The Dead House

by Dawn Kurtagich

  CCTV Camera Footage

  Wednesday, 22 December 2004, 2:15 PM

  Claydon Youth Psychiatric Facility

  A low buzz sounds as the nurse lets Naida Chounan-Dupré into the visiting room. Naida steps inside, her eyes dull but alert. She looks at the guard for a moment, perhaps to ensure that he leaves, and then turns to Kaitlyn, who sits on a plastic chair in the center of the room, motionless. Her wrists are cuffed with soft restraints; Naida eyes them and bites her lips.

  “I’m surprised you came,” Kaitlyn says; she doesn’t stand. Though her words are hostile, their delivery is weak—fragile as rice paper.

  Naida sits down in the chair opposite Kaitlyn; she seems affected by Kaitlyn’s appearance, which is somehow muted since the Naida Camera Footage, as though washed of vital color.

  “Of course I came.” Her eyes dart left and right. “You’re my best friend.”

  Kaitlyn doesn’t reply for a moment, but her eyes seem to take Naida in with precision. “They… they didn’t tell you? About what’s happened?”

  “Yes… I know exactly what’s happened. I came to see how you are.”

  Kaitlyn nods. “Thank you. I… I’ve been better.”

  “Everyone’s been so worried.” Naida glances around again, finally spotting the camera. “They can’t wait to have you back, hopscotching around.”

  “I miss them too. Why aren’t you home for the holidays?”

  “I’m staying at Elmbridge over Christmas.”

  Kaitlyn frowns. “Why?”

  Naida smiles but doesn’t answer. Eventually, she says, “Ari’s been asking after you. I said you’d be back as soon as you were well. He’s staying for Christmas too. And Scott and Brett.”

  Kaitlyn turns her head to the side, resting her chin on her sharp shoulder like a bird perched on an outcropping. “I see. Thank him for me. Tell him… tell him I—” She breaks off as one dry sob breaks free.

  Naida’s hand shoots forward to grasp Kaitlyn’s. She squeezes, then lets go. Kaitlyn balls her hand into a fist, eyes fixed on Naida, then snatches her hand into her lap.

  Naida swallows. “Ari… he wanted to tell you that the chapel’s been pretty dank and dark, and he doesn’t like to go there much anymore. He prefers the main building… mostly the lower level.”

  There’s a small pause and the briefest hesitation from Kaitlyn.

  She swallows, squeezing her eyes closed. “They’re saying I’m crazy, Naida.” She says it in a rush. “They say I’m Carly and that I’m crazy—they say I need help—they say—”

  “No.” Naida says it firmly, her voice low and her lips tight. “Never. Never let them tell you that, Kait. You’re not crazy—do you hear me?”

  Kaitlyn presses her fists to her eyes. “I don’t know anymore—I don’t know what’s real. They sedated me, and I couldn’t get out of the Dead House. The Voice… I hear his whispering so close—” She breaks off once again, tearing her fists away from her eyes, and her voice grows softly shrill. “I think he’s trying to get inside me. Naida… that’s not normal, is it?”

  Naida leans forward and drops her voice. “You listen to me, okay? You’re not crazy. I think someone’s trying to make you think you are. You’ll be out of here before you know it. Just stay calm, stay focused.” Her eyes dart to Kaitlyn’s hands and back up to her face. “All right?”

  Kaitlyn begins to shake, slowly at first, and then more violently. “They won’t let me go, Naida,” she breathes. “They’ll lock me in here forever! I heard Carly screaming for me to help her, but I can’t—I don’t know how!”

  The guard buzzes into the room. “Calm down, Johnson, or this meeting will be over in a second flat.”

  But it’s too late.

  Kaitlyn locks her eyes on Naida’s and yanks on her restraints. “Get me out of here, Naida! The Voice is getting closer! Get me out of here! Get me out!”

  Naida stumbles out of her seat and covers her mouth.

