The Screaming Season (14 page)

I stood. Mandy’s back was to me, with her perfectly straight, shiny, silky hair.
If she turns around, I’ll scream,
I thought.

She walked away.

My face tingled with cold, then heat, and I felt my forehead to see if I had a fever. My skin was cool.

I hurried to the row where I’d seen Rose disappear. There she was, at the other end. She was standing still, a mirror of Mandy, with her back to me. There was nothing unnatural about it, nothing scary, but I was uneasy, and I tiptoed away before she could see me.

Everything is fine,
I told myself, sitting down. But how could that be? We were at Marlwood.

THE NEXT DAY, Rose dressed in what I had come to refer to as her “catering clothes”—white blouse, black skirt, black stockings. and black flats—her attempt to look, as she called it, “mundane.” She paraded around at breakfast, talking fast. She was nervous. I knew she didn’t like being summoned to the admin building for any reason. Rose wasn’t exactly poor, but her family had significantly less money since her father’s company had fallen apart during the recession. Besides me, Rose was the only other scholarship student that she and I knew about. She was positive they were itching to boot her because she had no looks, no clothes, and although she had a framed Cirque du Soleil poster in her room, her favorite group was the Dresden Dolls. One look at their website, she figured, and Dr. Ehrlenbach would boot her. Ehrlenbach was not a fan of people without money.

As Rose passed by our table, she gave me a little conspiratorial wink. It made me as nervous as she was.

At free period, I joined my dorm mates in the newly renovated “conservatory,” which was a gift from Sangheeta Shankar’s family. The conservatory was a Victorian structure made of glass, hunter green wood, and iron, though mostly of glass—lots and lots of small panes—and the interior was brimming with palm trees in black urns, trellises of ivy, and large, overstuffed furniture upholstered in thick green brocade that didn’t quite match. There was also a fireplace with a white wood mantel.

The conservatory had opened while I was living in the infirmary, and each dorm was going to get use of it one day a month. Today was our day, and I was looking forward to the novelty. At ten-thirty, the beginning of free period, it began to rain, and we whooped and laughed as we trundled inside the glass jewel box. There was a fire crackling in the brick fireplace and we’d all brought cups of hot chocolate.

“Sangeeta, this is so cool,” Julie said. “Your parents are angels.”

Sangeeta smiled at Julie, flushed and proud. She sat in a chair with a flourish and sipped her chocolate. Then she gazed up toward the glass ceiling, at the rain.

“It rains as much here as in India,” she said, “only it’s much colder.”

“Lindsay?” a voice said at the doorway. It was the new parttime clerical person who was helping the school secretary, Ms. Shelley, in the admin building. I couldn’t remember her name. “Ms. Shelley needs to see you. Something about a form for you to sign.”

Everyone groaned for me. I was going to miss our conservatory time.

“Okay.” I picked up my chocolate, jumping a little as thunder rolled around the glass building. Before she’d left, Dr. Ehrlenbach had decreed that I needed an extracurricular, even though my scholarship didn’t cover it. She was trying to make me more college-worthy.

The woman turned on her heel and left. Marica handed me her umbrella. It was beige, navy, and red plaid. Burberry, maybe.

“Thanks,” I said. “I’ll bring it back.”

I left, darting beneath a stand of pine trees. As I looked over my shoulder, Julie waved; then she flopped into one of the chairs and stretched out her arms, as if she were embracing the whole world.

I wasn’t all that good with an umbrella; it hardly ever rained in San Diego, and we all had cars, so we never carried umbrellas around. I ran to avoid getting soaked to the skin, darting up the hill toward the admin building. It stood dark and stark against the clouds. I thought of Miles and wondered what he was doing.

I slogged along the wet path and through the front door. Steamy warm air greeted me as I neared Ms. Shelley’s empty desk. There was a folder on the dark green blotter with a white Post-It on it.
FOR LINDSAY CAVANAUGH
was written on it.

