Liv, Forever

by Amy Talkington

  The temperature dropped with the sun as the boys rowed and rowed. After some minutes, I realized they were rowing me straight into the middle of the lake. When I asked about our destination, they just chuckled and said, “We’re just taking you where you belong.” I told them I was cold, and one of them told me I deserved to be. I realized they were pulling some kind of cruel prank, and perhaps I wasn’t terribly welcome at Wickham Hall. I stopped my protestations—I had prepared myself for this kind of ridicule. I was, after all, from the lower class.

  Finally it was dark, save for the moonlight, and they pushed me into the water. I did not put up a struggle because I wanted to save my strength for swimming back to shore. What I did not expect was what happened next. They put their hands on my head and pushed me under the water, holding me there.

  Somehow I caught a glimpse of one of their hands—a Wickham Hall ring, and beneath the insignia an inscription read: B.A./V.P. 1885.

  We retreated to a remote corner of the library and started to compile information.

  Gabe and I came up with a list. We had seen seven ghosts: Weeping Willow Girl, Skellenger Girl, Gossip Girl, Boathouse Girl, Jackie O Girl, Lydia, and the blonde I’d caught a glimpse of in the nature preserve. If we could find names, or at least dates, for each ghost, then we’d know where to look in the student files for their records.

  First, Weeping Willow Girl. She was usually at the weeping willow tree near the well. She was wearing a beaded dress, something formal for a party, maybe. Her throat was cut. And she was singing that song. I remembered the chorus: And that’s the reason I’ve got those weepin’ willow blues.

  Gabe Googled “weeping willow blues” and easily found it was a Bessie Smith song that had been a hit in 1924. So Malcolm asked the librarian for the microfilm of any state newspapers from that year. She had The New Hampshire Gazette, which she boasted was “the nation’s oldest newspaper,” as if it were her own. Malcolm scoured the editions—day after day, week after week—looking for a death announcement, while Gabe used the rolling library ladder to pull the 1924 and 1925 yearbooks from the shelves and examined them on the long worktable. I stood behind him, studying the class pictures, hoping to identify her.

  Malcolm and Gabe both flexed the serious deductive reasoning they’d learned and honed at Wickham Hall. And I couldn’t help but notice that they worked surprisingly well together. They were alike in more ways than either would care to admit.

  “Death reported at Wickham Hall, February 1924!” Malcolm blurted excitedly, reading from the microfilm. Then more silence as he read. “But, damn, not a student. A male teacher. Natural causes.”

  We couldn’t find a picture we recognized in the yearbooks, but seeing as how she was singing that Bessie Smith song and wearing a flapper dress—like the girls were wearing in the mid-twenties—we could safely place her in 1924 or 1925.

  Next: Lydia in the catacombs. She didn’t have a visible wound, but there was definitely something wrong with her neck. And she was erratic, with wild eyes, as if she’d gone mad. She was wearing that Smiths T-shirt with a black-and-white image of a young guy in profile. We Googled and found it was for the Smiths album Hatful of Hollow, released November 1984.

  Gabe and I pored over the 1984 yearbook. We both recognized her immediately in the Fifth Form group photo, where she lurked in the back with a few other goth and hippie types. Then we found her again in the literary magazine photo—Lydia Korn was her full name. In the picture she looked typical-teenage angry, but not crazy like now.

  And Skellenger Girl—the one who jumped out of the cupola at me—had blood coming out of her nose, ears, and eyes. She’d probably been pushed to her death. She was wearing what looked like a school uniform—a black jumper over a white blouse with large, billowy sleeves. Malcolm discovered the girls’ school uniform matching that ensemble was adopted in 1907. Malcolm checked the yearbooks from that time while Gabe scoured microfilm from The New Hampshire Gazette starting in 1907 to see if there was any mention of a death at Wickham Hall. Gabe eventually discovered an article about a suicide in 1915—a Florence Kelly had thrown herself from the cupola of her dorm. Malcolm cross-referenced her name in the 1915 yearbook and, yes, it was definitely her. Florence Kelly.

  The Gossip Girl I’d seen in Main was easy to date. I remembered she was wearing leopard-print flats with a distinct metal emblem. A quick Google search revealed the shoes were designed by Tory Burch and rose to popularity in 2005. Assuming she died in 2005, we looked through the 2004 yearbook and there she was—a trendy but sweet-looking Third Former named Brit McLean.

