What She Left Behind (22 page)

“She’s right,” Alex said. “We have to hold hands.”

“Why?” Izzy said. “What does it mean?”

“In case any of the spirits we bring forth are evil,” Alex said. “If we’re touching each other, the evil spirit can’t attach itself to anyone.”

“See?” Crystal said, grinning. “I told you. Now let’s get this show on the road.”

Josh rolled his eyes and held a hand out to Luke, who reluctantly touched the edges of Josh’s fingers.

“If I hear any rumors going around about this, I’ll—” Luke said.

“Our lips are sealed,” Dave said, pretending to blow kisses in his direction.

Crystal stomped on Dave’s foot. “Did you forget what we came here for?” she said.

Dave’s face contorted in pain. “Jesus!” he said. “Okay, okay!”

“Everyone ready?” Crystal said, directing her attention particularly to Josh and Luke. Josh and Luke nodded, doing their best to stop smirking. Crystal waited another second or two, then closed her eyes. “Is there anyone here with us?” she said, her voice hushed and reverent. One of the guys made a small, snorting sound, as if trying to suppress his laughter. “We’re not here to cause you harm,” Crystal continued.

“If there is anyone here with us,” Alex said, “can you give us a sign?”

Izzy opened her eyes to look at Alex, surprised to hear her speaking. Her eyes were closed, her head down. Beside her, Luke stood with his shoulders hunched, his face in knots as if he expected to be hit or touched at any second. Izzy closed her eyes again. She wondered what would happen if they called Clara’s name. She thought about suggesting it, then changed her mind. Everyone would ask questions about how she knew a patient’s name. Right now, she just wanted to get this over with.

“We invite you to move among us,” Crystal said. “You can touch our hair, knock on the walls, anything to let us know you’re here.”

“If someone touches me, I’m outta here!” Luke said.

“Shhh!” Crystal said. She took a long, deep breath, then let it out slowly, waiting. Then she said, “Please give us a sign that you’re with us. We want to understand why you’re still here, trapped inside this asylum.”

“We can help you find peace,” Alex said. “To move on from this place and join your loved ones who have already crossed over.”

Just then, a soft
thud-thud
sounded behind Izzy. Alex made a high-pitched squeak, as if trying to suppress a scream.

“Shhh . . .” Crystal whispered. “It’s okay. Just relax. If that was you, can you make that noise again?”

Josh’s sweaty hand tightened around Izzy’s. She wiggled her fingers, trying to loosen his grip. It was no use.

“We hear you,” Crystal said.

“Were you a patient here?” Alex said. “Were you locked up in this horrible place?”

Izzy’s heartbeat quickened.
Is this for real?
She’d come in this awful place to humor Alex, not to get scared shitless. The only thing worse than being in an old insane asylum would be seeing the ghosts of former patients.

“Are you here alone?” Alex said. “Are there others with you?”

“Can you make a different noise?” Crystal said. “Something to let us know it’s really you?”

Just then, Izzy heard three knocks behind her, as if a person was rapping their knuckles on the inside of the wooden vault. The hair on her arms stood up. All at once, the air felt heavy and hot, as if someone had turned on the furnace. Despite her doubts, she pulled her shoulders inward to make herself smaller, squeezing Dave’s and Josh’s hands.

“Can you make that knocking sound again?” Alex said.

“We’re here to help you,” Crystal called out. “Can you tell us your name?”

Alex screamed. Izzy opened her eyes and let go of Josh’s and Dave’s hands. She dropped her flashlight. Just then, the candle went out, pitching the morgue into blackness. Alex started shouting. “Get off me! Leave me alone! What are you doing?” Then she was mumbling, as if someone had a hand over her mouth.