I hesitated. Did she mean for me to take it?

Then I heard muffled voices coming from the hall. I listened. Rose and Dr. Morehouse. I wondered what they were saying.

I opened the file. There was another Post-It.

Lindsay, I had to step out. Please fill out the form and photocopy it. Copier is in the storage room.

I glanced down at the form. Ms. Shelley had filled in my name, birth date, and some other basic facts. Then I had to initial a form about when I entered the infirmary, who had “attended” to me,” etc.

A little miffed that I had had to miss our time in the conservatory to spend thirty seconds filling out a silly form, I nevertheless took it with me and looked for the storage room, where the copier was located. Dr. Morehouse and Rose’s voices grew louder as I tiptoed down the hall. I thought Rose might be crying.

What if she was telling him about some of the conversations she and I had about the wrongness of things here? Or if she confessed that we had broken into Mandy’s room during Thanksgiving break?

Down the hall past the glaring statue of Edwin Marlwood was a door marked
No Admittance
. It was locked. There were no other doors to try.

I went out the front door, onto the porch, and walked it around to the left, where I recalled seeing a door during my first trip to the admin building, in October. I stepped off the porch, and saw that a door was hanging open. A sign below an old-fashioned brass knocker read
Storage
.

I reached the door and cautiously peered around it. There was a small room, clean, lined with wooden shelves that reached from floor to ceiling. Reams of photocopy paper and plastic bins with neatly typed labels filled the shelves. At eye level, there were some framed photographs separated by clear bubble wrap. The top picture was a head shot of Dr. Melton smiling at the camera. Out with the old, in with the new.

There was a large photocopy machine pushed against the far wall. And beside it, a tiny elevator, in a shaft about as wide as my shoulders, with a wooden base and top, and nothing else but the rope and pulley system that would be used to raise it. I wondered if it was operational. Like the rest of the room, it was very clean.

Out of curiosity, I set my papers on the photocopy machine and leaned in to examine the dumbwaiter. A glint of light caught my eye, and I leaned in farther. There was a crack in the wall, at least two inches wide.

“Rose,” said a muffled voice. “I’m here to help you.” Dr. Morehouse.

Rose was crying. I remained stock-still. I knew I should go; I shouldn’t intrude on her privacy, but I had secrets I needed to pry out of Marlwood. What if she knew something, said something that would help me ? If it could put an end to the madness, I should hear it.

Guiltily, I edged back to the door and pulled it shut. Against the contrasting darkness, light streamed in from the crack and shadows splayed across my body.

I put my hand on the wooden floor of the dumbwaiter. It didn’t move. I placed my other hand beside it and pushed down experimentally. It remained in place.

Rose said something that I couldn’t hear. I bent forward and planted my hands. Amazed that I was being so reckless—or else, more interested in what Rose might say than afraid of plunging down the shaft—I crawled into the tight space. Arching my back, I pressed my face against the crack in the wall. I could see a pair of men’s hands, resting on the polished wood surface of Dr. Ehrlenbach’s desk.

“You know I’m here for you, Rose,” he said. “You don’t need to carry such a burden alone.”

“I don’t know,” Rose said, so quietly I could barely hear her. “It’s just so . . .
hard
.”

“You have to trust me, Rose. When it’s your time, I’ll let you know.”

His cadence was calm and soothing, the vocal equivalent of a fish tank. I had no idea what he was talking about. Rose’s time?

She whispered something. His hands moved on the desk, flattening against the wood. A shadow fell over the backs of hands. The backs of his hands . . . the backs . . .

Ice water poured through me. Starting at the crown of my head, it cascaded over my brain, into my forehead, down my skull. I gasped; cold throbbed through me in a steady slow pulse. My vision started to cloud.

It was Celia. She hadn’t left me. I was still possessed. I wanted to scream, I was so devastated. I was shivering. The cold had never been this bad before. It made me ache.

