Sisters of Misery

by Megan Kelley Hall

  Abigail sat up in her bed, nodding, not at all surprised.

  “I knew something like this would happen again,” Abigail said knowingly.

  “Something like what? Why would she come…?” Maddie’s voice trailed off. Suddenly, something clicked in her mind. “What do you mean again? Mother, has Rebecca been here before?”

  It was all making sense—Tess’s dreams of a red-haired girl, the crying in the night, the rune stones that popped up all over the place. It wasn’t Cordelia haunting them. It was Rebecca.

  Abigail shut her mouth in a grim line and turned her head away from Maddie.

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about. Things are getting too difficult, too crazy around here for all of us.”

  “But why? What’s going on?” Maddie said, growing more and more anxious by the minute.

  “I wasn’t surprised when she slipped through the cracks at Ravenswood with the place being shut down and all. But Fairview,” she continued, shaking her head, “I was convinced they’d keep her away from us. Now she’s coming for me, and probably you, too. I knew this would happen. I just prayed it wouldn’t happen like this.”

  Maddie was reeling from her mother’s words. Since when was Rebecca such a huge threat? She knew that her aunt was unstable, that she had been mentally destroyed by Cordelia’s disappearance, that she most likely held some anger against her family, the town, the world, for that matter. But dangerous? A threat? It was hard to imagine, despite the stone-throwing episode at Ravenswood.

  “Why couldn’t you just tell me that you were afraid of Rebecca? Couldn’t you have at least warned me? That she resented us so much? That she blamed us?” Maddie screamed the words at her mother, but she was really only shouting out of fear. Then she composed herself.

  “Get up, Mother. We’re going to Ravenswood to find Rebecca. Where can I find a flashlight?”

  Abigail climbed out of bed and went to the closet for her clothes.

  “Rebecca’s been here before, hasn’t she? And you tried to keep it from me. You knew that she could get out of Ravenswood, but you were too afraid to say anything. But why? You never cared about her before. Why protect her now?”

  “She had her reasons for taking out her anger on me, and I had mine for keeping it a secret. That’s all you need to know,” Abigail said firmly, jutting her chin out in defiance.

  “No, Mother,” Maddie shouted as she grabbed hold of her mother’s rail-thin arm. “You are going to tell me everything that I need to know, starting this minute. After everything you’ve put me through, it’s time for you to start talking. I need to know now. And if you don’t tell me, I’m going to call the police and get to the bottom of it that way.”

  Abigail took a deep breath.

  “No police, they wouldn’t be any help to us anyway. Garrett Sullivan doesn’t know his ass from his elbow.” Abigail shook her head. “I’ll fill you in on our way to Ravenswood. Let’s just go.”

  Maddie left Abigail to get dressed while she ran down to the kitchen in search of a phone book. There was only one way to get into Ravenswood.

  Finnegan O’Malley.

  He was the only person who could get her inside and help her navigate that maze of a building.

  O’Connor…O’Donnell…O’Leary…O’Malley, Finnegan…781-555-4343.

  Her nail-bitten fingers flew over the telephone buttons. Come on, come on, pick up, dammit!

  “It’s three in the fuckin’ morning,” growled Finn. “This’d better be important.”

  “Finn, it’s Maddie Crane. I need your help. Rebecca is missing. You have to get me into Ravenswood right now.”

  “Whoa…whoa…whoa…” Finn countered. “What the hell is going on, Maddie? Why haven’t you called the police? Why’re you calling me? You don’t want to be trekking around in that place in the middle of the night by yourself. It’s suicide.”

  Suicide…The word hit her like a weight. That’s what her mother was worried about.

  “Please, Finn, I need your help!” Maddie screamed into the phone. “Just meet me at Ravenswood. I don’t have time to explain.” Grabbing the keys, Maddie ran out to the car. Abigail was already waiting in the passenger seat.

  “There’s no turning back now,” Abigail said calmly, almost to herself. “I knew it was going to come to this. I just didn’t know it would happen so soon.”

