The Dead House

by Dawn Kurtagich

  I’m mortified by what I might have said—Oh, great. I’m having a panic attack right now.

  Okay, slow and steady. Breathe.

  What. Happened?

  I walked into the confessional. Slid the door shut. Sighed, rested my head against the back of the booth.

  “I don’t think there’s a God, but here’s hoping.” I remember I said that. “I miss Carly. I wish she were here. I wonder what she talked about with Naida today. I hate all that time they get together, especially when I’m so… Oh, God, I’m so lonely. Thank God I have you, Dee.”

  I kept going on and on, and then I dropped my head onto the bar separating the two sides and just let myself fill up with this horrible self-pity that made me want to tear out my eyes.

  “Who’s Carly?”

  I gasped this breathless scream and fell out of the booth—like, literally toppled out of it and onto the floor—bashing my shoulder on the wood. The priest’s side slid open, and this figure stepped out towards me. I scrambled back on my hands, gasping like a fish out of water. Like a beached octopus or something.

  He followed after me. “Hey, whoa, whoa—” And then he crouched, and the vomit-orange light fell onto his face and onto the bowler hat on his head. “You’re kind of skittish, aren’t you?”

  “Who”—gasp—“the”—gasp—“hell—”

  “Are you?” he finished.

  “I’m—I’m—”

  “Surprised, probably. I didn’t expect anyone else to be up here.” He helped me to my feet. “Not the most graceful fall on an arse I’ve ever seen, but I’ll give you points for breathlessness. Too many girls are all—” He broke off, gesturing vaguely. “Screamy.”

  It took a minute for the deep-boned surprise of having another living-human-person-being-thing right there to wear off.

  I brushed my hands on my jeans and noticed I’d cut my hand. Carly’s hand.

  Damn.

  “Do you always sit in confession booths and listen to private conversations?” I snapped.

  “Sometimes. Do you?”

  “And who the hell wears a bowler hat?”

  “I do, and I have excellent taste. I’d be gay if I wasn’t so straight.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Well, that was less than subtle. What, are you going to divulge your favorite sex position next?”

  “Wheelbarrow,” he challenged.

  “Bank number?” I called.

  “I’d tell you, but then you’d fall for me.”

  “Really.”

  “Yeah, I’m dirt poor. Very sexy. Besides, I hear that freaky people shouldn’t fall for each other. Weird things happen if you break the freaky-normal, normal-normal rule.”

  “Okay, I have no idea what’s going on here, but this is private property. My property, so get out.”

  “The sign outside says OUT OF BOUNDS. I’m pretty sure the school owns it.” He folded his arms and cocked his head, and the stupid bowler hat stayed on his stupid head. “I don’t think you really want me to leave.”

  I glowered at him.

  “‘Oh, God. I’m so lonely’?”

  “Get out of here! This is my space, you—goddamn—” I was infuriated, lost for the word. “Watson!”

  After glancing down at my book, he had the cheek to say, “You should invest in a quality hardcover of Poe’s collected works. Buying cheap may be simpler and easier in the short term, but your future self is only laughing at you—or slapping you. Mentally, of course.”

  My future self. Ha. What a concept.

  Anyway, I just stared. He talked like some kind of awkward, socially inept idiot—or genius. I honestly have no idea which.

  “Or you can borrow mine,” he added.

  I sniggered at that. “You read Poe?”

  “I read other, less trendy things too.”

  “Let me guess,” I drawled, leaning back to consider him. “Arthur Conan Doyle?”

  “Funny.” He smiled. “’Cause of the hat.”

  It was growing early, and I could feel the change in the air as dawn began to shift and sigh, preparing for her inevitable rise.

  “I have to go,” I told him, and he frowned.

  “Why?”

  “One of the mysteries of the universe,” I muttered, and left.

  He said he was new. Just started. He must be the one Carly mentioned. It’s got to be embarrassing to be the new kid at school on top of arriving late. Do you think I could be normal around him, Dee? Could I pretend to be a regular girl who sleeps, who dreams, who has a life ahead of her instead of an existence in which she’s dragged around like an appendage by the one she loves most?

