Mary (Bloody Mary)

by Hillary Monahan

  “Hey, how you holding up?” she asked.

  Mrs. McAllister turned to look at me, her face falling into a frown. “Is everything all right, Shauna?”

  “Yeah! Yeah. I’m just having a rough patch,” I said, understating it by a million. “I’ll be okay.”

  Mrs. McAllister gave me one of those tight mom smiles that said she understood even though I hadn’t said a word about the problem. Our problem. My problem. She cut another half brownie from the pan and brought it my way, dropping it onto my paper towel. “That’s when you spoil yourself with a little extra chocolate, honey. Trust me. It works.” She gave my cheek a pat and then stroked my hair, reminding me of my own mom. I felt my eyes water. I was getting awfully weepy these days.

  Seeing my extra brownie, Todd scowled and sat up in his chair. I watched him wipe his mouth on his arm, leaving a long chocolate smear between his wrist and elbow. “Mama, can I have more brownie?”

  “No. You’ll spoil your dinner.”

  “Won’t Shauna spoil her dinner?” he returned.

  Jess reached out to flick his ear. He batted her away like he was shooing a fly, but she ignored him and flicked his other ear, making him erupt into a series of whines.

  “Come on, Shauna. I think that’s our sign to retreat.”

  Jess led us to Todd’s toy room. There wasn’t much in the way of real furniture, but at least there was carpet and a couple of beanbag chairs. I walked past the G.I. Joes and coloring books to get to the windows. A big bowl of salt was already on the floor, and Anna placed a salt line on the left window while I did the same to the right one. Someone had already pulled down the shades. It made me think of Cody with her black construction paper windowpanes.

  “Is your brother going to barge in here?” Kitty asked Jess. Anna hadn’t quite graduated to making polite conversation yet, but Kitty made the effort.

  “He’d better not, if he knows what’s good for him,” Jess replied.

  I sighed. “You realize if he goes and tells your mom we’re in here, she’s going to kick us out. You need to make sure he’s okay with it or we’ll have to move. Why not your room?”

  “My closet doors are mirrors. I was being careful.” Jess fwumped down into the red beanbag chair before kicking off her flip-flops. “I can handle Toad if it comes to it.”

  Jess had zero intention of talking to her brother about using his room. How couldn’t she foresee the looming disaster? No kid wanted anything until someone else had it, and that was especially going to be true when it was his older sister. This wasn’t much of a Mary sanctuary if Mrs. McAllister was going to boot us out when Todd whined.

  “No, Jess. We need Todd’s approval. I’ll be right back,” I announced. I walked to the door. The doorknob’s gleaming glass surface should have caught my eye, but it didn’t.

  I reached for the doorknob.

  It reached back.

  Two slimy, cold-fish fingers stabbed out from the rounded center, scraping my fingers and ripping into the skin. The jagged edges of Mary’s nails jerked down, lashing at me so hard, they sliced the webbing between my thumb and forefinger.

  My hand felt like I’d plunged it into a nest of fire ants. I stumbled back, blood running down my arm and onto my jeans, dripping onto the white canvas tops of my sneakers. I dug my teeth into my lip to stop myself from screaming.

  Anna rushed over with the salt and flung it at the blood-smeared fingers wriggling from the knob. The moment the crystals struck dead skin, a sizzle sparked, and Mary retreated into the glass. Blood splashes ran over the curve of the doorknob and down onto the carpet. Jess found one of Todd’s SpongeBob T-shirts on the floor and threw it at me. I was in too much pain to catch it, but Kitty snagged it and wrapped it around my hand, putting pressure on the wounds to stop the bleeding.

  “Clean it, we’ve got to clean it and bandage it,” Kitty said. She grabbed the doorknob without a thought for her own safety, but the salt kept Mary behind the glass. Kitty steered me out of the playroom and across the hall to the bathroom.

  “Kitty, n-no, the bathroom,” I said, but she ushered me to the door anyway. Anna trailed along behind while Jess ran off toward the kitchen, presumably to get more salt. Mrs. McAllister called upstairs to see if we were okay. Jess yelled something back. All I could think about was the pain.