  Chapter 26

  NAUTHIZ REVERSED

  NEED

  Hasty Decisions That Lead to Destruction;

  A Difficult Time is Ahead

  They sped along the winding road carved through the passage of trees to Ravenswood Asylum. Out of the corner of her eye, Maddie detected movement in the darkness, but told herself it was only the shiver of low-hanging tree branches. She scanned the asylum grounds for any sign of life as her mother spoke in slow, even tones.

  “They called her Houdini, she escaped so much,” her mother said wryly. “She resented me for putting her into Ravenswood. Thought her time would be better spent out looking for Cordelia.” Her mother laughed a dry, tinny laugh. “Rebecca quickly discovered the tunnel system beneath the hospital. That’s when she started paying us visits, always at night. She hid in the basement.”

  Maddie tried to imagine Rebecca, the stranger she’d visited briefly at Ravenswood, a shell of her former self, returning to Mariner’s Way again and again. But she seemed so far gone mentally, and so frail, that Maddie couldn’t imagine her having the strength to actually go through with it.

  Maddie looked at her mother in the glow of the pale moonlight. Her face, usually angular and stiff, looked softer, almost remorseful.

  “But why would she do these things to you, Mom? Why blame you? If she wanted to blame anyone, she’d blame Kate and all the rest of the girls from the Academy. They were the ones who made Cordelia’s life hell. Or me, for that matter, for not sticking up for her when I had the chance.”

  “I don’t know. You’d think that she’d go after the bastard who got her pregnant. Your new best friend there. Reed Campbell.”

  “What are you talking about?” Maddie pulled the car to a stop in front of the monstrous building. “Reed had nothing to do with Cordelia’s disappearance. They were never involved. End of story,” she said furiously, slamming the car door.

  “Then why did he give her money for an abortion?” Abigail’s voice was muffled behind the car window as Maddie walked over to the weed-covered stairs of concrete.

  Spinning back to face the car, Maddie blurted out, “How could you possibly know that?”

  Abigail thrust her jaw to the side as if she realized she’d gone too far.

  “I have my ways,” she said firmly as she got out of the car.

  Just as Maddie was about to grill her for her sources of information, a woman’s scream pierced the silence.

  Maddie pivoted, trying to see where the sound came from. Shadows danced along the boarded up doors and windows. There had to be a way inside.

  “Mother, you stay here. I’m going to find a way in. Get back into the car and wait for Finn. If he shows up, tell him to try to find me in there.”

  “I don’t want to stay out here by myself. I’ll come with you.”

  “No, Mother,” she instructed. “I’m sorry, but you’ll just slow me down. I need to find Rebecca before she does anything to hurt herself. I owe at least that much to Cordelia.”

  Thrusting her cell phone into her mother’s hands, Maddie turned toward the vacant building. Maddie had to find Rebecca before she did something to hurt herself. She wasn’t the same woman who had moved back to Hawthorne months ago. Her aunt had been drastically psychologically altered. And in this huge monster of a hospital, anything was possible.

  “If I don’t come out in twenty minutes or so or if you hear or see anything unusual, call the police,” she ordered. As Abigail started to object, Maddie said, “Listen, I don’t know what reasons you have for not wanting to get the police involved. But right now, I really don’t care. You will do as I
say, understand?”

  Abigail nodded meekly for the first time ever.

  Maddie turned on her flashlight and circled around the perimeter of the building, trying to find a way in. In the moonlight, Maddie could see tattered window shades blowing in and out of broken windows like ghosts. It looked like the monstrous building was breathing. As she crept around the building, the first thing Maddie came upon was the faces of the Pickering sisters and Cordelia carved into the wall. They took on an unearthly glow when her flashlight illuminated their hollow eyes and cavernous grins, as if they were daring her to enter, daring her to join them.

  Maddie stumbled her way around the building. Guided by instinct, she groped the walls as brick and mortar came loose in her hands. She smelled dank, mossy decay mixed with something more pungent.

