At my questioning look, she went on, “The prank will be in this super-ultracondemned building that used to be an insane asylum. It’s the most haunted building on the campus.”
“I thought Jessel was the most haunted,” I said, as I felt a flutter of panic. Not because of the chills and thrills, but because I really didn’t have time to go watch a prank. I couldn’t remember the name of George Washington’s wartime aide-decamp, and if Jefferson or Jackson had owned Monticello. “And this place was never an insane asylum. It was a family retreat.” I tried to remember the history of Marlwood. “And a girls school a long time ago. During the American Revolution,” I added lamely.
“After the Civil War. So they said.” Julie wagged her brows. “But we know different. It was a loony bin.”
We. I suppressed a sigh. I wanted to remind her that she was the one who was so afraid of Marlwood’s ghosts that she had gotten a roommate.
Sneaking out when you lived on campus wasn’t much different from sneaking out when you lived at home. It turned out that Julie and I were supposed to show up at ten, giving me lots of time to study. The prank was scheduled for midnight and everyone knew about it. Half our dorm was planning to watch. The other half was too afraid they’d get in trouble. Smart girls.
Julie helped me arrange pillows on my bed to look like I was sleeping. She was so excited and nervous that she was shaking.
We tiptoed past our housemother’s door. Ms. Krige was not very motherly. Her TV was on, and I hoped for the best. We opened the front door very, very slowly . . . then we flared out into the bitterly cold night. In sweaters and coats, me in my high-tops and shredded jeans, we crossed our quad, darting past Jessel’s privet hedge, and dashed into the woods.
Lara was waiting for us. She was dressed all in black and carrying a black hood. She said, “Just you two, right?” and craned her neck around us. I was willing to bet Claire and Ida were back there, probably Elvis and Marica, too. They weren’t allowed to show up until later. We two were the only Grose-ites privileged to see things up close and personal. But I let Julie do the nodding, and Lara seemed satisfied. She turned and walked us into a thick stand of redwood trees. Leaves rustled. I heard organ music.
Then we stepped out of the shadows into a moonlit clearing. The hair on the back of my neck rose as I stared through a chain-link fence with a large sign that read DANGER! KEEP OUT! CONDEMNED. Veils of mist shifted and trailed over a decayed two-story building with a jagged rooftop of chimneys and gables jutting over the upper floor. Ivy trailed down the brick exterior, and at least half of the structure had collapsed into piles of rubble. Cobwebs stretched over mounds of broken bricks and rusted metal. I spotted an eyeless baby doll and a rotted satin slipper.
Lights flashed on in the arched windows, revealing faces in the broken glass—blurry white circles with blackened eyes and mouths opened in silent screams.
“Wow. This is pretty incredible,” I said.
“Isn’t it cool?” Julie nudged me. “Can you believe they did all this and Ehrlenbach doesn’t have a clue?”
No, I couldn’t, actually.
In front of the house, the mist thickened. I heard a scream, and then the whole house went dark and silent.
“Okay, good.” Mandy’s voice blared over a PA system. “Take a break.”
Then the rotted front door creaked open, and Mandy stood in the frame, wearing a white robe that covered her straight shoulders and plunged to the ground. The Bride of Frankenstein.
“You’re la-ate,” she said to Julie in a singsong voice. “Lara will have to cut off your head for that.” She smiled at me. “Hey, Linz.”
“Are we really late?” Julie fretted.
Lara rolled her eyes and dropped her black hood over her head. Then she scooted past Mandy and went inside.
“That’s a good look for you,” I told Mandy, trying to sound cool and unfazed. But seriously, all this for a prank? What was the other, “official” haunted house going to be like?
She raised a brow as if giving me points for trying. “Just think, all this could be yours.” She smiled lazily and gestured for both of us to follow her in.
“So what was this building?” Julie asked her, as we went inside.
“Library,” Mandy said.
“Oh. I thought it was an insane asylum.”
“Nope,” Mandy replied. A beat. “The entire campus was an insane asylum.” She grinned over her shoulder at Julie.
“Rock,” Julie enthused. “Cool.” I wondered if what Mandy was saying was true.
