The Dead House

by Dawn Kurtagich

  [Softer] Scott, I need to know how it all went down. You’re the only one who knows.

  [Silence]

  See, I think you know more than you’re telling me. Why, I don’t know. You’ve got no one to protect and everything to lose. So tell me what happened that night!

  [End of tape]

  66

  40 days until the incident

  Naida Camera Footage

  Friday, 24 December 2004

  Time Index Not Noted

  Basement

  Naida swings the camera around the small room. It is nothing more than a cemented space with a solitary lightbulb hanging from the ceiling. The circle of light that the bulb creates does not touch the corners of the room, which sit stagnant in shadow. The mic picks up the sound of dripping water.

  “Lovely spot,” Kaitlyn murmurs, folding her arms.

  “It’s temporary. I’d stash you in my room, but the chances of you being seen—”

  “No. No, you’re right. This is fine. Cold, dank, lonely.” She gives a grin. “Feels familiar.”

  “I’m going to set the camera up there,” Naida says, angling the camera at a strip of wall near the ceiling. “I can monitor the footage through my computer.”

  “Won’t the battery die?”

  “Nah, I’ll hook it into the school’s power supply, and it’ll feed directly to my laptop. I’ll rig it to send automatically to an online server too, so we can watch it later in more detail.”

  “Watch me in more detail, you mean. We’re past sociology projects, aren’t we?”

  “It’s not about that anymore. We need this. Need proof.” She spins the camera to face her and messes with the focus.

  “They told me I was crazy,” Kaitlyn says after a beat of silence. Her voice barely registers in the mic.

  Naida glances at her, then steps forward. “You’ve got to put that out of your head, sugar. It won’t help Carly.”

  Kaitlyn looks away, and the progress of the camera—and Naida—stops. “What you did… going there. Seeing me, the note, everything. I… thank you.”

  “I’d do it again and more in a heartbeat.” Naida hesitates, and then adds, “But what made you come here? Why believe me?”

  “I could blame it on the pill diet they had me on, but… in my last session with Lansing… I saw something. I don’t know, probably nothing. But…”

  “Tell me.”

  Kaitlyn sighs sharply. “I sound so bloody crazy, and I hate it because I’m not crazy.”

  “I don’t think you’re crazy. You’ve got to trust me with the truth.”

  “I saw something in the room with us in my last session with Dr. Lansing. A girl. She smelled wet and earthy, and she looked terrified; her mouth was wide open, and her teeth—” She takes a breath. “She was pointing at Lansing. Like she was warning me. And I knew… I just knew I had to get out.”

  There is another pause, and then Naida says, “We should find something for you to sleep on in that junk heap round there.” She points the camera at the floor. “There’s bound to be—”

  [END OF CLIP]

  Naida Camera Footage

  Date and Time Index Missing

  Basement

  “You look like shit,” Naida says, facing a mattress that now lies in the corner of the room. She goes to sit beside Kaitlyn, handing over a bag of cookies. She takes one too. “Didn’t they feed you?”

  “Don’t remember.”

  “So tell me about this girl, the one you saw. Have you seen her before? Do you see her a lot?”

  The slightest hesitation. “No.”

  “What about other things? I need to know, Kait.”

  Kaitlyn opens the bag of cookies. She removes one but doesn’t eat it. “I don’t want to go back to that place.”

  “Then tell me.”

  “Right.” Kaitlyn laughs. “Tell you about crazy stuff I see so that you don’t call my shrink.”

  Naida glances at her pointedly. “I warned you, Kaitlyn Johnson. I warned you about all this. You called it crazy Mala shit, remember? Now you’re going to tell me everything so I can help you and Carly, okay?”

  Kaitlyn smiles, regarding her. “Well, it is still crazy Mala shit, even if it’s true.”

  “Come on, now. Spit it out.”

  “I don’t know. I see… sometimes—” She sighs. “A… a dark shape. I’m not sure… It really wasn’t much more than a shadow. I heard breathing, smelled an ashy smell. And there was a snake… a green viper. I spoke to him.” Her voice fades away, into a murmur. “He asked me if I was a real girl…” She blinks, shakes her head. “But it was a dream.”

