She nodded, swiveling her head right and left; then she pointed. “Voilà,” she said, and I followed her line of vision. Dr. Ehrlenbach had her back to us, speaking to Dr. Melton. I wondered if they’d found out about the fight in the pool room. About Spider’s accusation.
I didn’t see Miles. Or Julie, or anyone else who’d been in the pool room.
“Where are Julie and Spider?” I asked Rose, but she and Charlotte were already heading off toward our headmistress. I would have to check on Julie later.
For a flash of an instant, I wondered if I would ever see her again. If Troy hurt Mandy, or me . . . or worse . . .
Don’t think like that, I told myself, feeling the flutters of panic. My chest got tight and I couldn’t breathe. As I dashed back outside, I became light-headed. I gripped my hands together, glancing fearfully around, in case whoever had been lurking in the statue garden had followed me back to the gym. Maybe it was just someone making out.
Maybe pigs could touch down on Mars.
Shaking, I put on my parka, my Doc Martens, and my gloves, and checked my cell for just the tiniest possibility that a text message from Troy had come in. Nothing. I stashed it back in my pocket and took a ragged, but deep breath. I tried to clear my head but I couldn’t quell the panic.
Where was Troy? Who was Troy?
Then I struck out for the old library. That was where we had been meeting of late, so it seemed likely that would be where he—or David Abernathy—would spring a “surprise” on me. Shayna had seen his ghost, crying over a piece of jewelry—one of the lockets he had promised to two desperate, terrified girls.
Cold pressed over the back of my neck. “Liar. Deceiver,” Celia said, through me.
I felt her anger boiling inside me. The snow tumbled and fell, creating bulky objects in the air, like giant foggy vampires swarming over the mountains. I tucked in my head and began to run, partly to keep myself warm, but also in hopes of outpacing anyone who was trying to follow me. As before, I had no idea how I would find my way. I assumed Celia was sufficiently motivated to do it for me. Last semester, Julie had served as bait to lure me to the operating theater. This semester, Mandy—
—I slowed. Would Troy want me to meet him at the library, or the operating theater? He and I had never met there. But that was where the fire had happened.
And the lobotomies.
The same panicky sensation caught hold of me as when I stared into our swimming pool and saw Celia again, after I thought I was free. I lurched forward, unsure of my path in more ways than one. At least if someone was trying to follow me, they’d have as hard a time as I did. Unless they saw with different eyes, like Celia. Then nothing could keep them from me—not the snow, or the dark, or the past.
THE LIBRARY WAS CLOSER.
As the snow flurried around me, I stood in front of it and stared at the upstairs window. The shutters were open, banging against the side of the house. I remembered seeing them open at night, then nailed shut by light of day. I even had pictures on my cell phone.
I took another deep breath and walked through the doorway. I was out of the snowstorm, at least; but if someone was behind me, he—or she—could see me now. I turned around, detecting no one; and edged sideways, holding my breath until my chest hurt. I aimed the light from my phone at the floor and exhaled slowly, trying to stop the jitters, the panicky trembling, and the intense desire just to lose my mind.
There were no lights on in the reading room. I peeked around the doorway, listening. Nothing.
A thump overhead made me jerk; I clutched the phone and flattened myself against the wall. My heart beat so hard I could hear it in my ears.
“I wish I had a rock now,” I muttered, but I didn’t really mean it.
Yes, I did. I so did.
My pulse beating at thrash-metal speed, I walked back down the way I had come, stinging with fear, aching with cold. I knew the stairs were to my right, but I couldn’t make myself walk past the open doorway. It was dark, and unless I turned my cell phone light back on, no one would see me. But I was paralyzed.
“H-hello?” I called. But my voice was a dry whisper. I tried again, waiting for a blast of courage from Celia. Nothing.
I pictured Mandy. Happy, smiling. Then I saw her as a drowning victim, with an ashen face and shiny eyes. And then as a dybbuk, haunting the world because of her horrible murder.