  As soon as he talks to Carly, he’ll know something is up. If he hasn’t spoken to her already. Though, I think she mentioned that they share no classes. Maybe Naida will steal him away too. Best to let it go. Friendship is out of the question for someone like me. I know that for a fact.

  Still… it would be nice to make believe for a while. And he certainly made me forget all about being lonely.

  He said he just got his room in Pinewood Hall, one of the boys’ dorm wings, and I told him I’m in Magpie House with the girls. I gave him my email and IM.

  Isn’t it funny, Dee? The world isn’t empty after all.

  Getting dizzy—no time. Forgot to write a new note in the Message Boo

  [The entry ends here.]

  8

  Ari Hait and Kaitlyn Johnson communicated via Instant Message (IM) and email throughout the months that followed. Telephone records were pulled for the trial, as well as saved conversations on Kaitlyn’s IM mobile service. Where relevant, those that have been made available are included in this report.

  Diary of Kaitlyn Johnson

  Time Index and Location Not Noted

  Thursday, 9 September 2004

  Proof! Proof that he was real and not some desperate wish from my warped little mind. As soon as the sun set and Carly discarded me, vanishing to wherever she vanishes when the night closes in, I found this email waiting:

  From: AriHait558

  To: RealxChick

  Date: 9 Sept 2004

  Subject: Nice Meeting You

  Well, Miss Confessional. You have some pretty interesting secrets. And you’re quite stunning when you’re flushed. Will you have more confessions for me tonight?

  Intrigued,

  Ari

  I’m going to print out every email we exchange and give it to you, Dee. I want to be able to figure him out, if I need to. My reply:

  From: RealxChick

  To: AriHait558

  Date: 9 Sept 2004

  Subject: Re: Nice Meeting You

  Well, Mr. Watson, you’re a sneaky little spy and an invader. The chapel is my base—trespassers will be shot on sight.

  Armed,

  Me

  From: AriHait558

  To: RealxChick

  Date: 9 Sept 2004

  Subject: Threats

  Nice bait—see you then.

  Ready for battle,

  Ari

  PS—You never gave me your name. MI5 Agent or Witness Protection?

  9 September 2004

  Instant Message Exchange, 8:30 PM

  Ari558: You never answered my email. I am mortally wounded. As my new best friend, you’re off to a pretty bad start.

  CONFESSIONALGRL: You are a sad, lonely little individual.

  Ari558: I can go with the sad and lonely, but LITTLE?

  Ari558: Okay, well, confession: you’re weird.

  CONFESSIONALGRL: I’m weird?

  Ari558: Exceedingly.

  CONFESSIONALGRL: WEIRD???

  Ari558: I’m going to fix that.

  CONFESSIONALGRL: Like the doctor in Star Trek? Like with a dermal regenerator, only for my personality?

  Ari558: Wow.

  Ari558: A Star Trek reference. I guess, kind of like that, but cooler.

  CONFESSIONALGRL: If you’re not a Trekkie, we cannot be friends.

  Ari558: Fine, but if you’re a ST: Vo
yager girl, I quit you here and now.

  CONFESSIONALGRL: Sad, lonely LITTLE individual!

  9

  144 days until the incident

  Diary of Kaitlyn Johnson

  Saturday, 11 September 2004, 9:00 pm

  Dorm

  It’s the pills. Nothing more. It’s in my mind—not real, not real, NOT REAL.

  I left Carly a Post-it on the mirror—“stop taking the pills!” If Lansing wants her to remember what happened to our parents, then I’ll do it for her.

  It’s useless. No matter how hard I try, no matter how many synapses I burst looking for the memory, it isn’t there. In the blink of an eye, Mum and Dad went from living to dead.

  I don’t know how they died.

  Later

  Some people say that night blooms. I’ve always said that it cuts. Like a guillotine. I guess the sun heals the wound?