Izzy rushed toward the door, slamming face-first into Josh. To her surprise, he grabbed her and spun her around. For a split second, she thought her sense of direction was off and Josh was trying to help her escape. Maybe the door was to her right, not her left. The room filled with the sounds of people shuffling and fighting. Then Josh wrapped his arms around Izzy’s chest and picked her up, his beer-soaked breath coming hot and fast in her ear. She thought he was going to carry her out of the room, toward safety, but then someone grabbed her ankles and lifted her legs off the floor.

“What the hell are you doing?” Izzy yelled, kicking. One foot collided with someone’s head, setting that leg free, and she heard someone cuss. It was Dave. She twisted and turned, trying to fight her way out of Josh’s grasp. It was no use. Dave grabbed her ankle again, and they carried her across the room. “Let me go!”

Metal screeched against metal. It was the sound of the vault slab being rolled out. Then Izzy was dropped onto the cold block and held down, the back of her head thumping against the steel. Strong hands held her down. Metal screeched again and she moved forward, as if slipping along a horizontal slide, except the slide was moving with her. She was shoved inside the vault, the slab slamming into the back wall with a vibrating thud. She raised her arms to stop the door from closing, her elbows and wrists scraping along the rough interior of the chamber. Her forearms caught in the door, crushing her muscles and tearing at her skin. She screamed. Rough hands pushed her arms inside. Then the door slammed closed, plunging her into total darkness.

CHAPTER 14

C
LARA

 

As the leaves curled around the edges and fell one by one from the oak trees outside the Rookie Pest House windows, Clara sat on her filthy bed and watched Lawrence Lawrence push a wheelbarrow between the rows of iron markers in the cemetery across the road. He worked in the graveyard at least three times a week and his routine was always the same. First, he stopped at the chosen location, unbuttoned his coat, and took off his newsboy cap, smoothing his hands over his gray hair, once on each side, then four times down the middle. Then he made the sign of the cross over his chest and bowed his head, his cap clutched over his heart. After a long minute, he looked up at the sky, put his cap back on, pulled his shovel out of the wheelbarrow and started digging, stopping only long enough to lift a rock over the edge of the hole or switch from a shovel to a pick. He didn’t stop until the hole was dug and the pile of dirt beside it was free of roots and stones. When the job was finished, he took off his cap, smoothed his hair again, wiped his brow, and put his cap back on. Even on the days when he raked leaves or cut the grass, he worked nonstop until the job was complete.

While the weeks passed and Clara felt herself giving up and growing weaker, she marveled at the gravedigger’s stamina. Even as winter’s snow weighed down the cedar trees and built up between the bars outside the windows, the gravedigger shoveled paths through the cemetery to dig a patient’s final resting place. Near the end of December, he finally gave up trying to break open the frozen earth, but only for a short time. A few weeks later, after an unseasonably long January thaw, when Clara could see the white banks of Creek Mears nearly overflowing with icy water, Lawrence Lawrence got back to work.

Every night, she prayed the gravedigger would soon be digging a grave for her. Other than mealtime and being taken to use the bathroom two times a day, she spent her days and nights chained to her bed, sleeping or staring out the dirt-covered windows. Like most of the women in the Pest House, her bodily functions didn’t always correspond with the bathroom schedule. As a result, her hospital gown was encrusted with dried urine, blood, and feces, her sheets and thin blanket soiled and rank. When her monthly cycle came, she was given rags to put in her undergarments, to be rinsed out when she used the bathroom. If she was lucky, she was given a fresh nightgown after her weekly ice bath. More often than not, there weren’t enough clean ones to go around.

Shouting and screaming often came from elsewhere inside the building, but other than the sounds of weeping, coughing, and women talking to themselves, Clara’s room was relatively quiet. The Pest House workers were nothing more than untrained guards, and a daily, evening dose of laudanum kept most patients drifting between a state of unconsciousness and a groggy, dreamlike stupor.

