Casters Series Box Set

by Norah Wilson

  Alex stumbled on the steps, and Maryanne tried to catch her as she fell forward. Alex could have caught herself if she used both hands, but she couldn’t bring herself to release the diary she gripped so tightly in her hoodie pocket. So she went down on one hand and one elbow, skinning the latter.

  They all froze, waiting to see if the small thump would be heard, and if so, whether anyone would come to investigate it. But the quality of the silence didn’t change. Harvell House slept on.

  “You okay?” Maryanne whispered, touching her arm.

  Alex jerked away as she straightened. “I’m fine.”

  Brooke flicked her lighter but the small, blue-white flame lit the pitch black of the stairwell only dimly.

  “This help?” Brooke asked. There was the faintest hissing sound as she adjusted the flame higher.

  Maryanne answered, “A little.”

  “Whatever,” Alex said. She was still pissed at Brooke for forcing her to share the diary. “We’re just about there anyway.” No sooner had she said this, than the timbre of her footfalls changed, and she took that final trembling step off the stair treads onto the attic floor. She pulled in a choking breath. The dust... it stirred the few memories she did have, memories of waking up on the floor.

  Except last time she’d been here, the room had been washed by the gray light of pre-dawn. Tonight, the white glow of moonlight poured into the small room from the lone window, laying a muted pattern on the floor. But unlike the light of dawn, this rectangle of moonlight only served to darken the room around it.

  Alex’s eyes were drawn to the stained glass window itself, where the moonlight had set the decorative image darkly glowing.

  That other morning, she’d barely glanced at the upper half of the window, but now all she could do was stare at the picture segmented into the glass. The Madonna holding her child. It should have been a peaceful image. It should have been calm. Serene. But it wasn’t. The poor woman stood in a bed of thorn-guarded roses. And the darkness in the glass bits at her feet could only represent one thing. The woman was bleeding as she stood there in the ancient window, high up in Harvell House.

  “Whoa—time warp!” Brooke breathed.

  Alex turned to her. Brooke was using the lighter again, and she’d moved toward the furniture piled in the corner. The same bed Alex had seen days before. The same bureau and rocking chair she’d pushed to the room’s center.

  “Spooky, creepy, time warp. Ouch!” The lighter’s small flame went out. “That gets hot,” Brooke said by way of explanation for letting the light die.

  “You want to go back?” Alex asked. She knew her voice was quick with hope—didn’t even try to hide it.

  “No way,” Brooke walked toward the window and stepped into the light coming through it, her shadow long and thin behind her. Silently Maryanne followed and held out the candle, which Brooke obligingly lit. Alex watched as Maryanne dripped wax into the makeshift holder—a fancy glass ashtray Mrs. Betts only brought out when C. W. Stanley came to the house.

  The two girls settled themselves on the floor, and Alex studied them in the moonlight.

  Brooke’s eyes were avid as she took everything in.

  Maryanne, on the other hand, seemed fascinated by the candle, staring quietly into the flame. She was pretty, sort of, in a straight-laced, not-trying kind of way. Not to be confused with the “natural” beauty that took some girls hours to achieve. This girl... she just flat out didn’t try. Luckily, she didn’t have to. She was smart, too. Alex knew that from the couple of classes they shared. But she had a hunch Miss Hemlock had led something of a sheltered life. How would she react to the revelations in Connie’s diary? Of what had happened to her here in this attic?

  Or of what happened to me?

  Something hammered at her memory again. Still! And all the harder up here, just outside her reach. What had he done to her? How had he gotten her up here? And the worst question of all, was it just “he” and not “them”?

  God, it haunted her, not knowing who’d done this to her. She stared hard into the eyes of every boy at school, every man on the street, trying to see if anyone stared back a moment too long. But then what? How could she be sure? How could she accuse without betraying her secret?

  She wrapped her arms around herself, holding the shaking in. Well, until she caught Maryanne, staring silently up at her from where she sat on floor. Alex loosened her shoulders immediately, shrugged them back into a don’t-mess-with me posture, and sat on the floor with the other two girls.

