The Dead House
Page 22
“Hang on,” Brett cuts in. “What does Kaitlyn have to do with Juliet, though?”
Scott shrugs. “My guess is they think you knocked her off.”
Kaitlyn stares at him.
“You know,” he adds, swiping at his neck, “did her in.”
“Yes, thank you,” Naida drawls. “Gorro, they’ll do anything, won’t they? Absolutely anything to get you back.”
“Well,” Scott says, reasonably, “we already knew they wanted to talk to her about Juliet anyway. Breaking out of Claydon was probably not the best thing to do to prove innocence. They’re saying Carly might have been the last one to see her.”
“Yeah, for like two seconds, and she was passed out at the time, if you don’t remember!” Brett says hotly.
“Yeah, all right, calm down, Panicky Annikey. I’m just saying.”
“This is stupid,” Naida says, getting to her feet. “We just have to hide Kaitlyn even more carefully. I want us to keep an eye on this stairway. Make sure it stays secret.” She turns to Kaitlyn. “And I want you to start sleeping at night, and keeping hidden and alert during the day, all right?”
Kaitlyn doesn’t reply, and Naida takes that for affirmation. She nods and then heads towards the stairs. “In the meantime, we have to keep going to class like nothing’s wrong. So let’s get moving, before the kitchen staff get in.”
“As the lady commands,” Scott says, taking out a handful of cookies before handing the bag back to Kaitlyn. “Right you are, love.”
Brett smiles down at Kaitlyn after he gets up.
“Try to rest,” he says. He nods, awkwardly, and then follows Scott out of the room.
83
From: AriHait558
To: RealxChick
Date: 10 January 2005
Subject: Status Update
How are you doing? I’m in the library—study hour. Every little thing is boring as hell without you.
Sincerely,
Rule Breaker
From: RealxChick
To: AriHait558
Date: 10 January 2005
Subject: Re: Status Update
Tired of waiting. Want to get moving. Scared about what “get moving” really means. Why are you emailing instead of studying? Don’t you know I feel bad enough about all of you helping me without you failing on top of it?
Deeply Concerned,
Ghost Girl
From: AriHait558
To: RealxChick
Date: 10 January 2005
Subject: Re: Re: Status Update
Girl-Who-Is-Very-Real-to-Me,
Don’t worry; I’m a genius. I can pass with my eyes closed. I’m curious about what the “get moving” will involve too. Has Naida said anything?
Suave Genius Prodigy
From: RealxChick
To: AriHait558
Date: 10 January 2005
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Status Update
We went to London to talk to someone. I can’t really talk about it. He said not to. Besides, I’d rather not think about it.
PS—I can tell you that his name is Haji, and he’s Naida’s brother. He seems to know his stuff.
From: AriHait558
To: RealxChick
Date: 10 January 2005
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Status Update
I might be able to help. You don’t always have to do everything on your own. When will I see you again? When can we be alone?
From: RealxChick
To: AriHait558
Date: 10 January 2005
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Status Update
It’s not that at all. I just really don’t know what he said, if I’m honest. I’m so confused. I wish he hadn’t taken Naida’s top hat camera off us. I wish I could have filmed it. I would have liked to watch it back. It’s weird how little of it I remember.
I’m not really feeling very sociable. Or sexy.
From: AriHait558
To: RealxChick
Date: 10 January 2005
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Status Update
Shit. Bell rang. I’ll check for your reply later. Don’t worry about anything—it’s not worth it. Naida knows what’s going on, I’m sure. I guess we should just enjoy the calm, right?
Talk later,
A
84
After the meeting with Haji, the basement camera footage shows Kaitlyn staring at the wall day after day, barely touching the food she is given. It is unclear what has happened, since she does not write in her diary.
Ari visits almost every day. They kiss, but not much more. He asks her to come to the Forgotten Garden, but she refuses. One day he brings her a pile of wildflowers. She smiles faintly and turns back to the wall.
It is six days before Naida enters the basement with news that shocks Kaitlyn out of her depression.
Naida Camera Footage
Sunday, 16 January 2005, 11:45 PM
Basement
The camera clicks on as Naida storms into the room. Kaitlyn is sitting on the mattress, facing the wall.
“Come on,” Naida demands. Above her, the light flickers ominously. “Get up.”
Kaitlyn doesn’t move, and for a moment, Naida won’t give ground. Then she exhales and walks over to the mattress, flinging herself on top of it.
“It’s taking longer than I thought to get everything in place,” she mutters. “I’ve been keeping an eye on Mike, just in case. Apart from fondling Brenda in her room after lights-out, I haven’t seen anything yet. And the ritual… it isn’t my usual kind of thing. But it will happen. Trust me. You can’t give up hope.”
Kaitlyn doesn’t reply.
“Anyway, there’s a problem. There’s some guy out there saying he knows you. Demanding to see you. He was actually in the main building today at reception. I thought he was a nut job, but then he turns up again now.” She checks her watch. “It’s close to midnight. Crazy-ass talking about pesky birds—”
Kaitlyn’s head snaps sideways. “What?”
