The Dead House

by Dawn Kurtagich

  And there it was. Carly’s journal.

  When I looked up, she was two inches from my face, grinning at me with haunted yellow eyes. She said something, but there was no sound. It looked like “see what I found?” And then she was gone, walking away down the silent corridor, flickering in and out, like something about to crack and topple over.

  And here I sit with it in my hands. It feels like an ancient relic of someone dead. The only piece left of them. Of her. That’s when it hit me, Dee. If I don’t get Carly back, she’s dead. She’s gone forever.

  I can’t live like that.

  There’s so much I want to tell her. I flipped to the back of her journal and wrote inside. Maybe, somewhere, somehow, she can see it.

  Carly,

  Nothing is the same without you. I eat because I need the strength to find you. I sleep because now my body forces me to. But it’s meaningless, like a movie set. I play a part, but there is no substance. I go home to nothing at the end of the scene.

  I wish you could see how you’ve brought Naida and me together.

  I wish you could see Ari… the things he’s revealed in me. What I’ve done. I’m sorry, so sorry, but I wouldn’t change it even if I could, because it saved me. He saved me. I was falling into a blackness without you that was darker than the world I lived in before. He reached into that darkness with his beautiful, strong hand, and he pulled me up. He continues to prop me up.

  I think I love him. I want nothing more than to be able to tell you this. To believe that you can see these words and know that they’re true. But I would give him up if it would bring you back.

  I’d give up anything for you.

  Please come home. There’s a gap inside me waiting to be filled, and the longer you’re absent, the closer I feel something… other coming. The harder it will be to keep this space open, ready to receive you.

  I feel the thing getting closer.

  Hurry, Carly. Oh, hurry!

  Give me a sign. Give me a sign, please, please, give me a sign. I will wait. I will watch. Please—anything. Anything, Carly, please!

  Later

  I feel the eyes of this attic over my shoulder as I read. I feel the urge to hide her words from the walls’ prying eyes. Her entries are discordant, worse than mine. “Got no pen,” she writes. Writes with a pen. “Something, nothing, sunlight isn’t real.” Broken fragments of thought, no more.

  What was I expecting? That she would write endlessly about me, the way I do her? She was more of a poet than that.

  Far, far, far, far, far, far, she writes.

  Shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up, she writes.

  Her words are neat and precise, solid and real. Then they change. The writing grows, like some kind of mythical beast eating space, disregarding the lines, looser, softer, more widely spread, until a few pages later, there are no words, just long lines of nothing.

  Dee, she was disappearing even then. How did Naida not see? Was the Voice pulling her away without my even noticing? If I had told her the truth, might she have tried to hold on to me? I can almost see Aka Manah pulling at her arm. She is insubstantial as a rag doll, stitched at the joints, loosely, like she will fall apart any moment.

  Today the dog barks, she writes.

  Someone is coming, she writes.

  And on the last page:

  help me

  Later

  I know. Yes, I know it’s important. Yes. Yes, I’m going to.

  Don’t rush me. Naida can wait for a minute, can’t she?

  This means something, Dee, doesn’t it? That’s why you’re pushing me.

  I know.

  Yes, I know.

  I will—I’m going to tell her right now.

  A conversation with Naida is implied in the last section of the diary. No record has been found of such a conversation, nor is it mentioned by Kaitlyn or Naida in any of the following entries.

  Naida Camera Footage

  Wednesday, 5 January 2005, 11:52 PM

  Basement

  The light is on. Kaitlyn gets off the mattress gingerly, leaving her journal and Carly’s journal behind. She walks over to the armoire, pauses as though listening, and then opens both doors. There is a full-length mirror attached to the back of the ornate cupboard.

  “Carly?” she says, staring at her reflection. “Carly? Carly? Carly? Carly? Carly? Carly? Carly?”