  Before my parents died left went away, night was full. I made it that way. I went out. I partied. I drank. I met men. I stole borrowed. But since we went to Claydon Hell and now Elmbridge, I haven’t been who I was before. That destruction is still there, I think—that urge to break myself open so I can peek inside. I still climb onto the roof and wonder why I don’t just jump fly away—even if my body cracks on the pavement below. I still break into forbidden areas.

  But I don’t go out to nightclubs anymore, where they sell drinks and drugs—the kind you never heard of, let alone imagined. I don’t dress in masquerade, a mask behind a mask, and dance with men who touch me and then vanish without even a kiss. I don’t break into bookshops, and I don’t steal. I don’t leave messages in weird places for people to find. Except in the back of people’s diaries sometimes…

  Ari reminds me of what I lost when I lost the Viking… John. You know, he used to bring me seeds and call me his bird—his pesky falcon hawk…

  Distract yourself. Distract me, Dee.

  I miss him. John. I don’t want to talk about him. He’s the proof that I can’t have friends. He’s the proof that getting close is dangerous—it just ends up hurting.

  It hurts.

  But I do…

  Be honest. Be honest.

  I miss the Viking. I could really use one of his wisecracks. It’s been a while since I’ve seen him—not since Carly and I were dragged to Claydon. I’ve looked for him—an email address, anything. I sent a letter to his house, but I guess they moved.

  He was responsible for all these changes. He’s the reason I got out of the habit of practicing my suicide note—which I left for strangers to find. At bus stops, late-night cafés, pubs, clubs. Everywhere. Anywhere. Nowhere.

  I remember it line for line: “Tell the living that I was never one of you. When you find this note, my throat will be a bloody red smile.”

  You can say it. I have a flair for melodrama. But it really was a cry for help. It still is. I’m just too scared to reach out even that much anymore. Thank you, Lansing.

  I met the Viking at one of these masquerade clubs—Masqued, I think it was. It was all blackness with strobes, green, white, and blue. The music made the glass shiver and the floor beneath our feet hammer as if attempting to get us to quit stomping on it.

  He towered over everyone and looked as if he was with everyone, but he was alone, like me. His mask concealed a face I instinctively knew would be a mask in itself. He was veneers upon veneers upon hidden secrets. I think I recognized myself there, and I wanted him to be my secret. Something only mine. Something real.

  Suddenly he was beside me, his Viking helmet glinting under the strobes.

  We started to dance, and he didn’t touch me. Not once. We lost ourselves in the music, in the obscurity it gave us, where no words could survive, making them even more unnecessary. I took off my mask. He took off his. And we both saw, for one fleeting moment, the true self beneath before we shuttered down the iron layers we had grown over our skin.

  We left without a word. He with a girl from the bar, me alone.

  The following night, he was there again, same mask, just like mine. We danced, and I didn’t feel or see the other masked figures gyrating around me, only him. It wasn’t sexual. It wasn’t anything except a small connection to another human, and even that I was skeptical of.

  He left his mask down as he said, “Will we exchange names?” These words did survive.

  “True or fake?” I asked.

  “True.”

  “Dark Half.”

  “Barbarian.”

  I shook my head. No. “Viking.”

  And it was not an untruth. Dark Half and the Viking. That’s all we were to each other. He went home with a new girl, and I went home alone.

  Every night we’d dance and exchange a sentence or two. Eventually our relationship evolved out of Masqued and into the streets of Chester. We’d walk around aimlessly, among the freaks and the rejected, who all come out at night.

  “Don’t you have somewhere to be?” I’d ask.

  “Yes,” he always replied. “Here.”

  “Which girl tonight?”

  He’d shrug. “No idea.”

  “You like your damsels.”

  “No Viking is ever without one. Pillage and plunder. How about you? A Dark Half… implies another half. A Light one.”

  I hesitated. “True.”

  “Want to eat?”