That last image give me a push, and I broke free of my frozen state and dashed to my right, shoe tip colliding with a bottle; it went skittering. I braced myself for whoever was upstairs to call out; still there was silence. My hand smacked the banister and I started up, shining the light down again, glancing into the blackness behind me. Chills popped off the top of my skull, like static, as I climbed in slow motion, as if I were wearing leg weights.
I reached the landing, standing in darkness, listening for tell-tale creaks, for breathing, for someone else. The room with the window was behind me; I had to turn around to see it. Sucking in another breath, I pivoted, waiting for it, waiting . . .
The pitted, dark wood door was shut, but a slice of flickering yellow light ran along the bottom, giving me something to see by. There was a rusty latch chipped with white paint in place of a knob.
I tried to exhale, but I couldn’t; with my chest about to explode, I walked to the door and raised my fist, hesitating, trying to make myself move again; and I knocked.
No answer.
My eyes fluttered back in my head as I forced the air out of my lungs; and I put my hand on the latch and pushed down. The door began to swing open.
As the hinges creaked, Celia seemed to activate. Cold on cold, fear churning inside me like a gasping fish. I could feel her thrashing, trying to force me away from the door. I tried to respond but the door vanished, and I was staring at the blurry, translucent image of a twenty-something heavyset guy sitting at an oak roll-top desk. He wore a long-sleeved white shirt and over that, a thick white apron, like a butcher’s. His hair was parted down the center, and he was crying, his voice echoing as if we were both underwater.
I was stunned.
That’s not David Abernathy. Not from what I could remember from the pictures I’d seen. I realized suddenly that I never asked Shayna what her ghost actually looked like. So who was this?
I took a step forward. He didn’t notice me; he just kept sobbing. I saw the glint of a brass chain in his palm, smeary and unfocused.
Shayna’s piece of jewelry, I thought.
I licked my lips and tried to speak. No good. I tried again, and said, “Hello?”
Ignoring me—or not hearing me—he lifted up the chain, sending beams of light all over flocked wallpapered walls. There was a large brass skeleton key attached to the end, and a book similar to the one Troy had shown me. The writing swirled like smoke, and then the elaborate, thin letters came into focus.
“Leave,” Celia said.
And the man gasped. He turned his head to the left and stared straight at me. I stared back at him.
“Is someone there?” he said.
He couldn’t see me, but he had heard Celia. I waited; then he opened the center drawer of the desk, at his waist, and coiled the key inside. He began to cry again, burying his face in his hands.
I looked back down at the page of the open journal.
13 February
Tomorrow they will move my darling Belle and the other young ladies into the cells within the operating theater. I have seen the instruments laid out—the cloths for the chloroform, the pick, the hammer. She will be the first.
No, no I cannot let it happen. I must free her from this fate!
But I am watched. I have protested the conditions of this wretched place; it is believed that the mad can feel neither heat nor cold night and so they dispense with comforts for those chosen by Marlwood for the procedure. Thus they suffer in thin shifts with no heat, though the snow piles up around their prison doors while Marlwood warms his fat butcher’s hands in his stately mansion on the hill. Las
t Tuesday, Leticia Dunwoody froze to death, although they wrote her parents and explained that it was “a strange malady” that took her.
I have tried to give Belle such warmth and comfort as I can. I have brought her coffee and blankets and so the others hate her, for I cannot do it for them all. But could they but draw hope that one of them, at least, lives like a human being?
And I watch my love, suffering, and I see, oh, God, I see it all. I see Abernathy go into her cell and I see her quiet and anxious after, gazing at me, begging for my help. Evil, evil. Like Marlwood he is, a scoundrel and a rogue and if I could dash his brains in, I would.
I will help her escape, though it may mean my job and livelihood. This I swear. I shall do it, or die trying.
—Edward Truscott, Orderly, Marlwood Reformatory
THIRTY
A SCOUNDREL AND A ROGUE.
That’s what he’d called David Abernathy.
I left the haunted library and its weeping ghost, searching for a few seconds for some rags or piece of newspaper, anything to wrap around my flimsy parka and my tiny black dress. Anything to keep me warmer in the draining cold. There was nothing handy, and I wasn’t about to go back into the reading room, even if there was a fur coat to be found in there.