“Where’s the electricity coming from?” I asked. “I’d think they’d be worried about the whole thing burning down.”
“That’s where the fifty grand went,” Mandy said, looking mildly impressed that I’d think of such a thing. “We’re using special effects lighting. Lots of batteries.”
“I’ll bet,” Julie said, and Mandy chuckled affectionately. The floor was littered with dirt, paper, a crushed Coors can, some broken glass. Some girls I didn’t recognize stepped from the shadows. They wore white. They had on white Latex gloves.
“This place is gross,” said the middle one.
“Some of our ghosts,” Mandy told Julie and me. “It’s so hard to get good ghosts these days.” She flicked on a flashlight. “Come into my parlor.”
We turned left and walked into a cavernous room. Bulbous lamps provided dim light, revealing bookcases that reached into the gloom. They were clogged with moldy books. Some of the titles were still visible. Female Behavioral Reformation. Neurological Science. Psychology of Hysterics.
“This really was a library,” I said. All the books seemed to be ancient psychology volumes. It certainly lent weight to the theory that Marlwood really had been an asylum for girls, rather than a school. Some kind of reformatory. The idea gave me the creeps.
“How did you get access to this place?” Julie asked, enthralled.
Mandy shrugged, miming ignorance. Then she took the end of Julie’s ponytail and ran it under Julie’s chin, pulling it upward, like a noose.
“If I told you, I’d have to kill you,” Mandy said.
I remembered her black eyes, and I wanted to grab Julie’s ponytail out of Mandy’s hand. I had started to let go of that memory, deny I’d seen what I’d seen—the same way I’d pretended that I didn’t know Jane was having sex with Riley.
I shivered. What was I doing here? What was Julie?
“We have to get you into costume,” she told Julie. “You’re going be a headless Frenchwoman. You’ll chase Alis and Sangeeta in, and when it’s over, then you’ll chase them back out.”
“No,” I said, but it was too soft for them to hear.
“Cool,” Julie said. “What about Lindsay?”
“Crowd control,” Mandy said.
She headed toward the door, taking her flashlight. Julie fell in behind her, and I trailed behind as the dark got darker, the lamps dimming. I turned around one last time.
A ghostly apparition appeared, see-through, standing in a long white dress. Her long, crazy hair—kind of like mine—hung in her face, and her head was bowed. Slowly, she began to raise her head. . . .
. . . And for some reason I couldn’t explain, I didn’t want to see her face. I caught up with Julie and Mandy as they left the room; then, on the threshold and a little braver, I looked over my shoulder.
She had shifted her position, and she was staring straight at me. Her face was chalk-white and her eyes were black—black like Mandy’s, back at the hedge.
I felt a chill. It’s just a girl, a student, someone who’s in on it, I reminded myself.
But she kept staring at me.
“Okay, where’s my costume?” Julie asked, and the girl disappeared in a blink.
“Linz, could you go outside now and keep the animals calm?” Mandy asked sweetly, and I realized I was being booted.
“Julie,” I said, wanting a moment with her. Wanting to tell her that I had a funny feeling—make that a creepy feeling—and I
thought maybe she should bail. But she was already flitting down the hall with Mandy, arm in arm, heads pressed together.
“Julie, “ I said again.
I started after them, but Lara stepped into the hall. She was still wearing her hood, her brilliant red hair peeking out the edges. Soundlessly, she raised an arm and pointed toward the door.
I went outside and looked at the house. A crumbling brick chimney hunched between two broken sections of the house like a knobby backbone. Sitting atop it all was a bell tower shaped like a tulip, with curved slate sides, and the bell still there.
There was no moon; except for the lamplight, it was very dark. Skeletal trees stood frozen and unmoving in the frigid night. The windows flashed on and off with their parade of white faces. The face of the dark-haired girl with the black eyes appeared in the window directly across from me. I waved to show that she wasn’t getting to me. She stared.