  “You spoke to a nathair nimhe? A snake?”

  “Yeah, but it’s just the drugs they were making Carly take. It does crap to the brain—”

  “No. It’s not just that. There’s a spirit associated with animals, the snake in particular, but also dogs, wolves, foxes. It’s a dangerous spirit, Kaitlyn. An Olen. Olens can be very powerful—they are more than mere spirits. Normally Olens are revered, because when they come, they bring healing, strength, courage, and love. But they can be malevolent forces too; they can cause physical harm, injure the souls of the living, and they can enter animals to manipulate them—and animals that are filled with an Olen are collectively called Sivu.” Naida stands up. “Blessed Gorro, help us.”

  Kaitlyn laughs, leaning back against the wall. “So, what? I was conversing with a god?”

  “I don’t know. It almost feels like… a—a haunting. All I know is that someone’s working. Working you.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Naida rubs her face, then pulls something from her pocket. “I found this under my bed. It’s a bind… for Marri-Korro. You see the feathers? The likeness of the shrieking crow? These symbols belong to her. She’s a demon Olen, Kaitlyn. Dangerous. And this bind—this is Grúndi. Grúndi and Mala are two very different things. Mala is faith, religion, and ritual. And Grúndi… like I said in my note, Grúndi is black magic. It’s not governed by morals or ethics. And if whoever’s working you is conjuring too, then we’re dealing with somebody—” She breaks off, shaking her head. “Someone who fears no consequences. And who knows what they’re doing. Mike and that damn spirit board at Halloween.”

  “So you’re telling me that, because of the Ouija—the Olen board thing—at your party, someone is, what? Casting magic spells on me?” She snorts with laughter, but her face falls when Naida stares at her.

  “What I’m telling you is that someone has noticed you. And that someone is a Shyan—that’s the name we give a Holi who practices black arts as well.”

  “A what?”

  “Holi. A Mala priest. Shyan is the name we give someone who has no morals and no ethics. Someone who delves into Grúndi and who is dangerous to you and to Carly too.”

  “And you think it’s Mike?”

  “I don’t know. He seems too stupid to pull this off. I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “What about his mirror? Those cuts on his face?”

  “Aye, that was weird. Goddamn it, Kaitie, I warned you.” She exhales. “This is beautiful. Just beautiful.” She pauses, then mutters, “When you said ‘the Voice’ was getting closer in that visiting room… I knew something was going on. I could feel it in my bones.”

  “So… you believe this stuff. And you believe me?”

  “Of course I do. I feel it myself, didn’t I say so? I warned you about that pointer, about keeping under the radar—”

  Kaitlyn lies back on the mattress. “Blah, blah, I remember.”

  “I know. I know. I’m sorry. It’s just… it’s Carly—” Naida’s voice breaks on Carly’s name, and she turns away, fiddles with the camera. “Well. Here we are, anyway.”

  There is an awkward moment of silence.

  “Look, I don’t know why the Shyan took Carly, if that’s even what happened. I think maybe it’s to do with creating a gap where she used to be. But a soul doesn’t just pass on. It takes time. Assuming Car
ly’s soul is behaving like the soul of someone who died, then her spirit won’t leave your body right away. It’ll linger. Which means something is hiding her away in there. I’d say we’ve got roughly a month to get her back. Maybe more, maybe less. Damn it, I don’t know.” Naida leans forward, resting her head on her hands. “I just don’t know. I don’t know why a Shyan wants her soul at all. But I’m going to find out.”

  “Here we are,” Kaitlyn agrees, her entire face in shadow.

  “Gorro help us.”

  67

  39 days until the incident

  Diary of Kaitlyn Johnson

  Saturday, 25 December 2004, 9:17 am

  Basement

  No pills.

  No toilet.

  No window.

  A mattress.

  Wet.

  Cold.

  A camera, always watching.

  A new kind of prison.

  Merry Christmas to me.

  Oh, Dee. Have you been lonely without me? I know, I missed you too. So much. While you were gone, a lot happened, but I made sure to write it down—as much of it as I could anyway. Here, see? The pages are for you.

