Sisters of Misery (14 page)

Maddie remembered going to a party at Fort Glover a few months before Cordelia had arrived in Hawthorne. On their way up to the fort, some of the kids from Hawthorne Academy slapped the faces of the Pickering sisters that were carved into the main wall of the original fort. While the rest of the fort area had been turned into a beautiful park overlooking the ocean, the older walls still connected to Ravenswood, adding to the crumbling Gothic allure of the place that once served to protect the town from outsiders and now protected them from those inside the asylum. No one ever knew how the faces of the sisters had gotten there or who kept returning them to their former state after town officials covered them over again and again, not wanting to be reminded of the cruelty their ancestors had inflicted on victims of the witch trials. But the faces of the three sisters always reappeared, each time looking a little more haggard and vengeful. Maddie never looked directly at them, recalling a playground song that warned against doing such a thing:

As she walked up and down the path between Fort Glover and Ravenswood that afternoon in November, waiting for Tess to come out and inform her of another uneventful visit with Rebecca, Maddie noticed from the look of the dark sky and ocean that a storm was approaching.

Maddie averted her eyes as usual as she passed the faces of the Pickering sisters, but something caused her to stop suddenly. The tendrils of ivy, too stubborn to die off in the shivery November weather, had been pushed aside as if someone or something had recently been there. The faces of the sisters pushed out of the massive fortress wall as if trying to break free of their stony prison. But there was another face that had joined the three sisters. The color of the mortar was darker, fresher than the other three faces, which were bleached to the color of sand. This face didn’t have the harsh features and wicked grimaces of the Pickering girls. This face was softer…beautiful…haunted.

It was the face of a young girl who was both familiar and horrifying. And it took her breath away when Maddie realized who it was supposed to be.

Someone had added a fourth face.

And this face looked remarkably like the person Maddie most wanted to see.

But not like this. Not here, not now.

It was the face she had seen in her dreams long ago.

It was the face of Cordelia.

MESSAGE

DECEMBER

T
here was a flurry of activity as Hawthorne Academy shut down for the holidays. Kids ran across the hallways slapping each other on the back, girls huddled in tight knots by their lockers. Laughter, shouts, screeching of sneakers.

And then, after a half hour or so, silence.

Maddie waited until everyone had gone to start cleaning out her and Cordelia’s lockers. She hadn’t told any of the other girls of her plans of taking a semester off. She didn’t want a lecture from Kate on how she was throwing away her chance of getting into one of the Ivies. At this point, she didn’t know what she wanted to do, but she knew this much: Hawthorne Academy was the last place in the world she wanted to be.

Maddie succeeded in getting the headmaster to let her take the semester off to care for her family and recover from the loss. While it seemed like a kind gesture on the surface, Maddie knew that the school board made that decision not out of goodwill, but as a way of taking the spotlight off of the school. Private schools never liked it when anything bad happened to their students, even if it didn’t happen during school hours or on the property. It made parents uneasy. So when Maddie approached Headmaster Collins, he seemed happy to have an excuse to let her leave the premises for a few months—at least until all the news surrounding her cousin’s disappearance and her aunt’s institutionalization died down. Abigail was thrilled as well, because Tess was displaying clear signs of dementia, obviously brought on by the recent tragic events and was becoming more of a challenge to care for. The dementia was steadily taking over, and it wasn’t uncommon to find her grandmother in the strangest of places or situations.

After cleaning out her own locker, Maddie made her way down to Cordelia’s locker, her footsteps echoing through the deserted hallway. She stopped short, hearing a shuffling noise behind her. She turned, half expecting to see Cordelia escaping from a classroom, running down the corridor. But the hallway was empty.

She opened Cordelia’s locker and started pulling out books and paperwork and school supplies to throw into the trash.

