They all ran toward the window.
But before they could reach it, the walls had swallowed the window, too.
Dad was on the verge of freaking out. “I don’t understand,” he said. “What’s happening?”
What was happening was that the house really didn’t want them to go.
“The superintendent’s apartment!” Janie said, running for the main hall.
“Jane, wait—” Dad said.
But she’d already run through the door.
Dad raced to grab it before it closed … but before he could reach it, the place where the door had been was transformed into a smooth expanse of red wallpaper.
“No!” Dad shouted. “No! Jane, come back!”
Mom joined him, banging on the wall with her fists. “Janie!”
I had the advantage of being able to move through walls, so I slipped into the hall, where my sister stood staring at the spot that, until about ten seconds earlier, had been a door. Then she leapt into action, pounding on the wall.
“Mom? Dad?” Her voice rose. “Mom! Dad! Help me! I’m stuck!”
In the lobby, my parents were shouting themselves hoarse. I slipped back out to see them.
Finally, Mom stepped away from the wall. “Brad,” she said, “stop. We need to think. We need to be smart about this.”
“Smart?!” he yelled. “This house just trapped our daughter! Janie’s locked in there, just like—”
Suddenly, he froze and just looked at Mom, stared at her with an expression so horrified that you would have thought he’d just seen death itself.
“Just like Delia was,” he whispered. “Delia was right. She was right. There’s something here. She knew that, and she wanted to leave, but we didn’t let her. My God, Lisa, she was right.”
Mom didn’t answer. Her mouth a hard line, she turned and surveyed the room. “Come on,” she said. “We’re going to get Janie out if it kills us.”
In the hallway, Janie sat with her back to the wall, sobbing. I hated to leave her, but I had to get a better look at the situation. So I dashed outside.
When I got about fifteen feet from the house, I turned and looked up at the side of the building. It was just as I feared—there wasn’t a single window or exterior door left in the entire structure. Only solid stone walls.
“What’s going on?” Theo appeared beside me, staring up at the house.
“My family’s in there,” I said. “I need to get them out.”
He stared at the bizarrely solid sweep of stone and shook his head. “How?”
“Not sure,” I said. “I guess I’ll tear the place to pieces by hand if I have to. Want to help?”
“But aren’t you afraid?” he asked. “Of what it could do to you?”
“Actually,” I said, “that’s the least of my concerns.”
I don’t know if he tried to say anything else. I was already back inside. In the lobby, Dad was trying to make a call, but he couldn’t get a signal. Finally, he chucked the phone across the room in frustration.
“Brad, we have to stay calm,” Mom admonished. “We have to make a plan.”
“Tell me what happened today,” Dad said.
“I don’t know, exactly,” Mom said. “Something went after Janie, and then … the day has been a blur for me.”
“What does that mean?” he demanded.
“I mean, I was coming down the stairs and everything after that is a blur,” Mom said, a note of irritation underlying her words. “I’m not being purposefully obtuse.”
It turns out that watching your parents bicker is just as annoying when you’re dead as when you’re alive. Anyway, I didn’t have time to stand around and pout about their behavior.
I had a packed schedule.
* * *
Penitence was bent over and focused on her invisible blanket as if nothing had happened. She didn’t even seem to notice that the walls had devoured the day room windows.
“What did you do with his body?” I asked. “Did you bury it?”
She looked up, startled, but didn’t even have to ask who I was talking about. “No. I—I burned it. In the incinerator.”
Black fire. Of course.
“And where’s the incinerator?” I asked.
Penitence looked pained by the memory. “In the basement. Why? They’ve since built a new one away from the main building. They had to stop using the old one because the chimney wasn’t properly sealed.”
“Let me guess—too much smoke seeped out?”
She nodded.
“All right, come on,” I said. “I have to show you something.”
“Show me what?” she shot back. “Haven’t I done enough for today?”
This was no time to be coy. “Your daughter’s been living alone on the third floor since she died, and I’m taking you to meet her.”
Penitence gasped, and I felt a little guilty for not cushioning the blow at all.
“No,” she finally said, shaking her head. “She went crazy. She killed herself and murdered a nurse. It was terrible.”
“Wrong,” I said. “That’s not what happened at all. It was a cover-up.”
She looked at me disbelievingly. “What would you know about it?”
“I know what Maria and Florence told me,” I said. “You made a cake for your father. Maria and the nurse found it in the kitchen.”
Penitence raised her hand to her mouth. “Oh no,” she said. “No …”
“They ate it and died, but the staff covered it up. You were hiding out in the basement after burning your father’s body, so you didn’t know any of this. It was a pretty grim night here.”
Grim enough to curse the very land.
“It can’t be.” She shook her head and pressed her hands over her ears. “It can’t be true.”
“They posed the dead bodies to look like they’d died in the bathroom, but they were poisoned by the same cake that killed Maxwell.”
Now she began to choke on her sobs. “No! I don’t believe you!”
“Believe it or not,” I said. “It’s what happened. And now she’s upstairs, and she’s lonely and scared, and she needs her mother. And I’m not trying to rush you, but I don’t have a lot of extra time.”
