, why she haunted the road, why I had dreamed of lying in the frozen earth. She’d still been alive when he buried her. Did he know it? Had that haunted him? I was standing over Miles, gazing down on his lolling head. The flashlight was in my hand. I clicked it on and squatted down, scrutinizing his face. His eyes were closed. I didn’t know how long I had lost awareness. I reached out and lifted his right lid. Flashed the light directly into it. I couldn’t tell if there was a response.

  Then he jerked, hard, as if he had suffered some kind of spasm. With a gasp, he flared open his eyes.

  They were completely black.

  He was possessed.

  “He’s got you now,” he crowed in Belle’s voice. “He’s got you now.”

  TWENTY-SIX

  A HAND GRABBED the back of my head and yanked it, hard. My scalp burned. A bright light shone in my eyes and I shut them trying to block it out.

  Celia started shrieking. Her screams blocked out everything. I went somewhere black, and cold. I was lying in her grave, among the worms and bones, surrounded by screams.

  “Look into the light. Now,” Dr. Morehouse commanded me. Only, it wasn’t his voice. It was the voice of my dreams and nightmares, soft, lilting, comforting. Dr. David Abernathy’s voice.

  Celia screamed.

  He shook my head so hard my jaw ached. Again.

  “No!” Celia screamed. “No, don’t!”

  Again.

  I opened my eyes against the blazing yellow light. I flinched, but my head was held fast.

  “Good. Now we start. I will count down from ten to one. And when I say your special secret word, the word you told me is your favorite, you will do everything I ask of you. Yes?”

  “No!” Celia’s scream rattled my eye sockets. My eyelids fluttered.

  “Keep looking. Or I’ll kill that boy.”

  I made myself look. My eyes burned.

  “Ten,” he said.

  Celia thrashed. She struggled and screamed.

  “Nine.”

  “Please, Lindsay, please, oh, God . . . ”

  “Eight.”

  I couldn’t hear the numbers over her screaming. Maybe that didn’t matter; I could feel myself sinking, dissolving, surrendering.

  “Seven.”

  Deeper and deeper.

  “Six.”

  Deeper still.

  “Five.” Light, blazing .

  “Four.”

  Warmth.

  “Three.”

  Heat.

  “Two.”

  Safety.

  “One.”

  Stillness. Utter silence.

  “Memmy.”

  Love. I was loved, and I
had always been loved.

  “Memmy,” he said, one more time. “Good. Now stand up, darlin’.”

  It was good to stand up. I liked doing as he asked. Slowly I rose, feeling languid and heavy, knowing it was all right.

  “And come with me.”

  Come with me

  Come with me

  Come with me

  Come with me

  Come with—

  Barefoot, I walked over dust and dirt. Something crept along my mind, like a ghost on all fours, a white blur. I stiffened.

  “Memmy,” he said again, and I relaxed.

  He was my love; how could I not go with him? How could I deny him anything? Whither thou goest, there will I go. My second-favorite Bible passage, the one I had underscored in my copy of the Good Book, the only possession given me by Edwin Marlwood, my wretched, evil headmaster. I would take it with me when we left this place.

  When I belonged to my David, and I was his.

  My favorite Bible passage: I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine.

  What did it matter, if we had each other?

  David began to sing my favorite song, our love song.

  My love is like a red, red rose

  That’s newly sprung in June;

  My love is like the melody

  That’s sweetly play’d in tune.

  So fair art though, my bonnie lass,

  So deep in love am I;

  And I will love thee still my dear,

  Till a’ the seas gang dry.

  Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear,

  And the rocks melt wi’ the sun;

  And I will love thee still, my dear,

  While the sands o’ life shall run.

  And fare thee weel, my only love,

  And fare thee weel awhile!

  And I will come again, my love,

  Tho’ it were ten thousand mile.

  “My red rose,” David whispered, kissing the center of my forehead. “Now come with me, sweet girl. I have exactly what you need to take the pain away.”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  WE WALKED HAND in hand into the operating theater. I saw the bed where I was to lie and the circles of gas lamps hanging above it, like a chandelier composed of suns. High above us, the three circular balconies were filled with men—young medical students, who had traveled far to witness the miracle of modern science. It would be quick, and then I would feel no pain, ever again. No anger, no sadness, no rebellion, nor moods. I would be sweet, biddable, a good girl.

  A good girl.

  The learned young men gazed down on us; I floated beside David, trusting him, loving him, sensing that this favor had been kept from me for a long time. That my struggle had been long and painful, but at last I was to have the sweet release that he had promised me.

  He walked me to the bed. Then two nurses came forward, waiting to prepare me for the surgery.

  They were beautiful. One had dark hair and flashing eyes. The other was a redhead, curls piled on her head. I knew them both.

  “Marica,” I said, pulling back slightly. “Rose.”

  They smiled at me.

  “No, I’m Pearl,” replied the one I had mistaken for Marica.

  She gestured to Rose. “And of course you know Belle.”

  “It’ll all be over soon,” Rose-Belle said silkily.

  David gestured to the bed. “Just lie down, my beautiful good girl.”

  My vision was blurry. I looked at the bed, but it was hard to see. He wrapped his hand around my wrist to steady me, and then he led me to the little wooden block of three stairs. My foot came down on the first stair.

  Something inside me . . . shifted.

  “Please, no,” I said. “I . . . this is not right.”

  “No, it’s fine.” He sounded impatient. He wiggled my hand. “Memmy.”

  I took the next step.

  The third.

  Pearl picked up a mallet from a metal tray beside my bed. Belle lifted a sharp, needle-like metal filament attached to a wooden handle. I squinted at it, willing it into focus through my blurry vision.