  He always knew when I didn’t want to talk about something. He never asked too many questions. At least, he never asked important ones. He’d state a truth and move on to the trivial, and I liked him for it.

  We ate greasy chips from a chippy off Guildford Road.

  “Got to go,” I said, flipping down my mask once we were done.

  He nodded and put on his helmet-with-mask, and was once again Barbarian the Viking. He turned and left. No long, drawn-out good-byes. No hugs or air kisses. I think I loved him because of that.

  It became a regular thing.

  I kept him out of the Message Book. For a full half year, he was just mine. I accidentally mentioned him once, and after that—after the tiny slip—he wasn’t my secret anymore. It was after the slip that I asked Carly if I could tell him about us. She agreed, and I did, and for a time, everything seemed sort of… perfect.

  I should have memorized his number, maybe, instead of just saving it in my phone. They took it away. Took him away. I never even knew his surname.

  I hate that I miss him. My brother. My friend. I hate that I’ve been looking for signs of him on the Internet. I hate that I’m so easy to let go.

  I guess it’s easy to abandon forget someone once she’s out of sight. Still. I can’t believe the Viking would do that. Or I couldn’t, for a long, stupid time. Some days I still can’t.

  And here I sit, writing about him as though he’s just a ghost from my past that still haunts me. And I guess that is all he is now. Just some guy I used to know.

  Midnight, Courtyard

  I’m too proud to email Ari first.

  Sunday, 12 September 2004, 12:30 am

  I spy on Naida sometimes too. She’s going to be a serial killer for sure. Right now I’m outside her window, up in the giant beech tree. Juliet also has a beech outside her window, and Brenda too, and I’m pretty well hidden. In late autumn, when the leaves fall, I won’t be able to use it to spy, but I have other methods—besides, I have this weird notion that I’m one with the darkness and that I’m really nothing more than a shadow myself.

  Well, it’s true, Dee, isn’t it?

  Right now, Naida’s kneeling beside her bed, facing the window—facing me—but there’s a candle burning (probably some acacia-turnip-catnip ritual concoction), so she’s blind to my presence, I think. As far as I know, she sneaks these candles and paraphernalia into the dorms without permission. Where she hides them I have no idea. In her arsecrack for all I care.

  To the casual observer, it would appear (apart from the scarves—tapestries?—on the walls and the strangely symbolic carpets on her floor) that her room follows school regulations. I know, h
owever, that the bottles that look like perfumes are actually oils she uses for conjurations and ritual baths and that the little pouches that look like purses are actually full of herbs and weird stuff like that. What do they call them? Douche charms? Hope charms? Whatever. The cards on her dresser are kind of like tarot cards, and she has all kinds of weird spell kits that I’ve seen her riffling through under her bed (covered with long bedclothes, of course)—**cough** Witch **cough**.

  When I watch her murmur under her breath, hold a lighter under the incense (banned incense, I might add), and beat on a little drum she stashes under her bed—when I watch her draw symbols on her walls in fragrant water that no one can see and then dance around her room—I almost feel like a part of it.

  It’s so… dark.

  When she bounces on the balls of her feet, eyes closed and face so serene, I’m almost pulled in with her. I can almost hear the drum, rhythmic, hypnotic, and I can sense the Voice in my head somewhere nearby, slowing. Like a purr, he enjoys this. He’s calmed. Lulled, almost. He sleeps.

  How strange that Aka Manah should sleep so close to the one I hate most. It never fails to amaze me how opposites attract. Carly, the purest, most innocent and trusting girl alive and, well, Naida. I mean, look at her. You see that, right? Black magic? Enough said. She should be burned at the stake.

  Naida is rocking back and forth now, praying to whatever goddess she serves. I wish I could hear what she’s saying. Whatever it is, she’s put the Voice in my ear into a coma.

  Holy freak show, Dee. Just when I thought I was safe.

  Naida saw me. Looked right up into my face like she knew I was there the whole time. I literally froze solid, but not just because she was looking at me. Because, for a second, I thought my own reflection in the windowpane was smiling at me.