  “So you found the diary here?” Brooke sat with her feet flat on the ground, knees pressed together and pulled up close, as if to prevent touching too much of the dust and dirt of the place with her pajama-clad butt.

  “Yeah, up here.”

  “Where up here?” Maryanne asked.

  “Just up here.” Purposefully Alex didn’t let her eyes slide ceiling-ward, toward the wooden beam from where she’d pulled it free. That much she’d keep to herself. Absolutely.

  Alex drew a long breath as she pulled the diary from her pocket.

  She’d never had one single qualm about cheating on a test she’d failed to study for, pirating DVDs, or keying the principal’s car like she’d done every year since coming to the Streep Academy. Even that time she and Leah and Kassidy had broken into the Legion to steal booze, she’d done so without the least bit of guilt. Alone in Halifax one time, she’d broken into a vacant house with a Realtor’s sign on its lawn and slept the night in the master bedroom. On these occasions, she hadn’t felt like she was taking. Not truly. At least, not beyond physical property.

  But now... As she held Connie’s little diary in her hands, a great sense of guilt washed over her. A sense that she was violating poor Connie yet again. Taking more from this long-dead girl who’d lost so much in her life. By sharing the diary, she was betraying her secrets. But the choice seemed beyond her now, on so many levels.

  Her resentment toward Brooke flared again, but she took a deep breath and tamped it down. There was nothing to be done about it. And if she had to share Connie’s words, she would do it right. At least she could give Connie that.

  “Read on, Alex.”

  Brooke, of course.

  “Keep your shirt on. I’m getting to it.” Alex began skimming through the pages, her eyes adjusting quickly as she focused on the words.

  “Aren’t you going to start at the beginning?” Maryanne asked.

  “Whose beginning?” Alex murmured, then cursed herself when she felt Maryanne’s gaze sharpen.

  “Duh,” Brooke huffed. “Connie’s.”

  For once, Alex was grateful for Brooke’s directness. She leafed through the pages some more until she found the one she wanted. “Okay, you guys ready?”

  “Yeah, get right to the good stuff,” Brooke said. “Dish the dirt. I saw the dates. Connie Harvell was a sixties chick. There’s got to be some good stuff in there.”

  It took every bit of restraint Alex owned not to reach over and throttle Brooke Saunders. “Connie wasn’t like that!”

  “Shhhhh!” Maryanne hissed. “Keep your voice down! We’ll get caught up here.”

  “Okay, okay,” Brooke’s hands went up in mock surrender. “Connie wasn’t like that. Fine. She was sugar and spice and I’ll love Elvis till the day I die. Her life was sweet and innocent.”

  Alex could feel tears stinging the back of her eyes. Oh shit, she wouldn’t cry! Couldn’t cry in front of these girls. In front of anyone. “Her life was far from sweet and innocent. But that wasn’t her fault.”

  Alex’s throat tightened as she leaned forward toward the candlelight. She wet her lips, swallowed past the lump in her throat. Then, with a silent apology to Connie Harvell, she began.

  September 9, 1962

  I blew out the candles when I heard Billy at the lock. He knows where they keep the key—knows where they keep me. I hid under the bed, but that didn’t stop him. He brought a candle of his own, and when I saw him light it and hold it ou
t to look around the room, I knew I was defeated. Billy knew where to find me. And when he did, he knew how to hurt me.

  Mother and Father were gone to church again. They couldn’t miss a Sunday night meeting, even though they’d spent most of the day there already. Oh, THAT would be damnation! Not what they do to me! So again tonight, I faced my own hell as Billy raped me. Then he beat me. And like he always does, he threatened to kill me if I tell.

  I believe him. So though I scream and scream up here when he does these things to me, I never scream out loud.

  “Connie was beaten,” Maryanne whispered. “She was raped. Oh my gosh... she was locked up in here!”

  Brooke shuddered. “Here? In this attic?” She looked around the dim room, studying it all over again. “Wonder if that’s the bed she hid under?”

  “Oh, the poor girl!” Maryanne said. “She must have felt so... powerless.”