  When we got to Jess’s bathroom, Anna darted in to salt the mirror. It was flush against the sink, like it was in Anna’s basement, so she was able to leave a thick line along the edge. Jess ran in with a second box, and the two of them worked together to finish it.

  “Okay, it’s clear. Come in,” whispered Anna.

  Kitty started to put my hand under the faucet, but it was chrome silver. I jerked back, afraid to get too close. Kitty understood, filling the sink with hot water for me. The faucet was still right there, but at least there was enough distance between it and the bottom of the basin that I could avoid any more finger jabs. I dipped my hand into the warm, steamy water, gasping and slumping at the fire racing up my arms. I watched through tear-swollen eyes as the water turned a red-swirled pink.

  “God, we need to…do something. This, the car. I don’t know. Do the ‘I believe in you’ thing again or something,” Anna said. “We need to brainstorm.”

  SLAM.

  One moment the mirror had our reflections, the next Bloody Mary was there, her face smashing against her side of the glass. Bones crunched, like she’d broken something in her own face, but that didn’t stop her from bashing her head against the glass again and soiling it with her thick, crusting fluids.

  I yanked my hand from the sink and the four of us huddled against the bathroom wall.

  “G-get your mom,” I rasped at Jess. “GET YOUR MOM!”

  Jess looked confused, but she didn’t ask for an explanation. She darted from the room to shout for her mother, asking her to come upstairs. Kitty and Anna and I remained, staring at Bloody Mary, who grinned and licked at the smears she’d left on the glass. She stopped and looked straight at me, her head tilting to the side. It forced the muscles in her neck to go taut, the stretch of skin bursting a small gray pustule along her collarbone. A flurry of black beetles poured down her dress. I could almost hear the click-clicking of their jaws.

  Kitty gagged and Anna whimpered, but I was frozen, pinned by Mary’s black-as-midnight eyes.

  Mary stretched up and down as if her body were elastic. One minute she was tall and impossibly thin, the next low and squat. Repeatedly she pushed her palm to the glass to see if it’d give, but the salt kept her contained.

  Then she lifted her hand and splayed her fingers. The tips were covered in my blood. Mary raised them to her nostril holes. I realized with sickening dread that she was smelling me. She was sniffing my blood.

  “Oh, God,” I murmured. Mary smiled, showing us a row of yellow-gray stump teeth. Slowly and deliberately, she popped a finger into her mouth, sucking it clean. Her tongue ran along her knuckle and underneath her nail to capture every last drop of my blood. She lapped at her palm and then slurped the tip of her finger before moving on to the next finger, her eyes fluttering in perverse rapture.

  “Why? Why is she doing that?” Anna asked.

  Mrs. McAllister rushed into the bathroom and came straight for me. She reached for my hand and hissed when she saw the blood swirls curling over my wrist and forearm. I glanced past her leaning blond head at the mirror; it was empty. The moment Jess’s mother arrived, Mary fled. I wanted to cling to Mrs. McAllister and never let go, like a little kid on the first day of school.

  “Oh, hon. How did you manage this one?” she asked, pulling me toward the sink. She put my hand back under the faucet, turning the water on cold as she rummaged through the drawers of the vanity for bandages and Neosporin. I wasn’t thrilled to be so close to the chrome, but having Jess’s mom there was as close to safe as I was going to get.

  “I broke a glass,” Jess said from the hall. “It’s my fault.”

  Mrs. McAllister cast a sharp look
at Jess before dabbing ointment on the shredded flesh between my thumb and pointer finger. It hurt enough that I cringed. “Easy, girlie. If this doesn’t stop bleeding, you might need the hospital for a stitch or two. Keep an eye on it. Do you want me to call your mom?”

  “No. It’s okay. If it doesn’t stop bleeding, I’ll call her myself.”

  She nodded and layered some gauze on the injury before wrapping me in medical tape.

  “Did you clean up the glass?” Mrs. McAllister asked.

  “Yeah. It’s fine. Sorry, Shauna,” Jess said, stepping aside as her mother ducked back into the hall.

  “Good. I’ll come see you in an hourish, Shauna. We’ll check how you’re doing, okay?”