Clara grew to love the bitter taste of the laudanum. It tasted like black licorice rolled in sugar and dirt, but the numbness on her tongue meant the ignorance of unconsciousness was soon to follow and she would no longer be subject to the black mass of grief that sat like a house on her chest, making it nearly impossible to take the next breath. Despite the medicine, she had the same nightmare every night. In it, Beatrice was thin and wailing in a filthy nightgown, her metal crib in the center of a ward with hundreds of other cribs, each filled with another screaming, emaciated baby.

Every morning, when the medicine wore off and Clara opened her eyes, tears already blurring her vision, the memory of Beatrice being taken away made something foul and vile churn in her stomach. She lay there, wishing to die, crushing grief turning her blood to lead, her heart to stone, her muscles to granite. She closed her eyes and tried to go under again, but sorrow always pulled her back to reality, as if she deserved to be punished. Agony nearly swallowed her.

During her first few days in the Rookie Pest House, she had tried reasoning with the orderlies, begging them to let her out so she could find her daughter before it was too late, before Beatrice was so far away she would be lost forever. Numb to patients’ pleas, the orderlies ignored her, their faces blank, prodding her along the hallway, wrestling her into bed, roughly clamping the ankle iron around her leg. Once, after being taken to use the bathroom, she shoved an orderly to the floor and ran down the hall, only to find a locked door and a group of orderlies waiting to carry her back to her room.

A week later, she tried to stop eating. But the orderlies noticed and stood over her, ordering her to eat the gruel already drying in her bowl. When she refused, they lifted her from her stool and slapped her hard, across the face, warning that if she didn’t do as she was told, things would only get worse. With her lip split and bleeding, she took a spoonful and nearly choked. Afterward, she cursed herself for not being strong enough to let them punish her further. Beatrice was gone and she was locked away in a mental institution. There was no reason to live.

Then, near the end of February, she dreamed of seeing Beatrice as a grown woman, her dark hair like satin against the shoulders of a yellow dress. Beatrice entered what looked like a hospital room, then kneeled and smiled up at her, tears glistening in her eyes. The next morning, the mass in Clara’s chest had loosened. It was still there, heavy and painful, but it no longer felt like her heart was being crushed. The dream was so vivid Clara could almost smell Beatrice’s perfume and feel her soft cheek. It had to mean something. And she’d never find out if she spent the rest of her life locked away in the Rookie Pest House.

That night, Clara held her dose of laudanum in her mouth instead of swallowing it. The nurse moved on to the next patient and Clara put her blanket to her lips, spitting the narcotic into the stained fabric. Over the next few weeks, she kept up the drugged mannerisms of the other women so she wouldn’t draw attention to herself. Then, on the first of March, when Dr. Roach finally came to the Pest House to made rounds, she looked him in the eye and agreed that Beatrice was better off being raised by someone else.

CHAPTER 15

I
ZZY

 

Trying to catch her breath, Izzy struggled to turn over on the metal slab inside the morgue vault. It was no use. There wasn’t enough room inside the narrow compartment to bend her knees and push her body over. She kicked at the low ceiling and pounded on the walls.

“Let me out of here!” she screamed.

Thuds and muffled laughter filtered in through the insulated, wooden walls. The morgue doors banged open then squeaked back and forth, swinging briefly on their hinges. And then there was nothing.

“Help!” Izzy shouted.

She reached above her head and pounded on the door, the rough wood tearing at her knuckles. After a few seconds, she forced herself to lie still, trying to hear over her own labored breathing. She closed her eyes and counted to ten, struggling against the panic that threatened to overwhelm her.
They’ll come back,
she thought
. They’re just out in the hall having a laugh. They’ll be right back.
Then, suddenly, the heavy, cloying stench of decay and formaldehyde filled her nostrils. She pressed her lips together and tried not to take deep breaths. The lack of oxygen made her dizzy.

“Okay, the joke’s over!” she yelled. “Let me out of here! Alex? Josh?”

Still nothing. Maybe this wasn’t a joke. Then she remembered Alex yelling at someone to let her go, her muffled cries. Did they put her in one of the vaults too?