  This behavior continues for forty minutes, until Kaitlyn falls silent, but does not move. By the time the motion-activated camera deactivates, she is still standing in front of the mirror, looking for a sign that does not appear.

  75

  On the first of January 2005, DCI Floyd Homes was assigned to the Johnson missing persons case. He began an investigation into the whereabouts of Carly Johnson and issued a warrant for her arrest on 6 January 2005.

  Diary of Kaitlyn Johnson

  Thursday, 6 January 2005, There Is No Time!

  Basement

  Writing down—

  Haaaaaandrad heeeeeends.

  —everything he says to me.

  Seeeeeee the bluuuuuuuuuud?

  Leeeeeeesen welllllll.

  Caummmmm to meeeeeeee.

  Yooooooooo ah myyyyyyyyyyyn.

  Reeeeeeeeeeeeeee

  Mehhhhhhhhhhhhhhm

  Behhhhhhhhhhhhhhr

  Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr…

  His voice fades away into the hiss of the Dead Ocean, but I have the words:

  Hundred hands.

  See the blood?

  Listen well.

  Come to me.

  You are mine.

  Re

  Mem

  Ber.

  Remember.

  Remember what?

  Later

  She’s always here now. Can you see her, Dee? Her laughter sounds like glass.

  YOU ARE NOT HER!

  76

  26 days until the incident

  Naida Camera Footage

  Friday, 7 January 2005, 7:12 AM

  Attic

  “It appeared overnight, we think,” Naida says. She is holding a pashmina around her neck, lifting it over her nose. “It reeks.”

  She turns the camera. This is the first glimpse we can see of the attic in which Kaitlyn spent so much of her time before her sectioning. As Kaitlyn described, it is riddled with boxes, dust, cobwebs, and cupboards. Only now, script covers every inch of the wooden walls.

  Naida approaches the wall to the left, directly beside the door. “We think it starts here. We can’t know for sure… it’s all so manic.” She touches the wall. “Wow, look here. Mirror writing… like Da Vinci used.”

  The camera reveals an array of script written in pen and marker, sharp letters that slant left, then right, most of it difficult to decipher. The mirror writing runs neatly from right to left in patches.

  “Moving along,” Naida continues, her breath noisy in the mic, “looks like the pen ran out. See here, it turns to pencil.”

  And the writing does change, for a short while, to pencil.

  “Then scratching in the wood itself.”

  Naida runs her fingers along the grooves where words and symbols have been cut into the wood with sharp, frenetic lines.

  “And then here,” she says, walking farther along. “Some kind of stain.”

  The words become larger, haphazard—and seem to be smeared onto the wood with something brown. Naida follows the script, moving between and behind boxes, and rounds the first corner.

  “Then there’s this.”

  A stain on the floor. Large. Dark. Ominous.

  “Haven’t got a clue what that is, but I do sense something… off about this room. Kaitie says she’d been spending all her time up here until Carly… went. It troubles me.”

  She turns the camera on herself. “It troubles me, because I can sense intent here. Like parts of this school… the older parts. Only, I’ve never sensed anything like this. And there’s a smell… a scent. Like”—she inhales, nostrils widening—“I don�
�t know, like mildew or something. Like rot. And something else—something vile. It worries me that Kaitie’s been sitting in this power for so long, exposed to hell knows what.”

  The camera spins once more, to take in the defiled space.

  “Something’s been working up here. I’ll have to check people’s handwriting. I’ll decipher all I can.”

  77

  Diary of Kaitlyn Johnson

  Friday, 7 January 2005, 9:50 am

  Forgotten Garden

  It’s everywhere.

  On the walls, on the ceiling, on the floor—every surface. Words and words and words. Endless writing, some of it legible, some not. The whole attic is covered in the scrawl. I found it when I went up there. It stank. I couldn’t stand it. Went to find Naida.

  Someone has been in my space. Someone knows I’m here. But who? Who knows, besides Ari and Naida, Scott, Brett, and me? Who besides us five would come into my bubble, while my body betrayed me to sleep down in the basement, and write on the walls of my haven?