My unease grew. I stood in the shadows and glanced up at that strange, white face. Instead of Julie, I was the one being singled out. I was sure of it. I just wasn’t sure why.
nine
Girls started showing up at about eleven-thirty. Ida and Claire came over to me, all shushes and giggles. Shayna was back for more punishment. Quite a little mob scene of at least two dozen Marlwoodians gathered for Mandy’s version of a good time. Elvis and Marica wore sleek swing coats and leather jackets, cute knitted caps and charm bracelets. Another girl was wearing a white fur coat. I was staring at thousands and thousands of dollars in clothes.
“Oh my God, that house is so scary,” Ida said shrilly.
It was, even without any of Mandy’s help. Whole sections of the walls had fallen away, leaving gaping holes where fog swirled in and out.
“Come in,” echoed a low, evil voice. “Come in and die, Alis and Sangeeta.”
“Bwahaha,” Claire murmured.
We found a rock and a tree stump to sit on. The Amy Winehouse chick, Rose Hyde-Smith, bounded through the underbrush and plopped down on a log. Waving at us, she sat with her legs crossed, in her beehive and a short denim skirt and orange tights with big yellow polka dots on them. Her boots were chunky leather rectangles.
She looked me up and down, at the remnants of my jeans, my high-tops, and my sweatshirt—advertising just how much I didn’t belong there, like her. We looked like escapees from the circus, or a shelter.
“Hey, I’m Rose. From our lit class.”
“I know.” I grinned, but then tensed up again, wary of what was about to happen.
“Here they come,” Ida whispered.
I craned my neck and saw a bunch of white blobs emerging from a stand of pine trees about twenty feet away. As they approached, they grew more distinct: Lara and Kiyoko walked on either side of tonight’s two victims, Alis and Sangeeta.
Then a tall, headless woman dressed in a shredded white poof-skirt ball gown burst from the trees and bobbed after them. Julie, of course. Blood pumped from the stump, which Julie must have been wearing like a hat, and sluiced down the low-cut bodice onto the gown.
“Heeeee!” the woman shrieked.
Alis and Sangeeta whirled around, saw her, and screamed. Kiyoko and Lara boxed them in as Julie started herding them toward the front door. Sangeeta pushed against Alis, who started laughing. The house erupted into flashing lights and organ music, and just as abruptly stopped.
“Holy cow,” Ida murmured.
Lara handed the girls flashlights. The two flicked them off and on, testing them. They entered the condemned building. Julie ran after them into the house staggering a bit. Alis raised a hand as if she were waving to us onlookers, and a couple of girls cheered.
“And they were never seen or heard from again,” Claire intoned.
“Except in the bathroom,” Rose put in, “if you say, ‘Come to me, come to me, come to me, come to me, come to—”
“Stop,” Ida pleaded.
“Mmmm . . . ” Rose teased. Ida batted her arm and Rose shook her head and rolled her eyes.
The building came alive. The lamps flashed, creepy organ music cascaded out the holes in the walls, and crazed laughter echoed over the dark hills and pine trees. Someone shrieked. A second scream joined the first; then the screaming was a crescendo falling over itself like a waterfall.
“What’s going on in there?” Ida asked me, and I understood the genius that was Mandy. She’d shown me just enough to make me something of an insider. I could share information. But I didn’t have all of it, so I couldn’t give away all the surprises. Only Mandy’s chosen few—and her victims—would have the 411.
“I know not,” I assured her.
“Did you get to go in?” Claire asked me.
“Yeah, but I didn’t really see anything,” I said. They both eyed me dubiously. “It smelled like rotted books.”
“So there’re books?” Ida asked. “What kind of books?”
“Rotted books,” Rose said.
The music blared; the screams became real.
“It sounds like they’re dying,” Ida said.
I got the feeling that someone was watching us, the watchers.
On a rise to my left, pine trees swayed and moved in the night wind. A figure stepped from their bobbing branches. His hair was dark and bedroom-tousled, his eyes deep-set in a tanned face. He was cut—broad chest and muscular shoulders encased in a hoodie that read LAKEWOOD.
I stared at him for another heart-stopping moment. He was hot. He was rock-solid, wearing faded jeans that molded to long legs and athletic thighs. As the organ music tumbled note over note over note, I thought he was staring at me, too. Then he stepped back into the shadows.