  “So angry,” Alex spat out, surprised she’d spoken at all. She drew a breath as she flipped forward a page, scanned down the old lines with a finger. “Angry beyond belief and scared and alone and... messed up. Just listen... ”

  Alex read on.

  But I went to that place again as Billy hurt me—as he did those things to me. I just slipped away to that place outside my body where it didn’t even seem like the girl on the floor was me anymore. I was just another little girl watching something terrible happen to someone else—something else—the girl-shaped sack on the floor.

  Billy left when he was done.

  And then, as I always do, I got up and went to the window. I looked into those same sad eyes of the lady in the glass, the baby in her arms, her bleeding feet, and I spoke the same futile prayer as I tapped the glass—“I want out, I want out, I want out.”

  Alex fought the urge to slam the diary shut. But a part of her had to go on. She wanted them to know the pain. Connie’s pain; her pain! Though she could never admit to the latter. No one would ever know. But there was more. She had to tell Maryanne and Brooke the rest of it. The rest of what Connie said happened to her that September night.

  And this time—God, what have I done?—this time as I tapped the stained-glass window and pleaded “I want out,” something happened. This time, part of me—a dark part, pitch black and empty—did go out into the night.

  It was nothing physical, and yet, it was. Not so much as a fleshy fingertip went beyond the glass, but part of me absolutely flew right out! It wasn’t my soul that escaped. It wasn’t my mind. But while my body fell to the attic floor, something else, something dark, cast out from Connie Harvell.

  “Holy shit!” Maryanne swore. “The poor girl! It was too much to take. She lost it.”

  “This window?” Brooke turned full around to take in the moonlit glass. “This is the window she... cried out from? Tapped on?”

  Maryanne hugged herself as she shivered. “It would have to be this window. Look at that woman’s eyes. The blood at her feet, just like she said. Oh, poor Connie Harvell.”

  “Crazy Connie Harvell, you mean,” Brooke said.

  Before she even knew what she was doing, Alex flew at Brooke. Grabbing a fistful of Brooke’s pajama top in her hands, she pulled the other girl’s face in close. “Crazy? You think Connie’s the crazy one here? Because she couldn’t handle repeated rape and beatings? Because her mind just couldn’t wrap itself around what was done to her? She’s the one who deserves the names? You see her as weak?”

  “Alex, let her go!” Maryanne’s voice was shrill with panic as Alex’s grip tightened. Brooke scrabbled at Alex’s hands, gasping for breath. “You’ll hurt her! You’ll strangle her. You’ll—”

  “I’ll kick her New York ass.” Alex’s eyes never left Brooke’s, but she released her with a shove. Automatically, Brooke’s hand went to her throat.

  “What the hell?” she rasped. “Are you trying to kill me?”

  Alex shook her head in disgust. Pocketing the diary, she crossed to the window. And though she felt the urge to raise a hand to swipe at her eyes, she kept her hands down deep in her hoodie pocket and just looked out into the Mansbridge night. The wind blew through the scattered trees behind Harvell House. The river was a long black strip past the field. Headlights from a lone vehicle moved along the road on the other side of the river, and then just that quickly, all was dark again. As she stared into the window, Alex became aware of the candlelight’s flicker reflecting in the glass. As if it actually danced there alongside the reflected outline of her own sad eyes.

  Idly, she raised a hand, tapped the glass lightly.

  “I can’t even comprehend how hard that would have been.” Maryanne joined her at the window. “Being abused like that. Locked up here. How... ”

  “Evil.”

  Brooke came over to stand with them. “Alex, I wasn’t trying to make fun of Connie.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Alex said. “I shouldn’t have... gone off on you.” That was all the apology she could manage. “But can’t you guys just imagine it? How... how vulnerable this girl was? How sad? How desperate? Tapping on the window like this.” Her fingers took on a rhythm now as she tap, tap, tapped on the glass. “Can you imagine her standing here, crying for someone to hear? Begging over and over... I want out, I want out, I want out—”

  Alex was out.