  The guard moves to intercept Kaitlyn. “I warned you.”

  Kaitlyn throws herself out of the chair, yanking her arms violently to try to break free. She must pull a stitch, because the bandages covering her left arm bleed red. Naida begins to cry, watching as the guard grabs Kaitlyn.

  “Naida!”

  “You can leave,” the guard shouts as two health-care assistants rush into the room from the rear door. “Now!”

  Naida, shaking her head, hand still pressed to her mouth, flees the interview room and out of camera shot. The assistants remove the restraints and carry a hysterical Kaitlyn from the meeting room. An eerie silence follows the slow, mechanical sweep of the weighted door.

  61

  The Johnson Claydon Diaries

  Twenty-fourth Entry

  Naida came.

  She slipped me a note:

  Kaitlyn,

  You have to get out of there, I know you can. Carly told me how you’d break out at night and go wandering during the summer. You have to come back to Elmbridge. Down to the basement, which Ari showed me. Avoid the chapel—we can’t risk you being seen—the basement is safer. In that little side room, okay? Weird things have happened since you left, and I’m convinced that a Shyan is working you. That’s a Mala priest who has tainted himself with dark conjurings.

  Someone’s been trying to bind me with tricks, I think because I’ve been looking into Carly’s disappearance, but they’re using Grúndi, not Mala. That’s dark magic, plain and simple. But they don’t know that I know a bit about Grúndi, so I recognize it.

  I think I know who’s doing this—I mean, maybe. I’ll explain more when I see you. If you absolutely have to reach me, use this number:

  [number omitted]

  My dreams have been… Carly is in worse trouble the longer we wait.

  Come soon.

  Carly is in trouble. I was right. I knew she was calling to me. This is bigger than me, Dee, much bigger than me. I knew it, I knew it, I knew it! I’m so relieved, so grateful. Nothing else matters now.

  What do you mean?

  I don’t think—

  She might, I suppose…

  No, I suppose so…

  Well, yeah. I guess I really don’t, do I, Dee?

  Yeah… yeah, I know, I should trust you. Naida never liked me. She always wanted Carly for herself… and she is promised to the Mala calling, which Carly made sound like some kind of witchcraft-voodoo cult. She could be working with the Voice. With Aka Manah.

  She might be trying to trick me. Get me into worse trouble.

  What’s that? Oh.

  Yeah, I think so too.

  I must look a wreck, because when she came through the door, she stopped in her tracks and blinked back sudden tears. I know she sees Carly, not me. Still, it was nice to think that she cared how they’ve been treating me.

  “Of course I came,” was the first thing she said when she sat down across from me. “You’re my best friend.”

  The visit was nothing more than hidden messages that I didn’t really understand. Except when she spoke of Ari. I haven’t forgotten him. I wish he would write to me. I don’t understand why he doesn’t. Maybe they won’t let him. I miss his smell.

  They dragged me away, but they didn’t sedate me. They just locked me in my room—how long before they take you away from me too, Dee? How long before they steal these pages and plot against me once more?

  I must be careful what I write. I should tell you, though:

  [The rest of this page has been torn off. Where she hid the paper, as well as what it contained, is a mystery.]

  62

  The Johnson Claydon Diaries

  Twenty-fifth Entry

  I fall into the Dead House when I am awake now. I thought I was awake… sitting on the floor, my pages in hand…

  Something changed in the ambience of the room, a shifting, a darkening… and I looked down; I sat on waterlogged floorboards, so old and moldy that they sank under my weight. Claydon was gone…

  Get out of the house.
Get out of the house.

  I got to my feet, and the room opened out before me, from the deep umbra into the dim main room of the house, which creaked and subtly moved so I couldn’t focus on any one object. Once a picture frame, empty, now a light fixture, dusty. Once an armchair, warped, now a rickety table, cracked and peeling. It formed and unformed like a breath released and forgotten.

  “Carly?” I called, hoping the house would shift, allow her to scream—anything that would pinpoint her location, up or down.