  She fell to her knees when she noticed a loose board covering a basement window. Maddie pulled at the board, cursing as splinters wedged their way under her fingernails. Finally, she pried the board loose and kicked the glass out of the window. Yanking off her jacket, she placed it along the bottom of the window, hoping that it would protect her from any remaining shards of glass. Maddie then lowered herself down, trying to ignore the scurrying sounds. Clinging to the flashlight, she dropped down to the cement floor. Once on level ground, she directed the flashlight’s beam around the room and tried to get her bearings. The subterranean room was freezing.

  This had to be the creepiest thing she’d ever done in her life. There she was—someone who couldn’t even watch a moderately scary film—right in the middle of a real-life horror movie.

  Maddie had to mentally bark orders at herself to stay motivated and not crumble with fear. One foot in front of the other…just move forward…push on…keep moving…you can’t stop now…

  She was in some type of medical storage room with metal gurneys haphazardly lined up next to each other. Maddie knocked into one, and the cool metal clanged, announcing her entrance, as it slid into the others. Maddie tried to hold the flashlight steady to find the door. Running her hands across some metal file cabinets that lined the walls, Maddie edged her way across the dank room. It wasn’t until she saw one of the drawers fully open that Maddie realized where she was; her stomach began involuntarily heaving when she realized that she hadn’t been clinging to file cabinets after all.

  Maddie was in the asylum’s morgue. She charged for the door, which was, mercifully, unlocked.

  Don’t lose it, Maddie. You can’t freak out now. Keep it together.

  Who knew what was waiting for her? Maddie simply wanted to find Rebecca and be done with this place, this family, and this town once and for all. With every step deeper into the asylum, Maddie wondered if she would live to regret coming here, as she regretted going to Misery Island on Halloween night, for the rest of her life.

  Here she was in the middle of the night in a deserted insane asylum looking for a woman with a death wish. And who said that small towns were boring? Maddie thought as she brushed cobwebs and God knows what else from her clothing.

  Maddie crept through the tunnel, searching for a door or a staircase, anything that led up to the main level of the building. She desperately hoped that her terrible sense of direction wasn’t leading her away from the main building, off into one of the many corridors that stretched out away from the heart of the hospital like a spider’s web.

  Echoes reached down to her from above. Maddie heard heavy footsteps just above her head. Was that Rebecca? And then, silence.

  Maddie raced ahead blindly, praying for a staircase, a ladder, an elevator shaft, anything that would help her climb up out of the depths of this evil place.

  As she finally reached a staircase that led up to the main floor, Maddie began to wonder what would bring Rebecca back again and again to their basement.

  What happened in that basement?

  Maddie could only think of one logical reason for her aunt to return: Cordelia.

  Chapter 27

  ANSUZ REVERSED

  WARNING

  A Misunderstanding or Delusion; Manipulation through

  Trickery and Pranks

  Maddie ran up the stairs, desperate to find where the footsteps were coming from. Reaching the top of the staircase, she slowly turned the knob and pushed the door open, stepping into the hallway right off the admittance area. There was a shuffling sound to her right. Creeping across the room, Maddie headed in the direction of the footsteps, stepping gingerly, not wanting to startle Rebecca.

  Who am I kidding? Maddie asked herself. Rebecca knows I’m here. She planned this. She knows this place better than I ever could. She wants me to pay for whatever happened to Cordelia.

  Maddie heard different, heavier steps—slow, steady, methodical—heading in her direction. Maddie prayed it was Finn, but she didn’t want to take any chances. She sucked her breath in, squeezing her body against the damp, mildewed wall, wishing for invisibility. It would be one thing if it was daytime, and she could at least see her surroundings. Suddenly, everything quieted down. The footsteps were gone. She tried to quiet the sound of her own breathing, but was convinced that the sound of her heart was loud enough to fill the entire room with pounding, unrelenting noise. A hand reached out and covered her mouth. Maddie swallowed her scream and bit down hard on the hand, pulling away with every ounce of strength left in her body.

  “Jesus!” Finn yelped, shaking his hand wildly. “What the hell did you do that for?”