“But if what you say is true, then I can’t,” Penitence said, her voice hollow. “She must hate me.”
“She doesn’t hate anyone, but for a hundred and fifty years, she’s been hiding in a bathroom on the third floor. Alone. Tortured by other ghosts. The only person who was ever kind to her was my aunt Cordelia.”
Penitence pressed both hands to her chest, scrunched her eyes closed, and made a terrible keening sound. “I’m a bad mother,” she whispered.
“If you don’t go to her now, you are a bad mother. She needs you.” I was running out of patience. I reached over and grabbed her firmly by the arm. “Come on, we’re going upstairs.”
* * *
I stuck my head inside the bathroom. “Maria?”
She was nestled on her greasy blanket, rearranging the assortment of pictures on the floor. After a moment, she blinked and looked up at me. Then the spark lit up in her eyes. “You came back!”
“Yes,” I said, stepping almost all the way inside. “I did. I beat Florence.”
Her eyes widened.
“Maria, I have someone I want you to talk to.”
“No, thank you,” she said, turning away. “No one likes me.”
“This person likes you,” I said. “I promise.”
Then I pulled Penitence in behind me. I’d warned her that Maria had been through a lot, but actually seeing the little girl’s ruined face and body must have been like being punched in the gut. Penitence was silent, staring.
I crouched down, still holding Penitence’s hand. “Maria, this is your mother,” I said. “Do you remember her?”
Maria nodded but shrank away.
“She’s not going to hurt you. She’s come to take care of you.”
They gazed at each other for a l
ong time—long enough that I began to worry that this wasn’t going to work, that too much time had passed, and too many things had gone wrong.
Then Maria reached out and wrapped her clawlike fingers around her mother’s hand. “Would you like to see my pictures?”
Penitence looked down at the floor and nodded.
Maria shuffled her feet. “You can have one, if you like. Any picture at all.”
“You choose for me.”
Maria bent down and picked up a picture of a mother with a small baby, and handed it to her mother.
“I’m sorry I’m not a pretty girl anymore, Mother,” she said. “I understand if you don’t want to be around me. Nobody likes to be around me.”
“I do,” I said.
Penitence stood to her full height, which I’d never actually seen—she’d always been hunched over like an old woman, but she was half a head taller than me. “Maria, we’ll never be apart again. I’ll always be here with you. Is … is that all right?”
Maria nodded.
“Then let’s go,” Penitence said. “We must go downstairs.”
And then, with Maria clutching her mother’s skirts like a security blanket, we made our way back to the second floor.
“What will you do now?” Penitence asked, as Maria ran happy circles around the day room. “I—I can’t help but feel that I owe you.”
“You don’t owe me anything,” I said. “Stay here with Maria. If I do what I hope I’m about to do, I want you two to be together when it all goes down.”
Mom and Dad had dragged the sofa to the center of the room and flipped it like an animal carcass. They seemed to be trying to disassemble it, with Dad’s car keys as their only tools.
In the main hall, Janie had calmed herself enough to walk around, testing the walls and looking for a way out. She’d peeled away huge sections of the wallpaper, to no avail. She tried the remaining doors that lined the hall, but they were all locked.
Suddenly, she cut short her inspection and turned around.
“I know someone’s here,” she whispered. “You’re trying to help me, aren’t you?”
I nearly fell through the wall.
“Who are you?” she asked.
Collecting myself, I walked past her to the far side of the rug, and in one quick motion, I pulled the corner up—just enough to reveal my name scratched into the floor.
DELIA.
The rug flumped back down disapprovingly.
My sister was quiet for a long time.
“I knew it was you,” she said at last. “Can you help me get out of here?”
I could, actually. In fact, I needed her to come with me—it was part of the plan. Passing through the wall, I unlocked the door that would lead her to the service hallway and down to the basement.
Janie heard the click and pushed the door open, wonder and wariness in her eyes.
She followed me through, trailing a few feet behind, waiting as I unlocked and carefully opened each subsequent door. We passed Rosie and Posie, staring as always, and I paused.
“Thanks for stealing all their stuff, guys,” I said. “Really helpful.”
The one on the right blushed, and the one on the left scowled.
“Have you ever thought of maybe using your powers for good instead of annoyingness?” I asked. “Never mind. I have to go.”
Then I opened the one that led down into the basement.
“What are you doing down there?” the girl who had blushed asked.
“Trying to save us all,” I said. “You can thank me later.”
The girls vanished.
Janie hesitated at the top of the steps, and I didn’t blame her. The basement smelled like a dead skunk had been rotting in there for a year. The dead shadow creature, its smoky form significantly paler than before, was piled near the center of the room. And then there was Florence, still trapped.
Not much of a welcome wagon.
“You!” Florence struck at the barrier between us, but she was helpless to escape. “I’ll kill her! I’ll tear you both to shreds!”
“Yeah, yeah, go ahead and try,” I said.
