The Dead House
Page 7
“You can’t just put her away.”
Naida hesitates. “Would you… if you could?”
For the first time, Carly’s face grows hard, alert, and resolute. “No. Never. I would destroy myself first, okay?” Her voice turns desperate. “Do you believe me? I would never intentionally—” She breaks off with a gasp, hands flying to her throat.
“What? What—Carly, what?”
Carly’s face crumples. “Don’t you hear it? Don’t you hear the noise?” She stands, and her face disappears out of the shot, but we can see her hands shaking. “I hear you! I hear you! What? What?”
“Carly, what the hell—”
Carly’s legs buckle, and she collapses onto the sofa, eyes rolling and lips trembling. She looks panicked, though unaware. Naida pushes back her hair and feels her forehead.
“Kaitie,” Carly murmurs in a high, small voice, before she falls silent.
Naida sits watching, face drawn and eyes shadowed. “What the hell’s going on with you?”
After a few moments, Carly’s eyes snap open. She glances at Naida before sitting up and leaning away. Her posture is noticeably different, her expression visibly hardening.
“What do you want?”
Naida shakes her head, seemingly unable to tear her eyes away. “Nothing, Kaitlyn.”
With a withering look, Kaitlyn gets to her feet and walks out of the shot. As though stung, Naida reaches out a hand.
“Kaitlyn!” she calls. “Is… is everything okay… with you?”
Offscreen, Kaitlyn’s reply is curt. “Why should you care?”
“I do. I… is Carly okay?”
There’s a pause. It stretches out. Has Kaitlyn left?
“How would I know?” comes the somewhat subdued reply at last.
Naida nods. “Okay… um… see you around.”
Footsteps, a door closing, and then Naida bends forward, covering her face with her hands. It is unclear whether she is crying.
[END OF CLIP]
Diary of Kaitlyn Johnson
Sunday, 26 September 2004, 8:00 pm
Attic
So Mike’s door was apparently taken right off its hinges while he slept, and no one can find the door. It’s vanished into thin air. That’s not all. The mirror in the Juniper House boys’ bathroom was completely smashed—and no one heard a thing. And then there’s Mike’s face… cut to little pieces. Creeeeeeeeepy. The police are being all hush-hush about it too, and Mike hasn’t been back to school since. I think there’s something more that they’re not telling us.
Principal Roth called the police. And, naturally, the police wanted to talk to me—I guess because of my parents or maybe just because of Claydon and Carly’s meds. Technically, we’re the only people person who are is a social-deviancy risk. This was after dinner, thank God. If they had treated Carly the way they treated me and I found out about it later, I’d have done something stupid.
As it was, I simply listened to them ask the same questions over and over.
“Do you know what happened to the door to Mike’s room?”
No.
“Did you remove the door to Mike’s room?”
No.
“Do you and Mike associate in school?”
No.
“Did you and Mike have a falling-out?”
No. (Get on with it already.)
“Are you currently taking your medication?”
(Screw you.) Yes. Is that all?
“We’ll be in touch again.”
(Goodie for me.) Uh-huh.
Automatically it’s me, right? Oh, yes, Officer, I unscrewed Mike’s forty-five-pound door and carried it out of the dorm on my back and then buried it in the graveyard Forgotten Garden, then proceeded to smash the bathroom mirror—all without anyone hearing a thing. Oh, right. I must have drugged everyone with the enormous amounts of nitrazepam they give me, which I secretly hide on the roof of my mouth, so they all slept right through it. Prick.
I’ll admit that it’s odd. Me, awake all night, and I didn’t hear anything either. I can see into his room from across the courtyard, so, really, I should have seen something. Then again, I try to avoid being in the dorm too much. It feels like Carly’s, not mine.
If I’m the accused, I want to see this for myself.
Diary of Kaitlyn Johnson
Monday, 27 September 2004, 2:35 am
Attic
I went to check out the missing-door situation. I climbed in through Mike’s window, because he’s gone home now, and wandered around. It smelled like guy, and I don’t even know why. It just did. Instinctively, I knew that the musk in there was male, nothing more.
Much like Magpie House, the dorms in Juniper House are plain and boring, though interior decoration varies from most of the useless crap I see in the girls’ rooms. More posters, less jewelry (although still some), and more clothes in unlikely places (windowsill, sink, and trash can). I wondered if Ari’s room was like this. I could have found out… I thought about going to Pinewood Hall and looking into every window until I found his.
But I had to focus.
Apart from the missing door, which was kind of like a giant hole in a person’s face, the room looked normal. I inspected the hinges and found them intact, if missing the door. What would I feel like if I arrived to find my door missing, Dee?
The bathroom was another story.
At first, everything looked completely normal. The mirror looked perfect—new, even. I couldn’t believe how fast they’d replaced it, but I guess I wasn’t that surprised. Maybe it posed a health and safety risk. Maybe Elmbridge just didn’t want ugliness anywhere near it. I glanced at myself, for some reason put in mind of my reflection when I spied on Naida from out in the beech tree—how I thought I saw my reflection smile at me.