  Boathouse Girl was wearing those bloomers and that dress. It reminded me of some Monet paintings of bathers I knew had been painted in the 1870s. We learned her outfit was indeed a bathing suit, the style that was worn in Victorian times—the kind that modestly covers the entire body. So, Boathouse Girl must have died sometime between 1865 and 1900. She was the most elusive.

  As for the Nature Preserve Girl, there was no way of knowing. I hadn’t seen enough to have any idea when she might’ve lived. And Gabe, who never visited the nature preserve, hadn’t seen her at all.

  “I don’t do nature,” Gabe boasted.

  “That’s like saying I don’t do air,” Malcolm replied.

  Gabe shrugged at him. Yes, they worked well together, but that certainly didn’t mean they agreed on much. Or anything. But we were actually making progress. At what? We didn’t exactly know, but we were getting somewhere.

  Finally, there was Jackie O Girl. She was the one I’d somehow seen—or at least thought I’d seen—in the cemetery on that Headmaster Holiday night before I died. She was undeniably sixties, had slit wrists and a blood-soaked jacket and skirt. Gabe and Malcolm studied the yearbooks from the sixties, trying to identify her, or at least date her uniform. No luck.

  “I swear it was her who I saw that night in the cemetery. Maybe we should try to talk her,” I proposed again.

  “No! I told you—”

  Gabe was about to go postal when, out of nowhere, Kent and Abigail appeared. Standing side by side, their twin-ness was almost eerie, like that famous Diane Arbus photo of the two girls, almost identical but not quite.

  “What are you doing?” Abigail asked Malcolm. Her tone was unreadable. She deliberately ignored Gabe.

  “Just looking at some old pictures,” he said. His knee twitched, his foot bouncing up and down. I wished I could stop it. Gabe noticed, too, his eyes flitting toward Malcolm.

  “With him?” Kent pressed, visibly concerned that Malcolm was with Gabe.

  Malcolm nodded.

  “You feeling okay?” Kent added. “Did you talk to the grief counselor? You don’t want them to tell your dad.”

  Malcolm stiffened in his chair.

  “When’s he coming?” Kent pressed.

  “Tomorrow.”

  “We missed you last night,” Abigail said.

  “At some point we need to discuss the absences,” Kent went on. “I—”

  “In case you didn’t notice, we’re kinda busy here,” Gabe interrupted.

  “Right.” Kent didn’t take his eyes from Malcolm. “New friend?”

  “Yep.”

  Kent shrugged. “Just talk to the counselor, okay?” And then he drifted off, his near-mirror-image shadowing close behind.

  “Your friends are assholes,” Gabe said, loud enough so that they’d hear. “Just for the record.”

  “Kent’s not bad. I swear.” Malcolm looked down, ashamed. “I had some issues last year. I got really depressed. I isolated … so I took some time off.”

  Gabe frowned. “That’s why you left? I heard you went abroad.”

  “That’s what everyone is supposed to think,” Malcolm said. “Kent kind of saved me. He helped spread that lie. But he also helped me get help. I owe him. And anyway, I’m stuck with him. He’s a Victor. We’re all stuck with each other. But with him … I don’t mind. I know he’s kind of a dick, but he’s a friend.”

  Gabe
put his hand up like he was taking an oath. “I do solemnly swear to befriend all the stuck-up pigs and jerks heretofore known as the Victors.”

  “Stop it, Gabe,” I snapped. I couldn’t help it. Malcolm had just confessed something huge; he’d made himself vulnerable. Why couldn’t Gabe back off?

  Gabe swallowed. He nodded toward me. “Sorry, man. That was harsh. I just …”

  “Whatever,” Malcolm said. “Anyway, it’s not like that, at least I don’t think that was what we were swearing. I wouldn’t exactly know.”

  “Because?”

  “It’s not in English. It’s all in Latin and some old Celtic dialect.”

  Gabe barked a laugh. “So, wait, you sit and make all these oaths, and you don’t even know what you’re swearing to?!”

  “I heard a rough translation. Once.” Now Malcolm looked ashamed. “But yeah, pretty much.”