“Alex?” she cried. “Are you in here?”

Still nothing. What the hell was going on? Maybe Alex had been dragged out of the room against her will. Then she remembered Alex’s warning; she needed to be even more careful after Shannon apologized. Loathing welled like bile from Izzy’s stomach. Could Shannon have put Josh, Crystal, and Dave up to the whole thing? Then she had another thought and the cold fingers of fear clutched her throat. If they dragged Alex through the basement, up the stairs and back outside, Alex wouldn’t realize Izzy was missing until they let her go. Alex had no idea Izzy was locked inside the vault!

She took deep breaths, trying to recall how the groups were formed, how it was decided that her group would investigate the morgue. Had she been so preoccupied with not wanting to go inside Willard she’d missed the signs that she was being set up?

She clenched her fists, suddenly shaking and gasping for air, fighting the flood of horror that made her feel as though she might pass out. Tears of anger and fear spilled from her eyes. “Let me out of here!!” she screamed at the top of her lungs. And then, from the vault below her . . .

She pressed her hands over her ears, her heartbeat thundering in her chest.
What the hell is going on?

“If somebody doesn’t let me out of here right now, you’re going to be sorry!” she shouted, knowing her threats meant nothing. What could she do, turn them into the principal? She kicked the walls as hard as she could, banging her ankles and jamming her toes. “Dave and Josh! I know you put me in here!”

She thought about telling the person doing the knocking to stop, that she knew it was part of the hoax. It had to be. Instead, she decided to ignore it. Then again, what if it wasn’t a person down there? An image came to her: a dirt-brown skeleton lying in the vault below her, its lipless mouth opening and closing, its bare bone knuckles rapping on the damp wood. She imagined a rotting hospital gown hanging off the skeleton’s arms, jagged pieces of decayed cloth and rotted flesh hanging from its ribs. She crossed her arms and pushed the image from her mind, keeping her eyes closed, trying to ignore the noise and the fact that she was trapped inside a morgue vault.
What if no one comes back? What if they leave me here? I could die and no one would know what happened. No one will know where I am. No. Alex won’t let it happen. Once she gets away from Luke and Crystal, once she realizes I’m missing, she’ll ask where I am. She’ll come back for me.

Suddenly, a hazy childhood memory came to her, or maybe it was a forgotten nightmare, she couldn’t be sure. She was in bed, her My Little Pony night-light glowing pink in one corner of the dark room. The click of her bedroom door pulled her from the warm, fuzzy weight of near sleep. She blinked and started to sit up. Then someone, a man, was lying beside her, the smell of sweat and whiskey wafting through the air like a mist. At first she couldn’t see the man’s features, but then he smiled and his face morphed into a snarling demon, his blood-filled eyes swelling until they reached his hairline, his pointy teeth jagged and black. She opened her mouth to scream but couldn’t. The demon was holding her down.

Izzy bit her lip, her hands clenching and unclenching, her nostrils flaring as she tried to catch her breath. The air felt hot and dry in her throat. The first memory of her recurring childhood nightmare came to her now, no doubt brought to the surface by being locked in the vault. Now, she remembered being so terrified she couldn’t move, unable to tell her mother until hours later, when she finally came out of what felt like a trance. Her parents would allow her to crawl in bed with them until morning, her mother telling her over and over again that she had no reason to be afraid, that monsters weren’t real and besides, she would always protect her. Then, suddenly, the nightmares just stopped. She remembered her mother apologizing, for what, she wasn’t sure.

Now, somehow, she pushed the terrifying image away. But the feeling of being trapped, of being suffocated, bore down on her like an oncoming train. She tore the zipper down on her hoodie and pulled at the collar of her T-shirt. Sweat broke out on her forehead and upper lip. She pushed up her sleeves and dug her nails into her arms, trying to break the skin. If Shannon wanted to drive her crazy, it was working.
No,
she thought,
I can’t let her win.
She tried willing her body to relax, imagining the muscles in her toes, her feet, her legs, going loose. The trick worked for a few seconds, but then panic seized her all over again. She took a deep breath and started over.