She snarled and filled up with light, but she was powerless against the six-inch-wide pile of salt. Still, her manic, evil energy added a heavy feeling to the air, and I could tell by the way Janie’s shoulders hunched closer to her ears that it was having an effect on her.
Careful not to draw my sister’s attention in Florence’s direction, I knocked over a few small objects on my way to the back of the room, to indicate that she should follow me.
Janie stopped, considering a scratched-up metal box attached to the pillar at the bottom of the stairs. Finally, she popped it open and flipped a switch inside. Dim light spilled from the old bulbs hanging from the ceiling at random intervals.
“Probably should have looked for that last time,” she said.
Then she followed me.
The old incinerator room, walled-off with bricks and guarded by a barred metal door, was off to the right, positioned perfectly so that its leaking chimneys would permit the evil fog to penetrate the rooms at the front of the house. I took a few steps toward it before noticing that my sister wasn’t behind me. I turned to look for her, and saw that she was frozen in place.
There was something wrong with this room, and she sensed it.
But I couldn’t afford to lose her trust now.
“Delia, is it really you?” she asked into the air. “Can you find some way to tell me it’s you? Knock twice?”
I reached for the nearest hard object, an old crate, and tried to knock on it. But my knuckles passed silently through the wood.
Janie was asking for a specific message. I couldn’t do that.
I had no way to tell her it was me.
“I’m sorry. It’s just, I … I don’t know if I can do this,” Janie said. “It kind of feels like those slasher movies you and Nic used to let me watch with you. What if you’re not even Delia? What if you’re something evil pretending to be her? And you’re luring me to my doom? Give me a sign. Any sign.”
She wanted a signal, but what if I couldn’t send her one?
Of course, she was completely right—I could be any ghost, misleading her, tricking her.
We were so close, and the situation was so frustrating that, without thinking, I turned and knocked over the nearest knock-overable object.
It happened to be a mop.
Janie gasped.
Yes! A mop. I remembered her housewife costume from Halloween and searched the surrounding shelves for the other objects I needed.
Almost giddily, I knocked a stocky-looking metal teapot off the shelf. It hit the ground and bounced heavily one time, then rolled onto its side.
My sister held her breath.
Next, I swept an entire stack of frying pans to the floor with a deafening crash!
Then there was silence.
Janie swallowed hard and balled her hands into determined fists. “All right, Delia,” she said. “What now?”
I felt a swell of joy and had to remind myself that this wasn’t the time for celebrating. I walked across the room and opened the door to the incinerator room.
Janie came and stood in the doorway. We were practically shoulder to shoulder, not that she’d know it.
The incinerator itself hulked in the corner, a six-foot-tall, eight-foot-long, and six-foot-wide fortified box of iron and brick. The air smelled stale and faintly burnt—a sweet blend of toast and smoke.
I stepped inside, flipped up the lever on the incinerator’s two-by-two-foot-square metal hatch, and pulled it open.
Janie’s eyes went wide. “No way, Delia! I’m not going in there.”
There was a petulance in her voice that made me feel like we were just two normal sisters trying to figure out how to glue together a broken vase before our parents came home.
“I never said you had to,” I said. “Nobody’s going inside the incinerator.”
But when I opened the door and
peered down into the belly of the structure, I could see nothing but pitch darkness. Which meant that one of us was going in, and since I was the only one of us who could produce her own light, it was probably going to be me. Better me than my sister—but still.
“Delia?” Janie asked, stepping close. “Are you going in? Be careful. Are you sure it’s safe?”
Nope. Not sure at all.
What, Delia, you’re going to give up now?
Of course not. There was no fire in the incinerator. It wasn’t even hot. It was just dark.
I repeated those facts to myself—not hot, just dark—as I moved through the thick brick wall.
“Are you okay?” Janie asked.
I looked around, a very bad feeling rising in my stomach.
I was not, in fact, okay.
I was surrounded by fire.
The flames reached as high as my head. They looked like normal fire in the way they jumped and leapt, but instead of being bright orange, they were the fathomless, velvety black you’d expect to find in a black hole. And, like a black hole, they devoured the light that radiated off of my ghostly form, until parts of myself were missing and I started to get pretty worried that I was being burned alive by the dark flames without even knowing it.
But no. If I moved my arm, the invisible parts became visible again—even if only for a moment. And I didn’t feel any burning—not from heat, anyway. They were actually quite cold, like on a frosty night, when the wind goes right through your clothes.
Any relief I felt was only temporary, though. Because immediately I was faced with the reality of being surrounded by dark flames and having no way to put them out except apparently spilling the blood of my little sister, which—call me crazy—I had a feeling she wouldn’t be totally cool with.
And then disaster struck.
“Delia, I’m coming in!” Before I could stop her, Janie climbed up and propelled herself through the incinerator hatch, landing clumsily inside with me. “What … What’s happening in here? What’s … Is this fire?”
Her voice faded out as she held her hand in the light that spilled in through the hatch, studying the way the flames made it vanish.
“Am I dead now?” she asked. “Am I a ghost?”
To be honest, I wasn’t sure. I stepped between her and the opening. “Can you see me? Can you hear me?”