The Dead House Read online

  You read that right: “Two souls in one body.”

  Mostly I think I’m broken. Error on lot “Johnson-K.” Issue recall immediately.

  If I’m going to do that “honest” thing, I should tell you that I felt like I lost Carly the day she and Naida met, and partly that’s still true.

  Naida stole my sister.

  I’ve been trying to steal her back.

  In any case, it all comes down to this one tragic fact: Carly is my whole entire world. She’s all I have left, my only tie—one of the three two last people who believe I’m real—and we’ve never even spoken. I had a tenuous enough grip on her as it was, and now Naida has part of that too. Except Naida has more. Naida has her laugh, her tears, her company during the daylight hours. Naida has her.

  It’s not fair.

  So, you see, when I saw Naida in the corridor, looking so relieved, I wanted to scream, “Carly’s mine!”

  But she just nodded once to acknowledge me, then disappeared into her room next door, and the moment was lost. But maybe she got the message in my eyes, the way I get messages in hers.

  I dream of her eyes, and their messages… they’re framed by the beautiful red that blood always is, whispering I’m sorry.

  Something is going on in those eyes when she looks at me.

  Later

  Left Carly a note in the Message Book. I’ll do what has always been done: wait for her message like I have no life like I’m starving.

  I have no real use.

  I’m alone.

  My time is my own.

  For all my complaining, I have a good feeling about this year. I think maybe we’ll make it through without problems. So long as Dr. Lansing keeps eating the lies we tell her and never sees this book, we’ll be out of here come July.

  Good-bye, Elmbridge. Good-bye, Naida.

  Hello, world that invites the night.

  Message Book Entry

  Undated

  Naida and I have been talking about London. She agrees with you about it being perfect for us. That or New York. New York never sleeps either, apparently. Naida was laughing that I didn’t know that. Found your sneaky Post-it on the bottom on my school shoe, by the way. You think you’re so clever. Well, not only are you not going to find my Post-it, but even if you do, you won’t be able to decode it. I can be smart too!

  There’s a new kid in school. He’s not in any of my classes, but I’ve seen him around. He’s got dark hair, is sort of tall, dark eyes. It’s weird seeing a new student in our year. I mean, who changes school in the final year? So weird. Also, Mr. Thomas retired, and the new music teacher isn’t up to his standards. I forget her name. I hate it when things change.

  By the way, watch your elbow. I grazed it in PE, but the nurse cleaned it out. Sorry, Kaybear.

  Love you! I’ve left Heart of Darkness under the pillow. The new Internet code is NX74S1D. Don’t forget to clear the history if you go into the computer room.

  Xoxoxo

  Carly

  Diary of Kaitlyn Johnson

  Friday, 3 September 2004, 12:52 am

  Dorm

  There’s a voice in my ear. His name is Aka Manah. I have never told Carly about him because—hello, crazy.

  Sometimes I feel him scratching around in there, or whispering, on and on. I think he’s there to make me feel guilty for surviving when they didn’t. I think he’s here to make me feel as dead as they are.

  I know it’s because of the drugs they give Carly. The Klonopin, the Xanax, and the risperidone. They screw with my mind and not hers—how cute. I know this, and yet I don’t. Because, drug-induced or not, his voice is real. As real as anything else in my life, I guess. And his words are true, even when they’re just screams that sound mechanical and broken. He feels, to me, like a ticking bomb.

  When he’s not in my ear, he’s nearby. I can’t see him, but I can sense him. I can hear him. He likes to breathe. He likes to laugh under that breath, which smells moldy somehow. Like a towel left damp too long. But also hot—like burning ashes.

  Tonight it’s the same. I can hear him sitting in the corner, watching me; his mechanical laughs stutter and bounce along the walls around me.

  I just shrug and continue writing.