  I followed her into the hall, eager to put the mirror behind me. “Sure, thanks. Oh, hey, Mrs. M? We’re working on a project tonight and need extra room. Is it okay if we use Todd’s playroom? If he needs stuff, it’s cool. We can go somewhere else,” I said.

  She nodded. “Sure. I’ll tell him to grab a couple toys for the night and scram.”

  Jess opened the door wide so I could sidestep the knob and settle back down on the floor. I felt stiff and old; my throbbing hand made my back spasm, too, like my body decided my hand needed sympathy pain.

  “What the hell is going on?” Anna demanded, following me inside. She still had the salt with her, clutched to her chest as she peered from me to Jess and back again. “This is crazy. What is going on?”

  I looked between my friends. Seeing their weary, terrified expressions, I knew it was time to talk.

  The car haunting had Jess on edge. I watched her drift to the window to peel back the shade, looking out at the cars in the driveway like they were monsters lying in wait.

  With all of us together, I detailed what I knew about Cody’s haunting, how Mary was passed to me from a blood tag, and how Cody’s friends and cousin died. I warned them that they were in danger, but none of them made any motion to leave. I should have told them this was it, that I had to go away after tonight, but I wasn’t ready yet. It was selfish, but I was too scared to go it alone. Maybe one day soon I’d have the will to insist they go, but today wasn’t that day.

  Finally, I described Cody’s fly-ridden house and the pigs’ blood. Jess snatched the second letter from my hands, insisting on reading it aloud and refusing to relinquish it when she was done, her fingers smoothing over the paper and flattening the curled edges.

  “Everything okay?” I asked.

  She laid the letter flat on the carpet. “Don’t you think this is sad? Like, what’s said here? He abused her. No wonder she ended up becoming a crazy bitch.” I could see the inherent tragedy developing in Mary’s letter, but I had a hard time assigning pity to her. She was trying to kill me. One day, she’d try to kill every person in this room. Feeling sorry for a would-be murderer was stretching it.

  “I’m not sure,” I admitted.

  Anna wasn’t so diplomatic. “I don’t. Bad stuff happens to everyone in life. That doesn’t mean you have to turn into a jerk. Not to the people who don’t deserve it. Those guys?” Anna pointed at the letter with a snort. “The pastor, that Elizabeth girl? Fine, haunt them. But what did we do to her?”

  Jess was about to reply, but Kitty cut her off. “I don’t think that’s how ghosts work. Not in the movies, anyway. Think about it. They die and then something disturbs their resting place or someone breaks their stuff and they come back. I just don’t think they can see right or wrong anymore.”

  Kitty made me think about Mary’s rising. The mirror. The darkness. The bugs. Mary must have died somewhere around the church, I thought. Maybe she died in the church. Pastor Starkcrowe had threatened to lock her downstairs indefinitely.

  “Hey, anyone got a laptop?” I asked.

  “Yeah, give me a second.” Jess got up to head to her room. Before she touched the doorknob, she bunched her shirt into a wad to form a makeshift glove. It sucked that we’d been reduced to such maneuvers, but there was nothing to do about it. Adapt or die.

  Jess reemerged with her computer. I eyed it, checking for shine, but it was constructed of brushed silver and matte plastic. I felt relatively safe having it in the room. I motioned for Jess to fire it up. The screen had a reflection, so I kept my distance by pressing my back to the wall on the opposite side of the room.

  “What are we looking for?” Kitty asked.

  “You said that thing about the ghost being disturbed, and you’re right. That’s how it works in books and movies. Maybe something happened to her body. Cody mentioned that there was a flood in the sixties. If Mary’s remains were in the church and something disturbed them, maybe that caused her to start haunting people.”

  “The legend did start in the sixties,” Jess said. I remembered her texting that to me the other day. Anna must not have gotten the same information. She looked surprised Jess would know that fact off the top of her head, but before she could ask about it, Jess offered an explanation. “I did some research. Mary Worth died in 1864, but the legend of Bloody Mary didn’t start until the sixties. There was a hundred-year gap.”

  Anna scowled. “Seriously? You knew all these things about Mary Worth and you still thought summoning her was a good idea? Wow. Great plan, Jess. Well done. Ten out of ten.” The sarcasm was palpable. I glanced at Anna, then over to Jess, hoping for a peaceful resolution, but neither of them noticed me.