Most of Cordelia’s personal belongings had been taken away by the police as evidence. Just as Maddie was about to slam the door closed, she noticed a rune stone stuck way in the back of the locker floor. Reaching down to retrieve the stone, Maddie realized the base of the locker was loose. After making sure no one was watching, Maddie pulled up the locker floor and was shocked to discover a stack of opened letters. Letters that must have been delivered by hand as they were unstamped and without a return address. Maddie flipped through them and then quickly stuck them into her bag, fighting the urge to read them all right there in the middle of Hawthorne Academy. She slammed the locker door closed and continued down the hallway.

Maddie walked into the older section of Hawthorne Academy where the teachers had their offices. She wanted to see if the rumors about Mr. Campbell getting fired were true. The mansion that once served as the original schoolhouse remained virtually unchanged since the school had opened its doors decades earlier. Perhaps the hardwood floor didn’t gleam as brightly as it once had, but now with all of the scuff marks and chinks, the thickly varnished planks of pine gave off a warm amber glow. The front door banged open suddenly.

Maddie!
A raspy, ghostlike voice suddenly filled her ear.

She spun around quickly to see who called out, or rather whispered, her name. But no one was there—only the faint tinkling of laughter, from one of the classrooms, perhaps. Her heartbeat quickened, and her breathing became shallow.

The nameplate had been torn from Mr. Campbell’s office door, so it was as though he never existed at the school. The esteemed academy probably felt it important to remove any chance of being implicated by association with the disappearance of Mr. Campbell’s favorite—perhaps too much of a favorite—student, Cordelia LeClaire.

Maddie always believed that if anyone was involved with Cordelia’s disappearance, it was Trevor, not Mr. Campbell. She wanted to believe that Mr. Campbell with his twinkling blue eyes and obvious concern for her feelings was innocent. But sometimes when you put a person too high up on a pedestal, you no longer see their actions clearly. And Maddie was smart enough to realize that her feelings for Mr. Campbell were deeper than a mere student–teacher relationship, and that those feelings might be clouding her judgment.

Maddie reached into her bag and felt the stack of letters, wondering if they held the answers to her questions. Was Cordelia involved with Mr. Campbell? Were these actually love notes between them, confirming a relationship? Maddie raced out of school, anxious to get home and read the letters that might hold the clue, the missing piece to this puzzle. She was so lost in thought over the letters that she didn’t even realize that someone was watching her the entire time. Someone who knew what those letters would ultimately reveal. Someone who would do anything to get them back.

Maddie’s relief at being out of Hawthorne Academy was short-lived when she caught sight of the note from Abigail scrawled on the kitchen counter, detailing her list of chores. The old family station wagon, complete with fake wood paneling adorning the sides, needed the brakes checked, the oil changed, and various other life-extending procedures. The fact that she was a few months shy of getting her license didn’t seem to bother her mother, so why should she care?

“Happy holidays to you, too, Mom,” Maddie muttered. As she maneuvered the old car away from Mariner’s Way, Maddie wondered how this decrepit ancestor of the SUV had managed to survive all of the brutal winters and actually run despite the salt water mists that ravaged the metal undercarriage. The way it was handling, Maddie wasn’t sure if it would even make the short distance to O’Malley’s local body shop. Upon entering the old auto shop, Maddie again felt a strange sense of being watched despite the fact that the place seemed empty. She looked around for a security camera, but couldn’t spot one. There was a bell on the Formica counter. The smell of oil and grease permeated the place.

“Hello?” Maddie called as she tentatively rang the bell. And then a little louder,
“Hello?”

A voice came from behind her. “Hey there, Maddie, what’s up?”

Maddie turned quickly, surprised by the unfamiliar voice saying her name. A tall, lanky guy stood there, his dark eyes peering from behind long strands of hair.

“Do I know you?” she asked in a clipped tone.

He looked slightly hurt that Maddie didn’t recognize him, but then seemed to shrug it off and said in a cool tone. “You go to Hawthorne Academy.”

His features were strikingly handsome, in strong contrast to the gritty condition of his longish hair, goatee, and oil-stained clothing. It was almost as if under all that dirt and grime, there was an incredibly hot guy. With his high cheekbones and strong jaw, he definitely didn’t fit in with the doughy, baseball-capped guys that Maddie knew from school.