  6

  149 days until the incident

  Diary of Kaitlyn Johnson

  Monday, 6 September 2004, 3:00 am

  Elmbridge Grounds

  I like to stand outside the oldest part of the school—the real part of the school. I thought I’d show it to you, diary. Do you mind if I call you Dee? It suits you much better. Dee, then. I can just imagine what this house was in the 1910s. A garish palatial home deeply envied, full of damask silk, the finest velvet, marble floors, and chintz.

  On and on it goes, solarium, library, billiard room (now seniors’ hall), gallery, the old banquet hall, the kitchens, old butcher’s kitchen, and a few newly built classrooms at the rear.

  This—what used to be the original house before expansion started like crazy back in 1912 and later, when the separate wings were added for the dorms (they look like stupid L-shaped arms sticking out on either side, bent at the elbows)—is a mask. They bricked over the original stonework to force it to look more uniform. To match the stupid Oxbridge-style arm-wings they built on either side. This part of the school is me. A veneer. If you were to look at it from above, the school would look like a rudimentary bird. A body with its wings bending and turning at a ninety-degree angle. Like I said: arms with stupid elbows. I don’t get why they didn’t just make it a giant square, with a courtyard in the middle. Wouldn’t that be a better trap?

  During the day, this main section is the hub and heart of the school. You can almost sense it beating. At night, though, it’s empty. Switched off and abandoned. God, this school is Carly and me. One thing during the day, another at night.

  It may be a redbrick, Oxbridge imitation on the outside, but within the bowels lies something far older, something far grittier, all weathered gray stone, moss stains, and watermarks. Ugly. With the suggestion of something… not quite right. This part of the school feels vaguely sinister, or aware somehow. There are all kinds of rumors about this part of the school.

  Let’s go round the side. They built two little alleys between the wings and the main house, like rabbit tunnels through the red, and near the back of the west alley are small dark windows low down on the ground. The basement windows. I nearly missed them, they’re so obscure.

  Elmbridge is like a church in some ways, and in others, it’s like a mansion. Churchlike, in that it feels holy… no speaking over a whisper without a teacher shushing you, my dears. And that weird way you always suspect someone is watching. Even now, as I write, I feel like there is a face peering out at me from one of those windows, little hands pressed to the black glass.

  I wave. Hello.

  For a minute there, I thought I actually saw someone. A girl. A thin, grinning girl.

  Mansionlike, in that you’re always sure that:

  a) You’ll break something.

  b) It’s haunted.

  For me, it’s more like my place home. Couldn’t explain it even if I wanted to. I hate this place, and I love it. Like the anorexic who revolts at the thing that keeps her alive. I see myself mirrored here in the fakeness of it all. Carly is my mask, of course. She’s the “real” Johnson girl. I’m just the imposter girl of nowhere. Am I a parasite? I prefer to imagine that I’m carrying Carly, that she’s asleep on a hammock inside my mind, swaying gently with every step I take.

  But that’s crap, because during the day, I’m nothing. I don’t exist. So neither does she, at night.

  I’ll never tell Carly how jealous I am that she gets to walk inside every single day while I’m stuck outside at nighttime, looking at the shell.

  I don’t want to think about it. I don’t want to be outside anymore.

  I’m going in.

  Ha! Try to keep me out, and I’ll break in! Oh, I feel wonderful! It’s just like the o
ld days, back in Chester with John.

  You won’t believe what I found!

  I broke in through one of those smudged-up dark windows of the basement where I felt saw? something someone watching me earlier. I only just fit. What will they do when they notice the broken window? Whatever, I don’t care! I’m invisible!

  The cellar basement was

  [A page has been torn from the diary.]

  The top floor was where I made the real find. I was about to head back to the basement and return to the dorm when I spotted an unobtrusive black door in one of the long halls, right next to a tall grandfather clock.

  It didn’t look like a closet.

  It didn’t look like a bathroom.

  It looked like a secret.

  The attic, Dee, is so vast—one long, seemingly endless room. It’s full of boxes that contain glass ink pots, silver-nibbed dip pens—nibs!—notebooks, and antiquated textbooks. Stuff that is decades older than the things stored in the basement. I found a girl’s guide to etiquette, if you can believe that. Could I need anything less?