  They were fixed on each other. Anna was squinting, a combination of no-glasses and annoyance. Jess looked furious. Her eye twitched and her ears were the color of a cherry tomato.

  Finally, Jess broke the silence. “I said it before, I’ll say it again: I screwed up. I know it. We all know it. But being sorry doesn’t fix this. So here’s how it is, Anna. We play nice until Shauna’s Mary-free, and then you get the hell away from me. Or if that doesn’t work, leave now. I’m here to help. If you’re not going to help, go home.” Jess never raised her voice, but she didn’t have to. There was enough fire in her tone that I cringed. I understood what she was saying in spite of it, though. The Mary problem was bigger than our personal gripes. If we wanted to solve this mystery, we needed to work together.

  I was about to ease the tension, but Jess cut me off with a muttered, “Of course, then you’d have to get back into a car to go home, and we know how that goes right now, don’t we?”

  It was mean; Anna hadn’t been the only one in that car. It’d certainly scared me to death, and thinking about it again was enough to make my heart skip a beat. Kitty shrunk down into her beanbag chair, drawing her knees to her chest and hugging them. The lower part of her face was hidden behind her crossed arms, and her eyes jumped from shadow to shadow.

  Anna started throwing her stuff back into her tote bag with a dry, humorless laugh. “You’re such a bitch sometimes. If that’s your attitude, fine. I’ll call my mom and go home. I can help Shauna from there.”

  “Whatever,” Jess said, thrusting the computer aside.

  “Wait,” I said to Anna. “Wait. You know what, Jess? I get what you’re saying about putting Mary first, and I appreciate that. I really do. But you keep saying you’re sorry, but you’ve never actually apologized to us. And that matters. This is scary stuff. And while it’d be more convenient if Anna stopped copping attitude”—I braced, expecting Anna to snarl at me for that, but she remained quiet, her hands wedging her clothes back into her overstuffed bag—“it’s her right to be mad. We were all scared out of our minds in the car—she looked like she was on the hood. She shook it and…whatever. Either apologize to us instead of at us or I’ll figure out this stuff at my place.”

  Jess looked like I’d struck her. Her eyes bored through my skull. Anna’s lips were pinched in a flat line; she expected Jess to start screaming. Kitty snagged the computer, avoiding the fight. I had no idea what she was doing hunkered down behind the screen, but her fingers were loud on the keyboard.

  Jess let out a shrill whistle like a teakettle boiling over. I stiffened, ready for a tantrum, but some
thing dissuaded her. There was a soft sigh followed by a groan. She dropped to the floor beside me with a hard thud. “Fine. Fine, I get it. Yeah. I guess I…I am sorry. I’m sorry you’re all scared. I’m scared, too. I’m scared for Shauna and myself and you guys, so for what it’s worth, I’m sorry. I do really want to help Shauna now.”

  Anna rolled her head back to peer at the ceiling. She took a few long breaths to clear her head and nodded. “Fine. Let’s just figure out what Shauna needs. She’s the priority.” She shoved her tote bag aside and slid down next to Kitty, leaning into her side.

  “Thanks, guys,” I murmured.

  “Hey, come here,” Kitty said. “I found Mary’s church on the historical society site.”

  It was a black-and-white picture of an old church with a tall steeple. A brunette woman stood before its double doors smiling, holding a rake and wearing overalls. The caption read, Adeline Dietrich, Southbridge Parish, 1961, two months before the flood.

  We’d seen a snippet of the church in the Mary Worth picture, but not the whole deal. It was a beast of a building, with large cathedral windows and two side chambers that sprouted off the main body like arms. The stone looked dark, almost black, but it was hard to tell the true color by the picture alone.

  Jess reached out to tap the screen. “Oh, holy crap. I know where that is,” she said. “It’s right next to my grandparents’ place near the river. It might have flooded, but most of the structure is still standing. Maybe we should check it out?”

  The idea was interesting, though I did remember what Cody had said about Moira’s library research. “We could. I’m not sure what we’d find. Isn’t most of the stuff in storage?”

  “Yes, but if the pastor locked Mary in the basement like he threatened…I doubt they’d move a body. There would be some reference if they found the bones, right?” Anna asked.