  I thought of the attic in the main Elmbridge building, where secrets were hidden. Up. As good a choice as any.

  Crazy

  Kaitie

  crazy

  Kaitie.

  The stairs were normal when I looked at them, but as I glanced to the top landing, they seemed to warp and move, shift and sigh, all in my peripheral vision. The house had control of them, like everything else. When I looked back, they were once again still, innocent. Lying.

  “You can’t keep her,” I muttered, all the while wondering why I was saying it. “She’s mine.”

  I repeated the rhyme that was Carly’s favorite when we were young, holding on to the memory of her presence, something I never realized I could sense deep inside me until she was gone.

  “Yesternight,” I began, “upon the stair… I saw a girl who wasn’t there… she wasn’t there again today. I wish I wish, she’d go away… Yesternight upon the stair…”

  On and on, I said the rhyme; on and on, I climbed, and the staircase never ended. The house had changed from a refuge to a trap overnight, and I couldn’t shake the notion that it was keeping me away from Carly.

  “I will get her,” I told the house, and I hated with a passion I have never felt before.

  No sooner had I spoken the words than I was at the last step, facing a door I had never seen. It was old, bolted from the outside. I put my hand on the bolt, intending to slide it away, when I sensed in the core of me that there was something I didn’t want to see behind the door.

  Don’t be afraid.

  But I was. Because I could feel a desire locked away in there—something that wanted out. Desperately. Impatiently. Something big. Something that wasn’t Carly.

  I dropped my hand, knowing somehow that the house would never have given her to me so easily, and the door thundered, rattling on its hinges. It raged, it yelled, yet it never spoke a word.

  “Trickery,” I breathed at the house, my will deflated and shriveled as an old balloon. “Trickery-trick-trickery.”

  The door quieted.

  Creeeaaaaaak.

  I stepped backwards.

  Ssshhhhhrrrrk.

  A noise down in the dark.

  Crrrrrrrrreeeeeeeeaaaaaaak.

  “Carly?”

  The sound continued, inching closer to me out of the darkness.

  “Carly, tell me that’s you.”

  Sssssshhhrrrkk.

  I felt the grin in that umbra. Something wasn’t right. I turned, and I ran down the stairs, but they were endless, and the dark shadows behind me never seemed to recede, no matter how fast I ran.

  Finally, because I knew it was a dream and because the thing in the dark was so very close, I launched myself over the railing. I fell for a long time, but I don’t remember landing. Only that all of a sudden I was in the doorway and the house was screaming, foul breath forcing me backwards—tearing me away.

  I clung to the doorframe, needing to stay, needing to go into the basement—the only place left hidden—needing to find her.

  GET OUT OF MY HOUSE!

  I flew out the door, past the crumbling mountainside, towards the mists, which roared up to meet me.

  I woke up on the floor, sticky with my own sweat, the echoes of the voice of the house ringing in my ears. Even now I can hear it—Get out of my house. Get out of my house. It doesn’t want me snooping.

  My Voice is nearby, Dee. He laughs, and he sings: The house is mine. The house is mine.

  I really am crazy, aren’t I?

  The devil’s in the details.

  63

  41 days until the incident

  Inpatient Session Recording #78 [Ref: Johnson-Inp-0033]

  Thursday, 23 December 2004, 3:14 PM

  Claydon Youth Psychiatric Facility, Somerset

  Dr. Annabeth Lansing (AL) and Carly Luanne Johnson (CJ)

  (AL): I want to address what you spoke about at the end of our session last Friday. You said you felt like you had murdered Carly. Why?

  (CJ): I’m not sure how I feel anymore. I thought… I thought I felt like that because by—by accepting your help… I accept that she’s gone. And that was hard for me.

  (AL): And do you accept it?

  (CJ): I… don’t know.