Finally, she willed herself into something that resembled self-control. The knocking below her had stopped and she wondered if the perpetrator had fallen asleep. Whoever it was, they must really want Shannon’s approval. Thinking about Shannon, she clenched her jaw. What if Izzy had been so scared she had a heart attack or a nervous breakdown? What if she ran out of oxygen before someone came back for her? Did Shannon hate her so much that she was willing to risk something happening to her? And what about Ethan, was he in on this horrible trick?

No. He couldn’t be. He might be naïve enough to make excuses for Shannon’s mean school pranks, but he would never go along with this. It had to be Shannon, Josh, Crystal, and Dave.

Eventually, the sweat of panic began to evaporate, cold air drifting around her wrists and ankles, like the icy fingers of ghosts touching her skin. She zipped up her hoodie and pulled the hood over her head, hugging herself to try to stay warm. Her teeth chattered. She envisioned herself trapped in the vault while fall turned to winter, growing thinner and weaker, starving to death. She reached up and wiped her hands over her face. Her skin felt like wax; cold, dead skin on the outside, pulsing and hot on the inside. She remembered hearing stories of people being buried alive, scratching and clawing the wooden lids of their coffins, fighting to get out. She imagined their bloody fingers, nails scraped to the quick until there was nothing left but bone.

No,
she reminded herself.
You’re not in a coffin. You’re in a vault, with a door. There is a way out. You just have to wait until someone comes and opens it.
She pushed the image away and tried to concentrate on something else. Her jaw ached from gritting her teeth and she was getting a headache, a sharp stab of pain thumping at both temples.

Finally, she heard muffled voices, heavy footsteps running down the hall, the double doors swinging open.

“Izzy?” someone shouted. “Where are you?” It was Alex.

“I’m in here!” Izzy yelled. She banged on the side of the vault.

“Holy shit,” a male voice said.

“We’re going to get you out of there!” Alex said. “Just hang on!”

Their voices sounded low and muffled, as if she were listening through a door with a drinking glass.

“Which one is she in?” the male voice said. Izzy’s heart raced. It sounded like Ethan.

“I don’t know,” Alex said. “Just open the doors!”

Izzy pounded on the wood above her head. “I’m in this one!” The lower left-hand vault opened. Then the one directly below her.

“What the hell?” Ethan said. “What are you doing in there?” Metal screeched against metal and then there were several loud thumps, as if someone was struggling to stand, or wrestling. Something heavy scraped along the floor, then hit the door above her head. The vault shook. “Where is Izzy?” Ethan snarled. His voice sounded right outside the door and Izzy pictured him pushing someone against the vault, his face contorted in anger.

“It wasn’t my idea!” a male voice said. “They paid me!”

“Who paid you?” Ethan said, thumping the person against the vault again.

“Never mind about him!” Alex said. “We’ve got to find Izzy!”

“I’ll deal with you later!” Ethan said.

Izzy sensed rather than felt a person being yanked away from the vault. A metallic bang echoed in the room, as if someone had fallen over the vat of embalming fluid. The swinging door squeaked.

At last, the thick door above her head wrenched open and beams of light sliced through the dark interior. She gasped for air and pushed on the sides of the vault, trying to force herself out of the chamber. Then someone yanked out the slab. She blinked and covered her eyes with one shaking hand, suddenly blinded by lights. The bright beams dropped and Alex stood holding two flashlights, staring at Izzy, her face pale, her eyes wide.

“Oh my God!” Alex said. “Are you all right?”