  It’s her, isn’t it? The thin yellow girl. You can tell me, Dee.

  But, see now? Do you see? How some of the writing is written in felt-tip pen? Marker? And how as the fibers die on the splintered wood, it changes to ballpoint pen? And farther, as the pen dies, scratchings as though she—Carly, it has to be Carly?—attempted to use the pen to gouge her cries into the wood itself. That doesn’t last long, see, Dee? Something else is used after that—it’s messy, confused, brown. Ugly. Oh, God—it’s shit. She wrote in shit, Dee. This is where the smell is coming from. It reeks!

  I followed the trail of words, none of them making much sense, following all the way along the dark and narrow U that is the attic—my home—until I came to the very end, where not even the spiders live anymore. There, on the floor, sat an ominous dark stain in the corner, soaked into an old carpet rolled up to one side. I didn’t know if it was green or blue or brown, that stain, but there in the shadows, it looked black. The true color.

  Horror woke itself inside me, and I backed away slowly, never letting my eyes wander from that stain, which seemed to regard me as much as I did it, telling me, I can see.

  But can you?

  Later

  I told Naida I won’t look at the writing. I won’t go back to that defiled place. There is something wrong with me. There is something inside me.

  Because… I didn’t tell her that the writing on the walls, Dee… seems to be my own.

  5:00 pm

  Maybe it was stupid, but I DON’T CARE! I’m sick of waiting! I’m sick of being alone! Her school’s only four miles away, in town, and I knew I’d be back before anyone noticed, and I was, so no big deal. So you can quit looking at me like that, Dee.

  I saw her waiting for dickball Bailey by the front benches, so tiny and lonely and vulnerable, and I called her over to me. Her eyes widened, and she ran over so fast I could barely catch her. All her stuff, including the ridiculous bobble hat she was wearing, went rolling all over the place, but I didn’t care, because she was in my arms.

  “Kaitie,” she murmured into my hair. “You were gone!”

  “It’s okay, Jaimebean, I’m here.” And she didn’t smell like Jaime anymore. The Bailey smell had completely taken over.

  I took her round to the back benches, just out of sight of the main school, and I asked her how she was. Normally she’d tell me about her school, her friends, her new coloring pencils—all that stuff—but this time she just kept asking about Carly.

  “Where’s Carly? Is Carly with you? Has she gone to heaven with Mummy and Daddy?”

  “No!” I snapped, and when her eyes filled with tears, I added, “She’s just… sleeping. Don’t worry, though, because I’m going to wake her up.”

  “You’re going to get her?”

  I nodded. “I promise.”

  Maybe it was stupid to say that, but I did. And that promise held a thousand meanings.

  I promise I will get Carly.

  I promise Carly will be safe.

  I promise life will go back to normal.

  I promise I will take care of you.

  I promise I know what I’m doing.

  I promise I’m not crazy.

  I promise I won’t go to jail.

  I promise I will force the world to make sense again.

  I saw Mrs. Bailey before Jaime did, and when she called out Jaime’s name, and Jaime turned to look, I melted into the shadows and watched the whole disgusting scene like the ghost I am.

  Mrs. Bailey came, and Jaime picked up all of her lost treasures. She didn’t turn to look for me. Not once. It’s as if she knew I wasn’t really there to begin with.

  78

  Diary of Kaitlyn Johnson

  Friday, 7 January 2005, 10:00 pm

  Basement

  I can’t make sense of all the images in my head. They flash and burn and change; they bleed into one another, but I must try. The first thing is a hand. A huge hand right in my face, and there is terror in my mouth, bursting to get out as I look at it coming slowly forward. I’m choking on the fear, which bends its way into my vitals like an insidious and very conscious weed. The weed knows exactly where to go, and it is laughing.

  I see his face—but it’s torn, warped, bleeding. Dad.