  (AL): To have any hope of recovery, you must accept it. The first step is accepting that you are Carly. You are Carly Luanne Johnson. So let’s try to say it. Say it with me… I am Carly. You can do it. [Pause] Please try.

  (CJ): I…

  (AL): You can do it.

  [Sharp intake of breath]

  What is it, Carly? What’s happened?

  [Shuffling]

  Vocalize, Carly. Come on.

  [Heavy breathing]

  (CJ): I… I suddenly, um, realized that this will be my first Christmas without her. It was alarming for a moment… to think it. But… I—I’m better now.

  (AL): Carly, what is it?

  [Pause]

  (CJ): I am Carly.

  (AL): Excellent! Again.

  (CJ): I am Carly.

  (AL): [Laughs] No need to cry, Carly. This is wonderful work, and I am so proud of you! Now, again.

  (CJ): [Crying] I am Carly.

  (AL): Again.

  (CJ): I… am… Carly. [Sobbing]

  (AL): This is excellent, Carly. You’re doing well. Now, I’m going to give you an assignment. I’d like you to write down everything you can remember about the night your parents died. Not what I told you, but what you yourself remember. Then I’d like you to attend the Friday group session and read it aloud to everyone.

  (CJ): Okay.

  (AL): You’re very brave. I’m so pleased with your progress, Carly. Maybe, if you keep it up, you can return to Elmbridge by the New Year.

  [Chair scrapes]

  (CJ): Thank you.

  [End of tape]

  64

  The following outgoing phone call was recorded on 23 December 2004, 41 days before the incident:

  [Three rings]

  [Muffled noises] “Who is this? [Sigh] You know what time it is, dickface?”

  [Heavy breathing] “Naida! Naida, it’s Kait!”

  “Kaitie—you called. Thank God.”

  “You were right—I have to get out of here.”

  “What happened?”

  “I was in a session today, and I saw something—I don’t know—something wrong with her face. She isn’t who she says she is!”

  [Silence]

  “Kaitie, are you alone?”

  “Yeah, why?”

  “Hang up.”

  “But why? What is it?”

  “I can hear someone breathing on the line.”

  [Click]

  [Line dead]

  No one thinks of how much blood it costs.

  —Dante Alighieri

  A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door,

  And a word that shall echo forevermore!

  —Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  God hath given you one face, and you make yourselves another.

  —William Shakespeare

  65

  135 days after the incident

  Criminal Investigation Department, Portishead Headquarters

  Avon and Somerset Constabulary, Portishead, Bristol

  Friday, 17 June 2005, 15:34 PM

  AUDIO INTERVIEW #2, PART 2: Detective Chief Inspector Floyd Homes (FH) and Scott Fromley (SF)

  (FH): And that’s all, huh? You’re telling me that’s all you know about what happened to Juliet?
>
  (SF): Yes.

  (FH): I see. And what about the night of the fire? Do you also know nothing of that?

  (SF): I can’t remember exactly. I don’t know!

  (FH): Several people are dead, two are missing, and one is permanently crippled… and you don’t know?

  (SF): I wasn’t there at the end—I never saw anything. All I know is that it happened. I don’t know anything else.

  (FH): And Carly Johnson? How well did you know her, huh? Maybe you’d better rethink that answer, lad, because Naida’s talking.

  (SF): You asshole—

  (FH): Watch your mouth. You’re facing some serious charges, Scott. If I were you, I’d answer my questions honestly. [Pause] Carly Johnson. Were you intimate with her?

  (SF): What the hell is that supposed to mean?

  (FH): Did you and Carly Johnson have sex?

  (SF): I want to speak to my father.

  (FH): Answer the question! Did you and Carly Johnson have sex?

  (SF): No—

  (FH): But you wanted to. Maybe you suggested something of that nature to Carly herself. Maybe you forced her into it—

  (SF): No! I told you, no! I was with Naida, that didn’t change—

  (FH): Something triggered her, and you’re the only one left!

  [Loud bang]

  [Heavy breathing]

  [Pause]