“Huh?”
“Birds?”
“Aye, he kept going on about some falcon shit—”
Kaitlyn is on her feet in a moment, running past Naida and out the door.
“What—Kait! You can’t go out there!”
Naida sprints from the room after her. The camera footage doesn’t end for an additional thirteen seconds.
[END OF CLIP]
85
16 days until the incident
Diary of Kaitlyn Johnson
Monday, 17 January 2005, 2:00 am
Basement
I’m sorry I’ve been ignoring you. It’s just been too hard.
Haji is in my head. I guess he’s not going anywhere. I would have explained if there was an answer.
But, Dee! Something wonderful happened! He’s here! John, my Viking! He’s here! I feel like the old me—the me that danced away the night in Masqued with John, who ate the seeds he brought me and flew through the streets with him at my side, the me who lived before my parents died.
FREEDOM.
JohnJohnJohnJohnJohnJohnJohn!
My soul is singing, Dee.
Later
Ari was here. He’s confused about John. He didn’t say much, but I could see it in his face the second he arrived. Tightness in the lips, granite in the jaw. Bruises in his eyes.
I kissed him, told him John was like my brother, and he hugged me and said, “Everything is going to be okay.” Except I don’t want Ari to hate John. My John. Ari smelled my hair and then kissed me again.
We had sex on the cold, wet floor of the basement, and the whole time, the dead girl was grinning in the corner. It was only after he was gone and I was smoking a cigarette (Carly, I’m sorry) that I remembered Naida’s camera had been filming the whole time.
[No such clip has ever been found.]
86
15 days until the incident
Diary of Kaitlyn Johnson
Tuesday, 18 January 2005, midnight
> Basement
I won’t hear these lies
Your words laced with arsenic
Poisonous deceit
It is unclear what lies “Kaitlyn” referred to in this haiku poem. Perhaps this is only an indication of the degradation of her mental stability, or perhaps it is something far darker. Something she chose never to share.
Naida Camera Footage
Wednesday, 19 January 2005, 5:00 AM
Basement
John and Kaitlyn sit on the mattress, facing each other. He is a tall, broad-shouldered youth with a thin beard and long hair tied back. He wears a Metallica T-shirt and a leather jacket. They sit in silence for a long time, Kaitlyn furtively glancing at John every few seconds.
“What?” he asks at last, grinning.
“You… you look so different. A beard?”
“Even more Viking now, right?” He rubs his face, smiling. “You look different too.”
“How?” Her eyes are bright with anticipation, and she leans forward.
“You look thin, and…”
“What?”
He laughs, throws up his hands, then slumps. “Well, look how you’re living.”
Kaitlyn looks around, her expression difficult to read. “It’s not that bad, really.”
“You’re sleeping on a moist mattress on the floor of a basement.”
“It’s okay. The mattress is good.”
“God’s sake, DH, you know what I mean. You’re going to catch your death.”
It is true that Kaitlyn looks drawn and pale.
She nods. “Yeah. It’s not forever, though. Just until Lansing and the cops stop focusing on the school. Stop looking for me.”
“They say you had something to do with a girl going missing.”
“It’s a lie. I was passed out when she decided to walk home. Naida was with me the whole time. So how could I have done anything to her?”
“This is… this is messed up, Kaitie. Maybe… maybe you should—”
Her body tenses. “What? Go back to Claydon?”
John looks at her, mute.
“Are you… are you joking?” She jumps to her feet. “Are you kidding me right now?”
“Calm down.”
“No! No, I won’t calm down! You’re telling me I should go back to a nuthouse! You told me I didn’t belong there—on the phone, you told me! You were lying?”
Kaitlyn’s words become shrill, yet there is something more, because suddenly she turns away and half-collapses against the wall, her palms pressed against the dark surface to keep herself erect as she gasps for breath.
John hurries to her side and pulls her into a tight embrace, but she begins to gasp deeply and scream with every exhale.
“Shh, Kaitie, it’s okay. Shh…”
Kaitlyn’s screams turn into cries and then her cries become sobs.
“I’m sorry,” John says. “I’m sorry. I’m an idiot. I’m sorry. Shit.”
Kaitlyn’s arms fall to her side, and she seems calm. “I have to go,” she says, her voice empty. “Let me go.”
John releases her and steps back. “I’m sorry, Kait.”
She doesn’t look at him. “I have to go now.”
John steps aside and she stalks past him like a zombie. He stands staring after her for a few seconds, then he turns and punches the wall.
“Damn it!”
[END OF CLIP]
87
14 days until the incident
Diary of Kaitlyn Johnson
Wednesday, 19 January 2005, 11:12 pm
Basement
Naida’s bind no longer holds.
The Dead House is upon me once again.
It’s
A
Trickster.
It’s a thief.
Thought I saw Carly. Just for a second. She was standing at the end of a long hall. Could I put my joy into words, even though it lasted only a moment? Probably not. But it doesn’t matter, because when I ran forward, the house bent around her and she was gone. I could hear the walls laughing at me.