“Leave me,” I whispered, in my own voice.
“Stop.”

She didn’t answer, but I could feel her moving my hands, making me push backward, forcing myself to crawl out of the dumbwaiter. I couldn’t hear Dr. Morehouse anymore. I didn’t know if he could hear me fighting her, trying to stay in control. She was forcing me to leave because he’d been helping me get free of her. I was surer of that than of anything else that had happened since I’d come home from break.

“I hate you. I hate you,” I whispered, as I grabbed my form off the copier. I was shaking. I wanted to cry out to Dr. Morehouse, let him know I was there and I needed his help.

But then I was walking stiff-legged to the door, like a robot or a monster. I was walking like a stalker.

Like the Marlwood Stalker.

I pushed the door open and staggered outside into the pouring rain. It wasn’t noon, but it was as gray as twilight; rain poured down in buckets. I was so cold already that I felt no difference. My teeth chattered.

Lightning jagged overhead, and I shambled back onto the porch and rushed into the admin building. I put the form on Ms. Shelley’s desk and wrote on the Post-It,
“Sorry, couldn’t find copier.”
Now she’d think I was an idiot.

I walked back around on the porch, making sure I’d shut the door. There was a back porch, too, sided by two small columns with a triangular overhang. Something was sitting on it. The driving rain washed the image out, making it impossible to figure out what it was. But suddenly I knew it was bad. I knew I had to stay away from it.

I knew I should run back to the conservatory.

And yet, I walked toward it. I couldn’t stop myself.

I couldn’t breathe. Shivering in the cold, nearly paralyzed with fear, I kept lurching toward the thing on the porch. I had the sure sensation that someone was watching me. It was like a laser beam at the nape of my neck.

“No,” I told Celia “I won’t do this.”

We were getting closer. A white blob was sitting on the porch, about two feet tall. I didn’t want to see it. My heartbeat was hammering in my eardrums. My throat had closed so tightly I couldn’t even swallow.

Something was still watching me. It was behind me. I didn’t know how close, but it was there. I knew it was there.

If I fainted, what would happen to me ? I looked down, completely mute. My eyes bulged and the rain smacked my face.

The thing on the porch was the white head from our room.

Did it
move
? Did its blank eyes gaze up at me?

“God!”
I finally forced out, swaying, reaching out to grab onto something, anything. But there was nothing, just the freestanding porch and the head sitting on it.

I staggered backward.

Something was behind me.

I couldn’t turn around. I couldn’t move forward.

The scent of wet geraniums filled my nose—my mom’s favorite flower, the borders of my walk with Dr. Morehouse. I had friends in this world, connections, people who cared about me and could save me.

No one’s coming.
I stood in the rain and I knew it.

I was at Marlwood, an isolated world unto itself. Brimming with ghosts and danger. I was drowning in terror. If that head moved, if it came near me . . .

“No, please, help me, please,” I whispered.

Did someone take my hand? Did someone lead me away?

Because everything went hazy and blurry; I floated away; I wasn’t there. Time passed without me, as it had when I woke up in my pajamas and found Kiyoko’s body in the lake. What had happened to me while I was “gone”?

I came to outside the conservatory. The shrieks of my friends must have snapped me out of my catatonia.

“Lindsay, what are you doing?” Julie cried, racing up to me. She was carrying a dark blue umbrella with white stars on it and she shielded me from the downpour as she grabbed my wrist and dragged me into the airy glass-and-iron room. Marica, Elvis, and Claire were seated at a glass table that was perched on a base of weathered turquoise-streaked copper. They’d been playing cards; Julie had thrown her hand down when she’d come to get me.

“Oh, my God, you look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Julie said, then blanched. I had tried to tell her that there were ghosts at Marlwood, but she hadn’t believed me. What did I say now? What did I do now? “Here. We were drinking hot chocolate. Drink mine.” Julie sat, pushing me down in one of the stuffed chairs and picking up a white china Marlwood academy mug.