  She felt her body drop, felt the sharp explosion of pain as her head hit the floor, but simultaneously she felt a part of herself fly beyond the stained glass and out the window. Alex was conscious of Maryanne’s hands shaking her shoulders. Could feel them on her body as she lay on the attic floor. But at the same time, from outside the window she saw Maryanne’s panic as she leaned over her limp form. From outside she clearly saw Brooke, with her hand over her mouth, take a step backward from her sprawled body.

  Co-consciousness.

  She knew it instantly—that was what she was experiencing. She was aware in both worlds, in both ways! Alex-on-the-floor stared out at Alex-past-the-window. Connie had felt this, written about this. And Alex was feeling it now. She’d cast out too.

  Alex-outside held her pitch-black, empty hands in front of her face. This was wild! She looked down to the ground two stories below and thought, I’m hovering. I’m out here in this amazing, awesome night, and I’m freakin’ hovering!

  And she wasn’t scared. She knew she probably should be. Shit, she should be terrified. She’d just peeled away from... the rest of herself. But she wasn’t frightened. For the first time since the rape, she wasn’t scared.

  Alex-on-the-floor thought, I can feel it too! I feel the night around me even though I’m in here. Or part of me is. And it feels so good. So... free! But she couldn’t articulate it for the other girls. She couldn’t speak at all, as she lay there on the floor.

  Alex-on-the-floor watched as Maryanne’s wide-eyed gaze turned to the window. Stared out and saw Alex-outside staring back in at her through the glass.

  Chapter 6

  From That Darkest Place

  Maryanne

  Maryanne’s heart pounded with terror, as if it would leap right out of her chest. Or out of the window with... whatever it was out there. While Alex Robbins—the flesh, the body, the original Alex Robbins—lay flat on her back on the floor at Maryanne’s feet, out past the window against the star-filled sky, an Alex-shaped blackness hovered.

  Through the clear pane beneath the stained glass Madonna, Maryanne watched the cast-out piece of Alex raise both of her hands. The hovering Alex moved her hands in front of her empty-black face, and they disappeared from sight, only to re-emerge when she waved them out to the sides. Cast-out Alex turned her body—almost in a half-assed pirouette—as she played in the darkness, played as part of the darkness.

  Then Alex stopped, faced the window again, and waved a dark hand to them. Maryanne’s legs weakened.

  “What the hell?”

  Maryanne turned her head to see Brooke backing away, a hand pressed to her mouth. For a moment, she marveled that the other girl had the presence of mind to quiet
her voice to avoid waking the house. Then she got a good look at Brooke’s face and realized she was holding back a scream with those fingers. Tough-talking Brooke was just as freaked out as Maryanne herself.

  Fascination warring with terror, Maryanne turned back to the window where the dark form still hovered, obscuring the stars. But a small, distressed noise from Brooke had her turning around again, seconds later.

  Brooke now knelt on the floor beside Alex. Her hand trembled as she touched her fingers to one pale wrist, moving them searchingly up and then down Alex’s arm. Her face knotted in anxiety.

  Maryanne’s stomach clenched with dread. “Is she... dead?”

  As if in answer to Maryanne’s question, Alex moaned. Her right foot kicked sideways. Okay, it was more of a sudden flop than a kick, as if flaccid muscles had jumped out of paralysis only long enough for that weak, spastic jerk.

  “Her pulse is... oh God, I don’t know!” Brooke said. “Where the hell do you even find it?”

  Maryanne blinked. She’d spent two summers as a junior counselor in a camp for disadvantaged kids and had been trained in basic first aid. It should be her, not Brooke, looking for a pulse.

  “Let me, Brooke.” She squatted down and drew a sharp breath before she grabbed Alex’s right wrist and sought her pulse. Oh, crap. “Her heart’s racing. I mean, it’s hammering. Like she’s run a hundred-yard dash.”

  Brooke was silent.

  Maryanne wet her dry lips. “Should we get Mrs. Betts? Should we... What the hell should we do?”

  Brooke didn’t answer.

  “Brooke, are you even listening to me?”

  As soon as Maryanne turned toward her it was obvious the other girl wasn’t listening. Maybe wasn’t even coherent as she stared out into the night. Out into the black form of Alex.