Strange.
Stranger still, when I opened my eyes, I could still feel the house. Feel its solidity, feel its putrescence, feel its floors, walls, and roof. Smell the decay of it. I could feel the awareness of it, the hunger. Until I realized that it wasn’t the Dead House I was feeling at all.
It’s the school.
88
23 days after the incident
Extract from the statement of Annabeth Lansing
Friday, 25 February 2005
Patients do construct mental settings that can help them escape their reality. When those settings become more real than reality, or bleed into reality, we have psychosis. Thoughts and emotions become so warped and impaired that external reality can no longer be accessed. It is a discontinuation in the belief of the person’s own reality. That is psychosis.
Diary of Kaitlyn Johnson
Monday, 24 January 2005, 2:52 am
Attic
So here I am. Naida said she wanted to talk to me. That it was important to do it up here, and she was right. I finally understand. I think I do. I recorded the conversation like I did before, so take it in, Dee. I could use your opinion.
“This isn’t Carly’s handwriting,” Naida said. She was standing at the farthest wall, right by that big stain, her hand on the wood.
“You don’t know that—”
“I know my best friend’s handwriting, Kaitlyn.” She turned to look at me, and I couldn’t decide whether to slap her or run from her. Before I could decide, she whispered, “Write something for me.”
“This is stupid.”
She stepped towards me, holding out a marker. “Write for me. Here, on the wall.”
“No.”
“Why?”
Cornered, I got up off the green sofa and walked away. I don’t know if I intended to leave. “I just don’t want to, okay?”
“You wrote this. All of this. The writing—it must have taken days.”
“I didn’t write it.” I needed to make her understand, and being evasive wasn’t going to help, Dee. “Yes, it’s my handwriting, but I didn’t write it.”
“I believe you.” She said it so simply, and I got a small glance of the Naida Carly loved so much. I think I loved her too, a little, then. Just for her faith.
“I think… I think something else did.” She choked the words out. She sighed and rubbed her hands over her face. She looked tired. Had she slept? “That house you keep dreaming about? The, what was it, the Dead House?”
“Yeah.”
“Did you know that in dream psychology a house represents the self? Your own mind?”
“Oh, hello, Dr. Lansing. You look different today. Get a ridiculous perm, by any chance?”
Naida managed a smile. “It’s simple fact. I think the Dead House is your mind. I think you were right when you said Carly was stuck in one of the rooms… with something. I think she was still in there, with you—only trapped. Unable to come out. But I don’t think that’s true anymore. I think she’s gone.”
Icy terror flooded my veins, and I wanted to make her stop, but I couldn’t. “I think I saw her, though—the last time I was in the house. She was standing at the end of a long corridor, but then in the blink of an eye, the house had bent itself around her and she was gone.”
“You sure it was her?”
I wasn’t, Dee. Not at all.
“In the last dream,” I whispered, “the house felt really empty. Not quite empty, but empty of her. So… no. But if she’s not in the house, where did she go?”
“I don’t know. Somewhere beyond you. I always told Carly that you two were something—something special. It was something I sensed, rather than knew. But I could tell that it put you in danger.”
“You always spoke about dual souls,” I said, remembering the countless times I had put her down.
Two souls in one body, blah blah.
Naida nodded. “I think there’s a kind of doorway t
o that other place inside you. Like a portal. The door that the Olen used to steal her away. It’s the same door he used to enter you in the first place. I think all those times you heard—what did you call it, your Voice?”
“Aka Manah.”
“Aye, every time you heard him coming closer, he was entering you. Finding that door.”
“Wait, so my Aka Manah is the Olen you keep talking about? They’re the same?”
“I think so, yes.”
“But I heard Aka Manah before the Halloween party.”
“I think the Halloween party—the Olen board… I think it just made it worse. I sensed that you were already in danger before that. But anyway, it doesn’t matter now. The thing is… I think…” Her voice trailed off.
She stood up and paced the room.
“You look like you have to tell me I have terminal cancer.”
Naida stopped, pressed her lips together, then continued. “I think you’re possessed.”
I remembered the girl from the Mala nightclub, how she writhed and shrieked and scratched that man’s face. I couldn’t be… possessed. Not like that. Not like her.
“Somehow,” Naida continued, oblivious to my screaming thoughts, “I think… I think Carly opened the doorway. I don’t know if she knew she was doing it, but I think she did it all the same.”
“Carly? Why do you think she did it?”
“Well… did you?”
“No,” I snapped, irritation bubbling up inside me. “But maybe you did with that stupid Olen board of yours at Halloween. Or with your little Mala group last year, I don’t know!”
Naida stared at me for a moment, and I thought she looked a little pale.
“I’m not accusing her, Kait. I’m just trying to find answers.” She took a breath. “It just seems likely that a door like that could only be opened from within. Anyway, it doesn’t change the fact that I think something’s in there with you.”