I frowned, pulling faces at myself, making sure that my reflection followed suit and in perfect time. For a minute, I was stupid enough to think that… maybe… if I looked really hard, I would see Carly in there, looking out at me. But it was just me, of course, and I felt like an idiot.
“Nothing,” I muttered, glancing around once. “How disappointing.”
I rolled my eyes and headed for the exit. As I got to the door, I turned back one last time—
The mirror was gone.
Utterly,
Completely,
Gone.
Not a mirror. Not my reflection looking back.
A yawning black hole.
I tried to scream, but I was frozen, locked in place by the sight of such… nothingness. My voice was gone, sucked into that dark expanse, which seemed to be inhaling. One giant, terrible breath. Pulling me closer. My heart skipped a beat, then thumped painfully, then raced like it was trying to escape.
I just kept thinking,
This isn’t real.
This can’t be real.
This isn’t real.
And then she was standing in the gulf, the girl I thought I’d seen at the basement window, grinning, her thin arm waving back and forth at me.
Hi there, she seemed to be saying, her long white teeth shocking in the black. So real. So fucking real.
I wanted so badly to scream, to run, to escape. But I was trapped there, my legs stuck.
Who is she?
The sink lay full of shards of glass… and they were bloody. The girl reached slowly through the black space, crisp and empty, and took a long shard of mirror. She grinned wider—how was it possible?—and slashed at her arms, flesh parting to reveal thick spaces of black nothing inside.
I stumbled back a step, my body weak and useless with shock, and I blinked—
And then she was gone. The black hole was now a chipboard, and not a shard of glass was in sight. My heart thumped once in my chest, paused, and then raced frenetically; my eyes couldn’t look away. Somewhere… very close yet also very far, something was laughing at me. Raucous roars of pulsing derision.
“This isn’t happening,” I whispered, but the chipboard seemed to be laughi
ng as well, and I had the sense that it was becoming more and more real. More and more… present—mocking me.
I covered my mouth to hold back my scream, and then I ran from that bathroom, from that wing, and threw myself out the window, the whole time feeling as if something was right behind me, inches away from grabbing me, right on my heels. The laughter faded the farther I went, but I didn’t stop running until I got up here, safely to the attic, and to you, Dee.
I can’t stop shaking. What’s happening to me?
15
127 days until the incident
Diary of Kaitlyn Johnson
Tuesday, 28 September 2004, 1:51 am
Attic
I think that Aka Manah is trying to make me believe I’m crazy.
5:00 am, Dorm
Went to the chapel tonight. Ari came a little after 2 am, and the moment I saw him, everything else faded away. I was fine. Isn’t it strange? How another human being can make the quiet seem less quiet, the unreal more real? Even when we sat there, doing nothing. Isn’t it astonishing? Isn’t it miraculous? I haven’t felt this way since the Viking in a while.
If I sat there with Ari for long enough, could the thing I saw—the not-mirror, the blood—be a nothing? Could I forget about it, brush it off?
Ari didn’t mention Carly tonight, so maybe they haven’t run into each other yet? I hope so. How could I explain it to him… Worse, how could I explain to Carly why I kept him to myself?
“Because you’ve been busy, and I needed someone.”
Too cruel?
Too cruel.
So I’ll keep him for myself, like the Viking. Except this time, I won’t waver. Maybe he can make me more real. Maybe he can make what I saw in the bathroom last night be forgotten.
I know what I saw.
Almost time to disappear. I wonder where I go.
Diary of Kaitlyn Johnson
Wednesday, 29 September 2004, 3:00 am
Attic
I like to leave myself memento mori. I draw them in everything—hidden in textbook diagrams, in the grains of the wood on the wall, under my bed.
They make shit real. But not as real as the girl staring at me from the corner.
Is that you, Dee?
16
Recovered Message Book Entry
Wednesday, 29 September 2004, 4:40 am
Carly, where are you? Why haven’t you written? Are you angry with me?
I think maybe I’m starting to remember something about how it happened. Please answer. I need to talk to you.
17
125 days until the incident
Session #47 Audio
Dr. Annabeth Lansing (AL) and Carly “Kaitlyn” Johnson (CJ)
Thursday, 30 September 2004, 8:34 PM
(CJ): Thank you… for seeing me. I know you canceled, but…
(AL): What’s happened?
[Rustling as of material]
(CJ): Nothing, really. I just… You told me to trust you, and…
(AL): You can trust me. [Pause] Trust me.
(CL): Carly hasn’t written to me. She hasn’t left me any messages. It’s unsettling. She always writes to me. Always.
[Pause]
(AL): Kaitlyn. How long since she failed to write?
(CJ): A couple of days. I mean, she still leaves me Post-its, but something’s wrong. She’s distant.
(AL): [Sigh] This is good. This is excellent.
(CJ): Wait… you think this is good? Where is she?