  I could spend months up here, looking at every little thing. This might be a nice place for me. Hidden. Forgotten. Perfect.

  4:34 am, Roof

  Dee, I’m a bit of a spy. What else is there to do when everyone else is sleeping and you’re bored? I said I’d behave, and to get out of here, it’s the least I’d do.

  Escapism is a window that I don’t have, but I need movement. I can’t sit still.

  I have this horrible fear of turning to stone like I’m in an Anne Rice novel or something. Or that I’ll vanish, fade like a ghost. Cease to be. Then I won’t be anything, just like Lansing wants. And the thought of that, Dee, is enough to drive me up onto the roof, where I teeter on the edge and wonder why I don’t just leap.

  And honestly, I don’t know what’s holding me back anymore. But of course, I do. It’s Carly.

  Hurt yourself, hurt Carly.

  Whatever, I digress.

  Spying entertains me. The things people do when they sleep, the faces they pull and the things they say. The way they touch their bodies when they think they’re alone.

  Last year I sat in the dorm room of one of Naida’s friends, Juliet. Right by her bed. I watched her face twitch while I tickled her nose with my hair. And, a secret? I stole from her. I took a pen from her desk drawer, wrote a note in the back of her diary—I forget what it was now, and she never found it, from what I can tell—and I did something else too. I’ve got to be careful what I write down…

  I need to tell someone. I need to tell you.

  Diary… Dee…

  My confession: I cut her. I cut Juliet last year, right before summer. I took the blade out of her razor, and I sliced a little bit of her skin near her wrist. There was a tiny red line of blood, and she never even stirred.

  I was horrified at myself, of course, but it was so exciting. The most exciting thing I’ve ever done, I think. What a thrill to tell someone! I felt a sensation deep in my stomach that I’ve never felt before. Can you imagine what you could do to a person while they sleep, oblivious?

  I climbed out of her window, sat in the tree, and watched her. The following night, she was wearing a plaster on her wrist, but her brow was unlined as she slept—she didn’t have a care in the world. It was just another inexplicable injury, forgotten in the moment it’s found.

  But it wasn’t forgotten by me. Not after all this time, even. I made a difference, Dee. I changed something in this world. I made a plaster appear on that wrist, and it never would have happened if I didn’t exist.

  I’ve done other things since then. Taken things from students who leave their windows open. Read diaries. Did you know that joker-boy Scott Fromley keeps a diary, Dee? I read it and then I left a little message in the back, written with his own pen. I have no idea if he ever found it, and I can’t remember what I wrote. I think a word. Loser, maybe. I couldn’t see the effect it had on him, so I consider that one a failed experiment. But there were others. A strand of hair pulled from Brenda’s head. A stone placed under Megan’s pillow.

  All of this was—is—my clever way of distracting myself from the fact that, despite Carly, I am alone.

  And I always will be.

  Later, Attic

  I’ll keep you here. I’ll keep you safe.

  Purple Post-it

  You are a ray of sunshine at midnight.

  Message Book Entry

  Monday, 6 September 2004, 4pm

  School was annoying today. Scott is always all over Naida. I think she noticed that it bothered me, though, because she sent him off and then we talked for ages. Mostly about you (in a good way!). She said she wishes you could hang out with us too. See? She isn’t bad. She says you’re feisty, and that’s not a bad thing.

  The downside of today was Brett. He spent all of study period passing me notes.

  Anyway, how was your night? What did you get up to? I’m planning a surprise for you, but I know you hate surprises, so this is your fair warning to not be surprised when you find it.

  Also, you need to call Lansing. She’ll ask about breakfast, lunch, and dinner (cereal, lasagna, and omelet) and she’ll ask how choir practice was (I skipped because I felt weird, but I’m fine, don’t worry).

  Love you, Kaybear.