I crept outside; the snow was falling more steadily, and when I felt severe cold against the back of my neck, I had no idea if it was Celia or the elements. Orienting myself, I knew I should head left. I tried to keep my eyes open, scanning for a stalker. I felt in my pocket for Marica’s high heels, my only weapon.
I started moving, afraid I was about to become a Marlwood statistic—Lindsay Cavanaugh, the scholarship student who froze to death on Valentine’s Day. Why was she staggering around, inappropriately dressed? Because the boy she was crushing on already had a girlfriend. Poor, crazy, pathetic Lindsay. No one would know the real reason.
Maybe not even me.
I blinked; I had started to daydream, and I knew I was lost. Trees rose around me. I was in the forest. I thought I heard something moving through the brush and I grabbed onto a branch and held tightly, just to keep myself from screaming. Were mountain lions nocturnal? Were psycho brothers and/ or possessed boyfriends?
Then the coldness intensified, giving me a brain freeze, and I doubled over because it hurt; it hurt like brain surgery; it hurt like my heart breaking; like all the air forced out of my lungs; like my skin peeling off my face in the flames. It was a searing, horrible hurt and I knew that if I could see myself, my eyes would be black and empty.
My love is like a red, red rose.
I will come to thee by midnight, though hell should bar the way.
I must pretend to love Belle, Celia, because she has money; she is an heiress with a fortune and Marlwood has his hooks into her family. And there must be a way for me to dip into it. Once that is done, we shall leave together, you and I—
—you and I—
I WAS STANDING inside the operating theater. Flickering lanterns—kerosene—were set on folding chairs, casting yellow light over the drifting snowflakes, cascading blue through the hole in the roof, past the ruined balcony where the eager young men had once watched helpless young women lose their minds.
Below, a few yards in front of me in the center of the room, a girl was lying on a surgical table draped with a white cloth blotched with blood, and Troy, in a white doctor’s coat, was bending over her.
“Here’s the pick,” he said, and his voice was not his voice as he raised up something metallic; the light glinted off it and I screamed, hard.
Then Marica—not Mandy—bolted upright, knocking Troy backward. They both looked at me and Marica waved her hands in front of her face: no harm, no foul.
“Get away from her!” I shouted, barreling into him. “Marica, run!”
“No, no, it’s all in fun,” Marica said, laughing, as Troy grunted and staggered backward, grabbing me around the waist.
“Whoa, whoa,” he said. “It’s okay.”
I pulled away from Troy. “What is this?” I asked shrilly.
“I didn’t think you’d come,” he said. “I thought you believed that. It wasn’t me. Listen, please—”
“What are you doing?” I yelled, as Marica slid off the table. The white cloth was a thick, fuzzy white blanket, and the blotches were scarlet Valentine’s Day hearts. A shiny silver serving tray ornately decorated with a floral pattern and large Ms—for Marlwood—contained a hammer and a single long-stemmed red rose.
“I recreated the lobotomy surgery,” Troy said, gesturing with the ice pick. “I thought if we went through the steps . . . ”
“Are you insane?” I asked, and I hoped he was.
He looked at me, really looked. “You have to know I would never hurt Julie. I forgot that I’d given my ID bracelet to Mandy. After we left the dance, she confessed that she gave it to Miles.” He raised his brows, hopeful that I was following him. “And so, you see . . . ”
“I-I remembered that, too,” I said, but my voice was quaking. “But why are you here?” I looked at Marica. “Why are you doing this?”
Wrapping herself in the blanket, Marica walked over to us. She opened one arm like a mother hen and cuddled me up, giving me a kiss on my cheek. I was so cold I couldn’t feel anything, and Marica winced. Meanwhile, Troy walked over to the tray and laid down the pick. His hand hovered over the rose; then he dropped his arm down to his side, facing me. His face was shrouded in darkness.
I was drowning in iciness, shivering so hard my head hurt. The center of my forehead burned as if someone were dripping hot wax onto it. I saw Troy jerk, and I stiffened.