  Dee? Are you here?

  I really am a ghost now, aren’t I?

  Later

  I’m still getting used to sleeping. Naida tells me it’s been a month and ten days since they put me back in Claydon—a month and ten days of sleeping—and I still feel like I’m vanishing every single time.

  The dreams. The nightmares. The possibility that, this time, I’ll enter the Dead House. I can’t control it. These things make it impossible to lie down. The dank air, the warped steps, and the molding wallpapers have crept into my bedcovers. With every step I take towards the mattress, I hear the creak of swollen, rotten floorboards, swelling and shrinking with moisture and the air I breathe is stale and musty and the sheet under my back is the mirrored wall and the thing I’m staring at when I close my eyes is her.

  The dead girl, only not grinning this time, but broken and torn like she was when, I now realize, I saw her in the Dead House mirror wall. When, for the briefest moment, I thought she was my reflection. Or was that Carly? I don’t know.

  And I hear those nails snapping as she drags her torso along, her blown pupil blaring at me like a foghorn, if such things are possible. If silence can be so loud.

  I can smell her rank breath in my mouth.

  She couldn’t be Carly.

  Dee, I wish you could hold me.

  Don’t touch me.

  68

  34 days until the incident

  Diary of Kaitlyn Johnson

  Thursday, 30 December 2004, 3:45 am

  Attic

  I felt it, Dee—that thing people write about. That thing the girls laugh over in their rooms at night when I’m out in the cold looking in. That thing Carly’s teacher was talking about when they read Wuthering Heights last year. The burn—it really is a burn, Dee, somewhere in the solar plexus. Warm. Intolerable.

  Can it be that love really does exist? Is it love? This fire in my stomach when he leaned over and touched my cheek? When he said, “You just vanished. I had no idea where you were until Naida came to tell me.” His eyes as they bored into mine, the desperate pressure of his hand on my face. “You were gone.”

  His stupid bowler hat and the darkness in his eyes. The bend of his jaw, the line of his yielding lips as he leaned closer and—oh, God—kissed me. Is this love?

  Please don’t think I’m stupid for crying right now, Dee, because I can’t help myself. I emailed him, and then went to the chapel after midnight, and he was there, and it was like seeing life again.

  He came in with wide, urgent eyes, looking all around for me. I watched him for a moment as he strode down the aisle and checked the confessional. I was in the rafters, so I already felt as if I was flying. I was hiding—making sure that I wouldn’t be seen, like Naida said.

  Then, because I had to see his face, I called to him. He was with me in a flash, hand on my cheek, hurting.

  We were superior creatures, up there in the darkness while everyone else slept, so when he put his hand on mine, I felt our purposes—our existences—united in that moment. That contact.

  His voice: “You were gone.”

  He said the words and then he looked at me, and that fire began as soon as I saw his eyes flicker down my body. In that moment, when I knew he was looking at me in the way that men look at women and the fire lights them from inside, I became Kaitlyn Johnson. I was nothing before he noticed me, and everything is different now.

  His mouth on mine, the texture of his tongue, the taste of him, his warmth in a world of such coldness—all of it felt like divinity. I wasn’t a ghost in that moment. I wasn’t nothing.

  My life is different forever, Dee. I think I love him, and it doesn’t scare me. He is connected to me in this horrible life; he shares my every night, which I refuse to give up, because it means accepting that Carly is gone, as I almost did in Hell.

  And maybe, just maybe, he is the reason I can stay in the dark. He is my new reason—the new reason I don’t jump out of this life.

  Or, if I do, I can fly.

  69

  32 days until the incident

  Naida Camera Footage

  Saturday, 1 January 2005, 5:45 AM

  Basement

  Naida faces the group of Elmbridge students gathered in the gloomy basement: Brett, Scott, Ari, and Kaitlyn, sitting in the corner.

  “Right,” she says. “I’ve asked you all here because you love Carly as much as I do, and you’ve come because you trust my judgment.” She pauses, her face panning slowly over them all.