  C xxx

  A page has been torn from the Message Book at this point, presumably Kaitlyn’s reply. The next few pages are badly scorched or destroyed entirely by the fire. It seems that the events over the following weeks prevented whatever surprise Carly had planned from coming to fruition, but mention of a need for hundreds of Post-its in what remains of Carly’s journal implies an elaborate plan. It is unknown whether Kaitlyn was aware of what Carly had in mind.

  7

  The following Kaitlyn journal entry is the first that can be found in which Ari Hait makes an appearance. Because of his significant role in later events, all entries pertaining to Mr. Hait have been included.

  Diary of Kaitlyn Johnson

  Wednesday, 8 September 2004, 11:04 pm

  Hill Outside Old Chapel

  The chapel is organic, like it spewed up out of the ground. Not like the school, which looks more as if it fell where it sits—a meteor crashed into a crater. One a denizen of hell, the other a celestial body. Both revolt and delight me.

  It’s not too cold tonight, even up here at the top of the hill, but the night cuts deep, and I need… something. A filler for the space inside that’s like a stygian black pit and not very pretty. I’m being melodramatic, I know. I can’t help it. I guess I thought I could find something here.

  Find God. Find hope. Company… I don’t even know what. I’m so alone. Oh God, I wish Carly was here.

  They switched the outside lights on tonight, so all the white-barked trees stand starkly orange under the new moon like lepers bent and twisted. The light is only the imitation of warmth, but I’ll take what I can get.

  When I was five, I asked Carly what the sun felt like, and she wrote, “Warm, Kaitie, so warm. Like a hot bath.”

  Even the stone walls of the chapel are illuminated, and I feel less alone somehow. But warm? No. Cold as ice, like everything else.

  There’s a profound stillness here, especially in the nooks where the walls cast the darkest shadows. They look like spilled ink, impenetrable. Void. Even the scratching of my pen as I write is raw and harsh in the silence, as loud to my ears as a scream. I flinch—I tear—with every stroke.

  Can they hear me, the corpses beneath the little gravestones in what I call my Forgotten Garden? There are only about thirty, from a long, long time ago. Nothing but dust now, not even memories. Most of the headstones are illegible, sentiment that even stone wasn’t strong enough to hold. I told you. Forgotten Garden, full of skeletons, like depressing seeds that will never flower.

  I’m reading “The Fall of the House of Usher” from my Poe collection. It’s so suitable.

  It’s been exactly 101 days since I was last here. Carly onc
e wrote, “Naida says she understands why you go to the chapel. It’s holy, she says.” If ever I thought Naida was right about this being a magical place, I do tonight. It feels holy… synthetically warm. The closest I’ve ever come to God. Is this what Carly feels every single day of her life, bathing in sunlight she takes for granted? Is the sun what the hand of God is? And if so, are these uplighters the crumbs he allows me?

  Dee, I don’t feel warm. I feel cold and abandoned. I stand painfully alone, and, selfish as I am, I wish that some other soul stood trapped here beside me in the profound stillness.

  There’s nothing so terrible as the utter silence of a soul like mine. Like those souls out there. Though if I’m honest, I don’t think they’ve lingered here. That Forgotten Garden is the absence of souls, which is even more pathetic. I’m alone, even among the dead. Can you begin to understand how that feels?

  Except Carly is here with me… somewhere. That gives me comfort. Gives me hope. She’ll never know the strength she gives me, simply by my knowing she’s here.

  The whole world feels like a vast, empty space, with me the only living thing in it.

  Or am I dead too?

  6:00 am

  Dee, my hand is shaking as I write this, but I must get it all down before Carly comes. I can’t risk losing any of it in the crossover. The almanac says sunrise in fifty-two minutes, but I don’t trust it to be accurate. Yesternight I lost three minutes.

  Onwards!

  I was in the confessional, as usual. Talking to the night. Talking to silence. Talking to God knows what, to be honest. Safe in that little space. How long had I been talking?