“You go there?” She cringed upon hearing her own voice—just like a typical Hawthorne snob. “I mean—what I meant to say was…um…are we in any classes together?”
God, I’m such a bitch.

He shook his head and smiled faintly before lighting a cigarette. “Nah, I work there. I go to the tech school over in Lynn, but I work odd jobs around the Academy. My old man’s the groundskeeper there.”

“Are you, I mean, you’re not O’Malley, are you?”

“Yup, Finnegan O’Malley in the flesh.” He eyed her for a moment. “Don’t look it, do I? I’m what they call Black Irish.”

He had read her mind. His features were too exotic for him to be named O’Malley. His eyes were dark, so black that she could barely see his pupils. He looked at her intensely, making her feel somewhat exposed. He was very different from anyone in Hawthorne. Maddie was surprised she’d never noticed him before.

“You’re Cordelia’s cousin.” He stated this, letting it hang uncomfortably in the space between them. It was weird. Usually, people referred to Cordelia as “Maddie’s cousin,” not the other way around. It was as if, to Finnegan, she held ownership to this town in the brief time she had spent here, and Maddie was the visitor.

“Did you know her? I mean, I know that everyone knew
about
her,” Maddie stopped, wondering how to phrase this tactfully, “but she was here for such a short time.” She was confused. Maddie knew everyone that Cordelia knew—she was the one who introduced her around—so how did this total stranger know her? “Were you friends or something?”

For a moment, he seemed guarded, his eyes drifting over her shoulder. Taking a deep drag off his cigarette, he nodded as he exhaled. A smile lingered at the corner of his lips, and his eyes glossed over as if he was lost in thought. It was the look of someone who knew a person intimately.

“I just heard the stories about her. About how she disappeared and all.” He moved back behind the counter. “I’d seen her around a few times. I used to think I was the only one crazy enough to walk around the town at night—well, me and the drunks coming outta the Sea Cap, of course.” He smiled, his face softening slightly, and then continued. “Yeah, I used to see your cousin in all sorts of crazy places real late at night.”

Scratching the back of his head, he continued, “That really sucks that she’s gone. Especially after everything she went through. I’m really sorry—I mean, I feel bad for your family…and for Cordelia.”

“Yeah, well, you know…” Maddie wasn’t sure how to respond. Talking about Cordelia with this stranger, this very unusual, very cute stranger, was making her extremely nervous for some reason. Maddie couldn’t put her finger on it, but his presence, the way he looked at her as if he could see right through her, unnerved her. “It just seems, I mean, the way you talk about her and all…how well did you know my cousin?”

He held her gaze for a few beats, almost staring her down. “Like I said before, I’ve seen her around. I’ve seen lots of things going on in this town, doesn’t mean I’m a part of it.”

Maddie nodded, not quite sure what he was getting at. “But, I mean, if you knew—”

“Listen,” he said sharply, “I’d love to do this stroll down memory lane, but I’ve got a lot going on right now.” He pointed to the garage, which seemed nearly empty. “Lots of work I need to get back to.”

“Oh,” she said disappointedly. Why was he so quick to get rid of her? “Okay, Finnegan, I’m sorry. I’ll just leave you the keys, if that’s alright. My mom needs the whole thing fixed up—oil, brakes, the works. It’s barely hanging on, and we’d like to see it through the winter.”

He nodded as she slid the keys across the counter into his grease-laden hands. His voice softened a bit. “Call me Finn. I’ll see what I can do.”

“Thanks, Finn,” Maddie sighed and closed her eyes, rubbing vigorously at the pressure point between her eyebrows. “I’ll be back later to pick it up.”

When she opened her eyes, he had already vanished into the back room, making her feel as though she had been talking all along with an apparition. Maddie shook her head and set out into the bright winter light.

It was only after Maddie had settled into a booth at the coffee shop across the street and spread out the paper that something Finn had mentioned caught her completely off guard. What did he mean when he said, “after everything she went through?” Was it possible that he knew about that night out on Misery Island? And if so, how?