  “Not sure how much we should trust,” Scott mutters. “Sorry, babe, but you are aware that you’re helping someone who escaped from a mental hospital—someone, I might add, that the police are now looking for in connection to Juliet McClarin? No offense, Carly, love,” he adds. “But that detective bloke has already been asking me questions. I felt like a bloody criminal! Great bloody way to start the New Year.”

  “This won’t be easy,” Naida says, “but all of you know I’m not crazy, right? And I would never lead you astray. So”—she takes a breath—“I hope you’ll believe me when I tell you that Carly Johnson is not in this room.”

  Only Ari is unsurprised.

  Brett glances at Kaitlyn in the corner. “This is a prank, right?”

  “April’s a while off,” Scott adds.

  “Forget it, Naida,” Kaitlyn says, getting to her feet. “This isn’t going to work. They don’t believe you.”

  “Sit down,” Naida snaps. “Sit! We need our friends if we’re going to do this. Now, I know they’re not a bunch of cowards, and I know they’ve got our backs. We just have to explain a little. So.” She gestures. “Go ahead.”

  Kaitlyn folds her arms and looks away. “I’m not a performing monkey in the circus.”

  Brett and Scott glance from Naida to Kaitlyn and back again.

  “It’s true,” Ari says eventually, getting to his feet to stand beside Kaitlyn.

  “Well, of course you’d agree,” Scott snaps. “Everyone knows you’ve got a thing for Carly.”

  Ari meets Scott’s eyes. “Her name is Kaitlyn. Not Carly. They’re… sisters.”

  Brett frowns and glances at Kaitlyn with uncertainty. “Sisters. Twins?”

  “Not in the conventional sense,” Kaitlyn says, smiling slowly at Ari. “We… we share the same body. Carly comes out during the day.” She swallows. “Used to. And I’m around at night.”

  Scott scoffs.

  “Scott,” Naida pleads, “I’ve known this about Carly and Kaitlyn for almost two years now. Do you think I’m lying?”

  He throws up his hands. “Babe—”

  “Well?”

  “No, but I think she’s pulled the wool over your eyes.”

  Naida throws up her hands in a mirroring gesture and growls.

  “You know,” Brett says slowly, glancing at Kaitlyn tentatively, “she
is very different at night.…”

  Naida turns to Scott. “I need your help. I need you to believe this quickly, because Carly’s in some serious trouble. Life-and-death kind of trouble, only worse, because it’s her eternal soul in danger.”

  Scott stares at her like she just sprouted feathers. “Naids, I dunno. It’s so… Jekyll and Hyde, you know? Are you sure she’s not just—”

  “What? Crazy?”

  Scott shrugs. “Well… yeah. Sorry.”

  “Just listen, okay? We think an Olen—a Mala spirit of great power—has taken Carly.” She pauses, looking each of them in the eye. “Last year I initiated you guys into a Mala circle. I taught you and shared with you, remember that? Now I need you to believe me.”

  “Excuse me?” Kaitlyn says softly.

  “Last year I taught all of them a bit about Mala. I wanted to explore it a little more. Scott was curious, and so was Brett. Carly too. We formed a kind of Mala group.”

  Kaitlyn looks as though she’s had the air knocked out of her. “Carly… was in a witch ring?”

  “Just basic stuff. How to create a charm bag and a trick bag, simple things like that.” Naida turns back to the room. “But this is bigger than that. Like I said, Carly’s been stolen somehow. And I need your help.”

  Scott frowns and, after a moment, as though sensing that Naida has reached some kind of limit, walks over and wraps her in his long arms.

  “This is mental, I hope you know that. But… you’re stubborn as shit, so I guess I have no choice but to make sure you don’t get hurt. What do you need from us?”

  Naida doesn’t reply right away, and before long, it is evident why. She is crying. He kisses the top of her head, nuzzling into her corkscrew curls.

  “I need you to sneak Kaitlyn food and drink,” she manages, at last. “And bring her clothes from my wardrobe, bringing out the old ones. It’ll have to be on a rotation. Kaitlyn can’t be seen.”

  “For how long?” asks Brett.

  “I don’t know. I have find out what’s going on. I can’t go into this blind. I need to prepare myself—could be a few days. A week, maybe?”