Marica whispered in my ear, “I helped him plan this. He wants you, chica. He broke up with her, really, he did. Tonight.” Then she frowned at me. “Are you okay? Troy, I think she’s got hypothermia. Like before, when she was in the infirmary. She looks so white.”
“I could start a fire,” Troy suggested. “There’s a lot of trash and—”
“No!” I yelled, making them both jump. I tilted my head, straining to see him in the darkness. “No fires.”
“Are you . . . feverish?” Marica asked. She touched my forehead, then my cheeks. “Ay, she’s burning up.”
“Get help,” I whispered urgently. “Marica, run.”
She blinked at me, then looked over at Troy as if to say, Are you hearing this? He was still standing in the shadows. Why? Why didn’t he come over to us, unless he had something to hide? He didn’t want her to see, to know . . .
“Help,” I begged. Icy sweat was pouring down my forehead. “Marica—”
Marica took my hand and began to rub it.
They tie you down. They take the hammer—
A clang echoed through the cavernous room. Neither one of them heard it.
There was a scream. It shot around the room like a tangible object—like a bullet, ricocheting off the walls, the floor, the table, the ice pick.
The ice pick.
I smelled smoke.
“My love is like a red, red rose,” Troy sang, as Marica walked me toward the table.
“Oh, God,” I gasped. “It really is you.” I tried to move away, but I was suddenly so tired, and dizzy. I could feel myself sinking down, down, somewhere deep and frozen, somewhere where I couldn’t move my own legs or arms . . .
. . . Couldn’t talk . . .
. . . Couldn’t warn her . . .
“Oh, Dios mío, I think she’s fainted,” Marica said. Troy came forward then, and scooped me up into his arms. My head lolled as he carried me toward the table; I saw my reflection in the silver tray.
Only it was Celia I saw. And her skin was rosy; her brown eyes were framed with dark lashes, and her black hair tumbled down onto her shoulders.
“Troy!” someone called. It was Mandy. “Okay, listen, Miles says that he has proof he was in San Covino that night.”
“Linz?” Troy said ignoring her and brushing my hair away from my forehead. From my forehead.
“Are you listeni
ng to me?” Mandy shrieked at him. “Y-you cheating bastard!”
He ignored her. “Linz, are you sick?”
He leaned over me like this, and over her like this, promising love; and then he murdered—
The smoke thickened, making my eyes water; or I was crying. Heat rose from the floor. The rush and roar of the flames drowned out his voice.
I sat up, flung out my hand, grabbed the hammer, and hit him as hard as I could. With a shout, he fell forward. I gathered up his tux jacket and hit him again; where, I didn’t know; he slumped forward, against me. Then I threw down the hammer and got the pick. My hand was shaking but I held it against his neck. I got ready to jab. He groaned.
“Linz,” he said, gasping, “what . . . ?”
“Mandy, he’s going to kill us!” I bellowed.
“Oh my God!” Mandy shouted. I ticked my glance toward her. In his overcoat, Miles came up behind her.
“Don’t come any closer. He’s possessed!” I cried. “He’s David Abernathy.”
“My love,” Troy said, only it wasn’t Troy, it was David. My David, my own.
“Did you hear that?” I cried.
“Troy,” Mandy said, her eyes ticking from me to Troy and back again, “Troy, be careful.”
“Mandy, get help,” Miles said through his teeth, his gaze fastened on me. “Go.”
“Marica, come with me,” Mandy said. “She’s out of her mind. Lindsay, we’re going to get someone for you—”
“No one moves,” I said, holding the pick against Troy’s neck. And then I thought about what I was doing. This was Troy.
“David Abernathy,” Celia insisted. “He locked—”
And then I saw it, as clearly as I had seen the ghost of Edward Truscott:
He gave a locket to me, and then he gave one to Belle. Belle, always the favorite. Belle, who seduced Mr. Truscott, the orderly. Who had coffee and blankets, while I froze. The heiress, the rich girl, while Leticia died of exposure and I would be next.
And David—Belle didn’t love him; she only wanted to escape and so she hated me because I was in the way. I took him from her because he loved me.