(AL): Kaitlyn, this is hard for you. I understand. You’re holding on. It can’t be easy to learn that you’re not real. To learn that you’re a symptom of trauma. I understand that you want to resist. To hold on. But by doing that, you’re keeping Carly from healing—
(CJ): No! You’re trying to confuse me. Carly wouldn’t abandon me. She wouldn’t leave me all alone! Something’s wrong, I know her!
(AL): Carly is letting you go. It has to happen. It will feel like abandonment, it will be so hard. But, eventually, you’ll find peace. You’ll integrate. Absorb.
(CJ): [Sniff] Disappear.
(AL): The way it’s meant to be.
[Pause]
(CJ): I’m not nothing. I’m not meant to be nothing.
(AL): You need to free her, Kaitlyn. You need to let her go. You need to stop being a crutch. She has to heal.
(CJ): You want me to just… die?
(AL): [Pause] Yes.
[Lengthy silence]
[End of tape]
I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
—Walt Whitman
You are the music
While the music lasts.
—T. S. Eliot
18
Additional raw footage filmed by Naida Chounan-Dupré was discovered in an external hosting site linked to MalaGenie.com. One such clip has been unencrypted and transcribed below. It is believed that this short clip is the first recorded and has been included because of two revealing details.
Naida Camera Footage (Raw)
Date and Time Index Missing
Naida’s Dorm Room
Camera, blurry, spins and jostles, but in a few of the frames, we can see that we are in a dorm room. Shots of scarves pinned to the wall reveal that it is Naida’s room.
“How do you get this stupid thing to work?” she says, peering down into the lens so that we see her eyes large and distorted.
“Give it here.”
Scott takes the camera, which angles in on his face, and messes with the lens. The picture refocuses, definition sharp. He turns the camera on Naida, who reaches for it.
“Give it back, Scott! It’s new. Hand it over, or I’ll give you a nutshot and upload it onto the school website.”
Scott laughs. “I thought that making a little ‘Scott’s bollocks’ voodoo doll and sticking it full of pins was more your style?”
“Push me, Scotty-boy, just push me.”
Scott hands back the camera, and Naida wipes the screen with her sleeve. For a moment a shadow passes over the shot—behind Naida.
“You adore me too much for that,” Scott says.
“Your balls, maybe. Ugh, forget it. I need to fiddle with it some more.”
“Fiddle with this,” Scott says, but the camera turns off before we can see Naida’s reaction.
[END OF CLIP]
Close analysis of the frames in this clip reveals two things. First, there is a sound, perhaps only static or something brushing against the microphone as Naida wipes the lens, or perhaps what it sounds like, whispering. Second, a person is standing in the closet behind Naida, the dark form of someone looking out, two pinpricks of light glinting off their eyes.
19
124 days until the incident
Diary of Kaitlyn Johnson
Friday, 1 October 2004, 12:24 am
Elmbridge
Tricks, trickery, manipulations.
Lies.
They are all lying to me.
Lansing is a master manipulator.
Liar.
Trying to put space between Carly and me.
Part of the “integration process.”
She’s a murderer! She wants to kill me.
If Carly doesn’t write to me, then she won’t need me.
Tricky tricky tricksters.
Carly.
3:00 am
I saw something by the
I’m not really sure what I saw
I’m not going to let Lansing and her psycho-drugs get to me. I wish Carly would stop taking them!
Searched for the Viking again online. Nothing. Always nothing.
Wrote in the Message Book:
Carly, Lansing scared me.
Where are you?
Why are you so quiet?
Lansing said—God, Lansing will do anything. Please answer.
What happened to our plan? Elmbridge, then out, remember?
La
nsing… she said—she said—just write something nice. Tell me you love me. Tell me you need me. You believe I’m here. Please. Please, Carly.
Where are you??
Message Book Entry
Saturday, 2 October 2004, 7:18 am
Everything’s going to be okay, Kaitie. I promise.
20
The “Forgotten Garden” area of which Kaitlyn speaks in the entry below is the graveyard outside St. Martha’s Chapel on the hill above Elmbridge High, where Kaitlyn and Ari first met. Petitions to have a children’s play area built near the site were denied thirteen times in the twelve years following the incident. No petitions have been filed in the last eight years.
Diary of Kaitlyn Johnson
Monday, 4 October 2004, 4:42 am
Forgotten Garden
There are places. Abandoned places. Forgotten places. These are the places I like to be.
Elmbridge has one of these places. Once, it was beautiful. You can tell that right away. The rain-stained gravestones among the dying grasses; the fence, rusted and half-hinged, with coils of wrought iron—once painted black or a very dark green—now flaking away; the overgrown footpath, which now leads into the impenetrable grasses that stand dry and still. A dead yellow sea.
I figure it’s either a holy place, or cursed. Either way, I guess I belong here.
Redemption or Punishment.
I don’t know which one I’m looking for. Each seems likely. When I first found the chapel, where no one goes, I walked around blind. The next night, I came with my flashlight and spent my hours swimming my way around the sad place, memorizing the blank graves.