  There is shadow on a wall, moving, but slowing. And with the slowing, I’m filled with something. And then there is blood on very rough, dark walls—bleeding stone—like walls?!—then, clear as crystal, John the Viking’s face.

  He is pale, his eyes wide, his lips grimly set.

  He is always in the flashes, right at the end, and I don’t know why, and I am terrified.

  79

  Naida Camera Footage

  Date and Time Index Missing

  Naida’s Dorm

  The camera light illuminates Naida’s face, turning it to sharp lines and deep furrows. In the distance, the constant echoing drip of water tells us she is in a room of stone. There is no natural light.

  “Someone doesn’t want me snooping around,” Naida says, her voice low and solemn. “That little cast I performed… this is what’s been made of it.” She holds up a round object. “It’s a bull testicle, sealed with red wax. My conjure’s inside. The earthroot, the devil’s heart, the silver coin… Then there’s this.”

  She lifts a tag from behind the object and reads it aloud.

  “‘Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness?’ ‘Ye cannot drink the cup of the Lord, and the cup of devils: ye cannot be partakers of the Lord’s table, and of the table of devils’—2 Corinthians 6:14 and 1 Corinthians 1:21.” She sticks her tongue between her teeth and laughs. “He’s quoting scripture at me. He’s taunting me—telling me I haven’t got what it takes to beat him. That I won’t do what might be necessary.”

  She laughs again, shaking her head. “Someone’s been inside my room, found the bind I placed in secret, and conjured around it. He—or she, I suppose—is more powerful than I reckoned. But if he thought he’d scare me away by quoting scripture and reworking my bind against me, he doesn’t know me too well. This only makes me more certain. It only makes me more determined.”

  She sighs. “But now I have to do something I really don’t want to do.” She looks up into the lens. “I have go and see Haji.”

  Diary of Kaitlyn Johnson

  Saturday, 8 January 2005, 7:55 pm

  Basement

  London, my precious London!

  Naida’s never done anything like this before. She wants me to take her top hat camera so that we can look at the footage later. No need to tell me how stupid I look. She thinks this guy—Haji, she calls him—might give something away with a glance or a particular phrasing of words.

  All I should care about is this: London. London, Dee. My sleepless city, at last, just like Carly and I planned. Cute, right?

  Naida says we could be going into a den of vipers, and I secret
ly hope so. Anything to take away this feeling in my chest.

  No going back now. We catch the 9:14 train.

  A review of the system records on the date in question reveal no train ticket purchases by Carly Johnson or Naida Chounan-Dupré via credit card. We can only assume cash was used.

  80

  24 days until the incident

  Naida Camera Footage

  Sunday, 9 January 2005, 12:15 am

  Time Index Not Noted

  Top Hat Camera Clip #1

  The streetlamps flicker over streets that look as though they’ve seen Victorian England. Kaitlyn, wearing the top hat camera, follows Naida across a deserted road and into a narrow alley; only one set of footsteps echoes against the walls and boarded-up windows that tower on either side.

  “Are you sure this is the right way?” Kaitlyn whispers.

  “I stole my cousin’s map,” Naida murmurs, rifling through her bag.

  She pulls free a thick roll of parchment paper, murmuring, “It shows all the places she gets her supplies and all her… friends.” She nods, her gaze sharpening as she taps the scroll. “We got it right. Down here.”

  “Not exactly the side of London I know best.”

  The alley continues for three hundred yards and then banks sharply left. Kaitlyn follows Naida around the bend, glancing up at the buildings that tower on either side, and then the alley opens onto a small side street.

  “Here,” Naida says, pointing towards a set of railed stairs that disappear down into the pavement, beneath the street level.

  “You’re shitting me,” Kaitlyn says drily. “We’re going into a sewer?”

  Naida rolls her eyes as she puts away the parchment. “It’s not a sewer, it’s just belowground. It’s… grungy-chic.”