  It was an ice pick. It caught the light of the gas lamps and threw prisms against the ceiling, each one like a bloom from a—

  Flashlight.

  I woke up. Flat, blue light from battery-operated camping lanterns revealed my surroundings. I was standing beside the hospital gurney Troy had snuck in on that Valentine’s Day, beneath the shattered ceiling of the operating theater. Torrents of icy rain pelted me as I gasped.

  I spun around. Marica and Rose faced me. Their eyes were completely black. Possessed.

  Marica held a hammer and Rose an ice pick. I understood now that Mandy really had seen a ghost in Marica’s eyes, when she had stared into them during her “game.” If only Riley hadn’t shown up, distracting us both. I had let down my guard, and now Mandy was dead. And I was going to die, too.

  “No,” I ground out. “You guys, wake up.” I backed away from them, searching the triple tier of ruined balconies, where blurs shifted and moved. The iron railings were rusted and twisted, like water hoses flung into the ocean. Rain poured on the front seats, splattering as it fell, gushing back down to the floor of the theater.

  A large hand came down on my shoulder. It clenched hard, and I jerked.

  “You won’t be able to feel it,” said David Abernathy from behind me. Celia’s enemy had hidden inside Dr. Morehouse, just as she had hidden inside me.

  The shrill drone of a motor buffeted my ear. He turned me around, slowly, and showed me the cordless drill—silvery blue, with a spinning drill bit that would gouge a hole in me so enormous and so deep, my soul would come screaming out.

  He looked from it to me and back again, and smiled. It was his face, and then it wasn’t. It shifted, changed.

  Then a skull floated over it, jaw open and grinning, eye sockets black.

  “I’m here to finish what I started,” he informed me, shouting over the noise.

  “No,” I ground out.

  He blinked. “No? You can’t say no!”

  I understood now. Dr. Morehouse had hypnotized me into obeying his instructions. Whether he had done it as David Abernathy or as himself, he had assumed I wouldn’t fight him. Had Mandy fought?

  “No,” I said again.

  On my left, Rose and Marica took a step toward me. On my right, Dr. Morehouse-Abernathy approached as well.

  “Dr. Morehouse, you’ve been taken over,” I told him. “You’re not yourself.”

  “I am David Abernathy,” he said. “And it is I, dear girl, who mesmerized you. While I slept inside him. And I soothed the raging bitch who lives inside you. The murderess, Celia Reaves. I have performed the mesmerizing. I have spoken the word that silences her.”

  I bolted, whirling and running straight ahead, hoping that I would be quick enough to dodge the three of them. David Abernathy ran at me, the drill spinning in his hand. I fled into the darkness beyond the reach of the lanterns, out of the rain. My right foot came down hard on something on the floor. My ankle twisted. I grunted.

  “Help me!” I screamed. “I need help!”

  “Lindsay!” Miles shouted.

  I looked in the direction of his voice. He braced himself inside the doorjamb, staring at the ghostly white figure now superimposing itself over Dr. Morehouse’s body. Wisps of gray hair clung to Abernathy’s skull, and ragged, moldly tatters of an old-fashioned suit clung to a bony chest and hung on hip bones.

  “Holy shit,” Miles said.

  Marica and Rose headed toward me. Skulls rose over their faces too—the dead masks of Pearl Magnusen and Belle herself, here for the kill. Winding sheets floated around their skeletal bodies. Rose-Belle grabbed Marica’s arm and pointed to the ceiling.

  “Water puts us out,” she said in her southern drawl.

  They broke apart, each racing just outside the semicircle of rain, heading for me. I backed away, trying to remember where the gaping spot in the wall had been. I could see nothing behind me, onl
y shadows. To either side, the dead flew at me, just a few feet away.

  Miles propelled himself into the operating theater and ran toward Abernathy. He held out a cross.

  “I abjure thee, demon!” Miles bellowed, arms shaking. He was half-covered in blood, and he staggered to the left.

  Abernathy threw back his head and laughed.

  Marica-Pearl grabbed my arm, and Rose-Belle showed me the ice pick. Pearl twisted my arm and pushed me to the floor, falling on top of me, grabbing my wrists and holding me down. She had dropped the hammer. I turned my head, staring at it. I struggled, but the ghost who held me was strong.

  Belle approached, holding the ice pick in front of herself like a sacred object. Laughter bounced around the room.

  She knelt beside me.

  I couldn’t stop looking at her. Hammer, I thought, get it. But I couldn’t tear my gaze from the pick.

  “Oh, God, Rose, listen. You’re possessed,” I said. “You don’t want to do this.”

  “You deserve it, sweet bee,” Belle said. “And we’re not going to deny you any longer.”

  She turned the pick point down and pressed it against my forehead. My heartbeat roared in my ears. I heard myself screaming. I fought, kicking my legs; for a confused instant, I thought I was back in the infirmary, in the grip of another nightmare. But this was real. This was happening.

  “Lindsay!” Miles shouted.

  “Miles!” I shrieked.

  Belle raised up on her knees and placed her left hand over her right. She looked over at Pearl. I remembered Pearl. Pearl had possessed Julie, and she alone had felt remorse and horror over what they were planning to do to me. With her help, I had escaped to the lake.

  “Pearl,” I tried, “stop. I’m begging you.”

  My tears were sliding across my temples. I let out a violent wail as the ice pick pierced the skin on my bruised and battered forehead.

  “Not this time, Celia,” Pearl said, sneering at me.

  “I’m not Celia, I’m not. I think she’s gone,” I babbled. “Oh, please—”

  “Oh, she’s here,” Belle said.

  The ice pick went in a little deeper. It was like the slice of a knife, stinging all my nerve endings, making me scream. It was going to happen to me; it was happening; and no one was going to stop it.