“I think so,” Izzy said, pushing herself up on her elbows. She swung her legs over the edge of the slab, sat up too fast and immediately felt dizzy. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes, trying to regain her equilibrium. A warm hand touched her back and she turned to see Ethan, his brow furrowed, his lips pressed together in a hard, thin line. He came around in front of her, offering to help her down. Unable to stop shaking, she grasped his upper arm for support and moved to the thick edge of the metal slab. Ethan put his hands around her waist and lifted her up, then gently set her down on the floor. The world turned gray and teetered away from her as she swayed and tried to keep herself upright. Ethan grabbed her shoulders and held on.

“Are you sure you’re all right?” he said, bending down to look in her eyes.

Izzy nodded. Despite the overwhelming relief of being rescued, she wondered what he was doing here. She wanted to ask him where Shannon was, if he knew what his girlfriend had been planning. But first, she wanted to get the hell out of Willard.

“I’m so sorry!” Alex said. “I had no idea what was going on! When they dragged me out of here, I thought they were dragging you out too. I couldn’t see anything and tried to get away but . . .” She was crying now, her words coming in short, shallow gasps. “I didn’t know you were missing until we were back outside!”

“It’s okay,” Izzy said. “It’s not your fault. Just get me out of here.”

“They took off with the flashlights and just left me outside the building,” Alex said. “It took forever to find someone to help.”

“Come on,” Ethan said, putting an arm around Izzy’s waist. “Let’s go.”

She walked toward the exit on elastic legs, holding on to Ethan’s arm to keep her balance. She shivered, her teeth chattering, partly from cold and exhaustion and relief, partly from anger.

“It must have been Shannon!” Alex said, her words rattled by fury. “She put them up to it!”

“Yeah,” Izzy said. “That’s what I thought too.”

Ethan stopped in the hall, unzipped his sweatshirt, and held it out for Izzy. She pushed her arms into the sleeves and wrapped the too-big garment around herself. The inside of the sweatshirt was dry and warm, the familiar smell of Ethan’s cologne wafting out of the collar. She wanted to pull the edge of the sweatshirt over her face, to block out the wet, rotten smell of the basement, but she resisted. She started walking again, moving along the cement corridor as fast as she could, eager to fill her lungs with fresh air.

“Who put you in the vault?” Ethan said. “Do you know?”

“Josh and Dave,” Izzy said. “I’m sure of it.”

“I’m really sorry about this,” he said. “I can’t believe she would do that to you. To anyone.”

“Your girlfriend is one messed-up bitch,” Alex said. “She’s out there, acting all concerned about Izzy, wondering what happened. Izzy should press charges!”

At the end of the hall, Izzy grabbed the banister and pulled herself up the stairs. “She can’t be too happy with you right now,” she said to Ethan. “If she knows you came looking for me.” He shrugged. “Where is she now?”

“Everyone is waiting down by the boathouse,” Alex said.

“Take me there,” Izzy said.

 

Flashlight beams bobbed and crossed, yellow shafts of light lining the black lawn and briefly illuminating the decaying shingles of the old boathouse. Groups of kids milled about, pacing and jumping up and down to stay warm, waiting to hear what happened. When Crystal saw Izzy coming down the hill, she hurried toward her, running across the grass. Izzy felt her chest and face grow hot.

“Are you all right?” Crystal said, her voice filled with feigned pity. She reached out to Izzy, as if to embrace her. Izzy brushed past her and kept going, her eyes searching the crowd for Shannon.

Finally, Izzy saw her, talking and laughing with Josh and Luke, a beer in one hand, a cigarette in the other. Izzy pushed her way through the crowd, ignoring the fact that everyone was staring. The closer she got to Shannon, the more her fury grew, swelling up inside her like a balloon being filled with hot air. Normally, she would have pushed the feelings of anger out of her mind as soon as they appeared. But this time her fury was too big, too massive, consuming all thought. She wouldn’t hit Shannon, but she wouldn’t let her get away with this either. She marched toward her, taking long, even strides, her body tense, her hands clenched into fists.