  “Oh, my God, Finn,” Maddie yelled, adrenaline pumping in her chest, her body shaking. “What are you doing? Why did you cover my mouth?”

  “Well, I didn’t want you to yell and attract any attention to us. But I guess we need to move on to Plan B. Come on, let’s head up this way. I heard some footsteps right before you decided to make a meal outta my hand.”

  Maddie obediently fell into step behind Finn, feeling a little more secure. At least she had company.

  “Thanks for coming,” she said sheepishly.

  “Now, tell me what’s going on. Why didn’t you go to the police?” Finn whispered as they crept through the corridor.

  “My mother didn’t want us to go to the police. Not yet. I guess she was afraid that we’d get Rebecca in trouble,” Maddie said weakly. She was making excuses for Abigail, though she didn’t really understand her mother’s reasoning. “Besides, everyone’s looking for her over at Fairview. This was just a hunch.”

  “So you drag me out of bed in the middle of the night to go on a wild goose chase in the creepiest place on the planet, all because of a hunch?” He reached behind and grasped her hand, pulling her forward in order to speed her along.

  “I don’t really know. My mother isn’t one for airing our family’s dirty laundry. She probably was afraid that it would get around town and embarrass her.”

  “So she’d rather read ‘Teenagers Arrested for Breaking and Entering Ravenswood’ in the paper tomorrow?” Finn offered sarcastically.

  “Well, if you had gotten here earlier, it wouldn’t have been breaking and entering. It would have been entering with a key. That’s not a crime.”

  “This is definitely out of my jurisdiction right now. I could get into all kinds of shit for doing this. You’d better be right about your aunt being here.”

  “I am, Finn,” Maddie said, her voice quivering. “I have to be. If I’m wrong…I…I don’t know where else to look.”

  Finn stopped and turned, unexpectedly pulling her into his chest. He smelled of laundry soap and cedar, not at all what she had expected.

  “We’ll find her,” Finn whispered. “I won’t let you lose any more of your family, I promise.”

  Then, as if on cue, a woman’s wail echoed off in the distance.

  “Let’s go,” Maddie said.

  They raced down the hallway, carefully avoiding the stray wheelchairs and piles of loose plaster and debris that cluttered the floor. They were in a part of the hospital that had been shut down over a decade ago, and it was already in a severe state of d
eterioration. Passing from room to room felt like being in a neverending maze in a rundown funhouse. Still in the distance, Rebecca’s cries propelled them further and further into the core of Ravenswood. “I don’t know why she’s doing this,” Maddie said, gulping down air as they ran, the muscles in her legs burning. Finn confidently navigated them through the long corridors, never faltering.

  “Maybe she blames you for what happened on the island,” Finn called over his shoulder. She came to an abrupt halt. Maddie had never told him about that night on Misery Island. And she was sure that no one else had either.

  “How could you know about that?” Maddie asked, becoming all too aware of what a vulnerable position she was in. Finn stopped and slowly paced back a few steps toward her.

  “I was there, Madeline,” he said quietly. “I know what you girls did to Cordelia.”

  Maddie never realized how dark Finn’s eyes were until that moment.

  “You…? But how?” Maddie stammered as she backed up slightly, realizing she had gotten herself into a place of horror with someone she barely knew, someone who knew his way through the belly of this beast all too well. How could Maddie even be sure that Finn wasn’t involved in Cordelia’s disappearance?

  Finn turned and walked slowly toward her, shining the light into her face so that he became a darkened shape behind the blinding glare, ignoring the screams and shouts coming from up ahead of them. Finn didn’t seem to be in any rush to find Rebecca. Not yet, anyway.

  “I overheard what was planned for Halloween night. All the Hawthorne Academy assholes talk about all sorts of stuff around me because in your minds, I don’t matter. I’m just the handyman’s kid. Some poor, working-class schmuck who didn’t deserve any attention,” he growled. “But Cordelia paid attention to me. She was the only one. To all the rest of you, it’s like I don’t even exist.”