  AS WE WERE LEAVING the library, three police investigators approached Gabe, blocking his exit. They just wanted to talk, they said. They knew he and I had become friends, and they wanted to learn more about me. At the station. He said he was busy, he had homework, but they assured him it wouldn’t take too long. It was clear he didn’t really have a choice in the matter.

  “Fine, but can I at least take a pre-interrogation whiz?” he asked in true Gabe form. The officers stepped back. Gabe scurried off to the bathroom. Malcolm followed. As did I. And in that bathroom, we quietly made a pact to sneak out and meet that night at 1 A.M. outside the Headmaster’s Quarters to pull the girls’ records.

  AS MALCOLM AND I approached the Headmaster’s Quarters, I worried Gabe might have been detained. Or gotten caught sneaking out. I missed him the same way you’d miss your hands or your voice. He was both of those things to me, particularly the latter. As we waited, Malcolm paced, looking at his watch. “He’s my connection to you,” he said, echoing my thoughts. “He better be here.”

  Gabe slunk from out of the shadows. Thank God. He looked tired, but relatively unscathed. He shook his head, making it clear he didn’t want to talk about the questioning—or risk anyone overhearing us.

  Malcolm’s master key got us into the house. I lingered at the foot of the headmaster’s stairs, standing guard, while Malcolm and Gabe crept into the records room and rifled through the files, searching for the dead girls’ Wickham records. As I waited, I studied every detail around me. Next to the door was another historical plaque. This one detailed every headmaster who’d resided here, starting with Elijah Wickham.

  There were several holes above the front door, as if there had been bolts of some kind to hang something above it. Something heavier than mistletoe. And, looking closely, I could see the door had been damaged and carefully repaired and repainted. The door frame and even the walls on either side of the door had all suffered some damage—marks or streaks of some kind.

  I drifted into the small room attached to the living room; I wanted to look more closely at those strange photographs I’d seen before. Each photograph was labeled. The first read: Elijah Wickham and the spirit of his mother, Minerva, 1877. Elijah was a handsome young man, maybe thirty. Posing thoughtfully, a halo of light above him. Looking very carefully, you could see the faintest eyes looking out over him. I guess that was supposed to be her. It was spirit photography—obviously a hoax, right?

  I’d learned about spirit photography in a multimedia class I took at a community college last summer. Hilariously, the whole movement started with an accident: a photographer mistakenly double-exposed his film. When he realized that it looked like a ghost, he decided to capitalize on the booming Spiritualist movement and market himself as a spirit photographer. Spirit photography became quite a thing—think JibJab of the nineteenth century except people actually seemed to think it was real.

  Another, Elijah Wickham with female spirit, 1886, revealed an older Elijah, now standing with hand to chin, pensive. A trace of a girl swirled above him. She reminded me of Boathouse Girl. Her peaceful smile was hardly recognizable, but I wondered if it could be her or, more likely, a super-imposed photo of her.

  Elijah Wickham with three female spirits, 1916 portrayed a greying Elijah with a swirl of light and three ashen smiling faces around him. One of those faces looked distinctly like Skellenger Girl, with her big blue eyes. He’d used her Wickham portrait—the one I’d just seen in the yearbook—for the double exposure.

  And Elijah Wickham with many spirits, 1930 portrayed an elderly Elijah outdoors in the woods, arms raised as if in victory, surrounded by six bright “spirits.” Now I saw another familiar face—Weeping Willow Girl.

  The final photo—this one much smaller—was Wallace Wickham with Minerva. An aged, kind-looking Wallace was seated in a sumptuous room, enveloped in a blur. There were no eyes or faces, but he genuinely seemed to be wrapped up in the spirit of Minerva in this one. Perhaps this one was real. His eyes were closed, but the expression on his face reminded me exactly of the way Malcolm looked when I was around—peaceful but deeply sad.

  I was so engrossed in the photo that at first I didn’t hear the footsteps coming down the stairs. It wasn’t until the thunk of two slippers that I was shaken out of my daze. I flew out of the small sitting room into the vestibule. Headmaster Thorton was there grumbling, “Hello?”

  I panicked. This was my fault. I was supposed to be at the foot of the stairs. I was supposed to have alerted Malcolm and Gabe if anyone was coming. I needed to distract him, draw him away from the records room. I surged past him. He shivered and shook his head as if he’d felt a chill, mumbling, “Damn drafts.” As he went to check the window in the living room, I looked around for more to do, grasping for something light enough for me to affect. The butterflies.