“Guys,” I said. “There was a—”
“I heard Alis and Sangeeta have to get to the bell tower and flash their flashlights on and off in Morse code,” Claire said, “to spell out ‘come to me’ five times.”
“ . . . Meeeee,” Rose finished.
“No!” Ida cried, batting Rose’s arm.
“Listen, there’s a guy here,” I said.
Ida and Claire turned to look. “A guy? Like that guy from last night? That diver guy?” Claire asked. “Corbin Bleu looka like? He thinks Julie’s cute.”
“A different guy,” I replied.
“Ooh. Does he have a chainsaw?” Claire asked.
“You’re evil,” Ida said.
Claire struck a pose. “That’s why you love me.”
Sangeeta appeared in the bell tower. Alis popped up next. A cheer rose up from the spectators as the two girls hopped around in a victory dance, then pointed their flashlights down as Mandy strode stick-legged out of the house and turned around and faced them. Kiyoko appeared in a white hospital nightgown, and Lara still had on her hood.
“We did it!” Sangeeta declared. Her voice echoed; it was very cultured British. “Might we come down now?”
“You need to do the code!” Lara called back, lifting her hood up from her mouth. “Flash us, honey!”
“Please! We are freaking out!” Sangeeta protested, swirling her flashlight overhead.
“Do the code!” Kiyoko shouted.
“Do the code! Do the code!” The chant was taken up.
They flicked their flashlights in a rhythmic pattern.
“Come to me,” Mandy called through her microphone.
They did it again.
“Come to me.” Lara and Kiyoko sang along with Mandy.
The flashlights went on, off, on, off, on, off.
“Come to me.” The girls around me took up the chant. Rose rocked back on the log and pounded it with her open palms. I couldn’t bring myself to join in.
“Come to me, come to me!”
And that strange coldness crept into my head again. I jerked and touched the back of my neck. Was it wet?
“Okay, you can come down,” Mandy informed Alis and Sangeeta.
They cheered and disappeared down some stairs. “Hey,” I said to Rose, “is my neck wet?”
“Huh?” She got up to check, pulli
ng down my jacket and my sweater. “Ewww.”
“Ewww what?” I cried.
She snickered. “Oh my God, you’re easy. There is nothing on your neck.”
“Here they come,” Mandy announced. A cheer rose up as Alis and Sangeeta barreled out of the house just as Headless Julie ran up behind them. Mandy, Kiyoko, and Lara threw their arms around Alis and Sangeeta. They turned to the rest of us and bowed. People started applauding and cheering. Then they moved to the right, into the shadows. Around me, the girls started heading out, in a rush to sneak back into their dorms. The lights in the house went off. Poof, just like that.
Julie swayed forward, then stopped. She looked confused.
“Hey, Julie,” I shouted, waving my hands.
“Ju-lie! Ju-lie!” Ida and Claire chanted.
Julie started toward us. The stump and the torso shifted forward, throwing her off balance, and she stumbled, ran-walked, and stumbled again.
Then Julie tripped on something. She flew forward and landed in a ball-gown heap on the ground.
I got up and hurried to her. Rose, Ida, and Claire jogged behind me. Julie looked pretty bizarre, headless and all, as the last of her fake blood poured onto the ground. Rose and Ida started pulling apart the Velcro strips that held her neck-stump together. It split down the middle like she was hatching her own head. She was sweaty and flushed.
“I—I tripped on something.” Julie groaned. “Ow! It hurts!”
“Look.” Claire shined her flashlight on a blob of white gleaming in the moonlight. It was a human head made out of glass—maybe porcelain. The brain was showing and it was divided up into sections with numbers painted in black.
“What the heck is that?” Ida said.
“It’s Julie’s missing head,” Claire informed her.
“No, it’s like a chart. Like a cut-by-numbers. Oh my God, did they do brain surgeries out here?” Ida made a face.
I gently touched Julie’s ankle. She sucked in her breath.
“Ouch, no,” she said. “Oh, it really hurts.” She looked off to the left, where Mandy’s group had gone.