  I rushed at the hanging butterflies and pushed myself through them. I ignored the burning pain as best I could—the swarm began to swoosh and flutter in the air. The metal contraption that held them up squeaked. But I had to collapse against the couch, drained.

  Thorton went over to the butterflies. He touched the delicate strings, calming them. Then he checked the other windows—none were open, of course. He was confused and unsettled now.

  I had another idea. I lifted myself up and rushed past the old steam heater, chilling it, causing the thermostat to turn on. The radiator began spewing steam and hissing. Somehow that made him feel better, convinced everything was the fault of that noisy heater. He padded over and turned a knob. As he started back up the stairs, I collapsed on the bottom step, still stinging and exhausted. Once I recovered and was certain the headmaster was back in bed, I crept in to find Malcolm and Gabe.

  The records room was something out of the past, long before computers, musty and stale: rows and rows of floor-to-ceiling files, documenting every student who ever attended Wickham Hall. Malcolm and Gabe were so deep into a heap of folders they hadn’t heard a thing.

  “Thorton came down, but lucky for you guys, I did some deft ghost interceptions.”

  Gabe chuckled.

  Malcolm asked, “What’s funny?”

  “Liv’s back. She saved us from Thorton.”

  “For now,” I grumbled, angry at myself. “Any progress?”

  “Progress?” Gabe beamed. “We struck gold. We found a file for every one of them. Boathouse Girl took forever, but we just found her.”

  Malcolm started gathering up folders. “Let’s get out of here. We can go over it all at my dorm.”

  THE THREE OF US climbed through Malcolm’s ground-floor window. Gabe and Malcolm now knew to leave the window open a few extra seconds for me to follow. “In,” I announced. Gabe shut the window as Malcolm spread seven school folders out onto his bed.

  “Seven?” I asked. “You found Nature Preserve Girl?”

  “No. The six we identified and … you,” Gabe explained.

  “Me?!”

  “We thought it might help us look for commonalities,” Malcolm said. He was getting good at guessing my side of the conversation and responding to it. Sometimes it even seemed like he
could hear me.

  “Okay. I guess. But please tell me that’s not the end of this story. That I become some murderous ghost.”

  “You’re not going to become a murderous ghost,” Gabe assured me.

  Malcolm followed Gabe’s stare and said firmly, “We know you’re not that, Liv. You will never be that. And that’s why we’re doing this—to end it. To make things right.”

  “Okay. Tell him I said okay.”

  Gabe grumbled. “She said okay.”

  “Say it nicely.”

  “She wants me to say it nicely.”

  Malcolm flashed a brief smile, but I was frustrated with Gabe. We all felt that way. Gabe was sick of having to repeat everything I said. I would have been, too. And Malcolm was clearly frustrated he couldn’t hear me. But we got back to the task at hand. Malcolm moved all the folders into chronological order and started to review the facts.

  “Clara Dodge, aka Boathouse Girl, disappeared in 1885. Technically, it was an unsolved missing person. Florence Kelly, aka Skellenger Girl, died in 1915. Suicide. Ruth Bookout, aka Miss Weeping Willow, died in 1925. Suicide. Cut her own throat.”

  “How is that even possible?” Gabe grumbled angrily.

  “Just let him keep going,” I said.

  Gabe growled, shaking his long hair down over his face, as Malcolm proceeded. “Mary Bata, aka Jackie O Girl, died 1965. Suicide. Cut her wrists. Lydia Korn, died 1985. Suicide brought on by a bad reaction to LSD.”

  “Shit! No wonder she seems so insane,” Gabe proclaimed. “She’s tripping.”

  He had a point. That could explain her belligerence and wild eyes.

  “And, finally, Brit McLean, aka Gossip Girl,” Malcolm finished. “Died in 2005. Suicide. Hanged herself in the lobby of Main. So … those are the facts.”

  “According to Wickham Hall,” Gabe added.

  “Yes,” Malcolm concurred. “The facts according to Wickham Hall.”

  “So what does it all mean?” Gabe pressed.

  “Well, for starters, they’re all girls,” Malcolm said.